Reflections on President Trump: "America 250: Presidential Message on the Anniversary of our Victory in the Spanish-American War"

 

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One always ought to worry when a merchant  attempts the role of the official/bureaucrat; or when the warrior seeks to play the role of merchant; or when the Bureaucrat/official attempts the governance of warriors. None of them ever seem to get it right, if only because the cognitive lens of each are distinct enough to make rationalizing the world difficult for a merchant playing at war, a warrior playing at business or bureaucrats and merchants attempting to play the role of the other. The imaginaries of the merchant, warrior and bureaucrat are based on distinct ways of identifying and assessing  the things that are significant and the way they might be valued against their own sense of the appropriate ordering of things. ways of seeing the world. (The "Merchant" (商), the "Bureaucrat" (士) and the "Tariff War"--The Cognitive Cages of the New Apex Post-Global and the Condition of the U.S. and China in their Folie à Deux). When these distinct cognitive cages are ordered within hierarchies of values they might well produce useful synergy--assuming a dominant imaginary to rule them all.  That is so as long as the inherent tensions among them can be managed successfully. Merchants and warriors sometimes find it hard to get along (example here) etc., precisely because they cannot see the world and identify the significance of actions, issues, etc. in the same way. The contradictions become more acute, and significant enough to threaten the stability of a political-economic model, when ruling/rationalizing archetypes, taking for example, the forms described here, attempt to wield the cognitive referents of another. It works sometimes: the warrior merchant, the yeoman official; but contemporary functional differentiation of governance spaces suggest that this effort is more difficult to sustain in the current environment.    

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Such is the state of the world that our global leaders, all true archetypes of the old divisions among merchants, warriors, officials, and peasants, appear ever more desperately to act "out of character."   This is especially relevant when a merchant empire (or rather a post-global empire now run by merchants types who sometimes style themselves bureaucrats or warriors, though perhaps their foundations resonate more with the yeomanry from which they emerged) celebrates its generative moment, or better (since that generative moment occurred decades before in the sort of trade based diplomacy that opened Asian markets in the wake of European territorial imperial ambitions of an ancien regime sort) when it celebrates the idea that a merchant empire or a post-global empire of merchants can actually presume the role of bureaucratic empire while retaining its fundamental transactional merchant character. Mind you, there is neither anything wrong or special about this--the thirst and capacity for empire (though often the will for it doe snot survive three generations as Ibn Khaldun reminded his Arab readers in the 14 century). But what is dangerous--for those who lead merchant empires is the folly of actually believing that merchant empires might function, and function effectively in the world, as if they were the manifestation of bureaucratic or warrior empires, or worse, the fantasy of a yeoman empire. That, in a sense was what appeared to be the message of the 2nd leadership period of the Trump administration in early 2025 (considered in The Borderlands of America First--Marco Rubio: "100 Days of an America First State Department" and the Structures of the America First Belt & Road Initiative). Yet temptation runs deep, and flirtation across cognitive spaces may be irresistible in ways that may ultimately undo the best laid plans of merchant empire. Or it may be that even merchant empires require a base, and we are ony now being treated to a description of its breadth. 

It was with this in mind that one might better appreciate a recent Presidential Message:  America 250: Presidential Message on the Anniversary of our Victory in the Spanish-American War, the text of which follows below in full. The Presidential Message was quite inspiring. The Presidential message focused on the relations between the United States and Spain, the relationships between which was marked by a short war and the Spanish cession of a number of its colonies--some transferred to the control of the United States and others--principally Cuba, granted independence from Spain. For the President, those changing relations between the merchant empire of the United States and the old colonial Empire of Spain incarnated the best features of the co-called Monroe Doctrine that emerged from an 1823 address by President Monroe opposing further European colonization of the Americas but also protective of U.S. national territorial aspirations in the Northern Hemisphere and then morphed into a more protean concept of American protective influence in the Western Hemisphere.The Monroe Doctrine has had its share of advocates and detractors, architects and those devoted to its demolition. That is a matter of politics and the values in which it is sometimes encased, or at least encased in some sort of vision that can be articulated in ideology-principle. In this case, and with President Trump's well known concern about the state of Europe and its relationship with the U.S., its emphasis in the Presidential Message also suggests some sort of time travel backwards to the generative period of American antebellum development  projected forward to contemporary times. President Trump is not the only leader time traveling these days, at least discursively; there are others who are well known but not worth taking the time to mention for their own pathos, or better bathos. But having traveled back and forth into the 19th century, the President then offers sometimes of value that might be extracted from those perambulations: "Today, we honor the unwavering courage, conviction, and sacrifice of every hero of liberty who fearlessly confronted forces of tyranny to defend our honor, our sovereignty, and our birthright of freedom" (America 250: Presidential Message on the Anniversary of our Victory in the Spanish-American War). . . in Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and elsewhere. Not that this is bad or good, but that it is, and being is the essence of both politics and its narrative ideologies. 

It was kind, though, of President Trump to recall that tragic monarch, Alfonso XIII, and the even more tragic circumstances that saw the U.S. battleship Maine hobbled in old Havana Harbor, with  large loss of life, producing the sort of national  response--aided by  the precursor of today's social media managerial tools--that made war palatable to the American laboring castes, and potentially beneficial to American merchants, warriors and the newly emerging class of professional vanguardists in the growing bureaucracies that would later come to dominate political life. The loss of life on the Maine, which had been sent to Havana to protect American economic interests that were threatened during the course of the Wars of Cuban Independence that had started far earlier in the 19th century and sputtered on sporadically for the greater art of that century, " propelled the United States toward a momentous struggle for justice and ignited our Nation’s righteous determination to defend our interests and maintain our dominance in the Western Hemisphere."  (

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America 250: Presidential Message on the Anniversary of our Victory in the Spanish-American War). A merchant might have said that, after decades of sitting on the sidelines the intervention of the projection of the United States into Cuba to protect its interests made inevitable an intervention against the Spanish colonial administration for Cuban independence. Viewed in that way one might have seen in the Maine tragedy the necessary predicate for an America First style action to protect U.S. interests which in that case tilted against a competing (and increasing obsolete form of) empire and (at last for Cuban nationalists) in favor of independence form Spain. But for the nascent warrior and bureaucrat castes in the United States a distinctive narrative of the events emerged, one which the President (or his writers) nicely captured:  

The war swiftly unfolded as American troops and sailors advanced with decisive strength, securing victories from Cuba to the Philippines. At the Battle of Manila Bay, United States forces destroyed the entire royal Spanish fleet within mere hours. Additional fighting in Cuba was backed by Theodore Roosevelt’s legendary regiment of “Rough Riders,” a volunteer cavalry made up of cowboys, miners, and college athletes, who embodied the full measure of American strength, resilience, and grit. These triumphant victories across land and sea brought the Spanish Empire to its breaking point and solidified the United States of America as the greatest military force in the world.America 250: Presidential Message on the Anniversary of our Victory in the Spanish-American War).

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That is the kind of narrative that sustained generations. And it is inspiring, fashioning a view of patriotic projection that does not appear to end at the territorial borders of the United States (something that  august elements of the Trump Administration  with deep roots in the American yeomanry might have been more sensitive to). And it reflects a way of looking at the world that fit nicely into the development of U.S. elite vanguardist tastes from the progressive movement on. Yet it effectively marginalized the Merchant approach to American policy. "Merchants and bureaucrats do not speak the same language; they do not have the same concerns, they do not share the same loyalties either to structures or operations, they approach challenges form opposite sides--one from principle and the other from action.  One builds by doing and then considers what has been built, the other conceives of the building and then conforms activities to those that advance that vision." (The "Merchant" (商), the "Bureaucrat" (士) and the "Tariff War"--The Cognitive Cages of the New Apex Post-Global and the Condition of the U.S. and China in their Folie à Deux. This cognitive cage of the merchant leadership vanguard, one would have presumed, had been revived in contemporary form by the current Administration and its America First initiative--one that mirrored the official/bureaucrat version that might be said to have taken the form of the Chinese Belt & Road Initiative. The merchant lens understands everything through a transactional lens, giving definition to the constitution and management of merchant empires in which territories (physical and virtual) are spaces in which transactions can be advantageously realized; the warrior, and warrior empire through coercive control of territory and its pacification, in which overlordship can be advantageously achieved (and perhaps maintained); and the official/bureaucrat through the territories of institutional control, these empires of institutions see the world as territories (physical and virtual) in managerial terms which may be brought to a higher stage of development through values based shepherding.  

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But perhaps not. Nothing exists in pristine form. Each of these ruling styles needs the others; the issue then is not exclusivity by a leading means of organizing and rationalizing the world to make it possible to identity, assess and act in ways that can be measured against a unifying set of objectives and values. None of this is a criticism of U.S. against Spain--merely a suggestion that the analytical lens makes all the difference in the world in understanding its signification then, and what it teaches the current generations of merchant leaders for recognizing and staying true to the cognitive lenses through which the world is rationalized and U.S. interests understood and realized. 

Perhaps what the Presidential Message was meant to convey, through this analytical lens, way that Cuban independence from Spain was in some respects a brilliant example of the power of merchant thinking projected outward for inward reward with collateral benefits to the population whose interests aligned with those of the merchant empire (the classical win-win strategies of the merchant led America First Initiative and the Bureaucrat/official centered Belt & Road Initiative). Even as independence from Spain was achieved, through the intervention of the U.S. (and approval of another old Empire, the British one which had its own geopolitical reasons for the silence/approval), American merchants created a Cuban sovereignty that was dependent on American forbearance. The Platt Amendment, which also follows below, suggested a much more acutely merchant approach--one that was less interested in the bureaucrats more ancient desire for territory and more focused not on control per se but on control of the circumstances within which transactions and economic relations on a favorable basis could be managed and augmented. 

Platt was a U.S. senator from 1879 to 1905 and influenced the decision to annex Hawaii and occupy the Philippines. As chair of the Senate Committee with Relations on Cuba, he sponsored the amendment as a rider attached to the Army Appropriations Bill of 1901. Cubans reluctantly included the amendment, which virtually made Cuba a U.S. protectorate, in their constitution. The Platt Amendment was also incorporated in a permanent treaty between the United States and Cuba. * * * The Platt Amendment supplied the terms under which the United States intervened in Cuban affairs in 1906, 1912, 1917, and 1920. By 1934, rising Cuban nationalism and widespread criticism of the Platt Amendment resulted in its repeal as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy toward Latin America. (Platt Amendment 1903)

Politics and its shifting from a merchant to a bureaucratic/vanguardist elite between the end of the 19th and the middle of the 20th century is reflected in this history. None of this is either good or bad, empire has been undergoing a tremendous transformation in the last several decades and what had once morphed into a vanguardist loosely cobbled together empire of expertise has again broken up into empires of management of productive forces but now in quite distinct ways.  The Trump Administration, robustly embedded in the cognitive cages of the merchant and merchant empire, appears, however, to also appears tempted to avoid detachment from either a warrior or bureaucrat caste approach to cobbling together and managing empire. Perhaps that is inevitable; but which comes first? and if the merchant lens orders the others, then how does that "firstness" of the merchant affect its instrumentalization of the others? That remains unclear here. Still, one is reminded that perhaps only theologians and academics hold to conceptual purity, and pragmatism may require something messier. One sees this in the Presidential Message; , But one also sees it in the construction of a Chinese empire--in the former case the merchant must deploy but control the warrior caste; in the later the bureaucrat/official must develop but also control its own warrior case; not the caste themselves but the cognitive frameworks from out of which they rationalize the world. But the danger is that pragmatics may overcome the generative cognitive approach that holds a system, including a system of empire together. That contradiction marks the discourse of the end of the Presidential Message:

On this day 127 years ago, the Treaty of Paris formally ended the conflict . . . —a pivotal moment that marked not only the conclusion of the war but the dawn of America’s role as a military superpower unlike anything the world had ever seen. Today, we recognize the territories and partnerships forged by the Treaty of Paris, where the full force of American freedom has taken root. Above all, we renew our commitment to a simple truth: Peace is maintained through strength. My Administration is proudly upholding this America First vision through our negotiations of historic peace deals in regions marked by decades of conflict—proving to nations around the world that we can turn the page on the days of endless wars and usher in a future defined by everlasting peace. (America 250: Presidential Message on the Anniversary of our Victory in the Spanish-American War).

It is also a warning to those in whose hands the development of the American "vision" is entrusted One can try but might find it challenging to have it all ways. Peace through strength requires strength for peace. And strength is not the product of accommodation with competing Empire--a Spanish one in the 19th century and others in the 21st. Peace, for the merchant, is not an absence of war but a space within which transactions  are possible that produce win-win use of the productive forces controlled by a community of transaction makers. Peace for the merchant, in the 21st century, requires not just strength but a steady protection against the bureaucrat and the warrior states that are also the key elements in shaping a transactional platform. Therein lies the great contradiction for the American merchant--a contradiction that viewed through the transactional lens of the merchant has produced a certain amount of inconsistency (though that too may be the essence of merchant governance): "As we commemorate this anniversary of our victory in the Spanish-American War, we stand united in our unwavering commitment to peace, military strength, and the enduring principles that define the American spirit." (America 250: Presidential Message on the Anniversary of our Victory in the Spanish-American War).

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Where this leads, no one knows yet. But the signalling is confusing--and perhaps that is the greatest mark of the merchant empire as long as one is content with the foundational ordering premise that the only steady state is the transaction itself.  For Cubans and and Venezuelans the revived and repurposed Monroe Doctrine provides peace through dependence. The Platt Amendment is revived in cultural form even as its formal legal constitution recedes more forcefully into history. But for Ukrainians reading this, the suggestion is clear--the 1990s did not bring sovereign independence, it brought only independence form the Soviet Union. But that left open the question of dependence--they have rejected a closer union with the reconstituted remnant of the Soviet Empire; Europe remains unwilling or unable; perhaps what might remain is a Platt Amendment for Ukraine through which the U.S. can protect its economic interest in Ukraine and establish the borders from which a  ore fruitful relationship might be undertaken with what remains of the powers to the east and the West of Ukraine.  All that is required are the discursive tropes necessary to make these realities palatable. In that respect, at least, the Chinese are a generation ahead of the Americans. And the American are still attempting to overcome the contradictions of their own cognitive framework in a conversation that is over a century old.  It is in this spirit that, indeed, all patriots can join in the commemoration of the American victory against the Spanish Empire at the end of the 19th century, and in reflecting on the critical relevance of that victory against obsolete empire in forging the merchant, bureaucratic and warrior empires that are now again emerging from out of the detritus of that even greater experiment on convergence that lasted  for the briefest of moments.  

For the people of the Western Hemisphere, at least, the commemoration reminds all  that through the lens of merchant empire, transactions between empires are a central element in ordering the spaces necessary to advance the values and objectives of each. Where those values differ--between an American merchant Empire and a Spanish colonial empire, the contradictions may be resolved by force between them when an accommodation becomes impossible. The objects of all this conflict and contradiction--spaces that colonial empire "sees" as territory to be controlled and exploited; and merchant empire "sees" as the locus of the exploitation of means of production and the cultivation of consumption (production/consumption platforms)--are conseqeuntial rather than driving forces in battles  over that space's utilization. Discourse is an essential lubricant in those conflicts and their call to "higher values" are in turn a function of the lens through which these spaces are understood. American values, then, like those of Spanish colonialism before them (and the cornucopias of other values in the contemporary marketplace of ideas) become embedded and understood with a reference to the ordering lens through which those values emerge and are applied--to enhance the value and operation of transactional spaces for merchant empires in accordance with the fundamental values of markets transactional environment in the service of which they are applied ("This tragedy propelled the United States toward a momentous struggle for justice and ignited our Nation’s righteous determination to defend our interests and maintain our dominance in the Western Hemisphere." Presidential message). But there is the problem. It is hard ti square that conceptual lens with the discursive tropes of warrior empire. A warrior empire assumes a constant state of war--to defend and expand (the contemporary Russian model, perhaps, and others). Peace is a consequences of domination; for the merchant peace is a predicate to transaction (there is a caveat for merchant cultures subordinated to and surviving on the economies of warfare). "As we commemorate this anniversary of our victory in the Spanish-American War, we stand united in our unwavering commitment to peace, military strength, and the enduring principles that define the American spirit" (Presidential Message) it may be worth a moment to consider the relationship among the three and their variability as a function of the lens used to signify and apply them. It is in that effort that the shape of America First may yet emerge more clearly, unless it too is merely a transaction within a larger market space. 

  

 

Brief Reflections on José A. Adrián Torres, "Compañero", el igualitarismo ficticio que conduce a la mediocridad [José A. Adrián Torres, "Comrade," The fictitious egalitarianism that leads to mediocrity]

 

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I recently read what turned out to be a fascinating opinion essay,   José A. Adrián Torres,  Compañero", el igualitarismo ficticio que conduce a la mediocridad:  En Cuba, la igualdad no se llevó solo por delante los privilegios del dinero, sino también los matices del trato humano," ["Comrade", The fictitious egalitarianism that leads to mediocrity: In Cuba, equality not only swept away the privileges of money, but also the nuances of human relations], 14Y Medio (30 August 2025). The essay's primary focus is irony--one built around that now ancient and to some extent cliched term "Comrade"-- the irony of which has become almost kitsch in liberal democracy since the first screening on Ninotchka in 1939. The problem is not so much with the use of the term to denote the end of class differences; it is merely that the use of the term to denote the end of old class differences  provided the veil behind which an egalitarian society could construct new hierarchies which ideologically, at least, did not have the same signification as the ones that were eradicated--at least in language and forms of address, by the flattening term, "Comrade." 

Nonetheless, one ought not to "walk away· from the essay with a sense of either superiority or relief that one lives in a state of human collectivity where the folly of the "Comrade" has been avoided,  It has not. And that, perhaps ought to be the much more potent moral of the essay.  What appears  humorous--in the style of the movies "Ninotchka" (1939) and "Death of Stalin" (2017)--is not the term itself but that curious state of the human collective condition that works so hard, at least since human collectives became more efficient in ridding themselves of leaders in the 17th century, to develop a language of equality at precisely the points of inflection where equality is incomprehensible.  While the masses are congratulating themselves for living in a new linguistic world order that had banished both the language and conditions of an older form of hierarchy (now normatively "bad"), they embraced in the language of social equality the inequality that those new linguistic imperatives commended. But that was perfectly positive precisely because new hierarchies were "good" (normatively and linguistically different from the old, and as such the signification of the language of hierarchy by definition could not be hierarchical.  The language of equality is manifested in a boss encouraging employees to call them by their first names; the flattening language of the team is another; beneath, or beyond, both are other hierarchies, or the way in which such hierarchies are expressed.  

Magic.

But them human society is at its best when it creates both linguistic magic and the conditions under which that magic can produce some sort of glamour, an enchantment which when cast on the masses produces a remarkable effect. Ferocious in their contempt for the language and practice of hierarchy, they are willing to accept both a language of hierarchy and the conviction that hierarchy (defined as something form the past) no longer troubles them because it can only exist in the ancient and not doubly enchanted old language of hierarchy. 

José Adrián Torres, however, has other fish to fry--and in the Cuban context not one to be dismissed lightly. 

 No se trata, por supuesto, de defender títulos ni rangos por sí mismos. Pero sí de recordar que una sociedad madura distingue funciones sin humillar, valora esfuerzos sin paternalismo y reconoce el saber sin avergonzarse de ello. En Cuba, lamentablemente, el igualitarismo ha derivado en una especie de liturgia de la mediocridad funcional, donde se aplaude más la obediencia y el discurso afín que la excelencia. [This isn't, of course, about defending titles or ranks for their own sake. But it is about remembering that a mature society distinguishes functions without humiliating, values ​​efforts without paternalism, and recognizes knowledge without shame. In Cuba, unfortunately, egalitarianism has led to a kind of liturgy of functional mediocrity, where obedience and consensual discourse are applauded more than excellence.] ( Compañero", el igualitarismo ficticio que conduce a la mediocridad)

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Here one encounters the opposite side of the irony of hierarchy and its linguistics: where a society is successful in flattening linguistic distinctions that reflect the differences in the signification of social role, then the society itself begins to resemble the flatness it has (apparently successfully) imposed--at least within that functional sector of the collective toward which the language of hierarchy is either elaborated or rejected. It does more than that, of course, and the essay does a marvelous job of describing how flattening  language and its norms  produces an energy that is then expressed in the flowering of a delicious counter language that layers the official norm-language with one if its own. That is, as well, an old game, and social collectives, especially its masses, are always willing to play.   TA the same time, the languae of flattening acquires its own subtext.  Adrián Torres suggests the complexity if the use of the word "comrade", grounded in context and intonation; he notes as well the use of other terms in, around, and in commentary of the term "comrade."

Pero la cosa no terminó ahí. Con el tiempo, incluso el “compañero” se fue devaluando como fórmula de trato. Surgió entonces el “amigo”, mucho más informal, más descomprometido, más desganado. Y así, del compañero que fregaba el piso, pero invocaba la igualdad de la revolución, pasamos al dependiente que no te mira a los ojos, al taxista que te llama “hermano” con desgana o al joven que no te saluda en el ascensor.  [But that was not the end of it. Over time, even the "comrade" became devalued as a form of communication. Then the "friend" emerged, much more informal, more uncommitted, more half-hearted. And so, from the comrade who scrubbed the floor but invoked the equality of the revolution, we move on to the shop assistant who doesn't look you in the eye, the taxi driver who reluctantly calls you "brother," or the young man who doesn't greet you in the elevator. ] (Compañero", el igualitarismo ficticio que conduce a la mediocridad).

But of course, hierarchy and flattening of hierarchy may be functionally differentiated, but they may occupy spaces within a larger platform of interaction in which both produce and consume each other. Cuban Caribbean Marxism is focused on class based leveling--social classes and labor market hierarchies and proletarian solidarity becomes the central element of a revolutionary flattening of equality around the terminology of the comrade. And so it was; but leveling proletarian masses leaves an awful lot of space for hierarchy--vanguard party, nomenklatura, their internal hierarchies and their status and authority (and exclusivity) relative to the proletarian masses provide the next frontier of hierarchy (all for a good cause), There is the semiotic trick--is one doesn't signify a hierarchy as hierarchic then it cannot be so. 

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This is not merely an idiosyncrasy of Marxist-Leninism, or it Cuban variaiton (now that the Soviets have transformed back into Russians). The leveling language of equality insinuates itself within liberal democracy as well, and perhaps with the same ironuc force. Adrián Torres notes, for example, the obvious: "In Spain, certain policies of current progressivism use the language of equality while promoting a fictitious diversity that only accepts difference when it ideologically coincides with its principles, nullifying or disregarding differences that challenge them" [En España, ciertas políticas del actual progresismo utilizan el lenguaje de la igualdad mientras promueven una diversidad ficticia que solo acepta lo distinto cuando coincide ideológicamente con sus principios, anulando o despreciando las diferencias que los cuestionan.] (Compañero", el igualitarismo ficticio que conduce a la mediocridad). It is more than that, certainly; and far more powerfully subterranean in its more "everyday" forms in its contemporary contextual form: Issy Jackson put it this way:

 My friends and I are unknowingly segmented into that same feed (is this modern-day friendship compatibility?). And so, we know the same pop culture news, buy into the same trends, talk about the same micro-influencers, and want to visit the same new restaurants, all fed to us on our TikTok ‘For You’ pages. (here)

The excellent essay Compañero", el igualitarismo ficticio que conduce a la mediocridad follows below in the original Spanish and in a crude English translation,  

 

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"Literature as an Art Form – Evolving Intermedial Literary Landscape" (Intech Open 2025)

 

The millennial trajectory of human progress is intricately linked to a foundational element—silicon. From the earliest stages of civilisation to the present digital era, silicon has served as both a literal and metaphorical cornerstone in human technological and cultural evolution. This element, which constitutes the second most abundant component of the earth’s crust after oxygen, has accompanied humanity from the prehistoric Stone Age to the realm of Artificial Intelligence. (Asunción López-Varela Azcárate, Techno-Poïesis and Intermedial Semiosis in David O’Reilly’s Videogame Everything)

Happy to share the announcement of the publication of Literature as an Art Form – Evolving Intermedial Literary Landscape.

Literature as an Art Form – Evolving Intermedial Literary Landscape brings together sixteen scholarly contributions that explore literature’s ongoing transformation across media, cultures, and technologies. This anthology traces the dynamic interplay between literature and visual, sonic, performative, and algorithmic forms, ranging from illuminated manuscripts and oral traditions to digital texts and anime. Rejecting the notion of literature as a fixed verbal art, the chapters highlight its status as a transmedial, evolving practice, shaped by and shaping the environments in which it is situated. Each essay examines how literature migrates across modalities, revealing it as a mutable process of techno-poïesis. Together, they offer a compelling vision of literature not as an autonomous artefact, but as a fluid cultural phenomenon whose conditions of existence are inseparable from intermedial exchange. (Press Release)

The book was edited by Asunción López-Varela Azcárate (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain), and includes some quite interesting essays at the borderlands of semiotics, techno-virtuality, and literature. 

The Table of Contents with links to the open access chapters follows below along with the editor's introductory chapter: Asunción López-Varela Azcárate, Techno-Poïesis and Intermedial Semiosis in David O’Reilly’s Videogame Everything, which provides a quite intriguing engagement with the emerging dialectics reconstitution of both fields of knowledge and their manifestation in the interactions of humans with their environment--natural and virtual--and vice versa.

Upcoming Conference: Legal Dimension of China's Presence in Latin America (10-11 February 2025; University of Barcelona)

 

 I am delighted to pass along the announcement of an upcoming conference:  Legal Dimension of China's Presence in Latin America, which will take place at the University of Barcelona 10-11 February 205. More information coming soon. The call for papers and other information may be accessed here.

Just Published: Revista Española de Empresas y Derechos Humanos (No. 2 February 2024)

 

 

I am delighted to pass along the notice of the publication of Issue No. 2 of the Revista Española de Empresas y Derechos Humanos. The issue includes a number of quite interesting and important articles written in English and Spanish. Contributors include José Antonio Tomás Ortiz de la Torre, Laura Íñigo Álvarez, Marta Paricio Montesinos, Elena Assenza, Andrea Cerofolini, and Luiz Henrique Garbellini Filho.

The entire issue may be accessed via 'pdf' HERE: Ver pdf.

The table of contents with links to individual articles follows below,  along with the Presentación (Introduction), in Spanish, authored by Daniel Iglesias Márquez (Universitat Rovira i Virgili), and Estrella del Valle Calzada (Universitat de València). Highly recommended.

International Seminar: La Lucha en clave judicial frente al cambio climático (5 Mayo 2022) and PPT of My Presentation, "Rethinking Climate Change from the perspective of the 2018 proposal for a “Framework principles on human rights and the environment” (A/HRC/37/59)

 

I am delighted to have been able to participate in the International Seminar: La Lucha en clave judicial frente al cambio climático organized by Francisco Javier Zamora Cabot, Lorena Sales Pallarés and Maria Chiara Marullo. The Seminar was organized to present two quite remarkable works (English and Spanish):

María Chiara Marullo, Lorena Sales Pallarés, Francisco Javier Zamora Cabot (eds.), La lucha en clave judicial frente al cambio climático (Aranzadi/Civitas, 2021) 

Representa esta obra un punto de inflexión por cuanto hasta el momento no se ha realizado en España un libro dedicado exclusivamente a la lucha judicial frente al cambio climático a pesar del importante impacto que sobre los derechos humanos supone. Diferentes voces y matices pulsan aquí reflexiones sobre la época en la que vivimos de transformación radical de nuestros marcos de referencia, donde uno de los ámbitos de reflexión y de acción compartida obligada en la comunidad internacional se centra en la emergencia climática. ¿Cómo debemos actuar desde la dimensión de la gobernanza para transformar el actual modelo en otro sostenible, justo y equitativo? Con una mirada coral transversal y pluridisciplinar se aborda la problemática del cambio climático a través de un hilo conductor guiado por los casos prácticos y el análisis jurisprudencial más reciente tanto en Europa como en Latinoamerica.

and Francisco Javier Zamora Cabot, Lorena Sales Pallarés, Maria Chiara Marullo (eds) Beatriz Felipe Pérez (coordinadora), Aspectos destacados en la lucha frente al cambio climático (Aranzadi/Civitas 2021)  

Obra independiente pero complementaria de La lucha en clave judicial frente al cambio climático, en la que las diferentes aportaciones repasan la defensa judicial del medio ambiente y del cambio climático fijando el punto de partida en los actores: ONG’s, consumidores, pueblos indígenas…Todos ellos contribuyen con su trabajo y lucha a nivel micro a la consecución de un objetivo macro: la defensa del medio ambiente. La perspectiva de los actores involucrados en la defensa medioambiental es un tratamiento novedoso ya que no solo aporta de primera mano las acciones que están emprendiendo, sino que abre la perspectiva a nuevos retos a los que enfrentarse. La obra ofrece un amplio abanico de actores, ONG’s, pueblos indígenas, pequeños estados insulares, asociaciones de consumidores…que nos plantean situaciones reales a las que se enfrentan en la actualidad, así como los recursos legales con los que cuentan o justamente aquellos que requerirían para poder hacer frente en igualdad de condiciones frente a las grandes multinacionales que con frecuencia están detrás de los efectos más devastadores.

Both are profoundly useful sets of essays on the way in which climate change and climate related issues have surged to the forefront  of policy and judicial interventions globally. More on the Seminar and the books HERE.

My presentation, Rethinking Climate Change from the perspective of the 2018 proposal for a “Framework principles on human rights and the environment” (A/HRC/37/59), sought to bridge  the conceptual operationalization presentation of Gregorio Mesa Cuadros, with the more granular consideration of judicial engagement with the climate change project from the perspective of the courts of Philippe Couvreur. The principal objective of the presentation to was more deeply engage with the character and consequences of a human rights driven approach to meeting the challenge posed by climate change. More specifically, the presentation was meant to provoke a reconsideration of the consequences of a human centered and human rights based rationalization of the responsibilities of humans and their institutions in the face of their contributions to climate changes affecting not just the human condition but that of virtually everything else on earth. My suggestion was that the current conceptualization of the climate change project reduces the issue to a function of the way in which .human institutions develop a framework for legalization of the rights of humans the protection, damages and consequences of which are measured in terms of climate changes as and to the effect that it negatively impacts humans. Meeting the challenge of climate change is deeply embedded in the and limited by the institutional and normative constraints of the legalizing project of human rights and its manifestations within human organization.   At the center of these projects are humans (person and collective), their "rights" and the rationalization of botg within human institutional power relations. Climate is object or measure--its deterioration the measure of the rights and values of and in humans.  Humans continue, in this sense, the project of asserting dominion over the Earth in line with their individual and collective interests, rationalized to suit the times--but perhaps the planet less well.  

The PowerPoint of the presentation follows.  The PPT may also be accessed here.

 

Draft Posted: "The EU to the Rescue of the Cuban Economy? the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (PDCA) and the State of Cuba-EU Economic Relations"

Rafael Velazquez Perez and I have posted the draft of an essay, which we first presented at the Associativity of the Study of the Cuban Economic January 2021 Conference. The paper,"The EU to the Rescue of the Cuban Economy? the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (PDCA) and the State of Cuba-EU Economic Relations" considers the PDCA as a critically important template of European strategic aspirations--not merely with respect to trade but more importantly with the ideology of trade aligned closely to a preferred political model. We conclude that the lubricant that the EU attempts through this model form of agreement is dialogue, an that dialogue is spiced with a substantial effort to witness the EU's faith in itself through capacity building projects structured and financed by the EU to meet and then overcome the disjunctions between the EU approach and those of target (in this case Marxist Leninist) states. We conclude that:

It is this disjunction that continues to frame European approaches to trade and investment relations with Marxist Leninist State. This is one of developing deeper interlinkages with the expectation that this will permit them to use various for a to instruct, or at least engage, their trading partners in European values. That model, the Cuba PDCA model, is evident in the 2020 agreement with China as well.Where once the weaknesses of the PDCA were viewed as a means of flexibility in using trade to build capacity and naturalize the European approach to the principles of a sustainability and human rights based trade regime (if ever so slowly), now those provisions are viewed as both weak and threatening to the position and interests of Europe. The PDCA was a dry run for what will be the agreement with China. And what PDCA teaches is that such agreement pay lip service to European values while seeking access to markets or territories where Europe has an interest. And yet, that lip service, in the view of some, is precisely what is most valuable to Europe, even at the expense, in the short term, of the values it seeks to promote through PDCA type deals. And yet there is ultimately a thoughtlessness here: what may be possible against a small and struggling state (and even that is not clear) may actually backfire when used against a state whose own power and cultural self-confidence as great as that of Europe. And, indeed, the price now may be too steep.

The conclusion is helpful in a sense, but it is the richness within the approach itself that is worth savoring for the insight it provides on the way in which the EU both sees the world and seeks to bend it to a specific way of engaging with it.  Not that there is anything wrong with this  And certainly other states with post-global imperial aspirations are engaging in similar project.  PDCA exposes, in a sense, the way in which the EU seeks to make meaning and to impose it.  It uses the mechanics of legalization, and its internationalization, as a framework through which it can, by a process of intergovernmental dialogue with NGOS strategically on the sidelines and as useful instruments enhanced with funding , seek to align trade and strategic objectives. In this they follow a similar pattern as that employed by the Norwegian Pension PLan Global, through the stratetegic use of state power in the service of internationalized legalities (Sovereign Investing and Markets-Based Transnational Rule of Law Building: TheNorwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund in GlobalMarkets).  And the approach was attempted--though incoherently--in European responses to Chinese engagements in redeveloping its One Country Two Systems  principle in Hong Kong (here) 

The draft may be accessed HERE.  The Introduction follows below.

 

I Congreso Italo-Español sobre la Lucha en clave judicial frente al cambio climático (First Italo-Spanish Congress on the Key Role of the Courts in the Fight Against Climate Change).

 

 

I am delighted to announce the  I Congreso Italo-Español sobre la Lucha en clave judicial frente al cambio climático (First Italo-Spanish Congress on the Key Role of the Courts in the Fight Against Climate Change). The Congress takes place 19-20 November in a mixed mode (physical-virtual) format.
 

El programa del congreso incluye diferentes conferencias a cargo de expertos como Carmen Márquez, que abordará los «Casos ambientales, daños climáticos y responsabilidad corporativa»; Michele Nino, que profundizará en el «Arbitraje internacional y cambio climático», y Antoni Pigrau, que tratará las «Emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero y la responsabilidad internacional del Estado». Asimismo, se han programado tres sesiones temáticas sobre el marco teórico internacional de los impactos ambientales y sociales del cambio climático; los litigios sobre cambio climático; y las visiones internacionales sobre el cambio climático, así como una mesa redonda dedicada a los actores destacados en la lucha contra el cambio climático. Además, se realizará una presentación de comunicaciones.  El congreso cuenta con la financiación de la Generalitat Valenciana. [The congress program includes different lectures by experts such as Carmen Márquez, who will address "Environmental cases, climate damage and corporate responsibility"; Michele Nino, who will delve into "International arbitration and climate change", and Antoni Pigrau, who will deal with "Greenhouse gas emissions and the international responsibility of the State." Likewise, three thematic sessions have been programmed on the international theoretical framework of the environmental and social impacts of climate change; litigation on climate change; and international visions on climate change, as well as a round table dedicated to leading actors in the fight against climate change. In addition, there will be a presentation of communications. The congress is financed by the Generalitat Valenciana.] (Announcement)

Great thanks to the organizing committee for a great program and a shout out to Maria Chiara Marullo, for organizing the excellent panel on which I will participate. 

The Conference Program and the PowerPoint of my presentation, El estado del litigio en materia de cambio climático en los EEUU [The State of Climate Change Litigation in the USA] follow. Links in my PPT may be accessed here. ACCESS and DOWNLOAD PPT HERE:  Climate_Litigation_US_2020

The parallel sessions (comunicaciones) held on the 19th November at 18.30h (CET), will be streamed via Meet:

Session 1: https://meet.google.com/nvz-fkxb-gym
Session 2: https://meet.google.com/jgs-queb-dgk
Session 3: https://meet.google.com/zii-yxtu-qdk
Session 4: https://meet.google.com/nrw-fcph-epd

The full and updated program can be consulted at the following link: https://redhexata.com/congresos-y-seminarios/

If you have any question, please contact us: congresocambioclimatico2020@gmail.com

"From the Castros to COVID: An ASCE Virtual Conference" Interview Series: Dr. Prof. Michael Strauss Speaks to the Guantanamo Naval Base

For July and early August 2020, and in the run up to the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE) conference From the Castros to COVID: An ASCE Virtual Conference (13-15 August 2020; Concept Note HERE), ASCE will be organizing a series of interviews of individuals who will be participating in the upcoming conference.



The interviews explore in more detail some of the issues that will be presented at the Conference and also will introduce some of ASCE's key actors. The object is to get to know us better as well as to begin to engage in some of the more important issues facing Cuba, Cuba-US relations, and the regional situation in the Caribbean.  Larry Catá Backer hosts the interviews. All interviews may be accessed free of charge.  They are posted to the ASCE YouTube Channel, and may be accessed as well on the Coalition for Peace and Ethics YouTube Channel. They may also be accessed by scanning the QR Code on your mobile phone or other device.

Our next interview is with Dr. Prof. Michael Strauss, professor of international law and international relations at the Centre d’Etudes Diplomatiques et Stratégiques (CEDS) in Paris, and an invited professor at the Belarusian State University in Minsk We spoke about the the long and quite interesting history of the Guantanamo Naval Base from its creation in 1903 through current times.  What appears at first glance to be a straightforward issue--the lease of another sovereign's territory, turns out to have produced complex issues of international law, international relations, and internal operations for the US military services.  The politics of the closing of the Naval Base during the very brief movement to normalization that ended in 2017 is also discussed. We discussed as well legal issues around the use of Guantanamo as a detention center for prisoners from the Iraq and Afghan campaigns. Professor Strauss' book, The Leasing of Guantanamo Bay (Praeger Security International, 2009)provided the foundation for our discussions.

Please enjoy the interview with Larry Catá Backer. Professor Strauss' short bio follows.

A short video sneak peek of the interview may be accessed HERE.

The entire interview (English only) is available HERE.  

Just Published--Latin American Research Review Vol. 55(2)

I am delighted to pass along links to the articles recently published in the Latin American Research Review (Vol 55).

There is much worth reading here, especially the studies of the structures of race infused social organization  and the economics of ethno-migration in Spain. But also of interest--in particular to students of Cuba (and now developed states)--is the examination of the development of the informal sector and its consequences for public law and management.

Dr. D. Francisco Javier Zamora Cabot: "Gobernanza mundial y el binomio Empresas-Derechos Humanos" (For Spanish Speakers; Programa en Castellano)

Sesión organizada por la Sección de Derecho. LUGAR: Escuela de Práctica Jurídica. Amaniel, 2 FECHA: Miércoles, 24 de abril de 2019, a las 18:30 h

Interviene el Dr. D. Francisco Javier Zamora Cabot, Catedrático de Derecho Internacional Privado de la Universidad Jaume I, sobre el tema: Gobernanza mundial y el binomio Empresas-Derechos Humanos

Resumen y un enlace al video de la presentación a continuación.

"In the Shadow of Empires—Latin American Perceptions of Development and International Law"-- Summary of Presentation for ASIL 2019 Proceedings

At ASIL 2019, I presented In the Shadow of Empires—Latin American Perceptions of Development and International Law--discussing the legacy of the Spanish Imperial system and its organization of relations in the context of Latin American regionalism and on Latin American relations with European powers, the United States and China--as part of a marvelous panel entitled “Diverse Perspectives on the Impact of Colonialism in International Law.” More information on the panel HERE. ASIL 2019: Minorities in International Law Interest Group (MILIG) Panel--“Diverse Perspectives on the Impact of Colonialism in International Law.” 

Panel members are preparing a summary of each presentation for inclusion in the ASIL 2019 Proceedings.  My contribution--a short summary of my presentation, follows below. Presentaiton PPTS available HERE.  

Iuris Dictio (Ecuador): Call for Papers (Convocatoria) No. 18--"Law and Literature in Latin America" ("Derecho y Literatura en América Latina")

It my great  honor to serve on the Scientific Advisory Board of the journal Iuris Dictio whose home is the Universidad de San Francisco de Quito (Ecuador).  It is one of the leading legal journals in Ecuador and the Andean region.  Its editors, Diego Falconí Trávez and María Teresa Vera-Rojas are engaged in expanding its international recognition.

For 2016 Iuris Dictio is planning a monograph-symposium  on law and literature in Latin America, understood both as law as literature or law in literature. 

The Call for Papers (Convocatoria) for Monograph No. 18 on Law and Literature in Latin America follows (in English and Castellano).  Also included is information about Iurias Dictio's publications (Castellano).

Welfare and Insecurity in Europe in an Age of Austerity; Readings From the Oñati Socio-Legal Series

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2015)

The International Institute for the Sociology of Law (IISL) in Oñati is devoted to teaching and promoting the sociology of law, socio-legal studies, and law and society research. The IISL is a joint venture of the Research Committee on Sociology of Law (also known as RC12 of the International Sociological Association) and the government of the Basque autonomous region in Spain and is hosted by the University of Oñati.

IISL is noted for its  Socio-Legal Series, the current issue of which caught my eye.  It offers a series of papers that consider welfare and insecurity in Europe in an age of austerity.  Entitled "Social Responses to the Crisis and the Precarization of Life Conditions in Contemporary Society;" it is edited by Benjamín Tejerina (Universidad del País Vasco-Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea). The table of contents and links to the papers appear below.

Democracy Part XXIV: Mass Democracy Not in My Backyard

In the West, influential individuals within the academy, government, business and the media appear to embrace expressions of mass democracy and mass sentiment only when it is convenient.  

 (From Eric Stoner, A more honest look at nonviolent success stories, Waging Non-Violence, Oct. 22, 2009)

Such expressions are almost always convenient when they occur in the home states of rivals and competitors.  But mass democracy and mass expressions of political power are invariably deemed to include a criminal element the views of which are incoherent where these expressions occur within states which view themselves as fundamentally democratic in the conventional sense.  Indeed, in those states, mass movements are viewed, perversely, perhaps, as anti-democratic. Larry Catá Backer, Scenes From the Streets of Barcelona: Direct Democracy, Disenchantment and the Globalization of Resistance, Law at the End of the Day, June 19, 2011.  Thus, for example, the efforts to suppress mass demonstrations against economic anti-democratic movements that started in Europe in the summer of 2011, usually on the grounds of sanitation and public safety, might be contrasted to the encouragement of mass movements in the Middle East. But even in these cases, democratic mass movements tend to be subject to a multilateral will beyond that of the people. 

(Julian Borger, Syria crackdown continues prompting urgent Arab League talks, The Guardian, 6 Nov. 2011) ("Protests against the regime continued on the first day of the Islamic festival of Eid-al-Adha in places such as Alsnmin near Deraa. Photograph: Reuters"))

Arab League arranges emergency meeting to discuss Assad's failure to stick to peace plan after death of 13 on Islamic holy day . . . At the weekend the Arab League's secretary general, Nabil al-Arabi, warned that failure to implement the Arab peace talks, which involved the return of troops to barracks and the freeing of political prisoners, would have "catastrophic consequences for the situation in Syria and the region".

It is unclear what action the Arab League might take. Its decision to turn against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya ultimately proved fatal to the regime, as it cleared the way for a UN resolution mandating Nato's military intervention. However, Russia is much closer to the Syrian regime and has complained that it was misled over the extent of Nato's intended role in Libya, so Moscow has so far resisted concerted international action against Damascus.

The French foreign minister, Alain Juppé, said the latest deaths had made it clear there was "nothing more to expect from this regime and that despite its occasional announcements it will not commit to a programme of reforms".

Juppé told Europe 1 radio: "Different initiatives have been taken to try to bring Bashar al-Assad to dialogue. You can see what happened to the last one: Bashar al-Assad accepts the Arab League peace plan and the next day he massacres dozens more people in the streets."

Juppé criticised the UN security council for its "failure" to act on Syria, after a draft resolution threatening to take punitive action against Damascus was vetoed by Russia and China last month.  (Julian Borger, Syria crackdown continues prompting urgent Arab League talks, The Guardian, 6 Nov. 2011)

The second and more troubling has been the tremendous efforts asserted by the European Union on the government of Greece to avoid a public referendum on the adoption of austerity measures demanded by the Eurozone institutions to avoid financial collapse. In this case, what is suggested is that popular sovereignty, even when expressed by conventional methods, must fall before the multilateral will.    

 (From Opening Bell: Cautious optimism in markets ahead of Greek vote, Financial Post, June 21, 2011)

The sentiment was perhaps best expressed  by the novelist George Zarkadakis:

Greece is the cradle of democracy, but, as the world saw this past week, a financial crisis is no time to put important questions to the people. Prime Minister George Papandreou’s proposed referendum on the country’s loan deal with the European Union, called off quickly after intense international opposition, illustrated that perfectly. Plato and Aristotle would have approved of dropping the referendum. They didn’t like democracy of the direct kind. Neither trusted the people that much. . . .

 The Greek financial crisis is a crisis of identity as much as anything else. Unless the people redefine themselves, this could become the perfect catastrophe: a country designed as a romantic theme park two centuries ago, propped up with loans ever since, and unable to adjust to the crude realities of 21st-century globalization.  (From George Zakardakis, Opinion: Modern Greece’s real problem? Ancient Greece, The Washington Post, Nov. 4, 2011).

 (From George Zakardakis, Opinion: Modern Greece’s real problem? Ancient Greece, The Washington Post, Nov. 4, 2011 ("Cutbacks demanded by international lenders have led to a public backlash, with tens of thousands of Greeks flooding into the main squares of cities across the country.")).

This is not to suggest that the new political arrangements are wrong.  It is only to remind one that even the most important ideological frameworks for contemporary times is contextually driven and subject to the constraints of the structural framework from which it arises.  In this case, it is clear that mass democracy can be used as a means to project ideology beyond a state, and might be used toi manage the expression of political accountability within states that see themselves as legitimately democratic.  But they may not be used without permission.