Of Impiety and Blasphemy: Reflections on the Text of Remarks by President Biden at 9/11 Memorial Ceremony

 

Pix Credit: The WTC in More Innocent Times

Last year, on the anniversary of the attack by elements of what remains discursively rendered foreign on the institutions and physical manifestations of the Republic, I spoke about one of its greatest lingering effects--the effective abandonment of the great project of global convergence for the safety of protective membranes around the core of like minded social collectives (A Global Order of Protective Membranes--Brief Reflections on the 20th Anniversary of the 11 September 2001 Attacks). This year on the 21st anniversary of the tragedy that occurred on this day, I speak to impiety and blasphemy. 

This appears to be an era of blasphemy, of impious speech. It is an era of piety and impiety as discursive hammers directed toward the smashing of old orders in the service of whatever is built on its rubble. It is an age of phēmē, of utterances--of speaking one's truth, of declamations that by the force of their utterance displaces as it incarnates the utterance. It is an utterance at once wrong, but the power to become right. That power to blaspheme--to project one's personal truth outward, has been manifested in blood for a long time. And it has its object--to reverse the poles of impiety and piety. One builds new temples on the foundations of the old--displacing and obliterating what came before--dissipating its pieties to myth and its physical presence to legend.   Even in an irreligious world, the religious foundations of this impulse--ever so strong in human collectives--remain inescapable.

Today marks the anniversary of a transformative act of impiety--an act directed to the obliteration of the temples of the current ruling orthodoxies in favor of another; a blood sacrifice offered on the alters of a vision of a world in which the current is swept away  through an ecstatic act.  It announced a new world order--of contemporary Maenad, raving ones--in whose ecstatic rituals of blood the world would be torn to pieces to be made ready for a new order. remade.  And it has. In a strange twist of Stockholm Syndrome one might be forgiven for worrying that the Maenads are all around us now--and worry more that a faint echo of this ecstatic impulse toward a lusty blaspheming, to the tearing apart of a body politic may remain a ghostly reminder of the of that blaspheming, the tragedy of which we commemorate today. 

 It was with that in mind that one might approach in a suitably contemplative way the remarks of the President of the United States (Remarks by President Biden at 9/11 Memorial Ceremony) made to commemorate the 21anniversary of the events of 11 September 2001, events which extracted such a terrible price in blood and spirit and which then paid in blood, continues to be paid in spirit. One speaks here of the response to an impiety in terms of sacred obligations to those would sacrifice was a blasphemy to the Republic and its eternal verities ("never fail to meet the sacred obligation to you to properly prepare and equip those that we send into harm’s way and care for those and their families when they come home" Biden Speech supra).

One speaks here of retribution without end for the enormity of the abominations projected onto the body of the Republic ("It took 10 years to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden, but we did. And this summer, I authorized a successful strike on Zawahiri" Biden Speech supra). And one speaks of memory, of adding memory to the pantheon of the divine spirit of the Republic ("to never, ever, ever forget"). That divine memory requires its own temples which have been built, and its rituals which are being perfected ("We raised monuments and memorials to the citizens whose blood sacrificed on these grounds, and in Shanksville and Ground Zero, to keep touch of the memory — keep it bright for all the decades to come." Biden Speech supra).  

Pix Credit here

And it requires ever more vigilance and protection around the ordering divinity of the Republic--"there’s nothing this nation cannot accomplish when we stand together and defend with all our hearts that which makes us unique in the world: our democracy." (Biden Speech supra). It is here that one ties the construction of the apex idea in the pantheon of ideas that constitute our Republic, with its protection not just against the impieties of foreigners, but also against the impious, the infidelities, of heretics within our political collect. The line between this speech and that made in Philadelphia on 1 September 2022  are unavoidable ("However, it is time for you not to slumber, but to attend to affairs, for you have strengthened your rival against yourself." Life in the Time of the Late Republic--Transcript of President Biden's 1 September 2022 Speech Delivered in Philadelphia). The national deities must be protected against blasphemy and impiety.  That impiety takes many forms--but in every case it must be paid in the blood of the impious.  This is a very very old reflex now reanimated in post-modern garb. 

The text of Mr. Biden's Speech appears below along with links to the text on the White House Website.

 

 

Now Available: Essays on The Self-Reflexive Imaginaries of Law: Essays on Contemporary Legalization in an Age of Algorithmic Law and Platform Governance in Volume 16 Issue 2 "Emancipating the Mind in the New Era: Bulletin of the Coalition for Peace & Ethics"

 

I am delighted to announce that the essays in Volume 16(2) of Emancipating the Mind: Bulletin of the Coalition for Peace & Ethics (Winter 2021) (ISSN 2689-0283 (Print); 2689-0291 (Online); ISBN 978-1-949943-08-5 (paperback) 978-1-949943-09-2 (Digital)) are now available.

The theme of this volume is ” The Self-Reflexive Imaginaries of Law: Essays on Contemporary Legalization in an Age of Algorithmic Law and Platform Governance.” The seven essays in this issue explore the ways that this movement from the sovereign legal to plural legalities–that is from the formal, qualitative, and public expression of command, to its insinuation into the practices, habits, and expectations of collective bodies—have become deeply embedded each in the other.  One does not speak here of zero sum binaries.  One speaks here of union that produces  new forms of managing individuals and in the process reshaping the institutions developed for that purpose. In the process the legal becomes both more variegated and diffuse. The essays are organized in two parts.  The first, The Condition of Law, considers the modalities of insinuation of disciplinary legalities alongside, beneath, and within the traditional architecture of law its public institutions. This part includes three essays. The first suggests the structures of weaving between the old orthodox national legal orders and the emerging plural legalities, both qualitative and quantitative. The second considers how this weaving is manifested in the governance behaviors of the institutions of the Norwegian Pension Fund Global. The third focuses on the way that interpretation changes to suit the times and the memories of those who then apply them to interpret the norms and rules of collective organizations. The second, Algorithmic Law and Platform Governance, suggest the ways that the condition of law is further shaped by the modalities used to0 express and apply it. This part includes four essays. The first considers the way in which democracy is quantified by private actors in liberal democratic political orders. The second considers four inter-related stories: (1) the disciplining of Jack Ma; (2) the completion of the first cycle of data protection and cybersecurity laws in China; (3) the detachment of data services from Ant; (4) the glimmerings of the Western parallel developments in the contest between Australia and Facebook. The third essay considers forms of quantitative corruption by considering the way that data was corrupted in the production of World Bank reporting efforts, in the course of which data was manipulated for the benefit of certain states. The last essay considers the regulatory application of ‘wokeness’ in China by considering recent Chinese efforts to report online expression that violates community standards, and the regulation of algorithmically based recommendations systems. 

At the foundation of the essays (as in Issue 16(1)) are notions of imaginaries.

The word ‘imaginary’ as a noun is a jargon term that has been gaining currency in a number of social sciences. It grates on those who have not come across this usage before, as in ordinary language the word is mainly used as an adjective. People have, for example, ‘imaginary friends’, but they rarely have ‘imaginaries’ (Brigitte Nerlich, Imagining imaginaries, University of Nottingham Blog (23 April 2015) with a nice summary explanation of the evolution and expansion of the term within the social sciences)

Whatever its pedigree, the term is useful here. The term is connected to a number of other similar terms that seek to give meaning to the same set of practices or states of social being: for example, the German-English Weltanschauung) or perhaps “lifeworlds.” In their own ways each tries to center the way that knowledge is organized and rationalized through systems of interpreting, understanding and giving meaning to the world around us (Jacques Lacan, Écrits: A Selection (Routledge, 1997) p. 21; Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination (Routledge, 2010 (original 1940), pp. 57-94). It can also be understood as shared perceptions of the meaning of reality backed by massive background consensus (Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (William Rehg (trans) MIT Press, 1996); pp. 22, 322); or as biopolitics (the narratives through which social and political power may be normalized over the control and management of the bodies of the living and their relationship to physical and abstract objects and the technologies of control) (Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France 1978-1979 (Graham Burchell (trans) Picador 2004), pp. 75-101).   

All of the essays are available free online. The entire volume may be purchased in paperback form from Amazon. LINK HERE.

The Table of Contents with links to the essays along with the Introduction by the issue editors (with abstract summaries of the essays) follow below.  I hope there is something of interest here for readers. Always welcome engagement and conversation.  The issue may also be accessed through the Emancipating the Mind Bulletin Website Volume 16(2).

28. Conversations About the Book "Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems': Chapter 27 (Monday 1 June 2020) Inaugurating the New Era for Hong Kong with the National Security Law and the Cancellation of the Tiananmen Vigil

 

Pix Credit HERE

 “言有尽而意无穷” [Words and meanings are endless]. 

From the run up to the book launch of 13 July 2021, the folks at Little Sir Press organized a series of short conversations about my new book, "Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems'." We continue with that series here.

About the Book: Hong Kong Between “One Country” and “Two Systems” examines the battle of ideas that started with the June 2019 anti-extradition law protests and ended with the enactment of the National Security and National Anthem Laws a year later. At the center of these battles was the “One Country, Two Systems” principle. By June 2020, the meaning of that principle was highly contested, with Chinese authorities taking decisive steps to implement their own understanding of the principle and its normative foundations , and the international community taking countermeasures. All of this occurred well before the 2047 end of the 1985 Sino-British Joint Declaration (中英联合声明) that had been the blueprint for the return of Hong Kong to China. Between these events, global actors battled for control of the narrative and of the meaning of the governing principles that were meant to frame the scope and character of Hong Kong’s autonomy within China. The book critically examines the conflict of words between Hong Kong protesters, the Chinese central and local authorities, and important elements of the international community. This decisive discursive contest paralleled the fighting for control of the streets and that pitted protesters and the international community that supported them against the central authorities of China and Hong Kong local authorities. In the end the Chinese central authorities largely prevailed in the discursive realm as well as on the streets. Their victory was aided, in part by the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. But their triumph also produced the seeds of a new and potentially stronger international constitutional discourse that may reduce the magnitude and scope of that success. These essays were written as the events unfolded. Together the essays analytically chronicle the discursive battles that were fought, won and lost, between June 2019 and June 2020. Without an underlying political or polemical agenda, the essays retain the freshness of the moment, reflecting the uncertainties of the time as events unfolded. What was won on the streets of Hong Kong from June to December 2019, the public and physical manifestation of a principled internationalist and liberal democratic narrative of self-determination, and of civil and political rights, was lost by June 2020 within a cage of authoritative legality legitimated through the resurgence of the normative authority of the state and the application of a strong and coherent expression of the principled narrative of its Marxist-Leninist constitutional order. Ironically enough, both political ideologies emerged stronger and more coherent from the conflict, each now better prepared for the next.

The book may be purchased through AMAZON (kindle and paperback), book information including free chapters and the access to all video conversations HERE.

I am delighted, then, to make available the next in the series of video recordings of conversations about the book with my former research assistant Matthew McQuilla (Penn State International Affairs MIA 2021). Today we discuss Chapter 27 (Monday 1 June 2020) Inaugurating the New Era for Hong Kong with the National Security Law and the Cancellation of the Tiananmen Vigil.

This Chapter is one of several in which the end game of the arc of protests that started in June 2019 is becoming clearer. Here, that clarity is illuminated by the banning, for the first time in 30 years, of the city's annual Tiananmen Square vigil. Ir was there most palpable evidence of the defeat of the protests. Where once their power was manifested in their ability to control the streets, now it is clear that this control has shifted to the central authorities. What is left, at this point, are the margins. Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp “asked supporters in Hong Kong and around the world to light candles in their homes or other private places and post the images online." 

Pix Credit HERE

This, it might be said, represents the new state of affairs in Hong Kong in the wake of the determination by Chinese central authorities to approve a National Security Law for the HKSAR, and the subsequent declaration of the United States that Hong Kong was no long autonomous of the rest of the nation, a view shared by the US's Anglo-Australian allies. Even as these states declared that the special status of Hong Kong was voided in violation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration specifically and international law generally, Chinese authorities declared that nothing of the kind happened, only on adjustment to the core conditions within which that special status could be managed. One side privileged the treaty under which the territory was returned to China in 1997; the other on the fundamental character of sovereignty. And in that back and forth, over the course of the last year, both sides have decisively developed--and substantially extended the distance between--One Country ad Two systems. What had been one principle embodying a central contradiction in 1997 has now been resolved, but in two fundamentally distinct ways. COVID-19 here merely provided a cover for a quite conclusive move, one now manifested publicly in a most dramatic way. 

Pix Credit HERE

2019-2020, then, serves as a point of rupture--a rupture between three primary of an internationalist conception of Hong Kong and sovereignty against a nationalist conception of both. This rupture more clearly marks the larger rupture between the Chinese and American approaches to the rationalization of the post global world than virtually anything else that marks the increasing detachment of these two centralizers of global production. This essay looks back to 1997 and forward to 2047 to consider the fundamental rupture in the concept of Hong Kong that occurred in 2020, and what that suggests both for the future of the Special Administrative Region, and the evolution of more flexible definitions of sovereignty within international orders. It suggests that a useful way of understanding the Declaration, and the evolving conception of "One Country, Two Systems" is to divide the period between 1997 and 2047 into an initial international phase for One Country Two Systems in Hong Kong (1997-2020), and now a national phase for One Country Two Systems (2020-2047). It attempts a rewriting of that history, and this rupture, from the vantage point of 2120.

 

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The video of the conversation about Chapter 27 may be accessed HERE.

All conversations are posted to the Coalition for Peace & Ethics YouTube page and may be found on its Playlist: Talking About the Book: "Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems'." All conversation videos are hosted by Little Sir Press. I hope you find the conversation of some use. 

 

A pre-publication version of some of the book chapters may be accessed (free) on the Book's webpage (here). All videos may also be accessed through the Little Sir Press Book Website HERE.

27. Conversations About the Book "Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems': Chapter 26 (Sunday, May 31, 2020) The "Four Great Errors" and the Stratagems of Meaning Making.

Pix Credit HERE

 “言有尽而意无穷” [Words and meanings are endless]. 

From the run up to the book launch of 13 July 2021, the folks at Little Sir Press organized a series of short conversations about my new book, "Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems'." We continue with that series here.

About the Book: Hong Kong Between “One Country” and “Two Systems” examines the battle of ideas that started with the June 2019 anti-extradition law protests and ended with the enactment of the National Security and National Anthem Laws a year later. At the center of these battles was the “One Country, Two Systems” principle. By June 2020, the meaning of that principle was highly contested, with Chinese authorities taking decisive steps to implement their own understanding of the principle and its normative foundations , and the international community taking countermeasures. All of this occurred well before the 2047 end of the 1985 Sino-British Joint Declaration (中英联合声明) that had been the blueprint for the return of Hong Kong to China. Between these events, global actors battled for control of the narrative and of the meaning of the governing principles that were meant to frame the scope and character of Hong Kong’s autonomy within China. The book critically examines the conflict of words between Hong Kong protesters, the Chinese central and local authorities, and important elements of the international community. This decisive discursive contest paralleled the fighting for control of the streets and that pitted protesters and the international community that supported them against the central authorities of China and Hong Kong local authorities. In the end the Chinese central authorities largely prevailed in the discursive realm as well as on the streets. Their victory was aided, in part by the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. But their triumph also produced the seeds of a new and potentially stronger international constitutional discourse that may reduce the magnitude and scope of that success. These essays were written as the events unfolded. Together the essays analytically chronicle the discursive battles that were fought, won and lost, between June 2019 and June 2020. Without an underlying political or polemical agenda, the essays retain the freshness of the moment, reflecting the uncertainties of the time as events unfolded. What was won on the streets of Hong Kong from June to December 2019, the public and physical manifestation of a principled internationalist and liberal democratic narrative of self-determination, and of civil and political rights, was lost by June 2020 within a cage of authoritative legality legitimated through the resurgence of the normative authority of the state and the application of a strong and coherent expression of the principled narrative of its Marxist-Leninist constitutional order. Ironically enough, both political ideologies emerged stronger and more coherent from the conflict, each now better prepared for the next.

The book may be purchased through AMAZON (kindle and paperback), book information including free chapters and the access to all video conversations HERE.

I am delighted, then, to make available the next in the series of video recordings of conversations about the book with my former research assistant Matthew McQuilla (Penn State International Affairs MIA 2021). Today we discuss Chapter 26 (Sunday, May 31, 2020) The "Four Great Errors" and the Stratagems of Meaning Making.

This is a stock taking chapter. We have come almost full circle from the exuberance of the start of the protests in early June 2019, to the announcement of the enactment, and soon, the vigorous enforcement, of a more direct oversight of Hong Kong by the central authorities in the form of a new regulatory superstructure. Across the arc of the development all of the principal actors deployed against each other quite potent discursive elements that in retrospect now begin to show the power of error as both a positive and negative tool in the (re)construction of a governing narrative for the management of collectives and in the structuring of inter-collective relations. 

Pix Credit HERE

For that stocktaking I use the analytical framework developed by Friedrich Nietzsche, who quite famously spoke to the four great errors of causation: (1) The error of confusing cause and consequence; (2) The error of a false causality; (3) The error of imaginary causes; and (4) The error of free will. These are the errors on which the entirety of a rationalized weltanschauung may be built. Yet that is the point--the ‘Four Great Errors’ may be best understood as the Four Great Stratagems of collective organization. The errors remind one that collective reality is based on shared meaning, and on the power to create and maintain that meaning. They also suggest a baseline error on which the other four are revealed: The greatest error, then may be an indulgence of a belief the objectivity of causality removed from the ideological process of collective meaning making. That fatal error suggests the fundamental importance of the error (indulgence) in the belief in free will  context in which will is a commodity  the management of which is a prize sought by virtually everyone.

Pix Credit HERE

The situation in Hong Kong suggests the relevance of the insights of the Four Great Errors, as both stratagem and as collective meaning making. But it is meaning making grounded in the inversion at the heart of the Four Great Errors. It is a quite conscious understanding of the malleability of inference, and of the potential for well managed ordering of the binaries that appear at the heart of the errors that seem to drive action and discourse in and around Hong Kong since 2019. The Four Great Errors are at their most useful as a structure of accountability; of stocktaking. Events, especially like those around the situation in Hong Kong, tend to acquire a life of their own. It is a life where officials and the public may feel swept along by events; where it is possible to spin out thrust and counter thrust on the basis of virtually anything but considered contextually based thought. These are the sorts of events in which reality becomes somewhat detached from the principles and objectives that themselves are reconstituted as "things"--with a life of their own whose satisfaction must be attained. And, of course, the events in Hong Kong can be telescoped from a granular examination of people in Hong Kong to the relationship of those events as interconnected with everything around which the Chinese and Americans now battle for the constitution of shared space. Hong Kong, then, becomes the center of a calculus of global finance (and dollar versus yuan internationalization); of the meaning and making of sovereignty in China even as it is remade elsewhere on quite different foundations; on trade and trade systems; and on the construction from out of a thousand places like Hong Kong of new imperial orders.

But the analysis is equally useful in the context of other great conflicts in which the field of discursive battle is every bit as important as what occurs on the ground. The situation around the Russian invasion of Ukraine provides fertile ground for the analytics of error and its strategic use in discursive conflict.  Along with that the ever present danger of being trapped in and by error oneself.  See essays in Russia-Ukraine2022.

 

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The video of the conversation about Chapter 26 may be accessed HERE.

All conversations are posted to the Coalition for Peace & Ethics YouTube page and may be found on its Playlist: Talking About the Book: "Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems'." All conversation videos are hosted by Little Sir Press. I hope you find the conversation of some use. 

 

A pre-publication version of some of the book chapters may be accessed (free) on the Book's webpage (here). All videos may also be accessed through the Little Sir Press Book Website HERE.

Now Available: Essays on Contemporary China: Heartland, Periphery, and Silk Roads in Volume 16 Issue 1 "Emancipating the Mind: Bulletin of the Coalition for Peace & Ethics"

 

 

I am delighted to announce that the essays in Volume 16(1) of Emancipating the Mind: Bulletin of the Coalition for Peace & Ethics (Summer 2021) (ISSN 2689-0283 (Print); 2689-0291 (Online); ISBN 978-1-949943-06-1 (online digital); 978-1-949943-07-8 (paperback)) are now available.

This issue includes essays on Contemporary China--Heartland, Periphery, and Silk Roads. The discussion focuses on core issues around Chinese imaginaries--knowledge and knowledge production, ideology, self-knowledge and the construction of the Chinese heartland as the way in which discursive knowledge is manifested in concrete form. The twelve essays are organized from out of a core or hub (the Chinese heartland). These essays touch on the foundations of knowledge and the passing of the education of the young. That is then connected to the translation of education into social behaviors and social leadership (celebrity culture) and the curating of their collective self knowledge (official histories). A second set of essays then spiral outward along its spokes to the Chinese internal periphery (Hong Kong and Xinjiang) and its connection to foreign global imaginaries through economic activity. It ends with essays that consider the internationalization of the Chinese heartland imaginaries through its silk road (with a focus on African engagement). Here one encounters the projection outward of internal Chinese self-construction and as well the internationalization of the Chinese path as a model for the re-construction of economies and social-political orders to attain the Chinese Dream with local characteristics. A central theme of the essays is an examination of the way in which Chinese Marxist-Leninism constructs its own symbolic universe as an iterative self-construction of theory and experience that progress through time replicating responses that change as context changes. 

At the foundation of the analysis are Chinese imaginaries.

The word ‘imaginary’ as a noun is a jargon term that has been gaining currency in a number of social sciences. It grates on those who have not come across this usage before, as in ordinary language the word is mainly used as an adjective. People have, for example, ‘imaginary friends’, but they rarely have ‘imaginaries’ (Brigitte Nerlich, Imagining imaginaries, University of Nottingham Blog (23 April 2015) with a nice summary explanation of the evolution and expansion of the term within the social sciences)

Whatever its pedigree, the term is useful here. The term is connected to a number of other similar terms that seek to give meaning to the same set of practices or states of social being: for example, the German-English Weltanschauung) or perhaps “lifeworlds.” In their own ways each tries to center the way that knowledge is organized and rationalized through systems of interpreting, understanding and giving meaning to the world around us (Jacques Lacan, Écrits: A Selection (Routledge, 1997) p. 21; Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination (Routledge, 2010 (original 1940), pp. 57-94). It can also be understood as shared perceptions of the meaning of reality backed by massive background consensus (Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (William Rehg (trans) MIT Press, 1996); pp. 22, 322); or as biopolitics (the narratives through which social and political power may be normalized over the control and management of the bodies of the living and their relationship to physical and abstract objects and the technologies of control) (Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France 1978-1979 (Graham Burchell (trans) Picador 2004), pp. 75-101).   

All of the essays are available online. The entire volume may be purchased in paperback form from Amazon. LINK HERE.

The Table of Contents with links to the essays along with the Introduction by the issue editors (with abstract summaries of the essays) follow below.  I hope there is something of interest here for readers. Always welcome engagement and conversation.  The issue may also be accessed through the Emancipating the Mind Bulletin Website Volume 16(1).

 

Video Recording of Larry Catá Backer on Sovereignty and Hong Kong Protests: Penn State JLIA Speakers' Series 10-2021

The Penn State Journal of Law and International Affairs invited me to address our community as part of their Speaker Series on one of the more interesting themes of my recently published book, Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems (about, videos and free chapters HERE; purchase here). That theme focused on the way that discourses of sovereignty significantly shaped and were shaped by emerging discourses of sovereignty, sovereign rights, and most importantly, the divisibility of sovereignty in a world in which autonomous sovereign actors are no longer a function of or tied to a physical territory. These competing discourses were curated and developed to a high degree during the course of the protests in Hong Kong between June 2019 and June 2020.

The focus of the presentation was on the emergence of three distinctive approaches to sovereign governance (and their implications) that played a role in the narrative battles around the Hong Kong protests of 2019-2020. The three principal narratives of sovereignty were: (1) Internal sovereign partitioning under or within a superior national constitutional order; (2) External sovereign partitioning under or within international law or norms; and (3) Shared sovereign partitioning. 

These were woven against the contests over the control of the meaning and application of the "One Country/Two Systems" principle of Hong Kong political organization. The Chinese central authorities became staunch defenders of the first approach, which aligned territorial and operational sovereignty and relegated autonomy to a discretionary exercise within the constraints of the national constitutional order. The US/UK and the international community elaborated at least two variations of the second position. The first variation was grounded strictly on the application of the international instrument under which sovereignty was transferred from the UK to China. The second variation posited to the full range of international law protections, from self-determination to protection of of the full range of human rights in international norms and law. The protester community within Hong Kong moved toward advocacy of the third position. This one was grounded on the idea that the unit against which compliance was to be measured was the people of Hong Kong who were recast as an indigenous people with their own character and aspirations all worthy of protection irrespective of the text of the international instruments of sovereign transfer of territory. 

The narrative contests were not just sophisticated abstract game playing.  Each produces substantial consequences for the way in which governments relate to each other to the subject peoples. A focus on internally centered sovereign partitioning produces a move to binary categorization: patriots versus those shirking their responsibilities within the nation; domestic versus foreign interference; coordination with the state at the center versus contradiction destabilizing the state, and the like.  The Hing Kong National Security Law embodies this approach to autonomy within sovereignty.  For the international community one focuses on legalisms bound by the narratives of contract.  That is the position that sees in the Sion-British Joint Declaration a contract the terms of which must be performed and enforced, if need be, by the international community on whom the legitimacy of international (contract discursive) law rests. Each of these narratives The consequences for each position was then discussed. A broader reading of international legalism understands both that sovereignty may be fractured along a number of different lines, that such a fracturing was undertaken in this case and that the laws and norms of the international community then both define the terms of that fracturing and must police compliance. The position of the in the protester community then take that one level further.  It is grounded in a sense of the people of Hong Kong as autonomously indigenous and distinct from the rest of China and thus subject to the protection of international law and norms  to the protection of their own legitimate expectations to evolve their political and social order in accordance with the needs, cultures, and context of the SAR (rather than of the Chinese people as a whole).

The video of the presentation may be accessed HERE.

The PPT follow.  

Video Recordings of Session 5: Agriculture-- 31 Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy “COVID and the Eighth Party Conference: Reforming the Cuban Economy”

I am delighted to make available the video recordings of the panels organized for the 31 Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy Videos Link “COVID and the Eighth Party Conference: Reforming the Cuban Economy.”

The theme of this year’s conference is Cuba’s economic reforms, the impact of COVID and the VIII Congress of the Cuban Communist Party. Cuba is in a tremendous state of flux, one that is likely to affect all aspects of the society. No one can be sure how this will turn out, but ASCE’s members old and new have for more than 30 years brought understanding and analysis to the Cuban puzzle. That experience and familiarity with Cuba is needed more than ever as we note that our work is being widely read and watched by more people in government and on the Island. This year we will also focus on the Cuban diaspora.

Access Video of Session 5 HERE

ACCESS ALL VIDEOS--Conference Playlist HERE

DAY 3, SATURDAY AUGUST 14 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Session 5: Agriculture

Chair: Felipe Manteiga

Olimpia Gómez-Consuegra and Tomás Depestre, “Producciٕón de Semillas Hortícolas: Actualizacion de Caso de Estudio en Cuba"

William Messina, University of Florida, "Cuban Agricultural Production and Trade in the Midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic"

Mario A. Gonzalez-Corzo, Lehman College, The City University of New York (CUNY), "Policy Measures to Incentivize Agricultural Production in Cuba after the 8th Party Congress."

Alonso Exposito Alvarez, “El minifundio rural: principal estructura agraria de Cuba desde la época precolombina hasta nuestros días”

Recordando a Pepín Alvarez. Comments by Francisco Proenza, William Messina, and Jorge Perez-Lopez

Video Recordings of Session 4: Cuban Political Economy Challenges-- 31 Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy “COVID and the Eighth Party Conference: Reforming the Cuban Economy”

 

I am delighted to make available the video recordings of the panels organized for the 31 Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy Videos Link “COVID and the Eighth Party Conference: Reforming the Cuban Economy.”

The theme of this year’s conference is Cuba’s economic reforms, the impact of COVID and the VIII Congress of the Cuban Communist Party. Cuba is in a tremendous state of flux, one that is likely to affect all aspects of the society. No one can be sure how this will turn out, but ASCE’s members old and new have for more than 30 years brought understanding and analysis to the Cuban puzzle. That experience and familiarity with Cuba is needed more than ever as we note that our work is being widely read and watched by more people in government and on the Island. This year we will also focus on the Cuban diaspora.

 

Access HERE video of Session 4:  

ACCESS ALL VIDEOS--Conference Playlist HERE

DAY 2 -- FRIDAY 13 AUGUST 2021 2:15 PM – 4:15 PM

Session 4: Cuban Political Economy Challenges 

Chair: Jorge Esquirol, Florida International University 

José Gabilondo, “Socialism 2.0: Rebuilding Cuba’s Post-Castro Economy” 

Larry Catá Backer, “The 8th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba and the Future of the Cuban Economic Model” 

Vadim Grishin, “The 8th Congress of the CPC: Continuity vs. Reforms” 

Video Recordings of Session 3: International Dimensions-- 31 Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy “COVID and the Eighth Party Conference: Reforming the Cuban Economy”

 

I am delighted to make available the video recordings of the panels organized for the 31 Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy Videos Link “COVID and the Eighth Party Conference: Reforming the Cuban Economy.”

The theme of this year’s conference is Cuba’s economic reforms, the impact of COVID and the VIII Congress of the Cuban Communist Party. Cuba is in a tremendous state of flux, one that is likely to affect all aspects of the society. No one can be sure how this will turn out, but ASCE’s members old and new have for more than 30 years brought understanding and analysis to the Cuban puzzle. That experience and familiarity with Cuba is needed more than ever as we note that our work is being widely read and watched by more people in government and on the Island. This year we will also focus on the Cuban diaspora.

 

Access video of Session 3 HERE:  

ACCESS ALL VIDEOS--Conference Playlist HERE

DAY 2, FRIDAY AUGUST 13 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM 

Session 3: International Dimensions 

Chair: Natalia Delgado, Columbia Law School 

Silvia Pedraza and Carlos A. Romero, “Cuba and Venezuela Cooperation. Doctors for Oil: The Social Dimension of the Partnership” 

Yvon Grenier, St. Francis Xavier University, “No Sanction: Explaining Canadian Foreign Policy toward Cuba” 

Martin Palous, Florida International University, “Cuba in 2021: A Central European Point of View”

Video Recordings of Session 2: Tarea Ordenamiento and its Aftermath-- 31 Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy “COVID and the Eighth Party Conference: Reforming the Cuban Economy”

 

 I am delighted to make available the video recordings of the panels organized for the 31 Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy Videos Link “COVID and the Eighth Party Conference: Reforming the Cuban Economy.”

The theme of this year’s conference is Cuba’s economic reforms, the impact of COVID and the VIII Congress of the Cuban Communist Party. Cuba is in a tremendous state of flux, one that is likely to affect all aspects of the society. No one can be sure how this will turn out, but ASCE’s members old and new have for more than 30 years brought understanding and analysis to the Cuban puzzle. That experience and familiarity with Cuba is needed more than ever as we note that our work is being widely read and watched by more people in government and on the Island. This year we will also focus on the Cuban diaspora.

Access videos of Session 2 HERE 

ACCESS ALL VIDEOS--Conference Playlist HERE

DAY 1, THURSDAY AUGUST 12; 2:00 PM- 4:00 PM 

Session 2: Tarea Ordenamiento and its Aftermath 

Chair: Joaquín Pujol, IMF retired 

Luis R. Luis, “Inflation Trends and Devaluation in Cuba” 

Ernesto Hernández-Catá, “Expectations under a Fixed Exchange Rate Regime: An Imaginary Model of the Official Cuban Peso” 

Gabriel Di Bella and Rafael Romeu, “Considerations on the Impact of Peso Unification in 2021” 

Gabriel Di Bella, Rafael Romeu, and Nemanja Jovanovic, “What can we learn from Cuba’s Parallel Exchange Rate after currency unification?”

 

Video Recordings of Session 1: Economic and Political Context-- 31 Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy “COVID and the Eighth Party Conference: Reforming the Cuban Economy”

 

I am delighted to make available the video recordings of the panels organized for the 31 Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy Videos Link “COVID and the Eighth Party Conference: Reforming the Cuban Economy.”

The theme of this year’s conference is Cuba’s economic reforms, the impact of COVID and the VIII Congress of the Cuban Communist Party. Cuba is in a tremendous state of flux, one that is likely to affect all aspects of the society. No one can be sure how this will turn out, but ASCE’s members old and new have for more than 30 years brought understanding and analysis to the Cuban puzzle. That experience and familiarity with Cuba is needed more than ever as we note that our work is being widely read and watched by more people in government and on the Island. This year we will also focus on the Cuban diaspora.

 

Access video of Session 1 HERE 

ACCESS ALL VIDEOS--Conference Playlist HERE 

DAY 1, THURSDAY AUGUST 12; 9:45 AM – 12:00 PM Opening Remarks—ASCE President Session 1: Economic and Political Context     Chair: Gary Maybarduk, ASCE President

Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Professor Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh, “Key Economic and Social Factors That Provoked the Worst Cuban Economic Crisis since the 1990s and Subsequent Street Protests”

Jorge I. Domínguez, "The Triumphs and Failures of Bureaucratic Socialism in Cuba in 2018-2021."

Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva, “La economía cubana: La Tarea Ordenamiento y su repercusión social”

 

16. Conversations About the Book "Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems': Chapter 15 (Tuesday 18 September 2019) “Two Systems” Internationalism: Congressional-Executive Commission on China Hearings on "Hong Kong’s Summer of Discontent and U.S. Policy Responses"

 

Pix Credit HERE

“言有尽而意无穷” [Words and meanings are endless]. 

In the run up to the book launch scheduled for 13 July 2021 (registration required but free HERE), the folks at Little Sir Press have organized a series of short conversations about my new book, "Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems'." 

About the Book: Hong Kong Between “One Country” and “Two Systems” examines the battle of ideas that started with the June 2019 anti-extradition law protests and ended with the enactment of the National Security and National Anthem Laws a year later. At the center of these battles was the “One Country, Two Systems” principle. By June 2020, the meaning of that principle was highly contested, with Chinese authorities taking decisive steps to implement their own understanding of the principle and its normative foundations , and the international community taking countermeasures. All of this occurred well before the 2047 end of the 1985 Sino-British Joint Declaration (中英联合声明) that had been the blueprint for the return of Hong Kong to China. Between these events, global actors battled for control of the narrative and of the meaning of the governing principles that were meant to frame the scope and character of Hong Kong’s autonomy within China. The book critically examines the conflict of words between Hong Kong protesters, the Chinese central and local authorities, and important elements of the international community. This decisive discursive contest paralleled the fighting for control of the streets and that pitted protesters and the international community that supported them against the central authorities of China and Hong Kong local authorities. In the end the Chinese central authorities largely prevailed in the discursive realm as well as on the streets. Their victory was aided, in part by the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. But their triumph also produced the seeds of a new and potentially stronger international constitutional discourse that may reduce the magnitude and scope of that success. These essays were written as the events unfolded. Together the essays analytically chronicle the discursive battles that were fought, won and lost, between June 2019 and June 2020. Without an underlying political or polemical agenda, the essays retain the freshness of the moment, reflecting the uncertainties of the time as events unfolded. What was won on the streets of Hong Kong from June to December 2019, the public and physical manifestation of a principled internationalist and liberal democratic narrative of self-determination, and of civil and political rights, was lost by June 2020 within a cage of authoritative legality legitimated through the resurgence of the normative authority of the state and the application of a strong and coherent expression of the principled narrative of its Marxist-Leninist constitutional order. Ironically enough, both political ideologies emerged stronger and more coherent from the conflict, each now better prepared for the next.

The book may be purchased through AMAZON (kindle and paperback), 

I am delighted, then, to make available the next in the series of video recordings of conversations about the book with my former research assistant Matthew McQuilla (Penn State International Affairs MIA 2021). Today we discuss Chapter 15 (Tuesday 18 September 2019) “Two Systems” Internationalism: Congressional-Executive Commission on China Hearings on "Hong Kong’s Summer of Discontent and U.S. Policy Responses."

Pix Credit HERE

This Chapter marks the first real emergence of something that begins to loo like a coherent counter discourse to the discursive narratives developed by the Chinese central authorities since June 2019. It was odd for a number of reasons. First it was driven by the United States rather than by the U.K. Second, it was grounded on internationalism and the conception of international treaties imposing constitutional constraints on the exercise of national sovereignty (even when that sovereignty was undisputed). And it was driven as well from the oddest of sources, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China,rather than by the President of the State Department. Nonetheless, the CECC intervention represented the first time the sensibilities of the liberal democratic camp were (finally) exposed.  

These are the sensibilities that underlie both the international community’s approach to the protests in Hong Kong and to its own perceptions about the status of Hong Kong . It is grounded in a normative internationalism memorialized in hard and soft law produced by and through the U.N. and regional systems of state collectives that present both collective normative authority and a set of constraints on national action.That grounding is meant to produce the ideal toward which all states aspire and with respect to which all states have a duty to help one another attain. In some respects it provides the mirror image of the Marxist internationalism emerging in its forms in the New Era of Chinese historical development under Xi Jinping (sometimes referenced as “socialist internationalism”and more traditionally in Western Marxist thought as proletarian internationalism). For that reason it has produced--though very late given the transparency of this process, fear and caution on the part of vanguard elements of the liberal democratic camp. And perhaps more importantly, it made visible the connections between the discursive outlooks and perceptions of elements of the Hong Kong protest movement with those of the liberal democratic and internationalist camps.  The interventions of several protest leaders would have dramatic effects in the form of countermeasures eventually adopted by the central authorities.  But its framework is exposed here first.  

Pix Credt HERE

 

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The video of the conversation about Chapter 15 may be accessed HERE.

All conversations are posted to the Coalition for Peace & Ethics YouTube page and may be found on its Playlist: Talking About the Book: "Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems'." All conversation videos are hosted by Little Sir Press. I hope you find the conversation of some use. 

 

 

A pre-publication version of some of the book chapters may be accessed (free) on the Book's webpage (here). All videos may also be accessed through the Little Sir Press Book Website HERE.