This is a dossier of My Comments on published articles in the media
Comment on article in mainstream media titled ‘John Bolton threatens US sanctions against illegitimate ICC’ Sep 2018
If “The hard men of history are not deterred by fantasies of international law . . . etc.” then why is Mr Bolton reacting hysterically to the prospect of an investigation of the US by the ICC??
‘Letter to the Editor’ (was not published) referencing article on ‘The Arab Spring’ Mar 2018
Sir,
Some would argue there was never an ‘Arab Spring’ in the first place. There certainly were serious popular uprisings in a few Arab countries demanding political reforms.
But the ‘Arab Spring’ label was a western media fabrication predicated on the presumption that uprisings would be, and would be made to be, ‘western-politics-friendly, hence a ‘spring’ … Democracy was not the real game of western powers. This is a very significant distinction, which you rightly allude to in your article.
Today, the devastated political, as well as physical, landscapes in Arab countries from North Africa to the Gulf attest to the significance of this distinction!
Alas, it’s time we called the Arab Spring by its real name: the ‘Arab Dark Winter’, from which there is still no reprieve in sight!
Sincerely,
Comment on article on ‘The Rise of the Robots’ Mar 2018
I don’t know why I get the feeling that this article is telling us ‘the story so far’, which is not where the worries lurk.
The worries are in what might be hidden in the ‘next leap’, which we might have expected an “excited robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) researcher” to tell us about.
We worry about what we don’t know and this article is not helping us to have a better understanding of a tomorrow’s world dominated by robots and AI. Statements like “Such systems will not replace doctors” can only provoke the response: really?!
It is clear that today’s robots “can’t sit down with patients to discuss symptoms or review treatment plans” but isn’t that why researchers at MIT are developing these ‘soft material’ super intelligent robots, precisely so they can take over these tasks?
At the heart of debates about technology is the exponential speed of technology’s advance. We no longer have the luxury of a whole generation to change from one technology to another, so throw-away sentences like “many of them have since found other meaningful vocations suited to their skills” are no longer meaningful ..
Researchers presumably know a lot about what is awaiting humanity and at what speed. They also know why certain technologies are being developed; it is no longer easy to understand the ‘why’ beyond the fact that they ’can’ …
So when researchers go ‘on the defensive’ it only raises our doubts. After all, by their own admission they are “working to transform science fiction into science, and science into reality” and that is fine, but ultimately how do we know the ‘Terminator joke’ is not on us?
‘Letter to the Editor’ (was not published) referencing article on ‘The Arab Spring’ Jan 2018
Sir,
Isn’t it time we put to bed the whole nonsense about the so-called Arab Spring?
The ‘Arab Spring’ was no more than a myth created and promoted by western media. If we must use euphemisms, the politically and/or physically and/or humanly devastated landscapes from Tunisia to Baghdad bear witness instead to a Dark Winter from which no reprieve is in sight.
The illusion of ‘nobility of purpose’ that western media brandishes every time the debate moves to ‘other countries’ sits quite comfortably with the real drivers of western powers’ political manoeuvres in regions such as the Middle East: power, influence, access to resources and markets … these are the real drivers.
The reality is that the welfare of an Egyptian, Syrian or Tunisian citizen comes very low on the list of priorities for policy makers in Washington, London, or Paris.
Democracy, freedom of expression, freedom from repression … great ideals dispersed and freely offered as if from a God to his worshippers … but quickly discarded when hard truths reveal real intents, real issues and real needs of a ‘West’ that remains totally wedded to ideas of superiority and dominance.
Witness the West’s support for countless regimes with not a whiff of democracy, and the hostility towards or overthrow of democratically elected governments simply because they refuse to come under the ‘power umbrella’ of the west … witness western governments acquiescence in the subjugation of two and a half million Palestinians to military rule by occupation forces which see nothing in midnight raids on homes to take away children for detention and torture because they ‘threw stones at soldiers’ … (see documentary on https://vimeo.com/86575949)
Alas, an Arab Spring there never was; the few rays of sun that might have been, were soon turned into searing fires of a neo-colonialism attempt by mass and social media, which ended as all such attempts end …
Sincerely,
Comment on article about Facebook founder, Zuckerberg c. 2017
The human mind is very complex, but we’re still tempted to make simplifications .. and here is one: does Mr Zuckerberg think he is entitled to give us a piece of his mind because a) he has loads of money (which would be quite ‘American’, witness Trump ..), or b) he controls an organisation which has a big influence on our lives (which he denies)?
Comment on article about ‘Western Liberalism’ c. 2017
You may well be more sceptical now but, I fear, perhaps not sceptical enough!
Were you so, you might have asked the right question, instead of trying to find the right answer to the wrong question ..
The question is not whether other nations and peoples are right to seek alternatives to western notions of progress.
The question is why western notions of progress failed.
You say “It was remarkably arrogant to believe the rest of the world would passively adopt our script”.
Yes it was, but the fact is that the rest of the world did adopt the western script.
Until, that is, the script was shown to be defective, corrupted to the core .. Witness the financial and economic crises of 2007-8, brought about by the pillars of western ‘notions of progress’. Witness the corruption of democracy in the US, which by all accounts can now be described as a ‘plutocracy’, and this is the nation that attacked other countries and killed hundreds of thousands in the name of democracy .. We can go on. And you are right, that Trump only brought in sharp focus the extent to which the ‘notions of progress’ have been corrupted.
You might have been a little kinder to your hosts in Moscow. After all, had you listened a little more carefully, you might have found the right question to ask!
Robert R Domloge 