Tuesday, October 30, 2018

问责时代的社会主义宪制民主 第十届“政治、法律与公共政策”年会主旨演讲发言稿 2018年10月27日,北京大学 Bilingual Version of Remarks Prepared for the 10th Annual Conference on "Politics, Law and Public Policy"


(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2017)


For the 10th Annual Conference on "Politics, Law and Public Policy" (第十届“政治、法律与公共政策”年会) (more on that event HERE) held at Peking University last week, my co-author, Miaoqiang Dai and I presented our essay 问责时代的社会主义宪制民主  (白轲 戴苗强  翻译:戴苗强)--Socialist Constitutional Democracy in the Age of Accountability. The essay may be accessed HERE and downloaded HERE.

In connection with that presentation I delivered the following remarks in English with Chinese translation. I earlier posted the pre-delivery remarks in English. This post includes the English version and the 中国语言版本 of those remarks as delivered, which both appear below. 
 
The focus is on the development of a political theory of democracy that does not center popular elections at its core. This is a difficult, if not taboo subject, under the political cultural conditions of Western liberal democracies (with respect to which a theory of endogenous democracy, especially one relevant to Marxist Leninist state systems) has no quarrel. And yet it might prove interesting to consider its implications within Western systems that have evolved well past the structures that made theories that privilege the exogenous of democracy so potent in West Western political culture.    





Thursday, October 25, 2018

Now Available on Kindle "Cuba’s Caribbean Marxism: Essays on Ideology, Government, Society, and Economy in the Post Fidel Castro Era"



I am happy to report the publication of Cuba’s Caribbean Marxism: Essays on Ideology, Government, Society, and Economy in the Post Fidel Castro Era (Little Sir Press 2018; ISBN: 978-1-949943-00-9 (pbk); I SBN: 978-1-949943-01-6 (ebk)). The book includes a brilliant Foreword by Flora Sapio.  The book is available on Kindle and through other eBook distributors. Order Kindle edition HERE.  Other ordering information to follow.

Over the course of future posts I will be introducing  readers to the book. This post includes the Detailed Table of Contents and Summary Introduction.

HERE for the video recording of the launch event for Cuba's Caribbean Marxism: Essays on Ideology, Government, Society, and Economy in the Post Fidel Castro Era, which took place 12 November 2018 at Penn State



Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Remarks "Socialist Constitutional Democracy in the Age of Accountability" [问责时代的社会主义宪制民主 ] delivered at the 10th Annual Conference on "Politics, Law and Public Policy" (第十届“政治、法律与公共政策”年会) October 27, 2018 Peking University

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2017)


I have been writing about the upcoming conference at Peking University, 10th Annual Conference on "Politics, Law and Public Policy" (第十届“政治、法律与公共政策”年会) (more on that event HERE). My co-author, Miaoqiang Dai and I will be presenting our essay 问责时代的社会主义宪制民主  (白轲 戴苗强  翻译:戴苗强)--Socialist Constitutional Democracy in the Age of Accountability. The essay may be accessed HERE and downloaded HERE.

I will be delivering more formal remarks (in English) at the Conference, the text of which follows below. 


Tuesday, October 23, 2018

问责时代的社会主义宪制民主 (白轲 戴苗强 翻译:戴苗强)--Socialist Constitutional Democracy in the Age of Accountability (责) Larry Catá Backer and Miaoqiang Dai



(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2018; Westlake, Hangzhou, China [西湖 杭州])

It was my great delight to be able to participate in this year's 10th Annual Conference on "Politics, Law and Public Policy" (第十届“政治、法律与公共政策”年会) (more on that event HERE). For that event, I was invited to speak to emerging theoretical approaches to socialist democracy.  To that end I will present brief remarks (to follow shortly) derived from a conference draft that my co-author, Miaoqiang Dai (戴苗强) and I (白轲) prepared, entitled   问责时代的社会主义宪制民主  (白轲 戴苗强  翻译:戴苗强)--Socialist Constitutional Democracy in the Age of Accountability. 

English and 中国语文 versions of the Conference Draft follow below and may be downloaded HERE. Comment and engagement always welcomed.


Monday, October 22, 2018

第十届“政治、法律与公共政策”年会---会议议程 [The 10th Annual Conference on "Politics, Law and Public Policy"--Agenda]



It was my great delight to be able to participate in this year's 10th Annual Conference on "Politics, Law and Public Policy" (第十届“政治、法律与公共政策”年会).

The Conference is sponsored by the Peking University Center for Rule of Law Research, the Peking University Law and Economics Research Center, and the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, Chongqing University, with special thanks to the Hong Kong Lida Group.  The Conference start October 27, 2018 and will be held in Wang Kezhen Building at Peking University. 主办单位 北京大学法治研究中心 北京大学法律经济学研究中心 重庆大学人文社会科学高等研究院. 特别鸣谢; 香港丽达集团; 2018年10月27日; 地点:北京大学王克桢楼20楼会议室.

The conference touches on quite relevant emerging themes of constitutionalism that are worthy of greater study. Jiang Shigong will moderate "Theme 1 The Constitution of the Great Powers and the Paradigm of Constitutional Studies" [主题一  《大国宪制》与宪制研究的范式 【主持人】强世功].  Yu Ming moderates "Theme 2 International System, Empire and International Law" [主题二   国际体系、帝国与国际法 【主持人】于明 ]. Hou Meng moderates "Theme 3 Constitutional, political parties and state building" [主题三  宪制、政党与国家建设 【主持人】侯猛]. Gao Shan will moderate "Theme 4 New Vision in Legislation and Judicial Studies" [主题四  立法与司法研究新视野 【主持人】高山]. Zhang Weiwei will moderate "Theme 5: Political and Legal Order and China's Road" [主题五:政法秩序与中国道路  【主持人】张薇薇]. Theme 6Law and Pubblic policy will be moderated by Chang an [主题六  法律与公共政策 【主持人】常安]. Jiang Shigong will provide the opening address [开幕致辞:强世功], and I will speak briefly to issues of socialist constitutional democracy in the age of accountability with Hou Meng as opeiong moderator [开幕主持人: 侯猛]. The Agenda (会议议程) is provided below. 仅限中文


Tuesday, October 16, 2018

"The King is Himself Again": The 2018 Report of the UN Working Group for Business and Human Rights to the UN General Assembly




George III: "The king is himself again. We must try to be more of a family. There are model farms now, model villages, even model factories. Well, we must be a model family, for the nation to look to." (Madness Of King George Script - Dialogue Transcript)

The UN Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises' annual Report to the UN General Assembly, circulating in some form or another for the last several months, has just been released to general circulation. This is most welcome and appreciated by those of us in the periphery who take their work seriously. 

The Report, The report of the Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises (A/73/163 (16 July 2018)) may be accessed HERE.  I am pleased to include the English version below. The 2018 Report is also available in other languages:  F S A C R.

I have circulated my own reflections on prior reports (2012 Report; 2016 Report; and 2017 Report). My reflections on this 2018 Report will follow in a future post (with a tiny bit of foreshadowing above).  

Monday, October 15, 2018

Announcing Publication of New Book: "Cuba’s Caribbean Marxism: Essays on Ideology, Government, Society, and Economy in the Post Fidel Castro Era"



I wanted to take advantage of the end of the celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month to provide an advance announcement of the forthcoming publication of my book: Cuba’s Caribbean Marxism:  Essays on Ideology, Government, Society, and Economy in the Post Fidel Castro Era (Little Sir Press, forthcoming 2018; ISBN 978-1-949943-00-9(pbk); 978-1-949943-01-6 (ebk)).

The book will be available in electronic versions first in a few weeks with the paperback edition to follow shortly thereafter.  Eventually an audio version will be available as well as the ability to purchase chapters at a very modest price.

The book will be published by Little Sir Press, and the hope is to make the book available as inexpensively as possible. I have been concerned for a while about the way that academic work has effectively been made unavailable to most people--especially those with limited means, and with no means of accessing public libraries.  Knowledge has become an elite affair, not because it is intellectually inaccessible, but because it has been made societally inaccessible my making it harder to access, and too expensive for most. This is especially of concern for me for its effects on traditionally marginalized communities--including the many communities that together make up the U.S. Hispanic community.

A short abstract follows.  In later posts will will make available more detailed descriptions of the work, and of each of the chapters.  For those of you with an interest in ideology, or in the quite dynamic changes to Marxism-Leninism as a political-economic and constitutional system, or for those interested in Cuba or Latin America, there may be something of interest for you here.  

Sunday, October 14, 2018

Practicing Socialist Democracy With Cuban Characteristics: Popular Consultation and the Mechanics for Participation of Cubans Living Abroad in the Process of Constitutional Reform


I have been writing about the development of theories of endogenous democracy that increasingly might be used as a lens through which to understand the way that democracy might be practised within Marxist Leninist systems (e.g., here, here, here, here, here, and here). These principles of endogenous democracy abandon centering theoretical democratic legitimacy on the representational character of the relationship between citizen and elected official (a key element of democratic notions in Western liberal democracies), in favor of a system grounded in accountability and consultation between collectives and the core with responsibility for normatively based governance. 

Since 2011 Cuba has been seeking to develop, refine and practice a form of this endogenous democracy in ways that its governing party determines fits within its ideological principles. The initial initiative was undertaken during 2010 and 2011 when the Cuban Communist Party under the direction of Raúl Castro managed a project of deep (by Cuban standards of the time) popular consultation on a program of substantial reform to the economic and administrative model of the state. Out of bounds was any reflection on development of the political model--including development of even Leninist theory to suit the times. The result was the Lineamientos de la Política Económica y Social del Partido y la Revolución.

Broad, but substantially well constrained consultation was attempted again in 2016 as the Party and its state apparatus considered potentially substantial reform to its economic and political model. On the table was the way on which the state translated and interpreted the core principles of political and economic organization.  Beyond consultation power was any consideration of the core principles of political and economic organization--the role of the Communist Party, the permanence of socialism, the rejection of the market as a mechanism for economic policy except at the margins.  The result was the Conceptualización del modelo económico y social Cubano de desarrollo socialista; Plan nacional de desarrollo económico y social hasta 2030: Propuesta de visión de la nación, ejes y sectores estratégicos.

And now, the Cuban Party-State is seeking to apply its principles of broad popular consultation to its constitutional reform project. That project, as I have suggested in earlier essays, is both a reflection of and constrained by the political and economic model adopted by the Communist Party and embraced by the National Assembly in 2017.  Those constraints have caused some distress both among Cubans in the diaspora (see, e.g., here, here, and here) and Cuban organizations within Cuba (e.g., here, and  here). These constraints, and the growing confidence of the Cuban Party-State in its approach to the practice of endogenous democracy are evident in the willingness of the Cuban state to solicit the participation of Cuban citizens resident abroad.  At the same time, the modalities of consultation also make clear that such consultation remains very much subject to the leadership of the Communist Party and the ideological constraints of the core principles of the political constitution of Cuba, better represented in the Conceptualización del modelo económico y social Cubano than in its Constitution. 

One can get a much better sense of this framework and its operation within Marxist Leninist systems by working through the instructions for popular consultation in the 2018-2019 Project of Constitutional Revision.  These follow below in English and the original Español, junto con una traducción aproximada de estos pensamientos These shed light not only on the way that consultations have acquired a global dimension (among Cuban citizens certainly), but more importantly, it also suggests the way that the thousands of scheduled meetings of of the local population, scheduled to take place all over Cuba from August through November of 2018, will be organized, the reflections valued and recorded.


Friday, October 12, 2018

Thoughts on John Ruggie, ‘Guiding Principles’ for the Business & Human Rights Treaty Negotiations: An Open Letter to the Intergovernmental Working Group"


("Le marchand de colifichets", England 1756-58; Musée Ariana, Geneva; pix © Larry Catá Backer)

At its 26th session, on 26 June 2014, the Human Rights Council adopted resolution 26/9 by which it decided “to establish an open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights, whose mandate shall be to elaborate an international legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises.”

The fourth session of the open-ended intergovernmental working group will take place from 15-19 October 2018 in Room XX of the Palais des Nations, Geneva. During that session, the Working Group will discuss the zero draft “legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises”, as well as the zero draft optional protocol annexed to the instrument. Many who have worked diligently to see this process through will be in attendance. (Draft Programme of work for the 4th session; A/HRC/RES/WG.16/4/1)

Apparently the IGWG expects that they will be at work on this draft through the end of 2019, as a Fifth Session has already been largely scheduled as well (Draft Programme of work for the 5th session).

Many have had much to say about that Zero Draft. Much of it can be accessed at the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre Website. But by no means all of them (e.g., here, here, here, here, and here) Among the most useful recent comments and helpful advice has been that of John Ruggie, the former Special Representative to the Secretary General and the principal progenitor of the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights. His Guidance (‘Guiding Principles’ for the Business & Human Rights Treaty Negotiations: An Open Letter to the Intergovernmental Working Group  and my brief comments follow.


Thursday, October 11, 2018

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC): Release of 2018 Annual Report; Making a Case for 'Crimes Against Humanity' Against China, and Text of Proposed “Xinjiang Uyghur Human Rights Act of 2018”.


The Congressional-Executive Commission on China was created by the U.S. Congress in 2000 "with the legislative mandate to monitor human rights and the development of the rule of law in China, and to submit an annual report to the President and the Congress. The Commission consists of nine Senators, nine Members of the House of Representatives, and five senior Administration officials appointed by the President." (CECC About). The CECC FAQs provide useful information about the CECC. See CECC Frequently Asked Questions. They have developed positions on a number of issues (e.g., here).

CECC tends to serve as an excellent barometer of the thinking of political and academic elites in the United States about issues touching on China and the official American line developed in connection with those issues. CECC becomes an even more important barometer of coherence and fracture in policy approaches as the discipline of activities between the political parties and the President and Legislature fractures in new and dynamic ways. As such it is an important source of information about the way official and academic sectors think about China. As one can imagine many of the positions of the CECC are critical of current Chinese policies and institutions (see, e.g., (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).

This month the CECC has released its Congressional-Executive Commission on China Annual Report 2018 (The Press Release HERE and following below). The 2018 Annual Report may be accessed HERE (pdf).

The CECC has also intensified its attention to a critical consideration of Chinese policies toward its autonomous regions, and its treatment of religion (in general) and religious minorities (specifically). CECC leaders coordinated the announcement of the release of the 2018 Report with three other actions that are particularly noteworthy:
1. The Chairs released a letter asking the FBI to report on how it addresses “unacceptable” intimidation and threats targeting Chinese, Uyghur, and Tibetan diaspora communities living in the United States (Letter to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray).

2. The Chairs released a letter to IOC President Thomas Bach urging him “to take steps to reassign” the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing (Letter to Thomas Bach, International Olympic Committee (IOC) President, on 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics).

3. The Chairs released the text of a Xinjiang Uyghur Human Rights Act of 2018 (the text of which follows below).
The material is rich with possibility. Ironically, some of the measures advocated would bring the United States much closer to adopting (and hardening) the mechanisms of the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights in both its 1st Pillar (State Duty) and 2nd Pillar (Corporate Responsibility) aspects. But of course it is meant to do more than that. It would align the work of the United States to that of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Special Rapporteurs even as the United States formally pulls out of the Human Rights Council. More importantly, it would further expand the use of the "targeted action mechanisms" represented by the Global Magnitsky Act (see here) now extended in a way that would make the United States the global protector of a neutrality based approach to human rights that reflects the evolving American jurisprudence of its Constitution's protection of the "Free Exercise" of religion and internationalizes those jurisprudential approaches, standards and principles.

One last point:While the human rights orientation of the CECC interventions would appear to run counter to Administration policies and preferences, it would be a mistake to think that there is policy dissonance in fact. In the past the CECC has tended to chart a course that was autonomous of the policies and objectives of Presidential Administrations. Yet now there appears to be a measure of coordination between CECC and the Trump Administration that one might not have noticed before. It may be necessary to read this intervention by the CECC as (in part) continuing the arc of the agenda that CECC has been forging autonomously for several years) but also that this arc has now been harassed int he service of the current efforts to strike a new grand bargain with China.    To that end, these interventions ought to be read against both Vice President Pence's speech at the Hudson Institute (Underlining the Obvious: Remarks by Vice President Pence on the Administration’s Policy Toward China),  and President Trump's U.N. speech ("America First," "Belt and Road," "Mutually Advantageous Cooperation" and the Rise of the Global South: Preliminary Thoughts on Remarks by President Trump to the 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly (25 September 2018)). 

More importantly, the focus on Muslim majority populations in China may also provide an important opportunity for the Administration to refine its domestic position with respect to the jurisprudential structures within which religion will be privileged int he United States by holding up this policy-action mirror to China. It would likely be a mistake to see in the CECC only a focus outward.

The CECC Press Release, Letters to the FBI and the International Olympic Committee and the text of the Xinjiang Uyghur Human Rights Act of 2018 follow.


Wednesday, October 10, 2018

The Battle Over the Legal Construction of Sexual Assault -- A Report From the Battle Lines at the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code Revision Project



(Rebecca Horne, In The Triangle 1973-74, Tate Modern, London pix © Larry Catá Backer 2017)

The great transformation of institutional preconceptions of the borderlands of the performance of relations between individuals,. and the management of sex, only most recently on display during the confirmation hearings of now Justice Kavanaugh, have for years now passionately divided the membership of the American Law Society as it continue to consider the extent to which the membership will be willing to be managed by the vision of the Reporters long charged with the overhaul of the American Law Institutes (ALI) Model Penal Code Sexual Assault and Related Offenses.

Since 2014, members of the ALI have waged an increasingly heated debate over the basic approach to the issues, the principles underlying the drafting of the provisions, the purpose and scope of the ALI in pushing law to particular directions of reform, or in synthesizing contemporary law. The battles have become more pointed as the ALI Reporters have continued to press their vision in the face of substantial opposition (see, e.g., 2016--Sexual Assault at the American Law Institute (ALI)--Intensified Controversy Over the Criminalization of Sexual Contact in the Proposed Revision of the Model Penal Code; and Sexual Assault at the American Law Institute (ALI)--The Saga Continues With Three Motions to Redirect the Course of Change; 2017--Sexual Assault at the American Law Institute (ALI)--The ALI and its Model Penal Code at the Center of the Controversies on the Sexualization of Criminal Law and the Criminalization of Sexual Rules).  

The battles continue at the ALI through 2018-2019. It is not clear that a compromise will be possible, given the essentially irreconcilable basic principles animating both sides. 
The issues raised go to the heart of two great trends in U.S jurisprudence.  The first is the move toward the criminalization of behaviors that society, through the state, seeks to control. The second touches on the value of the use of the criminal law as an instrument of social and cultural change. A subsidiary issue that is related to the use of the criminal law as an agent for cultural change involves the way that customary rules of process fairness are bent to the greater policy goals.There are many who view criminalization and the use of law instrumentally, and especially the criminal law, as a valuable tool for societal progress.  There are many who disagree.  (Sexual Assault at the American Law Institute--Controversy Over the Criminalization of Sexual Contact in the Proposed Revision of the Model Penal Code).
This post includes the last set of critical Comments to Preliminary Draft 9 of the Revisions to the Sexual Assault Provisions of the Model Penal Code recently lodged with the ALI Council, officers and the Reporters. The meeting next May (2019) will be interesting.

Monday, October 08, 2018

白轲 爱思想; Essays on the Aisixiang Website




I am delighted to note for my Chinese language readers that some of my essays will appear on the Aisixiang (Enjoying Intellectual Discussion) community website (Here). From time to time I will post essays of interest relating to New Era Chinese Constitutionalism and related issues for interested readers.

All essays  只有中国语文.

Links follow.

Saturday, October 06, 2018

Announcing "Little Sir Press": A Self-Publishing Collective (In Progress)


In 2013, the Coalition for Peace and Ethics announced the launching of a long term undertaking as part of its Education and Knowledge Dissemination work, a series of Knowledge Cores/Spiral Clusters projects. The initial focus of that project was to "think-by-doing"--experimenting with different modes of producing and disseminating knowledge around the societally developed structures for the control and management of both.  This resulted in the conception of a Video Knowledge Project to be built around short burst videos, the introduction to which has been distributed (see HERE); and the rest of which is in production.

This year has seen the expansion of the project to include the formation of something a little different--Little Sir Press.  It is conceived as a loosely organized self-publishing collective. The publishing concept can be found HERE and below. The object is ti free knowledge from its connection to conventional structures of content ownership and management.

It being important to put one's money where one's mouth is, as the old saying goes, Little Sir Press will distribute its first book in the next several weeks; cover image follows here and more information to come.




Thursday, October 04, 2018

Underlining the Obvious: Remarks by Vice President Pence on the Administration’s Policy Toward China




On the morning of 4 October 2018, Vice President Pence traveled to the offices of the Hudson Institute, a public policy think tank with a reputation as a politically conservative organization,  to deliver a carefully designed Remarks on the Administration’s Policy Toward China.  

This has been a long time coming.  And it was part of a well orchestrated series of related statements that together are setting out the vision of this Administration's foreign policy. The speech cannot be read alone but acquires greater depth when read alongside recently delivered President Trump's U.N. Speech, and John Bolton's earlier ICC speech.  It "underlines the obvious" in the sense used in the title of this post in the sense that it refines the implications of both earlier speeches, but much more directly, it develops the quite transparent statements of policy already made a central element of the U.S. National Security Strategy

The speech makes the case for the various policies that together now constitute the operationalization of the NSS's competition not adversary policy.  The key portion of the speech, and one likely to be overlooked, lays out the framework within which, at least behind closed doors, the opportunity continues to be available to form that partnership of mutual interest that might benefit both states. 
We should remember that “Competition does not always mean hostility,” nor does it have to. The President has made clear, we want a constructive relationship with Beijing where our prosperity and security grow together, not apart. While Beijing has been moving further away from this vision, China’s rulers can still change course and return to the spirit of reform and opening that characterize the beginning of this relationship decades ago. The American people want nothing more; and the Chinese people deserve nothing less.
And here again, the language of the Global South, now embraced by the leaders of the Global North: "we will not relent until our relationship with China is grounded in fairness, reciprocity, and respect for our sovereignty."

Of course, unstated, and essential, is the embrace by the United States of an alignment of its own approach to those sentiments.  In order to make a deal, one needs a partner rational enough to deal, but one also needs to be committed to dealing. It is not clear what the U.S. is willing to concede--and there will have to be some concessions respecting the ordering of China's internal markets and the projections of its politics through its global SOEs for which a principle of strict mutuality may not suffice "to reset America’s economic and strategic relationship with China.". But long term best interest Chinese concessions are likely to be equally strict, and conceptually painful to the Chinese leadership. And in that context personal ego inevitably gets in the way.  This may well be a context in which the leadership collectives of both states might be most useful to their respective cores. 

At the same time, the Vice President marshaled virtually all of the key arguments that have been amassed in the public campaign to weaken China's efforts to appear to have the better moral claim in the heated negotiations with the U.S. to remake the basic structures of global trade. Again, here the U.S. embraces itself in the rhetoric of the Global South, painting China--and quite effectively from a discursive perspective--as the epitome of the contemporary Global North. The Vice President's hand was strengthened by the apparently fortuitous widespread circulation of an investigative report that accused the Chinese PLA of a sophisticated campaign to sneak spying hardware onto motherboards supplied to key public and private institutions in the U.S. For all that, the object remains negotiation and accommodation.Yet this also speaks to the rhetoric of Bolshevik infiltration that permeated American politics from the 1920s through the 1950s.

It is unlikely many people will see it that way.  Too many people have too much invested in ideologies whose objective is to augment antagonism; too many institutions have factional interests in continuing to foment conflict for their own or factional advantage; and the friends of both of these powers would like nothing more than the cultivation of an antagonism that creates the opening necessary to weaken both to their advantage.  And over all of this is the mutual antagonism of a large clique of intellectuals, public servants,  who might view with some alarm the alignment of the U.S. and the Chinese in abandoning the great multilateral project of the Post-War 20th century in favor of more regionally focused bilateral multilateralism it the form of "America First" and "Belt and Road" Initiatives. That alignment itself was underscored by the recent announcement of the American version of the Asia Infrastructure and Investment Bank, when on 4 October 2018 "the U.S. Senate passed the Better Utilization of Investment Leading to Development, or BUILD Act, which will create a new U.S. government agency — the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. Development experts called it the biggest change in U.S. development policy in 15 years" (A new US development finance agency takes flight).

For all that, there is much that one might read into the speech.  That reading would yield better results in context.  Yet context has never been an amiable companion to politics. And politics and egos have never been a good combination. The drama continues and the Vice President's remarks follow. 


Tuesday, October 02, 2018

UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment--Call For Inputs: Air Pollution and Human Rights; Newsletter No. 29 (Sept. 2018)



NOAA George E. Marsh Album, theb1365, Historic C&GS Collection - http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/htmls/theb1365.htm (direct link)  Dust storm approaching Stratford, Texas. Dust Bowl surveying in Texas.

The 2nd UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, Dr. David R. Boyd, Associate Professor, Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia, has just distributed his first Newsletter.  It follows below. Among activities of note was the Escazu Agreement on Access to Information.

Professor Boyd's first thematic report to the Human Rights Council in March 2019 will focus on the topic of air pollution. His particular concern are the impacts upon vulnerable populations, including women, children, and people living in poverty. He has requested stakeholder input on this topic, particularly with regard to good practices in reducing the adverse impacts of air pollution. The call for Inputs follows below (English, Spanish, French).