globe on a table against the wall of blue

Country X has no right to exist!

Feel free to insert any country’s name in the title according to your personal preferences or animosities. My initial instinct was to go for click-bait and title the article, “Israel has no right to exist”. This would be sure to inflame the passions of all the Israelis who condemn as antisemites anyone who asserts Israel’s lack of a right to exist. Then I thought about using “Taiwan”, “The United States of America”—too long—“China”, “Russia”, “France”…. It really doesn’t matter. Countries do not have a “right” to exist.

Countries either do exist or they don’t. Taiwan exists. Israel exists. Palestine lacks the functional sovereignty—control over borders, defence, foreign policy—that defines statehood. Should its people have the right to functional sovereignty? Absolutely.

My father once observed that there is nothing he found more frightening than a sudden proliferation of national flags. I heard the comedienne Sarah Silverman make the same observation. Flags connote nationalism, and nationalism distinguishes itself by being in opposition to a defined “other”—the quintessential thing that distinguishes us from you. It entitles us to have things and deny them to you, and take things from you without regard to your interests.

Nationalists do not look at other countries as having rights. They look at other countries as a wolf eyes a flock of sheep—an opportunity. Of course if the other country is a bear, they may need to be more circumspect, but even a bear can make a great rug.

Nationalism rest on mythic history to instrumentalise the population towards the leader’s ends, not the people’s interests. Now imagine a world in which, as the US seeks in its National Security Strategy 2025, all countries revive their mythic histories. No country will choose the history of the time when they were weakest, a vassal state or worse, completely absorbed. They will pick historical points of grandeur. Mongolia will claim vast swathes of Russia, China, and Central Asia—and rightly so! Turkey will recall it historical right to the Balkans, North Africa, and the Middle East. Who amongst us would not acknowledge Italy’s historical claim on England, France, Spain, Greece, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, and Israel. Neither China nor Russia have need for further over-reach on their territorial claims, but they could. Russia tells the tale of a sovereign need for a Pan-Slavic State that gobbles up Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Egypt should certainly need to have it’s Pharaonic claim to the Levant recognised. Spain will eye its Western hemisphere territories with delight and return to discussions of the Holy Roman Empire. Morocco can start planning it’s revitalisation of Andalusia. Denmark will talk of the glory days when Schleswig-Holstein was not enough—when the North Sea Empire under Cnut the Great included England, Norway, and parts of Sweden. Sweden will promote a modern Baltic State reclaiming its rightful territories in Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and parts of Germany. Will France want to revisit the Louisiana Purchase? I think it should. Ecuador, Bolivia or probably Peru can sound the drums for a revitalised Incan empire. Once Burma has dealt with its pesky insurgency it can turn its eye to former glory: Thailand, Laos, and parts of Cambodia. Indonesia’s Majapahit claim to Malaysia, Singapore, southern Thailand, and the Philippines is entirely justified.

I would like to remind you all that when my ancestors stepped out of Africa, wherever their descendants placed their feet is mine to claim. And maybe this should be a new Pan-African myth of global capture.

Each of these claims rooted in a novelist’s fantasy of historical pride permits leaders to instrumentalise the young as warriors and breeders. And the foolish among us will swell our chests with the false pride of false histories.

For this story shall the good man teach his son;
And a national day shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
Our claim shall be remembered.

If you walk past a United Nations building you will see flags of every nation fluttering. The message is not of history but future shared endeavour.

The sole purpose of a country is to advance the welfare of the people circumscribed by its borders—citizens and non-citizens. When leaders start to instrumentalise the population—treat them asmeans to the leader’s personal ends and ambition—they fail.

Countries come and go. The people are constant: tilling, toiling, and typing. If they choose to come together in unity within a geographic area, that is their right. They may expand that boundary with the consent of those around, and contract it on a similar basis. It cannot be a whimsical destabilising thing that would instrumentalise the lives of others. It needs thoughtful deliberation that takes into account the rights and duties of all. The purpose is welfare—full stop. Not glory. Not destiny. Not at the expense of others.

With apologies to William Shakespeare for butchering the lines from Henry V, Act IV, Scene 3

“AI Wrote That!”

“Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none; And some condemned for a fault alone.” [Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 1]

If only we could all write like Shakespeare. It’s sonorous, timeless, replete with metaphor and meaning. Now we have AI slop swilling around the internet. Finding something written by a human, something genuine, something worth reading, is like trying to pick out the orations of Cicero in a sports crowd as they roar for a touchdown. If you let yourself, you could drown in that cacophony of information.

The appearance of generative AI and its effectively infinite capacity to…well…generate has meant that you, poor reader, are now faced with the literary equivalent of a Deli full of lunchmeat—homogenised words with colouring and preservatives.

We need better ways of writing. We need to return to the old ways—a kind of writing where the artist, steeped in craft, can mold and form a narrative or argument and render it in a single draft. I am thinking here, at best, of a cuneiform tablet. But I would settle for ink, quill and velum. That is the true measure of the art.

We blame AI, but things really started to go wrong in the late 19th Century. The combination of wood-pulp technology and the Fourdrinier machine made paper cheap and available. And as paper became more affordable, thinking got lazier. Loose, ill-considered mutterings and on-the-fly musings could now be committed to paper and reworked through multiple drafts. There was no allegiance to de novo refined precision.

László Bíró, inventor of the ballpoint pen, and Marcel Bich, mass producer of the same, need to shoulder some of the blame (1933-1956). Even with the ready availability of paper, the blotches and smudgings of the maladroit kept many wannabe writers out of the market. Some thought they had good ideas, but manual dexterity was a solid benchmark for well-constructed prose.

The manual typewriter became a ubiquitous domestic item in the 1960s. Liquid paper had already been invented, which meant we could all become monkeys at the keyboard, randomly pecking in the hope of producing Shakespeare. These were followed in rapid succession by the electric typewriter and the electric typewriter with correction tape.

Between 1978 and 1983, authorship was no longer bound to paper. WordStar, WordPerfect, and Microsoft Word, running on personal computers, freed the illiterate to create everything from a letter to Grandma or a eulogy to a first novel. Effort and thought were gone. “Writing” was a mindless process of rinse-and-repeat. Spellcheck, grammar check, word suggestions, thesaurus (for the truly illiterate—or as I like to call them, the analphabetic) and “suggestions”.

And here we are—2025. Editors are inundated with crap because everyone is now a writer.

Claude, write me a bawdy Limerick proving the infinity of primes.

A strumpet proved primes never cease
By shagging each one for a piece,
She’d finish the set,
Find one larger yet,
Her clients increased without peace.

OK! It’s not Shakespeare. But it is a curiosity—a two-minute amusement. It’s also worth thinking about how that limerick comes to exist. The GenAIs are not monkeys at a typewriter. They are constrained. They respond to prompts. The outputs are not random. You might get lucky and one of the generative AI engines immediately produces a limerick worth two minutes of your life. The chances are, however, you will get dross, or it will be a proof, but it won’t be bawdy, or it will be bawdy, but it won’t be a proof. You will need to go back and forth with the AI, refining, editing, and selecting. It was your idea—a bawdy proof. You refined and selected. For a five-line limerick, it might not take much time and effort, but it does require some—and that process is creative.

When photography first appeared on the scene in the second half of the 19th Century, it was seen as the end of painting, because all painting was an attempt to reproduce reality perfectly (Not!). And all photography was the perfect reproduction of reality (also Not!). Photography is now accepted as an art form, although not always. The technology, however, is mechanical, and…. Where is the art?

I heard a story told of the renowned art photographer, Robert Maplethorpe. A woman commissioned him to take her photograph. He took dozens and dozens of photos on the day. When the woman returned some weeks later to receive her portrait, she was not entirely happy with it and asked Maplethorpe if she could see the other photos taken on the day. He refused. The other photographs are not “Maplethorpes”, he explained.

The production of the art might rely on a mechanical device—but the composition, the lighting, the post-production, and most importantly, the aesthetic choice is entirely in the hands of the artist. Maplethorpe might have been able to render a portrait in a fraction of the time it would take to paint the same picture—that is a matter of medium, however, not artistic merit.

If Shakespeare be the measure of literary art, then, Houston, we have a problem. Who in 2025 knows what that line from Measure for Measure means: “Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none; And some condemned for a fault alone”?

The Bard himself is unintelligible to the reader—and he is rarely, if ever, translated into modern English. The translation is an affront to the author as artist, which is ironic because Shakespeare almost certainly would have embraced the idea.

If he were translated, we might get any of the three following forms. There is the poetic and adherent: “Some hide in icy coverts, shun the call; and some are judged for but a single fall”. There is the plainer meaning: “The guilty hide and prosper; the unlucky answer once and fall”. And there is the prosaic: “Some people evade justice entirely by hiding and refusing to answer charges, while others are condemned for committing just one offence”.

The problem with AI is not that working closely with it cannot produce things of merit and worth: curated, thoughtful, and illuminating—things artistic and authored. The problem is the volume. We are looking for grains of black sand on a shore of white sand.

To judge “AI Wrote That!” as a dismissive and condemnatory act is as useful as looking at a Maplethorpe and declaring, “That’s a Photograph!”

ps: AI did not write this, except where it did.

The End of the Green-Growth Illusion

COP30 will produce nothing realistic to address a development, climate Ponzi scheme forced on the weak by the strong.

This chart reveals some stark realities about the link between development and carbon. It plots excess CO₂ consumption against GDP per capita, measuring each nation against a fair per-capita carbon allocation. Consumption-based accounting attributes the carbon from manufacturing to the country that buys the goods, not where they’re produced—revealing the true carbon costs of wealthy nations’ consumption patterns. The “fair” CO₂ allocation is based on a distribution of the global carbon sink—the biosphere’s capacity to absorb CO₂ annually. It has a finite budget, and the red lines show what a fair per-capita share of that budget would be for each country.

Every wealthy country is in the upper right quadrant. They are well above the red-line, consuming well beyond their climate share. The relationship is stark: a consequence of the current development strategies rely on generating CO₂. The highest GDP per capita achieved by any country without exceeding the fair CO₂ allocation is $16,000 by Costa Rica.

China, for its modest GDP per capita of $19,000 sits above the 75th percentile. That is, it is an inefficient producer of wealth for every tonne of carbon burnt—and this is after the carbon from exports is removed from the books. India under-consumes relative to its wealth as do Brazil and Colombia.

Norway achieves high GDP per capita whilst remaining near zero and Qatar achieves an enormous GDP per capita while sitting on the 25th percentile. These apparent climate successes hide structural problems: as energy exporters, they offload carbon costs to importing nations through consumption-based accounting. This isn’t a weakness of consumption-based accounting but it shows the fragility of the carbon exporting economies in the face of real commitments to reduce carbon emissions.

City-states like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malta sit well above the 75th percentiles relative to their GDPs per capita, their high consumption reflecting imported goods produced elsewhere.

The difficulty deepens when we examine the geopolitics of the energy transition. We have a global development strategy that is almost entirely tied to carbon. Wealthy nations continue to burn carbon whilst promising to “decouple” growth from emissions. The promise is that green energy will save us, without us ever having to compromise on our expectations of wealth. The levels of solar-panel and wind-turbine manufacturing required to reduce emissions (not just growth in emissions) are staggering. Every one is looking to China—a single point of failure and an aggressive geopolitical force that (like all powers) will exploit it’s advantage—without credible alternatives. The world’s decarbonisation strategy implicitly assumes that China will continue to expand manufacturing of clean-tech materials at stable prices, and it will do this without entangling its dominance in geopolitical leverage. This is implausible. It is also historically unprecedented to have the world’s future energy system hinge on one state’s industrial capacity and beneficence. That single point of failure will endanger the entire project.

Addressing climate change requires “giving up”. It requires wealthy countries give up on their expectations of continued privilege and comfort at the expense of poorer nations. Poorer nations need to give up their expectations of ever achieving current wealthy nations’ standards of living. Finally, powerful countries need to give up on using climate as a geopolitical pawn in the search for national, strategic advantage.

My argument is, empirically, in the right direction and politically unpalatable. No political system—authoritarian, democratic, or otherwise—has shown willingness to articulate a program of “giving up”. As a consequence, we are sold a vision of techno-optimism that preserves the narrative of growth without sacrifice.

As soon as the bubble of that narrative if burst and becomes a more realistic narrative of growth versus sacrifice, it becomes abundantly clear that the powerful intend to sacrifice the weak.

The logic of the present system leaves no room for a fair transition. The global economy is built on the extraction of ecological capacity from the many to sustain the consumption of the few. The COP process, for all its technical ambition, is designed to protect that hierarchy, not dismantle it. It offers the appearance of collective action while ensuring that no high-income state is required to reduce consumption to anything approaching its fair share, and no low-income state is allowed to question the model it is expected to follow.

Once the comforting fiction of green, painless growth gives way, the reality becomes clear. The world is not preparing for shared sacrifice but for selective survival. The strong will preserve their position by externalising the costs of climate stabilisation onto the weak, whether through border adjustments, constrained development pathways, or the quiet abandonment of nations deemed geopolitically expendable. Under current structures, the future is not collective sacrifice but a brutal form of triage in which the most vulnerable are forced into destructive competition, fighting for space in a system designed to abandon them.

The data for the graph were from the Our World in Data (OWD) CO2 dataset. The graph and the analytic approach is not OWD’s nor endorsed by them. The arguments and conclusion are mine.

Viewpoint Therapy—Getting Identity Right

It was a bland, beige waiting room. John approached the receptionist’s desk. He felt awkward and uncomfortable—the awkwardness of a teenager doing something embarrassing while knowing that people were watching and judging. The waiting room was empty except for the receptionist and John’s mother, who had nudged him towards the desk while she took a seat.

I’m here to see Dr Childs he mumbled, fingering the cuff of his shirt. Sure hon, the receptionist smiled. You have a seat and she’ll be with your shortly.

He sat down next to his mother and thumbed nervously through a brochure he’d taken from the coffee table in the middle of the room—“Viewpoint Therapy – Helping Teens Explore Their Authentic Identity”. The pictures were soothing images of sunrises and beaches. On the third page was a head shot of Child’s. She had a slight smile and warm eyes. John’s mind flitted briefly to what the rest of her body might look like. A brief paragraph described Child’s approach to the healing journey: holistic, integrative, trauma-informed, grounded in mind–body connection, and authentic relationship building. Therapy was about creating a safe space for exploration. It was about meeting clients where they are, and about empowering growth through curiosity and compassion.

At the bottom of the back page in 4-point Helvetica was the disclaimer. None of our professionals are medically qualified. We engage in free speech at the rates displayed in our offices.

No one reads the fine print. John was no one.

Whether it was the pre-existing knot in his stomach or the gummy he’d had earlier, what John did read, he had to read twice. As his father liked to say, better informed but none the wiser. John definitely felt none the wiser.

One of the five doors coming off the waiting room opened and the full body version of the head shot appeared. John? Child’s inquired. John felt a slight twitch in his groin. His mother gave his shoulder a quick rub and a delicate push in Child’s direction. She smiled at Child’s who returned an acknowledging nod.

John and Childs had been dancing around for about thirty minutes. John had been fingering the shirt cuff on his right hand for almost the whole time. His head hung with embarrassment. It was only with occasional furtive looks he would see Child’s through his mop of brown hair.

The last thirty minutes had revealed John’s guilt and the shame. His almost constant thoughts about sex. His glances at girls breasts, necklines, buttocks, …. The slight (sometimes not so slight) tumescence. Oh My GOD—even now as he talked about it. The disgust with which he heard the girls whisper about it. Did you see….? Raucous giggles.

He loathed school.

His dad had seen him flipping through porn on his phone. His face flushed with the memory and with the memory of an almost instant desire to vomit.

And now he found himself in Child’s office.

Child’s knew she was at a difficult point in the therapeutic relationship. Teenagers are volatile. A soup of emotions and feelings. Sharp morals and jagged thinking.

Feelings of shame and disgust were normal, she said. In some ways they were appropriate. Looking at girls in class like that wasn’t right. Understandable? Maybe. Not here to judge. Here to help.

Now seemed to be the appropriate moment.

Your mom mentioned that you wanted to be gay. You want to escape that sense of shame and disgust about yourself. But you think of yourself as straight—a cis, hetero-normative cliche. You just can’t help but find girls attractive. It’s like that attraction is just a part of who you are. Something innate. It is so “you” that you cannot begin to imagine it being otherwise—and the shame and guilt.

John nodded. But you can’t just be gay, he said. I like being around other guys, but I’m just not attracted to them.

I think I can help you with that, Child’s said.

Six months later John was back in the same beige waiting room. Jessica—he now knew the receptionists name—waved him to take a seat.

John had lost weight. His clothes hung baggily. He glanced down and spotted the edge of a thin red wound near his left cuff. He pulled the sleeve down a little further.

Child’s appeared, smiled encouragingly and waved him into her office.

She looked winsomely disappointed. I’ll have to let your parents know, she explained. John was giving up on therapy. Giving up on himself.

Obviously any details were confidential, she reassured his slightly panicked look. But they do need to know you’ve decided to discontinue your healing. John could feel the sub-text: you’ll return to shameful, furtive looks at girl’s necklines. They’d never really gone away, John admitted to himself.

The process had started so well she reflected. Your faith … leaning on God. We had prayed together, here and then you with you family. There was such strength and hope. We had talked strategy. Then Luke had shown real interest when you had approached him. I thought you were making a real break through, then you pulled back. I think you used the word, “revolted” or was it “nauseous”?

Part of you obviously wanted to be gay. I could see it. Literally. You had it written on your forearms in hairline cuts. You thought I hadn’t noticed? Of course I had. It’s common. It was you rejecting the self attracted to girls—you were punishing it. If only….

I’m sorry we couldn’t complete your healing together, John. When you’re ready, my door is always open. I know that with faith and love you can do it.

Oral argument in the case of Chiles v. Salazar was heard by the US Supreme Court on 7 October 2025. The case was about the constitutionality of a Colorado law that prevented a therapist engaging in talk-based sexual-identity conversion therapy. Essentially, the argument was that banning the therapist (Chiles, a medically unqualified therapist) from engaging in talk therapy to convert a child from gay to straight sexual infringed the First Amendment—a denial of Chiles’s right to free speech. The argument hinged on the idea that therapeutic speech remains speech and thus, protected.

It was only Associate Justice Elena Kagan who inquired briefly about the protection offered by the First Amendment if the therapist was converting a child from straight to gay.

The problem with the free speech argument is that it gives cover to significant harm. Let me quote from a statement by an independent expert group published in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine.

Conversion therapy is a set of practices that aim to change or alter an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity. It is practiced in every region of the world by health professionals, religious practitioners, and community or family members often by or with the support of the state. Conversion therapy is performed despite evidence that it is ineffective and likely to cause individuals significant or severe physical and mental pain and suffering with long-term harmful effects.

That statement is about effectiveness, and the Supreme Court case is about the law.

The Court will rule in favour of Chiles. Talk-based therapy, they will say, is protected by the First Amendment. The court has often ruled that significant harm is protected by the law—see all the Second Amendment cases on the right to keep and bear arms. They would not, for a scintilla of a second, uphold Justice Kagan’s hypothetical. Conversion is only free speech in one direction and harm doesn’t matter.