Daily Archives: May 12, 2023

In the aftermath of the coronation of King Charles, Professor Louis Ren Beres argues that a quid pro quo for subject loyalty is an irrevocable declaration that the states sovereignty represents the optimal path to power over death...

Its an uncommon association, but certain connections have been suggested between sovereignty (the highest form of earthly authority) and offerings of immortality. For the most part, at the level of philosophical investigation, such connections have not always been subtle. Observes G F Hegel (1820) in The Philosophy of Right: The state is the march of God in the world. And from Heinrich von Treitschkes 1897 Lecture on Politics: Individual man sees in his own country the realization of his earthly immortality.

There is some nuance here. Von Treitschkes statement suggests something less than the classic after-worldly meaning of immortality. He is likely suggesting, after all, that something akin to eternal fame and not life everlasting, best represents this generally invisible dynamic of world politics. Though there can exist no scientifically valid ways of rank-ordering two contending meanings of immortality over time and space, there can be little doubt that any presumptive power over death must bestow greater satisfactions than any purported power over personal reputation.

The Realpolitik Foundation

To be sure. there are variously assorted details. Though difficult to understand, Realpolitik an historical shorthand for traditional power politics draws its animating force from the microcosm, from the individual. While inconspicuous, it is this personal human search for immortality or staying alive that may ultimately drive not only domestic kingships but also comprehensive international relations.

In any final reckoning, each states competitive struggle for the death of other designable states may represent a last-ditch defense against both collective and personal annihilation. Among other things, this obscure simultaneity suggests that the most genuine rationale of Realpolitik is not really the acquisition of territory, wealth or victory. However unwitting or sub-conscious, it is the avoidance of personal death.

This is not an easy idea for scholars and policy-makers to conceptualize, but ignoring it could severely limit humankinds rapidly disappearing chances for survival. Some preliminary understandings can be drawn from King Charles III recent coronation. It is the sovereign state, blessed by Gods vicars here on earth (in this case, the Archbishop of Canterbury) that holds the key to life everlasting.

These ideas are not easily understood by a countrys mass or by career politicians. To begin, searches for collective immortality based on sovereignty may signify core yearnings to avoid personal death. Though such fervid hopes can be nurtured only by assorted convictions of faith, not science, the history of humankind reveals no evidence that Reason could ever trump anti-Reason. Even in our glittering age of advanced technology and AI, conspicuous claims of non-rational belief continue to drive states and sub-states toward an explosively violent geopolitics. Lamentably, any corollary associations of sacredness with national armed force would further ensure that war, terror or genocide serve the highest imaginable forms of human power.

Bases of Deeper Understanding

But how should these very complicated connections be better understood? Why ought anyone acknowledge that a world politics based upon sovereignty offers a plausible path to personal immortality? What are the most revealing connecting factors? About the recent coronation in London, wouldnt we all be better off just asking the usual prosaic questions about King Charles, Camilla, William, Harry, etc.?

With pride of place, history should be our starting point. In his still-illuminating classic, Man and Crisis (1958), 20th century Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega yGasset comments thoughtfully and prophetically: History is an illustrious war against death. Though this comment is captivating and sets the stage for our own present queries about sovereignty and immortality, it still represents only a partial piece of a much wider truth: Ultimately, power over death always represents the greatest conceivable form of power here on earth; but acquiring such power in world politics can sometimes demand the killing of assorted others.

Inter alia, as more-or-less derivative from sovereign authority, there is war, terrorism and genocide.

Credo quia absurdum, said the ancient philosopher Tertullian. I believe because it is absurd. Sovereignty offers a direct link to immortality (collective and personal), but the palpable rewards of power over death are too-frequently tied to engineered violence and armed force. Often its a Faustian bargain.

There is more. To acquire a politically manageable power over death, individuals (microcosm) and states (macrocosm) must first make tangible preparations to bring irreversible fatality to purported enemies. At times, such viscerally belligerent thinking could involve seductive notions of martyrdom. Significantly, as we may learn from the evening news, especially in the Middle East, these notions may call not only for war, but also for terror and genocide. In all cases, the planned mass killing of other human beings is more-or-less comparable to religious sacrifice, a primal ritual oriented toward the intentional deflection of death to others.

There are additional details. Scholars and policy-makers should continuously re-examine vital underlying links between microcosm and macrocosm. In this regard, Elias Canetti, winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Literature, once wrote boldly of not being dead as the principal exemplar of ascertainable power. Confronted with what Canetti called terror at the fact of death, humankind both individually, and collectively always seeks one particular advantage above all others. This evident advantage is to remain standing while others prepare to lie down.

In the end, it is only those who can remain upright, however temporarily, who are victorious. It is these fortunate ones, after all, who have keenly managed to divert death to others. By definition, there can be no greater or more advantageous diversion.

A key lesson obtains here for states as well as individuals. For all players, microcosm and macrocosm, the situation of physical survival is the manifestly central expression of all human power. But as sovereignty-centered belligerent nationalism makes meaningful survival more problematic, Realpolitik or power politics inevitably deprives states of their most genuine power lever. Left unmodified, the all against all Westphalian process effectively creates or merely magnifies adversarial relations, and encourages state enemies to enjoy microcosmic triumphs that will remain concealed. These triumphs are the deeply-satisfying human emotions experienced by persons when confronting powerless individuals who are preparing to lie down.

Sovereignty and Victory Over Death

In world politics, the ultimate acquisition of power is never really about land or treasure or conquest or some other reassuring evidence of primacy. It is, rather, a presumed victory over death, ultimately a personal triumph, one described by Heinrich von Treitschke and G F Hegel as closely linked to the unique prerogatives of sovereignty.

The relevant reasoning here is straightforward. When my state is powerful, goes the core argument, so too am I. At some point, when this state seems ready to prevail indefinitely, I too am granted a personal life that is gloriously unending. Stated somewhat succinctly: An immortal state creates (as its citizen or subject) the immortal person.

These abstract ideas can be bewildering. Still, to actually feel such conceptual reasoning at a palpable level, one could intentionally recall the staggering images of mid-1930s Nazi party rallies at Nuremberg. Leni Riefenstahls monumental film celebration of Der Fuhrer, The Triumph of the Will, says it all best. Reminding the German people of Hegels famous aphorism, the legendary film underscores that a nation-state can actually become the march of God in the world.

Today, in 2023, all states continue to be driven by policies that generally bring them neither personal satisfaction nor institutional safety. To the contrary, all they can continue to expect in a chaos-leaning Realpolitik world is a perpetual global landscape of war, terrorism and genocide. In the best of all possible worlds, however, humankind recalling the ancient creed of Epicurus that death fear is foolish and irrational- would consider one indispensable query:

What is death? A bogy. Turn it round and see what it is: you see it does not bite. The stuff of the body was bound to be parted from the airy element, either now or hereafter, as it existed apart from it before. Why then are you vexed if they are parted now? For if not parted now, they will be hereafter. Why so? That the revolution of the universe may be accomplished, for it has need of things present, things future, and things past and done with.

States seemingly fail to understand that death is normally identified by their enemies as a zero-sum event. Anything that is done to sustain ones own national survival invariably represents, for these enemy states, an intolerable threat to their own lives and a diminution of their own power over death. Reciprocally, anything that is done to effectively eliminate hated enemies must expectedly enhance their collective life and augment their collective power. Ideally, these strategies fare best whenever God is on our side.

There is still more. Because of the deeply intimate associations between collectivities/macrocosm (states) and (microcosm) individuals, the reciprocal life advantages of death and dying can be enjoyed doubly.

Normally, even if only at a subconscious level, the living person never really considers himself more powerful than at that very moment when he faces the dying person. Here, as we may learn again from Elias Canetti, the living human being comes as close as he or she can to encountering genuine feelings of personal immortality. In roughly similar fashion, the living nation-state never really regards itself as more powerful than at that moment when it confronts the apparently impending death of a despised enemy state. Only slightly less power-granting are those reassuring sentiments that arise from confrontation with a dying enemy state; that is, the same sentiments experienced by a belligerent state that seeks some tangible victory over another.

In both cases, personal and collective, convention, good taste and sometimes skilled statecraft require that zero-sum feelings about death and power be suppressed. Such polite feelings ought not to be flaunted; nonetheless, they do remain prospectively vital and determinative.

Getting Beyond Appearances in World and National Politics

Oddly, perhaps, in all world politics, power is so closely attached to the presumed conquest of death (national and personal) that core connections have been overlooked. As a result, students and practitioners of international relations continue to focus mainly on epiphenomena, on easily recognizable ideologies, identifiable territories, tangible implements of warfare (arms control and disarmament) and so on. The problem is not that these factors are unimportant to power, but that they are actually of a manifestly secondary or reflected importance.

During a war, any war, the individual soldier, a person who ordinarily cannot experience satisfyingly tangible power during peacetime, is offered an utterly unique opportunity to remedy such absence. Inter alia, the pervasive presence of dead bodies in war cannot be minimized. Actually and incontestably, it is a central fact of belligerency. To wit, the soldier who is surrounded by corpses and knows that he is not yet one of them is normally imbued with an absolute radiance of invulnerability, of immortality, of monumental and perhaps incomparable power.

The adversarial state that commands its soldiers to kill and not to die, feels similarly great power at the removal of a collective adversary. This surviving state, like the surviving individual warrior, is transformed, indisputably and correspondingly, into a potentially primal source of everlasting life. Such abstract observations are hardly fashionable among general populations or political leaders; to the half-educated, they may even appear barbarous and uncivilized. Yet, for now at least, scholars should be seeking not to prescribe more appropriate behavior for sovereign states, but to accurately describe such behavior. Among other obligations, this means looking behind the daily news.

There is more. Always, truth must be exculpatory. True observations may sometimes be indecipherable or objectionable; but they are no less true. What is most important to understand is that to die for the sake of God is actually to not die at all. For example, by dying in a divinely commanded act of killing presumed enemies the Jihadist terrorist really does seek to conquer death, which he fears with a special terror, by living forever.

Ultimately, the love of death proclaimed by Jihadist terrorists is the ironic consequent of an all-consuming wish to avoid death. Since the death that this enemy loves is temporary and temporal, leading in fact to a permanent reprieve from any real death, accepting it as a tactical expedient becomes an easy matter. If, for any reason, the normally welcome death of an individual engaged in holy war were not expected to ensure an authentic life ever-after, its immense attractions would be reversed.

The greater the number of enemy corpses, the more powerful terrorists will feel. Real power, understood as an irremediably zero-sum commodity, is always to gain in aliveness through inflicting death upon enemies.

Power and Survival

An enemy, whether state or non-state, cannot possibly kill as many foes as his primal passion for survival may demand. This means, among other intersecting considerations, that he may seek to induce or direct others to satisfy this particular passion. As a practical matter, this deflecting behavior points toward an undeniable impulse for genocide, an inclination that could be actualized, in the future, by adversarial resort to higher-order forms of terrorism (chemical/biological/nuclear), and/or to crimes against humanity.

The sovereign still has much to learn. But before leaders can fully understand the true nature of enemy intentions and capabilities, they must first acknowledge the most primary connections between power and survival. Once it can be understood that enemy definitions of the former are contingent upon loss of the latter, these leaders will be positioned intellectually to take appropriate remedial action.

The true goal of certain adversaries is as grotesque as it is unrecognized. This goal is to be left standing while assorted others are made to disappear. These relentless enemies must survive just so that their enemies do not. They cannot, by this zero-sum reasoning, survive together. So long as the enemy is allowed to exist, no matter how cooperative or congenial it has been, some states will not feel safe. They will not feel powerful. They will not feel power over death.

It is always a mistake to believe that Reason governs the world. The true source of governance on this imperiled planet is power, and power is ultimately the conquest of personal death. This conquest, which displays a zero-sum quality among enemies, is not limited to conflicts in any one region. It is always a generic matter, a more or less universal effort that is made especially manifest between enemies. On this generic matter, one should consider the revealing remark of Romanian playwright Eugene Ionesco in his Journal in 1966. Describing killing as a purposeful affirmation of ones own survival, Ionesco observed:

I must kill my visible enemy, the one who is determined to take my life, to prevent him from killing me. Killing gives me a feeling of relief, because I am dimly aware that in killing him, I have killed death. My enemys death cannot be held against me, it is no longer a source of anguish, if I killed him with the approval of society; that is the purpose of war. Killing is a way of relieving ones feelings, of warding off ones own death.

While certain enemies accept zero-sum linkages between power and survival, others do not. Though this may suggest that some states stand on an enviably higher moral plane than their enemies, it may also place the high-minded or virtuous state at a security disadvantage, one that will make it too difficult to remain standing. This consequential asymmetry between state enemies may be addressed by reducing certain adversarial emphases on power-survival connections and/or by increasing enemy emphases on power-survival connections.

Difficult questions will have to be asked. Must a state ultimately become barbarous in order to endure? Must it learn to identify true power with survival over others, a predatory posture that cannot abide the survival of certain enemies? What is required is not a replication of enemy leadership crimes, but policies that recognize personal death-avoidance as the essential starting point for national security. With such recognition, protracted hostility and existential threat could be rejected in their entirety and a new ethos one based on a firm commitment to remain standing at all costs could finally be implemented.

Life and Death as Zero-Sum Qualities

Core changes will be necessary. All sovereigns must rid themselves of the retrograde notion that killing others can confer immunity from personal mortality. In his Will Therapy and Truth and Reality (1936), psychologist Otto Rank affirms: The death fear of the ego is lessened by the killing, the Sacrifice, of the Other. Through the death of the Other, one buys oneself free from the penalty of being killed.

What is being described here remains the greatest form of power anywhere: power over death. Americans and other residents of a deeply interconnected planet have a right to expect that any president of the United States or major world leader would meaningfully attempt to understand these complex linkages. At a minimum, this means that all of our national policies must build upon more genuinely intellectual and scientific sorts of understanding.

There is more. Our just wars, counter-terrorism conflicts and anti-genocide programs, must be conducted as intricate contests of mind over mind. These contests are never just narrowly tactical struggles of mind over matter.

Only a dual awareness of our common human destination, which is death and the associated futility of sacrificial violence, can offer an accessible medicine against adversaries in the global state of nature. Only by this difficult awareness can we ever relieve an otherwise incessant and still-ascending Hobbesian war of all against all.

More than ever before, history deserves pride of place. The United States was founded upon the philosophy of Hobbes and the religion of Calvin. This means something very different in 2023 than it did in 1787.

What should this particular history now signify for American foreign policy preparation? This is not an insignificant query, but it does presuppose an American democracy founded upon authentic learning, not flippantly corrosive clichs or abundantly empty witticisms. In this connection, individual human death fear has much to do with a better understanding of Americas national security options.

A Triumph of Death?

In the end, for individuals, a triumph of death in one form or another is inevitable, and attempts to avoid death by killing certain despised others are necessarily futile and inglorious. Going forward, therefore, it is high time for new and more creative thinking about national sovereignty and human immortality. Instead of simply denying death, a cowardly and potentially corrosive emotion that Sigmund Freud labels wish fulfillment in The Future of an Illusion (1927), we must soon acknowledge the obvious. With such an eleventh-hour acknowledgment, all people and all sovereign states on this endangered planet could begin to think more insightfully about our immutably common destiny. In turn, this will mean using an always-overriding human commonality as the secure basis for expanding empathy and worldwide cooperation.

This is a visionary and fanciful prescription, one rather unlikely to be grasped in time. But there is still a plausible way to begin. This way would require the leaders of all major states to recognize that they are not in any meaningful way world powers (all are equally mortal, and none have any verifiable power over death) and that a coordinated retreat from Realpolitik or traditional geopolitical competition would now be self-interested.

There are other considerations. The primary planetary survival task is a markedly intellectual one, but unprecedented human courage will also be needed. For the required national leadership initiatives, we could have no good reason to ever expect the arrival of a Platonic philosopher-king; still, even some ordinary political leaders could conceivably prove themselves up to the extraordinary task at hand. For this to happen, enlightened citizens of all countries must first cast aside all historically discredited ways of thinking about sovereignty-centered world politics, and (per specific insights of twentieth-century German thinker Karl Jaspers) do whatever possible to elevate empirical science and mind over blind faith and mystery.

In endowing us with memory, writes philosopher George Santayana, nature has revealed to us a truth utterly unimaginable to the unreflective creation, the truth of mortality. The more we reflect, the more we live in memory and idea, the more convinced and penetrated we shall be by the experience of death; still, without really knowing it, this very conviction and experience will have raised us, in a way, above mortality.

The legacy of Westphalia (1648 treaty) includes deification of the state. Although we may discover such murderous deification in the writings of Hegel, Fichte, von Treitschke and various others, there have also always been compelling voices of a different sort. For Nietzsche, the state is the coldest of all cold monsters. It is, he says in Zarathustra, for the superfluous that the state was invented. In a similar vein, we may consider the corroborating view of Jose Ortega yGasset in the Revolt of the Masses. Here, the Spanish philosopher identifies the state as the greatest danger, always mustering its immense resources to crush beneath it any creative minority which disturbs it.

Sovereignty as an Under-Explored Attribute of Life-Everlasting

In the end, sovereignty is always about life, death and immortality. For the most part, it is not for us to choose when we should die. Instead, our words and our destinies, will lie beyond any discernible considerations of conscious decision or individual selection. Still, we can choose to recognize our shared human fate and especially our derivative interdependence. This unbreakable intellectual recognition could carry with it significant global promise.

Much as we might prefer to comfort ourselves with qualitative presumptions of societal hierarchy and national differentiation, we humans are all pretty much the same. Already, this incontestable sameness is manifest to capable scientists and physicians. Our single most important human similarity, however, and the one least subject to any reasonable hint of counter-argument, is that we all die.

It is from the universal terror of this common fate that Westphalian law invests nation-states with the singularly sacred attributes of sovereignty. And it is from the incontestable commonality of death that humankind can finally escape from the predatory embrace of power politics or Realpolitik in world politics.

Ironically, whatever our more-or-less divergent views on what might actually happen to us after death, the basic mortality that we share could still represent the last best chance we have for viable global coexistence and governance. This is the case, however, only if we can first accomplish the astoundingly difficult leap from acknowledging a shared fate as mortal beings to operationalizing our species more expressly generalized feelings of empathy and cooperation.

Across an entire planet, we can care for one another as humans, but only after we have first accepted that the judgment of a resolutely common fate will not be waived by any harms that we may choose to inflict upon others, that is, upon the unworthy. While markedly inconspicuous, modern crimes of war, terror, and genocide are often just sanitized expressions of religious sacrifice. In the most starkly egregious instances, any corresponding violence could represent a consummate human hope of overcoming private mortality through the targeted mass killing or exclusion of certain specific outsiders.

Its a murderous calculus, and not a new thought. Consider psychologist Ernest Beckers ironic paraphrase of Elias Canetti in Escape from Evil: . each organism raises its head over a field of corpses, smiles into the sun, and declares life good.

There is a deeply insightful observation latent in this idea. It is the uniquely dangerous notion that killing can confer immunity from ones own mortality. Similarly, in Will Therapy and Truth and Reality, psychologist Otto Rank affirms: The death fear of the ego is lessened by the killing, the Sacrifice, of the Other. Through the death of the Other, one buys oneself free from the penalty of being killed. What is being described here is plainly the greatest form of power discoverable anywhere: power over death.

A Struggle of Mind Over Mind

Americans and various other residents of our interconnected planet have a right to expect that any president of the United States should attempt to understand such vital and complex linkages. Here, Americas national policies must build upon more genuinely intellectual sorts of understanding. Our allegedly just wars, counter-terrorism conflicts, and anti-genocide programs must be fought or conducted as fully intricate contests of mind over mind, and not just as narrowly tactical struggles of mind over matter.

Only a dual awareness of our common human destination, which is death, and the associated futility of sacrificial violence, can offer accessible medicine against North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, and assorted other more-or-less foreseeable adversaries in the sovereignty-centered state of nature. This natural condition of anarchy was already well known to the Founding Fathers of the United States (most of whom had read Locke, Rousseau, Grotius, Hobbes, Vattel and Blackstone. Now, only this difficult awareness can relieve an otherwise incessant and still-ascending Hobbesian war of all against all.

More than ever before, history deserves a reasonable pride of place. America was expressly founded upon the philosophy of Hobbes and the religion of Calvin. But this means something quite different in 2023 than it did in 1787.

What more precisely should this particular history signify for Biden White House foreign policy preparation? This is not an insignificant query, but it does presuppose an American democracy founded upon some measure of authentic learning, not on flippantly corrosive clichs or abundantly empty witticisms. For the foreseeable future, this is not a plausible presupposition.

Human death fear has much to do with acquiring a better understanding of Americas current enemies, both national (state) and sub-national (terrorist). Reciprocally, only a people who can feel deeply within itself the unalterable fate and suffering of a much broader global population will ever be able to embrace compassion and reject collective violence. Any new American president should prepare to understand what this implies, with pointedly specific reference to the United States and also to this countrys various state and sub-state adversaries.

The existence of system in the world is always obvious, immutable and pertinent. Accordingly, America First actually meant America Alone and America Last. America could never be truly first so long as its president insisted upon achieving such status at the grievous expense of so many others, and while failing to understand that international law is part of the law of the United States. To again seek to secure ourselves by diminishing others would merely be a retrograde playbook for ever-recurrent instances of war, terror and genocide.

For all humankind, the triumph of death is unassailable and inevitable. Attempts to somehow avoid death by killing certain despised others are both futile and inglorious. Going forward, it is high time for new and more creative thinking about global security and human immortality. Instead of denying death, a cowardly and potentially corrosive emotion that Sigmund Freud labeled wish fulfillment (see The Future of an Illusion, 1927), we must finally acknowledge the obvious, perhaps even viewing it as a long-overlooked blessing. With such an eleventh-hour acknowledgment, all people and all nations on this imperiled planet could begin to draw purposefully from our immutably common destiny that is, from our conspicuously shared mortality. Among other things, this means using that always-overriding commonality as the intellectual basis for expanding empathy and a closely-corresponding pattern of worldwide integration.

It is, to be sure, a visionary and fanciful prescription, one unlikely to be grasped in time. But there is still a practical way to begin. It would require the leaders of major states to recognize that they are not in any genuinely meaningful way world powers (in the sense that all are equally mortal; that none has power over death) and that a coordinated retreat from Realpolitik or traditional geopolitical competition must be self-interested and indispensable.

The Obligations of Courage

It follows from all this that the primary planetary survival task is a markedly intellectual one, a matter of mind, but unprecedented courage will also be needed. For the required national leadership initiatives, we could have no reason to expect the timely arrival of a Platonic philosopher-king, but even some ordinary political leaders could conceivably be up to the task to become extraordinary. For this to happen, enlightened citizens of all countries would first have to cast aside all historically discredited ways of thinking about global survival, and do whatever deemed possible to elevate science over blind faith and mystery.

In endowing us with memory, writes George Santayana, nature has revealed to us a truth utterly unimaginable to the unreflective creation. the truth of mortality. The more we reflect, the more we live in memory and idea, the more convinced and penetrated we shall be by the experience of death; yet, without knowing it, perhaps, this very conviction and experience will have raised us, in a way, above mortality.

Though few will actually understand, such a raising is necessarily antecedent to human survival in world politics, though only if it is linked purposefully and self-consciously to global integration. Is it an end that draws near, inquired Karl Jaspers, or a beginning? The correct answer will depend, in large part, on what another major post-war philosopher had to say about the Jungian/Freudian mass.

In Being and Time (1953), Martin Heidegger laments what he calls, in German, das Mann, or The They. Drawing fruitfully upon certain earlier seminal insights of Nietzsche, Kierkegaard as well as Jung and Freud, Heideggers The They represents the ever-present herd, crowd, horde or mass, an untruth (the term favored by Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard) that can quickly suffocate indispensable intellectual growth. For Heideggers The They, the crowning untruth lies in (1) its acceptance of immortality at both institutional and personal levels, and (2) its encouragement of the seductive notion that personal power over death is associated with (or actually derivative from) the sovereignty-centered sacredness of nation-states.

The arena of world politics (macrocosm) is violent because individual human beings (microcosm) compulsively fear death. Though patently ironic, the murderous connections are longstanding and difficult to dispute. Ultimately, states battle against other states on behalf of individual human salvation.

While the typical result of such redemptive battles has always been death and mega death, not long or eternal life, an overriding mythology still endures. This is the ironic belief that it is in war, not in peace, that humans are able to acquire power over death. Sometimes, this acquisition is intended to be direct that is, an immediate consequence of killing on the side of God. More generally, however, such power over death devolves indirectly to general populations that are not actually involved in the business of killing. Recalling Bob Dylan, even de facto bystanders can have God on their side.

None of this is to deny the validity of more traditional and conspicuous explanations of Realpolitik or power politics, namely that these struggles are about tangible goods, geography or national security. These conspicuous explanations are not mistaken; they are, however, trivial and epiphenomenal. Such explanations are generally correct, but merely as secondary reflections of what is most genuinely important.

In William Goldings novel Lord of the Flies, the marooned boys make grotesque war upon one another because they have suddenly been thrust into a netherworld of anarchy and chaos, but only because this dissembling exile from civilization now threatens them with personal death. It is only after they have settled upon an amorphous but ubiquitous horror (the beast) that they decide to wage a titanic struggle to survive. And in what amounts to yet another irony of upholding policies of inflicting death in order to bring freedom from death, the boys are rescued by a military ship, a naval vessel that will transport them from their literally primal state of nature on the island to the more comprehensive state of nature of world politics.

In essence, readers quickly learn, the rancorous and barbarous conditions that had obtained on the deserted island were actually just a microcosm of the wider system of international relations. But who can now rescue this wider system of Realpolitik from itself? Before we can meaningfully answer this core question, scholars and policy-makers will need to probe more closely behind visible events of the day, beyond mere reflection. Above all, this probe will have to be suitably theoretical.

Why? Theoretic generality is a trait of all serious scientific meaning. Scientific inquiry in such matters is indispensable.

In the beginning, in that primal promiscuity in which the lethal swerve toward politics first arose, forerunners of modern nation-states established a system of perpetual struggle and violent conflict, a system destined to fail. Captivated by this self-destroying system of international relations, states still allow the degrading spirit of Realpolitik to spread everywhere unchecked, like an ideological gangrene on the surface of the earth. Rejecting all pertinent standards of logic and correct reasoning, this inherently false consciousness of power politics imposes no reasonable standards upon itself. It continues to be rife, despite endless rebuffs. Somehow, Realpolitik takes its long history of defeat as victory. Somehow, its historical proponents have never learned anything.

The vast majority of human beings are unable to accept the biological truth of mortality. Understood in terms of world politics, this suggests that national sovereignty will likely continue to be viewed by many as a suitable institutional antidote to personal death. Such a view may not be explicitly apparent even to Realpolitik adherents, and it would very likely disregard certain palpable benefits other than a presumed power over death (e.g., enhanced personal status of belonging to a powerful country). Nonetheless, it is a perspective that will not simply fade away graciously on its own.

It is high time for candor. Whatever our in-principle preferences, the plain fact of having been born augurs badly for the promise of immortality. Accordingly, the primal human inclination to deny an apparently unbearable truth will continue to generate the same terrors from which we allegedly seek refuge. The irony is once again staggering, but still incontestable.

In its obvious desperation to live perpetually, humankind has embraced a cornucopia of faiths that offer life everlasting is exchange for unchallengeable loyalty to a sacred duty. Such loyalty is then transferred from faith to State, which battles (or prepares to battle) with other states. Though historians, political scientists and pundits routinely describe such conflicts as a tangible struggle for secular influence (power politics), it is often something different. This is a struggle between Good and Bad, Right and Wrong, Decency and Indecency, even the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. In this last example, apocalyptic imagery of the Dead Sea Scrolls is invoked not because any or all of a combatant states rationale is necessarily religious, but because such imagery best portrays the enormity of ideological attachments.

In the United States, ideas of prevailing apocalyptic contest obtained widely during the 1950s Eisenhower years, and later during the Reagan Administration. More recently, Donald Trumps core message of American First was not without underlying or implicit references to righteous struggles in world politics withGod on our Side. For several million Trump supporters, their leaders slogan of America First was essentially an eschatological code term used to signal impending End Times. In view of certain religion-based support for the Trump presidency, a core aspect of his appeal was an implicit linkage of American sovereignty with life everlasting.

Death, says Norbert Elias, is the absolute end of the person. So the greater resistance to its demythologization perhaps corresponds to the greater magnitude of danger experienced. Now, major states in world politics must strive more vigorously to reduce both the magnitude and likelihood of anticipated existential danger. In this connection, they must remain wary of planting new false hopes that offer only illusions of personal survival through perpetual international war or war-planning.

To survive in world politics, citizens of planet earth will first have to detach themselves from various mythical promises of power over death. In the most promising of possible worlds, the pervasively underlying human death fear could be made to disappear, but this auspicious prospect would also seem blatantly implausible. It follows that more gentle and reason-based orientations will be required for world politics than those discoverable within the narrowly self-destroying dynamics of sovereignty-centered belligerent nationalism.

In this regard, there is much to be learned from the May 6, 2023 coronation of King Charles III. This means exploring much deeper linkages between sovereignty and immortality. In the end, species survival must become a preeminently intellectual obligation, one based on comprehensive theory concerning survival, immortality and power over death.

LOUIS REN BERES (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue. His twelfth and most recent book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israels Nuclear Strategy (2016). In 2003, Professor Beres was Chair of Project Daniel in Israel (regarding Irans nuclear weapons, prepared especially for PM Ariel Sharon). He has published in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; The Jerusalem Post; Israel Defense (Tel Aviv); BESA (Israel); INSS (Israel); JURIST; Air-Space Operations Review (USAF); The Atlantic; Yale Global; Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); International Security (Harvard); Oxford University Press Yearbook on International Law & Jurisprudence; World Politics (Princeton); Parameters: Journal of the US Army War College (Pentagon); The Strategy Bridge; International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; The War Room (Pentagon); Modern War Institute (West Point); Horasis (Zrich) and The New York Times.

Suggested citation: Louis Rene Beres, King Charles IIIs Coronation at the Convergence of Policy, Sovereignty, and Immortality, JURIST Academic Commentary, May 9, 2023, https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2023/05/king-charles-coronation-immortality.

This article was prepared for publication by JURIST Commentary staff. Please direct any questions or comments to them at commentary@jurist.org

Opinions expressed in JURIST Commentary are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JURIST's editors, staff, donors or the University of Pittsburgh.

View post:
King Charles III's Coronation at the Convergence of Policy ... - JURIST

The Greek Ministry of Culture has announced that the ancient Asclepieion in Thessaly, an important healing temple of the Greek empire, will be restored.

Greeces Minister of Culture and Sports, Lina Mendoni, stated that in the city of Trikala, in Ancient Trikki, there was one of the oldest and most famous (temples) in the entire ancient world, Asclepieion.

The earliest confirmed excavation of the city dates back to the Bronze Age and is located in the area of the present archaeological site of Trikala.

Excavations have uncovered ceramics indicating that the western slopes of the ancient acropolis had been inhabited since the Early Bronze Age (3300 BC) until the Mycenaean era.

Ancient Trikki was first referred to in the Homeric List of Ships, which states that Trikki participated with great force in the Trojan War, with 30 ships led by Asclepius sons, Mahaonas and Podalerios, who were taught medicine by their father.

Asclepius was the Greek god of healing, truth, and prophecy, and is also known as the god of medicine. In later times, he was honoured as a hero and eventually worshipped as a god. Healing temples in his honour began in Thessaly but spread to many parts of Greece.

The practice of sleeping in these healing temples became common in many parts of Greece, as it was believed that Asclepius cured illnesses in dreams.Zeus (the king of the gods), afraid that Asclepius might render all men immortal, slew him with a thunderbolt.

Read more here:
Ancient Greek healing temple in Trikala to be restored - The Greek Herald

You wont find the elixirs of immortality prepared by alchemists in ancient China on sale today. With ingredients including mercury and its main ore (cinnabar) and highly toxic arsenic sulfides (realgar and orpiment), they would not exactly have the effect on longevity that was hoped by ancient emperors. Yet the dream of an elixir of youth remains as potent as ever, and among the modern varieties seemingly as validated by science as the old alchemical ones were in their day are telomerase creams. By restoring activity of an enzyme called telomerase, this cream enhances skin cell longevity right down to your DNA says one advert, offering a small jar for just $33.75 (26.75). (A snip compared to Este-Lauders telomere-lengthening Re-Nutriv Ultimate Diamond, containing truffle extract and costing $435 a bottle.)

The telomere story is well rehearsed. Telomeres are tiny caps at ends of each DNA strand, the advert explains. They keep those strands safe from a wide variety of challenges and the longer your DNAs telomeres are, the more robust their protective qualities are going to be. But it seems the story is not that simple, and a new study suggests that long telomeres might not be such a great thing at all.

Telomerase has been touted as the fountain of youth

Lets stay with the anti-ageing cream for a moment. It claims to boost the activity of the telomerase enzyme, which maintains the telomere sections at the ends of our chromosomes, using a herb thats been used in China for centuries, called astragalus root. Astragalus membranaceus is indeed a long-standing ingredient of traditional Chinese medicine, where it is known as huangqi. It seems to possess genuine anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, and some tests on animals and cell cultures have shown that one component of the extract does activate telomerase, and perhaps even lengthens telomeres in humans. It might increase the health span of ageing mice, although not their longevity. In short, to find any evidence that astragalus extract will make you look younger or live longer, youll end up scavenging for scraps in the grey literature. But then, as the advert says, These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.

All the same, long telomeres and active telomerase are good news, right? Telomerase has been touted as the fountain of youth ever since it was discovered in Nobel-winning work in the 1980s. A study in 2011 showed that, while mice engineered to lack the enzyme entirely aged faster and suffered from age-related adverse health conditions, reactivating telomerase in the mice in adulthood could reverse these problems.1 Thats fine, but no one imagined that having no active telomerase could be a good thing. Worse, it has been long known that mutations that make telomerase unusually active are associated with cancer: the enzyme seems able to boost the growth of tumours.

Evidence for the adverse effects of over-active telomerase has accumulated since. In 2020, researchers at Rockefeller University showed that indeed telomere shortening seems to play a vital role in preventing tumorigenic cell proliferation, and that a gene mutation that promotes long telomeres increases cancer risk.2 And now a new study shows that mutations to a protein called POT1 that influences telomere length can increase the risk of cancer and blood disorders.3 Sure, particularly short telomeres can be problematic, but so can long ones.

So the real effects of telomerase, and of longer or shorter telomeres, are complicated. If those rejuvenating telomerase-boosting creams really have that effect (which is by no means clear), you cant be certain if its a good or a bad thing. Its unlikely to be as hazardous as ingesting mercury or arsenic, but youd be tampering with a biochemical process implicated in a complex system of cell maintenance and cell cycling, with results that would be hard to predict. Telomere rejuvenation is potentially very dangerous unless you make sure that it does not stimulate cancer, one expert told Nature after the 2011 study.

All this should surprise no one. The idea that telomeres are somehow the key to longevity is mistaken, and trying to alter their length is probably not wise. Ageing, like most ubiquitous physiological processes, is a very complex and multifactored phenomenon, in which telomere length is not even the dominant issue. The idea that we can simply tweak a molecule and expect to see a significant and predictable health outcome in such a case is not only flawed but perhaps dangerously so. Not necessarily because it will cause more problems than it solves, but because it encourages a misleading picture of biology in which complex effects can be traced back to simple molecular causes.

Originally posted here:
The long and short of telomere rejuvenation | Opinion - Chemistry World

Jarle Breivik is critical of claims that we are approaching thesolution to the cancer puzzle.

The solution to the puzzle is not what we think it is, Breivik, aprofessor of medicine, says. In a book with the name The solution to thecancer puzzle, he explains the fundamental cause of the disease and why asociety completely without cancer is perhaps not something we should wish for.

New advances are constantly being made in cancer treatment. Fortunately,twice as many people survive their diagnosis today as did 50 years ago,according to the Norwegian Cancer Society.

But that doesnt mean that we are about to be rid of this plague. It isestimated that the number of cancer cases will increase as we approach 2030.This is because the population is growing and the proportion of elderly peopleis increasing.

The better we get at treating cancer and other diseases, the longer welive, and the more cancer there will be in the population, Breivik said.

This is the paradox, because cancer is closely linked to ageing and to thehistory of how our biology has developed over time, according to the Professor.

Breivik is head of department at the Department of Behavioural Medicine atthe University of Oslo.

Why does cancer even exist? Why are our own cells suddenly transformedinto something resembling a monstrous parasite that destroys the body from theinside?

Let's say it like it is: Cancer is cruel, Breivik writes in thebook.

He remembers his first encounter with cancer.

As a young medical student, he was carrying out a dissection at theDepartment of Anatomy at the University of Oslo.

We were assigned a large, old man who had donated his body to science,Breivik said.

Over several weeks, Breivik and his fellow students worked their way throughvarious parts of the body with scalpels, scissors and tweezers.

It was a fascinating journey where we were constantly surprised byhow ingeniously the body is organized, recalls Breivik.

The book Lsningen p kreftgten (The solution to the cancer puzzle) was written by Jarle Breivik and was published in 2022. (Photo: Pitch forlag)

But a little way into the chest cavity they discovered something thatdidn't add up.

The nerves and blood vessels disappeared into a grey shapelessmass. The trachea and oesophagus were surrounded by the same stuff.

When the students put their scalpel into this tissue, it made a crunching sound, as ifthey were cutting sandstone. It was cancer.

The tumour had arisen in the intestine and then spread to other organs,such as the lungs and lymph nodes in the chest cavity. The cancer had grownwild, Breivik writes.

Cancer develops from the body's own cells, and the chance of the cellsrunning wild increases with age.

You don't necessarily die from it, but with it.

A centenarian who has not been diagnosed with some form of cancer hasprobably just not been examined well enough. And that is probably the best forall parties, Breivik writes in his book.

Artistic illustration of cancer in the body. (Illustration: Kateryna Kon / Shutterstock / NTB)

The fact that we age and get cancer is due to how the human body has beendeveloped over millions of years of evolution, explains Breivik.

Life, and how it has evolved and developed, is driven by the ability ofgenes to copy themselves.

It started with small proto cells. Through evolution, genes developedincreasingly better and more advanced ways of copying themselves.

Cells began to cooperate in large colonies and formed advanced organismssuch as animals and humans. This was driven by the fact that the organisms thatwere best at reproducing and surviving passed on their genes.

We often talk about our genes. But really, we are their body. Theyhave developed ways to ensure we copy them on to the next generation, saysBreivik.

The most fundamental reason why humans and animals get cancer because ofthe way our genes go in two different directions a few days afterfertilization, Breivik said.

While one copy of the genes is carried by germ cells on to the nextgeneration, another copies itself to all the cells that form the skin,skeleton, brain and all the other organs in the body.

The body cells are a dead end for genes, because sooner or later they willdie. Only the genes that accompany the germ cells are passed on.

The body's cells are like an ant colony with soldiers and worker ants whodo the work so that the queen ants, the germ cells, will continue and make newanthills somewhere else, Breivik said.

Theres no genetic advantage for the body to live for 200 years.

As soon as we've had children, we've pretty much done what our geneshave created us for. But since children need a lot of follow-up and care, itsclearly an advantage for parents to live long enough for their offspring totake care of themselves, Breivik said.

Some studies show that having grandparents can also be a biologicaladvantage.

But having 16 surviving great-great-grandparents, who also need food andcare, is not necessarily an advantage for the gene's ability to copy itself andpass itself on, Breivik said.

Our cells are therefore genetically programmed to die and waste away as weage.

Cells that have errors in this program develop into cancer, Breivik says.

We have 30 trillion cells, all of which contain two metres of DNA, whichagain consists of six billion nucleotides. These are the "letters" inthe genetic code that must all be copied every time a cell divides.

As we age, more and more errors can crop up in the copying of the code.

The genes have developed several control mechanisms to prevent us fromdeveloping cancer early in life, including DNA repair, programmed cell deathand immune cells that attack and kill cancer cells.

But some cells trick these mechanisms, survive and gradually develop intocancer.

It is always the "smartest" cells that survive, and Darwin'sprinciple of evolution by natural selection also applies inside the body,Breivik said.

As soon as they get a chance, they copy themselves. Cancer is preciselythe opportunity the genes in the body's cells have to copy themselves for aslong as they can, he said.

As with other brutal realities in nature, no malice is involved.

Genes are simply indifferent, Breivik said.

So what do we need to solve the cancer puzzle? Breivik says there are twopossibilities, in principle.

The fundamental problem is how our body is put together, which is as atemporary cell colony that will pass its genes on to the next generation, hesaid.

The first possibility is therefore to make the body immortal using biotechnology, Breivik said.

This may sound a little utopian. But we are developing increasinglyadvanced technologies to reprogram or replace the cells in the body as they age,he said.

For example, work is being done to grow new organs in laboratories and tofind medical treatments that slow down ageing.

By removing ourselves from natural biology, one might be able to extend life and prevent diseases such as cancer in the future. But this will create other issues, Breivik writes in his book. (Illustration: Marko Aliaksandr / Shutterstock / NTB)

In principle, cancer could be avoided by constantly renewing the cells inthe body, according to the professor.

It will hardly be cheap, and one can wonder what kind of world we will livein if no one dies. Or will the rich become immortal, while the poor die asearly as before? Breivik asks.

At the same time, it is not necessarily the body that we are mostconcerned with taking care of. It is the soul, or self, that we really want totake care of.

The problem is that the body takes our identity with it in death. Thesecond and ultimate solution would therefore be to get rid of our bodiesand move into the digital world.

Today's developments in biotechnology and artificial intelligence areredefining what it means to be human. But where are we really going? asksBreivik.

He warns that the solution to the cancer puzzle could be theend of humanity as we know it.

This is because we are actually the problem, he said.

Lars Andreas Akslen is a cancer researcher and professor at the Universityof Bergen.

He says that the understanding of cancer that Breivik presents, about howthe body is put together and our history of development, is not particularlycontroversial.

I think there is a lot of sense in this explanation, he said.

He agrees that there will probably be more cancer in the future as lifeexpectancy increases.

If you imagine that we have the constant pressure from environmentalinfluences, then I think it is a completely logical prediction that there willbe more cancer in society as a whole as people get older, he said.

What Breivik writes about as the solution and future possibilities withbiotechnology is a serious problem that has more to do with just cancer, Akslensaid.

There is great development potential going forward in this vein, which canaffect both our susceptibility to cancer and other diseases, he said.

This is an extensive problem both when you look at ethics and the economy and that the elderly will displace the young, he said.

Akslen points out that the increase in cancer cases applies to many, butnot all types of cancer.

Just think of cervical cancer, which has a curve that goes completely theother way as a result of screening and the HPV vaccine programme, he said.

The incidence of stomach cancer has fallen sharply as the ulcer bacterium hasbecome less common and can be treated effectively.

Theres also been constant progress on the treatment side.

This is what the whole world is working on, finding ever new and everbetter treatment regimens that can do one of two things, either remove thecancer cells completely or keep the disease in check, Akslen said.

There are a number of examples of this. Just think of childhood leukaemiaand testicular cancer, which used to be fatal diseases, but now the patientscan be cured, he said.

Other treatments can keep the cancer at bay.

Breast cancer is one example, where many people can live many, many yearswith this as a chronic disease, he said.

My experience after being in this field for a long time is that you neverreally know where the advances will suddenly come from, Akslen said.

He doesnt think we will find one solution that will make cancer no longera feared disease. The multiple forms of cancer are too different for that.

Evolution takes place in a cancerous tumour, much like how bacteria andviruses change and evolve to bypass antibiotics or vaccines.

This is the frustration with cancer and cancertreatment. It's so unpredictable. Cancerous tumours are like a kind ofevolutionary magicians that constantly try to find new loopholes in the fightagainst the host organism, he said.

Translated by Nancy Bazilchuk

Read the Norwegian version of this article at forskning.no

More:
Is there a solution to the puzzle that is cancer? The fundamental ... - Sciencenorway

I'm Steve Gutterman, the editor of RFE/RL's Russia/Ukraine/Belarus Desk.

Welcome to The Week In Russia, in which I dissect the key developments in Russian politics and society over the previous week and look at what's ahead. To receive The Week In Russia newsletter in your inbox, click here.

There's Red Square, and there's reality. Russian President Putin Vladimir Putin rehearsed grievances and repeated falsehoods at a Victory Day military parade as the war ground on in Ukraine. Farther from the Kremlin, the clampdown continued.

Here are some of the key developments in Russia over the past week and some of the takeaways going forward.

Any military parade is probably more theater than reality -- a display of pomp, pride, and power that glosses over the pain, death, and deprivation of war.

But Putin's Victory Day address on Red Square on May 9, when Russia celebrates the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, seemed particularly detached from the facts of both that conflict decades ago and the war he has inflicted upon Ukraine -- the biggest war in Europe since 1945.

The parallels he drew between those wars were also badly flawed, observers of the annual event pointed out.

Whether the parade and his remarks served their purpose for Putin is another question. It's one that numerous analysts answered in the negative, saying they underscored his distortions of events past and present and gave additional exposure to the problems Russia is facing on the battlefield.

One major distortion came almost at the very start of the short speech, when he said that "a real war has once again been unleashed against our homeland."

This is false. Russia is the aggressor in the war in Ukraine, where Putin dramatically escalated a conflict that had persisted in the Donbas region since 2014 by launching a large-scale invasion on February 24, 2022.

Since then, there have been a number of artillery and drone attacks on Russian territory that Moscow has blamed on Kyiv. But these are minuscule compared to the Russian assault on Ukraine, where tens of thousands of civilians and combatants have been killed and millions of people driven from their homes. Russian forces control Crimea in its entirety, occupy parts of four other Ukrainian regions, and have laid waste to several cities and towns including Mariupol, a Sea of Azov port with a pre-invasion population of nearly half a million.

Putin's claim is false, but it fits in with a narrative he has turned to frequently as time has passed: that Russia is fighting not a war of aggression against Ukraine but rather a defensive effort against Western nations bent on tearing Russia apart. As he put it in the Red Square speech, "Their aimis to achieve the collapse and destruction of our country."

This, too, is untrue. While plenty of people in the West would like to see what the domestic opposition describes in protest chants as "Russia without Putin," and some believe the war in Ukraine could bring that about, the prospect of Russia's disintegration or demise is a widely seen as a cause of concern, not enthusiasm, for the United States and many other governments.

Falsehoods aside, did this piece of military theater work for Putin?

As a show of strength, Russia's and his own, probably not.

The parade was modest compared to previous years in the Putin era. Fewer goose-stepping soldiers, fewer pieces of military equipment trundling across the square, and the absence of warplanes overhead might make sense when the country is fighting a war. But it may also have suggested that Russia's military -- built up over years in which Putin has warned the West to take notice -- needs everything it can get at the front and, after major losses in a war that Putin apparently hoped would be over in days or weeks but is now in its 15th month, has little to spare.

The struggles on the battlefield and sharp disagreements among Russia's military leaders were on stark display in a series of angry video statements by Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the ostensibly private mercenary group Wagner, who accused top generals and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu of badly mishandling the war and particularly the bloody and protracted fighting over Bakhmut, a once-thriving city in the Donbas that is now the scene of horrors that seem out of place in this century -- or did before the Russian invasion last year.

In one video, Prigozhin stood before piles of corpses of what he said were Wagner soldiers and accused the generals of causing their deaths by withholding supplies of weapons and ammunition. In another, in a remark whose target he may have deliberately left vague, he came close to calling Putin a "prick."

Putin, addressing the parade from the grandstand near Lenin's tomb, was no doubt pleased that leaders from seven of the other 14 former Soviet republics attended -- up from zero in 2022. State TV made that clear by cutting to shots of them, one by one, during Putin's speech.

And the 70-year-old president "looked and sounded in good form, belying claims of his worsening health and imminent demise," author and analyst Mark Galeotti wrote in the Spectator shortly after the parade. He noted that Putin "exchanged remarks withShoigu, also bringing into question assertions of a rift between the two men."

"Yet there was also no escaping the way that the parade, for all its rousing tunes and geometric choreography, signaled a military locked in an unexpectedly tough war," Galeotti wrote. "Russia is a nation losing its international status, and its president has nothing to offer his people but false claims of victimhood."

Beyond Red Square, a different kind of parade was conspicuous in its absence. For years, Russians have held marches called the Immortal Regiment, walking the streets carrying signs with photographs of relatives who gave their lives or otherwise contributed to the Soviet war effort in World War II.

A grassroots initiative at first, the new tradition was swiftly appropriated by the state authorities under Putin, who over his years in power has become increasingly wary of what he cannot control, particularly when it involves large crowds of people in the streets.

This year, the Immortal Regiment marches were canceled. Security concerns were the official reason, but analysts say the Kremlin was concerned that Russians might carry portraits of men killed in the war in Ukraine and also, more simply, is afraid of large demonstrations.

"There is a fear that people will carry portraits of people who have been killed in Ukraine and the real casualty figures -- not the ones presented by the Defense Ministry -- will be visible," historian Ivan Kurilla told RFE/RL's Siberia.Realities. "That is the most likely reason. But more generally, the authorities are afraid of any mass demonstration by the people in public. The authorities are obviously afraid."

And in prisons, jails, and courts, the repression that Kremlin critics say is driven by that fear ground on.

On May 11, imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei Navalny was sent to a punitive solitary confinement cell for the 15th time since August 2022, according to his Telegram channel.

Navalny said he was released from such a cell the previous evening but ordered back less than 14 hours later. He said he has spent 165 days in solitary confinement since he was jailed upon return to Russia in January 2021, after recovering in Germany from a near-fatal nerve-agent poisoning he blames on Putin.

The Telegram post came a day after the UN special rapporteur on torture, Alice Edwards, called on Russia to provide Navalny with "urgent and comprehensive" medical care amid reports that his health is deteriorating.

Edwards also cited the cases of three political supporters of Navalny who are also in detention -- Liliya Chanysheva, Vadim Ostanin, and Daniel Kholodny -- saying they should be released "without delay" if prompt, thorough, impartial investigations find that they "are being arbitrarily deprived of their liberty."

In the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg, popular former Mayor Yevgeny Roizman is being tried for his criticism of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine, under legislation signed by Putin days after it began. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted of discrediting the Russian military.

Roizman says he's being tried for calling the invasion of Ukraine what it is: the invasion of Ukraine. Russia officially calls the war a "special military operation," and officials including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have falsely stated that Russia has not invaded Ukraine.

On May 4, police detained the director and author of Finist -- The Brave Falcon, a play about Russ ian women who married Muslim men and moved to Syria that won Russia's Golden Mask national theater award in 2002.

Director Yevgenia Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriichuk are accused of the justification of terrorism and have been sent to pretrial jail for at least two months while prosecutors assemble their case.

The accusation over the play is a pretext and Berkovich is really being prosecuted "for her powerful, beautiful anti-war poetry," Konstantin Sonin, a political economist and a professor at the University of Chicago, wrote on Twitter. "This is [about] her anti-war stance, her poetry, her bravery and independence."

That's it from me this week.

If you want to know more, catch up on my podcast The Week Ahead In Russia, out every Monday, here on our site or wherever you get your podcasts (Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts).

Yours,

Steve Gutterman

Read more:
The Week In Russia: Theater Of War - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

Shes worth every penny: Welcome to Friday, dear readers, and not just any Friday but the Friday before Mothers Day but you already know that, with your reservations made and shopping done and all that.

If you havent yet gone to any Mothers Day expense, you will, according to the National Retail Federation, which projects American consumers will spend $35 billion on Mothers Day this year a year-over-year hike of $30 per person, according to the NRF.

Care package: Speaking of Mothers Day (sorta), today is National Child Care Provider Day, an annual Friday-before-Mothers Day celebration of the nannies, babysitters and other providers who let moms (and dads) do their things.

Super fudge: Things might get a little nutty today.

Other important providers honored today include therapists, psychiatrists and social workers, stars of the show on National Mental Health Provider Appreciation Day.

Prose (and pecans): If someone comes at you today with There once was a lady from Venus, run fast no telling what comes next on National Limerick Day, an annual homage to English poet and May 12 birthday boy Edward Lears (1812-1888) unique nonsensical style (more birthdays below).

If that doesnt make you nuts, this will: May 12 is also the salty-sweet National Nutty Fudge Day.

Heres the scoop: Fudge-nut flavors would come later, but it was this date in 1777 when New York City confectioner Philip Lenzi ran the first known ice cream advertisement (available almost every day) in the New York Gazette.

As north as it gets: Dont know about cream, but there was plenty of ice about when the airship Norge with Italian aviator Umberto Nobile at the stick and famed Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen (among others) on board flew over the North Pole on May 12, 1926, marking the poles first human crossing.

Just your type: Also iced out was University of Washington Professor August Dvorak, who fed up with his typewriters QWERTY keyboard patented the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard on this date in 1936. (It didnt really catch on, though its still beloved by some.)

From the shadows: Definitely catching on was the Z3, the first automatic programmable computer, presented May 12, 1941, by German civil engineer Konrad Zuse to his Nazi overlords quietly sparking the digital revolution.

Hole hearted: The center of the Milky Way Galaxy is a hole lot of fun.

Centerpiece: And it was one year ago today when astronomers released the first pictures of Sagittarius A, the supermassive black hole swirling at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

Produced by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, the stunning images solidified Einsteins Theory of General Relativity and confirmed numerous scientific beliefs about galactic structures.

Anthro-go-go: American ethnologist, geologist, explorer and activist Matilda Coxe Stevenson (1849-1915) who occasionally adopted the pen name Tilly E. Stevenson and always encouraged other women to pursue careers in anthropology and other sciences would be 174 years old today.

Board chairman: Hawk, at the height of his powers.

Also born on May 12 were British social reformer Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), the founder of modern nursing; British engineer Sir Christopher Hinton (1901-1983), who led the development of Britains nuclear energy industry; American geophysicist Maurice Ewing (1906-1974), who dove deep into ocean basins; American actress Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003), a headstrong individualist who enjoyed six decades of leading-lady status; and Lawrence Peter Yogi Berra (1925-2015), the eminently quotable Major League Baseball icon.

On board: And take a bow, Anthony Frank Tony Hawk! The American professional skateboarder and entrepreneur a vertical skateboarding pioneer and professional brand-building posterchild turns 55 today.

Wish Birdman well at editor@innovateli.com, where your news tips take flight and your calendar events roll on.

About our sponsor: Nixon Peabody delivers exceptional service and creates positive impact by combining high performance, entrepreneurial spirit, deep engagement and an unwavering commitment to a culture of collaboration, diversity and humanity. We constantly assess what is important to our clients to help them overcome their biggest challenges, ensuring they are equipped with winning legal strategies. Visit NixonPeabody.com.

BUT FIRST, THIS

Dans archive: One of Long Islands most recognizable publications has achieved a measure of immortality at Stony Brook University.

Publisher Dan Rattiner has gifted a complete archive of Dans Papers, the weekly lifestyle publication focused primarily on the East End, to Stony Brook University Libraries specifically, to the Special Collections division curating the universitys rare books and manuscripts, historical maps and other archival collections. Rattiner has presented a personal collection of his namesake publication, spanning 1960 (the year Dans Papers launched) to 2023 and comprising the most complete print run of Dans Papers held by a research library, according to SBU.

The archive is currently undergoing a preservation assessment, with the university planning to store print and microfilm copies and digitize the entire series for free online publication. Dans Papers is an important addition to the librarys distinctive collections because of its depth and coverage of the social, political and environmental history of Long Island, noted Stony Brook University Archivist Kristen Nyitray. It benefits the mission of the universitys libraries and the wider research community.

Mutual distrust: The failures of Washington Mutual and other major banks have understandably spooked middle-market CEOs.

Bank stare: Amazing how one little national financial disaster can bring down the room.

Three months after its first edition of 2023 struck a largely optimistic tone, the Marcum-Hofstra CEO Survey has returned with a downer of a top story: Middle-market CEOs quizzed byMarcum LLPand Hofstra UniversitysFrank G. Zarb School of Business in April, just weeks after the 2023 banking crisis nearly boiled over are concerned about the collapse of three major banks and its potential implications for their corporate finances, with more than 62 percent indicating they were at least somewhat concerned about their own banks stability (and 21.2 percent saying they were very concerned).

Belying the banking bummer, the 255 surveyed CEOs (of companies with revenues between $5 million and $1 billion-plus) remained largely optimistic about the current business environment, with 37.6 percent rating their outlook between 8 and 10 (on a 10 scale). However, remote-work policies are on the ropes, with 12.9 percent of respondents noting theyve discontinued the option and another 28.6 percent considering discontinuation. Full results here.

TOP OF THE SITE

Clearing roadblox: Determined to bring detailed brain mapping to her fellow neuroscientists, a well-funded SBU researcher is going where Roblox has gone before.

Gift rap: A hip-hop whos-who will help the LIMEHOF celebrate the music genres unofficial 50th anniversary and the Islands unique role in its evolution.

Suggestion box: Hey, youre a big thinker is there a one-on-one youd like to hear in Season 4 of Spark: The Innovate Long Island Podcast? Name an innovation economy leader at editor@innovateli.com and meanwhile, catch up on these classics.

ICYMI

Northwell Healths overachieving retina scans from down under; Farmingdale States futuristic science lab from the past.

BEST OF THE WEST (AND SOMETIMES NORTH/SOUTH)

Innovate LIs inbox overrunneth with inspirational innovations from all North American corners. This weeks brightest out-of-towners:

From California: San Francisco-based plug-and-play financing solution Triumph brings $14 million pot to skill-based competitions for startup game developers.

From Michigan: Auburn Hills-based automotive infotainment insider Alps Alpine Co. launches audio-enthusiasts virtual park on mass-multiplayer Roblox platform.

From California: Brea-based visual-solutions provider ViewSonic Corp. keeps an eye on gamers and workers with anti-tear, anti-blur high-performance monitors.

ON THE MOVE

Brad Hibbard

+ Brad Hibbard has been promoted to chief strategy officer for the Guide Dog Foundation & Americas VetDogs in Smithtown. He served previously as chief program officer.

+ Bernadette Riley has been elected assistant secretary of the Medical Society of the State of New York in Westbury. She is director of New York Institute of Technologys Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Hypermobility Treatment Center in Old Westbury and an associate professor of Family Medicine at NYITCOM.

+ Cheryl Katz-Erato has joined Uniondale-based Forchelli Deegan Terrana as a partner in the Tax, Trusts & Estates Practice Group. She was a trusts and estates senior associate at Melville-based Cona Elder Law.

+ Lonnie Ostrow has been hired as marketing and communications director at the Garden City-based Family & Childrens Association. He was director of marketing and communications for the American Friends of Bar-Ilan University in Manhattan.

+ Paul Pipia has been elected president of the Medical Society of the State of New York in Westbury. He serves as deputy medical director and chairman of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow.

+ Mary OReilly, co-chairwoman of the Trust & Estates Practice Group at Mineola law firm Meltzer Lippe, has been elected a 2023 fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel.

+ Chris Dodd has been hired as first vice president/middle market relationship manager at Valley Bank in Jericho. He was senior vice president/team leader at Merchant Financial Group in Manhattan.

Like this newsletter?Innovate Long Island newsletter, website and podcast sponsorships are a prime opportunity to reach the inventors, investors, entrepreneurs and executives you need to know (just ask Nixon Peabody).Marlene McDonnell can tell you more.

BELOW THE FOLD (Parking Lot Edition)

A fine mess: Parking tickets can be expensive especially if theyre fake.

Income outcome: The Big Apples richest may pay higher parking fines.

Spaced out: Why parking is such a pain in the backseat absolutely everywhere.

Ticket trick: Fake parking tickets with faux QR codes are scamming the unsuspecting.

Walk in the park: Please continue supporting the amazing firms that support Innovate Long Island, including Nixon Peabody, where client engagement, collaborative spirit and unmatched experience create the best legal strategies, every time. Check them out.

More:
No. 788: Hi, Mom were getting ready for your big day with dirty ... - Innovate Long Island

The Star Trek universe is packed with a ton of fascinating new technology. The show is rarely about the science of its incredible inventions, but its world is constantly influenced by the ever-evolving machines. Thanks to all the benefits of the future, the human lifespan has sharply increased. Of all the characters in Star Trek, who would have thought that the oldest human on record is a familiar face?

Serialized fiction often features characters that may as well be immortal. If a show wants to run for dozens of years, it can't kill off a bunch of its most popular faces. This can feel cheesy in a soap opera, but a sci-fi show like Star Trek can simply explain their eternal lives with future technology.

RELATED: Star Treks 26-Hour Day, Explained

The oldest known human in the mainline Star Trek canon is none other than the doctor of the USS Enterprise, Leonard "Bones" McCoy. McCoy canonically reached the age of 137. Non-canonical sources depicted him going on to become a Starfleet Captain, the head of the Starfleet Medical Academy, and the Starfleet Surgeon General. His death has never been depicted, so the highest point of McCoy's age is still unknown. At 137, he's the oldest confirmed human. Some edge cases challenge the definition of "human" and unseat him from his title, but Bones is the winner among traditional human beings.

With a much looser definition of "human," the oldest human is a man named Flint. Flint was an immortal who lived for more than 6,000 years on Earth. He was born in 3834 BC as an ancient soldier named Akharin. He went on to take several new names and careers as he lived his very long life. Flint was Methuselah, King Solomon, Alexander the Great, Lazarus, Merlin, Leonardo da Vinci, Johannes Brahms, and more. Flint knew Moses, Socrates, Jesus Christ, Galileo Galilei, Shakespeare, and more. His immortality was very poorly explained. He could consistently regenerate tissue and instantly heal from any injury for reasons that the show didn't feel the need to get into. Flint is unquestionably the oldest human who ever lived, but he is likely dead at this point in the canon. Dr. McCoy discovered that Flint's immortality was tied to some inherent quality of the planet Earth. After Flint left his home, his days were numbered. His death hasn't been depicted, but he was actively dying as the Enterprise crew left him.

Some augmented humans would outlast Dr. McCoy. Augments like Khan Noonien Singh enjoy lifespans that are at least twice as long as any ordinary human. Khan and his siblings are superhumans. They're incredibly fast and strong, resistant to any toxin, and capable of shrugging off wounds from almost any weapon. All of their organs are substantially better than those of ordinary humans. A blood transfusion from an augment can cure diseases. These beings can no longer reasonably be counted as humans. They'd outlive any ordinary person but only thanks to some outrageous cheating. Bones is the only honest winner of the title of oldest recorded human in the Star Trek canon.

The average life expectancy for a human being on Earth in 2022 was 72.98 years. That number is highly varied by country, with nations like Monaco nearing an average of 90 years. Twenty years ago, the worldwide average was around 67 years. In 1966, the year Star Trek debuted, the average lifespan was 53.73 years. That's an impressive increase over the last 57 years. According to the Star Trek canon, the average human lifespan will reach 100 years during the early 22nd century. By the mid-24th century, the mean crested 120 years.

This gradual increase in longevity is mostly thanks to advanced medical technology. Disease is a much less severe issue in the 24th century, medical outcomes are substantially better, and most issues that would end a human life prematurely have been dealt with. In addition, humans can enter suspended animation through the use of stasis chambers. This would allow a person to pass through decades without aging. While the subject wouldn't technically "live" these extra years, going into cryogenic slumber would allow a person to see eras they'd never experience otherwise. These technological advancements come alongside a general increase in social welfare. In a society that actually cares about its people, scarcity is a thing of the past. In the real world, tons of people die young due to avoidable policy choices. A world without poverty, thanks entirely to the reasonable redistribution of wealth and empathetic treatment of the needy, will always have better life expectancy than a world that allows the disadvantaged to die on the street.

Dr. Leonard McCoy is at the forefront of medical technology. He's a decent man who knows how to take care of himself and others. It's no surprise that he would understand how to keep himself alive far beyond the average life expectancy. At 137, Bones is the oldest human around, and he's still going strong.

MORE: Star Trek: Who Is Laris?

Here is the original post:
Star Trek: Who Is The Oldest Human? - GameRant

Image Credit: Nav Photographyonpexels.com

Recently, Nineequa Blanding wrote a piece about a coalition in Washington state that established a $1.37 million fund to enable sabbaticals for BIPOC leaders. The piece struck a chord with many NPQ readers, as it did for the Health Justice desk. In the past year, weve each taken sabbaticals of our own.

Looking back on that time offline, I recognize how important it was to my work as a health justice practitioner to create space for play, creativity, and dreaming. These activities are difficult to make space for in a capitalist context. Even in workspaces dedicated to holistic health and fighting injustice, productivity and urgency loom large. Once I stepped away, I was surprised at how centering care and thriving in my own life quickly led to accepting new, healthier ways of workand imagining new approaches to health altogether.

Sabbaticals for BIPOC Leaders, the report published by the BIPOC ED Coalition in Washington that pushed for the sabbatical fund, points out that the current climate is taking an immeasurable psychological, physical, and emotional toll, especially on women of color leaders. In conversations with my peers across the movement and nonprofit worlds, Ive seen this health toll manifest in a number of ways. Chronic illnesses, deep fatigue, hypervigilance, limited emotional bandwidth, and mental health stressall are well-known phenomena to many who work on social change.

In roles that required us to envision futures and tell compelling stories, we found ourselves lacking inspiration. Truly paradigm-shifting work requires the space to think and synthesize. Instead, my peers and I found ourselves trying to cram in the minutes between endless Zoom meetings, fundraising calls, and presentations. Rarely did I encounter leaders who felt that they had the resource of time in the ways they wanted.

At first, reclaiming that time felt selfish. I worked through guilt and confusion about how much work has shaped my personal identity, and whether it was flippant to walk away from it, even for a short time. As a child of immigrants, I have watched people in my community work tirelessly to provide stability for their families. The idea of removing myself from that cycleeven if it was only possible because I had been doing the same thing, for more than 15 years.

Second, I recognized critiques about mainstream definitions of self-care, which today has been commodified into self-focused activities like yoga classes or spa treatments. This commercialized approach to restoration is often disconnected from movement frameworks like healing justice, which acknowledge that addressing collective trauma requires collective solutions. I worried that taking time off would mean reneging on my commitment to work on those very solutions.

At the same time, I grew increasingly aware of the gap between preaching and practice. Many of the mentors and healers Ive been lucky to work with were always clear about the importance of balancing energy and refusing urgency. As a public health scholar, I know the importance of rest, social connection, and a persons ability to thrive and be healthy. Even further, against the backdrop of a global pandemic, I was surrounded by constant conversations about the nature of work, and how we change our relationship to it.

Despite these forces, like so many of those I worked with, I put the sabbatical decision off for as long as I could. Finally, my body made the choice for me. I had experienced chronic health problems for years, and during the pandemic, they accumulated to a breaking point. My brain, which I had relied on for so long in order to push through those issues, also ran out of fuel. I knew that I owed this overdue time to myself, and I finally decided to make the jump.

For the first few weeks of my sabbatical, I was tapped out. Ive been an avid reader since I was young, the kid at a party with a book in tow. It scared me, then, that I had no interest in absorbing new information or synthesizing patterns. My body and brain still felt hypervigilant: anticipating task completion and looming deadlines, even though I no longer had a work-driven work list. It took me three weeks to unwind from a sense of constant pressure.

For BIPOC leaders, our time is often filled with disproportionate demands and obligations, both internally and externally inflicted. Given this, and a system of work that often limits autonomy, the freedom to move through a day in an unstructured way can feel revolutionary.

Even when we are doing work we love, the idea that we can choose how we spend our time, and how much to give of ourselvescan open up space for imagination.

Subscribe to NPQ's newsletters to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

During my time off, I found myself turning to works of futurism and history. Doing so helped me remember worlds outside of the traditional healthcare spaces I frequently occupied. For example, reading about the Black Panthers free clinic model and their community-centered approach to health reminded me that people of color have long created their own systems for health, outside the White-led medical industrial complex. I also combed through fiction that envisioned health on faraway planets, or worlds where immortality yielded a whole new set of health challenges.

Time granted me the opportunity to dive into health approaches that I had always wondered about but never had the time to explore: bodywork, ayurvedic knowledge, plant medicine, sound meditation, and more. These practices, for me, held multiple meanings. First, as a person looking to heal physically and emotionally, I found that they helped me unlock various aspects of the creativity and relaxation I had been looking for. Second, they also piqued my curiosity as a public health practitioneras someone who knows that our existing healthcare complex, dominated by hospitals, insurance, and pharmaceuticals, can fall short, particularly for BIPOC communities. The more I read about these various healing traditions, the more I was inspired by the leaders, collectives, and organizations that are fostering them.

These unlikely sources led me to organic brainstorms, ideas for articles, and a whole host of questions that I had held off on as I was running around in past roles. They also caused me to rethink the work containers I wanted to build for myself, and for the various organizations I worked with.

Sabbaticals, of course, cannot remedy fundamentally extractive systems of work. Stepping into my time off, I was deeply aware of my privilege. I had few family or community obligations to carry, a network of strong professional opportunities, and the ability to save financially. A sabbatical was a viable option for me, but it was unfeasible for many of the people whose work I admired mostfrom frontline racial justice organizers to healthcare practitioners treating COVID patients.

It is for this reason that funded efforts like the one in Washington are crucial. So, too, are initiatives like New Seneca Village, which launched in 2021 to bring together BIPOC healers and leaders for reflective residences. Attendees at these residencies are not obligated to produce or even talk to their peers. With funded time to simply exist, attendees could choose to flow through their days as they saw fit.

Furthermore, while temporarily opting out of the system is crucial and nourishing, it is not a replacement for labor policies such as paid leave, wage reform, childcare support, and many other elements of a robust safety net. The European Union places significant priority on mental health in the workplace, with countries like Belgium offering paid leave for burnout, accompanied by dialogues with both employees and employers about what accommodations could be made. Shifts like these ensure that, in addition to the pathway of stepping away altogether, employees also experience options to recharge on a more consistent basis as well.

One common theme Ive observed among fellow sabbatical-takers is a commitment to rethinking structures of work we previously found immovable. Maria De La Cruz, the former executive director of the Headwaters Foundation for Justice in Minneapolis, shared in a blog post about sabbaticals and systems change that the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors are depleting people, treating them like expendable resources. These systems are rooted in racial capitalism and white supremacy.

Headwaters provides paid sabbaticals to all staff after five years of service and prioritizes a culture of openness. For De La Cruz, that included reaching out to senior leadership about struggles with mental health after months of spiritual toll, trauma, and stress. The organization supported her through a month-long leave of absence to focus on healing. It is possible to create a culture of abundance where people have the time, the resources, and the space to focus on their health, their relationships, and their joy, De La Cruz shares.

Greater cultural and funding support for these shifts is crucial at the individual, institutional, and systems level. This could look like joining advocacy efforts to promote more models like that in Washington, as well as joining campaigns focused on robust labor protections and worker support. For those in social change leadership roles, learning from grassroots and organizing groups that prioritize restorative labor practiceseven while engaging in urgent, high-stakes workis a great start. So, too, is opening dialogue with your own coworkers and collaborators to identify practice changes, as well as opportunities for collective imagination.

Creating this culture and placing it in the context of broader movements is key to ensuring the ongoing health of our workand nonworksettings. A sabbatical was crucial for me to remember essential truths about what it means to engage in social change. First, it is possible to imagine and build work systems that centers spaciousness and creativity. Second, implementing these systems enables leaders to both rediscover and redesign models of health that go far beyond the medical industrial complex. Prioritizing reflection and autonomy can bring us creative institutional spaces and models where wellbeing is part of the process, not just the outcome.

More here:
Sabbaticals: A Gateway to Reimagining Health - Non Profit News - Nonprofit Quarterly

She wrote 'Notes on Nursing' (1859) which is generally described as a classic introduction to nursing. (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

New Delhi: Every year on May 12, the world celebrates International Nurses Day to commemorate the birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale, someone who dedicated her life to helping others and stands as a shining example of humanity. The The Lady with the Lamp, as she is famously known was a social reformer and pioneer of modern nursing who showed during the Crimean War that human civilisation can best progress if we help each other, if we have empathy in our hearts and the aim to reach out to those who are in need. In this article, we will look back at the life of this gargantuan personality who became a beacon of compassion at a time of crisis.

Also read: Why is International Nurses Day celebrated?

Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820, in Italys Florence. Her family was a British one who had good connections in the upper echelons of society, and they returned to England in 1821. Nightangles family was liberal in their outlook, and the varied education that she got in her childhood would go on to help Nightangle immensely in the long run.

But despite her familys liberal views, when she announced her decision to become a nurse in 1944, it agitated her mother and sister greatly, as Florence did not conform to the conservative thought that women of her status should become wives and mothers only. Despite her familys opposition, Florence studied with great passion to learn the craft of nursing. It was not that Florence, a reportedly attractive woman, did not have her suitors, especially the politician and poet Richard Monckton Milnes. But she gave up the idea of marriage as it would interfere with her passion for nursing.

From October 1853 to February 1856, between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Sardinia-Piedmont were embroiled in a battle which is now known as the Crimean War. On October 21, 1854, she and the staff of 38 women volunteer nurses were sent to the Ottoman Empire, and the situation that they found there was appalling.

The medical staff was stretched in the face of the humungous challenge of caring for the dead soldiers, the officials could not care less about the situation, the lack of medicines, and nobody bothered about hygiene which resulted in the spread of other infections.

Through The Times, Nightingale appealed for a government solution to the dilapidated facilities for the wounded soldiers. The British government asked Isambard Kingdom Brunel to design a prefabricated hospital that could be shipped to the Dardanelles. As a result, the Renkioi Hospital was built.

It is said that Nightingale brought down the death rate from 42 per cent to 2 per cent, either by improving overall hygiene herself or by calling for the Sanitary Commission. She reportedly started the practice of washing hands in the hospital where she worked.

Her experience during the Crimean War convinced Nightingale that sanitary living conditions are vital to lead a healthy life. It would help her to bring down peacetime deaths in the army and focus on the sanitary design of hospitals and the introduction of sanitation in working-class homes. Also, it was during the war that Nightingale got the nickname The Lady with the Lamp from a phrase in a report in The Times.

Nightingale did extensive social reforms in her later years as well. She wrote Notes on Nursing (1859) which is generally described as a classic introduction to nursing. Also, in the 1870s, she mentored Linda Richards, Americas first trained nurse, who would go on to become a nursing pioneer in the US and Japan.

Florences name and her works became well-known not just in Great Britain, but all over the world. She died in London, on August 13, 1910, at the age of 90, leaving behind her immortal legacy as the founder of the modern nursing profession.

View post:
Florence Nightingale birth anniversary: The Lady with the Lamp who founded modern nursing during Crimean War - News9 LIVE

Today, I want to update the House on Russias attacks on civilians and critical national infrastructure in Ukraine.

We are now on day 442 of the conflict. During this period Moscow has, according to the UN, provoked the largest displacement of people in Europe since World War 2, including almost eight million refugees and almost six million internally forced from their homes. We must not lose sight of these staggering statistics. But, worse still, Russias battlefield setbacks have led it to cynically targeting energy infrastructure - putting millions of people at risk of sickness and death in cold unsanitary conditions. Take, for example, the besieged city of Bakhmut, where there are now fewer than 7,000 residents, one-tenth of the original population. Who, for the last nine months have been hiding in basements, without clean water, electricity, or gas and minimal connection to the outside world.

From the scale of Russias attacks, it is clear that they have not limited themselves to military targets - their purpose is simply to terrorise the local population into submission. That conclusion is the only one that can be drawn when you look at Russias ever-expanding charge sheet of international humanitarian law violations.

As of 2 April, there have been 788 attacks on healthcare facilities - hospitals, clinics, medical centres. There have been instances of damage to educational faculties schools, day care centres and nurseries.

Meanwhile, Russia has plundered crops and agricultural equipment on an industrial scale, destroying grain storage and handling facilities. According to estimates from the Kyiv School of Economics, Russia stole or destroyed 4.04 million tonnes of grain and oilseeds, valued at $1.9bn, in Ukrainian territories during the 2022 season. And the Kremlins continued intransigence is contributing to the current backlog of grain exports.

Besides this, Russia has bombed industrial facilities, including the Azot chemical plant (Severodonesk) risking toxic industrial chemical release and environmental impact. It has attacked Ukraines largest refinery at Kremenchuk on at least three occasions. It has bombed airfields, ports, roads and rail networks preventing refugees from fleeing the danger. It has taken out communication networks affecting banks, internet and cell phones with residents in some areas now forced to barter for food. And Kremlin strikes on substations, powerplants and powerlines have impacted water treatment facilities leaving cities like Mariupol without water and reliant on delivery of bottled supplies.

At the same time, Russia has forcibly occupied and undermined the safe operation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant the largest in Europe. As International Atomic Energy Agency director general Rafael Grossi has said: Every single one of the IAEAs crucial seven indispensable pillars for ensuring nuclear safety and security in an armed conflict has been compromised. He recently warned the situation around the plant was potentially dangerous.

Sadly, so far at least 23,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed or wounded, although the actual figure is likely to be substantially higher. Thousands of citizens have been sent to sinister filtration camps before being forcibly relocated to Russia. Some 6,000 children - ranging in ages from 4 months to 17 years - are now in re-education camps across Russia.

The UN as well as US investigators have found that Russia has committed war crimes with reported evidence of executions, torture and sexual violence in civilian areas. In early April, President Zelensky said more than 70,000 Russian war crimes had been recorded since Putins invasion. The names of Bucha and Izium have become synonymous with mass murder. The world will not forget the bombing of the drama theatre in Mariupol where 1,200 civilians sought shelter under a giant sign reading children - no matter how much Russia tries to hide and bulldoze over the scene we will not forget. Even in the territories Russia has illegally annexed, citizens find themselves subjected to the worst excesses of totalitarianism. A Russian passport is increasingly essential to access vital services a nightmare for those with newborn babies. Civilian infrastructure such as healthcare facilities are being seized and repurposed to treat wounded servicemen. Kill lists of civic leaders have been drawn up, citizens executed in cold blood and concerted attempts made to erase Ukrainian, culture, history and identity.

Mr Deputy Speaker, we should be clear. The targeting of civilians and infrastructure essential to the civilian population of Ukraine has not happened by accident in the fog of war. Much of it was planned Russian policy. Russia has form. Weve seen their handiwork in Syria.

In March, President Putin was indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes.

But we should also be clear, as numerous credible reports indicate, Russias morally bankrupt approach might have been made in the Kremlin but it is often carried out willingly - not just by rogue units - but by the ordinary rank and file across the Russian armed forces.

An even clearer picture of Russias barbaric approach emerges when we look at some of the weapons they are using against innocent civilians. I am not referring here to the extensive strikes against Ukraines electric power network from cruise and surface-to-surface missiles. Or even the use of short-range ballistic missile like the Iskander which infamously hit a railway station in the city of Kramatorsk, killing 60 and wounding more than 110. Or even the two 500kg bombs dropped by Russian fighter aircraft on the Mariupol theatre.

The fact is Russia has used cluster munitions with wholesale disregard for human life and civilians. They have been dropped near a hospital in Vuhledar. A 9M79-series Tochka ballistic missile delivering a 9N123 cluster munition warhead killed four civilians and injured another 10, including six healthcare workers. It has used 9M55K Smerch cluster munition rockets in three neighbourhoods of Kharkiv Ukraines second largest city - resulting in reports of nine civilian deaths and 37 injuries, according to the United Nations.

Russia also relies on massed fires. Indiscriminate artillery bombardments to built-up areas, that account for the vast majority of civilian casualties injured or killed.

And Moscow makes extensive use of conventional anti-personnel mines and improvised booby traps to indiscriminately harm civilians. Dead bodies, the homes and vehicles of Ukrainian civilians and even childrens toys have been rigged up as lethal devices. Russia has laid mines remotely and mechanically, covering significant areas of farmland with scant evidence of either marking minefields or warning civilians about their presence. These mines will leave a legacy of danger long after the conflict ends.

Russia has used hundreds of Iranian-made Shahed drones to attack targets in Ukraine. Loitering munitions sent on numerous suicide missions have repeatedly taken their toll on civilians. Last week these weapons struck a university campus in Odesa and, once more, innocents were in the crosshairs in Kyiv.

Mr Deputy Speaker, from the start I have been clear that our support for Ukraine is responsible, calibrated, coordinated and agile. Aligned and united with the international community, we are helping the Ukrainians defend their homeland. Most importantly, it is responsive to Russias own actions. None of this would have been necessary, had Russia not invaded. But now it is about pushing back their forces and deterring them from committing yet more crimes by holding the Russian military establishment to account for their actions.

In December, Mr Deputy Speaker, I wrote to Russian Defence Minister Shoigu and set out the UK governments objection to the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure. And that further attacks contrary to International Humanitarian Law for example, the Principle of Distinction, codified in Articles 48, 51, and 52 of the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Convention, would force me to consider donating more capable weapons to Ukraine, so they may better defend themselves within their own territory.

Unfortunately, Russia has continued down this dark path. This year, Russias leadership has continued to systematically target civilians and civilian infrastructure with bombs, missiles and drones. More medical facilities were targeted in January than in the previous six months combined.

It has bombed power facilities in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Zaporizhzhia and Odesa oblasts. Incidents of civilian casualties have increased; especially in areas close to the frontline, such as Kherson and Bakhmut - a city now reduced to a smoking ruin. In January, a block of flats in Dnipro was wiped out by a 5.5 tonne Russian AS-4 KITCHEN missile probably causing 124 casualties, including 45 fatalities. In March, a five-storey apartment block in Zaporizhzia was attacked with a S-300 missile - almost completely destroying the building. And between April 27 and May 2, Russian forces conducted strikes against Ukraine using Kh-101 and Kh-555 long-range Air Launched Cruise Missiles. Despite Kremlin claims that it is targeting Ukraines military-industrial facilities one of the buildings struck was a nine-storey apartment block. The salvo left 23 dead and dozens more injured. Last week, Russian shelling struck residential buildings, and on Monday they bombed a Red Cross warehouse full of humanitarian aid. And drone footage from Bakhmut appeared to show white phosphorus raining down on a city ablaze. The use of incendiary weapons, which burn at 800 degrees Celsius, within concentrations of civilians is a contravention of Protocol 3 of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.

Mr Deputy Speaker, as I have said many times in the past we simply will not stand by while Russia kills civilians. We have seen what Ukrainians are able to do when they have the right capabilities. In recent days, 30 Shahed drones have been shot down. The Ukrainian Air Force say 23 out of 25 cruise missiles fired from sea and land have been downed. And we have had confirmation from Lieutenant General Oleschuk, the Ukrainian Air Force Commander, that even Russias much-vaunted AS-24 KILLJOY air launched hypersonic ballistic missile has been brought down.

That is why the Prime Minister and I have now taken the decision to provide longer range capabilities.

In December, I informed the House that I was developing options to respond to Russias continued aggression in a calibrated and determined manner.

Today, I can confirm that the UK has donated Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine. Storm Shadow is a long-range conventional precision strike capability. It compliments the long-range systems already gifted, including HIMARS and Harpoon missiles, as well as Ukraines own Neptune cruise missiles and longer-range munitions already gifted.

The donation of these weapon systems gives Ukraine the best chance to defend themselves against Russias continued brutality. Especially, the deliberate targeting of Ukrainian Civilian Infrastructure, which is against International Law. Ukraine has a right to be able to defend itself against this. Their use of Storm Shadow will allow Ukraine to push back Russian forces based within Ukrainian Sovereign Territory.

Im sure the House will understand that I will not go into further details of the capability. But while these weapons will give Ukraine new capability, members should recognise that these systems are not in the same league as the Russian AS-24 KILLJOY hypersonic missile or Shahed Iranian one-way attack drones, or their Kalibr cruise missile with a range of over 2,000km. Roughly 7 times that of the Storm Shadow missile.

Russia must recognise that their actions alone have led to such systems being provided to Ukraine.

It is my judgement as the Defence Secretary that this is a calibrated proportionate response to Russias escalations.

Mr Deputy Speaker, travelling through Ukraine as I have several times since the invasion you see smashed buildings where once there were businesses, and piles of rubble where once there were homes full of life.

They reveal the truth of Russias invasion. Their needless destruction and gratuitous violence. Their continuing violations of international law and the deliberate targeting and killing of civilians. They are the visible and tragic symbols of the Kremlins desperation.

Try as they might, the Kremlin cant hide the fact that their invasion is already failing. They can only occupy the rubble left by their destruction.

And this weeks Victory Day parade showcased only, really, this historic failure. It demonstrated Putins efforts to twist the Soviet Unions sacrifices against the Nazis in the Second World War and was an insult to the Immortal Regiment.

It was the faade of power and distraction from a faltering invasion. The appeal to unity while even the Russian leadership loses confidence. The hypocrisy of claiming victimhood while waging a war of their own choosing.

The reality is that this is a war of President Putins own choosing. At the expense of Ukraines sovereignty and its civilians lives.

But Mr Deputy Speaker, as you know, the UK stands for values of freedom, the rule of law, human rights, and the protection of civilians. We will stand side by side with Ukraine, we will continue to support them in defence of their sovereign country.

And that is why I commend this statement to the house.

More here:
Defence Secretary oral statement on war in Ukraine - GOV.UK