Rhetoric and Its Abuses: How to Oppose Liberal Democracy While Speaking Its Language

I try to analyze the rhetoric that is being used in contemporary debates concerning the defense of the values of liberal democracy. My main point is the following: nowadays, human rights and liberal democracy constitute, as it were, the fundamental values of the political sphere. But, as we know, people very often only pay lip service to these political values. Schematically speaking, there are two opposed ways of trying to evade the constraints of human rights and the values of liberal democracy. I shall call the first one the frontal attack : the enemy explicitly defends values that are radically at odds with liberal-democratic principles. Such a rhetoric is very influential today, for instance—but not only—in the Islamic world. As everybody knows, it raises very serious problems for peace and security. But this is not my present topic. I am interested here in the second, totally opposed, strategy: in order to be at least heard by the democratic community, the enemy uses the language of liberal democratic values. By doing so, he or she very often succeeds in radically distorting the language of human rights. I shall call that strategy: the Trojan horse, or, to use another metaphor, the wolf in sheep\u27s clothing. The strategy is fundamentally related to demagoguery and, more subtly, to a sophistical distortion of reasoning. The more we consider the values of liberal democracies to be simple, clear, and distinct, the less we can see behind these apparently unproblematic notions, which so many people seem to respect, some hidden controversies, or a sheer manipulation of the language of human rights. In our times, dominated by political correctness, when so many deeply controversial notions are superficially considered clear and distinct, Vico\u27s lament keeps all its topicality

Rhetoric and Its Abuses: How to Oppose Liberal Democracy While Speaking Its Language

I try to analyze the rhetoric that is being used in contemporary debates concerning the defense of the values of liberal democracy. My main point is the following: nowadays, human rights and liberal democracy constitute, as it were, the fundamental values of the political sphere. But, as we know, people very often only pay lip service to these political values. Schematically speaking, there are two opposed ways of trying to evade the constraints of human rights and the values of liberal democracy. I shall call the first one the frontal attack : the enemy explicitly defends values that are radically at odds with liberal-democratic principles. Such a rhetoric is very influential today, for instance—but not only—in the Islamic world. As everybody knows, it raises very serious problems for peace and security. But this is not my present topic. I am interested here in the second, totally opposed, strategy: in order to be at least heard by the democratic community, the enemy uses the language of liberal democratic values. By doing so, he or she very often succeeds in radically distorting the language of human rights. I shall call that strategy: the Trojan horse, or, to use another metaphor, the wolf in sheep\u27s clothing. The strategy is fundamentally related to demagoguery and, more subtly, to a sophistical distortion of reasoning. The more we consider the values of liberal democracies to be simple, clear, and distinct, the less we can see behind these apparently unproblematic notions, which so many people seem to respect, some hidden controversies, or a sheer manipulation of the language of human rights. In our times, dominated by political correctness, when so many deeply controversial notions are superficially considered clear and distinct, Vico\u27s lament keeps all its topicality

Compensating for severe nuclear accidents: An expert elucidation

We present the results of a structured discussion held in London in July 2014 involving a panel of experts drawn from three communities: specialists on aspects of risk and insurance; lawyers concerned with issues of nuclear law; and safety and environmental regulators. The discussions were held on the basis of participant anonymity. The process emphasised three considerations: conceptions of loss arising from a severe nuclear accident; the specifics of the Fukushima-Daiichi accident and what it means for policy and strategy going forward; and the future of liability regimes. We observe some stoicism from those closest to implementation of policies and procedures associated with nuclear risks, but a lower level of certainty and confidence among those concerned with nuclear energy regulation

Liberté religieuse contre liberté d’expression ? Pressions de conformité et rhétorique politiquement correcte

Les dangers que court la liberté d’expression ne sont pas toujours liés à des attaques frontales, comme l’est l’accusation de blasphème. De plus en plus souvent, la rhétorique liberticide se présente comme une illustration de la défense des droits de l’homme. Ainsi la liberté religieuse, le refus du discours de haine et le droit à la réputation (corrélatif de la notion de diffamation) – pour ne citer que ces trois notions – peuvent-ils servir à une mise en danger de la liberté d’expression. Péril quasi invisible pour qui ne critique pas sérieusement les concepts utilisés, puisque le « vilain mot » de blasphème n’est plus prononcé et que des concepts très politiquement corrects viennent à sa place jouer le rôle de « censeurs » de l’expression libre. Je voudrais dans le présent article fournir quelques éléments de déconstruction de cette rhétorique périlleuse pour les libertés.The dangers to freedom of expression are not always linked to frontal attacks, as is the charge of blasphemy. The freedom-destroying rhetoric increasingly takes on the appearance of the defence of human rights. Thus, religious freedom, the rejection of hate speech and the right to reputation (a correlative of the concept of defamation) – to name but three notions – can serve to endanger freedom of expression. This is almost invisible for those who do not seriously criticize the concepts used, since the “ugly word” of blasphemy is no longer pronounced and very politically correct concepts come to play the role of “censors” of free expression in its place. In this article I would like to provide some elements of deconstruction of this perilous rhetoric for freedoms

The Japanese Electricity System 15 months After March 11th 2011

The Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami on March 11th 2011 caused mass destruction, significant loss-of-life and a large displacement of people. It also placed significant strain of Japan's electricity-generating infrastructure. There was a significant reduction in capacity due to the damage in thermal generation and gradual closure of Japan's nuclear power plants; the ability for load-balancing across the Japanese grid was compromised due to limited interconnections between the different utilities that comprise the Japanese electricity system. This paper looks at the first fifteen months following the earthquake and tsunami: outlining the supply reduction and consequent attempts to manage the demand. In turn it highlights the foibles of Japan's vertically-integrated monopolistic structures and the evolution of governmental and utilities response that went from decisions made 'on-the-fly' to a more developed policy for peak-demand electricity savings. The findings from this paper should serve as a useful set of examples to aid decision makers in contingency planning for disruptive large-scale reduction in electricity-generating capacity

Modelling uncertainties in phase-space boundary integral models of ray propagation

A recently proposed phase-space boundary integral model for the stochastic propagation of ray densities is presented and, for the first time, explicit connections between this model and parametric uncertainties arising in the underlying physical model are derived. In particular, an asymptotic analysis for a weak noise perturbation of the propagation speed is used to derive expressions for the probability distribution of the phase-space boundary coordinates after transport along uncertain, and in general curved, ray trajectories. Furthermore, models are presented for incorporating geometric uncertainties in terms of both the location of an edge within a polygonal domain, as well as small scale geometric fluctuations giving rise to rough boundary reflections. Uncertain source terms are also considered in the form of stochastically distributed point sources and uncertain boundary data. A series of numerical experiments is then performed to illustrate these uncertainty models in two-dimensional convex polygonal domains

La liberté académique

This book analyses the threats to academic freedom in the twenty-first century across the globe, and the various ways to face them