Tag Archives: politics

A Typology of Reasons Why Animals Are Worthwhile to People: A White Paper on Instrumental, Relational, Moral, and Civilizational Value

Executive Summary Debates about the value of animals often collapse into narrow frames: economic utility, emotional attachment, environmentalism, or animal rights. Such reductions obscure the reality that animals matter to people for multiple, overlapping, and historically persistent reasons. This white … Continue reading

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White Paper: Why Polk County, Florida—and Sheriff Grady Judd—Became a National Flash Point in America’s Crime Debate

Executive summary Polk County sits at a crossroads of American cultural politics about crime: fast growth, suburban–exurban churn, and an “I-4 corridor” media ecosystem that turns local incidents into national content. Sheriff Grady Judd has amplified that effect through an … Continue reading

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White Paper: Evidence That Would Support or Contradict “Coulter’s Law” in Crime Reporting

Executive summary “Coulter’s Law” is commonly described as a claim about delay: the longer it takes the news media to identify a perpetrator (often framed around mass shootings or notorious incidents), the less likely the perpetrator is to be a … Continue reading

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Egypt’s Repeated Efforts to Project Power into the Levant during the Third Intermediate Period (c. 1069–664 BCE): A Biblicist White Paper

Executive Summary The Third Intermediate Period (TIP) marks Egypt’s transition from New Kingdom imperial dominance to a fractured landscape of Libyan dynasties, rival priesthoods, and regional strongmen. Modern historiography often emphasizes decline and disunity. The biblical record, however, fills in … Continue reading

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Plain Speaking and the Construction of Legitimacy: A White Paper on Rhetorical Transparency as a Strategy of Authority

Executive Summary Plain speaking—characterized by direct language, minimal euphemism, and an aversion to ornamental or evasive rhetoric—has historically functioned as a powerful strategy for establishing legitimacy across political, religious, legal, and institutional contexts. This white paper examines plain speaking not … Continue reading

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White Paper: Watermelon Cultivation in Iranian Baluchistan as “Water Export” — and Better Drought-Tolerant Alternatives

Executive summary Iran’s push to grow and market irrigated watermelons in Sistan & Baluchestan (Baluchistan) is frequently criticized because it converts scarce groundwater into a bulky, low-value, high-water commodity—effectively exporting “virtual water” out of a hyper-arid region. Analysts and researchers … Continue reading

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White Paper: The Internet and the Collapse of Jurisdictional Speech Intuition: Why Online Political Discourse Produced Legal Harm Outside the United States

Executive Summary The globalization of online discourse has produced a dangerous mismatch between speech norms learned in one jurisdiction—most commonly the United States—and legal consequences imposed in another. This white paper argues that the internet has collapsed ordinary “jurisdictional speech … Continue reading

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White Paper: Political Speech as a Border Issue: Which nations restrict entry based on political speech, how it works, and who should care

Executive summary Many countries can (and sometimes do) deny entry, cancel visas, or remove visitors when officials conclude that a person’s speech, associations, or political activities create a security/public order/foreign policy risk. In liberal democracies this tends to be narrowly … Continue reading

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White Paper: Historical Context as Interpretive Framework in the Brother Cadfael Series: Understanding the Medieval Detective and His Ethical Posture

Executive Summary Ellis Peters’s Brother Cadfael novels occupy a unique literary space: they are at once historical fiction, detective narrative, and moral meditation set against the backdrop of the English civil war known as The Anarchy (1135–1154). Their enduring appeal … Continue reading

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White Paper: Criminals as Instruments of Power: The Role of Lawlessness in Totalitarian States and the Roots of Contemporary Judicial Leniency Toward Violent Offenders

Executive Summary Throughout modern history, criminal elements have often been used—deliberately or structurally—by authoritarian or totalitarian governments as tools of political control, social destabilization, or regime preservation. This phenomenon arises from the strategic logic of regimes that see social disorder … Continue reading

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