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it is time acknowledge that the two-state idea, as presently conceived, is dead.

Today, there is little enthusiasm for territorial concessions to the Palestinians. Even those who believe that Israel should withdraw from the West Bank do not believe that it can be done so long as there is no evidence the Palestinians are interested in peace.

For some time, I believed that the Palestinian people wanted peace but were denied the opportunity by their leaders. But decades of incitement and educational brainwashing regarding the evils of Jews and Israel have had an impact, and now poll after poll has found opposition to peace among Palestinians

radical Muslims will not rest until the descendants of apes and pigs are driven from holy Islamic soil

the same week John Kerry was extolling the virtues of the two-state solution and skewering Israel for allegedly creating obstacles to peace through settlement construction, the ruling Fatah party celebrated the 20 most outstanding terrorist operations of all time

Why Kerry or anyone else would expect Israelis to make concessions to people who commemorate the murder of Jews is a psychiatric rather than a political question.

One problem is that the Palestinians will continue their delegitimization campaign aimed at turning Israel into a pariah, and convincing the international community to dismantle the Jewish State.

Another concern with the status quo is that Palestinian terrorism fueled by hopelessness, incitement and radical Islam.

Put simply, the majority of Palestinians have no interest in peace with Israel under any circumstances. This view is reinforced daily by their leaders’ pronouncements, the incessant terror and incitement, and an education system that teaches intolerance, denies the Jewish connection to the land of Israel and extols the virtue of martyrdom.

Even when Israel agreed to Obama’s demand for a 10-month settlement freeze and the Palestinians responded by refusing to negotiate, Obama did not change his view. I’m not sure whether to call that naiveté or just stupidity

Today’s Palestinians are no more interested in compromise than their predecessors. As the poll data above indicates, the only acceptable solution is to have one state called Palestine that encompasses the West Bank, Gaza and what is currently known as Israel.

A wholesale change in attitudes and leadership will have to occur if there is to be any prospect of negotiating a peace agreement. Even then, it is difficult to imagine a reversal of the Islamization of the conflict — and there can be no compromise with jihadists.

Despite the ease with which it is possible to prove that settlements are not the obstacle to peace (e.g., did the Arabs agree to peace during the 19 years Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt occupied Gaza and not a single Jewish settlement existed?), President Obama never figured this out; but he is not alone. The obsession with settlements will not go away.

For the last eight years, the Palestinians have refused to negotiate altogether, and their position has not changed in 80 years

, his failure to learn anything in eight years was apparent in his last minute UN tantrum

the incoming Trump officials seem to understand reality and are prepared to act accordingly by rejecting the specious notion that settlements, rather than Palestinian implacability, are the obstacle to peace.

Israel has evacuated approximately 94% of the territory it captured in 1967, which, it could be argued, has already satisfied UN Security Council Resolution 242’s expectation that Israel withdraw from territory

Most people, including all Arab leaders, ignore that resolution 242 also required that the Arab states guarantee the peace and security of Israel in exchange for withdrawal

ank and 100% of Gaza, and this did not bring peace; it brought more terror and should have forever buried the myth that if Israel cedes land, it will receive peace in return

If a Palestinian Zionist emerges tomorrow, it will still be risky for Israel to make a deal because 5, 10, or 20 years down the road, a radical Islamist or other hostile leader may emerge.

Advocates of the two-state solution on the Israeli side talk about a demilitarized Palestinian state, but this is not acceptable to the Palestinians because it would be a significant limitation on their sovereignty. This is another reason why the “solution” is flawed.

While the international community insists the settlements are an obstacle to peace, they actually can serve as a catalyst for peace.

to defeat the Palestinians Israel would have to apply the Powell Doctrine, which says that “every resource and tool should be used to achieve decisive force against the enemy…and ending the conflict quickly by forcing the weaker force to capitulate.”

Israel would have to be prepared to kill every terrorist with little regard for collateral damage; the Air Force would have to bomb refugee camps and other targets that would result in thousands of casualties rather than hundreds.

The United States did not flinch from killing tens of thousands of Iraqis to defeat Saddam Hussein and is unapologetic when bystanders are killed in drone strikes (never mind examples such as the Allied bombing of Dresden or the US use of the atomic bomb). Israel would have to be equally callous to “defeat” the Palestinians.

Israel has been unwilling to follow Powell’s guidance because the public would see the action as disproportionate and immoral, the international community would condemn Israel and the United States would force Israel to cease military operations before total victory out of moral indignation and fear of Arab/Muslim reaction.

Israel has learned the hard way in battles with the Palestinians and Hezbollah that it does not have the same freedom as a superpower to use decisive force, and therefore cannot militarily defeat the Palestinians.

The reason that none of these men annexed the West Bank is well known: Israel cannot remain a democratic, Jewish state if it assimilates 2.7 million Palestinians

Meanwhile, the Jewish birthrate has increased, Aliyah will accelerate as global antisemitism worsens and the Palestinians will not become a majority in Greater Israel

Hamas is also allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, and this would strengthen the Islamist threat to the government, which would not be in Israel’s interest.

“The Palestinians now realize,” Bethlehem Mayor Elias Freij said in 1991, “that time is now on the side of Israel, which can build settlements and create facts, and that the only way out of this dilemma is face-to-face negotiations.”

The Palestinians continued to talk until President Obama took office, and gave them the false impression that he would force Israel to stop building settlements without their having to make any concessions in return

Obama’s refusal to veto the latest Security Council Resolution calling settlements illegal and labeling Judaism’s holiest places in Jerusalem “occupied territory” kept Abbas’ strategy in play, but the election of Donald Trump should derail this approach for at least the next four years.

the Palestinians will not accept any compromise that involves coexisting with a Jewish state

The current leadership will remain obstinate and continue to seek international help in destroying Israel.

President Trump can make an important contribution to disabusing the Palestinians of the idea that Israel can be forced to capitulate to their demands by fulfilling the promise to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the US embassy.

This would send a clear message that the Palestinians have no legitimate claim to the city and will never have a capital in Eastern Jerusalem.

To further hammer home the point that Jerusalem will not be divided, Israel should complete the long-delayed E1 project to connect Ma’ale Adumim with the capital.

The aim of this step would be to force the world to accept the reality that Israel will never relinquish these areas, and to increase pressure on the Palestinians to negotiate.

If the Palestinians refuse to talk or recognize the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their homeland, Israel should formally annex the Jordan Valley

The world may blame Israel for the growth of settlements, but the real culprits are Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.

Settlements have grown because of Palestinian rejectionism — and the situation will only get worse for them.

Ironically, the Palestinians could have two states instead of the one foreseen by proponents of the two-state solution. In the unlikely event of Palestinian reconciliation, a corridor could be created between Gaza and the West Bank as envisioned in the Clinton parameters.

Unless Palestinians radically change their attitudes, they will reject any proposal that requires coexisting with Israel. This will leave them with a shrunken Palestinian state with limited power and the possibility for a larger state permanently closed off.

It may be difficult to accomplish in the next four years, but Israel’s best chance of achieving this “solution” is to take advantage of having a friend in the White House.

“The proposition of recovering a supposedly perfect past is fiction; its merchants are cheats. Clever cheats,” he said, before saying the tactics that populists use are similar to those of ISIS.

Former Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren welcomed the reports that the U.S. is considering withdrawing, saying it would send a “moral message” to the world.

“I will not go to New York and abstain when the U.N. seeks to create an international environment that encourages boycotts of Israel,” she said, referring to the Obama administration’s controversial decision in December to abstain on a Security Council vote condemning Israeli settlements.

Hyon was a longtime Kim family loyalist who spent years working under North Korea's former leader Kim Jong Il as a high-ranking military official.

A spokesman for South Korea's Unification Ministry said the government considered the execution to be another display of "fear politics" in North Korea.

Hyon was seen nodding off during a meeting organized by Kim Jong Un

During 2014, Hyon was promoted again to the National Defense Commission (NDC), described as a supreme organ of the state which has authority over the Ministry of People's Armed Forces and Ministry of People's Security.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been accused of ordering the executions of as many as 15 top officials so far this year. However, during a rare trip by CNN to Pyongyang last week, a top official dismissed the allegation as "malicious slander."

North Korea is one of the most closed and repressive countries on Earth.

"Kim Jong Un has shown a ruthless side that we haven't seen since his grandfather consolidated power back in the 50s and 60s -- going after rivals and potential rivals and having them executed."

Diabate said armed groups were accountable for taking specific measures to provide protection to children. These include: clear directives by those in positions of authority within armed forces and groups to halt violations against children, meaning that children must not be recruited into the fighting, nor targeted. Unicef also called for the immediate release of children associated with armed forces and groups, and their protection from reprisals. Transit centres set up for the release and reintegration of children must also be protected from attacks.

Unicef and its partners say they have verified the killings of at least 16 children, and injuries among 60, since the outbreak of communal violence in Bangui on 5 December. In November, the UN warned that the number of child soldiers in the former French colony had more than doubled to up to 6,000 as anti-balaka militias have sprung up to counterattacks by the Seleka.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the medical charity, said on Monday that fighting, lynchings and violent attacks remained a daily occurrence in Bangui, and the situation in the city appeared to be out of control, despite the presence of international armed forces in the capital.

MSF said health facilities had been affected by the violence, hindering the provision of medical aid. On Sunday, a ministry of health ambulance was stopped and the staff were threatened with violence, preventing them from collecting the wounded. On the same day, armed men entered the Hôpital Communautaire with the intention of lynching patients, while health staff were threatened.

The UN launched an appeal for $152m last week to rapidly scale-up humanitarian operations over the next 100 days. The country has been plunged into chaos as its Christian majority seeks revenge against the Muslim rebels who seized power in a coup in March. Many Christian and Muslim civilians are armed, and the foreign troops brought in to try to rein in the violence have been sucked into the conflict and accused of taking sides.

The Chadians, part of the African Union force, are Muslim and are seen by the population as backing the Seleka rebels who toppled the president. But 1,600 French troops who were deployed in the first week of December are accused of backing the Christian majority, and their patrols have come under fire in Muslim neighbourhoods. Many say the bloodshed has little to do with religion as Muslims and Christians had long lived in peace. Instead, they blame a political battle for control over resources in one of Africa's most weakly governed states.

Investment firm Schroders said there could be $23tn of global economic losses a year in the long term without rapid action. This permanent economic damage would be almost four times the scale of the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis

Lord Nicholas Stern, of the London School of Economics said: “The low-carbon economy is the growth story of the 21st century and it is inclusive growth. Without that story, we would not have got the 2015 Paris agreement, but the story has grown stronger and stronger and is really compelling now.”

A key demand of the Global Investor Statement is to phase out coal-fired power stations across the world

Dozens of nations will affirm their commitment to end their coal burning on Thursday

the UN summit has seen US, Chinese and Japanese financial institutions cited as leaders in providing nearly $500bn in backing for new coal plants since the Paris agreement was signed.

The French president Emmanuel Macron’s botched attempt to increase fuel taxes and the gilets jaunes protests that followed were a model of how not to do it, said observers in Poland.

“It failed to take people along with them, accompanying the policy with social measures to allow citizens to embrace the opportunities of the transition and ride out the challenges,

They also want an end to subsidies for coal, oil and gas, which the IMF rates at $5tn a year and which the G20 has been promising to tackle for a decade. This measure alone could cut global CO2 emissions by 10% by 2030, according a UN report released in time for the Poland summit.

The investors said current national pledges to cut carbon would lead to a catastrophic 3C of global warming and that plans must be dramatically increased by 2020

There are two obvious things Corker could be talking about (and one hopes no less-obvious ones): North Korea and Iran.

Trump keeps telegraphing a desire to start a war with North Korea.  Having first drawn blood with his missile-strike on Syria, and been pleased with the reaction from the public and press, Trump seems to want more.

Although the official U.S. position, as outlined by other officials, is that all options are on the table, the president keeps suggesting that really only one is on the table. Why else would he so publicly slam the door shut on Tillerson’s open channel to Pyongyang? What else might he mean when he promised that the U.S. will “do what has to be done”?

There are other indications, too. In August, after a North Korean missile test, he said, “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. He has been very threatening beyond a normal statement, and as I said they will be met with fire, fury, and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.” (Aides said the language was improvised, and could not explain what he meant by it.)

In mid-September, at the United Nations General Assembly, Trump said that if Pyongyang’s aggression continued, the U.S. “will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” also saying, “The United States is ready, willing and able, but hopefully this will not be necessary.”

Of course, Trump could be just talking trash, trying to do the geopolitical dozens with Kim Jong Un, but there’s no way for Kim, or diplomats from other foreign countries, or the American people to know the difference. (North Korea itself claimed Trump’s UN remarks constituted a declaration of war, though the regime has a long history of similar comments.)

The impression of a slouch toward war is sharpened by other evidence. Mattis, for example, on Monday told Army generals to be ready to fight a war in Korea. Some of that is standard readiness, but given his own bleak view of a military solution—Mattis said earlier this year that a war against North Korea would be “catastrophic” and “probably the worst kind of fighting in most people's lifetimes”—it could also be an indication of growing probability of a shooting war.

Yet the road to a major war is usually a long one. The Bush administration spent months laying the groundwork, both publicly and privately, for the war in Iraq. At this point, the president has demonstrated a pattern of comments that indicate a preference for a military response to North Korea, although it’s not clear that his preference will prevail. That pattern is enough that Trump’s feuds with Tillerson and Corker deserve to be seen not merely as wacky, somewhat disconcerting antics, but as part of a potential move toward a war—whether that’s World War III or not.

Previous rounds of negotiations with North Korea, some lasting years, have all failed to persuade Pyongyang to change course as it has worked to advance its ability to strike the U.S. with nuclear weapons. As recently as a few months ag

North Korea warned it was contemplating a missile attack aimed at the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam.

ushing ahead with increasingly stringent economic sanctions aimed at curbing the country’s access to funds and fuel—and forcing it to abandon its atomic ambitions.

“It would be the first inter-Korean summit at a neutral location, so Moon can avoid the optics of appearing to pay tribute to Kim in Pyongyang,”

Senior U.S. officials have expressed doubts about the opening as a propaganda ploy meant to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington, but have publicly said they support South Korean efforts to bring Pyongyang to the negotiating table.

Kim Dong-yub, a professor of security studies at Kyungnam University, said North Korea could work to divide Washington or Seoul by insisting that a security guarantee involve the removal of U.S. troops from the Korean peninsula. “What defines security?” he said. North Korea has said repeatedly in recent years that the only true guarantee of its security was its possession of nuclear weapons. It reiterated the same idea on Tuesday, even as the South Korean delegation prepared to return home to Seoul.

Seoul’s delegation to the North had expected Mr. Kim to raise issues with annual springtime military exercises with the U.S., but the North Korean leader said he understood the need for them and didn’t push the point, a senior Seoul official said. North Korea has complained about the exercises, saying they are a rehearsal for invasion. Pyongyang last month warned the two allies that going ahead with them would go “against the climate of detente on the Korean Peninsula” and spell the end of the current thaw.

As the restrictions have tightened, North Korea has reached out to the South. Relations between the two began a nascent thaw ahead of the recent Winter Olympics.

The two Koreas agreed to hold a summit between their leaders at the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone that separates the peninsula —rather than in Pyongyang, the site of the two previous inter-Korean summits in 2000 and 2007.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told a visiting South Korean delegation that he was willing to hold talks with the U.S. about giving up nuclear weapons and would halt weapons tests during any negotiations, officials in Seoul said Tuesday.

“It is unlikely Kim Jong Un has abandoned his determination to keep nuclear weapons indefinitely,” said Robert J. Einhorn, a former senior State Department official who negotiated with North Korean officials during the Clinton administration.

American officials repeatedly have said North Korea still needs to carry out additional flight tests before it can be confident that it has the capability to strike the U.S. with a long-range, nuclear-armed missile.

Whether negotiations would produce more significant results is questionable.”

Beyond doubts about what Pyongyang will offer at the table, some U.S. officials also worry that North Korea will seek to use negotiations to create divisions between Seoul and Washington and blunt the American-led efforts to maintain tough economic sanctions.

Mr. Kim suggested his country might be willing to participate in the Winter Olympics in South Korea and Mr. Moon responded by proposing inter-Korean talks.

“They may mean it is a long-term objective and we may want them to denuclearize overnight,” said Joel S. Wit, a senior fellow at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins and a former State Department official.

Other difficult issues would include negotiating a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War, normalizing relations with the U.S. and determining when economic sanctions against North Korea would be eased and ultimately eliminated.

While the idea of a May summit is seen by many as an encouraging step toward peace on the Korean Peninsula — no sitting American president has ever met a North Korean leader — others are puzzled by Washington's marked change in tone.

"It is striking how fast this has moved forward ... This is encouraging news, but it's very important to manage expectations," said Park. "We don't have all the details yet to make an assessment on how viable this process will be."

there is a good chance that Kim Jong Un will do what is right for his people and for humanity. Look forward to our meeting!

by his lack of direct contact with foreign leaders, and his apparent unwillingness to stray too far from Pyongyang. Compared with his father, Kim Jong Il, the current dictator had little lead time before taking the reins.

“Previous Chinese negotiating behavior suggests that a meeting with Xi carries real weight

Mr. Kim and his wife met Mr. Xi and his wife during a lunch that “was overflowing with a harmonious and intimate atmosphere from its beginning to the end,”

which North Korean state media said was accepted “with pleasure”—though Chinese state media didn’t mention the invitation, one of several differences that hinted at enduring tensions between the neighbors.

Mr. Kim’s willingness to bring his wife to dinners with the South Korean envoys and with the Chinese president helps to make him “look like a fuller leader—a three-dimensional person, not this caricature,” she said.

The visit also allowed Beijing, with whom relations had soured, to play a central role in efforts to find a solution to the nuclear standoff.

In talks with the U.S., security analysts expect Mr. Kim to seek recognition as a nuclear-weapons state, or to demand sanctions relief and U.S. security guarantees in return for giving up its nuclear arms.

North Korean leaders’ preferred means of travel—armored train—would appear to reduce the likelihood of a summit in Scandinavia or Switzerland, given the distance and security concerns. Mr. Kim’s trip, like that of his father, w

But in venturing beyond his borders for the first time since taking power, Mr. Kim has signaled he can rub shoulders with world leaders like Mr. Xi.

Kim is sending a signal that he has options outside of full capitulation to Trump.”

The UN’s general assembly can step in where the security council has failed, and is currently considering a resolution to uphold the organisation’s central role in fighting the pandemic and to ensure that “there is no place for any form of discrimination, racism and xenophobia in the response to the pandemic”.

But some diplomats voiced concern that if the security council becomes less visible at the height of the pandemic, it will lose its centrality as an arena in which the world’s most powerful governments are held to account.

Trump’s speech will focus on “world regimes that threaten security”, the official said.

“And in those two cases as well as others, an appeal to others nations to do their part in confronting these threats, and understanding it is a shared menace and that nations cannot be bystanders in history,” the official added. “And if you don’t confront the threats now, they will only gather force and become more formidable as time passes.”

The four-page UN Genocide Convention was approved by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948 and has a clear definition of what constitutes "genocide." China is a signatory to the convention, along with 151 other countries.

However any establishment of an International Criminal Tribunal would require the approval of the UN Security Council, of which China is a permanent member with veto power, making any hearing on the allegations of genocide in Xinjiang unlikely.

According to the report, between 1 million and 2 million people have allegedly been detained in as many as 1,400 extrajudicial internment facilities across Xinjiang by the Chinese government since 2014, when it launched a campaign ostensibly targeting Islamic extremism.Beijing has claimed the crackdown was necessary after a series of deadly attacks across Xinjiang and other parts of China, which China has categorized as terrorism.

The report also attributed a dramatic drop in the Uyghur birth rate across the region -- down about 33% between 2017 and 2018 -- to the alleged implementation of an official Chinese government program of sterilizations, abortions and birth control, which in some cases was forced upon the women without their consent.

"The genocide allegation is the lie of the century, concocted by extremely anti-China forces. It is a preposterous farce aiming to smear and vilify China," Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a news conference on February 4.

Unlike his predecessors, Trump has embraced a top-down approach to nuclear negotiations with North Korea in the hopes of solving a problem that has eluded successive US administrations.

The US and the UN have made some concessions to allow humanitarian aid to operate outside the auspices of the Taliban; the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) granted some licenses to aid groups to operate in Afghanistan without running afoul of of financial restrictions on certain individuals and institutions in the country.

In the aftermath of the US withdrawal, many Afghans working as interpreters, aid workers, prosecutors, professors, and journalists suddenly lost their positions and their incomes, and many have been forced into hiding, further hampering their ability to provide even the most basic necessities — blankets, food, fuel, and medicine — for their families.

Many of Afghanistan’s current problems are intimately connected to the US withdrawal from the country last year, and the Taliban’s ensuing takeover of the central government. Since then, US sanctions and an abrupt end to international aid have wrecked Afghanistan’s economy and sent it spiraling into crisis.

Now, much of the country is facing poverty and starvation: In December, the World Food Program (WFP) found that 98 percent of Afghans aren’t getting enough to eat, and Guterres warned this month that “we are in a race against time to help the Afghan people.”

“Sanctions are intended to have a chilling effect, in that sanctions will always go beyond the face of the text,”

So far, however, no policy shift has been forthcoming. As of earlier this month, the US has pledged an additional $308 million in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, but the Afghan central bank reserves remain frozen.

And while Afghanistan’s current crisis isn’t wholly caused by external factors — even without sanctions by the US and its allies, the Taliban’s inability to manage the bureaucracy of government would have created issues, as would the pandemic and a severe drought that began in June last year — US actions do play a substantial role.

The chilling effect of sanctions is keeping businesses and banks from actually engaging with the economy. As House Democrats pointed out in their letter last month, relatively simple steps — like issuing letters to international businesses assuring them that they are not violating US sanctions — could help alleviate the crisis and shore up the Afghan private sector, but Treasury has yet to do so.

In the meantime, however, the Taliban will hold talks this coming week with Western nations, including Norway, Britain, the US, Italy, France, and Germany, about humanitarian aid. The talks should not be seen as a legitimization of Taliban rule, Norwegian Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt stressed to AFP on Friday, “but we must talk to the de facto authorities in the country. We cannot allow the political situation to lead to an even worse humanitarian disaster.”

Over much opposition from developing countries, the U.S. has insisted that the fund (technically named the Climate Impact and Response Fund) will be housed at the World Bank, where the U.S. holds a majority stake; every World Bank president has been a U.S. citizen. The U.S. also insisted that contributing to the fund not be obligatory. Sue Biniaz, the deputy special envoy for climate at the State Department, said earlier this year that she “violently opposes” arguments that developed countries have a legal obligation under the UN framework to pay into the fund.

The text agreed upon in Dubai on Thursday appears to strike a delicate balance: The fund will indeed be housed at the World Bank, at least for four years, but it will be run according to direction provided at the UN climate gatherings each year, and managed by a board where developed nations are designated fewer than half the seats.

That board’s decisions will supersede those of the World Bank “where appropriate.” Small island nations, which are threatened by extinction because of sea-level rise, will have dedicated seats. Countries that are not members of the World Bank will still be able to access the fund.

the U.S. remains adamant that the fund does not amount to compensation for past emissions, and it rejects any whiff of suggestions that it is liable for other countries’ climate damages.

Even the name “loss and damage,” with its implication of both harm and culpability, has been contentious among delegates

Several countries immediately announced their intended contribution to the fund. The United Arab Emirates and Germany each said they would give $100 million. The U.K. pledged more than$50 million, and Japan committed to $10 million. The U.S. said it would provide $17.5 million, a small number given its responsibility for the largest historical share of global emissions.

Total commitments came in on the order of hundreds of  millions, far shy of an earlier goal of $100 billion a year.

Other donations may continue to trickle in. But the sum is paltry considering researchers recently concluded that 55 climate-vulnerable countries have incurred $525 billion in climate-related losses from 2000 to 2019, depriving them of 20 percent of the wealth they would otherwise have

Still, it’s a big change in how climate catastrophe is treated by developed nations. For the first time, the countries most responsible for climate change are collectively, formally claiming some of that responsibility

One crucial unresolved variable is whether countries such as China and Saudi Arabia—still not treated as “developed” nations under the original UN climate framework—will acknowledge their now-outsize role in worsening climate change by contributing to the fund.

Another big question now will be whether the U.S. can get Congress to agree to payments to the fund, something congressional Republicans are likely to oppose.

Influence by oil and gas industry interests—arguably the entities truly responsible for driving climate change—now delays even public funding of global climate initiatives, he said. “The fossil-fuel industry has successfully convinced the world that loss and damage is something the taxpayer should pay for.” And yet, Whitehouse told me that the industry lobbies against efforts to use public funding this way, swaying Congress and therefore hobbling the U.S.’s ability to uphold even its meager contributions to international climate funding.

But who gets to decide that tyranny is imminent, and by what measure is the imminence of tyranny determined?

A commenter posting under the name Sanchez explained that “Tyranny consists of many things we have experienced the last 4 years, the firearm issue the latest in the line of them.” The point was echoed and amplified by another commenter, William Gill: “The second amendment is the only one that can assure the protection of your other rights which are being attacked almost daily by the current administration.” (In short, the Obama administration = tyranny.)

A commenter posting as Steve responded, “It’s not ‘Tyranny’ just because you were outvoted. That’s Democracy.”

he is met immediately by two responses from other commenters. First, “Steve, you’re assuming that the voting process was above board! Let’s face it, this election in November was by no means above board.” That is, the election results did not reflect majority will but some form of corrupt manipulation. (Those conspiring to overthrow government cite a conspiracy theory as their justification.)

The second response cuts deeper: “We live in a Republic Steve … majority rules is a problem indeed” (Buck Harmon). Harmon is invoking the familiar distinction between a democracy and a republic. In a democracy the majority determines what the law is and could, at least theoretically, take away the rights of individuals for the sake of the “public good.” In a republic, majority will is held in check by constitutional guarantees that forbid legislation encroaching on individual rights even if 51 percent or 95 percent of the population favors it

The N.R.A. militants have an answer. The purpose of the American Revolution was to secure the freedom of individuals and that means a minimally intrusive government. Representatives elected to safeguard that freedom may become intoxicated by their power and act in ways that restrict rather than enhance individual choice. At that point it is the people’s right and duty to rise against them. Measures limiting gun ownership are a sure sign that government is moving in the direction of central control and tyranny.

So for Angle and others, that’s the shape of tyranny — legislation that, in their judgment, abridges constitutionally protected rights. Sanchez explains: “We are all to decide what tyranny is. Just as we decide what law we obey or not.”

This antinomian declaration — our inner light will tell us when and when not to obey — flies in the face of another commonplace of democracy: ours is a government of laws not men (a declaration found in the 1780 Constitution of Massachusetts).

Another version of the commonplace is, no man is above the law.

C. P. takes the logic to its conclusion: “Secession is near. Can’t wait. Which by the way is Constitutional.” It’s constitutional, in this view, because a government in the act of eroding constitutional values is itself unconstitutional and has become a tyranny. Therefore to oppose it by whatever means available, including force, is not to undermine constitutionality, but to affirm it.

is it — to return to my original musings — un-American? Yes and no. On the one hand, nothing can be more American than throwing off the shackles of a government that has overstepped its bounds and disregarded the rights of its citizens.

on the other hand, the American tradition of accepting the results of elections — even when they bring with them policies you believe to be misguided at best and disastrous at worst — is in danger of being undermined when groups of armed people decide that the present leadership is infected by unpatriotic, socialist ideas and must be resisted at all costs.

A government founded in a revolutionary moment is always vulnerable to a determination by a zealous minority that its revolutionary ideals have been compromised by itself. When that happens, each side will engage in its favored rhetoric,

“officials in rural regions and security agents are far more inclined to air grievances more publicly regarding the leadership”.

“Orders from the top have been handed down calling for severe punishments to those who ‘spread absurd rumours’ [about Hyon],” another source who wished to remain anonymous claimed.