Poland, the EU, and rule-of-law / independence of judiciary

It is easy enough to see the current controversy over rule-of-law (meaning: independence of judiciary) in Poland as a "contest" between sovereignty and regional multilateralism / governance, and that is how the current Polish government is portraying it - one nation trying to retain/regain its sovereignty against "foreign" (meaning: European Union) influence. 

Well, apart from the international political and trade benefits of a coordinated and collaborative bloc (including stronger resistance to foreign influence - such as Russian coercion), there are other issues. 

Perhaps the most important of those is that of universal human rights. 

Incidentally, anyone who thinks the universality of human rights is still up for debate is decades behind the times: that ship has long ago  left  the  harbour, although there is still debate on which of the human rights to enforce and how - and thus the debate over a series of global Magnitsky Acts, and the ongoing  concerns around the UN's Human Rights Council.

However, one of the fundamental rights is that of rule - of - law - something with a long  history, and something Poland, with its history as part of the Soviet bloc (that it struggled to leave), should be well aware of the need for. 

It doesn't matter what Poles think of the EU - even if there is some form of Polexit, there should  still  be the fundamentals of rule-of-law, and that includes an independent judiciary, and it is changes that threaten that independence that has the EU concerned. 

Don't get sidetracked by the media focus on EU-Polish relations: it is the everyday Pole's right not to be abused by the powerful that is central to this.

PS - "EU fines Poland €1 million per day over judicial" changes.

Cross posting: Post No. 2,060 - Personal Reflection

This originally was posted on my main blog at https://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2021/10/post-no-2060-personal-reflection.html. 

*** 

On a day like today, when exhaustion, family health matters (including mine), and my PTSD (caused to me by bigots - especially in the workplace) are all combining to make the day difficult, I read articles like this one, and wonder at the absolute stupidity of those in power - what is wrong with them as human beings that they cannot see the suffering about them? 

If they can, and are ignoring it, they're drifting into evil ... 

 

The (partial) European rapid response force

Following the recent debacle (based on how  many  vulnerable people were left behind) in Afghanistan when that nation fell to misogynistic violent extremists, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia have formed a "rapid response" military force. 

The concept is that this unit is ready to deploy at short notice, and thus, if something similar happens again elsewhere in the world, they can get there in days, rather than weeks. 

It is a well intentioned and nobly-intended concept ... and it has - to some extent - been tried before, with mixed results. The deployment to Somalia, which went off the rails when its mission underwent scope  creep without commensurate re-planning and increased military resourcing, and ended in ignominious failure, is one example. The poorly prepared deployment to Lebanon, which also ended in ignominious failure, is another, but the most notorious, in my opinion, is the NATO deployment to Bosnia, which was effectively deliberately undermined by the stupidity of a NATO general who was duped by the lies being told to him by Serbian war criminals - an utterly repugnant general who, with others, led to a half-hearted "response" that was so USELESS it allowed mass murder under the noses of smiling NATO soldiers who were sharing drinks and selfies with war criminals (see Chapter 11 [9 and 12 also relate] of this book). 

So, clearly, there are lessons to learn from past failures. 

The first, I would suggest, is ensuring the political AND MILITARY will - from the top down - is GENUINELY committed to doing humanitarian work. This will require consideration NOW of who will decide on missions, how, what the goals will be, and the who-how-what-where-etc of the military planning, equipping, and execution of mission.

The next is the potential for things to go badly - not just the military stuff ups, but also the risk of mass rape and OTHER human rights abuses by those deployed. That has been a problem in Bosnia, with aid organisations, the UN, and - most recently - the WHO. 

Just having soldiers on the ground is meaningless - there were US soldiers in Somalia who watched Somali women stripped, raped and murdered just metres away from their positions. 

The concept of "peacekeepers" has been a furphy from the start, and its successes are due more to luck and the goodwill of those involved than any inherent value. The need for peace enforcing, as it is now called (given that the applicable term had been perverted by its earlier misuse), led to better mission rules for East Timor. (The ineptness and possible [certainly appears to many people to have happened] complicity of Europeans in Rwanda also drove the better mission rules.) 

It is to be hoped that Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia's rapid response force will have all these issues properly considered and allowed for. 

If that is done, I wish it well. 

If not, then this has just been a political point scoring exercise - another game with people's lives.

Naïveté

I hear some activists make some extraordinarily naive statements at times. 

One such, by someone whose worldview has been influenced by having been spent most of their life both "well off" and as an early adopter of technology, has made nonsensical statements along the lines of "I am surprised there are still piloted planes".

Piloted systems have weapons and speed capabilities that UAVs still don't, but, more importantly, if that person had done any checking, they would know how out of touch with military reality that statement is. They possibly thought they were advocating for the use of technology, but all they were doing was sounding foolish and lacking in credibility. 

The other key aspect of thinking that the person concerned got wrong was to think economists and the military would put the same value on life as peace activists do. 

They don't: they think differently - some economists and most military people do value human life, but they weigh that against other goals, which leads to a different end result of assessment than that followed by peace activists (such as myself).

It is VITAL to understand such matters, or otherwise you risk not being effective in what you seek to do. 

The other key aspect of this is that, because of the difference in weapons capabilities and issues around ethics (which, again, many, if not most, military people are genuinely want to comply with), unpiloted and other autonomous/remotely operated systems are still more expensive than what we have now. 

If anyone doubts that, consider that much of the Rwandan genocide was committed using machetes that cost around 20 cents ... (and could have EASILY been stopped by conventionally equipped military forces). 

A major problem international weapons trade is still the trade in 'small arms" (rifles, pistols, etc), and those are still used to create a terrible amount of death and destruction. 

An AK47 is cheaper than any remotely operated, less alone autonomous, killing system - and can be used without the supporting technological infrastructure that people such as the one I am considering take for granted.

That puts them basically somewhat out of touch with reality.

And if we are going to change the world, we have to understand what it is really like first. 

Extraordinary devaluation of human life ...

Recently a school Principal in my state was suspended for refusing to comply with a COVID-19 pandemic management directive to adopt only home schooling - he offered both home schooling and at the school for some situations. His reasoning was concern for the mental health of the students - which is a valid concern. However, it also clearly underestimated the risk of COVID-19, and led to an outbreak that put lives at risk, and helped to keep us in lockdown - which is damaging to other people's mental health. 

Yes, he had genuine concern for his students wellbeing, but I consider he was too focused on mental health and didn't realise (or didn't accept) the extent of the actual risks to physical health of the pandemic.

COVID-denying conspiracy fantasists could also have contributed to that. In turn, those fantasists may be genuine in their fantasies, but they are deluded, and are actively putting lives at risk - as is shown by the infections amongst police and union officials who were affected by the fantasists' sometimes violent protests (including the CHILDREN of those who had to attend). 

They do not have ANY offsetting concerns about anything, as the school Principal does.

And now we come to the federal neoliberal government, who seem to have been, IMO, resisting taking adequate action on managing the pandemic because they want to force the economy to reopen. They know that the modelling predicts will occur, but they seem to have a war time mentality, where lives will be sacrificed "for the greater good" (e.g., taking/holding territory, or ensuring supplies get through, or to repel an invader).

The economy is NOT a war. (This is a bloody stupidity I have found often in economic and management circles - that it is all about violence.)

The economy is about making lives better - ALL lives, not just those lives directly affected by the profits of (large) companies. Thinking there is a trade-off in PREVENTABLE deaths is unacceptable - both economically, as higher death rates have been shown to have greater harm to the economy, and morally. 

Despite that, the national neolibs are ending support that keeps people alive, albeit at home, and refusing to help hospitals prepare for predicted increased loads. 

Why? Why are they making this error?

Is it a lack of empathy - a problem they have acknowledged and tried to deal with in the past? 

Is it being ideologically focused on the economy? 

Is it a desire for good "numbers" to boost their chances of re-election? 

I hope it is not the latter, but, in any case, it seems to me to show a low valuation of life, and possibly a limited understanding that there are real human beings behind those COVID deaths, just as there are real human beings behind the smaller group of other deaths caused by pandemic management measures. 

The neoliberals are also, IMO, failing on the maths of all this, in that the costs of opening up will be greater than any economic benefits. 

To use economic wording, they are devaluing human life against economic return.

And that, morally, is extraordinarily appalling.

Examples of the means affecting the end

Something I have learned to be wary of is making the unwise and often downright stupid assumption that the end justifies the means. The current problems with anti-vaxxer/anti-pandemic containment conspiracy fantasists is, in my opinion, an example of that. 

Working in reverse: 

• the current problem and repugnant people are "anti-" largely because they do not trust "authority"/expertise/"the government"; 
• as far as politics ("the government") goes, that lack of trust has been created by problems that became widely apparent back with "Watergate" in the USA, but are perpetuated by all "back room"/"grey" people who advocate for doing whatever is necessary to gain power, thinking they can "fix it up" later.
  You can't - the current problems show how much such attitudes lead to later problems, and the suspicion of voters over things like "small target" campaigning shows how much voter have changed in response to "being treated like mushrooms"; 
• experts also have that problem. We - I am an engineer in my day job, so feel obliged to include myself - have the appalling habit of too often thinking we just have to make a pronouncement, and don't have to explain or justify it. That isn't helped by the rabid financial cut-throatedness of consulting in the neoliberal era, but it is even less helped by experts in one field thinking they don't need experts in other areas (such as communication).
  We have also been let down by failures such as thalidomide, DDT, the West Gate bridge collapse, Chernobyl, the under-design of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the active resistance to implementing car safety measures and addressing the climate crisis, and so on.
  Experts have done an enormous amount of good as well - the COVID vaccines and other medical advances are testament to that - but intellectual arrogance (and sometimes human flaws such bigotry) crops up and is used by experts to shoot expertise in the foot from time to time, to the lasting damage of all in the community.
  

 The end does NOT justify the means.

Governance for ...

Democratic governance is supposed to actually be for all, or as close to it as is possible - that's why rorting and other corruption is inherently wrong.

Valid criticisms such as this show that some people in power are governing for a few - specifically, for those who are in the "comfort zones" of those with power. 

That is, they will govern for those people they like, are comfortable with, or consider merit good things - which, in Australia at least and probably elsewhere, means: 

• fallacies/prejudices about "dole bludgers", 
• hate of those who are feared because of personal insecurities / inadequacies (most notably, the personal insecurities that lead to LGBTIQ-phobias), and 
• the problems of limited perspectives (e.g., parents who taught misogyny and/or racism, possibly using culture or religion as a thin disguise or excuse) or Newtonian world views 

enable abuses such as systemic governmental mental abuse of those receiving welfare (leading to Robodebt and many suicides), racist policies (the Stolen Generations, genocide, the still present and pernicious White Australia "thinking"), denial of uncomfortable events such as the climate crisis and the pandemic which mean cherished life goals and plans have to be abandoned (much as was the case for those experiencing last Century's two World Wars and Great Depression). 

In brief, it means governance for a few (not necessarily elites, but those who the elites and those with some power are comfortable with - "mates") rather than all, or even the many.

PS - from my coming weekly news post on my main blog:
an examination of what is behind housing unaffordability (which ignores people's misconception that homes are for generating wealth, rather than living in);

They knew ...

In my post on the risk of becoming a monster, I referred to the Bob  Woodward and Robert Costa  book "Peril" (Simon & Schuster UK, 2021, ISBN 978-1-3985-1215-3; Amazon). I've now finished that, and I am utterly appalled. 

I was appalled to discover that there are supposedly Democrats in the US with conservative, 1970s, neoliberal thinking about unemployed people - Democrats (or perhaps DINOs - Democrats in Name Only, as I once suggested) who had key, unhealthy influences on negotiations about making people's lives manageable. 

I expected to read of the support of those who are, in my opinion (IMO), lacking in "clear and present thinking" by supporting the narcissistic psychopath #45 - but it is still disturbing to read of it.

But above all else, I am appalled that so many people warned US President Biden of what would happen to women and girls - and others - in Afghanistan, but he still chose to screw the people of Afghanistan by taking the fastest withdrawal option. 

"The military leaders’ and intelligence officials’ warnings grew darker. They had spent decades tracking and studying the Taliban. They knew well what it would mean for the Afghan people, particularly women."

Yes, it was a no-win situation (damned if you do, damned if you don't), but there were other options - and the "gated" withdrawal approach would have prevented the rapid collapse, IMO, as well as giving time for an orderly evacuation of those who were risk for having aided the USA and its lickspittles - including my nation. 

I consider Biden's pain at the loss of his own son overwhelmed his decision making, and he forgot what it is like to lose a daughter.

Biden is the price the USA and the world is paying for the voters of the USA having elected #45 - and anyone who thinks the USA or the world would be better if #45 was still in power is an idiot. No-one else would have got enough votes to defeat #45 - there were better, IMO, candidates, but they  would  NOT  have  had  enough  appeal  to  voters  of  the  USA  to  win!!!

From the book again: 

"Cedric Richmond’s political mentor, House Majority Whip James Clyburn, heard the critics. Biden again? Why not new blood? Shouldn’t Black Democrats rally behind one of their own? But this was not a normal year to the South Carolina Democrat, two years older than Biden and the highest-ranking Black leader in Congress. Trump had to be defeated."

This is a problem faced elsewhere in the world as well - the price the UK is still paying for having elected Thatcher, the price my nation is paying for having elected social dinosaur Abbott, the utterly disappointing Turnbull, and the utterly appalling Scott. 

And just as the USA and the world is better off with #45 having been voted out, we need to vote Scott out - and we may have to pay a price of imperfection, but the price of Scott staying will be worse.

And we, the world, also have to learn never to rely on the duplicitous USA ever again - some of learned that decades ago, many of us were wary, but enough is enough: never again.

And it could get worse ...

Cross-posting: Post No. 2,031 - Monsters and the risk of becoming one

This originally appeared on my main blog at https://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2021/09/post-no-2030-monsters-and-risk-of.html.

*** 

In the same way that no-one can be completely "beyond  the  Pale" (our souls are eternal, after all, and those drama queens who think [and I've made this error] a few millions years are significant in the context of eternity are wrong - which is also why hate is such a problem: hate someone and you're going to have problems when you inevitably come into contact with them again, maybe a few thousands or millions of years hence), so too is the thought that people can evolve beyond ever being "evil". 

If they're alive on this world, people can always potentially backslide. 

I've been thinking about this as I've started reading the Bob  Woodward and Robert Costa  book "Peril" (Simon & Schuster UK, 2021, ISBN 978-1-3985-1215-3; Amazon) (I don't normally buy books that cost as much as it did, and the previous two in the series were too depressing to contemplate, but this one was so well written, from the free e-book sample I read, that I broke my budgeting rule), about the election of Biden and the transition from #45 to Biden. I haven't got to the section about the attempted insurrection on 6^th January, 2021 yet (I'm only about a third of the way through it), but there are a few things that have struck me. 

One is the comprehensiveness of preparation and thinking of Lt. General Mark Milley ("We Were Soldiers Once - and Young" also gives a good accounting of the thorough research, thinking and preparation of good soldiers, as does the War on the Rocks blog .. and it is interesting in a trivial sort of way that the Lt. General and I are of a similar age). 

Part of that preparation included getting advice on how to handle a narcissistic person like #45. The advice included not humiliating that sort of person in public (which explains some of the run-ins I've had with people I've stood up to in the past), and the amount of effort that goes in to keeping #45 as close as possible to rationality is staggering - and terrifying (FFS, USA - catch up with the LATE 1800s and GET THE F RID OF YOUR BLOODY STUPID ELECTORAL COLLEGE SYSTEM!!!). 

The only point, which has led to this post, is that #45 was initially heading towards admitting that he had lost the election, until the evil and/or insane (they are COMPLETELY out of touch with reality - I consider the word fits) gophers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell got their claws into him.

Sure, #45 was also evil, but he had an opportunity ... and chose to go down the wrong path. And it makes no difference that others were advising him badly - he was also getting good advice, and actively chose the former over the latter.

That can happen to all of us, and I'd like to review some of the reasons that can happen - there are others, and there will be others I haven't heard of, but this is a start to maybe stimulate some thought on your part, Dear Reader. 

To begin with, there are lifestyle vulnerabilities, which I wrote about here. I won't rep[eat that content here, this is just to stimulate some thought and, maybe, research, so ... do Lt. General Milley proud, and click on the link 😁

The next point is failing to work with (not "manage" - these are valuable tools) emotions. See here, and especially the links there (don't forget to keep Lt. General Milley proud 😁 ).

Next, consider: 

• fear of complexity; 
• being "flummoxed by the unfamiliar"; and
  
• the concept of negative learning.
  

The other risk factor I have become aware of as I age and my health declines (partly due to work pressures/expectations in our neoliberal poisoned society) is that of exhaustion. 

When you are young, healthy, and feeling strong, it is easy enough to take on a task ... but it is another to keep at it after a half century of a challenging life, a life exposed to the bigotry that is society's underbelly, combined with lifestyle vulnerabilities, family issues, and the effects of appalling governance from neoliberals and authoritarians. 

This is part of why I am aiming to finish the Magickal Battle of the World series by the end of the year: that will allow me to take fuller advantage of the end of the year work break. 

But I can now well understand how people who are desperately, desperately exhausted, ill, or afraid, can make decisions that they may regret - in some cases, even seconds later.

For those not in such situations, please consider that we need to be kinder, gentler, and generous to each other - and ALL sentient life. 

I know I'm going to think more kindly of those who try to change or manage problem situations / systems "from within".

Some thoughts on thinking

Back in the 1980s, I had a colleague who worked as a sub-contractor, rather than as an employee. He talked me into wanting to change from being an employee to a subbie, largely on the basis of the extra money. My manager at that time listed all the problems: no super, no holidays, etc - the higher money was supposed to cover that, and greater insecurity. I favoured security, so chose to stay as an employee. 

Fast forward a few years, and the same manager was trying to talk me into shifting from being an employee to being a subbie ... because of the higher money. 

The insecurity issue was basically laughed at: "oh you'll be OK". 

Anyone in that situation who starts to look at the minutiae of the second "offer" without considering the broader context and what this all meant for them is not thinking properly - I would go so far as to say they were being stupid. 

I challenged that manager quite bluntly, asking if he was lying then or now, and he was so flustered he couldn't think of a response to that - other than a blatant lie that he was trying to look out for me.

What he was looking out for was what was the company considered best for the company - and there had been changes in employment law and business management thinking where they considered worker insecurity - which they misdescribed as worker flexibility - was "better" for the company. 

In my opinion, all it did was relieve the company management of the need to think ahead, plan, and manage the business's needs and the workers reasonable expectations. Instead, they could lazily respond to the currents of the day and things as they noticed them. 

Yes, this was the start of neoliberalism, when the competence and quality of management started degrading. 

Getting sucked in to the manager's worldview (or "the premise of the question") would have been flawed thinking. 

Giving in to that flawed thinking would likely have been as a result of unacknowledged emotions. 

Unacknowledged emotions leads me to the next example, roughly a couple of decades later, of "flawed" (non) thinking, which was a notoriously sexist (to the point of misogyny, at times) male telling a trans woman that he had "naturally" assumed she would have lived her home life as if she were male.

It showed that male's bias towards a false view that being male was somehow "better" - that is, it was sexism personified. 

It was also utterly stupid, as it showed no mental effort whatsoever had been expended to come to terms with the FACT that the woman was clearly NOT of the view that being male was "better", and the assumption that a woman would arrange her home life as if was male was utterly moronic.

All of this came about because of that arrogant male's incompetence with emotions - to the extent that he was unaware that he had emotions. 

However, knowing and being comfortable with emotions doesn't automatically mean one is a clear thinker, either. 

Chronologically between the two events is one where I helped a (then) friend help her friend (all of us female) escape from a domestic violence situation. 

Friend's friend had to go to court to get a court order, and the two of us accompanied her for support. I don't remember the details now, but the aim was to get an order relating to personal property. The judge pointed out that the orders did not normally include one form of support friend's friend wanted, but he would specifically include that in this case, and they just needed to tell the court officer. 

This is where friend and friend's friend emotions overwhelmed their mind: their "thinking" was along the lines of "well of course that is right and just and proper, and friend's friend deserves that, so the law SHOULD be providing it and therefore it does". 

The FACT that the law didn't provide that was swamped by the emotions on the topic of what they both considered - and they were morally right on this, albeit not legally - friend's friend should have. 

When talking to the court officer, who said "no, the law does not require that", instead of saying "the judge told us to tell you he had added - please read the order a bit further on", they reacted from a view that what they thought should be was, and were angry - to the point of cutting me off when I tried to explain that. (They understood what I was saying hours later, that evening - and were so insecure they still resisted it.) 

Clear thinking in humans is not just a matter of developing powers of logic, induction/deduction, etc. Humans also have emotions - even, and perhaps especially, in the ones who deny or try to control them (as evidenced by some judges' decisions being overturned on appeal, I suspect).

As I wrote in April, 2020: 

You can not
shine from your mind,
unless you first
shine from your heart. 

A plea for ideology-free, character & EI & clear thinking developing education

In my opinion, a major part of the problem with denialist and other anti-lockdown fantasists is flawed thinking. Loss of trust is a key part also, true, but if the denialists were thinking clearly and understanding their emotions, they would understand that they have wrongly conflated expert medical advice with all government pronouncements, whereas those that are enacting expert medical advice are different. 

This happens for two reasons, also IMO:

1. Parents being unable to break free of the conditioning they had which limits their emotional intelligence (EI) and ability to think clearly; 
2. Education systems that have been poisoned by ideology - neochristianity for millennia, neoliberalism over the last four decades, and a general warped view that - effectively - people are economic cogs and nothing else ... which is shown particularly by every single teacher who is uncomfortable with the notion of teaching EI and/or clear thinking (both of which lead to a better character) in schools.
   

We need better education - and it is going to take three generations before such change is embedded into society, so, allowing for lobbying time beforehand, this may take a century or more. 

We don't have that much time, so adults are also going to have be taught these traits. 

The good news is, many either have these traits, or are open to them. It is the minority that have been most damaged by ideology that most need - and most deserve - help on thee aspects. 

Trying to provide that help in the midst of an inflamed, combative situation is obviously not going to work, but as soon as we get out the other side of the pandemic, we - the human species - need to start working on this.