Brexit expert to lead off Providence Committee on Foreign Relations season

To members and friends of the Providence Committee on Foreign Relations (thepcfr.org; pcfremail@gmail.com):

Herewith is part of the PCFR’s annual Summer Letter. Please note that there are a few updates below.

We are heading into our 89th season, which is a pretty impressive number. 

One of our members says that the PCFR dinner meetings are “the best party in town.’’ That’s a competitive field, of course, but we think that we can accurately say that attendees have a very good time, while learning a bit more about the world.

Our 2015-2016 season speakers included:

Evan Matthews, director of the Port of Davisville, on international shipping changes, particularly in the context of the expansion of the Panama Canal.

Greg Lindsay, writer, futurist and  expert on cities around the world and their relationship to airports.

Hedrick Smith, PBS documentary maker, former star foreign correspondent.

David Alward,  Canadian general consul.

Allan Cytryn, international cybersecurity expert.

Andrew Michta, U.S, Naval War College expert on Russia and NATO.

Rima Salah, High U.N. humanitarian-relief official.

Eduardo Mestre, Cuban-American civic leader and international  banker.

Paul Glader, author, former Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent and expert on Germany.

Scott Shane, New York Times correspondent, book author and expert on terrorism.

Mark Blyth, our first speaker, whom some of you have heard on NPR commenting on Brexit, will talk on Wednesday, Sept. 14, about Europe after Brexit.

Mark Blyth is Eastman Professor of Political Economy andProfessor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs at Brown.

He is an internationally celebrated political economist whose research focuses upon how uncertainty and randomness affect complex systems, particularly economic systems, and why people continue to believe stupid economic ideas despite buckets of evidence to the contrary. He is the author of several books, including Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (Oxford University Press 2013, and The Future of the Euro (with Matthias Matthijs) (Oxford University Press 2015). 

Coming fast after that will be:

Prof. Morris Rossabi, probably the world’s greatest expert on Central Asia and particularly Mongolia: a democracy stuck between the police states of Russia and China, Sept. 21.  How does this faraway country do it? He’ll be speaking to us soon after returning from Mongolia and other points in Asia.

Then:

Former U.S. Ambassador to Slovakia Tod Sedgwick, on thetense situation in Central Europe,  Oct. 5.

Meanwhile,  the World Affairs Council of Rhode Island and the PCFR are preparing a forum for Oct. 20 at the Hope Club on the foreign-policy visions and challenges of the U.S. presidential candidates. Stay tuned.

Naval War College Prof. James Holmes on the geopolitics of global warming,  Nov. 15.

German General Consul Ralf Horlemann on the role of Germany in an E.U. without the U.K and with an aggressive Russia pressing in from the east, Dec. 14.

International epidemiologist Rand Stoneburner,  M.D., on Zika and other burgeoning threats to world health, Jan. 18.

Indian Admiral Nirmal Verma, on military and geopolitical issues in South and Southeast Asia, Feb. 15.

Dr. Stephen Coen, director of the Mystic Aquarium, on the condition of the oceans, March 8.

Brazilian political economist and commentator Evodio Kaltenecker on April 5 to talk about the crises facing that huge nation.

James E. Griffin, an expert on ocean fishing and other aspects of the global food sector, will speak to us on Wednesday, May 17.

Joining us on Wednesday, June 14, will be Laura Freid, CEO of the Silk Road Project,  founded and chaired by famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 1998, promoting collaboration among artists and institutions and studying the ebb and flow of ideas across nations and time. The project was first inspired by the cultural traditions of the historical Silk Road.

Meanwhile, we’re trying to keep some flexibility to respond to events. Everything in human affairs is tentative. ”We make plans and God laughs….’’

We are talking with  our friend Michael Soussan to come to speak about the U.N., diplomacy, Iraq and his book Backstabbing for Beginners, now being made into a major movie and with an international travel expert (to give us business- and pleasure-travel advice) in world that sometimes seems to be imploding.

Suggestions and contacts are always appreciated!

John Morlino: Holmes mass-murder case highlights gap in the law

My immediate reaction to James Holmes’s 2012 shooting rampage at an Aurora, Colo.,  movie theater was twofold: horror and incomprehension. Who in their right mind could do such a thing?

Who in their “right mind,” indeed.

This summer, a jury found Holmes guilty of multiple counts of first-degree murder and attempted murder. Rejecting the young man’s plea of insanity, the court sentenced him to prison for the rest of his life.

It’s nearly impossible to fathom the terror that left 12 people dead and 70 injured. It’s also difficult to maintain one’s composure while listening to the heartbreaking testimony of survivors and loved ones, who shared their stories of trauma and loss.

Nothing can change what happened that night. And only a seismic shift in America’s stance on gun ownership — coupled with accessible, comprehensive mental health care — could possibly deter comparable acts of violence.

The verdict in this case, however, accomplishes neither. Nor does it represent justice. Instead, it highlights a fatal flaw in the way our legal system treats people with mental illness.

Holmes’s attorneys never denied he was the shooter. Nor was there any dispute that he meticulously planned the attack. And while he did verbalize having homicidal thoughts before that evening, he kept his specific intentions secret until shortly before the massacre. Those facts, prosecutors argued, proved that he knew what he was doing and was thereby legally sane.

But as a former social worker, those same facts — coupled with other evidence introduced in court — lead me to a very different conclusion.

Twenty minutes into The Dark Knight Rises, Holmes walked out a side door and headed to his car. After donning body armor, he hesitated before re-entering the theater, locked in a battle with his psychotic self — a titanic struggle he’d been losing since the onset of mental health issues as a child, 15 years earlier.

Looking for someone to talk him out of the carnage he was about to
 unleash, Holmes called a crisis helpline. The call was disconnected before anyone picked up.

Still, he held out hope that he might get a reprieve, convinced by his paranoia that FBI surveillance agents would soon emerge from the shadows and stop him. But no one was there to save him from himself.

Weeks before, that same internal struggle led Holmes to reveal his thoughts of killing to a psychiatrist. As jurors later saw on video, he expressed regret that she didn’t pursue admitting him to a psychiatric facility.

The jury also reviewed a notebook Holmes kept during the run up to his unfathomable crime. “It is broken,” he wrote of his disintegrating mind. “I tried to fix it. I made it my sole conviction, but using something that’s broken to fix itself proved insurmountable.”

There’s no comparison between the devastation experienced by those directly affected by the shootings and the tortured mind of the man at the center of it all. And there shouldn’t be. Though inextricably linked, each is a tragedy unto itself.

Still, it’s easier for us to identify with the victims than it is to relate to James Holmes.

Perhaps that’s a way to protect our own psyche — since the notion that we too could descend into madness may be too much to bear. It may also be why our criminal justice system is skewed disproportionately toward punishment, rather than treatment and rehabilitation.

In a letter to prosecutors about their son, published in The Denver Post, Holmes’s parents said as much. “We have read postings on the Internet that have likened him to a monster,” they wrote. “He is not a monster. He is a human being gripped by a severe mental illness.”

Given the magnitude of his crime — and confronted by the traumatic experiences of his victims — the jury may have felt the need to reject his insanity plea and deliver 
a guilty verdict. But there’s nothing sane about carrying out a mass execution.

Absolutely nothing.

John Morlino is a former social worker who founded The ETHIC (The Essence of True Humanity Is Compassion) to promote peace, nonviolence, and unconditional compassion. This was distributed by OtherWords.org.