Discerning an Interfaith Eremitic World Federalist Blogging Vocation with a Psychiatric Disability

My comment at 7:45 PM on the UN SG's 2026 New Year Message : From USA thanking God for the UN family, thinking hard about UN Charter reform, and praying earnestly for peace, health and sustainable development breakthroughs worldwide in 2026. 

My comment at 6:16 PM on a  Post from Tucker Carlson : Excellent grist for the conservative defense mill, Tucker. I have a vegan pacifist charism myself, but I respect those with a charism for physical guardianship of our country and for world civilization. Have you studied the Christian realism of Niebuhr at all? Maybe you could have a Niebuhr expert on your show. Practically speaking, in this fallen world, I think American Christians have to combine pacifism, just war theory and peacebuilding in a balanced foreign policy. In my view, Hamas is a genocidal terrorist organization that illegally took hostages and used Gazan civilians - especially women and children - as martyrs and human shields in an 8-front war to destroy the world's one and only Jewish state. Ideally, in a just war, there are no civilian casualties. Realistically, under the best IHL and LAC on the planet, collateral civilian casualties are not necessarily war crimes. This said, at every step of this 8-front Irania...

My second comment at 4:12 PM on Gaza Vetting : What percent of all aid workers in Gaza does this ban represent? Are the majority of aid organizations complying with Israeli vetting requirements, and if so, what explains the difference between them and the banned 37? Thank you. I am a US citizen praying for peace, urgent humanitarian relief in Gaza and a future 2-state solution. @nopolitichere replied: There's quite a few reasons why some organisations can't comply with the Israeli conditions. The Norwegian Refugee Council, for example, has pointed out that the Israelis seem to target aid workers, even the local ones, so supplying the lists of such people is a safety issue. Other groups have issues with GDPR regulations. Furthermore, the Israelis have accused, without evidence, some people affiliated with MSF of being involved with terrorist acts and are using this as an excuse to ban the organisation. MSF support 1 in 5 hospital beds and 1 in 3 births in Gaza, so this will sign...

My comment at 2:56 PM on "CIA/MI6 should be the first targets for Russia now" under Russia Will Retaliate : Nonsense. Putin should restrain the extremist impulses expressed by some advisors beneath him and remain tightly focused on diplomacy with Trump. This is not a time to widen or escalate the conflict. Putin should give Trump time to meet with Zelensky and key European leaders in January before Putin answers the Ukrainian attack in kind. More calls between Trump and Putin are in order. Diplomacy should win out here. If intelligence convinces Trump to believe Putin about the drone strike, it is better for Trump to deal with Ukraine (and NATO) himself than it is for Putin to dig any deeper into the Western public's negative opinion of him. If Trump doesn't believe Putin, then Russia has a problem it cannot solve militarily, anyway. Strategic stability confidence-building measures between Trump and Putin seem warranted in any event. All rational actors should keep st...

My first comment at 2:02 PM on Gaza vetting : Good exchange from both sides on the issue of vetting. Why shouldn't the ID and security clearance of all Palestinians be a joint responsibility of Israel and the PA [Palestinian Authority], or Israel and the BoP [Board of Peace] on the way to just the PA, with appropriate citizen protections, due process and remediation pathways? How else can they hope to deradicalize Palestinian society? 

My comment at 1:28 PM on The Final Phase in response to "How would attacking Putin directly be wrong when they are at war?" 1) Very destabilizing in light of Russia's nuclear doctrine. The targeted residence is also a command and control HQ for Putin. 2) It was a massive betrayal of Trump's peace effort if it was Zelensky. 3) It is a sign that Zelensky has lost control if it was rogue Ukrainian faction thwarting Zelensky. 4) It is a sign that Ratcliffe has lost control if rogue CIA actors worked with Zelensky, MI6, a rogue Ukrainian faction and/or NATO behind Trump's back. 5) If Putin thinks Trump was behind it and it was an assassination attempt that may mean a Russian declaration of war against the US (not just Ukraine) and Putin may never trust or talk to Trump again. 6) All of this said, it may have been a Russian false flag. 7) Whatever the case may be, Trump needs to address the public soon about Russia's threat to retaliate against Ukraine, IMHO, and h...

My comment at 12:28 AM on Day 3 of Iran Strikes and Protests : Looking forward to your next short update putting this in context for those of us pressed for time. Could this be the "one"? What should Trump and Netanyahu do? Thanks so much and God bless from New York! Cf.  IRAN RIOTS 101: Iranian explains EVERYTHING you need to know  and  IRAN RIOTS 101 PART 2: Iranian explains EVERYTHING you need to know .

My comment at 7:34 PM for Natasha Hausdorff on the Abuse of International Law with Henrik Beckheim : You already know I am deeply sympathetic to the UPJ argument, Natasha, but surely you have to acknowledge there is another credible argument before the bench here, and that it is so far the view of the ICJ majority? From Google Gemini: "Most international legal experts don't see uti possidetis juris granting Israel sovereignty over all historic Palestine because the doctrine applies to decolonization to preserve borders, not to empower a minority to claim the whole territory, contradicting Palestinian [Arab] self-determination; the Mandate itself was a complex trust with competing claims, not a simple colony, making the situation sui generis (unique), and the doctrine doesn't override existing humanitarian law or the right of a people to form their own state within those inherited borders." I agree that UNGA resolution 181 wasn't absolutely legally binding, but thi...

My response at 1:25 PM to the Somali President's remarks : Isn't "illegal and dangerous" exactly the same point that Israel has long tried to make about premature, unilateral, unconditional recognition of the state of Palestine? Does the international community recognize the government of Somaliland as a genocidal terrorist organization? Why should fair-minded Americans care more about what Erdogan thinks than what Taiwan thinks?

My comment at 1:30 PM on Ukraine Rejects Russian Claim : Trump's first responsibility was to let Putin, the Russian people and the world know that he didn't greenlight the alleged strike. Taking Putin at his word in this instance was appropriate for strategic stability. Now the hard part comes. Trump has to meet with his intelligence and security teams and decide whether this was a false flag or something else. The implications of either outcome are not good. From the strategic stability point of view, there will at first be understandable pressure on Trump to pray this wasn't a Russian false flag. Then the calculus sets in: what if it plausibly was a Russian red flag? Does that warrant an emergency UN Security Council meeting? Do we need an immediate international investigation? Should we expect Russia to present the UN Security Council with some forensic evidence? The point is not to insult Putin or the Russian people, but to proceed with healthy respect - and self-respec...

My comment at 7:45 AM on Day 816 | The Daily Briefing by The Times of Israel: Excellent debrief, TOI. What about the ray of daylight between Trump and Bibi on the West Bank?

My comment at 9:49 PM on "Specific strategic targets in Ukraine have been identified to be struck in response to Ukraine's attack on President Putin's headquarters" in a  Post from MILITARY TUBE TODAY : It's hard for this American to know whether Zelensky or Putin is lying about the alleged drone strike. Not good either way. US intelligence needs 48 hours to investigate the allegations. Is Russia planning to give Trump at least this much time to discuss the intel with his team and brief the public one way or the other before Russia retaliates and peace talks go further down the drain?  @brentondahlitz721: America would not know how to tell the truth they are born lies. This is my follow-up two days later on 31 December at 4:20 AM. @permavegan:​ @brentondahlitz721 Maybe all American boys are born liars and they only learn to tell the truth the hard way as American men. That's giving you the benefit of the doubt. In this instance, it seems clear to all neutral a...

My first comment at 4:11 PM on the AP report of an attack on Putin's residence : I am sure President Trump wasn't in the loop and didn't greenlight this attack, but I guess Trump will need to call Putin and say as much directly. Was Putin in the residence at the time of the attack? Any of his family? Is it possible Zelensky himself did not approve the attack - what has the Ukrainian side said about it?

My comment on Day 815 | The Daily Briefing from the Times of Israel: In addition to Iran's ballistic missile production, Hezbollah's disarmament, the deradicalization of Hamas, and everything else of core substance they need to cover, should Netanyahu ask Trump to call out right-wing American antisemitic conspiracy theorists (Carlson, Fuentes and Owens)? It's fine to criticize the govt of Israel within reasonable bounds, but when prominent conservative influencers start blaming Charlie Kirk's death and Epstein's sex-trafficking ring on Mossad, when they start calling Netanyahu a baby-killer, when they gang up on Ben Shapiro's Amfest speech instead of rising to his defense, does Trump himself need to say something - does he need to start naming and shaming - or is it more strategic for him to remain "above" the MAGA-Israel meltdown? And here is my follow-up later in the day: Trump and Netanyahu handled the situation very well at the press briefing afte...

My comments at 7:43 AM and following on Russophobia Made War Inevitable :  @permavegan: Russophobia or Russian Paranoia? Maybe 50% of both made this SMO happen. But that doesn't mean the SMO was inevitable. @vgstb: The SMO has nothing to do with Russophobia and the US (Victoria Nuland's pet project) made the SMO fully unavoidable. Remember the memo of Ambassador Burns on the brightest of red lines (Nyet means Nyet). @permavegan: @vgstb Good argument. In my opinion, Russia should have better used the UNSC and ICJ to defend its red lines before it started the SMO. But absent this, if Trump had won in 2020, would the SMO still have been inevitable? Maybe after December 2021 it was inevitable, but that was not until Biden made it so. Biden had a choice, and so did Putin. Each side miscalculated. Now we have a very complicated international legal problem to solve. @vgstb: @permavegan It's undeniable that the Russian governments (after the disintegration of the USSR) made enormou...

My comment on "Hungary becomes the second European country to ban meat grown in a lab by Bill Gates" and "Our land is fertile, our livestock is healthy, our people are our priority, and we will not poison them with fake meat" by Viktor Orbán in a  Post from MILITARY TUBE TODAY : If the meat-eating majority in Hungary wants to ban lab-grown meat and the effect on ecological overshoot is equal or better, I guess that is up to the meat-eating majority in Hungary. Please just don't start banning the vegan minority or suppressing the right of vegans to publish, speak and lawfully protest. That's a universal human and animal rights issue. 

My comment at 9:27 PM on "We Will Not Allow Somalia to Become a Foothold for the Israeli Enemy - Any Israeli Presence in Somaliland Will Be a Military Target for our Yemeni Armed Forces" in a  Post from MILITARY TUBE TODAY : Leave it up to the UN Security Council. It meets on Monday. Who put the Houthis in charge of global peace and security - Iran? Why make matters even worse for Yemen?

My comment posted at 9:08 PM in response to "Russia opposes Taiwan independence in any form, FM Lavrov says," in a  Post from MILITARY TUBE TODAY : The US position as I understand it is that resolution of the Taiwan question should be peaceful and involve the assent of the people of Taiwan. Does Russia agree with these principles?  @wayne9585: Do you agree with the native Hawaiian people getting a chance to vote on [unfinished]. @permavegan: @wayne9585 Not sure where you are headed with this question but it's looking like an apples and oranges situation. Russia doesn't know how to answer my question without hearing my opinion on a native Hawaiian vote to what, reverse US statehood? Apples and oranges, and Russia should have a more nuanced foreign policy than that.

Here is my response at 7:00 PM to part of the comment thread on Israel's War for Western Civilization : Nikos Sotirakopoulos: The war Israel has been fighting is not merely a regional conflict, but a rare, civilizational-level war. It is a clash between two fundamentally different ways of understanding what it means to live life as a human. @davidartzy6732: My correction as an Israeli: like everyone else we are fighting first and foremost for ourselves. The fact that we are more Western oriented due to religion and culture results in that the outcome of our struggle benefits the West as a whole. I think putting it in these terms is more accurate and relatable. No, we are not sending our children to war for some Christian Londoner, nor for some Jewish Londoner, we our doing for us here. The fact that ppl there don't understand the impact on them is the issue. @roberthanley: Israel is not just Western-oriented: it is Western — it is culturally European. Israel's fight has not...

My comment posted at 3:44 PM in response to  Post from MILITARY TUBE TODAY : DPRK makes a valid point about its security concerns, but a one-sided ultimatum is probably not the best way to proceed with President Trump. Why not offer to resume negotiations hand in hand with mutual confidence-building measures?

My comment posted 3:06 PM in response to  Post from MILITARY TUBE TODAY : Talk about playing into Netanyahu's worst fears and far-right inclinations right before his meeting with Trump! Why not agree that Iranian nuclear brinkmanship was a total moral and strategic failure? Why not signal a willingness to hand all of Iran's highly enriched uranium over to Russia under IAEA safeguards and give up on any further enrichment for at least 10 years in exchange for immediate nuclear sanctions relief? Both Trump and Netanyahu have been clear they want a stable, peaceful and successful Iran...without further nuclear weapons brinkmanship and proliferation in the region.

5:49 PM Saturday. Noting  Zelensky "ready" to call referendum on Trump plan with ceasefire  from Axios. Here is the concluding question of my Google Gemini research thread on the topic: "Would the four parties to the 20-point plan likely seek to get it approved by the UN Security Council before the referendum, and what effect would this have if any on the legal questions concerning Russian annexation of Ukrainian territory if the referendum fails?" Here is the answer: And here is the full thread: https://share.google/aimode/yxNx8ITevmrNjCCsD End 6:00 PM.

5:26 PM Saturday. My comment on  Paulo Nogueira Batista: West Destroys Global Economics System :  Alarmist and anti-Western! Trump is a disruptor to be sure but during my optimistic periods I have faith he is just clearing the way for his opposite in a Hegelian spiral of progress. What redesign of the global economic order will it take for us to reach a steady state net zero economy? Do we need degrowth or green growth? What does BRICS have to say about that? What would Adam Smith say today? Are the East and the South taking the lead, avoiding the problem, or following Western and Northern economic intellectuals on this question? End 5:29 PM.

5:24 PM Saturday. My comment on  Why is Israel Splitting in Two? Historian Ilan Pappé Explains the Internal War Nobody Talks About  (in response to the question, "Which part of Pappé’s argument hits you hardest: Judea vs Israel, hostages, or emigration?"):  If by hit me hardest you mean aroused the strongest sense of disbelief it was definitely the idea that IDF soldiers from "Judea" didn't value the hostages from "Israel" enough to die for them in battle. I completely disagree. If you mean struck me the most profoundly, it was the conceptual usefulness of a split between the state of Judea and the state of Israel. Was Likud still ostensibly in the state of Israel until the Judea coalition took power for the first time in 2022? Did Likud capitulate to Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, i.e., to the state of Judea, in order to keep Netanyahu in power, thus fundamentally transforming Likud, or was Likud always there? Final thought: where can I find the corresponding...

5:21 PM Saturday. My comment on  Otiyot HaGeulah: Ben Yosef & Ben David and the Final Geulah : Very powerful teaching. It makes me think of the political left and right; the pacifism of MLK and the warfighting of Netanyahu; and the United Nations ("70 Nations") and Israel. Does each brother represent the yetzer hara of the other until a certain point in their reconciliation? Thank you and shabbat shalom.  End 5:24 PM.

12:30 PM Friday. My comment on  Vance :  I agree that Israel needs to plan for a potential President Vance challenge to the special relationship. But what about the possibility Trump could turn on Israel before 2029? And how much or little does Epstein play into this? Is Epstein a tangential scandal that will blow over, or is it potentially much more significant? Will the MAGA base want Israel to pay for "playing" Trump (and other US leaders), even if the Epstein-Mossad connection is conspiracy theory nonsense? I hate to say it, but Bibi may be a major liability for Trump's Phase 2 Middle East Peace Plan, and Trump has turned on Bibi before. Potentially an effective way to deflect from Epstein, too - blame Israel. I am very concerned about what Vance-Carlson-Owens-Fuentes represent, but right now, I just want the Trump-Bibi meeting at Mar-a-Lago to go well. We need to make Phase 2 work. Bibi needs to turn from the far-right back toward the center (if he won't step dow...

12:21 PM Friday. My comment on  Natasha Hausdorff discusses legal status of Judea & Samaria (West Bank) and settlements :   I am deeply sympathetic to the UPJ argument, Natasha, but it is a dissenting view held by a small minority at the ICJ, and we also have UNSCR 2334 to consider. Moving from the academy and theory into the real world of settled decisions, why shouldn't international law scholars consider Judea and Samaria illegally occupied Palestinian territory in keeping with the ICJ and UNSC? We can say that the 2024 ICJ advisory opinion and UNSCR 2334 are not legally binding, and that they are based on flawed reasoning, but doesn't this make us vulnerable to putting our dissenting minority wishful thinking above settled IJC and UNSC majority fact, and won't this just hurt Israel's reputation and security in the long-run? Please help me see the other side of the argument here. I am an American who supports both Zionism and the UN Charter (as in need of reform ...

10:07 PM Tuesday. My response to a comment from @jerrypalmer1786: From Google Gemini: "While the International Journal of Modern Physics B (IJMPB) is a legitimate journal, the publication of the 2009 Gerlich and Tscheuschner (G&T) paper is widely cited as a failure of its peer-review process. After publication, the scientific community published formal rebuttals in the same journal to correct the record. A prominent 2010 commentary by Halpern et al systematically debunked G&T’s claims, noting they had ignored non-radiative heat flows and misinterpreted how heat transfer works in the atmosphere." Conscientious readers may wish to consult Bob Wentworth's page on Quora. Wentworth has a PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford University. He has written what may well be the most accessible rebuttal of the G&T paper for the non-specialist. It is pinned at the top of his Quora page under the title "Did Gerlich and Tscheuschner prove there is no atmospheric gree...

9:01 PM Monday. My comment on  Dr Sailesh Rao | Seeing the Big Picture on Climate Change : Greetings, Sailesh. You and Will Tuttle have certainly given the vegan community a very controversial pair of presentations to consider! While I find myself in resounding agreement with much that you have shared, I also have major questions about each of the four foundational "Planet B" truths that you refer to in your book on Amazon. As far as your fourth truth is concerned - "Animal husbandry is the leading cause of climate change, while stopping fossil fuel use now is suicidal" - I wonder if you have found public support for this two-fold view among any PhD-level climate scientists in the Global South, and in India and China specifically? I myself held and argued a methane abatement-intensive version of this two-fold view in a challenge to James Hansen back in 2013 but did not get very far with it before I was overtaken by a psychiatric disability. (I am recovering reasonab...

8:56 PM Monday. My comment on  Dr Will Tuttle | Freeing Ourselves from the Climate Change Narrative : Greetings, Will. I was born in 1972. I've been vegan since 2005, the same year that I got my MSW from UAlbany here in upstate New York. I interacted with Sailesh Rao by email for a while back in 2013 when I was researching the impact of insolation-dependent methane oxidation on temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at the century, 1K and 10K-year scales in the paleoclimatological ice core record. I've continued with independent research on both sides of the political and scientific aisle since then.  Your presentation is extremely provocative, so much so that I still find it shocking some eight days later. I initially thought that you were guilty of epistemic irresponsibility, speaking outside your area of expertise and causing harm to the faith-based vegan climate science community. But who am I to judge? Am I not your epistemic inferior in the vegan arena? Then I...