John Beckett has posted an interesting post about changes and challenges the world is currently facing - specifically, there is a "disturbance in the force". This is the sort of article that I can relate to because of the work I do on psychic weather reports and clearing, so it resonated with me. There is, however, limited specific information on this included in this post, but I suspect that will become available - especially if we all look - objectively, and without panic, knowing that there are things we can do.
The article is at https://www.patheos.com/blogs/johnbeckett/2019/10/premonitions-and-disturbances.html.
Now, the cross-posting.
This was originally posted on my political blog at https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2019/10/sanctions-and-war.html.
I've come across some interesting reading lately.
Firstly, a cautionary article pointing out that "War is Not Over", at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-10-15/war-not-over. The author's view that the work of people like Steven Pinker ("The Better Angels of Our Nature") is being interpreted by some people to assume that war and violence are no longer problems is news to me (and, I think, everyone else on the planet), but he does make some excellent points about the fragility of some of the statistics being used to assess levels of violence.
It is well worth a read.
The other reading is a report, authored by Hilary Mossberg and published by "The Sentry" - at https://cdn.thesentry.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/SanctionsEffectiveness_TheSentry_Oct2019-web.pdf (press release at https://thesentry.org/reports/beyond-carrots-better-sticks/) - about ways to improve sanctions.
This
is a well laid out, objective, and well-researched document, in my
opinion, and also well worth a read. It's fairly long, at 76 pages, but
does contain a stack of information. This is the sort of report that I
will refer to whenever I next write to a politician about sanctions.
One
caution I would make is that I'm not sure all the possible actions to
improve sanctions seem to be mentioned in the conclusions section - in
particular, I'm not sure that the recommendation to "improve messaging"
adequately covers what I read in the body of the report on this aspect.
Also, please note that I need to finish reading the case studies.
