Academic literature on the topic 'Human trafficking. Drugs. Korea (North)'

After World War II, much debate unfolded about the ethical, legal, and social implications of military human enhancement, due in part to Adolf Hitler's war on the “genetically unfit” and the United States military's experimentation with psychedelic drugs such as LSD. Interest in that debate has waxed and waned since the 1940s. However, it would be foolish or perhaps even dangerous to believe that America and its modern allies have abandoned efforts to upgrade service members' bodies and minds to create the “super soldiers” necessary to match the increasing pace of modern warfare and dominate the strengthening militaries of China and North Korea. Slogans such as “be all that you can be and a whole lot more” still reign strong at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and, according to some military futurists, the so-called “War on Terror” has only proven that military superpowers need a new type of soldier that is independent, network-integrated, and more lethal than ever before. Patterns of public risk perception, military expenditure, and new technological developments suggest that it is now time to re-open or reinvigorate the original debate. The authors' contribution comes in two parts. In this chapter, they provide a brief background to military human enhancement before defining it carefully and exploring the relevant controversies. In the second, they more explicitly examine the relevant legal, operational, and moral challenges posed by these efforts.

After World War II, much debate unfolded about the ethical, legal, and social implications of military human enhancement, due in part to Adolf Hitler's war on the “genetically unfit” and the United States military's experimentation with psychedelic drugs such as LSD. Interest in that debate has waxed and waned since the 1940s. However, it would be foolish or perhaps even dangerous to believe that America and its modern allies have abandoned efforts to upgrade service members' bodies and minds to create the “super soldiers” necessary to match the increasing pace of modern warfare and dominate the strengthening militaries of China and North Korea. Slogans such as “be all that you can be and a whole lot more” still reign strong at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and, according to some military futurists, the so-called “War on Terror” has only proven that military superpowers need a new type of soldier that is independent, network-integrated, and more lethal than ever before. Patterns of public risk perception, military expenditure, and new technological developments suggest that it is now time to re-open or reinvigorate the original debate. The authors' contribution comes in two parts. In this chapter, they provide a brief background to military human enhancement before defining it carefully and exploring the relevant controversies. In the second, they more explicitly examine the relevant legal, operational, and moral challenges posed by these efforts.

Mass incarceration exists in America on a scale unmatched in global history. America is also the only Western democracy that has not abolished the death penalty; and one of the nations that execute the most prisoners alongside abusive dictatorships like China, North Korea, and Iran. American justice is further characterized by pervasive racial discrimination, the peculiar “War on Drugs,” the dehumanizing treatment of juveniles, and routine use of harmful solitary confinement. Modern America has thus become a systematic human rights violator in criminal law and punishment. It was not always so, as foreigners once saw American justice as enlightened. Harsh justice has not made America particularly safe. It has the highest murder rate and the most gun violence in the West due to extraordinarily lax gun control shaped by die-hard partisans of the Second Amendment and lobbying by the NRA. Criminal justice reform gained more attention after shootings of unarmed black men in Ferguson and beyond led to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. However, historical root causes behind this dimension of American exceptionalism have been widely overlooked, including systemic racism, populism, anti-intellectualism, market fundamentalism, and religious fundamentalism.