Complicity

• These rolling actions are a concerted effort to interrupt Canada's complicity in Israel's genocide against Gaza, just days after the UN called for an immediate arms embargo against Israel.
• In Peterborough, activists picketed a Safran Electronics facility, and spoke with many supportive workers about their employer's complicity in genocide.
• "We are seeing different actions take place at arms companies across Canada demanding an immediate arms embargo against Israel.
• Government officials have been misrepresenting the nature of Canada's military exports to Israel, and failing to uphold their legal responsibility under the Arms Trade Treaty.

• Natural habitats are being decimated, the world is growing hotter, and scientists fear we are experiencing the sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history.
• Under such circumstances, is it reasonable to bring a child into the world?
• Recently, my work has explored questions where these two fields intersect, such as how climate change should affect decision-making about having a family.

A lifelong footprint

• Many people who care about the environment believe they are obligated to try to reduce their impact: driving fuel-efficient vehicles, recycling and purchasing food locally, for example.
• So, if you think you are obligated to do other activities to reduce your impact on the environment, you should limit your family size, too.
• In response, however, some people may argue that adding a single person to a planet of 8 billion cannot make a meaningful difference.

Crunching the numbers

• For example, statistician Paul Murtaugh and scientist Michael Schlax attempted to estimate the “carbon legacy” tied to a couple’s choice to procreate.
• They estimated the total lifetime emissions of individuals living in the world’s most populous 11 countries.

• Driving a more fuel-efficient car, on the other hand – getting 10 more miles to the gallon – would save only 148 metric tons of CO2-equivalent.
• He found that the average American contributes roughly one two-billionth of the total greenhouse gases that cause climate change.

Collective toll

• One common thought in ethics is that people should avoid participating in enterprises that involve collective wrongdoing.
• Suppose someone considers making a small donation to an organization that they learn is engaged in immoral activities, such as polluting a local river.
• We could reason the same way about procreation: Overpopulation is a collective problem that is degrading the environment and causing harm, so individuals should reduce their contribution to it when they can.

Moral gray zone

But perhaps having children warrants an exception. Parenthood is often a crucial part of people’s life plans and makes their lives far more meaningful, even if it does come at a cost to the planet. Some people believe reproductive freedom is so important that no one should feel moral pressure to restrict the size of their family.

• Is there a way to balance the varied and competing moral considerations in play here?
• I believe this allows a couple an appropriate amount of reproductive freedom while also recognizing the moral significance of the environmental problems linked to population growth.
• It is also possible, as ethicist Kalle Grill has argued, that none of these positions gets the moral calculus exactly right.
• Regardless, it is clear that prospective parents should reflect on the moral dimensions of procreation and its importance to their life plans.

Trevor Hedberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Voters in the world’s third-largest democracy, Indonesia, have elected former army general Prabowo Subianto as its eighth president, despite his campaign being dogged by accusations of human rights violations and electoral fraud.
• According to the latest reliable polling, Prabowo – Indonesia’s defence minister – secured almost 60% of the votes in what is considered as the largest and most complex single-day election in the world.
• This will likely mean that there will be no second round.

• He first ran as the vice presidential candidate for Megawati Sukarnoputri, PDIP chairwoman, in the 2009 presidential election.
• It was after his 2019 election defeat that Prabowo accepted the offer of a job as Jokowi’s defence minister.
• In this year’s election Prabowo teamed up with Jokowi’s eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, after a dispute between Jokowi and Megawati over their choice of candidates.

Jokowi’s factor

• The Prabowo-Gibran ticket was organised with substantial involvement from Jokowi throughout.
• Gibran was ruled eligible to stand as a vice-presidential candidate after the constitutional court, led by Jokowi’s brother-in-law Anwar Usman, overturned a requirement that the candidates must be at least 40 so that his 36-year-old son could run.

• Many declared that the election was no longer about continuing Jokowi’s legacy but about saving democracy.
• Three days before the election, a film exposing alleged electoral fraud involving Jokowi went viral.
• These ranged from distributing government funds to potential voters before the election to planting supporters in numerous key provinces.

What does this mean for Indonesia’s democracy?

• But it remains too early to make any judgements about any real democratic threat from the election.
• Baca juga:
  On election eve, all 3 of Indonesia's presidential candidates have troubling human rights records

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• It’s unlikely that Prabowo could have even achieved the runner’s up position had the election been held a year ago.
• And, importantly, the military does not necessarily support Prabowo.

Yohanes Sulaiman tidak bekerja, menjadi konsultan, memiliki saham, atau menerima dana dari perusahaan atau organisasi mana pun yang akan mengambil untung dari artikel ini, dan telah mengungkapkan bahwa ia tidak memiliki afiliasi selain yang telah disebut di atas.

• Collaboration with the enemy is a common and often painful part of armed conflict.
• It is also an issue in which I have both a professional and personal interest.
• The war in Ukraine is, in many ways, a transparent conflict, with cellphone images, drone cameras and satellite imagery feeding a flow of data to social media platforms and news outlets.

Liberating powers

• In June 2022, Bucha was the first liberated city from which collaboration with Russians was reported.
• The problem of collaboration is especially thorny in Ukraine’s Donbass region, with its long history of Russian-Ukrainian cultural and linguistic interaction.
• Since the summer of 2022, the front has stalemated, with a little more than half the region under Russian control.

What to do with collaborators

• On March 3, 2022, the Ukrainian parliament amended the country’s criminal code with two new laws criminalizing any type of cooperation with an aggressor state.
• It also prohibits cooperation with an aggressor state, its occupation administrations and its armed forces or paramilitary forces.
• The changes to Ukraine’s criminal code reflected concern among Ukraine’s leaders that collaboration with Russia would give the invading forces both ideological and military advantages.
• Yet in the near-daily speeches made since then by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, I was unable to find any reference to the need to root out collaborators.

The rush to (in)justice

• Were they acting out of a survival instinct or did they really sympathize with the Russians?
• Liberation brings tremendous release, not only of newfound freedom but of temptations toward revenge against those who once supported the occupier.
• This could be one reason why societies that experience occupation followed by liberation are prone to vengeance-seeking and lawlessness.
• The Netherlands, even with its global reputation for upholding human rights and democratic values, was no exception to the rush to judgment of suspected collaborators after World War II.

The post-occupation challenge

• A similar rush to justice appears to be playing out in parts of liberated Ukraine.
• Journalist Joshua Yaffa, writing from liberated Izyum for The New Yorker, found a town in which hundreds had been questioned or detained on suspicion of collaboration with occupying Russians.

Families divided

• And the longer the Russian occupation goes on, the more those in the occupied areas will be pressured into everyday complicity.
• As with the Netherlands at the end of Nazi occupation, the search for collaborators in Ukraine will not only be made by police and partisans; it will happen within families coming to terms with the past.

Ronald Niezen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.