Nautilus Magazine: Do Aliens Have Inalienable Rights?

If we do ever meet an intelligent alien, even a tasty one, I hope we have sufficient ethical awareness to think of more than pleasing our palates or filling our stomachs. My view that this would be the wrong way to respond to such an encounter, however, leads to a deeper question: What moral status would extra-terrestrials have? Would we have obligations to them? Would they have rights? And would our answers depend on their intelligence? [...]

I use E.T. as a thought-experiment to challenge students to reconsider their speciesism—the still widely held assumption that the boundary of our species is also the boundary of beings with rights, or with interests that we ought to take seriously. So far, the only nonhumans we have encountered are animals, plants, fungi, and microscopic living things such as protozoans, bacteria, algae, and spirochetes. When we consider the moral status of these organisms, our thinking is likely to be biased by our own interests in using them, especially as sources of food, or in avoiding being made ill by them.

This is clearest when we think about how we ought to treat nonhuman animals. We have deeply embedded customs of killing and eating animals and using their skins for fur and leather.  Many people can hardly imagine a meal without meat or other animal products. Religious and philosophical thinkers are as susceptible to bias as other people, and so most of them have justified this practice. In doing so, these thinkers have dug a broad gulf in our minds between ourselves and nonhuman animals. Even the term “nonhuman animals” sounds odd, because it implies that we are animals. It should not sound odd at all, because we have known, ever since Darwin, that we are animals. Yet we persist in thinking that we are a separate creation, that we alone are made in the image of God, or that we alone have an immortal soul. [...]

Albert Schweitzer famously advocated an ethic of “reverence for life” and some deep ecologists hold that rivers and mountains have intrinsic value. We don’t need to go to those lengths in order to see that the existence of another mind—another center of consciousness—places moral demands on us. If there is something that it is like to be another being, then we have a moral responsibility to avoid harming that conscious being, and, in so far as it is within our power and a reasonable use of our resources, to make that being’s life go as well as possible.

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Infinite Coincidence: The ideological psychopaths behind Trump, Putin and Brexit (February 6, 2017)

Figures like Bannon, Surkov and Cummings may have different visions of a perfect society, but they share a commitment to elite rule and an idea of how to aggressively pursue it: by creating chaos, using what Rebecca Solnit (in one of the best assessments I’ve yet encountered of why Trump won) describes as ‘gaslighting’ to destabilise accepted values and undermine trust in established institutions. I found out about Surkov through Adam Curtis (a very skilled propagandist in this own right), who says that Surkov has “turned Russian politics into a bewildering, constantly changing piece of theater…(creating) a constant state of destabilized perception, in order to manage and control”*. This interest in disruption is something all ideological psychopaths share. An appropriate analogy might be that shaking a baby vigorously enough a) might somehow make it grow up quicker and b) will stop things getting boring. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that historical precedents to such projects lie in the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Khmer Rouge. Figures like Bannon, Surkov and Cummings also have literary antecedents. Kane defines Cummings as “a mercurial figure who could easily stalk the pages of the Booker Prize longlist”. After all, part of the thrill and success of the Booker-winning ‘Wolf Hall’ lay in Thomas Cromwell’s machiavellian machinations. Much of what I’ve read about the three ideological psychopaths in question reminds me of a quote from H.G. Wells’ Doctor Moreau:“Each time I dip a living creature into the bath of burning pain, I say; this time I will burn out all the animal, this time I will make a rational creature of my own.” [...]

There’s also been a lot of talk over the last few months about tricksters: Pied Pipers who lead the masses astray. Ideological psychopaths seem to make use of charismatic leaders, or at least to put themselves at their service. They are often not the figureheads themselves but the powers behind the throne. The Italian populist leader Beppe Grillo keeps himself out of direct political involvement and tries to get someone else to do the dirty work (he’s not very good at choosing). Then there’s the question of which ideology they adhere to. Bannon recently claimed to have once been a Leninist but has very clear fascist and possibly Nazi sympathies. Surkov’s inspiration apparently comes from contemporary art, and both he and Bannon have been associated with the fascist Russian ‘philosopher’ Alexander Dugin, who believes Russia should provoke an all-out world war. As for Cummings, despite his intellectual posturings, he may be stupid enough to be a fan of that ultimate Godhead of failed teenage bullies with megalomaniac pretensions, Ayn ‘Medicare’ Rand. He is an extreme Neoliberal and a reminder that the origins of Neoliberal thought lay partly in nazi belief in the purity and goodness of elite power.

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Vox: I worked for Putin's government, then became one of his biggest critics.

There’s also financial pressure to stay out of opposition politics. Businesses face their own threats for working with anyone who criticizes the government. I’m fortunate that I work as an established energy analyst, which allows me to stay afloat financially and continue my work as a leader of the Democratic Choice party here in Russia. For others committed to political causes, it’s much harder to feed themselves and their families when they are iced out of the job market. Those who oppose Putin live in a state of constant pressure. [...]

When I think about those first few years under Putin, I realize that we overslept. We saw the signs of authoritarianism gradually taking over, but many still believed democracy would help us correct ourselves. We thought, if the people aren’t happy, they’ll make themselves known in the polls. What we didn’t take into account was that Putin was dismantling these democratic institutions systemically, on all fronts, and it was a very well-organized power grab masked under “gradual adjustments.”

I believe, also, that Putin sold a vision of a better standard of living in exchange for democracy and civil rights. In the first decade or so under his leadership, Russia’s GDP grew. Putin promised to continue to deliver us economic strength even as he took away our rights. Back then, many people in Russia saw these moves as separate and disconnected. They did not recognize that it was a systemic threat.

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Quartz: All but one of France’s presidential candidates want to reverse globalization

Ten out of the 11 candidates competing to be France’s next president have pledged to fight the forces of globalization in myriad ways. If polls are any indication, French voters may end up deciding between protectionist Marine Le Pen, of France’s far-right National Front, and globalist Emmanuel Macron, the upstart candidate pushing a liberal agenda. [...]

Macron is the only candidate explicitly in favor (link in French) of the comprehensive free trade deal between Canada and the EU. The pact, which has yet to be ratified by EU national parliaments, would make it easier and cheaper for French companies to export goods and services to Canada (roughly 10,000 French companies export to Canada). Most other candidates argue these agreements benefit big multinational companies at the expense of the environment, and French workers and consumers. The exception is conservative candidate François Fillon, whose stance on the pact is neither here nor there. [...]

The protectionist bent is not new (pdf) to France. In a 2016 year study (pdf) by German think tank the Bertelsmann Foundation, 54% of the French considered globalization as a threat, a higher proportion than every other EU country except Austria, thanks in part to immigration fears. In a separate YouGov poll published last year, French respondents were least likely to see globalization as a force for good, and ranked second to last among countries surveyed on its view of immigrants (ahead of Indonesia).

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Quartz: Why Germans pay cash for almost everything

On average, wallets in Germany hold nearly twice as much cash—about $123 worth—as those in Australia, the US, France and Holland, according to a recent Federal Reserve report on how consumers paid for things in seven countries. Roughly 80% of all transactions in Germany are conducted in cash. (In the US, it’s less than 50%.) And cash is the dominant form of payment there even for large transactions.

No one knows precisely why Germans have such a strong preference for cash, though survey data offer some hints. German respondents suggested that using cash makes it easier to keep track of their money and spending [pdf]. [...]

Other responses suggest Germans like the anonymity of cash, in keeping with their general enthusiasm for tightly protecting privacy. [...]

One explanation is that, as researchers have found, memories of hyperinflation have quite a bit of staying power. People in countries that suffered banking crises quite sensibly often prefer to save in cash—though typically in foreign currencies such as US dollars—rather than put money in the bank. (Federal Reserve Bank of New York economists found that demand for US dollars rises for at least a generation in countries after they suffer a searing experience with high inflation.) And countries such as Bulgaria and Romania, which have recent histories of currency instability and financial crises, also are quite heavy users of cash.

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