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I’m just back from France, where my direct experience of riots and looting was non-existent, although I had walked past a Montpellier branch of Swarkowski the day before it ceased to be. My indirect experience was quite extensive though, since I watched the talking heads on French TV project their instant analysis onto the unfolding anarchy. Naturally, they discovered that all their existing prejudices were entirely confirmed by events. The act that caused the wave of protests and then wider disorder was the police killing of Nahel Merzouk, 17, one of a succession of such acts of police violence against minorites. Another Arab kid from a poor area. French police kill about three times as many people as the British ones do, though Americans can look away now.
One of the things that makes it difficult for me to write blogs these days is the my growing disgust at the professional opinion-writers who churn out thought about topics they barely understand, coupled with the knowledge that the democratization of that practice, about twenty years ago, merely meant there were more people doing the same. And so it is with opinion writers and micro-bloggers about France, a ritual performance of pre-formed clichés and positions, informed by some half-remembered French history and its literary and filmic representations (Les Misérables, La Haine), and, depending on the flavour you want, some some Huntingtonian clashing or some revolting against structural injustice. Francophone and Anglophone commentators alike, trapped in Herderian fantasies about the nation, see these events as a manifestation of essential Frenchness that tells us something about that Frenchness and where it is heading to next. Rarely, we’ll get a take that makes some comparison to BLM and George Floyd.
I even read some (British) commentator opining that what was happening on French estates was “unimaginable” to British people. Well, not to this one, who remembers the wave of riots in 1981 (wikipedia: “there was also rioting in …. High Wycombe”) and, more recently, the riots in 2011 that followed the police shooting of a young black man, Mark Duggan, and where protest against police violence and racism soon spilled over into country-wide burning and looting, all to be followed by a wave of repression and punitive sentencing, directed by (enter stage left) Keir Starmer. You can almost smell the essential Frenchness of it all.
There is much to despair about in these French evenements. Police racism is real and unaddressed, and the situation people, mostly from minorities, on peripheral sink estates, is desperate. Decades of hand-wringing and theorizing, together with a few well-meaning attempts to do something have led nowhere. Both politicians and people need the police (in its varied French forms) to be the heroic front line of the Republican order against the civilizational enemy, and so invest it with power and prestige – particularly after 2015 when there was some genuine police heroism and fortitude during the Paris attacks – but then are shocked when “rogue elements” employ those powers in arbitrary and racist violence. But, no doubt, the possibility of cracking a few black and Arab heads was precisely what motivated many of them to join up in the first place.
On the other side of things, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France Insoumise are quite desperate to lay the mantle of Gavroche on teenage rioters excited by the prospect of a violent ruck with the keufs, intoxicated by setting the local Lidl on fire and also keen on that new pair of trainers. (Fun fact: the Les Halles branch of Nike is only yards from the fictional barricade where Hugo had Gavroche die.) There may be something in the riots as inarticulate protest against injustice theory, but the kids themselves were notably ungrateful to people like the LFI deputy Carlos Martens Bilongo whose attempts to ventriloquise their resistance were rewarded with a blow on the head. Meanwhile, over at the Foxisant TV-station C-News, kids looting Apple stores are the vanguard of the Islamist Great Replacement, assisted by the ultragauche. C-News even quote Renaud Camus.
Things seem to be calming down now, notably after a deplorable attack on the home of a French mayor that left his wife with a broken leg after she tried to lead her small children to safety. As a result, the political class have closed ranks in defence of “Republican order” since “democracy itself” is now under threat. I think one of the most tragic aspects of the last few days has been the way in which various protagonists have been completely sincere and utterly inauthentic at the same time. The partisans of “Republican order” and “democracy” perform the rituals of a system whose content has been evacuated, yet they don’t realise this as they drape tricolours across their chests. With political parties gone or reduced to the playthings of a few narcissistic leaders, mass absention in elections, the policy dominance of a super-educated few, and the droits de l’homme at the bottom of the Mediterranean, what we have is a kind of zombie Republicanism. Yet the zombies believe, including that all French people, regardless of religion or race, are true equals in the indivisible republic. At the same time, those cheering on revolt and perhaps some of those actually revolting, sincerly believing in the true Republicanism of their own stand against racism and injustice, even as the kids pay implicit homage to the consumer brands in the Centres Commerciaux. But I don’t want to both-sides this: the actual fighting will die down but there will be war in the Hobbesian sense of a time when the will to contend by violence is sufficiently known, until there is justice for boys like Nahel and until minorities are really given the equality and respect they are falsely promised in France, but also in the UK and the US. Sadly, the immediate prospect is more racism and more punishment as the reaction to injustice is taken as the problem that needs solving.
Guest post by Jacqueline R. McAllister and Daniel Krcmaric
The International Criminal Court (ICC) shocked the world on March 17 by issuing arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova. The ICC indicated it has reasonable grounds to believe that each bears criminal responsibility for unlawfully deporting and transferring children from occupied Ukraine to Russia—considered war crimes under international law. Rather than starting its ongoing investigation in Ukraine with arrest warrants for “small fry” war criminals, the ICC rolled the dice by going after its most prominent target ever: Vladimir Putin. Often considered the “most powerful man in the world,” Putin is the first leader with a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council—and the first leader with an arsenal of nuclear weapons—to face an ICC arrest warrant.
What does all of this mean going forward? And how will the ICC arrest warrants influence the war in Ukraine?
It is important to start by managing expectations: Neither Putin nor Lvova-Belova is likely to land in the ICC’s dock anytime soon. Since the ICC does not have a police force, it relies on state cooperation for enforcement. Russia refuses to recognize the ICC, and it is inconceivable that Putin and Lvova-Belova will voluntarily turn themselves into the court. The road ahead for securing justice will be bumpy.
Nonetheless, the ICC’s arrest warrants may have several implications for the war, some negative, some positive.
In terms of negative implications, the ICC arrest warrants are unlikely to deter Russian forces from continuing to commit atrocities in Ukraine. In fact, they may perversely convince Russians to double down on their atrocity crimes. This may already be happening in Ukraine. During his surprise visit to Russian-occupied Mariupol after the warrants were announced, Putin thumbed his nose at the ICC by visiting a children’s center. Other Russian authorities have responded to the ICC arrest warrants by signaling that “more deportations are on the way.” Ukrainian civilians—the very people who have already borne the brunt of the war—may continue to suffer as their children are abducted and put on display in Red Square photo-ops and at concerts celebrating the war.
The ICC arrest warrants are also likely to make it harder for Ukraine and its Western allies to reach a negotiated settlement with Russia. The logistics of negotiating peace are more complex now that Putin is in the ICC’s sights. Will leaders in Western democracies be willing to negotiate directly with an accused war criminal? Might they insist that Putin be removed—as they did for other brutal leaders—as a precondition for meaningful negotiations? Will Putin be willing to travel abroad for a prospective peace conference? The ICC’s 123 member states now have a legal obligation to arrest him if he ever sets foot on their territory, making them undesirable sites for a peace conference. It is possible that China, fresh off its role in brokering a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia, could play host. But China’s actions thus far have convinced Western officials that it would not be a neutral broker in Ukraine.
There are some positive implications, however. The arrest warrants could facilitate efforts to hold Putin and other top leaders criminally accountable. For example, following Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević’s indictment at the Yugoslav Tribunal, several of his key associates began sharing a wealth of much-needed evidence. As Yugoslav Tribunal Deputy Prosecutor Graham Blewitt explained in an interview with one of the authors, “Milošević opened up other areas of interest. Once he was indicted for Kosovo, we could then bring indictments for Bosnia and Croatia, because people talked to us. Some people were trying to do the right thing, and some people wanted to do deals.” In conjunction with military intelligence from Western governments, such testimony and documents linking top leaders to crimes proved crucial for prosecuting those who were previously beyond the Yugoslav Tribunal’s reach. It is possible that some in Putin’s inner circle could end up doing the same for the ICC.
If history is any indication, the ICC’s arrest warrants may also shore up support for Ukraine’s war effort, particularly from NATO. During the Kosovo War, the Yugoslav Tribunal’s indictment of Milošević helped to solidify support for NATO’s Operation Allied Force in Kosovo. Specifically, as NATO’s air campaign ground on with seemingly no end in sight, pressure mounted in Western capitals to bring hostilities to a close. In the face of such pressure, keeping the Alliance together posed a real challenge. The Milošević indictment, according to NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark, was “a huge win. Nothing was more likely to stiffen the Allies’ resolve and push us forward into a winning situation than this indictment.”
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine over a year ago, questions have persisted about whether NATO, the US, and European Union will sustain their crucial support for Ukraine’s war effort over the long haul. Indeed, Putin seems to be gambling that Ukraine’s supporters will eventually falter in their commitment to its cause. If NATO’s experience in Kosovo is any indication, the ICC’s arrest warrants might help Ukraine’s backers to keep calling Putin’s bluff.
Jacqueline R. McAllister is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Kenyon College and will join the State Department’s Office of Global Criminal Justice in 2023 as a Council on Foreign Relations fellow. Her research appears in leading scholarly and foreign affairs magazines. Daniel Krcmaric is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University and the author of The Justice Dilemma: Leaders and Exile in an Era of Accountability. He is currently writing a book about the turbulent relationship between the United States and the International Criminal Court.
The Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) has awarded a €8.9 million “Cluster of Excellence” grant to the “Knowledge in Crisis” project headed by philosopher Tim Crane (Central European University).
The project involves researchers at CEU as well as the Universities of Vienna, Graz and Salzburg. The universities themselves have also committed money to the project, bringing its total funding to roughly €15 million. The project looks at how recent social and technological deveopments affect knowledge:
Today we face a crisis of knowledge. Our claims to knowledge are being threatened by rapid and spectacular developments in technology, and by attacks on the very ideas of knowledge and truth themselves. The flood of information on the internet challenges our ability to tell truth from falsehood, and there is a widespread rejection of the standards of scientific evidence and expertise. The crisis raises deep philosophical questions about knowledge, truth, science, ethics, and politics, and ultimately about our relationship to reality itself. These questions will be addressed in entirely new ways by this Cluster of Excellence, which will work to understand the crisis of knowledge in all its manifestations, and to find ways to combat it and reshape our relationship to knowledge.
Professor Crane writes that the aim of the project is to “to investigate various challenges to scientific and other knowledge by connecting many otherwise unconnected areas of philosophy: metaphysics, ethics, political and social philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. The idea is to bring together areas of philosophy which are often isolated from one another, with the aim of getting a deeper understanding of the current crises of knowledge.”
He notes that the funds will be used for, among other things, 18 new academic appointments (postdocs and professors) and for funding PhD students.
The board of directors for the Knowledge in Crisis Project (l to r): Katalin Farkas, Marian David, Paulina Sliwa, Max Kölbel, Tim Crane, Hans Bernhard Schmid, and Charlotte Werndl.
In addition to Professor Crane, the project’s board of directors includes:
You can learn more about the Cluster of Excellence awards here.
Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)
Last fall, it looked like trouble for Microsoft when the European Union launched an in-depth investigation into its acquisition of Activision, but it now seems that Microsoft will emerge victorious. Three people familiar with the European Commission’s opinion on the matter told Reuters that, by agreeing to make a few more concessions, Microsoft will likely win EU antitrust approval on April 25.
According to Reuters, the European Commission is not expected to ask Microsoft to divest large parts of Activision—like separating out its Call of Duty business—to win approval. Instead, long-term licensing deals of lucrative games that Microsoft has offered to rivals could suffice, in addition to agreeing to “other behavioral remedies to allay concerns of other parties than Sony,” one insider told Reuters.
Microsoft declined Ars' request to comment, but the company told Reuters that it is "committed to offering effective and easily enforceable solutions that address the European Commission's concerns." Microsoft has previously opposed any proposed remedies forcing the merged companies to sell the Call of Duty franchise.
The European Parliament formally approved a law to ban the sale of new gas and diesel cars in the European Union starting in 2035 in a move designed to speed up the transition to electric vehicles.
The new legislation, which is part of a broader effort by the EU to combat climate change, says that by 2035, carmakers must achieve a 100% cut in carbon-dioxide emissions from new cars sold, which means no new fossil fuel–powered vehicles could be sold in the 27-country bloc.
With 340 votes in favor, 279 against and 21 abstentions, the new rules also set a path for more immediate emissions reductions targets. New cars and vans sold from 2030 will have to meet a 55% and 50% cut in emissions, respectively, compared to 2021 levels. The previous 2030 emissions target for new cars sold was 37.5%.
The law was first accepted by negotiators from EU countries, the European Parliament and the European Commission in October last year, so Tuesday’s approval is just a step before the law gets a formal rubber stamp and the rules begin to take effect. That’s expected to happen in March.
Member of the European Parliament Jan Huitema said these target revisions are crucial steps if Europe wants to reach climate neutrality by 2050.
“These targets create clarity for the car industry and stimulate innovation and investments for car manufacturers,” Huitema said in a statement. “Purchasing and driving zero-emission cars will become cheaper for consumers and a second-hand market will emerge more quickly. It makes sustainable driving accessible to everyone.”
However, some automakers, industry players and countries have been giving the EU pushback ever since the law was proposed in July 2021. Renault, for example, said in 2021 that it would seek an extension to the proposed plan to ban internal combustion engine vehicle sales in the EU by 2035, instead hoping to push out the transition to 2040 so it could provide more affordable cars to EV buyers.
As a result of resistance, the final deal approved Tuesday includes flexibilities, including a caveat for small carmakers producing fewer than 10,000 vehicles per year to be able to negotiate weaker targets until 2036.
EU formally bans sale of gas and diesel cars from 2035 by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch
Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)
The European Commission, which is tasked with tackling disinformation online, this week expressed disappointment that Twitter has failed to provide required data that all other major platforms submitted. Now Twitter has been hit with a "yellow card," Reuters reported, and could be subjected to fines if the platform doesn’t fully comply with European Union commitments by this June.
“We must have more transparency and cannot rely on the online platforms alone for the quality of information,” the commission’s vice president of values and transparency, Věra Jourová, said in a press release. “They need to be independently verifiable. I am disappointed to see that Twitter['s] report lags behind others, and I expect a more serious commitment to their obligations.”
Earlier this month, the EU’s commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton, met with Twitter CEO Elon Musk to ensure that Musk understood what was expected of Twitter under the EU’s new Digital Services Act (DSA). After their meeting, Musk tweeted that the EU’s “goals of transparency, accountability & accuracy of information are aligned” with Twitter’s goals. But he also indicated that Twitter would be relying on Community Notes, which let users add context to potentially misleading tweets to satisfy DSA requirements on stopping misinformation and disinformation spread. That process seems to be the issue the commission has with Twitter’s unsatisfactory report.
Science now has a cabinet seat, but Britain’s world-leading reputation is fading fast
Another day brings yet another cabinet reshuffle to a weary Britain, but to the university community, it was welcome news to see “science” getting a dedicated department and a seat at the cabinet table. It fits with Rishi Sunak’s pledge to make the UK a “science and technology superpower” and was partially in response to a cross-party House of Lords science and technology committee report on the UK’s “somewhat incoherent” international science policy.
Across the world, Britain is renowned for its universities and world-leading research. A scholarship to study at Oxford, the world’s oldest English-speaking university, is what brought me from tropical Miami to England, and then Scotland. Sadly, the past decade has seen the UK university sector losing its lustre for students and faculty. While it’s easy to talk about making science a priority, supporting world-leading research requires action and concrete steps that go beyond rhetoric. To make the UK a “science superpower” means addressing at least three crucial components.
Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh
Continue reading...University leaders urge ministers to provide bridging finance to keep projects running when EU support ends this year
Universities in Wales face more than 1,000 skilled jobs being lost because of the withdrawal of EU structural funds, with leaders saying that the replacement finance promised by ministers will not match the lost support.
Since 2014 Welsh universities have received about £370m in research projects from EU structural funds but, after the UK’s withdrawal, its support for 60 ongoing projects will end this year.
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The European Research Council (ERC) recently announced the winners of their sizable “Consolidator Grants,” and several philosophers were among them.
They are:
A.J. Cotnoir (University of St Andrews)
“Instruments of Unity: the Many Ways of Being One”
We perceive unities everywhere: from ant colonies to cellular automata, from organisms to organisations. Yet we have little understanding of the general constraints by which they are unified. The Instruments of Unity Project tackles this abstract question in a way that provides concrete applicable answers. The core hypothesis: unity is a complex pluralistic phenomenon, requiring a multifaceted theoretical approach. We identify unity relations across a variety of formal settings in a way that is receptive to insights and tools from the cognitive and computing sciences, even addressing the ‘meta-question’ as to whether there’s any unity to the different types of unity. We plan to apply the resulting framework to problems in metaphysics, social ontology, and formal ontology. Along the way, we seek to rehabilitate a more holistic ‘carving’-based metaphysics over against the dominant reductionistic ‘building’-based paradigm. (€1.7 million)
Dennis Lehmkuhl (University of Bonn)
“The Centre of Gravity Project”
The foundations of the general theory of relativity (GR) were laid by Albert Einstein in 1915. But much of what has been built on those foundations was developed in the Renaissance Period of GR between 1955 and 1975. In these years, several researchers built on Einstein’s foundations, but also revolutionized the mathematical tools and physical concepts within GR. Indeed, without the concepts and tools formed during this Renaissance, the recent observation of gravitational waves, rewarded with the Nobel Prize in physics in 2017, and the convincing prediction of and mounting evidence for the existence of black holes, rewarded with the Nobel Prize in physics in 2020, would not have been possible. And yet, these developments have not been properly investigated by historians or philosophers of science thus far. The goal of The Centre of Gravity Project (COGY) is to close this gap. The project will combine pioneering research on the published papers and literary estates of the core figures of the Renaissance period—such as Sir Roger Penrose, Stephen Hawking, Sir Hermann Bondi, Jürgen Ehlers and John Wheeler—with the analysis of detailed oral-history interviews. The aim is to get to the bottom of the most advanced mathematical techniques and conceptual innovations of GR, concepts like black holes, event horizons, and trapped surfaces.The project team will consist of historians and philosophers of physics as well as physicists and mathematicians. (€1.99 million)
Gry Oftedal (University of Oslo)
“Self-Assembly: Shifting our View of Life”
The project aims to build a new theoretical framework within the philosophy of science for understanding and explaining life, by bringing in the increasing knowledge about selfassembly processes from the life sciences. Researchers in the project will develop a comprehensive analysis of self-assembly across scales and look at differences and similarities to ideas of self-organization. We will challenge current ideas of mechanist and interventionist accounts of explanation and aim to build bridges between mechanist and organicist ideas of life. (€1.97 million)
Christian Vassallo (University of Calabria)
“Assessing Philosophical Authors and Texts from Herculaneum and Elsewhere on Early Stoicism: Insights into Ancient Logic, Physics, and Ethics towards a new von Arnim”
The project aims to remake, through a team of researchers and a task force of American and European universities, the Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, that is the edition of fragments and testimonies concerning the first phase of early Stoicism. (€2 million)
Susana Viegas (NOVA University of Lisbon)
“Film-Philosophy as a Meditation on Death”
“Film-Philosophy as a Meditation on Death” explores the affinities between philosophy and cinema. The research project seeks to bring together two distinct practices, but with a common interest in the theme of death, without which one would not have begun to philosophize and for which films show a special interest as a narrative and formal motif. To substantiate an emerging area of philosophical studies, such as Philosophy of Cinema, will be one of the main contributions of this project that seeks to understand the paradoxical situation in which we live: if on the one hand, we avoid thinking about death on our daily lives, we readily discuss the theme when it appears in films or television series. (€1.7 million)
According to European Research Council President Maria Leptin, “ERC Consolidator grants support researchers at a crucial time of their careers, strengthening their independence, reinforcing their teams and helping them establish themselves as leaders in their fields. And this backing above all gives them a chance to pursue their scientific dreams.”
In total, the ERC awarded €657 million to 321 researchers in this round of grants. For more information, including links to the full list of grant recipients, go here.
Data shows sharp decline in students from Italy, Germany and France with Brexit seen as primary deterrent
The number of EU students enrolling in British universities has more than halved since Brexit – with sharp declines in scholars from Italy, Germany and France, figures reveal.
Brexit is seen as the primary deterrent, with home fees and student finance no longer available to EU students who do not already live in the UK with settled or pre-settled status.
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For years, Apple has imposed unfair restrictions on our businesses. These restrictions hamper our development and harm European consumers. They include the tying of the App Store to Apple's proprietary payment system, with its excessive commissions for app developers; the creation of artificial obstacles that prevent our businesses from freely communicating with our customers; restrictions to developers' access to data of their own users; and capricious changes to terms and conditions. Apple benefits from a monopoly position over its mobile ecosystem and extracts exorbitant rents from app developers who have no choice but to remain on the App Store to reach European consumers."The time has come for urgent action from the EU to end Apple's abusive behaviors," the letter says, citing the newly passed Digital Markets Act (DMA) and calling for its swift enforcement. "The EU has the opportunity to take the lead, but it must act fast, as every day that passes is a loss for innovation and for the welfare of European consumers," it continues.
We therefore call for a rapid decision in the competition case against Apple for its illegal, anti-competitive behavior involving music streaming services. Many of the anti-competitive behaviors described in the Commission's Statement of Objections against Apple are felt not only by music streaming services but by countless other app providers who wish to offer goods and services via the iOS App Store. That Statement of Objections is nearly two years old and the abuses and consumer harm will continue until a remedy is enforced. Beyond the specific App Store case, the EU authorities urgently need to look at Apple's abusive behavior in other areas as well, such as publishing, web software, communications, and marketplaces.Apple has been repeatedly accused of unfair and anti-competitive business practices in its App Store, with Spotify being one of the most vocal critics. In October, Spotify published a press release accusing Apple of damaging "Spotify's and other developers' abilities to provide a seamless user experience" and stated these restrictions "hurt both creators and consumers alike."
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