Perspective Matters for How One Identifies and Assesses Dat to Weave into Significance

 

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There will be lots of perspectives about the now ongoing military actions among the US, Israel, Iran and their allies.  For many commentators, the favored perspective revolves around the contemporary version of the ancient "Jewish question," including most of the ancient tropes repurposed and sanitized for contemporary tastes. I am not going to bother with them; they remain so normalized in the discourse as to be unremarkable--and so remarkable for the power of an old cognitive cage. And they come in various flavors as a sort of seasoning applicable to virtually any substantive analytic focus. This does not suggest that there is something that "must be done" about it. But it does suggest the value of self consciousness in following cognitive pathways as if they were somehow either logical or natural. .

Changing the analytical lens even a little, that is changing the grounding premises through which one gathers facts, gives them value and then builds on them to produce an analysis that is the aggregation of those signified data points, also changes the analysis, or at least changes the "political" or "legal" message that these data points, appropriately arranged, are supposed to "show." In that light one might profit from reading through Zineb Riboua's recent essay, The Iran Question Is All About China: Why Operation Epic Fury Is the Opening Act of the Indo-Pacific Century. The essay follows berlow and may be accessed in the original HERE.

I do not propose that the4 essay is "right" or "wrong"--only that it provides a window looking out at a different landscape and a reminder that analysis may sometimes be more a reflection of the landscape within whicvh it is created than of itself without regard to its anchoring landscapes. In that sense, the lands capping may become more important than the analysis, and the analysis more infused with the sensibilities of propaganda or in its highest forms solidarity with a cognitive and analytocal orienting ideology than much of anything else.  

 

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President Trump's Statement at the Start of US Action Against the Government of Iran

 

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To the members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces and all of the police, I say tonight that you must lay down your weapons and have complete immunity. Or, in the alternative, face certain death. So lay down your arms. You will be treated fairly with total immunity, or you will face certain death. Finally, to the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don't leave your home. It's very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations. For many years you have asked for America's help, but you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want. (Scripted Transcript of remarks of President Trump)

President Trump announced the start of American military action against the government of Iran. The video of those remarks may be accessed HERE. Prime Minister Netanyahu also issued a video statement (discussed here).

It is far too early to speculate  much less to comment other than to restate positions that are both well known and well worn. Blood will change the analysis and the rationalization of its consequences. However the temptation is perhaps too strong to be avoided though much of it is rehash of traditional stances now years old applied to the current situation (eg here, here) but for perhaps useful strategic description see here. 

The full text of the remarks follows (with thanks to The National News).; though President Trump went off script so it is useful to watch the video. 

CfP: 2nd Asia-Pacific Politics and Public Administration (APPPA) HKU

 

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Happy to pass along this CfP:

The 2nd Asia-Pacific Politics and Public Administration (APPPA) Conference in Hong Kong is Calling For Papers now!  The inaugural Asia-Pacific Politics and Public Administration (APPPA) conference, hosted by the Department of Politics and Public Administration  at HKU, brought together over 100 scholars to share exciting research and exchange ideas! The second APPPA conference will return this year on May 18-19, 2026. This conference aims to bring together scholars conducting cutting-edge empirical research across all subfields of political science and public administration, fostering dialogue among researchers from the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.  Abstract submission is now open until March 12. Please use this link to submit your proposals: https://hku.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9t9dYsPFh4ItHwi.

The detailed CfP follows

 

Jeremiah “Lumpy” Lumbaca, "Cognitive Warfare to Dominate and Redefine Adversary Realities: Implications for U.S. Special Operations Forces "

 

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I have been considering the public facing production of analysis abut the emerging techniques of warfare. See, e.g., Handbook “Weapons of Information Warfare” 28.07.2025. While this is of particular concern to specialists, its general circulation publication reminds the rest of us that that spillover effects of these changes, whether viewed positively or not (and frankly the character of the reception is of little concern either to the technology or to the imperatives driving their development or use. . . like other tech driven innovation) will tech to upend virtually all aspects of the comfy cozy systems of premises that rationalize political, economic, and cultural orders. It is, in a sense the tech tail that will, indeed, wag what passes for the dog of social organization. This is especially important in the areas of normative premises--privacy, the character and expectations of individual autonomy, for example--and process rights. It also suggests that in the face of tech it is increasingly impossible to rest comfortably on the 18th century liberal notions that it is the political branches and their administrative organs that drive law and normative expectations.  Neither crying about that, nor whining about efforts (sometimes augmented by action) to return society to some sort of (re)conceived pre-tech golden age (though it is the decrepitude of that past age that gives off the glow that appears in the rear view mirror of temporal movement as "golden"). Understanding what is occurring is a first step in breaking that cycle--though where understanding takes one is unknown other than that it will be driven within the cognitive cages within which knowledge is received and processed. 

It is with that in mind that one  might useful consider a most interesting publication, Jeremiah “Lumpy” Lumbaca, "Cognitive Warfare to Dominate and Redefine Adversary Realities: Implications for U.S. Special Operations Forces," Small Wars Journal ( 11 February 2026). The provided overview sets the context:

Cognitive warfare directly targets the processes of perception, judgment, and belief formation within individuals and groups. This form of conflict utilizes the intersection of cyber tools, psychological sciences, and neurosciences to achieve political or military objectives by altering enemy cognitive processes. The primary aim is the generation of cognitive effects rather than simple information dissemination. This includes the deployment of cognitive contagions, ideologically charged constructs designed to spread virally across digital networks to embed specific patterns of thinking. Over time, these operations can lead to epistemic closure. This is a state where a target population rejects new information that contradicts an engineered narrative.

Technological advancements in artificial intelligence and social media algorithms serve as the primary enablers for these operations. AI facilitates micro-targeting and the creation of hyper-realistic disinformation, such as deepfakes, while social media platforms prioritize engagement over accuracy. The report highlights that adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party and Iran already utilize these methods to erode internal cohesion and decision-making processes in contested regions. For U.S. Special Operations Forces, this environment necessitates a shift in organizational structure and training. Dr. Lumpy recommends the establishment of multi-disciplinary cognitive warfare cells at all echelons to include data scientists and behavioral psychologists. Furthermore, the piece advocates for the development of cognitive resilience programs and the use of AI-driven cognitive firewalls to preserve the mental sovereignty of personnel operating in manipulated information environments. (HERE)

It suggests a number of things worth noting. First it continues the development of the premise that killing people in warfare ought to be viewed as last recourse strategies (my pre-tech view here: The Fuhrer Principle of International Law: Individual Responsibility and Collective Punishment). It does not make sense to kill people who, after victory, would be useful (prevention); unless necessary or unavoidable. Mass killings are presumptively  wasteful and comes backs to bite; reprogramming a population is more effective; if it can be done. The greatest utility of people the, is to program them correctly.  Programming people correctly is an old objective of human civilization; nor it is made potentially more effective and the time to reprogramming shortened using the techniques available through and as tech. But programming can also be embedded within military operations (mitigation and remedy rather than prevention of killing). That is the focus of military  absorption of tech; but it also suggests the difficulty of containing it within military operations--unless everything is understood as a military operation. Things will get more interesting when these processes become automated, and when automated decision making is not driven by humans, except at the margins (initial programming, quality control, and after the fact assessment. 

 

The article may be accessed HERE, and the 2025 version is reproduced below. 

 

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国新办举行新闻发布会 介绍市场监管服务经济高质量发展情况 [State C ouncil Press Conference to introduce the situation of market supervision serving high-quality economic development]

 

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Socialist Modernization has moved from being an object and subject of Chinese Marxist Leninism to being the cognitive cage through which Marxist and Leninist theory (and practice) is understood, evaluated, valued and applied in the new era of Chinese historical development. The difference is subtle but might be worth considering. As object and subject, modernization in general, and socialist modernization  (with Chinese characteristics) in particular, had been traditionally identified as the measure of Marxist progress through Leninist institutional theory. It was the "thing" that objectified progress (economic, social, cultural etc. development) and the process and manifestation of progress along the Socialist Path that made it the subject pf political guidance and administrative regulation. That continues to be the outward form of the relationship between the CPC, its administrative organs and the various aspects that in the aggregate can be seen to constitute modernization with socialist and Chinese characteristics. As the cognitive cage, though, the relationship is upended.  Socialist modernization becomes the foundation to which Marxist theory is directed and around which it is elaborated through the stages of historical development necessary to reach communism--socialist modernization as Marxist prequel--and around which Leninism is deployed. It is the crucial objective of Leninist organization (beyond vanguard solidarity and purity) as Marxist vanguards. It shaped and constrains the discretionary authority of Leninism and ties it closely to its theoretical justification for being--Marxism, or at least the obligation to bring the necessary comprehensive changes required before a society can realize a communist society. After that, of course, all bets are off--but this generation certainly will be long dead before it is anticipated that a Leninist vanguard would have to worry.  

It is with that in mind that the aftermath of the 3rd and 4th Plenum of the 20th Congress assumes a more interesting form. It focus is on the economy--but the economy as an expression of socialist modernization that itself is more than the economy (as the current general contradiction suggests).  How, then, might one read the recent engagements with modernization? One clue might be in the interstices of  a recent high profile public facing event organized by the Chinese State Council: 国新办举行新闻发布会 介绍市场监管服务经济高质量发展情况 [State Council Press Conference to introduce the situation of market supervision serving high-quality economic development].

国务院新闻办公室于2026年2月5日（星期四）上午10时举行新闻发布会，请国家市场监督管理总局副局长、国家标准化管理委员会主任邓志勇，国家市场监督管理总局价格监督检查和反不正当竞争局局长姚雷，国家市场监督管理总局网络交易监督管理司司长朱剑桥，国家市场监督管理总局标准技术管理司司长刘洪生介绍市场监管服务经济高质量发展情况，并答记者问。[The State Council Information Office held a press conference at 10:00 AM on Thursday, February 5, 2026. Deng Zhiyong, Vice Minister of the State Administration for Market Regulation and Director of the State Standardization Administration; Yao Lei, Director of the Price Supervision and Anti-Unfair Competition Bureau of the State Administration for Market Regulation; Zhu Jianqiao, Director of the Network Transaction Supervision and Management Department of the State Administration for Market Regulation; and Liu Hongsheng, Director of the Standards and Technology Management Department of the State Administration for Market Regulation, introduced the situation of market supervision serving high-quality economic development and answered questions from reporters.] (Press Release)

The object, as explained by Deng Zhiyong, Deputy Director of the State Administration for Market Regulation and Director of the State Standardization Administration [国家市场监督管理总局副局长、国家标准化管理委员会主任 邓志勇]  was to connect the ideological parameters through which modernization was to be manifested at this stage of the new era with pragmatic programs that indicate forward motion. In the process the quality of modernization was critical--and political.

In 2025, under the strong leadership of the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, the national market supervision system adhered to the principles of "emphasizing politics, strengthening supervision, promoting development, and ensuring safety," focusing on enhancing comprehensive market supervision capabilities, effectively maintaining and promoting the formation of a strong domestic market, and achieving significant results in supporting economic growth and promoting high-quality development.[2025年，在以习近平同志为核心的党中央坚强领导下，全国市场监管系统坚持“讲政治、强监管、促发展、保安全”，着力提升市场综合监管能力，有力维护和促进形成强大国内市场，支撑经济增长和推动高质量发展取得明显成效。].

Seven areas of concern were then identified, wrapped as usual, in the discursive tropes of forward movement and closing in completion: (1)  First, the quality of business entity development continued to improve [一是经营主体发展质量不断提升。]; Second, consumer rights protection was more effective [二是消费者权益保护更加有力。]; (3) Third, the market environment for fair competition has been continuously optimized [三是公平竞争市场环境持续优化。]; Fourth, the construction of quality infrastructure is more adapted to industry needs [四是质量基础设施建设更加适配产业需求。]; (5) Fifth, significant progress was made in the governance of the platform economy ecosystem [五是平台经济生态治理取得重要进展]; (6) Sixth, the overall security situation in the market supervision field remained stable [六是市场监管领域安全形势总体稳定]; （7） Next, we will earnestly implement the decisions and deployments of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council . . . contributing market supervision power to achieving a good start to the "15th Five-Year Plan" [下一步，我们将认真贯彻党中央下一步，我们将认真贯彻党中央、国务院决策部署。 。 。 为实现“十五五”良好开局贡献市场监管力量]. These then served as the template for the reports delivered by the other participants, each focused on their substantive areas of contribution.

Object, subject and cage then produced the setting for the specific manifestations of proper development.  The Press Conference summary follows below. The video may be accessed here. The way that modernization appears in all three aspects makes for better reading. 

Performative Text, Textual Performance as the State of the Union--Text of President Trump's 2026 State of the Union Address

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Think of it - much less than $1 trillion for four years, versus much more than $18 trillion for one year. What a difference a president makes. A short time ago, we were a dead country. Now we are the hottest country anywhere in the world. The hottest. As thousands of new businesses are forming and factories, plants and laboratories are being built, we have added 70,000 new construction jobs in just a very short period of time. Getting bigger and bigger and stronger. Nobody can believe what they’re watching. American oil production is up by more than 600,000 barrels a day. And we just received from our new friend and partner, Venezuela, more than 80 million barrels of oil. American natural gas production is at an all-time high. Because I kept my promise to drill, baby, drill. (President Trump. 2026 State of the Union Address).

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 Text is dead. In a world saturated by the visual, by the performative, the dreaming, by the visually enmhanced simulation of itself, by the metaphor of context and collective, the self-referencing power of a text has been displaced by something older, something more visceral, something  more comprehensive--the performance of text within ritual spaces in which a dialectic between the audience and the speaker, between the text and its oral reconstitution, can deliver messages in multiple levels of cognitive reception. This really ought to be sung or read to music and physical performance or a light show. One cannot capture the fullness of its intent in the absence of those  augmentations. This is a theater that requires a main character and a set of of actors in supporting roles that help foreground the text/performance and incarnate the opposition (and by doing so refining the message and identifying  the "not" text also through a performance that inverts the major action.

 So it is with the 2026 State of the Union Address--a performance the power of which is flattened and diminished merely by reading its text.  But a text that suggests not just the forward thrust of the Trump Administration, but also its sensibilities, its character, and its state of mind. There was nothing new substantively, no hints of secrets or the future. There was reassurance, threat, desire, anticipation, and a recitation of objectives and accomplishments from the perspective of the President. Fair enough. What lies beneath the intertwined text, oral performance and the stage on which it was presented I leave to the reader, who might start off by considering the full text which follows below. It power is evidenced by President Trump's NOT fans, who applied various visual techniques to shew the performance. My personal favorite that made the rounds--"Watch President Trump's 2026 State of the Union address in 3 minutes."  But that is like drinking watered down wine. It ought to be enjoyed fully and undiluted. Fair in politics, but it might well appear as a naughty appropriation of performance as instrument in the hands of those who are interested in dis(re)messaging the original 

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And yet there is text as well. I conclude these very brief remarks with an invitation to dive into a densely semiotic text that perhaps goes to the essence of the text as a whole:

Americans lifted humanity into the skies or the wings of aluminum and steel. And then we launched mankind into the stars on rockets powered by sheer American will and unyielding American pride. We wired the globe with our ingenuity. We captivated the planet with American culture and now we are pioneering the next great American breakthroughs that will change the entire world. All of this, and so much more, is the enduring legacy, unmatched glory of the hard-working patriots who built and defended this country and who still carry the hopes and freedoms on all of humanity’s backs. For years, they were forgotten, betrayed, and cast aside. But that great betrayal is over, and they will never be forgotten again. Because when the world needs courage, daring, vision and inspiration, it is still turning to America. And when God needs a nation to work his miracles, he knows exactly who to ask. (President Trump. 2026 State of the Union Address).

And its quite interesting conclusion with its play on the once and future revolution:

The revolution that began in 1776 has not ended. It still continues because the flame of liberty and independence still burns in the heart of every American patriot, and our future will be bigger, better, brighter, bolder, and more glorious than ever before. Thank you. God bless you and God bless America. (President Trump. 2026 State of the Union Address).

 And at the heart of this core--corruption requiring rectification:

This is the kind of corruption that shreds the fabric of a nation, and we are working on it like you wouldn’t believe. So tonight, although started four months ago, I am officially announcing the war on fraud to be led by our great Vice President JD Vance. He’ll get it done. And we’re able to find enough of that fraud, we will actually have a balanced budget overnight. It’ll go very quickly. That’s the kind of money you’re talking about. We’ll balance our budget. The Somali pirates who ransacked Minnesota remind us that there are large parts of the world where bribery, corruption, and lawlessness are the norm, not the exception.(President Trump. 2026 State of the Union Address).

So sing it, orate it out loud, dance, immerse as one delivers the words in performative context; perform it as if one were performing Aeschylus. . .  or Aristophanes. The power of the text is activated in ways the meaning of which can then  not be avoided. And that is power, perhaps power enough to affect the mid term elections. 

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Call for Contributions: Oxford Intersections: Borders | Oxford University Press Section: Territorial Sovereignty and the Modern International System

 

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I am delighted to pass along this quite interesting call for contributions. It is edited by edited by June Wang (王珺), Department of Public and International Affairs, City University of Hong Kong:

Oxford Intersections: Borders | Oxford University Press
Section: Territorial Sovereignty and the Modern International System

About the Series

Oxford Intersections is Oxford University Press’s online reference platform of thematic article collections, designed to map cutting-edge debates at the intersections of established fields. Each collection consists entirely of commissioned contributions — original, authoritative articles that orient readers within fast-moving conversations, trace the intellectual stakes of contested concepts, and open new research directions.

As Section Co-Editor for Territorial Sovereignty and the Modern International System, I am currently soliciting commissioned contributions across two thematic areas. Scholars developing original arguments on either area are warmly encouraged to be in touch.

Area I — Alternative Territorialities and Heterarchical Statehood

This area reframes sovereignty and territory as plural, contested, and assembled — not as a fixed Westphalian container. Drawing on decolonial thought, post-structuralist analytics (Foucault, Deleuze), and STS approaches to infrastructure-as-politics, contributions examine how political authority, legitimacy, and control are enacted through heterarchical actors, logistical networks, and spatial configurations that exceed the flat cartographic state. The section foregrounds voices and cases from Africa and Asia to ensure that “decentring” does not remain a purely Euro-American theoretical gesture.

Topics under commission include:

* Decolonial and anti-sovereign critique: normative and epistemic decentring of Western territorial sovereignty
* Relational statehood and heterarchical authority
* Topological territory and infrastructural space: corridors, chokepoints, special economic zones, logistical worlds, and BRI geopolitics
* Planetary politics and post-statist geographies: alternatives to state territorialism across scales

Area II — Digital Sovereignty and Digital Territory in a Multipolar World

This area argues that sovereignty is being re-assembled through digital infrastructures, data regimes, AI governance, and network control in an era of “weaponized interdependence.” The digital is treated not as a thematic add-on but as a core modality of contemporary territorialization: states and firms govern territory through cables, clouds, platforms, algorithmic standards, and jurisdictional chokepoints. Contributions are expected to situate digital sovereignty within the political economy of platform capitalism, the geopolitics of technological competition, and the longer genealogy of infrastructure as imperial and counter-hegemonic terrain.

Topics under commission include:

* Tech cold war and the multipolar world: competitive decoupling, weaponized interdependence, and the fragmentation of global digital infrastructure
* Digital sovereignty: AI governance, internet fragmentation, digital authoritarianism, and the uneven geographies of platform power
* Digital infrastructure and territory: submarine cables, cloud jurisdiction, data centre geopolitics, and the material politics of digital space
* Data colonialism and algorithmic power: extraction logics, platform capitalism, and the reconstitution of colonial hierarchies in technical architectures

Information on developing and submitting expressions of interest follow below

Part 17 (Part IV, Chapter 16: The Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights: Operational Principles IV, Issues of Context (UNGP Principles ¶¶ 23-24)

 

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I have been working on the production of a comprehensive commentary of the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights.  This is a humbling task. It follows the production of both an official commentary, written in tandem with the UNGP itself, and a collective commentary of the UNGP undertaken by some of the most distinguished students of other fields of human rights, business, and its related fields of academic  study ( The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: A Commentary (Barnali Choudhury (ed); Edward Elgar, 2023).  

I am at a point where I can start vetting portions of the draft. I hope to share those discussion drafts with a wider audience in hopes of getting feedback. In these posts I provide a short summary of the draft chapter and a link t access a 'pdf' version.  All draft chapters may be found on my Coalition for Peace & Ethics Website website at UNGP Commentary Page HERE.

Part I (On the Making of the UNGP), organized in five chapters, introduced the reader to the background, context, and sources that contributed to the drafting and eventual endorsement of the UNGP. Parts II through V then consider in detail the text and interpretation of the substantive provisions of the UNGP. Part II considered the UNGP's General Principles; Part III examines the State duty to protect human rights (UNGP Principles 1-10); Part IV then addresses commentary to the corporate responsibility to respect human rights (UNGP Principles 11-24); and Part V considers the remedial principles (UNGP Principles 25-31). 

 

The UNGP divides the principles for each of these Pillars into "foundational" and "operational" principles.  The former reflects the conceptual framework for each of the Pillars developed through the focus on the principled part of principled pragmatism exploration of the SRSG's initial mandate and culminating in the SRSG's 2008 Reports; the latter reflects the second mandate's direction to operationalize the conceptual framework, which focused on the pragmatism part of principled pragmatism that drove the SRSG's work throughout the mandates. The operational principles are then subdivided into a number of different categories of focus. 

 

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 This post considers considers UNGP Principles 23 and 24 (issues of context), the last two principles that constitute the 2nd Pillar corporate responsibility to respect human rights and the last of the operational principles of its human rights due diligence (HRDD) systems.   UNGP Principles 23 and 24 consider the issues of prioritization (as an alternative to balancing) that embeds the fundamental ordering principles of context, capacity, and severity of impact in two distinct contexts. The first, UNGP Principle 23, focuses on situations where applicable law of domestic legal orders may not be compatible with some or all of the international law and norms specified in UNGP Principle 12. In this context, legal compliance, a 1st Pillar obligation of enterprises but also constrained by the limits of a State’s international legal obligations, can itself produce adverse human rights impacts arising under the autonomous responsibility of enterprises (UNGP Principle 11) to avoid adverse human rights impacts measured against the normative yardstick of UNGP Principle 12. Or they may produce a system that effectively encases the particularity of State duty with the generality of the corporate responsibility with respect to all internationally recognized human rights. The second, UNGP Principle 24, focuses on the prioritization of an enterprise’s responsibility to address al adverse impacts. Where that is impossible, a severity based rule is imposed to sequence addressing impact. In both cases, however, prioritization does not reduce or eliminate the responsibility to address all adverse impacts, whatever their relations are to each other, and however national law may affect the conditions under which such impacts may be addressed.

The Chapter's conclusion provides a summary:

UNGP Principles 23 and 24 are, together, described in the UNGP 2nd Pillar as directed toward “issues of context,” do far more than touch on context. They serve, to different effect, to rationalize the operation of the 2nd Pillar corporate responsibility to respect human rights, as manifested in enterprise HRDD systems, and to tie that rationalization to the legal domains of the 1st Pillar State duty to protect human rights with its own overlapping engagement with human rights and their adverse impacts.     In that sense, there is no sense to HRDD, without bridging the autonomous universal 2nd Pillar from the variegated world of public law and policy State-based duty to protect international human rights through those portions of which an individual State might have bound itself or be bound.  In that way, and from the starting point of the internationalized normative framework of the 2nd Pillar, these “contextualizing” Principles suggest a means of rationalizing the State duty in a way that better aligns it with the global standard of the 2nd Pillar corporate responsibility. It also serves to rationalize the operation of HRDD systems themselves, by providing a way of ordering the sequencing of corporate systems for addressing adverse human rights impacts.

UNGP Principle 23 focuses on compliance within and between 1st and 2nd Pillar human rights ordering systems. In that sense it provides an orderliness to the relationship between UNGP Principles 2-3 (State should set expectations for business respect to human rights in their territories; States use of smart mix of public law measures to fulfill their duty) and the HRDD system (UNGP Principles 17-21) at the operational heart of the 2nd Pillar corporate responsibility (UNGP Principles 11-15). This is accomplished through the medium of legal compliance. Legal compliance embeds the hierarchies of the State system within the autonomous structures of the corporate responsibility. At the same time, it serves as a means of augmenting the State system rule basis, in all of its sometimes contradictory and irrational variability, by the homogenizing superstructures of UNGP Principle 12 based normative regimes built around the State through the 2nd Pillar. That overstructuring survives mandatory HRDD and efforts to “reign in” the corporate responsibility within law. By definition, everything that is law is NOT the 2nd Pillar, and the 2nd Pillar cannot be extinguished by State law making or the use of other mechanisms available through UNGP Principle 3, or in concert under UNGP Principles 8-10. The dialectics of legal compliance serves to mediate the parallel but distinct fulfillment of the State duty and the corporate responsibility, giving primary place to the mechanisms of the State. All of this is centered on the template for multi-Pillar dialectics—UNGP Principle 7 and the coordination of corporate and State activity in conflict affected areas, and through that around the concept of gross human rights abuse. But taken to its ends, UNGP 24 effectively treats all 2nd Pillar actions, and especially those of HRDD (and remediation through UNGP Principle 22) as matters of legal compliance. That becomes inevitable where the primary obligation of UNGP Principle 12 and HRDD is to undertake their fulfillment against the imperative of legal compliance—and around it.

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UNGP Principle 24, on the other hand, speaks to sequencing action. All administrative organs sequence the provision of their services. Some engage in this process in accordance with law; others as a function of capacity or budgets. The UNGP Principle 24 creates the same expectations for enterprises with respect to the adverse interests for which they are responsible. But UNGP Principle 24 also does more than that. It reaffirms UNGP Principle 11’s foundational premise that the 2nd Pillar responsibility does not permit waivers or avoidance of the responsibility to address adverse impacts. It reinforces the fundamental approach to human rights impacts that is fundamentally risk averse. That risk aversion is written into the normative framework of the 2nd Pillar and the legal framework of the 1st Pillar—that the primary objective of enterprises is to prevent and then mitigate adverse impacts, that is avoid or lesson their effects. That requires the ability to anticipate and act. Remediation, once the starting point for rights vindication becomes a sign of the failures or the marginal detritus of a system designed to minimize remediation. But it also leaves open the exact framework for mediating between these approaches. Systems that value development and that analysis human rights impacts as a function of development may still embrace this fundamental operating framework, and yet operationalize a system in which remediation plays a more robust role. And that is the last echo framed within UNGP Principle 24, the echo of context as the fundamental starting point for analysis. It is in context that severity may be understood and “valued.” It is in context that the idea and scale of remediation or irremediability can be assessed. And it is in context that the value of all of these factors, not to the enterprise, but to rights holders, may be recognized and applied.

It is only within the context of the insights embedded in UNGP Principles 23 and 24 that the understanding of the universality , indivisibility, and inter-relatedness of human rights may be better appreciated of human rights may be understood, not as principle but as pragmatics. It is within those principles that the dialectic between 1st Pillar legal and 2nd pillar coherence, one grounded in contextually relevant international law, the other in all generally recognized international human rights, may be rationalized. It provides the pragmatic structures for recognizing and working through the realities of hierarchies of international human rights law on the ground, and of honoring the ideal of the universal system as norm and law through operational efforts that are meant to move toward whatever the version of the embraced ideal appears in the context of relations between enterprise, state, and specific holders of human rights.

 

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 The Chapter 16 discussion draft may be accessed directly HERE (where revisions earlier chapters may also be accessed). The text of the draft of Chapter 16 as of the time of this posting also follows below along with its table of contents. 

 

Handbook “Weapons of Information Warfare” 28.07.2025

 

 

For those who missed this, a very nice primer that I have been meaning to post: Handbook “Weapons of Information Warfare” 28.07.2025 from the Center for Countering Disinformation. 

CENTER FOR COUNTERING DISINFORMATION (hereinafter referred to as the Center) is a working body of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, established in accordance with the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine of March 11, 2021 “On the Establishment of the Center for Countering Disinformation”, enacted by the Decree of the President of Ukraine of March 19, 2021 No. 106.

The Center ensures the implementation of measures to counter current and projected threats to the national security and national interests of Ukraine in the information space, ensure information security of Ukraine, identify and counteract disinformation, effectively counter propaganda, destructive information influences and campaigns, and prevent attempts to manipulate public opinion. (HERE).

The materials have application well beyond the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war. The most fascinating element is the elaboration: bots, fake accounts, anonymous authority, deepfakes, Potemkin Villages, website duplication, framing, information overload strategies (data streams as weapon). As interesting are the techniques: clickbaiting, ratings, information sandwiches, presence effects, and contextonomy.

The Table of Contents and Introduction follow below.

 

Just Published, Vol. 39(3) International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique; Special Issue: Law in an Age of 'Permacrisis'

 

 I am delighted to pass along the announcement of the publication of Vol 39 Issue 3 of the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique. This special issue grew directly out of the inspiring International Roundtables for the Semiotics of Law (IRSL), hosted at Keele University, and captures the energy, depth, and interdisciplinarity of those conversations.

 The Table of Contents with links follows below.