Wilczek (2008), Frank, The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces, Basic Books 2008 ' In this excursion to the outer limits of particle physics, Wilczek explores what quarks and gluons, which compose protons and neutrons, reveal about the manifestation of mass and gravity. A corecipient of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics, Wilczek knows what he’s writing about; the question is, will general science readers? Happily, they know what the strong interaction is (the forces that bind the nucleus), and in Wilczek, they have a jovial guide who adheres to trade publishing’s belief that a successful physics title will not include too many equations. Despite this injunction (against which he lightly protests), Wilczek delivers an approachable verbal picture of what quarks and gluons are doing inside a proton that gives rise to mass and, hence, gravity. Casting the light-speed lives of quarks against “the Grid,” Wilczek’s term for the vacuum that theoretically seethes with quantum activity, Wilczek exudes a contagious excitement for discovery. A near-obligatory acquisition for circulating physics collections.' --Gilbert Taylor  
Amazon   back

Willans (1954), Geoffrey, and Ronald Searle, , Max Parrish 1954 A guide to Sukcess fo tiny pupils including all there is to know about SPACE. back

Woolf (1925, 1992), Virginia, and Elaine Showalter (introduction & notes), Mrs Dalloway, Penguin Books 1992 Introduction: Woolf's literary standing has changed drastically over the last thirty years, but the character of Mrs Dalloway remains puxzzling. As Margaret Drabble has pointed out, like her predecessors Jane Austen and George Eliot, Woolf 'chose on the whole to describe women less gifted, intellectually less audacious, more conventional that herself. Indeed, in writing her fourth novel, at a moment that marked her own sense of artistic independence and maturity, Woolf chose as her heroine a London society lady whom even she thought 'too glittery & tinsely.' Woolf's contemporaries found Clarsissa class-bound and slight.'  
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Alex Lo (2025_07_04), My Take | How to undermine the US dollar and destroy its monetary system, 'Think of the US Supreme Court. It was historically the most trusted branch of the US government. But by stacking it with conservative ideologues, the highest court is losing public trust because it is increasingly seen as being aligned with the agenda of the Republican Party and the president. A compromised Fed means yields and borrowing costs will rise. That is supposedly contrary to the low-interest rate environment that Trump wants. But don’t expect well-thought-out policies from Trump. He wants power and control as he equates the personal with the presidential. I asked a Post expert, who doesn’t seem to think the Fed will lose its independence, what could happen if it did. He said that “softballing it would lead to gradual deterioration over the long term. Hardballing it would lead to instant chaos and destruction”. We should never underestimate Trump’s ability to undermine or destroy America’s foundational institutions. Great civilisations and powers, according to Arnold Toynbee, die by suicide, rarely murder.' back

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (2025_07_03), Trump has dropped a big, beautiful bomb on America’s economy , Donald Trump is making a fatal, irreversible error in his vindictive bill ' China’s leaders must be wondering whether they are hallucinating or whether America’s political class really has lost its mind, committing economic and geopolitical self-harm on a breathtaking scale. Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” marks a wholesale retreat from swaths of advanced manufacturing and energy technology. It abandons a central front of the Sino-American superpower contest without a fight. “Utterly insane and destructive. The bill will cause immense strategic harm to our country,” said Elon Musk, now the arch-apostate, perhaps soon to be punished, asset-stripped and deported. The big bill is the latest in a series of Luddite measures that let China run away with the electro-tech revolution and much of the future global market for cars, trucks, short-haul aviation, home heating and cooling, smart grids, power storage and the products that deliver the cheapest energy ever known to man. The think tank Ember says China is electrifying its economy at a rate of 10 percentage points a decade. It has already surpassed 30pc of final energy, well on its way to becoming the world’s first electro-superpower. America has been stuck in the low 20s since 2008, lulled into complacency by its fracking boom. Europe has missed the boat too, without the same excuse. It talks big on electrons without delivering much, while clinging to imported molecules for its economic existence, failing to compete successfully on either. The woke and the anti-woke are still arguing about renewables but we are past that developmental phase. The big trillions are going to be made in the ways we use electricity. The International Energy Agency thinks the vast electro-tech market will be eight times larger than renewables by 2035.' back

Anne Appelbaum (2025_07_04), The U.S. Is Switching Sides, ' Russian soldiers also continue to be wounded or killed at extraordinary rates, with between 35,000 and 45,000 casualties every month, while billions of dollars’ worth of Russian equipment are destroyed every week by Ukrainian drones. The Russian economy suffers from high inflation and is heading for a recession. But Putin is not looking for a cease-fire, and he does not want to negotiate. Why? Because he believes that he can win. Thanks to the actions of the U.S. government, he still thinks that he can conquer all of Ukraine. Putin sees what everyone else sees: Slowly, the U.S. is switching sides. True, Trump occasionally berates Putin, or makes sympathetic noises toward Ukrainians, as he did last week when he seemed to express interest in a Ukrainian journalist who said that her husband was in the military. Trump also appeared to enjoy being flattered at the NATO summit, where European leaders made a decision, hailed as historic, to further raise defense spending. But thanks to quieter decisions by members of his own administration, people whom he has appointed, the American realignment with Russia and against Ukraine and Europe is gathering pace—not merely in rhetoric but in reality. [. . .] Europe, Canada, and most of the rest of the democratic world will continue to back Ukraine. As I have written before, Ukrainians will continue to innovate, to build new kinds of automated weapons, new drones, new software. They will continue to fight, because the alternative is the end of their civilization, their language, and, for many of them, their lives. The Ukrainians could still win. A different set of American policies could help them win faster. The U.S. could still expand sanctions on Russia, provide ammunition, and help the Ukrainians win the narrative war. The administration could stop the fighting, the missile attacks, and the lethal drone swarms; it could stop the pointless deaths that Trump has repeatedly said he opposes. By choosing to back Russia, the U.S. will ensure that the war continues. Only by backing Ukraine is there hope for peace. back

Arnold Toynbee, “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” , back

Ben Minster, Hannah Robertds & Megan Messerly (2025_06_28), Pope Leo looks to MAGA megadonors to shore up Church finances, ' VATICAN CITY — The new American pope is looking to his MAGA compatriots to shore up the Vatican’s finances after decades of scandal and mismanagement. The conclave that brought Pope Leo to power was overshadowed by painful divisions within the Church, a war between modernity and tradition, and bitter reflections over his predecessor’s complex legacy. But more prosaically it was also plagued by angst over a serious fiscal squeeze that is forcing the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics to moonlight as a fundraiser. Despite the Vatican’s vaults of priceless masterpieces, Leo has ascended to the papal throne amid a steepening liquidity crisis aggravated by a major downturn in donations from the U.S., making it increasingly difficult for the city state to function. Leo needs to fix it — but to do so he needs to keep traditionalist U.S. Catholics on side. Insiders say that Leo was elected in part because as an American he exuded an Anglo-Saxon financial seriousness. He was also seen as well positioned to bring back donations that have dried up thanks to persistent scandal and the hemorrhaging of support from powerful American Catholic conservatives. Already, the gambit seems to be working. “Talking to some of the biggest donors in the country, they’re absolutely thrilled,” said one conservative Catholic leader in the U.S., granted anonymity to speak candidly. “I don’t know that they’re already writing their checks. I don’t see that necessarily yet. But as far as their optimism and excitement, it’s a 10 out of 10 — absolutely.” A boost to donations is desperately needed. According to Reuters, the latest internal figures show the Vatican ran a deficit of €83 million in 2024, more than double the €38 million reported in its last-published financial report in 2022.' back

Carla Thackrah, The Last Violin, SYNOPSIS Charalambos Vatiliotis, or Harry, is considered Australia’s greatest living violin maker. He and his wife Maria came from Cyprus in the 1950s. Romano Crivici, a professional violinist and composer, has known Harry for 48 years. Together, they share the making of Romano’s last violin, which also threatens to be Harry’s last, as the ravages of old age take their toll. Shot in the one location – the home in the suburbs of Sydney which Harry and Maria have shared for over 60 years – the director has spent many days over many months charting the making of Harry and Romano’s last violin within the context of the love, friendship and care that each of the three protagonists shares. The director has been hands-off and observational, capturing the intimate and meditative process of hand-making a fine violin from a few rough pieces of wood together with the often comical interactions between Harry, Maria, and Romano, their friend of many years. An important element is an exquisite score by Romano Crivici performed on Harry’s instruments.' back

Dirac equation - Wikipedia, Dirac equation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In particle physics, the Dirac equation is a relativistic wave equation derived by British physicist Paul Dirac in 1928. In its free form, or including electromagnetic interactions, it describes all spin-1⁄2 massive particles such as electrons and quarks, for which parity is a symmetry, and is consistent with both the principles of quantum mechanics and the theory of special relativity, and was the first theory to account fully for special relativity in the context of quantum mechanics. It accounted for the fine details of the hydrogen spectrum in a completely rigorous way.' back

Gerardus 't Hooft (1999), Nobel Lecture 1999: A Confrontation with Infinity, ' Early attempts at constructing realistic models of the weak interaction were offset by the emergence of infinite, hence meaningless expressions when one tried to develop radiative corrections. When models based on gauge theories with Higgs mechanism were discovered to be renormalizable, the bothersome infinities disappeared - they cancelled out. If this success seemed to be due to sorcery, it may be of interest to explain the physical insights on which it is actually based.' back

International Constitutional Law (ICL), Project Information, ' International Constitutional Law (ICL) This project provides English translations of and other textual material related to constitutional documents. It cross-references those documents for quick comparison of constitutional provisions. These are the rules we try to rely on: All translations and ICL-Editions of publicly available translations are in American English to simplify comparative research. However, British English is used for documents officially published in that language. Paragraphs are numbered, inofficial titles put in square brackets to be included into the table of contents. News and background information is fact oriented. A set of ICL-keys is provided for most ICL-editions; we also include internal references to other provisions of the constitution. As a separate document, you will find a primer on International Constitutional Law And Comparing Constitutions with more details about the project's purposes and some references to related literature. If you have suggestions or questions or if you want to participate, please contact me back

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life - Wikipedia, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is a 2024 French romantic comedy film written and directed by Laura Piani. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on 9 September 2024. It was released in France on 22 January 2025 and in the United States by Sony Pictures Classics on May 23, 2025. Agathe is a French bookseller who works at Shakespeare and Company in Paris and lives with her sister and her sister's young son. She cycles everywhere, as she has been nervous in cars since her parents were killed in a car accident in which she was injured. She is very close to her co-worker and best friend Félix.' back

Jeffrey Nicholls (1967), How universal is the universe?, ' 61 The future is beyond our comprehension, but we can get an idea of it and speed its coming by studying what we already have. Contemplating the size and wonder of the universe as it stands in the light of its openness to the future must surely be a powerful incentive to men to love God. We have come a long way since the little world of St Thomas. Ours is open to all things, even participating in god. This is what I mean by universal. ' back

Jeffrey Nicholls (1987), A theory of Peace, ' The argument: I began to think about peace in a very practical way during the Viet Nam war. I was the right age to be called up. I was exempted because I was a clergyman, but despite the terrors that war held for me, I think I might have gone. It was my first whiff of the force of patriotism. To my amazement, it was strong enough to make even me face death.
In the Church, I became embroiled in a deeper war. Not a war between goodies and baddies, but the war between good and evil that lies at the heart of all human consciousness. Existence is a struggle. We need all the help we can get. Religion is part of that help and theology is the scientific foundation of religion.' back

Jeffrey Nicholls (1992a), An essay on value, ' 1: We must kill to live. The question before is is whether or not to kill some fraction of the old growth forest (OGF) in the Wingham management area (WMA) in order to keep the sawmilling operation at Mt George alive.
2: Religion: Although the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), as we have it, is a document based largely on resource, commercial and employment considerations, I believe the Commission is facing a religious issue, and will have no peace until it realizes that fact.
3: Matters of life and death are questions of religion. For those who have power over life and death, deciding what to kill is a question of value. The value system of any organism is determined by the history of its survival.
4: If the decision is good, the benefit from killing will exceed the value of what is destroyed, yielding a profit and enhanced probability of survival. A wrong judgement of value leads to the opposite result.' back

Jeffrey Nicholls (2001), Toward Natural Religion Project, ' I was brought up amidst Roman Catholic theology, and so it is my natural starting point. This theology embraces traditions many thousands of years old. It emphasizes the vast difference between the eternal life of God and our own lives. The Catholic God is omniscient, omnipotent, infinite, etc, and the Church tells us that we live in a world fatally flowed by original sin. This doctrine has very important social, political and economic consequences. Catholic theology is the fiction at the heart of a huge corporation, the Roman Catholic Church (RCC), which has power over the minds and actions of more than a billion people worldwide. Over two thousand years, the RCC has developed and embellished a 'history of salvation' which giving itself a central role in 'God's plan'. The Church gained its power using this history, and strategies ranging from war and occupation to promises of eternal salvation in return for earthly obedience. My religious environment led me to trust Catholic belief, and I set out to live it in a religious order, the Order of Preachers. I began to train for priesthood. I was convinced then that there is no salvation outside the Church. Life in the Order opened my eyes to a whole new world of knowledge, which at first looked beautiful. Soon, however, it began to clash with science I had learned at school. This conflict made me look around and eventually come to questions like: why does God have to be so different? Why can't the World be God? Why do we need the Church? back

Jeffrey Nicholls (2024_06_20), Cognitive Cosmogenesis, ' On moving theology toward natural science To make a long along story very short: The Universe either had a beginning or it is eternal. If it had a beginning it did not come from nowhere, so somewhere in the background is an eternal Creator. If theology is to be a science, then divinity, Θηος, must be observable since science is based on observation The existence of the world is gravitation. The essence of the world is quantum mechanics. In the structureless omnipotent initial singularity, essence and existence are identical. Gravitation is the creator. The creator brings everything into existence and we feel them all the time unless we are in free fall. Quantum mechanics is the designer, serving up forms to the creator to be made dynamic realities. back

Jon Cohen (2025_07_03), Left behind: In Lesotho and Eswatini, U.S. budget cuts threaten to wipe out years of progress against HIV , ' On 14 May, Temalangeni Dlamini, 20, traveled 10 kilometers from her rural home in southern Eswatini to the Matsanjeni Health Centre for the first checkup of her pregnancy, which was already 8 months along. Dlamini was hoping to give birth at the clinic, and this required an evaluation beforehand. The procedure included an HIV test, and to her surprise, Dlamini was positive. The doctor immediately put her on antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, which would also protect her child from infection. The small, low-slung brick clinic has long received assistance from the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which paid for nurses, outreach workers, cellphones, and internet access, and provided transport for staff to make home visits. But in January, President Donald Trump’s administration began dismantling PEPFAR’s main funder, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and scrapping thousands of grants and contracts.' back

Martinus J G Veltman (1999), Nobel Lecture 1999: From weak interactions to gravitation, ' This lecture is about my contribution to the renormalizability of gauge theories. There is of course no perfectly clear separation between my contributions and those of my co-laureate 't Hooft, but I will limit myself to some brief comments on those publications that carry only his name. An extensive review on the subject including detailed references to contemporary work can be found elsewhere. As is well known, the work on renormalizability of gauge theories caused a complete change in the landscape of particle physics.' back

Merdith, Mills & Xu (2025_07_02), Around 250 million years ago, Earth was near-lifeless and locked in a hothouse state. Now scientists know why, ' Known as the Permian–Triassic mass extinction – or the Great Dying – this was the most catastrophic of the five mass extinction events recognised in the past 539 million years of our planet’s history. Up to 94% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate families were wiped out. Tropical forests – which served, as they do today, as important carbon sinks that helped regulate the planet’s temperature – also experienced massive declines. Scientists have long agreed this event was triggered by a sudden surge in greenhouse gases which resulted in an intense and rapid warming of Earth. But what has remained a mystery is why these extremely hot conditions persisted for millions of years. Our new paper, published today in Nature Communications, provides an answer. The decline of tropical forests locked Earth in a hothouse state, confirming scientists’ suspicion that when our planet’s climate crosses certain “tipping points”, truly catastrophic ecological collapse can follow. [. . .] n the case of the Permian–Triassic mass extinction, plants were unable to respond on as rapid a time scale as 1,000 to 10,000 years. This resulted in a large extinction event. Overall, our results underline how important tropical and subtropical plant biomes and environments are to maintaining a climate equilibrium. In turn, they show how the loss of these biomes can contribute to additional climate warming – and serve as a devastating climate tipping point. back

Nicholas Rattenbury (2025_07_04), ' Lost in space: MethaneSat failed just as NZ was to take over mission control – here’s what we need to know now, ' This week’s announcement of the loss of a methane-detecting satellite, just days before New Zealand was meant to take over mission control, is a blow to the country’s space research sector. New Zealand invested NZ$29 million in the MethaneSat mission, built and operated by the US nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, with a goal of growing the nation’s space industry. This would have been accomplished through gaining experience in operating a satellite at the University of Auckland’s Te Pūnaha Ātea Space Institute, and through research led by a team at Earth Sciences New Zealand to use the satellite to measure agricultural sources of methane. But on June 20, the satellite lost power and contact with the ground, and appears to be irrecoverable. This is disappointing for everyone on the mission development and operations teams. [. . .] The satellite’s main mission was to detect methane leaks from oil and gas production, but it was also used to track methane sources from agriculture. New Zealand was not likely involved in the chain of events leading to the under-performance and delays, nor the eventual loss of the satellite. But as investors in the project, we are entitled to an explanation. [. . .] The satellite’s main mission was to detect methane leaks from oil and gas production, but it was also used to track methane sources from agriculture. New Zealand was not likely involved in the chain of events leading to the under-performance and delays, nor the eventual loss of the satellite. But as investors in the project, we are entitled to an explanation.' back

Richard Behiel (c), Deriving the Klein Gordon Equation, ' 0:00 Intro 0:38 Three Principles for the Dirac Equation 3:12 Square Root of the Mass Shell 7:30 Anticommutation Relations 9:50 The Dirac Matrices 10:58 The Dirac Equation 13:58 Spinors' back

Richard Behiel (h1), The Hydrogen Atom, Part 1 of 3: Intro to Quantum Physics , ' The first of a three-part adventure into the Hydrogen Atom. I'm uploading these in three parts, so that I can include your feedback in the videos as we go along. Part 2 will solve the Schrodinger equation, deriving the energy eigenstates and eigenvalues. Then we'll look at the hydrogen spectrum and see how these ideas make contact with experiment. Part 3 will go beyond Schrodinger, exploring how the Dirac equation relates to hydrogen and provides a natural explanation for spin (and a nice prediction of antimatter, too), and then we'll look at the Lamb shift and talk briefly about quantum electrodynamics. back

Spherical harmonics - Wikipedia, Spherical harmonics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In mathematics and physical science, spherical harmonics are special functions defined on the surface of a sphere. They are often employed in solving partial differential equations in many scientific fields. The table of spherical harmonics contains a list of common spherical harmonics. Since the spherical harmonics form a complete set of orthogonal functions and thus an orthonormal basis, every function defined on the surface of a sphere can be written as a sum of these spherical harmonics. This is similar to periodic functions defined on a circle that can be expressed as a sum of circular functions (sines and cosines) via Fourier series. Like the sines and cosines in Fourier series, the spherical harmonics may be organized by (spatial) angular frequency, as seen in the rows of functions in the illustration on the right. Further, spherical harmonics are basis functions for irreducible representations of SO(3), the group of rotations in three dimensions, and thus play a central role in the group theoretic discussion of SO(3).' back

Supreme Leader of Iran - Wikipedia, Supreme Leader of Iran - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Supreme Leader of Iran (Persian: رهبر ایران, romanized: rahbar-e irān) is the head of state of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Supreme Leader directs the executive system and judicial system of the Islamic theocratic government and is the commander-in-chief of the Iranian Armed Forces. The Supreme Leader is the highest-ranking political and religious authority of Iran. . . . . Khamenei also makes the final decisions on the amount of transparency in elections,]and has dismissed and reinstated presidential cabinet appointees. The Supreme Leader is legally considered "inviolable", with Iranians being routinely punished for questioning or insulting him. The Constitution stresses the importance of the clergy in government, with Article 4 stating that all civil, criminal, financial, economic, administrative, cultural, military, political, and all other statutes and regulations (must) be keeping with Islamic measures;…the Islamic legal scholars of the watch council (Shura yi Nigahban) will keep watch over this.' back

Table of spherical harmonics - Wikipedia, Table of spherical harmonics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' This is a table of orthonormalized spherical harmonics that employ the Condon-Shortley phase up to degree ℓ = 10 {\displaystyle \ell =10}. Some of these formulas are expressed in terms of the Cartesian expansion of the spherical harmonics into polynomials in x, y, z, and r.' back

Tess McClure (2025_06_30), Rusted screws, metal spikes and plastic rubbish: the horrific sexual violence used against Tigray’s women, ' Warning: this article contains extremely graphic and distressing testimony and images Tens of thousands of Tigrayan women report brutal wartime abuse by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers, such as gang-rape and the insertion of objects into their uteruses. But justice seems a distant prospect Photographs and reporting by Ximena Borrazas For two years, Tseneat carried her rape inside her. The agony never faded. It attacked her from the inside out. The remnants of the attack stayed in Tseneat’s womb – not as a memory or metaphor, but a set of physical objects: Eight rusted screws. A steel pair of nail clippers. A note, written in ballpoint pen and wrapped in plastic. “Sons of Eritrea, we are brave,” the note reads. “We have committed ourselves to this, and we will continue doing it. We will make Tigrayan females infertile.” The objects, revealed by X-ray and surgically extracted by doctors more than two years later, were forced inside Tseneat as she lay unconscious after being gang-raped by six soldiers. She is one of tens of thousands of Tigrayan women subjected to the most extreme forms of sexual violence, in attacks designed to destroy their fertility. Medical records and X-rays obtained by the Guardian and reviewed by independent medical specialists show a pattern of cases where women have had foreign bodies forced into their reproductive organs, including nails, screws, plastic rubbish, sand, gravel and letters. Under international law, it is genocide to destroy fertility or prevent births with the intention of wholly or partly destroying an ethnic group.' back

Tobin Hansen (2020_03_01), Securing U.S. Access to Rare Earth mElements, ' THE ISSUE Control over the production of critical minerals necessary for advanced defense and commercial manufacturing processes is a new feature of the escalating tensions between the United States and China over trade and security. This report explores the state of the supply chain for global critical materials—specifically rare earth elements (REEs)—and the near-monopoly that China holds over it. Additionally, it identifies unique aspects of the critical mineral production process that makes the supply chain particularly difficult to preserve and evaluates ongoing efforts by U.S. industry and policymakers to create a reliable critical minerals supply chain. The report concludes by assessing the likelihood that China cuts off U.S. access to their production capabilities and how effective current U.S. countermeasures are in preserving access to rare earth elements.' back

Victor Goury-Laffont (2025_07_02), Seine swimming pool opening gives Paris mayor another jewel in her green crown, ' PARIS — To many Parisians, swimming in the Seine sounds icky. But starting Saturday, taking a dip in the famed river while enjoying a view of the Eiffel Tower will officially become possible. For years, the notoriously skeptical Parisian public was unconvinced that the estimated €1.4 billion project was worth it, especially as authorities struggled to keep the water clean during the Olympics last summer. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, however, is not one to let critics or pessimists get in the way of her plan to transform the French capital from a polluted megacity into an oasis of urban sustainability. [. . .] Making the Seine swimmable is one of the final major projects Hidalgo will inaugurate before she leaves office next year. She will depart having overseen one of the most drastic makeovers Paris has undergone since the mid-19th century, when Napoleon III and Georges-Eugène Haussmann ripped up what was a fetid medieval city and laid the groundwork for Paris as it is today.' back

Vladimir Kara-Murza (2025_07_01), Justice is coming for Vladimir Putin, ' STRASBOURG, FRANCE — It is not often that one gets a front-seat view on history as I (literally) did last week, sitting in the visitors’ gallery at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and listening to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as he addressed European lawmakers on the establishment of the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine. The agreement setting up the new court was signed minutes earlier by Zelensky and Alain Berset, secretary general of the Council of Europe, on behalf of its 46 member states. Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter “Justice must work in a way that makes it clear to anyone planning such crimes, crimes of aggression, that accountability is certain,” Zelensky told parliamentarians in a late-night address. “And it will take strong political and legal cooperation to make sure every Russian war criminal faces justice — including Putin.” This last line was met with long and raucous applause in the chamber. [. . .] The sole crime over which the tribunal is authorized to indict, prosecute and convict is the crime of aggression, defined as the decision by one state to use armed force against another in violation of the U.N. Charter. [. . .] As I have argued many times, the main reason for the failure of Russia’s democratic transition in the 1990s — a failure that led us to where we are today, including the war in Ukraine — was the lack of accountability for crimes committed by the Soviet regime, both against its own people and against other countries. Vladimir Bukovsky, a prominent author and dissident, spent many months in 1991 and 1992 trying to convince the Russian government to organize a public Nuremberg-style trial for former leaders of the Communist Party and the KGB. In his landmark legal opinion issued in November 1992, Russian Constitutional Court Judge Anatoly Kononov argued for holding the former regime responsible under the relevant international statutes, including those relating to “genocide, war crimes, and crimes against peace and humanity.” But these calls went unheeded: Russia’s democratic leaders were unwilling to “rake up the past” and dismissed the idea of trials as a “witch-hunt.” “In that case the witches will return and start hunting us,” Bukovsky warned Kremlin officials at the time — and turned out to be exactly right.' back

Wayback Machine (2001_01_22), The Natural Religion Project: Natural Theology, Toward natural religion project This project is devoted to the construction of scientifically based religion. Each of us is shaped by nature and nurture. Human nature unfolded through billions of years of evolution. (Darwin, Jones) It is relatively fixed and a subject of the life sciences. From the natural point of view, we are all one species intimately linked to all the other species of life on earth. The defining feature of humanity is our ability to learn. Learning has enabled us to adapt culturally to the wide range of environments in which we now live. From the beginning of recorded history, we have developed explanatory stories to make sense of our shared experience. Myths guide and inspire us, and enable us to live in an ultimately uncontrollable and mysterious universe. But if our myths help us, they can also become entrenched and blind us to changing circumstances. I grew up Roman Catholic Church and learnt to see religion as obeisance to an invisible divinity communicated through the Church. Slowly (over about 40 years) I begun to see that this invisible being is in fact visible. My new god is my environment: my community, my planet, the whole universe and every creature in it. No one can survive alone. Religious beliefs handed from generation to generation bind us into organic groups educated in the arts of survival. Religion is an essential element of human ecology. (Reynolds & Tanner) Religion binds, but it also separates. The physical resources of the world are limited. This fact, together with variation and the propensity of life to reproduce exponentially, sets the stage for evolution by survival of the fit. Like plants and animals, strong religious organisms grow at the expense of the weak. The great religions of the world have exterminated or absorbed thousands of little religions in the course of their growth. The Hebrew Lord God of the Catholic Old Testament supports the martial conquest of the Promised Land by his Chosen People (Joshua, Miles 144) The gods of other conquerors similarly pleased with the exploits of their people. Even now most wars may be seen as holy wars. (Dower) The divine mandate justifies the immense pain and loss caused by conflict. It is clear that if we are to eliminate war from the earth, we must become one organism bound by one religion. The basic motivation of this project is the search for such religious unity ('global ecumenism'). I have been trying to take theology along the route pioneered by physics, beginning with Newton's celestial mechanics. (Moulton) To be scientific, theology must be about something observable. Theology may become a science on the assumption that the visible universe is divine. My experience of life is my experience of god. Scientific theology may guide the development of a religion tailored to the realities of the world in the same way as science in general guides our practical arts. back