Category Archives: Post Human

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I should state that my prof probably wouldnt support me posting such a public critique of another academic, but in my profs own words..We are baby academics...and as a baby I think I have license to discussing my ever changing ignorant and informed perspective(s)..

Who is the subject in the future?

It becomes increasingly difficult to comprehend the diversity of Queer Theory. The comprehension of diversity possibly requires us to specify theoriesin "..document or legitimizing installment.."(Manalansan2014)or archival efforts in colonial desperation. MartinF. Manalansan's"The Stuffof Archives | Mess, Migration, and Queer Lives" offers a possible contemporary contribution to a post-colonial diversity. Even though this "..theoretical and ethnographic explanation" (Manalansan2014) situates itselfin New York City at the brink of the millenniumit may not be effortless to justify the "Contestationsof citizenship, hygiene, and social order."(Manalansan2014) thatManalansaninsists. This response essay will cover what is empirical, objective, but subjectiveabout Manalansan'spiece.Is there validity to positive and negative messes"(Manalansan2014)? Mess as Queer.

The piece situates itself in a "..gentrifying neighbourhood.."(Manalansan2014) NYC at the end of the AIDScrisis. Proposes the "The Queer Six" (Manalansan2014)to state a case for empirical observation. A Filipinatrans woman, two South-asiangay men, an Ecuadoranlesbian, and two Colombians, a lesbian and a bisexual..begs the question of appropriate diversity. What is so disheveled about this isolated group of "..minorariansubjects.." (Manalansan2014)? If"..mess is not limited to bodies, objects.."(Manalansan2014) then where are bodies of majoritarian? Limited by what Manalansanconstitutes "..material culture studies.."(Manalansan2014). Post-colonial means no-colonial? Empirical is concerned with the verifiable through observation interrogates the absence of neo-culturalIntegration.

To vindicate the "..untidy disorganization of bodies, things, emotions.."(Manalansan2014) as additions to the archive Manalansansheds light on "..culture of underrecognizedpractices.."(Manalansan2014). Using examples such as television show What Not to Wear as a "..pathology to normality.."(Manalansan2014) evidentiallyand objectively explores reasonings for these under recognized practices and bodies. Objectivity situates itself in neutrality. Words of scientific comedianEmily Levine "The subject subjugatingthe object" How is Manalansansubjugating the evidence?Indications of "..the idea of a hotmess involves less a clear-cut binary than a highly gendered one.." (Manalansan2014)implicating "..positive and negative messes.." (Manalansan2014)curiously invokes us to ask..who are the actual subjects in this allegedObjective commentary.

At further dissection, "The Queer Six" disguisesitself as subjects of "..ephemeral evidence.."(Manalansan2014) at the trenches against "..traditional historiography.."(Manalansan2014). For the reasoning inManalansan'sargumentgive impressions of morality. Unexpectedly, the subject becomes principlesof positive and negative as a rational for Mess as Queerness. Expansion on "..science of systems management.."(Manalansan2014) could have providedManalansanwith better substantiatedclaims. Though, the inclusion of BinarySystems offers an acceptable provocation "..of marginalized queers.."(Manalansan2014) as apposed to "..locating the quotidian.."(Manalansan2014) in the sensationalizedand evidencing irrelavant"..pleasures and fabulousness.."(Manalansan2014).

Who is the subject subjugatingthe object?.. in another contemporary effort "..to officialize and further historialknowledge.."(Manalansan2014)? As briefly analyzed in this responsiveessay ofMartinF. Manalansan's"The Stuffof Archives | Mess, Migration, and Queer Lives"; issues of inclusiveness, subjectivity, and evidence come into discourse. What is true substantiatedevidence in order to justify a new generation of archival practices? In Manalansan'sown conclusion "..hint at political potential.."(Manalansan2014) or "..alternative narratives enable an openess to multiple futures.."(Manalansan2014) claims fanaticaloptimism with aninsignificantglimpse at tangible solutions. Value in the fabrication in conversational literature may provoke changes in theoreticalperspectives. A material solution of the subject(s) "..queer immigrant archive.."(Manalansan2014) or the subject(s)"..traditional historiography.."(Manalansan2014) subjugating the objects of scientific inquiryin Queer Theory quarrels a different post-human future. Responses whetherMess as Queernessexists as a priority.

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Who is the #SUBJECT in the #FUTURE? - Huffington Post

Horrifying details have been released from inside a Syrian human slaughterhouse where up to 13,000 prisoners have been tortured and executed in the government facility.

Former inmates detail the shocking extent of the abuse they experienced in Saydnaya, a facility deigned to humiliate, degrade, torture and ultimately kill those trapped inside.

Amnesty International, which published the report on Tuesday, believe that the suffering and appalling conditions at Saydnaya have been deliberately inflicted on detainees as a policy of extermination.

Amnesty International

The findings of the report are based on an investigation carried out between December 2015 and December 2016.

Amnesty International spoke to 84 witnesses, included former Saydnaya guards and officials, detainees, judges and lawyers, as well as national and international experts on detention in Syria.

Between 2011 and 2015 up to 13,000 people were killed.

Groups of up to 50 people were taken out of their cells and hanged, the report states.

Hangings at the prison were carried out at least once a week, sometimes twice, Amnesty International said.

Detainees were transported to another prison building on the grounds of Saydnaya, where they were hanged. Throughout this process, they remain blindfolded.

They do not know when or how they will die until the noose is placed around their necks.

They kept them [hanging] there for 10 to 15 minutes. Some didnt die because they are light.

For the young ones, their weight wouldnt kill them. The officers assistants would pull them down and break their necks, said a former judge who witnessed the hangings.

Amnesty International

Guards collected detainees from their cells in the middle of the night, usually on Monday and Wednesday.

If you put your ears on the floor, you could hear the sound of a kind of gurgling. This would last around 10 minutes We were sleeping on top of the sound of people choking to death.

This was normal for me then, said Hamid, a former military officer arrested in 2011.

Amnesty International

The cell floors were described as having blood and puss from prisoners wounds. Guards collected the bodies of dead detainees each morning at about 9am.

Nader, a former Saydnaya detainee, said: Every day there would be two or three dead people in our wing I remember the guard would ask how many we had.

He would say, Room number one how many? Room number two how many? and on and on... There was one time that the guards came to us, room by room, and beat us on the head, chest and neck.

Thirteen people from our wing died that day.

Nicolette Waldman, the reports author, said: The vast majority of victims in Saydnaya who are being subjected to mass hangings and extermination are civilians.

Their most common profiles are human rights defenders, political dissidents, journalists, students, demonstrators.

They have not committed any crime other than being perceived to oppose the Syrian government.

Amnesty International

Not one of the detainees condemned to hang at Saydnaya Prison is given a fair trial, Amnesty reports.

Before people are hanged, theyundergo a perfunctory, one or two-minute procedure at a so-called Military Field Court.

One former judge from a Syrian military court told Amnesty International the court operates outside the rules of the Syrian legal system.

The judge will ask the name of the detainee and whether he committed the crime. Whether the answer is yes or no, he will be convicted... This court has no relation with the rule of law. This is not a court, he said.

The convictions issued by this so-called court are based on false confessions extracted from detainees under torture.

Detainees are not allowed access to a lawyer or given an opportunity to defend themselves.

Those who are condemned to death do not find out about their sentences until minutes before they are hanged.

Amnesty International

Rape was used as a form of torture, with prisoners in some cases being forced to rape other inmates, the report released on Tuesday states.

Vahid Salemi/AP

Amnesty International said such war crimes and crimes against humanity are authorised at the highest levels of the Syrian government.

Lynn Maalouf, deputy director for research at Amnesty Internationals regional office in Beirut, said:The horrors depicted in this report reveal a hidden, monstrous campaign, authorised at the highest levels of the Syrian government, aimed at crushing any form of dissent within the Syrian population.

We demand that the Syrian authorities immediately cease extrajudicial executions and torture and inhuman treatment at Saydnaya Prison and in all other government prisons across Syria. Russia and Iran, the governments closest allies, must press for an end to these murderous detention policies.

The upcoming Syria peace talks in Geneva cannot ignore these findings. Ending these atrocities in Syrian government prisons must be put on the agenda.

The UN must immediately carry out an independent investigation into the crimes being committed at Saydnaya and demand access for independent monitors to all places of detention.

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Syria's Saydnaya Prison A 'Human Slaughterhouse' Says Amnesty International Report - Huffington Post UK

Detectives are trawling the missing persons database as they attempt to identify a body found beside the A404 .

Human remains were discovered by a Thames Valley Police officer next to the slip road near the Handycross roundabout from the road to the M40 northbound, High Wycombe on Saturday, February 4.

A post mortem revealed it is a man's body but the cause of his death is still unknown.

Investigating officer, Detective Inspector Simon Marples said: We are still working hard to identify the person so we can inform any next of kin, however it has now been established that it is the body of a male.

We are reviewing our missing people database as well as liaising with the community, other police forces and partners to establish who the person is.

A post mortem was held yesterday [Monday, February 6] but the cause of death was inconclusive so more tests will be carried out.

The death is being treated as unexplained but not suspicious at this stage of the investigation."

A scene watch remains in place while police carry out further work in the area but the road is fully open.

The remains were found at around 1.40pm on Saturday by the officer during a routine patrol.

The road was reopened after an investigation on Monday, February 6 at around 1am.

Anyone with information is asked to call police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously 0800 555 111.

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Results of A404 human remains post mortem released by police - getreading

LONDON Inspired by his belief that human beings are essentially terrified of robots, Ben Russell set about charting the evolution of automatons for an exhibition he hopes will force people to think about how androids and other robotic forms can enhance their lives.

Robots, says Russell, have been with us for centuries as Robots, his exhibit opening Wednesday at Londons Science Museum, shows.

From a 15th century Spanish clockwork monk who kisses his rosary and beats his breast in contrition, to a Japanese childoid newsreader, created in 2014 with lifelike facial expressions, the exhibition tracks the development of robotics and mankinds obsession with replicating itself.

Arnold Schwarzeneggers unstoppable Terminator cyborg is there, as is Robby the Robot, star of the 1956 film Forbidden Planet, representing the horror and the fantasy of robots with minds of their own.

There are also examples of factory production-line machines blamed for taking peoples jobs in recent decades; a telenoid communications android for hugging during long-distance phone calls to ease loneliness; and Kaspar, a minimally expressive social robot built like a small boy and designed to help ease social interactions for children with autism.

When you take a long view, as we have done with 500 years of robots, robots havent been these terrifying things, theyve been magical, fascinating, useful, and they generally tend to do what we want them to do, said Russell, who works at the science museum and was the lead curator of the exhibition.

And while its human nature to be worried in the face of change, Russell said, the exhibit should help people think about what we are as humans and realize that if robots are going to come along, youve got a stake in how they develop.

A total of 100 robots are set in five different historic periods in a show that explores how religion, industrialization, pop culture and visions of the future have shaped society.

For Rich Walker, managing director of Shadow Robot Company in London, robotics is about what these increasingly sophisticated machines can do for humans to make life easier, particularly for the elderly or the impaired.

Im naturally lazy and got involved so that I could get robots to do things for me, Walker said. His company has developed a robotic hand that can replicate 24 of the 27 natural movements of the human hand.

As humans have a 1 percent failure rate at repetitive tasks, committing errors about once every two hours, the hand could replace humans on production lines, he said.

Walker concedes further erosion of certain types of jobs if inventions such as his are successful, but says having repetitive tasks performed by automatons would free up people to adopt value-added roles.

The issue is to rebuild the economy so that it has a holistic approach to employment, he said.

This in turn leads to questions, raised at the exhibition as well as by the European Union, of whether or not robots should pay taxes on the value of their output as part of the new industrial revolution.

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Our obsession with robots keeps getting creepier - New York Post

Posthuman, All Too Human is the theme of the 2017 Tanner Lectures on Human Values that will be delivered this spring by philosopher Rosi Braidotti of Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Her first talk, titled Memoirs of a Posthumanist, will be on Wednesday, March 1; the second, Aspirations of a Posthumanist, will take place on Thursday, March 2. Both talks will be held at 5 p.m. in the auditorium of the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St. Braidotti will be joined by Joanna Radin, assistant professor of the history of medicine and of history, and Rdiger Campe, the Alfred C. and Martha F. Mohr Professor of Germanic Languages & Literatures and professor of comparative literature, for further discussion at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, March 3.

Both lectures and the discussion are free and open to the public.

Braidotti is the Distinguished University Professor and founding director of the Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University. Her published works include Patterns of Dissonance: An Essay on Women in Contemporary French Philosophy, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming, Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics, and The Posthuman. In 2016, she co-edited Conflicting Humanities with Paul Gilroy.

Braidotti has been an elected board member of the Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes since 2009. She is also an honorary fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a member of the Academia Europaea. She was awarded honorary degrees by the University of Helsinki and the University of Linkoping. In 2005, she was knighted into the Order of the Netherlands by Queen Beatrix.

The Tanner Lectures on Human Values were established by the American scholar, industrialist, and philanthropist Obert Clark Tanner, who hoped that these lectures would contribute to the intellectual and moral life of humankind. For more information, contact the Whitney Humanities Center at 203-432-0670 or email whitneyhumanitiescenter@yale.edu.

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Noted philosopher to deliver Tanner Lectures on 'Posthuman, All too Human' - Yale News

New York Post

Inside Amazon's robot-run supermarket that needs just 3 human workers New York Post Amazon will utilize technology to minimize labor, a source close to the situation told The Post. Job-cutting technology isn't new for Amazon, which has increasingly used robots to automate its distribution warehouses. More recently, it has been ... Amazon's supermarket of the future could operate with just 3 staff and lots of robotsBusiness Insider Amazon Looking To Remove Human Workers From Grocery Stores, Says ReportDaily Caller Amazon to open a giant ROBOT-run supermarket staffed by just three humans: Droid assistants will grab your groceries ...Daily Mail Grub Street -TechRadar all 28 news articles »

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Inside Amazon's robot-run supermarket that needs just 3 human workers - New York Post

New York Post

How human beings evolved from this disgusting creature New York Post Finding and describing fossils is a critical way that we understand the history of life, and this is an important find, Matthew I. Palmer, professor of ecology, evolution and biology at Columbia University, told The Post. The evolutionary tree is ... and more »

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How human beings evolved from this disgusting creature - New York Post

PHNOM PENH - A Cambodian court on Monday charged a Japanese man and two Cambodian suspects with illegally recruiting women who were allegedly trafficked to Japan for sexual exploitation.

Susumu Fukui, the 52-year-old owner of the Guinness Japanese restaurant, his 28-year-old Cambodian wife Lim Leakhena and 30-year-old employee Seng Chandy were each charged with "illegal recruitment for exploitation" in the Phnom Penh Municipal Court.

They were arrested on Saturday.

According to a police document, Mr Fukui and his wife last August recruited 10 Cambodian women to work in Japan, promising them monthly salaries ranging from $3,500 to $5,000, and lent them $500 each.

On Nov 8, 2016, the recruits arrived in Japan where they were put to work at the Ikaho Restaurant in Gunma Prefecture and forced into sexual servitude, according to the allegations.

On Dec 3, 2016, seven of them sought help from the Cambodian Embassy in Japan, which cooperated with Japanese authorities to have all 10 of them rescued and sent back to Cambodia.

A case was subsequently filed against Mr Fukui and the two others by the Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Department of the Phnom Penh Municipal Police.

Under Cambodian law, the suspects face up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

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Japanese charged with human trafficking in Cambodia - Bangkok Post

Dear Science,

Why do we humans love our pets so much?

Here's what science has to say:

It really is an amazing question, said Clive Wynne, director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University.

Wynne has devoted his career to studying animal behavior and the evolutionary relationship between animals and people. He said it's easy to see why our pets would love us: The success of dogs [and other domesticated creatures] on the surface of the Earth is entirely due to the fact that we take some level of care of them.

In fact, some scientists have suggested that pets exhibit a form of parasitism taking food and shelter from humans without offering much in return. They argue that we love our pets because they have hoodwinked us into it, Wynne said.

He doesn't buy that argument. (Then again, he is a dog owner he's under the spell!) But he acknowledged there's no satisfying evolutionary explanation for that warm, gooey feeling we get when we look at our dogs and cats.

[Cats are popular pets, but how much do they like humans?]

This love story started with dogs, our most ancient animal companions. Analysis of dog and wolf genomes, along with numerous discoveries of ancient bone, suggests that humans domesticated our canine friends somewhere between 13,000 and 30,000 years ago. Wynne thinks it's likely that the animals started out as wolves that scavenged from human garbage pits; those willing to get closer to people got more food, and they evolved to become tamer over time. Eventually, humans felt comfortable around dogs and dogs liked being around us enough that we took them into our homes and recruited them for our hunts. Recent excavations at mammoth kill sites uncovered dog bones among the remains, suggesting that dogs and humans hunted together.

But even then, it's not clear that we loved dogs, Wynne said. That change happened around 10,000 years ago, when dogs started showing up in our artwork and burial grounds. Last year, scientists discovered an ancient cemetery near Siberia's Lake Baikal where 5,000- to 8,000-year-old dogs were buried right alongside their humans.

You get dog burials, which show there was a lot of care and attention paid to the burial, Wynne said, and they include grave goods [valuable items placed in the grave for use in the afterlife], which really seems like there was a strong indication of affection.

By ancient Egyptian times, household pets were laid to rest in elaborate tombs decorated with inscriptions, furnished with treasure and scented by incense. (Though archaeologists believe that some of the dogs were likely raised specifically to be killed, making the gesture seem somewhat less thoughtful.)

[Dear Science: Why do we cry?]

If dogs evolved to be the companions of human hunters, then cats came along to be farmers' pets. DNA evidence suggests that cats were first tamed by the Natufians, who lived in the Levant roughly 10,000 years ago and are often credited with being the inventors of agriculture. Cats, the logic goes, are very useful for catching the rodents that inevitably inhabit grain storehouses. As the animals started to congregate around human settlements, they became more social, developing the communication skills needed to deal with other cats and humans.

In the cases of both species, the process of domestication probably started with the animals themselves; tamer animals were better able to take advantage of the resources made available by human settlements. Then people got involved, selectively breeding the cutest, cuddliest and most cooperative creatures until we got the pets we know today.

So, that's how we came to love animals, but it still doesn't really explain why. We can't love dogs and cats simply because of their utility. For one thing, domesticated livestock are also useful, but we (typically) don't name cows or cry over movies about sheep that find their way home. For another, Wynne noted, dogs and cats really aren't that useful anymore.

My own dog, who I love out of all proportion, is utterly and completely useless, he said.

[Dear Science: Could my body include an atom from Shakespeare?]

For several decades, it was believed that pet ownership was good for humans' physical and mental health. But with further research, the picture has become less clear. A 2009 study of nearly 40,000 people in Sweden found that pet owners suffered from more mental health problems than their non-pet-owning peers.

Other theories suggest that the benefit of pet ownership could have more to do with other humans. For example, pets might be what's called an honest signal of their humans' wealth, demonstrating that their owners have so much time and money to spare that they can afford to keep a creature whose purpose is only cuteness.

Then again, some argue that our love for pets is purely social, rather than biological. After all, a 2015 survey of more than 60 countries found that, even though dogs were kept in 52 countries, they were considered companions in fewer than half of them. Harold Herzog, a psychologist at Western Carolina University, has written that love for pets is a contagious habit we catch from our peers, as evidenced by the rise and fall of fads in dog breed ownership. Perhaps the warm and gooey feeling we get when we look into a puppy's eyes is just a consequence of social pressure and Lassie Come Home.

As a scientist, Wynne isn't happy with any of the theories put forward to explain our love for our pets. He'd like to see more and better data perhaps an experiment that examined brain scans of people taken while they looked at cats and dogs.

But as someone who knows what it's like to love a dog, he was willing to indulge in some unscientific musing. Wynne noted that domesticated dogs are very childlike:They exhibit several behaviors usually found only among juveniles in wild animals, such as licking (or kissing) their owners' faces, and they're unable to survive on their own. When Wynne's family adopted their dog, his wife (who is an engineer and very practical, he said) remarked that perhaps they should have had more kids.

She perceived that same buttons were being pressed that were pressed when we had our child, Wynne said.

Maybe that's all there is to it: Humans are programmed to love soft and helpless things.

Have a question for Dear Science? Ask it here.

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Dear Science: Why do we love our pets? - Washington Post

The Trump presidency will have a significant impact on international law, including a potential withdrawal from or re-negotiation of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Iran nuclear deal.Although those two examples would pit the United States against much of the rest of the world, in other respects Trumps election is consistent with ongoing global changes.To take a well-known example, Trumps opposition to NAFTA appears to align with world-wide populism and hostility to trade agreements, as illustrated by Brexit.

Trumps election is also consistent with other trends in international law.As I argued before the election, we are in the midst of a world-wide decline in international human rights and a related rise in power by China and Russia over the content of international law, a theme discussed last week by Anne Peters here.Liberal intervention on behalf of human rightsopposed by China and Russiawould almost certainly have received a boost from a Hillary Clinton administration.Although it is difficult to predict what direction the new administration will take, it is likely that the U.S. will expend little energy on promoting the international legal protection of human rights (putting aside here international humanitarian law, the law of armed conflict, and other related areas of international law).

We are, in other words, probably already in the post-human rights era of international law, meaning that the enforcement and expansion of human rights through binding international law will decline. Fortunately, thanks in part to the historic successes of the human rights movement, there are many other ways to advance the cause of human rights, including regional human rights institutions, soft international norms (such as the historic Helsinki Accords), and domestic or transnational political reform and activism.Promoting civil liberties and human rights at home and abroad should be an important objective in the coming years, all the more so with Trump as President, but perhaps not through the enforcement of binding international law.

The Trump administration should use the post-human rights era as an opportunity to promote a different international law agenda:a strong core of international law dedicated to protecting international peace and security. The pursuit of human rights by the West through international law has weakened other norms of international law. Kosovo is an illustration.President Clintons 1999 humanitarian intervention in Kosovo lacked the authorization of the U.N. Security Council and violated international law; the intervention ultimately led to the creation of the new state of Kosovo over the bitter opposition of Russia and Serbia. The Kosovo precedent was used by Russia to support the right to self-determination for South Ossetia and Crimea.More broadly, doctrinal innovations like universal jurisdiction and the lifting of immunity for human rights violations can generate regional tensions and disagreements.

Quite simply, the West has lost its bid to promote human rights as politically neutral standards binding upon all nations as a matter of international law. That effort foundered most visibly on the shoals of selective, coercive enforcement, including in Iraq, but also including the use of force to effectuate regime change in Libya and the limited effectiveness of the Human Rights Council. A turn away from using international law to promote human rightswhether or not the first best choice in an ideal worldcreates an opportunity to strengthen other vitally important norms of international law.

Political science research (examples here and here) tells us that border and territorial disputes have historically been especially likely to lead to militarized armed conflict and to war.Indeed, the long peace may be as much a territorial peace as it is a democratic peace. Accordingly, a priority under the new administration should be to strengthen international legal rules which may reduce conflict over territory and borders such as Article 2(4) of U.N. Charter. Territorial conquests declined during the 20th century as the international rule limiting the use of force hardened. The norm began to emerge after World War I, as reflected in the Charter of the League of Nations and in mandate systems of the interwar period, which replaced the traditional system of simply awarding territory (including colonies) to the victorious states.The hopes of territorial conquest by (and the scope of territorial disagreements between) the Russian, Qing, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Japanese Empires at the beginning of the 20th century vividly illustrate how international laws permissive posture toward violent territorial acquisition led to conflict and war. The prohibition on the use of force for territorial conquest was strengthened in the U.N. Charter and became the cornerstone of the post-World War II international legal order.Geopolitically, concern about territorial and border disputes today means we need to remain focused on the South China Sea, the Ukraine/Eastern Europe, and the Turkish/Syria/greater Kurdistan border as especially potent threats to international peace and security (as well as to other U.S. interests).

Institutionally, we should seek to return in some respects to the immediate post World War II settlement with the U.N. Security Council focused on protecting international peace and security.For better or for worse, recent global developments, including the deployment of Russian military power and Russias growing alliance with China, have put the Russian-Chinese-U.S. relationship at the center of global importance when it comes to international law and to international peace and security. The veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council may not be broadly representative of the worlds countries, but the growing importance of the relationships among those five countries gives the Security Council a renewed significance.It is an important forum for the advancement of U.S. medium- and long-term interests.Turning our back on the United Nations would be a mistake.

During the Trump Administration, the United States and the world will need to focus on protecting civil liberties, the rights of minorities, free speech, and other rights from violation by individuals own governments.Thanks in part to the international human rights movement and to generations of activists, today we have a variety of legal tools to help us do so. But the enforcement of binding norms of international law through the United Nations or foreign domestic courts may not always be an effective means of doing so, especially in light of todays political realities.In a post-human rights era, binding norms of international law are often better used to pursue other objectives such as the maintenance of international peace and security.

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International Law in the Age of Trump: A Post-Human Rights ...