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Item Additions to "Ukraine and the 30 Year's Global War on Terror" for cadets and professors at Mihai's Excellent Intelligence Academy(2014-10-21) Andregg, Michael M.Additions on “Ukraine and the 30 Year’s Global War on Terror” for the cadets and professors at Mihai’s Excellent Academy, 21 October, 2014 1. What can I tell Romanians about the Ukraine? You should know 1000x more than I do about this country on your border. What can I tell you about the mind of Vladimir Putin, who is more dangerous to the greater Black Sea area than to the western hemisphere? 2. Well, I can say your political psychologists should be studying Mr. Putin very carefully! I do that to forecast wars, but be assured, it is not really possible to get into the mind of a leader thousands of kilometers away, with almost all sources of information about them mediated by groups with interests of their own. Propaganda is everywhere, but in war zones it is pervasive and professional. To take another hard intelligence target for example, we don’t even know if Kim Jong Un of North Korea is ALIVE right now, or confined to a hospital, or tied up in a tank somewhere to protect his security services from flagrant craziness with WMDs, and Kim’s affection for killing relatives on short notice, like his uncle. So political psychologists in Romania should study the mind of Mr. Putin carefully, and I will say more about that in a moment. 3. I can also tell you that the “Global War on Terror” declared by my President George W. Bush on 20 September, 2001, while renamed for public relations purposes, is going on briskly and some intend to keep this up for many decades. That has a significant bearing on security calculations by Mr. Putin in Russia, just as it does on calculations by the Saudi’s, the Israelis, the Pakistanis, the Indians, the Germans, and many other countries with global interests, like the Turks, who have many boiling issues of their own to worry about. So I will talk about Ukraine and the War on “Terror” simultaneously. 4. It is important to recognize that both Russia and the USA are empires in decline today. There are many technical differences, of course, and some will quibble about the word empire, but the decline is what matters most. Both Putin and Obama want to restore their countries to global dominance of the past, but rivals will block them and combine in unexpected ways, which is why declining empires are more dangerous than stable ones. 5. The “Developing Global Crisis” I mentioned in my first and second lectures here remains extremely relevant. But that is hard to review because it looks at everything all at once, which is difficult for even the best of our tiny little brains, much less for students who are burdened with other tasks like trying to find a long-term job, long-term relationships, etc. But do not forget that all these conflicts occur in the context of tremendous population pressure, significant resource depletion and environmental changes, and phenomenal corruption of governments around the world that limit solutions to these problems. 6. Ukraine and the 30 years Global War on “Terror” are different, but deeply related topics. Romania is a member of NATO now, and what causes the big gorilla of NATO to itch can affect smaller members more. So professional officers of Romanian security should pay close attention to the psychology of both US and Russian Presidents. ISIS (or ISIL, the Islamic State, or whatever the name of the day is for scary terrorists) causes our President many sleepless nights, probably more sleepless nights than Ukraine is today.Item The Agenda for Dialogues among Civilizations should be Human Survival(2005-06) Andregg, Michael M.THE Agenda for Dialogues Among Civilizations Should be Human Survival Prepared for the ISCSC’s 34th conference in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA at the University of St. Thomas, June 9-11, 2005. By Michael Andregg, University of St. Thomas, mmandregg@stthomas.edu Abstract The first, and last item on my agenda for dialogues among civilizations is human survival. The prime reason is that this goal generates more cooperation and less argument than any other I have found. If we are to avoid the “clash” of civilizations that many fear, we should avoid angry “debates” about political or ideological issues. The core difference between a “clash” or a “debate” and a “dialogue” is style or tone. These are vague concepts, but profoundly important. Safe food, clean water, fuel for heating and fibers to wear or write on can be politicized (as can anything) but they are also the most universal human needs. Therefore they are also understood by the illiterate as well as by erudite elites. The goal of human survival promotes a positive tone that helps with the very hard work of finding viable solutions to the manifold challenges of our time. From this point of entry, 10,000 other topics can be discussed constructively, including contentious ones. The point is to establish more rapport between participants than often exists initially, by focusing on common ground before the more difficult issues of war, peace and politics inevitably emerge. Even religion and its varieties may be dialogued very constructively if rapport exists with some minimal empathy for the problems that other human beings face. Lacking this, if one starts with religion or politics by contrast, one too often encounters dogmatic views or demonization of the other, and constructive dialogue becomes nearly impossible. Here are some threats to human survival that might better be addressed by a “dialogue” instead of a great “debate” among the civilizations of the earth today. War should be obvious, particularly when weapons of mass destruction are considered. Energy, oil-based and otherwise, is a challenge of vast scale with huge consequences for all. Threats to human survival include the many environmental challenges and even catastrophes cited by the recent Report of the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs, and forewarned by the Global 2000 Report to the President (of the United States, then Jimmy Carter) 25 years ago. They include religious extremism (or militant religion) and the challenges of how to preserve cultural and political diversity in an age of globalization. Each of those threats to physical or cultural survival includes many sub-topics, all of which benefit from a constructive attitude among those who seek solutions through dialogue as opposed to debate. Partisan bickering is the antithesis of this. So I say again that promoting this attitude is as important as any topic or line item on an agenda. No, it is more important than the intellectual elements on such lists of good things one might do.Item Behaviors and perceptions before and during Ramadan- Tremdina: The Feeling of Ramadan(2018-05-18) Pankey, Kia, RIslam is the fasted growing religion in the world33. Each year Muslims celebrate Ramadan, a month-long holiday, to strengthen their faith by abstaining from food, alcohol, sexual activity, cursing, and smoking31,33. During this time, Muslims cease these habitual behaviors rapidly at the start of the holiday. What happens to individuals stress levels and wellbeing when these habitual behaviors stop? The purpose of the study was to analyze the impact of the month of Ramadan on Moroccan individuals in relation to stress. The study includes the perspectives of 54 Moroccans conducted through Google Form surveys in French and English and two personal interviews. The majority of individuals had a sudden measurable change in habitual behavior during Ramadan. However, the majority of individuals did not feel stressed during the month of Ramadan and experienced an array of positive emotions. The novelty of Ramadan and faithfulness to Islam could overshadow an individual’s increase in stress levels during Ramadan due to sudden changes in habitual behavior.Item Biological Weapons(Combating Terrorism, 2020) Andregg, Michael M.BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS Since 1945, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) have included chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. All have been used in wars, with casualties greatest for chemical, then nuclear, and least from biological weapons, at least in the modern era. However, modern genetic engineering technologies like “CRISPR” could change that dramatically. Historical biological weapons typically involved infectious organisms from nature like smallpox, plague and anthrax. They were used at least as early as Hannibal tossing plague infested corpses into Roman cities. Some white Americans gave smallpox-infected blankets to Indians, and a Japanese Unit #731 did similar and worse things to Chinese people during World War II. During the “Cold War” both the Soviet Union and the United States developed extensive biological warfare programs. However, near universal horror at the concept of breeding and “weaponizing” ancient plagues for use against human populations resulted in a UN mediated treaty called the “Biological Weapons Convention” that banned all such activity by civilized nations in 1975. As of January 2018, this convention has been signed and ratified by 180 of the UN’s 193 nations. Moral and legal constraints on biological weapons are challenged, however, by the relative ease and low cost of creating biological weapons compared with nuclear and even chemical weapons. Modern genetic engineering techniques (which go far beyond CRISPR) raise fears that terrorists in basements using chemicals bought online could recreate ancient scourges like smallpox, or even create new “designer diseases.” These could be “Chimera” organisms that combine lethal genes from multiple organisms, and even include genes for resistance to all known antibiotics. One of the novel properties of biological weapons compared to other WMD is that they can reproduce themselves and spread far beyond any initial target. This helped military institutions to recognize that biologicals could turn on one’s own troops, and were not very useful against military targets. Instead, they would afflict mainly vulnerable civilian populations, and could spread worldwide. Biological weapons could also be used against food crops and animals, spreading famine as well as novel plagues. For all these reasons, even the most fierce warrior generals have generally agreed that biological weapons should not be created much less used. Some terrorist groups have expressed considerable interest in WMD, however, including biological weapons. One Japanese death cult called Aum Shinrikyo made chemical weapons, killing 12 people on a subway system in 1995, and tried to make biological weapons to attack Japan’s civilian population, but it was thwarted by Japanese police and counterterrorism forces. Another cult in Oregon organized by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh put salmonella bacteria on salad bars in ten restaurants in an attempt to swing county elections their way. In November, 1984, 751 people were sickened, but no one died. Assassinations are another area where biological weapons have been used. Biological toxins like ricin have been used to kill selected individuals like Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov in London, in September of 1978. Several packages of weaponized anthrax were also sent to about a dozen targets shortly after 9/11, killing five people and infecting 17 others. According to the FBI, the alleged culprit was not a ‘typical’ terrorist, however, but a veteran of America’s biological weapons program named Bruce Ivins. There remains controversy over that conclusion, but whoever sent the US weapons-grade anthrax packages to several news media offices and two Democratic US Senators included notes with Islamic terminology hoping to arouse mass anger against Muslims. Therefore, better control of biological weapons before terrorists (or false flag operators posing as terrorists) can build or buy any is a top priority for counter-terrorism around the world today. Michael Andregg [Word count excluding “Further Reading” is 600] Further Reading Osterholm, Michael T. and Mark Olshaker, 2017. Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company. Wright, Susan, 2002. Biological Warfare and Disarmament: New Problems/New Perspectives. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Cirincione, Joseph, John B. Wolfsthal and Miriam Rajkumar, 2005. Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats. 2nd Edition. Washington, D.C.: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Nuclear Threat Initiative is a well-financed, long-term, non-profit educational organization that maintains extensive files on all weapons of mass destruction, including one on biosecurity http://www.nti.org/about/biosecurity/. It also sponsors conferences like one in 2018 that can be seen whole at http://www.nti.org/about/projects/global-biosecurity-dialogue/event/nti-seminar-biosecurity-design-getting-ahead-risk-world-designer-organisms/ The United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs has a link to the full text of the Biological Weapons Convention that includes many supporting documents, history and data. It is at https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/bio/ .Item Birth Rates Determine Life Expectancy in Theoretical Equilibrium Populations: Implications for political demography and conflict early warning(American Intelligence Journal, 2018-04) Andregg, Michael M.Executive Summary This paper examines implications for political demography of a theoretical population that is in complete equilibrium. By “complete equilibrium,” we mean that the population neither grows nor shrinks, there is neither immigration to nor emigration from it, and that the age structure has stabilized so that it no longer changes over time. These are all important elements of complete equilibrium, as opposed to stability in just absolute numbers. This condition is found in some natural populations of animals and plants, but it has not obtained in most human populations in recorded history. Reduced to basics, this theoretical population has the following characteristics: 1. In complete equilibrium populations, birth rates will equal death rates so the population neither grows nor shrinks. 2. In a complete equilibrium population, death rates determine life expectancy, expressible as: LE = 1000/DR. 3. Since, in a complete equilibrium population, birth rates equal death rates, this can also be expressed as: LE = 1000/BR. 4. This implies that fundamentally, birth rates determine life expectancy in complete equilibrium populations. This paper has two goals. The first is simply to check the accuracy of the theoretical formulas identified above. Since they are quite simple and likely accurate, I invite others to identify any errors. The second goal is at least as important. How do human populations evade this limiting outcome? Or do they really? I fear the short answer to these questions is a) genocide and war, and b) no, they do not really escape an iron law of biology. However, they often do displace the high death rates to marginal or weaker populations. If correct, this has significant implications for conflict early warning as illustrated by several real-world examples.Item Book Review of "Glimpses of Igbo Culture and Civilization"(International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations, 2005-06) Andregg, Michael M.Book Review of: “Glimpses of Igbo Culture and Civilization,” 293 pgs. Edited by Okolie Animba, Computer Edge Publishers, Lagos Nigeria, 2000. This book is the proceedings from a Pan-Igbo National Seminar and workshop organized by a Cultural Heritage Center in Uwani, Enugu, Nigeria. So its overall academic quality, coherence and so forth are less than one might expect from pure research institutions. Many of the 14 authors are professors from 7 named universities, but some are headmen, chiefs, or other governmental officials. In a similar vein, the printing quality is not the best. However, those reservations noted, this book was a wealth of information on its intended subject, and while the authors were not all 100% pedigreed scholars, they were all very sincerely and earnestly trying to share the essences of Igbo life with a larger world. In that task they succeeded. The chapters proceed from history, through language and literature, social organization to ‘fine and applied arts.’ The most interesting chapters to me, and the ones I will use in class, looked at how the Igbo people try to transmit wisdom across the generations. Along the way one encounters some very interesting asides, as when Chibiko Okebalama of Nigeria University in Nsukka observes that “education in Igboland is gradually becoming a woman affair.” Some things may be universal across our world of transition. But first some background. The “Igbo people” are fundamentally a language group with one large division and many smaller ones. They live mainly in southeastern Nigeria and are known to the outside world more for losing the war for an independent “Biafra” against more dominant Hausa and Yoruba language groups, within a Nigerian context that has over 400 dialects and over 30 distinct languages. The weakness of this text is reflected by the fact that there were zero maps in the entire work, and most discussion of the range the Igbo occupy was in terms of this valley or that river watershed rather than things a western eye could easily place on maps without further research. Another problem it struggles with and notes in the very beginning is that before the British colonialists arrived, the Igbo people were non-literate. So much of the commentary on Igbo culture is necessarily drawn from oral tradition, put into a relatively recent Igbo written language and then translated into English. They did the best they could but this is obviously a difficult problem, and sometimes the real meaning of phrases remains obscure. That said, the book goes through the limited archaeology of the region, noting dates on pottery and human tools around 3,000 B.C.E. which documents “human activity of considerable antiquity.” This section defends the concept of Igbo civilization in an attempt “to contradict here the imperialist view that Ibgoland had no history or culture worth the name until the establishment of British rule.” This defensiveness was not necessary to my eye, but recurs from time to time. Now, to the chapters on proverbs that interested me most.Item Book Reviews of Thucydides' Trap and 2 other books for China, ISCSC, 2018(2018-06-16) Andregg, Michael M.NB: Unlike many reviews, this will combine three books to compare their different perspectives on US – China relations. We will begin with the mechanics and topline of all three. Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s’ Trap? 2017, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston and New York. 288 pages of text with 20 pages of front matter and 76 pages of endnotes. This is an academic, theoretical text with a dark tone of impending doom. It was also very well publicized and reviewed, resulting in much buzz among policy professionals. John Pomfret, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present. 2016, Henry Holt & Co., New York. This is the most detailed history of US-China relations among these three, written by a long-time correspondent for the Washington Post who married a Chinese woman and clearly loves the country. 637 pages of text with 54 pages of endnotes and index. Howard W. French, Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power, 2017, Alfred A. Knopf, New York. 288 pages of text with 42 pages of endnotes and index. This was the most useful for me to help understand historical roots of Chinese thought. It is less detailed than Pomfret, and less theoretical than Allison. French was also a correspondent for the Washington Post, and later a bureau chief for the New York Times in many countries including China.Item Building Bridges Between Cultures(Busan National University, South Korea, 2002-03-18) Andregg, Michael M.1. Why? Building bridges between cultures can involve many challenges, so the first subject I will address is: Why do this work? Answers important to me include: human survival, achieving prosperity through trade, compassion (especially for those who suffer, like refugees of war and relatives separated by politics) and achieving “the good life” spiritually as well as materially. All of these objectives benefit from a principle of living systems called “hybrid vigor.” These concepts will be illustrated by a few examples. Human civilization is facing a terrible crisis. It is a crisis of population growth combined with excessive consumption by the rich, which results in serious environmental problems and severe competition for the means of survival. Combined with other strains of politics, both normal differences of opinion about how to organize social life and more serious issues of corruption of governance and tyranny, this results in many wars (about 25 – 30 each year during the 23 years I have studied that subject). On the average half a million people die each year directly from these wars. Suffering from dispersed effects like refugee migrations and malnutrition related to the economic costs of these conflicts affects hundreds of millions every year. Human civilization is groaning in pain, but powerful psychological and social defenses exist that keep most people from hearing that pain clearly. It is the business of biologists to attend the living system. I testify before you that the living system itself is in danger because of these problems. If you need convincing I will gladly spend another hour or a day on that alone, because in my country at least, there are always excuses for taking just a little bit more from the living system despite its obvious distress. But our business today is building bridges between cultures, so I will return to that now with the simple observation that if the living system of earth is in trouble, human beings are in trouble. Human survival may even be at risk. So one reason to build bridges between cultures is to restrain people from blowing up the world with nuclear weapons, or despoiling it with endless conventional wars and the new, exotic biological and chemical weapons. Long ago I was a medical geneticist at a major University hospital. One reason I switched to why wars begin was what I knew about biological weapons 25 years ago. We have come a long way since then, and it is not a pretty picture. But even without such exotic weapons, the annual death rate from ordinary bombs and bullets should be plenty to inspire us to build some bridges to a better future for us all. A positive reason for building bridges is the prospect of increasing prosperity through trade. Now, I will venture a small observation on Korean politics. I apologize if I offend anyone. It is very sad to read about starvation in the North at the same time we read about fear created by Taepo-Dong II missiles, and a million-man army. Therefore, it was a happy day when we read about a new “sunshine policy,” and I was pleased when your President Kim Dae Jung was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his lifelong work for a better future.Item Building Bridges Between Cultures in the Nuclear Age: Globalization and the Current World-Wide War(2005-08-26) Andregg, Michael M.The peace community encourages building bridges between cultures to resolve conflicts and prevent war. Other positive results can be more trade to increase wealth, nation building, and growth of our global civilization by cross-fertilization of ideas and art as well as commerce. The UN asked people of goodwill to consider building bridges during a decade of dialogue among civilizations, rather than engage in destructive clashes. Unfortunately, the current “global war on terrorism” (“GWOT” in American military jargon) highlights some downsides to the building bridges theory. The same mechanisms that move people, money, goods, and information more efficiently can also move murderers, bombs, war plans, and nuclear or biological weapons components. Also, “Globalization” was increasing economic inequalities and tearing up established economies long before the current war. And “cultural hegemony” became a recognizable term long before the “war on terrorism” did. So global tension grows for many reasons. This paper will review these issues and examine three specific cases: South Africa, North and South Korea, and Israel / Palestine to ask whether, on balance, we are moving forward or backward on the road to peace and global harmony. One case appears a clear success, another a failure, and the third remains to be determined.Item Can a Culture of Violence Sustain Peaceful Democracy?(International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations, 2013) Andregg, Michael M.Can a Culture of Violence Sustain Peaceful Democracy? Of course, if one is flexible enough with definitions. That gets harder the more idyllic one wants the “peaceful democracy” to be. Most democracies are not all that peaceful now, and some are among the most violent nations on earth. Like, why dodge the obvious, my dear home United States of America. We hold records. We have been involved in more wars and lethal operations in more other countries than any other nation on earth over the last few decades, especially if one includes smaller targets in places like Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and other countries who have lost one snatched or snuffed. We incarcerate more of our own people than anyone else in the world, by rate and absolutely. Our war on drugs extends to tens of thousands dying in countries like Mexico and Columbia, and to hundreds of thousands in America with near-life sentences for petty crimes. We have more guns per capita than any other nation on earth bar none, and are damn proud of it polls generally show, despite enduring one of the highest murder rates as well. And our mass murderers, about 20 each year, have often been entertained and “educated” by some of the most ruthless video games ever created anywhere. America holds many records! So if you include the USA in the set of “peaceful democracies” then you would have to conclude that it is certainly possible to sustain a “peaceful democracy” with a pretty violent culture by most observers’ assessments. Some of our most ardent weapons enthusiasts, like the NRA, say that we sustain our peaceful democracy because of extensive gun ownership, etc. Their critics say we are on a path to perdition, but so far the Pentagon still owns the path. There are surely more peaceful democracies on earth today, no doubt, and may God Bless every one of them. Most of them have far more restricted access to guns, smaller and less harsh prisons, less militaristic foreign policies, and dramatically lower rates of death by violence. Some examples: Japan, Finland, Costa Rica, South Korea, Singapore and most of Europe. And there are police-states that rigorously repress both free speech and private ownership of weapons. If one expects perfection in definitions, however, you can be pretty confident that no perfectly peaceful democracies exist. Most true pacifists got run out of their ancestral lands long ago, like the Dalai Lama, so almost every government on earth maintains an army to maintain borders. Rare exceptions like Costa Rica rely on the prudence of neighbors too poor to invade. More common are countries built with guns, like China, Russia, the USA and Canada, all successful if variably violent nations today. Remember, North Americans were all Indians 550 years ago. Native populations may have been more or less peaceful, a very mixed record, but that mattered less than their inability to stop invaders with better weapons when civilizations clashed. This is just an opinion not a recommendation, and I welcome any others most sincerely. Michael Andregg, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, Dec. 28, 2012, for the ISCSC 2013 newsletterItem Can We Resolve Tensions between the US and China?(The Future Center in Dubai publishes Arab language commentary on many issues including security issues, 2019-04-27) Andregg, Michael M.Can We Resolve Tensions between the US and China? Michael Andregg, University of St. Thomas, mmandregg@stthomas.edu The trade war between the US and China worries many people these days, not least the business community. Worst-case scenarios involve real war, because trade and conflict have been connected throughout human history. A Harvard professor recently wrote a book called “Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?” (2017). Allison’s research suggests a 75% probability for the harsh outcome. A thermonuclear war would set the world economy back by generations at least, and even a “small” military conflict in the South China Sea between a rising China and declining US could cost trillions, and disrupt supply chains all over the world. Economic damage could last decades, even if land armies never met. So peace between these behemoths is imperative for many reasons. Both prefer to behave as empires, however, so neighbors should stay cautious. Therefore, the short answer to whether the US and China can patch up their trade differences must be a “yes” even if the challenges are large, which they are. Current US President Trump enjoys trade wars, and is unrealistic about their consequences. China’s push for dominance in key technologies, like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and 5G cell systems, will not abate. Those trends frighten national security hawks, and businesses that do not want to be left behind like the buggy-whip makers a century ago. In the short term, the most likely place for conflict to turn into bombs and bullets on targets is the South China Sea. China resents the projection of American power into the Pacific, despite the historic fact that American naval power was essential to rescue China from dominance by Japan. Hence, China’s massive engineering project to raise tiny islands in the South China Sea, and turn several into military bases.Item The Challenge of Achieving Wisdom in Intelligence Products and Processes(2016-03-16) Andregg, Michael M.This is a PowerPoint presentation sized for typical, ISA intelligence section panels. Its ~ 20 frames deal with institutional constraints much discussed elsewhere like the perennial desire of policy makers to keep their intel staffs out of policy (e.g. they often discourage anything close to wisdom, preferring "just the facts" so they can make the big decisions. Other common themes are very short time constraints and overreliance on "secret" sources of information that are often tainted in many ways. It brushes on some uncommon themes like the prevalence of psychopaths in secret power systems, but does not go into any depth on those difficult topics.Item The Challenge of Achieving Wisdom in Intelligence Products and Processes, outline(2015-02-19) Andregg, Michael M.The word "wisdom" almost never appears in intelligence literature. Here are eleven reasons why, which were offered as hypotheses for a roundtable of extremely experienced practitioners from many three letter agencies to discuss.Item Clashes of Civilizations Gave Rise to Martial Arts, but Enlightened Martial Philosophies Reveal the Better Way(2012-06-08) Andregg, Michael M.MarHuman beings have studied how bodies can move from time immemorial. Some of those studies have focused on the disciplined development of various skills, like acrobatics, dance and martial art. Millennia of genocides, wars and lesser atrocities have concentrated more attention on the latter than the former, although the former are more beautiful. Thoughtful practitioners of the deadly forms have often devoted considerable thought to ethics or other philosophies that should accompany their craft. This is especially important in martial arts, because to teach those skills means arming people for life with deadly capabilities. So thoughtful teachers in particular have had to worry often about what their students might do with skills once learned. Most of this brief review will be academic history, since ISCSC is a Comparative Civilizations Society, but one of the truisms of martial art is that it is never strictly ‘academic.’ Words on paper cannot begin to express some things at the heart of the art. Therefore, I will begin with a very modern example, towards which the history leads, and end with a physical demonstration. The modern example is the attempt to teach martial ethics to soldiers in the context of learning technique. The soldiers are US Marines who study the forms described by the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program (MCMAP) adopted in 2001 CE (1) and logoed thus:Item Climate Change and U.S. National Security(US Government Printing Office, 2020-05) Andregg, Michael M.In October of 2014 the U.S. Department of Defense published an “Adaptation Roadmap” for climate change that started with: “Climate change will affect the Department of Defense’s ability to defend the Nation and poses immediate risks to U.S. national security.” Then Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel was quoted saying: “Climate change does not directly cause conflict, but it can significantly add to the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty, and conflict. Food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, more severe natural disasters – all place additional burdens on economies, societies, and institutions around the world.” This chapter will detail what those challenges and burdens are, with emphases on national security implications and consequences for U.S. Army personnel in particular. But it cannot and should not be narrowly focused, because this is a global problem with global consequences that affect the entire U.S. military. It affects alliances, flashpoints, basing issues, geopolitics and budgets in complex ways we will try to exemplify with specific cases, like Syria and South Asia. Propaganda can influence assessments in any war zone. So that is not new, but it is an especially pernicious problem with climate change. , , , , For example, at Minnesota’s leading public policy institute we have been talking about, and some studying, climate change since at least 1982. It took 31 years before Andy Marshall commissioned the first publically known, Pentagon study of national security implications of climate change in 2003. Yet this author was told personally at the National Intelligence University in 2005 that officers there had been “ordered not to talk about that subject.” This was all because of a sustained campaign by legacy industries to suppress discussion of something profound that they already knew was guaranteed to occur.Item A Collaborative Learning Process from a Distance(2023) Jackson, Jeff; Reichenbach, MichaelAn online collaborative learning process was designed to bridge the gap between research and practice, engaging researchers in what is meaningful to a community of interest. The process is based on a collaborative learning model that includes a project focus, participant experience, expert knowledge, dialogue, deliberation, and reflection. Participants helped us identify gaps in education, research, and policy, which then resulted in a plan for additional research projects and educational programming. The process is described so others can create similar opportunities connecting researcher and stakeholder viewpoints.Item A Comparison of Mental Health in the United States and Morocco: A Literature Review and Summary of Responses by Students(2021-05) Adamek, Andrew JThis review article is based on a partnership between the University of Minnesota and the Hassan II University Hospital Center in a virtual internship. I have compiled my experiences, the experiences of a surgeon in Morocco, studies on mental health in both countries, and two questionnaires that were completed by students in both countries into a report of the differences and similarities in mental health in the two countries and recommendations for improvement for each. We have found that, there is a similar rate of burnout of physicians in the two countries, around 40%, the rate of mental health conditions is higher in Morocco, at 48.9%, than the United States, at 20.6%, and that there are more barriers to accessing mental health care in Morocco for many complex reasons, for example less funding for psychological units and a culture of mental health stigmatization. Based on these results, we recommend that for Morocco, it is essential to create a strong and national system to combat the stigma of mental health conditions and increase access to mental health resources, which may lead to more psychological units for students in schools and more psychologists in hospitals on-site for psychological assessments on demand that will be needed when the stigma around mental health is reduced. For the United States, we recommend that even more resources are necessary for mental health, considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and, when safe, for students to return to in-person classes, as students indicate many difficulties with online learning during COVID-19.Item Context in Parsing: Techniques and Applications(Schloss Dagstuhl, 2023-04) Van Wyk, EricThis paper discusses two approaches to parsing: Eelco Visser's scannerless generalized LR parsing and our context-aware scanning paired with deterministic LR parsing. We compare the underlying techniques, specifically how parser context is used to disambiguate lexical syntax, and their use in the context of language evolution and composition applications. We also reflect on the many discussions shared with Eelco on these topics, and on our shared realization that our different assumptions about the contexts in which our approaches were used drove and justified the technical decisions made in each.Item Corruption of Institutions and the Decay of Civilizations(Nova, 2013-02-08) Andregg, Michael M.CORRUPTION OF INSTITUTIONS AND THE DECAY OF CIVILIZATIONS Michael Andregg University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA ABSTRACT This chapter discusses the dangers of corruption of institutions, especially governments, and how such corruption can be exposed and partially cleansed. Theories about the decay phase of civilizations are briefly cited, and examples of corrupted forms of six professions illustrated (military, law, medicine, journalism, business and the clergy). Parallels between large organizations and the human body are shown to illustrate system consequences of dysfunction. An enduring theme is the need for constant, built in mechanisms to reduce corruption in living systems, including the largest scale of civilizations. Some solutions to these problems are mentioned, but readers are also challenged to do better since the problems of corruption of governance have been eternal and have successfully resisted many reform efforts. INTRODUCTION Civilizations are living systems, so like any living system they need at least 19 subsystems to acquire and process food, water, energy and information, to safely dispose of toxic byproducts or wastes, to avoid being eaten themselves, and otherwise to stay alive and to reproduce themselves. In one sense all these life functions are equally “essential” (Miller, Living Systems, 1978). Still I will maintain here that cleansing a civilization regularly of corruption (or empire or nation state) is especially important. Why?Item Creating a Reader on Intelligence Ethics, 2008 for INS(Intelligence and National Security (a journal), 2008) Andregg, Michael M.The information age is burying everyone in noise. Globalization increases stress. Then the poorly named Global War on Terror drove some leaders to suspend, or at least radically rethink, ethical constraints that had been settled two generations past, like the unequivocal ban on torture in the Geneva Conventions and many subsequent laws and treaties. This was the context in which we set out to create a reader on intelligence ethics that would, a) actually be read by busy professionals buried in urgent texts, and b) make a real difference in a profession better known for breaking rules. All involved recognized the “oxymoron problem.” All know that while most of our colleagues are moral people trying to do legitimate work to protect their peoples and governments, there are some who certainly think that ethics for spies is the dumbest idea ever. To them we say that intelligence ethics is actually a force multiplier, and dramatic deviations like officially sanctioned torture are force degraders. So 26 intelligence professionals from seven countries collaborated to create a reader designed to be 50 pages maximum, an hour’s read for busy people who recognize why ethics matter, even for spies and the many other intelligence professionals of the modern age. They gathered knowing only half would make the quality cut, and struggled to compress lifetimes of experience into extremely short forms. Each had specific reasons, but the overarching recognition was that national power declines when “all gloves off” immorality prevails. We are engaged in a very “Long War” that is basically between barbarism and civilized ways of life and conflict. There are always tactical voices who seek a quick victory by any means necessary. And real terrorism frightens all thoughtful people, so the danger of becoming that which you oppose has never been greater. This is a story about how that reader was created, with summaries of the 13 essays selected for publication. First, a professor at the National Military Intelligence College (then JMIC) Dr. Jan Goldman, collaborated with a philosopher of ethics with national security background Dr. Jean Maria Arrigo and about six others to create a new “International Intelligence Ethics Association” branching off of the long-running JSCOPE conferences (Joint Services Conference on Professional Ethics). They held their first meetings on January 27 and 28 of 2006, which made the front page of the New York Times precisely because the novelty of ethics for spies was, well, news. Their association can be found at: http://www.intelligence-ethics.org/ and their fourth conference will be at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, February 20-21 of 2009. Inspired by them, I went to the intelligence studies section of the International Studies Association seeking permission to do this project. They concurred, and let me fill one-fourth of their next year’s panels with papers on intelligence ethics of various kinds. Those engaged 18 participants, but some solicited could not come and others were advisors to international leaders who could not participate publicly. From those, 8 other papers were procured. A panel of judges was created. Two were editors of major intelligence publications, one was a former Chancellor of America’s National Intelligence University system, and one was an operator near the end of his career. Their task was to review all submissions and to pick the best half. The authors’ task was to compress what they thought essential into 4 double-spaced manuscript pages. All judges were invited to submit forwards to the final piece, recognizing that most could not. The one who did was INS senior editor Loch Johnson, whose forward will be reprinted here next.