Politics

Moe for President

/ stefanfeller / 1 Comment

The featured image: AI interpreting and visualising the content of my blog entry.

Having read three chapters of Anne Applebaum’s latest book, “Autocracy Inc.,” I found myself compelled to restart my reading. It appears that I had inadvertently lost the narrative thread she is skillfully weaving, which explores the intricate dynamics of collaboration between autocratic structures and the silent, covert, or misguided collaborations that exist within societies that self-identify as part of the West or those that embrace concepts such as democracy, the rule of law, and fundamental human rights. 

There’s this cliché about the bully at school: The guy who picks on weaker children in his or her class. He dominates the weaker guy in a menacing way, towering over him, threatening him, or even beating him up. He takes away whatever the bully wants or simply destroys things the weak guy holds dear. We’ve seen this all, whether in the comic Calvin & Hobbes, where Calvin is abused by the bully Moe, or in any Hollywood movie, where the underdog either gets beaten up or suddenly rises to beat up the bully.

Pretty binary stuff, isn’t it? The victim either loses the fight or rises to the challenge for various reasons, including whilst discovering his superpowers, as depicted in numerous movies, such as those in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Universe. Alternatively, the person with superpowers rescues someone from a bully. I personally enjoy the movie “Venom,” particularly the scene where the bully is a man extorting the owner of a corner store, Mrs. Chen. In this scene, Eddie Brock/Venom emerges to the rescue, unleashing a complex mix of emotions on the side of moviegoers, including fun, anger, joy in exacting revenge and retaliation, intertwined with disgust at the sight of Venom biting heads off. There are countless variations of this theme in pop culture, and these movies are exceptionally adept at evoking profound emotions that resonate with us all, often without our ability to fully comprehend the appeal of such content. However, it’s important to note that these movies primarily tap into purest emotions that we all identify with.

On one hand, as moviegoers, we despise the bully. We identify with the victim, we experience anger when the bully gets away with their actions and satisfaction when they are punished or meet their demise. On the other hand, there’s a crowd that often remains in the background: The bully’s followers. These are the individuals who surround the bully. In some movies, you’ll see a cute girl asking the bully why they’re doing that. In other movies, this person will be almost as mean as the bully themselves. Or this person will stay in the bully’s orbit, feeling a bit of pity for the victim. Sometimes there is a girl who pities the victim and later becomes the victim’s girlfriend after the underdog has finally stood up against or taken revenge on the bully. Again, there are many different variations of this same meme.

My primary question is how and why a bully can get away with their actions. Imagine a bully who constantly abuses others but has no followers. Is this even possible? A stone-cold sociopath who bullies while everyone around them walks away, clearly expressing their aversion for the bully, taking the victim’s side, or simply ignoring the bully when they’re abusing someone, no longer fits the typical image of a bully. It’s more like something out of Hannibal Lecter’s world. 

A bully always has a base of followers under their control. They need followers, and they design their actions to keep those followers in their orbit and to increase their number.

The concept of a bully necessitates at least three elements: the bully, the victim (which may even be wrongly labeled as the person attacking the bully), and the bully’s circle of followers. However, there are more: the sea of people who are indifferent, and those who dislike the bully. For the bully, this combined group encompasses both potential future followers and individuals to be labeled as potential enemies. Anyone who doesn’t fall into either category is utterly uninteresting to the bully. 

The followers serve as a primary motivation for the bully, who seeks to exert control over them and expand their number, aligning it with their desired objectives. In a school setting, the goal is to accumulate as many followers as possible within a specific class, as it represents the domain within which the bully exerts their influence. Conversely, in a national context, the group encompasses the entire population.  

The followers are the ones who empower the bully, but this group is more complex. The bully gains influence over their followers, and typically, the bully is driven by controlling their circle of followers and expanding their support base. In essence, the existence of the bully is contingent upon the presence of those who willingly follow them. In turn, the motivations and actions of these people also have a substantial influence on the bully. In many ways, the bully is the protagonist who is most visible. Which puts the followers second, with some sticking out into the limelight, but most of them staying second or third row. Yet, it is this group which has taken the decision to side with the bully. The interaction between a bully and a group of followers is more complex than that between a pied piper and the children he is marching into doom. People in a bully’s orbit have their own agendas, dreams, motivations, delusions, and rationalizations.

From some point on, the bully and that individuals’ followership develop a corporate identity. History shows that from this point on, individual accountability for consequences of actions becomes very difficult to establish.

As a German national born 14 years after the end of WW II, I witnessed firsthand how painful it was for a society to grapple with the question of moral responsibility of the uncounted individuals who were part of the system producing the Holocaust. As a child, a teenager, and as adult I witnessed the disbelief of people from other societies how a system could be overwhelmed, like when the Republic of Weimar was finished off by the NSDAP, Hitlers’ political party. Those who had not witnessed how this works, they had profound difficulties grappling with some appreciation. It is easier to label persons as malevolent and evil than to acccept that every normal person is vulnerable to becoming complicit.

As a police officer engaging in international work of the UN and the EU in the aftermath of conflict giving birth to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, I always was confronted with the mantra of “Never Again”. I also witnessed firsthand the same process in other societies as I had seen it in post-war Germany: Processes of denial of collective responsibility, they run, just for example, deep related to the Srebrenica genocide. Which is but one example of so many.

Sunday, 27.10., Nr. 45 held one of his last big rally events in the final days of this U.S. election cycle, at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Before His Majesty’s speech, a long procession of members of the Trump Bully Club walked up to the microphones, spitting out every possible hate and disgust imaginable: Against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Symbolic references against Black Americans. Derogatory elements against Palestinians, and anti-semitic jokes. Rude attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris. Transphobia against the LGBTQI community. Vitriol against immigrants at large. See a summary in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/31/six-racist-bigoted-comments-trump-madison-square-garden

Of course, followed by the Bully in Chief himself. Who, in an interview with Tucker Carlson attacked Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, with suggesting she should be put in front of a military firing squad: “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?” He talks about Liz Cheney who is standing up, like a growing number of senior republican figures including from Trump’s own administration, against a second term of Trump as a U.S. President. To which Nr. 45 responds by talking about the “Enemy from Within”, making it abundantly clear what he will do when he would have a chance: Exacting revenge, and retaliation, by bending the rule of law into a rule of Donald Trump.

All that against a background of people NOT leaving the arena in disgust. People laughing, applauding, clapping.

Wednesday, 06.11., we wake up with the knowledge who is going to be Nr. 47. My children expressing profound shock and disbelief, and despair. Walking into the neighborhood cafe here in suburbian Toronto, there is only one topic. My phone flooded with European messages of disbelief. A joint feeling of emotional hangover.

At the time of this writing, the still ongoing ballot count includes 71.544.343 votes for Nr 45, and bringing him over the threshold of 270 electoral votes he needs for becoming Nr 47. Currently, he has won won 276.

Democracy at its best. Putting on record that the American people, in their majority, have voted for a future President who has taken down all norms of civilised behavior. Europeans rattled, worried, scared, or jubilating (depending on the same question like in the U.S., on which side of this polarized battle of civilisation they have chosen to stand). Make no mistake: We have our own devils in Europe.

To be continued. Everything changes, and this one will, too.

The Attack on Humanity by Terrorism: Blinding and manipulating through inciting hatred and fear on an unimaginable scale – The monster hides in plain sight

/ stefanfeller / 4 Comments

The featured picture: Memorial Site Concentration Camp Dachau – Germany. Picture taken by the author on occasion of visiting the site May 2019, with two dearest American friends.

Every parent has seen this: A child in devious mood, quickly checking that it is not being watched, then hitting his or her sibling. The sibling being attacked yells for Mom or Dad. The parent rushing in, trying to find out what happened, and the attacker claiming “Mom, she started it, not me!” Bullies on schoolyards do the same: They immediately accuse the victim of having started the fight when caught.

As parents, we would join in the common experience that this is a typical phase within childhood development. If we are wise, we would undertake all efforts not to be manipulated into taking one child’s side. If we are able to clearly identify what happened, and who started it, we would work towards an understanding that action has consequences, that own behavior leads to accountabilty. We love them both. We would work hard helping our children to gain values of coexistence, rather than domination. We would learn how to explain the need for compromise, and that any compromise includes giving something away in order to share getting something. Myself being a parent, I remember this vividly. It can be absolutely unnerving being confronted with two children who are locked into a fight, not capable to give up, and becoming furious that Mom or Dad does not take their side. It takes a lot of patience and diplomatic skills to navigate through these situations until both children are ready for a compromise. In more than one case, I messed it up. The consequence was turmoil, protracted fights, and pain on all sides. But if successful, peace is reestablished quickly. And at some point during their development coming out of age, former children will look back at their fighting memories with smiles and jokes.

Childish behavior? What does it have to do with the title of this blog entry?

Let me try to paint a larger picture before locking in on what, in another context, representatives of the United Nations have named actions “verging on pure evil“. With this wording AFP is quoting UN officials talking about the unimaginable suffering of Darfuri people again, twenty years after a genocide. They are at the brink of another one. I have written about it, here. Most of us don’t even see these news. We are transfixed by what is happening in Israel and the Palestine Territories. I want to write about action which has crossed the border into the realm of pure evil: The Hamas terror attack against Israel and Israeli civilians, October 07, 2023.

In order to create the link from childish “tit for tat” and “he started it, not me” kindergarden behavior to what appears to have exploded into fiery emotional antagonization making it difficult offering an argument calling for reason, I want to recall how used we have become to the application of this utterly childish behavior as a most devious tool of manipulation by adults, namely by adults who hold or held highest office, and how a cohort of followers is using this method for manipulating and controlling massive portions of entire societies. The trick is: Blame the other side, trick them into anger and hatred, and capitalize on it. After pointing this out, I will take it to its most recent extreme application: This time in the corner of terrorism. Because we are running the risk of being successfully blindfolded by the mastery of a plan coming straight from hell, emerging through the underground tunnels in Gaza.

The 45th President of the United States brought this childish logic of always blaming others to perfection in each and every argument. When accused of bullying behavior, he would point to others having started it. When held accountable for own actions, he would point to others, faking stories, hammering out endless lies about these peoples’ own alleged evil. We have been through endless years where this person simply followed one rule: Escalation. On uncounted occasions we found and find ourselves in a reality where every day reveals another outrageous attack which was previously considered to be unthinkable. He is not alone in that, and I am not even talking about his followers, I am talking about other Heads of State, Presidents, Dictators, Autocrats. My argument is that this form of behavior has become mainstream, on a global level. Ruling people, manipulating people, controlling people, by inciting hate, anxiety, anger, and locking them into a fake narrative through lies which stop any bipartisan communication cold in its tracks. Once I am not willing to listen to people with other views, because I am told they are the enemies, I have successfully been locked into a world being solely controlled by these pied pipers.

However, like in the case of Nr 45 and others, we still underestimate them. We try to find reasons, we may ridicule, laugh, minimise, deny. I take a different approach: I assume that people like Nr 45 or others are not just deranged, or are stuck in childish behavior, or may suffer from mental conditions including narcissism and psychopathy making them incapable to act differently. They may be all that, but I do believe they act in cold blood. I believe that Nr 45 knows exactly what he is doing. Currently he is playing the story of facing prison “for the American people” to absolute perfection. It doesn’t matter that every Democrat is laughing at that silly argument. It does matter that this story locks up millions of other people in a scenario justifying to demolish democracy, and being intolerant to anyone different from their fascist, xenophobic and misogynistic thinking. I believe there is a good chance he may succeed again, and this is openly discussed in mainstream media. Which will open the doors of hell. Again. Never before in my view it has been more important to remember lessons of history. We are about to make horrible mistakes, once more.

This modus operandi is not new, at all. Sect leaders do it. Dogmatic ideology and ultra-orthodox religion does it, within any faith I know. Hostage takers do it. Hitler did it. Children in insane family situations face the same, as victims. Rocker gangs, street gangs, mafia-type organisations, they all deploy these principles, partly or in full. And these are just a few examples, small and large. At the core, it is about mercilessly controlling others for the own benefit.

Terrorism and violent extremism is using the same approach. The list of contemporary examples is long and would stretch from Afghanistan to the Middle East, from East Africa to West Africa, I could name examples in the Carribean, in Middle, Central, and South America, in Europe, just from the list of country situations I have a personal experience with. Of course it would include Afghanistan, the Ukraine, and the history or even small contemporary pockets in the Balkans. Again, just examples. Do we pay attention to Africa?

But nothing leaves me more scared than what is happening since October 07, 2023, the day of a most horrific attack by Hamas against Israel and the Israeli people.

Why is that?

It was Hamas who launched a terror attack from hell. It were Hamas terrorists who equipped themselves with GoPro cameras, livestreaming their hunt for Israelis hiding in horror. Lifestreaming how they maimed and raped and killed them. Amplifying the lifestreaming done by ISIS a thousand times larger. It were Hamas terrorists who deliberately bragged and documented their murderous attack on innocent Israeli citizens, claiming unspeakable atrocities in messages sent back to their families on social media channels.

For me, one question sits front and center: Why have they done that? And my answer is: In order to maximise blind emotions by Israeli citizens, in order instill hatred in the Jewish community all over the world, in order to derange a beginning hopeful dialogue between Israel and Arabic States, and in order to outrage international friends and supporters of the Jewish community. Reminded of 9/11, I am. At the same time, Hamas did this in order to be seen in the world of their sympathisers and supporters, to instill raw emotions of lust for more cruelties. They simply calculated that, within weeks, nobody would remember these pictures, because the world would be flooded by picures of dead Palestinian children.

Why?

There is only one answer possible: The sheer size of this attack, it’s careful long-term planning in utmost secrecy, and its military-style execution serves one brutally calculated purpose: To incite blind fury in the Israeli society. Hamas has done this for no other purpose than to provoke the most massive attack against Palestinians in the Gaza strip possible. Hamas’ calculus includes not only hundreds of Israeli hostages. It includes 2 million hostages in the form of Palestinian citizens who have no chance other than to live with probably the most sophisticated network of tunnels that the world has ever seen. Those tunnels do not serve as protection for the Palestinian people. They don’t serve as food storage for the population, or as shelters for them. These tunnels serve the purpose of a terror organisation, allowing fighters to move in security, rest between combat, storing huge amounts of weapons and military equipment (and food for the fighters), and deliberately placing the entrances of these tunnels into buildings used by civilians.

Hamas wants the Israeli military to overreact. Hamas wants to see as many Palestinian civilians being killed as possible. Israel, struggling with the pain of a terror attack and death tolls paling much since the Holocaust, now struggles with how to exercise the right of self-defense and taking at the same time all reasonable precaution to avoid civilian casualties in a situation where the other party to this war is using an entire population not as a shield, but as victims in a strategy aiming to blame Israel for violations of international law on armed conflict. Hamas, not Israel, is fundamentally violating the responsibility of any government to protect their own citizens. Hamas is leaving Palestinian citizens no choice but to be in the cross-hairs of IDF military action. The newsrooms are filled with stories of Israeli intelligence operatives calling Palestinian people hours before a planned strike, guiding them by telling which buildings have to be evacuated, and how much time is left. The newsrooms are not filled with stories how Hamas fighters lay down their weapons during any temporary silence of the guns, helping their population to get out of the combat zone. They simply don’t do that, because they need, and want, the pictures of Palestinian dead people, the pictures of overcrowded hospitals. They don’t want to show the entrances into the tunnel network under those hospitals.

This does not mean that Israel somehow can gain a moral benefit. It does not take Israels’ responsibilities away at all, as many in highest functions and being friends of Israel have stated, including highest officials in my own government, with mindblowing clarity and standing at Israel’s side. Germany has a historic responsibility, until today.

But it does mean that under no circumstances Hamas shall be allowed to successfully victimise itself, executing a long-term strategy exactly aiming at that. In this, there is the connection to the childish bully, and autocrats and would-be autocrats.

It does mean that there is a direct consequence of Hamas’s strategic and operational decisions for those Palestinanian casualties, in addition to the havoc they caused on the side of Israeli citizens. Every Palestinian citizen killed is being killed because of deliberate and calculated decisions from Hamas political and military commanders who want to see exactly this happening, rather than taking precautionary measures in order to adhere with their own obligation to protect the citizens of Gaza.

Hamas and their supporters will do everything to keep this fact in hiding, though in plain sight. Whether Israel exercises caution during a strike and casualties have been unavoidable and in compliance with international law, or whether there will be operations gone out of control, in each and every case Hamas will use these pictures for deflecting from its own accountability, and outmaneuvering Israel, finding herself in the most awful “Catch 22” situation imaginable. Each action is aiming at raising fury of Israelis, and every ultra-orthodox jew taking the law into his or her own hands will be used to contribute to the narrative that the evil is Israel.

That is the evil. And it started with this devilish plan executed by Hamas. For that, Hames needs to be held accountable. Like everyone else who violates international law, including the law of armed conflict. There is no other way. But this was carefully planned and executed by Hamas, including killing their own population through this calculus.

Why am I so passionate about this?

In recent weeks I am confronted with a flood of passionate reactions. Many of which are entirely polarised. The list of reports of people demonstrating for the one cause or the other with peaceful means is endless, and global. The list of incidents of anti-semitic violence is horribly long in many countries. Anti-semitic sentiments are exploding. The list of demonstrations and actions in support of the Palestianian cause is including unacceptable violence, in places where this stokes yet another round of xenophobic reactions. Many countries experience this.

At the same time, I am witnessing an emotional energy in this affecting the day-to-day discussions of “ordinary” people exceeding by far anything I have witnessed in previous developments, like when the war in the Ukraine broke out. Most recently, it affected my own family. It feels like if one supports the Israeli case, only subdued mentioning of the suffering of innocent civilians on the Palestinian side minimises the risk of being suspected of supporting “their” cause. The same the other way round: Reminding of the fate of the Palestinian people seems not to be very compatible with, at the same time, expressing equal sympathies for Israeli victims.

Been there on so many other occasions of conflict. But this time it feels very explosive including in societies far away.

Sympathy and compassion for the suffering of innocent people is running the risk of becoming monopolised: Either one is on the Israeli side, or the Palestinian side. Very much the same way, demonstrations appear to focus on the one or the other narrative, or may be it’s the way how media is reporting about them. And the mantra of “Who started it?”, “Who is responsible for it?”, it often leads to fingerpointing towards the other side. A collective view appears to be difficult to argue.

I would dream of demonstrations in which Israeli and Palestianian victims, mourning their loved ones, stand in for the protection of their human rights together. And where Hamas is isolated. Punched out. By both sides. Accused of the sheer monstrosity of their decision how to set the world on fire. And where more than it already is happening, Israeli voices can be heard how they desperately try to exercise caution. And other voices making it clear that there is no space for human rights violations.

And above all, that there is no space for collective responsibility of both peoples for actions of individuals, or in the case of the Palestinian people, a terror organisation. That both people have a right and will to co-exist.

It was this discussion that Hamas wants to eradicate. Because Hamas wants to eradicate the State of Israel. To achieve this, they are ready to kill their own children.

I mourn every innocent victim of this endless cycle of putting the blame on others, including through a recent terror attack from hell’s underbelly. I wish we retain an ability to listen to each other, and to cultivate an attitude where I first and foremost look at my own accountability, before talking about the accountability of others.

That’s my yardstick.

A Long Summer – Creativity Refill

/ stefanfeller / Leave a comment

I took a long break from writing. I don’t write when I have doubts whether I have someting meaningful to say. So I spent a summer with introspection. Just sitting with my unease. Yesterday I felt the creative energy coming back for the first time. At the end of two weeks with my children here in Toronto I enjoy a second cup of coffee, the house still silent, this part of the World experiencing the beginning of a Saturday morning, my friends in Europe already moving into the afternoon, and I am opening the WordPress editor for the first time since months.

What happened leading to the end of my incommunicado? At the surface of it, it were two articles I read.

One relates to August 19, 2003, when the United Nations office in Baghdad was targeted in a suicide attack. Today, August 19, 2023, marks this day for the twentieth time. Sergio Viera de Mello, the Special Representative of the United Nations’ Secretary General, and 21 other people died in that attack. I belong to those who can’t forget this day, like many dear friends, in the United Nations, and beyond. I won’t forget Luis da Costa, personally. Many of my colleagues who serve or served in th UN have somebody dear to them whom they lost that day. The BBC article “How a suicide bomb attack changed the lives of UN aid workers” by Imogen Foulkes memorizes this horrible attack and reflects on how the attack changed the way the United Nations system is working, until today.

At the time of the attack I was working for the United Nations in my office in Pristina, Kosovo. I was the Police Commissioner of the United Nations Interim Mission in Kosovo by then. When this mission, dubbed UNMIK, was established in 1999, Kosovo was a place of severe post-war violence for several years to come. Like thousands of other UN staffers, we police officers would rent apartments for living amongst the population, and going to work using soft-skin vehicles and working from regular offices. May be fenced, may be some very normal security around, but we would literally live and work within the population, for the population. We would take risks of being attacked, I still have many pictures in my archive. But countries like mine, Germany, would be willing to send their police officers into an environment where we could find ourselves waking up to the aftermath of a bomb explosion nearby. In one of those many cases, a German police officer literally woke up one morning to discover two new holes in his living room: A rocket propelled grenade had punched an entry hole and an exit hole into his rental apartment. At no point I heard any serious request from Police Contributing Countries to withdraw police officers from the deployment into this mission. We stayed, like we did the same in previous missions, in Bosnia & Hercegovina, or elsewhere.

Later, in my time with Headquarters of the European Union or the United Nations, I would travel to Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Sudan/Darfur, to South Sudan, to Mali, the Central African Republic, to Somalia. In those places, I would meet police officers in so-called “Super Camps” or other protected compounds. I would move around with them in armored vehicles. My memories of travels outside of Baghdad’s Green Zone or outside the protected areas of Kabul include heaviest military protection. Yes, there still were the established Missions in which UN staff would live under more normal circumstances, such as in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or in Haiti, or Timor Leste, or Liberia, or Ivory Coast. But the world of the United Nations changed way more than only in relation to security. The BBC article says “In 2022 there were 235 attacks on aid workers, according to the Aid Worker Security Database, and 116 were killed.” Add the casualties amongst United Nations peacekeepers, I believe they are not even accounted for in this. Places like Mali and others have caused a human toll on United Nations staff that would have been unimaginable twenty years ago.

Like community policing, peacekeeping of the United Nations is about communication. It is about being temporarily rooted in a host population, in order to promote peace, to contribute to peace, and to develop the means of a host State in order to guarantee peace and security again. How do you do that through the thick protective glass shields of a heavy armored vehicle? I saw a convoy of armed UN vehicles moving slowly through a refugee camp in Darfur, stopping at the center, UN police officers getting out, protected by other officers with guns, sitting down with camp elders, then moving back into that convoy of armored turtles. Every day, once or twice. Walk in the shoes of those elders, think about how they may feel.

And like in the microcosm of daily operations, the inability to communicate achieving joint goals is also reflected within the United Nations Security Council. The erosion of jointness, whatever there was before, on the side of the five permament members of the Security Council has reached unprecedented levels. Those inside the system saw this storm coming for many years, if not decades. A toothless political instrument designed to be ultimatly the arbiter of peace and security on a global level is the product of countless defeats within that round chamber to achieve common positions which meaningfully legitimate the field work of the UN. As a consequence, not only behemoths like the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo suffer. Recently, the drawdown of one of the biggest UN Missions, in Mali, has begun. It just is the most recent case in a long line of withdrawals, some successful, some not. The most recent developments in Sudan’s Darfur area remind me of exactly what happened twenty years ago and led to the establishment of the African Union’s AMIS, and then UNAMID as it’s UN-successor. History moving in cycles? No progress, because a temporary halt of violence and decay is not exactly what we would name “sustainable” peace? One of the reasons why I fell silent, for some months. Watching the ever growing influence and presence of Wagner mercenaries, left and right of UN peacekeeping in the Sahel, and filling the void even more after Russian propaganda has successfully contributed to hollowing out democracies in Africa, to the advantage of autocratic leaders, power-hungry Generals and corrupt local elites. As a side-note, I see the defensive posture taken by Baltic States bordering Belarus, since parts of Wagner were stationed there in the aftermath of this most notable One-Day-Putsch attempt of Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Like terrorism aims at disrupting communication and sowing fear, establishing own versons of a so-called “truth”, the same is true for political processes of antagonisation, being the product of nationalism, being the product of reckless selfishness playing with the natural fear of human beings, establishing falsehoods, repeating lies as long as necessary so to become the “truth” for many. All of the above falls in line with a longer and larger development leading us to where we are, today. How do I explain this to my youngest children? By not stopping to tell stories, in order to establish memory, and context. It is not about attempting to revive the past, but to have meaningful informed context for how to operate in the Here and Now. I did this over the past two weeks here in Canada with my kids. Obviously, it gives me the energy for telling stories in my blog, again. It is not about getting my memories “out there”, again and again. It is about contributing to establishing context for those who will be at the helm of decision making nowadays, or soon. People like my children. Every parent shares that responsibility.

Not having contextual knowledge is one thing. Denial is the other. Which brings me to the other article, the second one.

“How European Officials View a Possible Second Trump Term” is the second article. I read it in the New York Times this morning, August 19.

When I arrived in Toronto two weeks ago, catching up with my ex-wife casually, I was about to ask her how Canadians are looking at the series of ever expanding criminal indictments of Nr 45. I was stopped with a smile, but cold in my tracks: “If it is about Trump, I don’t want to hear it.”

When I travel in Europe, whether in South-East Europe, or in my country, Germany, discussions of the current state of affairs in the United States appear to be very detached from what I can see when focusing on U.S. domestic press and media. Sometimes it feels like the 45th U.S. Presidency has become an afterthought in Europe. Media reporting in European outlets which I follow are way different to the hype on CNN, MSNBC, and other media. Yes, I read liberal news, more or less sympathetic to the Democrat’s cause. I don’t make myself suffering from watching Fox News, or hate-mongering media outlets. My daily list of suggested videos on Youtube is reflecting that preference, too. I don’t want to have my list of suggestions become convoluted with hate, fear, anger, and lies.

Yes, there is a point in not to over indulge. Much of the American hype also leads to stoking emotions which keep me coming back to yet another piece of sensational news. But this is only one part of the story. The other part is, that as a concerned person informing myself through reading more of this stuff than, say, the average person, I get genuinely scared.

The NYT article talks about the subdued expression of grave concern amongst politicians and policymakers in Europe. Grave concern about the real possibility of a second term of office for Donald Trump. What it would mean, for the U.S., Europe, the support for the Ukraine in their fighting a war against a Russian aggressor, for relations between Super Powers including China and (still?) the U.S., for the European Union, other regional organisations such as the African Union, for the United Nations, and for principles based on the Charta of the United Nations, including the Rule of Law, first and foremost.

The article reports about an understandably subdued expression of fear by European leaders and diplomats. In politics, facing reality means being careful about closing doors, in the interest of the own constituency. It also means not to contribute to creating self-fulfilling prophecies. Lastly, it means not to play into the hands of adversaries by giving them the platform of antagonisation and hate which is their only objective.

Yet, there always is a cost attached to everything. The necessity to remain cautious and mindful, it also plays into the overwhelming wish of human psychology to deny reality. In European discussions with everyday people, there are those who do not know about the sheer monstrosity of hate and the open announcement of retribution and retaliation which comes from every sentence uttered by Nr. 45. And of course, I prefer to listen to people who are not right-wing extremists. It would take me a lot of energy to talk to somebody who openly supports the German right-wing extremists within the political party called “AfD”. Whilst I do not listen to those, I am under no illusion that their hate-mongering thinking and sometimes covert, sometimes more and more open action will literally explode in a scenario where Nr 45 would become Nr 47. Our challenge is to find ways of naming the reality as it is without invoking the same which sits at the heart of those extremist’s agenda: Ruling by fear, overruling the rule of law, establishing regime change, overcoming a system from within. Once more, I recall Germany’s history of how the Weimar Republic was defeated from within. By the way, it included the victimisation of own punishment and incarceration, after the so-called “Beer Hall Putsch“.

I am quoting Wikipedia here for ease of reference, though a bit longish: “The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch,[1][note 1] was a failed coup d’état by Nazi Party(Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP) leader Adolf Hitler, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorffand other Kampfbund leaders in Munich, Bavaria, on 8–9 November 1923, during the Weimar Republic. Approximately two thousand Nazis marched on the Feldherrnhalle, in the city centre, but were confronted by a police cordon, which resulted in the deaths of 16 Nazi Party members and four police officers.[2]

Hitler escaped immediate arrest and was spirited off to safety in the countryside. After two days, he was arrested and charged with treason.[3]

The putsch brought Hitler to the attention of the German nation for the first time and generated front-page headlines in newspapers around the world. His arrest was followed by a 24-day trial, which was widely publicised and gave him a platform to express his nationalist sentiments to the nation. Hitler was found guilty of treason and sentenced to five years in Landsberg Prison,[note 2] where he dictated Mein Kampf to fellow prisoners Emil Maurice and Rudolf Hess.“

Of course, I would NEVER EVER compare Nr. 45 with Adolf Hitler. NEVER EVER. But it is also fair to link you up with one for many references which may make you think yourself: “Donald Trump’s ex-wife once said Trump kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bed” is a reference to an article in “Business Insider” of September 1, 2015. It is just one of many results of a simple Google search, and references can be found in many reputable news outlets. What I do seriously believe is that Trump is actively using the indictments for his narrative, rather than trying to avoid them.

But back to denial: It is a common experience in which I have an in-depth personal share from many operational situations throughout my time with the United Nations and the European Union: Aside of those who are careful with their words so not to add to fear-mongering, there are those who elegantly snuff at worst-case scenarios, giving an impression as if they would have serious insider-knowledge, assuring you that your worst-case scenarios are but a paranoid dream not based on what they pretend to know. I witnessed too many situations where we woke up to a different reality. After that, those smart people quickly switch sides, pretend grave concern, joining those who say, exhaling moral authority: “How could that happen?”

I don’t say we will wake up in a different world next year. But I will say that chances are close to 50:50. If one only follows American polls, the sheer amount of those who simply stick to Nr 45 is overwhelming. The timidity of all Republican potential contenders of Trump for the Republican choice as Presidential candidate is deafening. The polled support of U.S. citizens supporting violent regime change counts a bit less than 20 Million. The shattered few remains of a healthy Republican core DNA will diminish with an almost unhearable “poof” once Nr 45 would win the race for the Republican candidacy. Retribution and cleansing the G.O.P. will follow as a first step. This scenario is already very much an emerging serious threat. From there, an election campaign would leave the great American people ever more divided and prepared for extremist action. Finally, just in case Nr 45 would become Nr 47, the immediate agenda would be nothing else than cleansing the Administration, everything would be about retribution, retaliation, and riddling the system with spineless brainless hateful self-serving cronies.

The Rule of Law would cease to exist, because I simply can not see the depth of resilience much longer which has brought amazing, brave, and highly skilled representatives of the justice system to where the U.S. is today. Just think about it: Donald J. Trump is defendant in four criminal cases with 91 charges (of which 44 are federal, 47 are state charges), alongside a huge number of co-conspirators. The four cases include the Jan. 6 election case, the classified documents case, the N.Y falsifying business records case, and the Georgia 2020 election case. In the Georgia case, Nr 45 and 18 others stand accused of violations of a powerful anti-racketeering law (RICO), which was solely created for enabling justice to arrest powerful Mafiosi. One of those who prided themselves for using the RICO provisions against the Mafia is now defendant under the same provisions: Rudy Giuliani.

I don’t think it is an over-statement to qualify the threat as being existential for the Rule of Law. The evidence fills whole Internet archives, and is now pouring into the courtrooms, through brave prosecutors, and brave judges. Unsurprisingly, the media is also abuzz with the judgement by doomsayers who assess the risk of indicting a former President as a threat to politics, and democratic governance. I disagree. This can not be tampered down by attempting to subdue the course of justice. Chances are that this would not change the battle for democracy at minimum, it may well be that it would be a serious blow in itself. There is no grey zone in here. It is about black and white, truth must stand up against lies, and the only chief principle is that we shall not fall into resentment, anger, and fear. Because this is what the other side wants.

Can I somewhat end my blog revival entry on a happy note, in case you’re still reading this?

Here is my current list of books I am reading. I bought myself a Kindle Scribe, and it has entirely changed the way I am reading. No books in my travel luggage. An amazing book-size screen. A battery-life for many weeks without even needing a charge.

I read “On The Origin Of Time” from Thomas Hertog. An amazing and equally mind-boggling book about Stephen Hawking’s final theory.

I read Zoe Kors’ “Radical Intimacy”, which is a great read within both the extended and the more narrow meaning of the word “intimacy”.

I read the classic text “The Prophet” by Khalil Gibran, (available in The Guttenberg Project open library).

In parallel I re-read “Psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism” by Erich Fromm.

I am reading Pema Choedron’s amazing book “How We Live Is How We Die” for the fourth time.

I am reading “Polishing the Mirror” by Ram Dass, and I will continue with Daisetz Deitaro Suzukis’ book “Mysticism – Christian and Buddhist”.

Finally, and with great pleasure, I am re-reading a book which I read last time probably four decades ago: Frank Herbert’s “Dune”.

All of those justify an own decription of my impressions. May be I’ll do some, at a later stage. Not here. But reading healthy wholesome literature covering a spiritual connection with the World, from various angles of mystical tradition, and combining that with a well-written book like “On The Origin Of Time”, which ends with surprising statements about what we can not know by means of science, it is one of those things over the summer which allowed me to re-position myself, to re-center myself, and to find new creative energy here, again.

Finally, since I started with a 20-year memory, I am ending with another one, a personal anniversary: Tomorrow it will be the tenth time I am honouring a decision I took August 20, 2013. It marked the beginning of a path which ultimately allowed me to reconcile with my own complex PTSD. It allows me to explain personal experiences and context to my now teenager-children, without being overwhelmed by own emotions. Not that you got an impression that my writing got less intense, if you read the above. Yet, there is a difference between passion and strong emotions.

Grateful that I can detach better. Like taking several months of break from writing here, or on my book projects. Now, back to work. Like, in my job, finding convincing arguments why reducing the threat from small arms and light weapons is important, even when we face the opposite discussion in light of a war in Europe.

There always is a time post-conflict. Better prepare for it now.

The Reason For Storytelling: If You and I Don’t, Only Others Do – On Gaslighting Taken To a Global Level

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“Around 1 percent of U.S. veterans of World War II remain alive to tell their stories. It is estimated that by the end of this decade, fewer than 10,000 will be left. The vast majority of Americans today are unused to enduring hardship for foreign policy choices, let alone the loss of life and wealth that direct conflict with China or Russia would bring.”

In a Guest Essay in the New York Times, titled “World War III Begins With Forgetting”, Stephen Wertheim made this point. I can relate.

Like: The fewer people remember, and talk about, the Holocaust and the horrifying evil done to the world by the Nazis and Adolf Hitler, the more it becomes, at least, possible to mystify and to glorify it, and using the most ridiculous of all arguments. Like Kanye West, who now goes by the name Ye. “The Hill” is just bearer of one of countless reports about an interview which he, accompanied by Nick Fuentes, one of the most atrocious racists of recent times, managed to place in a show hosted by the likewise awful racist and xenophobist Alex Jones. Old stuff. Except that the use of social media bullhorns and supporting media is taking it to new levels. Because, whether it is ridiculous or not to praise the architect of the Holocaust wrongly as the guy who invented highways, or the microphone, it does not matter. I have heard arguments like that from my late father in law of my second marriage, more than thirty years ago. There were no Social Media by then. Today, the matter is to get a radical message out, upping the ante, on a path to mainstreaming a “truth” which is not only unsupported by any evidence, but also suppressing any historical truth about what happened. My stomach would turn upside down when I would even quote what Ye said. But wherever on whichever dubious platform, such as Alex Jones’, such outrageous comments are made, within hours the message is also spread through any mainstream media. One side of them glorifying it, the other side vilifying it. For those intents and purposes behind the message itself, both work out very well.

Before I get to the gaslighting argument, upping even this ante, two other examples for why storytelling is so necessary, and which danger sits with when witnesses of horrifying events pass away in numbers: The older the Mothers of Srebenica get, the less can be done against the minimising narrative related to the horror of the Srebrenica genocide. I met the Mothers often, and I truly admire their relentless sticking to telling their stories of a genocide. This is not a function of their healing when they repeat to tell their stories. It is a sacrifice, for the good of keeping a memory alive as a cautionary tale. One day I took my visiting father with me. They are so kind, they offered him coffee and spoke with him just because he was an interested human being. No other intent, no benefit for them. My father cried and cried. Until today, more than twenty years later, he talks about the deep impact of his visiting them.

The same holds true for the genocide in Rwanda, and in uncounted other situations. The more people grow up who have no direct memory of what happened in Germany, in Bosnia&Hercegovina, in Rwanda, in Cambodia, in Stalin’s Russia, during the brutal McCarthyism and under Jim Crow in the United States, or in the Armenian genocide, or else, the less the voices of those can be mitigated who minimise, refute, deny. If context is not there, nothing describes the extent of atrocious behavior against the Uighurs, the suffering of minorities in Myanmar, and I need to end with “and and and”, because the list is so long.

Storytelling is a social function which can not be replaced by the noise on Social Media. Quite to the contrary, storytelling is one of the needed antidotes against the devastating effect which unhinged Social Media has. Because even the function of Social Media is subject to a gaslighting narrative, putting an unrestrained version of Twitter, for example, into a manipulative context of an alleged support of free speech, whilst the ulterior motive only is to make profit, and to increase own control.

By the way, I believe that there is a reason for why Number 45, since his account got reinstated by Elon, has not used this account ever since: Not only that this would take away from his own bullhorn (Truth Social), he does not need to use his old Twitter account, and can chose smartly when that time would be there. Simply because the message that his account got reinstated is already enough for gaining even more “followers”. These “followers” likely rise in numbers directly on “Truth Social”, and on connected accounts including on Twitter, as a direct consequence of the reinstatement.

When I grew up, “Followers” was used as a term for people following a certain religious or spiritual belief system. I still object against the manipulative use of terms such as “Friend” or “Follower” on social media. That’s why, in this tiny world of “Durabile”, my blog, I don’t care about how few people “follow” my blog here. What I care about is that the day before yesterday this blog surpassed the threshold of 10.000 reads within those 120 posts since 2014. It just tells me that my storytelling is a tiny contribution to the overall need of telling stories.

Because there is no absolute truth, and no objective truth, as I pointed out here. Now, I am quoting myself from that blog post: QUOTE “Truth as a means of control. Number 45 did this on countless occasions, and more recently he is hard-pressed by people who are attempting to establish even more radical forms of white supremacy, xenophobia, racism, and anti-semitism. Read in The Rolling Stone: “How Trump Got Trolled by a Couple of Fascists“. UNQUOTE

I wrote this post December 01. Four days before writing this post. At that time, I found the analysis relevant which is reflected in the article in “The Rollingstone”. Meaning, that Ye, Fuentes and likeminded people were on a path pressing Nr 45 into even more radical messages.

What happened since? In a few statements including on Truth Social, Nr. 45 did what we saw on many occasions when there was an uproar: He minimised. Distracted. Sold ambigous messages. Allowed messages that he wasn’t aware. That he did not know Fuentes.

I have no personal doubt that all this is part of the MO. Because, as always, the next attack is even more extreme. Meanwhile, inasmuch as I love Jimmy Kimmel, he and other well-minded Late Night Comedy hosts find themselves in the trap that each of their shows ridiculing Nr 45 helps him.

Which is what I want to end with here, today: I just read a story in the British BBC: Under the headline “Trump’s call for ‘end’ of constitution condemned by Democrats“, BBC is reporting on a message from Number 45 on his platform “Truth Social”. According to this report, the White House condemned former President Trump after he called for the termination of the U.S. constitution. I quote from BBC: QUOTE In the post, Mr Trump referred to vague allegations of “massive & widespread fraud and deception” and asked whether he should be immediately returned to power. “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!” he said. UNQUOTE Setting parts of the text in bold letters is done by me, not by BBC.

I can’t wait watching Jimmy Kimmel ridiculing Nr 45, but I mourn those months when he and others managed to find comedy topics which would not contribute to antagonism, by condemning it. May be I’ll write Jimmy’s staff an email.

This is unprecedented in contemporary history as I remember it. Since 2016 there is a history of statements in this blog concluding that it is getting worse before it gets better. But a former President of the United States fighting an accuse, possibly an indictment, for inciting sedition by establishing a narrative that is ripping down the foundations of the U.S. Constitution, this is unheard of.

There is a clause in the German Constitution sometimes named the “Stauffenberg clause“: “Gegen Jeden, der es unternimmt, diese Ordnung zu beseitigen, haben alle Deutschen das Recht auf Widerstand”. Or, in my translation: “Against anyone who is undertaking to remove this constitutional order, all Germans have the right to resist.” It can be found in Article 20, I grew up with, it’s part of my DNA and part of my pride. It’s one of the defining differences between today’s German Constitution and it’s predecessor before the Nazis demolished it: The Weimar Constitution. It is meant as a pillar, albeit, perhaps symbolic, in efforts to robustly protect a constitution from enemies within. Sometimes during 2016 I referred to it in discussions with friends on the U.S. Constitution. Then, with tears in my eyes, I played the song “Kristallnaach”, by the famous German Rockband BAP.

So, one of my hypothetical thoughts is about whether there will be people on the far-right in Germany who think about how to establish a narrative that the German constitutional order is subject to removal from within, by justifying their resistance in saying that the government and the establishment is the enemy of what the Forefathers, the Founders of our Constitution, meant. This is not far-fetched, and it is the same logic.

We have come this far in an approach of extremists in removing the foundations of contemporary democracies, and the rule of law. A few years ago, I would not have believed that one day I would read a report such as the one here on BBC. This has become the new normal, one and a half years before the next battle on presidential elections will begin, in 2024. So, my question is: What’s next, if this has already become the new normal now.

Of course, this question includes where those on the Republican side are, and which legal, ethical, and moral, responsibility they assume, by openly or tacitly condoning such a development. That, on one hand, is part of domestic politics in the U.S. in which I am only an external bystander. But over here, in Europe, we fight the same fight. And we are affected by what is happening “over there”. And vice versa.

We are in this together, only. There is no space for claiming “that’s not my business”, or for complacency. Each day, we are waking up with new worse news than before.

So, why all this under the headline “Storytelling”?

One of my next blog entries will talk about one of my recent books reads, “Dopamine Nation”, by Dr. Anna Lembke. Full quote of the book in my next article. But here is the connection: Within a universe of contemporary addictive sources of Dopamine release through substance and behavioral abuse, one key problem sits with Social Media. I will also refer to the challenges one of my children has with the addictive suffering using Tic Toc.

I believe we can not use Social Media for the kind of storytelling I mean in this blog. For many reasons which I will try to explain there. But for starters, Social Media does not support peaceful fact-based storytelling implicitly through it’s algorhythms. I have own examples, including this blog, or my Youtube channel. I stay away from inciting or upsetting messages and their promotion, as a consequence, nowhere in the suggestion lists of these sites any of my writing or my videos will come up.

There is a need not only to regulate Social Media, but also to devise strategies how storytelling remains a vital democratic and humble function of our societies and cultures. Storytelling is inherently local, or topological. It is unsensational, and personal. Peaceful, mindful, truthful, honest, personal storytelling. No rambling, no yelling involved.

I hope that I adhere to my own standards, here.

Predictability in Complex Environments – Cognitive Bias Codex

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April 20, 2021 I wrote a blog post “Futuretelling” on occasion of media informing about the report “Global Trends 2040”, a product of the collective of American intelligence agencies, issued then on occasion of a new Presidential administration (the Biden administration) taking the helm. I’d like to revisit the issue, almost one and a half years later.

“Global Trends 2040” revolves around five core assessments:

Global challenges include climate change, disease, financial crises, and technology disruptions. The report stated that they are likely to manifest more frequently and intensely in almost every region and country. Their impact on states and societies will create stress, or even catastrophic shock. The report assessed the pandemic as “the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come.“

Fragmentation flows from the predicted transnational or global challenges. Overwhelming threats will lead to a reflex breaking apart, or threatening, globalisation.

Disequilibrium was the third theme of the report. The report focusses on its effects in a widening gap between what societies, communities, and individuals expect from governance and services, and what they can deliver. Doubts in the benefits of democratic governance, the profound inability of systems of international order to provide peace, security, and other important challenges to the sixteen Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations create a perfect storm.

Contestation was the fourth theme. Wealthy societies pump their reserves into handling the crisis, and into the race of getting out on the other side in the best position for competing, on economical and power levels. Conflict, violence, exodus, displacement, migration will have an effect on more developed societies. In a way, this amplifies fragmentation and antagonisation.

Adaption being the final theme, it means that profound changes will ultimately end in a new equilibrium. The question is how such a new system state may look like. Or, how much of our current one is left, and what will be the new reality.

To me, the core statement of “Global Trends 2040” is that we are passing through a phase of profound global system change, or paradigm change.

That was spring 2021. “Global Trends 2040” was written during the Covid-19 pandemic, so it was somewhat easy for the authors to qualify an existing pandemic as “the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II“. Then, summer 2021 brought the catastrophic events around the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taleban, and a crushing defeat of the West’s ambitions for Afghanistan over two decades. Spring 2022 saw the beginning of a war of aggression by the Russian Federation against the Ukraine. Motivation and publicly voiced rationale by the Russian President went, from the outset on, far beyond his claims related to the Ukraine, and related to overthrow the Ukrainian government. From the West’s perspective it is an attack against the West, it’s systems and it’s values. The Russian President describes this as a threat against Russia, claiming to act in self-defense. Of course, I have a clear position here joining those who state this is a brazen and aggressive move attempting to overthrow an existing order, and violating fundamental principles enshrined in international treaties. But on various occasions since then I have also acknowledged that it depends on where people live, and which cultural and historical ties they have grown up with, whether they join this assessment, or blame the West. This is a war on multiple levels, including information warfare, a war of systems against each other, a war of economies, a war of dogma how to prevail, and to govern. The physical battlefields are local or regional, information warfare happens in cyberspace, and the conflict is ultimately global.

So I wonder how the events of 2021 and 2022 would have been reflected in the wording of the report issued in spring 2021, if these events would already have been on the books of history by the time of writing. If already the pandemic posed the greatest disruption since WWII, it has only gotten worse since then.

With lightning speed, the World is continuing to change. Nobody would have anticipated, even in early spring 2021, that the situation went so haywire in summer 2021 in Afghanistan. And after that, if someone would have asked “What’s next?”, I doubt many people would have anticipated the developments in the Ukraine bringing us closer to World War III. May be, many years in the future, historians will assess that we already were in WW III. Because, even the forms and shapes of warfare have changed. Some of it started in 2001, when we began to see consequences of asymmetric warfare. And at that time, people would have found it unimaginabe that we would see conventional armies battling each other, on European soil, 21 years later.

What else do we know about battlefields of such larger warfare? I could go on about Asia and the ever increasing tension between China and Taiwan, just recently blowing up again on occasion of Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, bringing likelihood of yet another massive conflict into the equation. I could refer to how we all, internationally, after 9/11/2001 made critical assessments related to terrorist attacks against nuclear power plants. Now we are finding ourselves in a situation where Russian military forces conduct their attacks using the biggest nuclear powerplant in mainland Europe as a shield. Of course, following the same logic as outlined above, two sides accuse each other of being responsible for it. From a perspective of the threat being real, and grave, even this mutual accusation, being part of information warfare, adds to how scary the situation has become.

The Doomsday Clock has, once again, moved closer to 12, with the UN Secretary General telling us August 07, 2022, that the risk of nuclear confrontation is back after decades.

I could refer to the many developments in Africa, and since I am not a paid professional analyst with own staffing resources, my list of critical developments in the World would be highly selective, and certainly biased. Of course, it would include a whole chapter on instability in the Western Balkans, where I spend much of my time.

So, what can be said about “What’s next?” now, mid summer 2022?

The almost natural reflex is about looking around and to assess specific situations, specific countries or regions, and to attempt making predictions about how things may remain stable, or not. But more often than not, previous developments have taught us that destabilisation, system change, conflict and war occur almost to the surprise of professional analysts, and intelligence systems. The short term developments may be subject to correct analysis, like intelligence organisations unequivocally warned about Russia being serious about invading the Ukraine, once there was enough evidential data. But that was a short-term prediction, being put out into the public domain only from end of 2021 onwards, also in order to convince those who still, until February 23, 2022, doubted that Russia would follow-through on building up her military power alongside the borders of the Ukraine. Did we have enough data to predict this already, say in April 2021, at the time when “Global Trends 2040” was issued? From what I know through publicly avalable information, I would doubt it. So, this is not about “I told you so”.

The same will be the case related to anything up in the future, any new conflict development, where we then, again, will ask ourselves with hindsight whether we would have been able to predict it. In a highly complex and unstable environment, the fault-lines of where conflict arises next, and which physical or virtual dimension it takes, are difficult to predict medium-term, and impossible to predict long-term.

However, this makes the highly abstract level of “Global Trends 2040”, which I summarised above so profoundly valuable. Because, whilst we cannot be sure about “What’s next?”, we can be reasonably certain about that we have not reached rock-bottom. “Global Trends 2040” predicts a fundamental paradigm change and a war of systems, not a state of “rock bottom” from where things might recover to an old or only slightly changed equilibrium.

One of my favorite Youtube channels is called “Veritasium”. The channel is run by Derek Muller. Veritasium is covering a broad range of subjects, based on scientific evidence. According to its own website, “Veritasium is a channel of science and engineering videos featuring experiments, expert interviews, cool demos, and discussions with the public about everything science.” You will find a vlog as of August 2, 2022 there, called “The 4 things it takes to be an expert“. This piece is amazing:

In attempting to answer the question which experts have real expertise, the vlog includes a long list of references related to scientific evidence for its statements. The four things that make somebody a real expert, in ANY field of expertise, are based on long and ardous training, the vlog talks of a rule of thumb of 10.000 hours. In order to become an expert, one has to go through many repeated attempts with feedback. At one point of the video, Veritasium refers to a sample of 284 people who make their living on offering analysis or commenting on complex issues related to politcal and economic trends. These people were followed and questioned over two decades. The results, in a nutshell, are sobering. Any so-called expert with only education, but without extended feedback loops, was doing terribly. These “experts” were not significantly better in their predictions than non-specialists.

Watch the vlog. But what is the issue here? At least, that we have to be very careful in attempting to make predictions. And secondly, that we need to have a healthy and limited expectation in relation to what pundits will tell us. In my own self-assessment, I would certainly qualify for the 10.000 hour rule in relation to my own field of expertise (peace & security). But it would not make me believe that I would be able to find anything more than short-term answers to the question “What’s next?”.

Something which is called “cognitive bias” adds to the problem. This is what is behind the picture attached to this blog, and you can find the picture in wikipedia’s list of 188 cognitive biases, grouped into categories and rendered by John Manoogian III. In essence, according to the website teachthought, “a cognitive bias is an inherent thinking ‘blind spot’ that reduces thinking accuracy and results inaccurate–and often irrational–conclusions.” The graphical summary is listing 180 (!!) of them.

With having said that on our limitations to predict the future reliably, I will finally come back again to “Global Trends 2040”. What I, in sum, subscribe to, is the general statement about a time of system change which “Global Trends 2040” has, in my view correctly, deducted from available assessed information, which we call intelligence.

After President Nr 45 of the United States of America took power, I would find it comparatively easy to anticipate the scenarios that were possible to happen, and my worst case scenarios were pretty much along the lines of what we witnessed, until including January 06, 2021, and what we see coming up as a continuing threat for democracy in the United States, until today.

But compared with the complexity of fragility which we experience, this prediction was a piece of cake, since it was largely based on a psychological analysis of a person with multiple personality disorders, adding perhaps some deeper understanding about American society because I was embedded there for five years and listened and learned a lot.

Asking the question “What’s next” related to what we experience since then, I only know it will get worse, but I don’t know how, meaning “What’s next”. This is not a Doomsday attitude. Rather, it is a personal statement about the gravity of the situation we are finding ourselves in, these days.

Perception – Seeing Does Not Equal Knowing – Part 3

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Three – How Groups establish Common Frameworks of Perception

Too close for comfort? No, I’ll let you have a little peek view into my neighbourhood, when I’m in Belgrade:

At my favourite neighbourhood cafe, with a view towards my local grocery store, picture taken by the author, 05.05.2022

I am trying to get the finishing touches on Part 3 done from a campsite close to Bucharest in Romania. My vanlife has given me the opportunity to meet so many people from different walks of life. I just offered a coffee to a young German man who is traveling in a small van, with his partner, her daughter, and a dog. Have you ever listened to somebody who feels alienated, ostracized, craving for acknowledgement, and trying to make sense of his or her personal life story? The intensity with which they argue, the words they choose for making their cases? His story about a little group of travelers trying to keep life together, seeking a place to live in Romania, dropping out of regular life also as a consequence of the pandemic and personal circumstances, it offered a practical example for how perceptions develop, and how they lead to reinforcement processes. This person, whilst clearly not there yet, is on his path sympathising with “Reichsbuerger” identity, living at the fringes, and I don’t know whether much more has to happen to him before there is a path towards delusionial viewpoints, and radicalisation. All the time I was listening to him, I was thinking how I can interact with his attempt of making sense of the world, instead of myself just apologising, stopping communication, and staying in my worldview. Because this is what happens: A negative self-fulfilling prophecy about all the things which make this world un-just to oneself is leading to less communication outside of the group one feels to belong to. The more extreme the divide in fundamental assumptions, the more likely is that any communication with somebody who does not share a similar narrative of the world will not happen. We feel uncomfortable facing such extreme differences, at least. We may feel being upset, angry. We may react with hypocrisy, cynicism, open verbal confrontation. Or we may just walk away, and then it is about that the perceptions of two people engaging in a conversation were so fundamentally different that they did not fit into the reference framework they each feel comfortable in.

We see this all over more recently. Radicalisation of views is related to narratives that diverge extremely. Either a fringe view is colliding with mainstream views. Or several radically different mainstream views exist: The great divide between Democrats and Republicans which grows ever deeper, or the smaller fringes that we try to address in order to not see them growing into mainstream divergence, it’s all the same. All people on all sides believing in their version of perception, judging, or even condemning those who hold different views.

Wherever my international work and life has taken me, I always made it a habit to live in a local neighbourhood. Not those fancy Expat-areas, rather I feel most comfortable when I am a guest, and a neighbour, in a typical local hood. Sipping a coffee with very local people hosting me as a guest in their country, I learned so much, in Pristina, in Gracanica, in Brussels, Sarajevo, Brooklyn, Naples/Maine, Berlin, Belgrade, or so many other places. Since I started part-time Vanlife, on my campsites in Germany, or roaming the countries in the Western Balkans and around, or anywhere where I stop near the road for the night, I enjoy the same experience.

Not only that my cat friend Tigger is making new acquaintances all over Europe, it happens to me too. So, in that picture above you also see my local grocery store in Belgrade. There is a man inside, very friendly, selling fruits and vegetables, often talking about his love for German soccer clubs. More recently, he looked at me with a scared face and spoke, in broken English and German, about the war in the Ukraine.

When I recently cleaned my van, a very old and fragile neighbour, certainly in his late eighties, stopped by. Turned out to be a very nice and open minded person with a lot of curiosity. After a few comments about my mobile home he asked me about my opinion about what’s going on in the Ukraine. He asked me whether this would have been caused by NATO.

When I walked Tigger on 01 May, neighbours invited me to their open barbecue. Guess what came up? Fear about the war in the Ukraine. “Don’t go there”, one of them told me. “Well”, I replied, “You never know.”

When I’m in Germany, conversations will immediately turn to the developments in the Ukraine, too. As one might imagine, there the question will not be about NATO’s role starting it, but about NATO’s response to actions for which the Russian President will be damned. At least within those circles I relate to. But on campsites I will also meet other people. Like 2020, when a conspiracy theorist took me by surprise. Or as it just happened this morning.

When I’m in Romania, I will hear the local context, which, again, is entirely different from Serbia, and Germany. When I am in Bosnia&Herzegovina, I will get three different versions of the context in which the Ukraine war is being perceived. If I would listen in Albania, Bulgaria, or Hungary, or Poland, everywhere I would get a local and different perception on the same war, and the fears which are related to it. The common denominator is profound fear. The context will be explained differently, with nuances, or starkly. And all people truly live and believe their perceptions, no ordinary person on the streets will tell a fake story truly for manipulative reasons. Those people who do this on intent, they are very different, I feel their malice, and some, if not more than a few, are leaders.

The huge diversity of opinions based on culture and history and belonging, that’s Europe. Literally. It always is so hard to understand for people outside Europe, like those who say “Does the European Union have a telephone number”, those who may call for a strong unified European Union voice. In a true democracy view, the diversity of opinions on this continent is, of course, very hard to capture and to transform into more than the least common denominator. The alternative is autocratic attitude, and we have some of those, too. But believe me, no autocratic Europe would be more homogenous, compared to the Europe holding on to democracy. Rather, autocratic attitude is a recipe for intolerance, violence, and war. Just look back into Europe’s history of the last millennium, and especially the last century, and you will see that coercion into one identity only works temporarily. After Tito’s death we witnessed it again, more recently. The answer can only be tolerance for others and enthusiasm for diversity.

But, back to perception:

Those who I sometimes label “pied pipers”, they can be seen on a global level, and they seem to gain influence. They are those who scare me, because they operate on the opposite to tolerance and diversity. They are responsible for unfathomable suffering of many. And they could not do this without the considerable number of others who willingly buy in into distributing distorted versions of reality, or fake constructs of reality, for many different reasons, all of these reasons being motivated by selfishness.

From there, manipulation of reality permeates into the minds of who I would call, with all respect and compassion, “ordinary people” who try to explain themselves in relation to what life is throwing at them. Everywhere there are these wonderful local neighbours who struggle to make sense of what they see, fear, and are being told.

I am not wishy-washy, I have a very pronounced opinion, including on the war in Ukraine and the larger threats, and my core is torn into pieces because I believe that we need to do what, for example, Germany is participating in. All the way long, cold-blooded, decisive, but with great compassion and with healthy fear about escalation getting out of control. Doing whatever we can to avoid that the cauldron is exploding, but being very clear and very tough in saying “No way that we are going to allow this blatant attack on all values we have fought for since the end of the last World War.” But it is about how these values are being established, and what that then means to the competition of value frameworks.

I can not write this without a heartfelt word to my Ukrainian friends: I am sorry for your suffering beyond words, and you have all rights to be upset with the world, since you need, and deserve, the most decisive and best help possible. I just hope that we keep the balance in finding ways to ease, and to end, your suffering, without creating even more suffering. But your perception of what is going on, it needs to be, and is, at the core of everything we consider. We need to bow in front of you.

I am very privileged by having the opportunity to experience so many different neighbourhoods, cultures, nations, beliefs, countries. That is why I put this at the core of Part 3 of this writing. Because I am allowed to see this diversity in perceptions. People who live an entirely local life, they probably are more challenged by the need to be aware of, and tolerant to, other worldviews. I see very friendly people with great hospitality all over. Whether in Europe, or any of those conflict-ridden countries in Africa I have been spending time in, or Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Haiti, to name but a few. I don’t meet them in that proverbial mediterranean beach resort I was mentioning in Part 2. Not in holiday-mood, not with booze. But just very real, in day-to-day life.

“Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari makes for absolutely fascinating reading. As do his other books. I directly quote from Wikipedia when saying that Harari is dividing “Sapiens” into four main chapters:

  1. The Cognitive Revolution (c. 70,000 BCE, when Sapiens evolved imagination).
  2. The Agricultural Revolution (c. 10,000 BCE, the development of agriculture).
  3. The unification of humankind (c. 34 CE, the gradual consolidation of human political organisations towards one global empire).
  4. The Scientific Revolution (c. 1543 CE, the emergence of objective science).

Much of my rambling is influenced by Harari’s explanation about communication between groups, tribes, communities, and especially when large meta-groups comprised of smaller communities come into play. His book is a fascinating journey connecting the evolutionary development including the brain of Homo Sapiens and its ability to form concepts that have no representation in the real world, and to communicate these concepts through language. The book seriously enlarged my appreciation for how we are able to form societal cohesion on a scale above relatively small groups of individuals.

At the beginning, in Part 1, I focused on how a representation of the environment is being put together from sensoric input. That’s the neurophysiological view. But already there perception is the result of an interpretation based on previous experiences through memory, and hugely influenced through emotions that accompany the sensoric input, or have influenced previous situations.

In Part 2 I have referred to neurophysiologist David Eagleman and his statement that brains need other brains for communication. Once communication comes into play, the result of perception becomes different because individual members of a group of living beings who communicate establish a joint, a common, perception. Communication allows for team-work. Orcas hunting as a group, they communicate what their individual group members see, perceive, and do. The same is true for wolf packs, or many other examples of collaboration. One way or the other, collaboration requires communication, and an ability to communicate what I see. Walk with me under a tree with ravens or crows on it, telling all other animals about the presence of my cat friend, and you will agree.

Reading Harari was a revelation for me in my understanding aspects of what he calls the Cognitive Revolution, 70 millenia back in time. I can only be selective in explaining here, but he maps out in detail what we know in relation to the cognitive difference which set us, Homo Sapiens, apart from ancestors, such as the Neanderthals. It is related to brain development, allowing for much more complex perception, and understanding, and more complex language. But the single most defining difference appears to be our ability to imagine things which have not one single reference in the physical world around us, which we see. We can come up with virtual realities since 70.000 years, and not just since Mark Zuckerberg hopped on the metaverse-ideology.

Amongst all living beings on this planet, our communication has evolved into language and other forms of formal representation of concepts (such as mathematics) allowing for highest levels of sophistication in representing the world, describing the world, communicating what we see in the world, doing this in oral and written form, and to establish concepts that have no representation in the physical world. Harari’s example of legal personae within the field of law is brilliantly told. And the same is true for religion, concepts of governance such as democracy, ideas like human rights, the rule of law, so much more. They are extremely relevant and some of them belong to my core values, but the important thing is to understand that we, Sapiens, are able to establish concepts which have no physical representation in the world. Harari is so convincing in explaining that this is the single defining difference which allowed mankind to form means of communication and cohesion that allow to operate on levels far beyond small groups, bands, or tribes. It is this evolutionary step which enabled mankind to form cohesion, and control, on societal level, it allowed for modern States, it allows for identities, like those of faith, which keep billions of people in one framework. Religions serve as means for societal cohesion, including through control. That’s why they also can, despite their mystical core, develop into instruments of brutal suppression, creating suffering. Whether it is about terror from Sunni extremism against Shia, or whether it is about overturning abortion rights by the U.S Supreme Court, in all this there is the ugly face of control, for reasons of enforcing one framework of belief and impressing it on others. With structural force, or physical violence, the motivation is the same.

Thus, these non-physical manifestations of concepts compete, and often don’t go well with each other, they sit behind the clashes of groups, nations, religions.

But when I sit in neighbourhoods and I listen to people, respecting their different frameworks of identity, I see wonderful individuals, all of them with inner beauty.

So what’s my final point?

The diversity of frameworks which ultimately, and inevitably, form the basis for how I perceive the world, it is a fact of our reality. There is no ultimate solution, and sure as hell happiness of people is not a direct function of democracy. Individual life can be fulfilled and happy in East and West, South and North. And whenever I reach a point in my reflections where I try to identify at least a few common denominators that allow all of us to thrive, and not to kill this world, not many core values are needed. Human rights belong to it.

But here is what I feel relevant in the current context: The invasion of the Ukraine has been identified as a fundamental violation of the Charta of the United Nations. This needs to be acknowledged. Then, only, we can also have a discussion about whether others have done the same before. That introspection won’t be easy, because a decade ago we believed that we had found a principle called the “Responsibility to Protect”, overriding under certain conditions the sovereignty of States. It literally hurts to see the Russian President establishing a fake reality of oppression of peoples in the Ukraine to justify and cover up his unprecedented aggression.

If we loose the achievement of the Charta of the United Nations, we are in really big trouble.

On Coherence of International Assistance

/ stefanfeller / 2 Comments

Elements of successful strategic assistance measures

This outline of considerations is based on personal experiences and lessons learned in a specific professional context, and it is based on many years of work in various international capacities. I have recently put this into a specific context and the following is the de-sensitized version which I hope is useful for a more general reflection on international assistance efforts.

  1. Any form of international assistance to domestic, national or regional development of governance happens in different societal and cultural contexts, has to be framed within a specific and complex historical and political environment often including various and very complex stages of post-conflict states of affairs, and depends on political and strategic motivations of (a) States receiving assistance, (b) involved regional and international organizations and (c) donors. There are only limited blueprints available, and no copy/paste strategy works.
  2. Situational ambitions and motivations by all involved actors are driven by the momentary situation and need to be used for, and reconciled with, the requirements forming the basis of long-term strategic and sustainable development based on a vision, a strategic framework, its operationalization, its measurability, and constant evaluation. There is no successful strategic development if it fails to deliver immediate operational impact, nor will quick-impact-projects without an evolving framework of flexible strategic commitment, robust enough to sustain itself in rapidly evolving political and security contexts, be more than piecemeal.
  3. “Local/domestic ownership” and “assistance” are crucial terms. However, they are vulnerable to becoming lip service. Thus, the DNA of any strategic assistance must hard-wire the commitment of all who assist to put beneficiaries into the driver seat and to demonstrate this in all actions. Since growth of confidence, capacity and capabilities of domestic governance are inherently a fundamental objective of such assistance, constant dialogue on all levels needs to mitigate the different motivations of all involved actors, putting the beneficiaries front and center. This requires a high-level agreement of beneficiaries, implementers and donors prior to any development of a concrete assistance strategy. The agreement needs to reflect motivation, commitments, and limiting conditions of all parties involved, and it should be subject to regular proactive evaluation on a high level, bringing all partners in this joint exercise together. In order to get there, operational kick-starter activities need to demonstrate visible commitment to partnership and transparency.
  4. Strategic assistance, if successful, attracts many who are interested to participate. Coherence of efforts must be robustly built in from the outset on, an accountability framework must bring all actors together. It works better if the capacity for growth is built in early. It is particularly relevant to include beneficiaries as partners: If unguided, donors and implementors can develop a mindset based on exclusive talking. This can be very subtle, allowing for claiming that domestic ownership is fully implemented, and the differences only been seen by insiders, but especially being felt by beneficiaries. Donors need constant reminding of what “assistance” means, and implementors will benefit from a larger accountability mechanism which helps them to mitigate their genuine motivation to assist (thus, to work at taking themselves ultimately out of the equation) with their business models (they need to generate projects because it is part of their raison d’être and they have payrolls to serve).

Recommendations

Identify Champions

Beneficiaries with a strong interest in identifying needs on a strategic level and a commitment to implementing governance processes and institutions committed to international principles and standards and resilient against undue political interference and corruption;

International/Regional Organizations with an ability to reflect and integrate regional political and security aspects and a willingness to establish, or significantly contribute to, and politically support, a technical steering process for all aspects of assistance to beneficiaries;

Donors with a willingness to be trailblazers in a partnership approach within a long-term political commitment, bolstered by the ability to significantly contribute to financial funding, political support, and being ready to deploy long-term advisers into the regional context.

Map a path into structured dialogue, based on principles of strong partnership

Champions on the side of international organizations and donors to generate a technical dialogue leading into high-level ministerial support, visibly owned by political stakeholders of beneficiaries.

Use kickstarting assistance in order to establish visibility and demonstrated immediate commitment

On basis of a preliminary needs assessment, from the outset on empowering representatives of beneficiaries, to identify quick-impact projects.

Tie kickstarting assistance into a political dialogue encouraging to express long-term intent and readiness to establish a roadmap

It allows for regional cooperation amongst those who are ready for it, and design a draft roadmap with vision, objectives, first-level operationalization, and benchmarking.

Identify the coordination mechanism which involves stakeholders from all sides allowing for what is needed most: Growing technical dialogue on basis of an understanding of equal partnership. This then is the basis for political operationalization, using these examples as successful templates for stating: “Cooperation works”.

On the rule of law and trusting it in times of misinformation and manipulation spread using social media

/ stefanfeller / Leave a comment

I finished my reading of the book “How Civil Wars Start And How To Stop Them”, written by Barbara F. Walter (Crown, 2022, Ebook ISBN 9780593137796). I wrote about it in my article “Anocracies – And Thoughts on International Efforts Related to Conflict Prevention“. There I said that I was impressed with the detailed historical account on the many civil wars, and what political science learned about their predictability. I also said that I will comment less on the second part of the book, where the author is applying those experiences on the current state of affairs in the United States of America. But here is a brief personal impression:

Purely from an emotional perspective, the first part of the book felt gripping, the second part felt like something was missing. Because the first part tells the story of not only why things went haywire, but also how they went haywire. The first part of the book talks about catastrophies that happened. Because the current situation in the U.S. is troubling, and partly deeply concerning, but has NOT led to a worst case scenario (yet?), the book is speculative in this regard, because, simply, it has to.

The author attempts to come up with a future scenario of how a descent into civil war in the U.S. could look like. When I read it, it felt incomplete. It had to. I believe the scenario had to necessarily stay away from including a potential role of individual actors which brought us to the brink of that abyss. Otherwise the book would have become speculative and politically antagonizing. The role of “Number 45” is being described in how the U.S. witnessed it’s downgrading from a starling democracy into the field of anocracies. But the book’s scenario on possible further descent stays away from involving contemporary individual actors. An that is why the scenario feels hypothetical. The absence of this link allows for concluding that we are, perhaps, far away from seeing one of the most stable democracies of the world itching closer to internal chaos. Which we are not, as I believe.

Here are two recent news articles which may make you better understand where my concerns are, still allowing me to stay out of the same trap. Make your own conclusions on whether the future may bring us closer to worst-case, just by reading and thinking about this one, and this one. We are a far cry away from being out of trouble. The mid-term elections in the U.S. are coming up, I feel we are in for a very bumpy 2022. From a European perspective, the current stabilisation of transatlantic jointness is extremely fragile, depending on future development.

At one point I was wondering what would happen if a future presidential candidate would claim his right for using Twitter back. It feels like “You’re damned if he is allowed, and you’re damned if he is not”. The claim of the far-right that it is fighting a corrupt, even pedophile global cabale, including depicting the free press as the enemy of the people, it will see a new and even more intense replication: The next round of racism, xenophobia, white supremacy, male domination, conspiracy theories challenging the efforts to fight the pandemic, and global warming, attempting to establish a narrative fighting Western democracies, it is just coming up. And the use of social media will be pivotal for those who attack, and those who defend.

The jury is out how this unfolds. And then there is the nutshell of Barbara F. Walter’s point how a fragile and unstable further descent into becoming an anocracy can be turned around. Here, the author refers to a piece of work she was commissioned with in 2014, for the World Bank. Like other scholars, the author found three factors standing out by far as being critical for preventing descent into conflict and chaos, including civil war: (1) The Rule of Law; (2) Voice and Accountability; (3) Government effectiveness. So, we will have to think about how we translate these fundamentals into concrete action allowing people all over the world to trust the form of governance which we say is the best of all alternatives we have been able to come up with so far.

So, here we are again. It is why any effort getting us collectively out of the currently very troubled waters must look at the rule of law, which Walter describes as “the equal and impartial application of legal procedure”. I stick to the definition of the rule of law as adopted by the United Nations: “For the United Nations (UN) system, the rule of law is a principle of governance in which all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the State itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated, and which are consistent with international human rights norms and standards. It requires measures to ensure adherence to the principles of supremacy of the law, equality before the law, accountability to the law, fairness in the application of the law, separation of powers, participation in decision-making, legal certainty, avoidance of arbitrariness, and procedural and legal transparency.“

However, my experience entails that in order to establish any rule of law, there needs to be a large consent of the respective society in how this principle is applied, and this consent must go beyond any larger factionalisation in that society. Any large faction of a society must accept this larger principle, rather than challenging the application of a rule of law as being biased, being imposed on them by other factions. Those who stir conflict for advancing their own objectives, they always will establish a narrative that there is no justice for their constituency. They will portray the rule of law as being a weapon wielded by their enemies against them. What these individuals do is to undermine the trust of their followers in a rule of law applied to their society as a whole. Which points to a second invisible feature of any successful establishing a rule of law: Trust.

It is about trust accepting the specific rule of law, for myself, and others, for the powerful and the less powerful. And it is about trusting that justice will always attempt to prevail, no matter how long it takes. Because very often, it can take a long time. And still, after many years, cases may be unresolved, often are. A society at large must trust the course which justice takes, even if individual members experience pain because their grievances are open and festering wounds for many years, before closure is possible, or sometimes even never.

For me, this challenge can be seen nowhere else with all clarity than in situations where I contributed to the efforts to re-establish a rule of law in a society where it had broken down. May be I will write more about a few of those experiences. Here it would be too long, because I want to finally focus again on the critical role of social media. Here is just one example:

There were two main ethnic factions in Kosovo before and after the violence ending in 1999. Under the UN Security Council Resolution 1244 Kosovo found herself with a majority and a minority faction, no form of own governance at all, and no rule of law beyond what UNSCR 1244 tasked us with. The Old had broken down and had to disengage. The New was not there. It was to be established, and being part of the international community engaging in assisting in finding a new New, I was representing the international interim police.

Whilst, on a technical level of developing policing, and helping a new Kosovo Police to emerge, being more and more successful, we found ourselves in a classical “Catch-22-situation”: All factions involved were blaming us not being able to provide security, and justice. Each side would accuse us to act on the interest of the other side’s agenda. And practically it meant that in case of any evidence of a severe crime which would allow us to make arrests, and prosecute suspects of grievious crime, there would not be a societal consent, or trust beyond factions. At least at the beginning. During those early years, any action by us leading to an arrest would be perceived by one faction as a biased, if not politically motivated, action in favor of the other faction. I have many examples for both factions.

I believe that, over time, some trust could be instilled. Not only that the Kosovan society at large moved forward towards healing from own wounds. Not only that our persistent sticking to a common rule of law for All slowly helped in setting some foundations for trust. Not only that the real success story is the work on the credibility of the Kosovo Police itself, establishing itself as a trusted actor within an emerging rule of law. But any development until today also shows how fragile this trust is. Including in recent times, operational situations can demonstrate how quickly old tensions, mistrust, and biased interpretation of events can break up. But what I want to demonstrate here is exactly that: That any rule of law is critical for peace&security in a society, and that this does go way beyond the technical application of such a principle.

It requires acceptance of that rule of law by a majority of all constituencies in a society, and it requires a sound trust in the equal application and adjucation of that rule of law, beyond personal grievances, and existing factions.

As said earlier (in my first blog article on this book), this holds true both for a society moving towards a rule of law, and it applies to a society where the efforts of trusting a rule of law are heavily undermined by the spreading of misinformation and fake news. Whether the society moves into a positive direction or a negative direction, it is the middle zone between the Old and the New which makes the situation most volatile.

All three factors mentioned by Barbara F. Walter, (1) The Rule of Law; (2) Voice and Accountability; (3) Government effectiveness played into any descent into chaos I have personally witnessed.

In 2022, the means to disrupt by using manipulative voice and amplifying non-accountability are a global challenge: Social media has become a bull-horn for those who know how to exploit fragility, and to further it.

So, how to translate Barbara F. Walter’s message, that civil wars can be avoided, into practice?

By taking responsibility for own action, and making our voices of reason being heard, day by day. Neil Young requested from Spotify to remove his music from the platform because Spotify is hosting “The Joe Rogan Experience”. Neil Young did not want to be on a platform which prominently features a protagonist for this type of spreading misinformation, lies, and manipulation, including wildest conspiracy theories about some mass-hypnosis being used by a global cabale enslaving citizens. Joni Mitchell followed suit, and she is not the only one.

This fight is taking us on a long haul, it is far from being over. Every personal contribution matters.

Under The Hood

/ stefanfeller / 1 Comment
Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning.
DESMOND TUTU

This entire blog is about peace and security, trauma and reconciliation. It is my chosen overarching theme since I began writing.

Ultimately, in order to sustain lasting peace and security in a society, the society needs to be at peace with itself. The impact of traumatic situations and the societal ability to heal these, through reconciliation, is directly affecting the cohesion which is also often referred to as a “social contract”. The less cohesion in a society, the more likely the foundations of that agreement erode.

I pre-ordered “How Civil Wars Start And How To Stop Them”, written by Barbara F. Walter (Crown, 2022, Ebook ISBN 9780593137796). I read an article in the New York Times discussing this book and was immediately drawn to it. Of course, much attention is given to such topics because January 06, 2022 we also looked back on what happened one year earlier: The attacks on the U.S. Capitol by violent crowds, incited by an angry former U.S. President ready to rip everything into pieces and to burn the house to ashes when facing his power coming to an end.

I am specifically interested in understanding the author’s methodological approach. To quote from the New York Times article: “As a political scientist who has spent her career studying conflicts in other countries, she approaches her work methodically, patiently gathering her evidence before laying out her case. She spends the first half of the book explaining how civil wars have started in a number of places around the world, including the former Yugoslavia, the Philippines and Iraq.“

So I began this blog entry by looking at my four terms “Peace, Security, Trauma, Reconciliation” with a focus on the January 06, 2021 Capitol riots:

There was no peaceful event, there was no security, there is massive traumatisation of an entire society, and there are huge challenges when it comes to reconciliation. The fabric of the U.S. society is critically wounded. Many, including the current President of the United States, have made that clear on occasion of the commemoration events. Others have blamed them for saying that, accusing them of dividing the very society they have undermined themselves. No matter on which side of the aisle one is, the fact of deep divisions in the society of the U.S. can not be disputed by anyone, because they all participate in it, blaming the respective other side.

Currently in every open society the fabric of consent appears to be at threat. We experience attacks from the outside and from the inside, and we have a large-scale public discourse about that. Attacks and covert efforts in a cyber-information-warfare do point back to actors from inside authoritarian systems, but not only: They include actors from within open societies, in an effort to overturn the systems of governance as they have been set up on grounds of the respective societal contract, enshrined in the relevant basic laws of these societies, their constitutional law. There is a blurry spider web of people and interest groups out there, networking on a global scale, who seem to diligently work on that.

We see societies with authoritarian leadership, heavily applying coercion, and whereever deemed useful, heavy violence against own constituencies. Whichever legitimacy, or sheer power, sits behind coercion into cohesion in those societies, the number of current examples of authoritarian regimes quelling opposition and unrest is considerable. Instability, public unrest, violent coercion of populations by a ruling structure, whether Central Asia, Africa, the Near, the Middle, and the Far East, the Americas, there are many examples.

We see societies with illiberate structures of governance that appear to be stable, sorts of. Big ones, and smaller ones.

We do speculate about the stability of the bigger ones, we suspect, or bluntly see them being in a game of stabilising themselves by dominating spheres of influence, and coercion, whilst at the same time being engaged in efforts destabilising opponents on the side of what we call open societies, including the so-called “West”.

We see smaller societies on their path to illiberate control that position themselves by jockeying for alliances, keeping options open, attempting to take advantage of being friendly to the one or the other, being ambigous.

That is how I came to suspect that the common denominator for all, on a global level, is about societal cohesion. On this level of analysis it is not about attacks of authoritarianism against democracy. It appears to be that notwithstanding the form of governance in many societies, we all struggle with societal cohesion. We all have the same problem, we only differ in how we deal with it.

With that in mind, I revisited my blog entry “Futuretelling” from April 2021. There I had written about the latest report published by the collective of American intelligence agencies: “Global Trends 2040”. The report “finds that the pandemic has proved to be “the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II,” with medical, political and security implications that will reverberate for years. That’s not sturm und drang. It’s the prologue to a far darker picture of what lies ahead.”

Five themes are identified in that assessment: (1) Global Challenges, (2) Fragmentation, (3) Disequilibrium, (4) Contestation, and (5) Adaption. I won’t repeat how I summarized the report in my previous artcle, but I do quote the following: “Global challenges include climate change, disease, financial crises, and technology disruptions. The report states that they are likely to manifest more frequently and intensely in almost every region and country. Their impact on states and societies will create stress, or even catastrophic shock. The report assesses the current pandemic as “the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come.“

That’s huge, and overwhelming. So, what can each and everyone do, in our circles of life?

I am coming back to the basic motivation which I had when I began writing this article. Because it has not been reflected in any of the above, but I believe it is the essence of any individual contribution to finding new ways into cohesion. Lasting cohesion requires some form of consent. Which can only be achieved by talking to each other, and not at all by talking about each other. Talking about each other contributes to dissent. Often we see the dissent manifesting within a public discourse, and all our new contemporary mechanisms of discourse, especially social media, are designed to reinforce messages which achieve large public attention. Those messages are fueled by rage and anger. It is how these systems are set up.

They also function by establishing closed networks. Friends, followers, open or closed chat groups. The opposite to talk with each other is possible there. Stalking, mobbing, bullying, that all adds. Because any dissenting voice within such groups will be yelled at. Can even happen to Ted Cruz, by Tucker Carlson, recently. You stray off the party line, you will be punished.

We can not talk about divisiveness in divisive terms if we genuinely want to address it. Those who do, they purposefully do that in order to solidify it, rather than reverting back to consent. They want to impose a new consent, by manipulation and force.

In everyday life, this is difficult. Like all of us, I have concrete examples: I do not know anti-vaxxers in my circle of friends. Because I have begun to separate myself from any of those. Neither they want me to be part of their circle of friends. And once one enters into those social media groups where attitude to an issue is the polarizing theme, a subtle brainwashing is going on. If I stay, I have to have the same beliefs. They reinforce, and they isolate from any dialogue with others. Over time, own positions and beliefs will radicalize the longer one stays in these groups and circles. As if we would not know how this works. Have we forgotten about how sects do this, how people have difficulties getting out of the prison of Scientology, how difficult it is to de-radicalize people who have been caught in the web of ISIS? There is little difference in the psychology behind all this.

This, again, is happening “under the hood”, and that’s why I have chosen this title. We see the open manifestations of societal dissent. It is hard to quantify and qualify to which extent the invisible divisive lines have already permeated societies. It is fair to suspect these lines of division run much deeper than we see, or acknowledge.

So, I will be interested to see what Barbara F. Walter has to say on that. Because over the last two decades I have been living in societies which at some point broke into open conflict. Or I have been dealing with working for peace in countries which all of a sudden, and often to the surprise of the international community, experienced relapse into conflict and war.

This time, I get a sense it is increasingly about all of us, not about a country far away from us.

How can we identify the threat-level? But notwithstanding that, I firmly believe that nurturing the ability of individuals to listen to others with a dissenting opinion, in an effort to understand the other, rather than subjugating the other under the own doctrine, will be key.

That’s why this will be a momentous task for generations to come.

On Responsibilities of German Public Servants and on Covid-19 – An Open Letter to Hans-Georg Maaßen

/ stefanfeller / 1 Comment

Sehr geehrter Herr Hans-Georg Maaßen,

Die digitale Ausgabe der “Tagesschau” berichtet heute, am 03.01.2022 (Link hier) zu dem Umstand, dass Sie auf der sozialen Mediaplattform GETTR ein Video mit der Bildunterschrift “Bewegender Appell von Prof. Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi zur dringenden Notwendigkeit eines Covid-Impfverbots” geteilt haben. Die “Tagesschau” ist fuer ihre faktenbasierte und neutrale Berichterstattung so anerkannt, dass ich auf weitere Verifizierungen dieses Berichtes hier verzichten darf.

Das Video, das Sie demzufolge weiterverbreitet haben, wurde urspruenglich am 22. Dezember 2021 von dem emeritierten Mikrobiologie-Professor Bhakdi auf der Plattform “Rumble” veröffentlicht. Der oben erwaehnte Bericht der Tagesschau leitet in eine detaillierte Schilderung und Bewertung dieses Videos wie folgt ein: “Es traegt den Titel “Der Beweis ist da: Impfung zerstört Immunsystem”. Bhakdi beginnt seine Ausführungen in dem Video mit dem Appell, sich nicht mehr über Details zu streiten, vielmehr lägen die Fakten auf dem Tisch. Alle genbasierten Impfstoffe, gemeint sind mRNA-Vakzine, verursachten das gleiche Ergebnis, so Bhakdi. Das Immunsystem des Körpers werde zerstört. Basis für diese Behauptung sollen Proben aus 15 Obduktionen sein, die der Pathologe Arne Burkhardt untersucht habe.“

Professor Bhakdi erklaert in diesem Video: “Sie töten unsere Kinder” […] “Ich halte das nicht aus”, fährt er fort – und kündigt an, “aus diesem verdammten Land” flüchten zu wollen, damit nicht auf “unseren” vierjährigen Sohn “geschossen” werde.”

Der faktenbasierten Berichterstattung der “Tagesschau” ist hoch anzurechnen, dass sie die zugrundeliegenden unbelegten Behauptungen und die vollstaendige Unserioesitaet der angeblichen Beweise, dass m-RNA Impfungen das menschliche Immunsystem zerstoeren, ausfuehrlich in diesem Bericht widerlegt.

Gleichfalls erlaeutert der Bericht, dass sich der fuer den pensionierten Pathologen Arne Burkhardt zustaendige Fachverband, die Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Pathologie bereits vorher von Erklaerungen von Herrn Burkhardt distanziert hat, ebenso wie auch die Universitaet Mainz bezogen auf Herrn Bhakdi. Schlussendlich moechte ich hier erwaehnen, dass die Bildungsministerin Schleswig-Holsteins, Karin Prien, die zugleich Mitglied im Bundesvorstand der Christlich Demokratischen Union CDU ist, sich als Folge dieser Ereignisse fuer den Ausschluss von Ihnen, sehr geehrter Herr Maaßen, aus der Partei CDU ausspricht.

Sehr geehrter Herr Maaßen, nicht jeder kennt Sie, und mein Blog, auf dem ich meist in Englisch schreibe, wird weltweit gelesen. Daher darf ich hier kurz erklaeren, dass Sie in der Zeit von August 2012 bis November 2018 das Bundesamt fuer Verfassungsschutz geleitet haben. Sowohl waehrend Ihrer Amtsausuebung als auch in Ihrem spaeteren politischen Leben sind Ihnen eine Reihe hoch kontroverser Aeusserungen und Stellungnahmen zuzurechnen. Sie werden in Ihrer politischen Orientierung dem sehr rechten Fluegel der CDU zugerechnet. Sie scheinen erhebliche Sympathien in politischen Zirkeln zu geniessen, die rechts vom rechten Fluegel der CDU stehen. Die Verfassungskonformitaet mancher dieser Gruppierungen scheint ebenso erhebliche Fragen aufzuwerfen wie deren Naehe zu Verschwoerungstheoretikern und Covid-Realitaetsverweigerern.

Uns verbindet daher beinahe garnichts, allerdings eins: Wir beide sind Beamte. Sie sind politischer Beamter (im Ruhestand), ich bin Berufsbeamter (im Ruhestand). Vor Ihrer Zeit als politischer Beamter waren Sie im Uebrigen auch Berufsbeamter, einschliesslich in herausragenden Funktionen des Bundesinnenministeriums. Fuer mich gelten die in der Verfassung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland verankerten “hergebrachten Grundsaetze des Berufsbeamtentums”. Sie beinhalten die Pflicht zum inner- und ausserdienstlichen Wohlverhalten, im ausserdienstlichen Bereich gilt dies fuer mich auch im Ruhestand. Fuer mich gilt die Pflicht zur politischen Neutralitaet, fuer Sie als politischer Beamter vielleicht weniger. Aber eine generelle Wohlverhaltenspflicht kann sicherlich sowohl fuer Berufsbeamtinnen und -beamte wie auch fuer politische Beamtinnen und Beamte abgeleitet werden. Diensteide muessen ja auch von beiden Gruppen geleistet werden.

Zu dieser Wohlverhaltenspflicht gehoert ohne Frage, von der vorsaetzlichen oder grob fahrlaessigen Verbreitung evidenter Falschinformationen abzusehen, die zu schweren Fehlentscheidungen anderer Mitbuergerinnen und Mitbuerger mit fatalen Konsequenzen fuehren koennen. Je prominenter das -ehemals-bekleidete Amt und die damit gegebene “Prominenz” bzw. Gelegenheit zur oeffentlichen Einflussnahme auf Meinungsbildung, umso mehr ist Ihnen als Amtstraeger in herausragendendsten Funktionen diese Verpflichtung zuzumuten, und umso schwerwiegender der Vorwurf, wenn Sie es nicht tun.

Mit Ihrem Verhalten tragen Sie zu erheblichen Zweifeln und Aengsten in der Bevoelkerung bei. Sie schueren ohne jegliche Tatsachengrundlage Aengste, die zum Widerstand gegen Covid-19-Impfungen fuehren. Das ist verantwortungslos und sicher ein Grund fuer die Forderung von Ministerin Prien, obwohl auch aus ihrer Perspektive nicht allein wegen dieser Ereignisse, sondern eher ein Ausdruck der Haltung “Das Mass ist voll”.

Mein Argument kommt allerdings auf die von mir aufgefuehrte offenkundige Verletzung der Wohlverhaltenspflicht zurueck: Sie schueren Aengste, die sehr konkret zu Impfverweigerungen fuehren. Die Zahlen und Fakten sprechen fuer sich: (a) Die mittlerweile milliardenfach durchgefuehrten Impfungen sind sicher; (b) Impfungen reduzieren signifikant das Risiko, an Covid-19 zu erkranken und auch die Wahrscheinlichkeit der Transmission; (c) Impfungen reduzieren in erheblicher Weise das Risiko, Opfer einer schweren Erkrankung zu werden. Ersparen Sie mir, diesen offenen Brief mit endlosen Fussnoten zum Nachweis meiner Darstellung zu verlaengern. Vorsaetzlich falsche Aussagen wie die von Ihnen verbreiteten Behauptungen von Professor Bhakdi tragen also sehr konkret zu Krankheit, schwerem Leid und Tod anderer Menschen bei.

Daran moechte ich Sie hier erinnern.

Ich schliesse mit der Bemerkung, dass sich gerade in den letzten Tagen in meinem persoenlichen und beruflichen Umfeld erneut tragische Todesfaelle ereignet haben. In Anbetracht dessen, dass trotz intensivster Hygiene- und Schutzmassnahmen nun auch meine Familie in Kanada von Covid-Erkrankungen heimgesucht wird, kann ich nur dem Umstand danken, dass Alle vollstaendig durchgeimpft sind. Ich hoffe, dass Erkrankungen mild ablaufen.

Sehr geehrter Herr Maaßen, meine eigene Verpflichtung zum Wohlverhalten legt mir auf, diese oeffentliche Aussage zu Ihrem Verhalten in angemessener Form darzulegen. Ich denke aber, es ist mir auch zugestanden, Ihr Verhalten als unerhoert, inakzeptabel und in schaerfster Form verurteilungswuerdig zu qualifizieren.

Stefan Feller, Leitender Polizei/Kriminaldirektor a.D.