Abdullah Khadr, Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism: Or what I was really trying to say

I was quoted in Canada’s Globe and Mail today about a trial involving a Canadian citizen, Abdullah Khadr, who the US has requested for extradition on terrorism charges. (This is the older brother of Omar Khadr who is still in Guantanamo prison.) It’s an interesting case for a variety of reasons so I thought I would expand upon my thoughts here – and the fact that I’m slightly concerned that the summary of my comments in the article were slightly crunched in a strange way.

The facts of the case seem to be that Khadr, operating in Afghanistan/Pakistan was sought by the United States in 2004. They placed a $500,000 bounty on his head and was captured by Pakistan and detained in a prison for 14 months. Khadr argues that during his time in Pakistani custody that he was routinely abused and tortured. He was interrogated for several days by US agents in Pakistan, before being released. Khadr was then repatriated to Canada in December 2005 and arrested a few days later by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on the basis of an indictment by a court in Boston Massachusetts on terrorism charges. 

In Defence of Flawed Giants

OK, its confession time. I don't really agree with them much, but I loved reading the post-Cold War 'blockbusters' of Samuel Huntington, Francis Fukuyama and John Mearsheimer, (all beautifully surveyed a little while ago by Richard Betts).

I was psyched to read Fukuyama's prophecy that with the American-led era of market democracy, humankind had overcome the historical dialectic struggle of ideologies and had hit upon an ultimate way of being that would satisfy its fundamental longings, both material and psychological.

Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations was also audacious, in its opposite claim that far from the triumph of the Atlantic, world history was entering a period of dangerous pluralism where the global forces driving us all together would accentuate difference, and where unless we were careful, disparate cultural identity would fuel conflict and fragmentation.

And John Mearsheimer's case for Realpolitik was a great read, making the case that no new paradigms were on the horizon, but that a multipolar power-struggle between nation-states would resume, even with the prospect of Germany and Japan unlearning their new peaceable ways and going nuclear.

So what? Go on Patrick, tell us more, I hear you thinking (get on with it, Ed).

Anders Breivik: Isolated Mad Man or Tip of the Far-Right Racist Iceburg?

Co-authored with Alison Howell, author of Madness in International Relations: Psychology, Security and the Global Governance of Mental Health

The recent events in Norway have revealed the pitfalls of speculation within a 24-hour new cycle/instant social media environment. Almost immediately after information about the bombings and the shootings emerged, facebook, twitter, and media outlets were saturated with possible theories on the source of the violence- with most of the speculation focused on radical Islam and Al-Qaeda (The Atlantic immediately re-posted a great article on Al Qaeda in Norway).

In the ensuing days, a new kind of speculation has become common in reporting on these events: that is, speculation about the psychology of the man who admits to committing these acts (if not his guilt).

Much of this started with Breivik’s own attorney vowing that his client must be insane and that he would only continue to represent him on the condition that he submits to psychological testing. But a number of news outlets, and indeed psychiatrists and psychologists interviewed in the media, have decided not to wait for these kinds of assessments, preferring instead to speculate about Breivik’s psyche based on the very limited information that we now have.

One particularly troubling example of this kind of psychiatric speculation includes a July 25 BBC Europe article, which asserts that “a deep level of mental disturbance” underlies Breivik’s motivations. The article quotes a professor of forensic psychiatry stating: "The bottom line is that we don't at this moment know enough about his motives to diagnose his mental state. However, while there are all sorts of cross-cutting with right-wing ideology, I believe he is likely to be suffering from a mental disorder.” The article then goes on, to compare Breivik to David Copeland (the 1999 London ‘Nail Bomber’), citing the same professor as saying that "The Norway attack is on the same lines - where extreme right-wing beliefs merge with paranoid psychosis, or delusional disorder...."
The article also quotes a forensic clinical psychologist, who, based on Breivik’s ‘manifesto’ is willing to authoritatively avow that Breivik must have been a ‘shut away,’ ‘insane’ and ‘deluded.’ These kinds of highly speculative pseudo-diagnosis are not confined solely to the BBC report: the Telegraph described Breivik as a “blond psychopath;” another source wonders if Breivik is insane or just evil; and Time magazine has recently published a piece in Breivik entitled "An Interview with a Madman.

Similarly, West Side Republicans- a Republican blog recently sported the headline “NORWAY – Breivik is a politically isolated sociopath. Not A Christian Fundamentalist as the Media & Left would have you believe.” The main conclusion of the post is that "Breivik’s murder spree did not result from classical liberal influences any more than it resulted from Christian influences: It resulted from his own evil and twisted mind.” The blog also takes issue with the way that the New York Times has portrayed Breivik as a Christian extremist, claiming: “The problem is this: There is no “Christian extremist” movement in the way that there is an Islamist or “Islamic extremist” movement. There are bad Christians, to be sure; but they have no modern-day intellectual and political movement that supports and sustains them — modern-day Islamists, or Islamic extremists, do…"

This kind of psychological speculation evident here is highly dangerous, for at least 3 reasons.

SSRN Bound Editions

The question before us: does SSRN now include a Vanity Press option, or it the new AllAcademic?

In the email box:

SSRN recently released our Purchase Bound Hard Copy Service. Authors and readers can now order printed copies of select papers in the SSRN eLibrary, which provides another format for users to access research papers. The Free One-Click Download option is not affected by this new service.

For $9.99 plus shipping, the reader will receive a black and white printed and "perfect bound" copy of the PDF document with a glossy color cover. The cover includes the title of the paper, and the authors with their affiliations. A sample cover and additional details about the Purchase Bound Hard Copy service, including details on which papers are eligible, are available on our FAQ.

We invite you to try this new service and share your experience with us.

Gregg Gordon
President
Social Science Research Network

Of course, AllAcademic trolled for papers from conferences rather than hosted a searchable database. But still.

On Paradigms, Policy Revelance and Other IR Myths

I had every intention this evening of writing a cynical commentary on all the hoopla surrounding Open Government, Open Data and the Great Transparency Revolution. But truth be told, I am brain-dead at the moment. Why? Because I spent the last two days down in Williambsurg, VA arbitrating codes for a Teaching, Research and International Politics (TRIP) project (co-led by myself and Jason Sharman) which analyzes what the field of IR looks like from the perspective of books. It is all meant as a complement to the innovative and hard work of Michael Tierney, Sue Peterson and the TRIP founders down at William & Mary, who have sought to map the field of IR by systematically coding all published articles in the top 12 peer-reviewed disciplinary journals for characteristics such as paradigm, methodology, epistemology and policy relevance. In addition, the TRIP team has conducted numerous surveys of IR scholars in the field, the latest round capturing nearly 3000 scholars in ten countries. The project, while not immune from nit-picky criticism about its methodological choices and conclusions, has yielded several surprisingly results that have both reified and dismantled several myths about the field of IR.

So, in the spirit of recent diatribes on the field offered by Steve and Brian, I summarize a few of the initial findings of our work to serve as fodder for our navel-gazing discussion:

"Sure I'm against war and exploitation- but don't make me feel guilty about my diamond ring"

Wanna know a guaranteed conversation stopper- great for engagement parties or wedding receptions? Mention the politics of diamonds.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not into being a political Debbie Downer at social events. God knows I have the ammunition. Yet, in my experience women and men are more comfortable with discussions of wartime sexual violence, amputations, and children born as a result of rape than they are about clear gems.
So what gives?

This has been a question plaguing since I finished several months of field work in Sierra Leone in my late 20s- the same time that everyone around me was getting engaged and getting married. This also coincided with the peak (and, it turns out, the rapid decline) in attention to conflict/blood diamonds by human rights organizations and the media.

No one wants to be that self-righteous white girl who has just returned from the global south with lessons to impart on anyone who will listen- so I tried to reserve my rants about diamonds for my husband (bless him), my single friends ('who wants diamonds anyway!'), or people who were already convinced that diamonds are a source of international exploitation.


To me, three main arguments against diamonds were clear and irrefutable.

Tears of Appreciation (and McDonald's) in North Korea

Sorry for the blogging hiatus, I've been on the road in South Korea and Japan for the past six weeks and not able to blog. I've spent quite a bit of time talking to folks in Seoul about the situation in North Korea and whether or not we are likely to see any movement in the relationship. North Korea is again suffering acute food shortages and another famine appears to be unfolding.
The poster above, according to North Korean Central Television as reported in the Korea Times

was reportedly made by soldiers working at a construction site, contains an image which shows that soldiers wipe away their tears, and the word, “Oh, bulgogi!!!” and “Soldiers are choked by Kim’s ‘passionate love’ toward them.”

In another image, a group of soldiers sit down together and eat bulgogi.

While North Korean Central Television was reporting on all of this "passionate love" for the glorious leader, the international media uncovered a different story. Last week we heard news that the regime (in defiance of the international sanctions) has increased its level of importing luxury goods from China -- including having McDonald's hamburgers flown in and delivered to the homes of key government and military officials (to ensure their loyalty to Kim Jong Il during the on-going planning for power transition to Kim's son).

The real question here in Seoul is the vulnerability of Kim Jong-Il's regime. Almost no one thinks we'll see any kind of "jasmine revolution" in North Korea -- there is no functioning civil society. There is a general sense that at some level Kim Jong Il and others in Pyongyang understand that the country needs to open up to save the country, but doing so would almost certainly threaten the regime by exposing its lies, propaganda, and dysfunctions.

Yet there is clear anxiety here about the future of the regime -- especially in the midst of the power transition that is now underway. Seoul is bracing for more provocations from the North as power is transferred in the coming months/years and the current South Korean government under President Lee plans to respond aggressively. The defense establishment here has a plan for that.

What the South Koreans don't have a clear plan for, and the cause of significant anxiety, is what happens if the regime -- under the weight of another famine and apparently being held up by McDonald's hamburgers-- simply collapses.

Stuff Political Scientists Like #7, International Relations edition: Isms

Lest you ask, I do understand the irony of me writing this particular post and risking being a one-hit blogger with the continuation of this series. But I haven't read a single Harry Potter book, so there is not much I can do. Enjoy!

If you show up at the bar at a conference of international relations scholars, you will immediately stumble upon a conversation about paradigms or ‘isms.’ You will quickly learn that almost all of those same scholars hate the isms and believe the field would be better off without them. Yet this conversation is the same one that has occurred at every hotel bar at an IR conference for 20 years. You are confused. This is because you must first recognize that international relations is like reality TV. This particular species of political scientists claim not to like the ‘isms,’ but the ratings speak otherwise.

If you are an international relations scholar and you want to get published in a big IR journal with a high impact factor, the odds are low, somewhat less than the chances of becoming the next American Idol. And even if you do get this type of network TV facetime, people still might not notice you. Do you remember who the second Bachelor was? The most important thing to do is to say something really crazy, like you can explain war and peace merely by reference to the size of the ‘selectorate.’ From this, you can build your ‘ism,’ your very own IR brand. This ensures a high citation count, the academic equivalent to press coverage, on which all reality TV contestants depend to keep their celebrity alive after their series end.

Key Constraint on Policy Relevance

Dan Drezner has a great post today about how the foreign policy smart set (his phrase) gets so frustrated by domestic politics that they tend to recommend domestic political changes that are never going to happen.

I would go one step further and suggest that one of the key problems for scholars who want to be relevant for policy debates is that we tend to make recommendations that are "incentive incompatible."  I love that phrase.  What is best for policy may not be what is best for politics, and so we may think we have a good idea about what to recommend but get frustrated when our ideas do not get that far.

Lots of folks talking about early warning about genocide, intervention into civil wars and the like blame "political will."  That countries lack, for whatever reason, the compulsion to act.  Well, that is another way of saying that domestic politics matters, but we don't want to think about it.

Dan's piece contains an implication which is often false--that IR folks have little grasp of domestic politics.  Many IR folks do tend to ignore or simplify the domestic side too much, but there is plenty of scholarship on the domestic determinants of foreign policy/grand strategy/war/trade/etc.  Plenty of folks look at how domestic institutions and dynamics can cause countries to engage in sub-optimal foreign policies (hence the tradeoff implied in my second book--For Kin or Country).

The challenge, then, is to figure out what would be a cool policy and how that cool policy could resonate with those who are relevant domestically.  That is not easy, but it is what is necessary.  To be policy relevant requires both parts--articulating a policy alternative that would improve things and some thought about how the alternative could be politically appealing.

Otherwise, we can just dream about the right policy and gnash our teeth when it never happens.

Pirates, Hackers, and Terrorists

A hypothesis: Pirates, hackers, and terrorists are perennial actors in international relations. They will never be permanently defeated; the frontier will never be permanently settled.

The underlying material reason that these actors exist is actually quite simple. Each of these (Weberian) ideal type actors emerges as a consequence of the (proto-capitalist or industrial-capitalist) overproduction and networking of standardized technologies. [I am considering them as separate types even though they may overlap in practice.] Overproduction and networking creates vulnerabilities as access is dispersed and familiarity increases. Technologies may be reverse engineered, hijacked, or even commandeered if there is sufficient familiarity with the operational system. As technologies that connect people and places experience a paradigmatic shift, waves of piracy, hacking, and terrorism will recede until the new technology once again becomes overproduced, common, and accessible.

Although each type of actor has occasionally been licensed and/or supported and sheltered by state actors, state support for terrorism, hacking, and pirating is not critical. State support may enhance the lethality and frequency of activities but the activities are not dependent on state support. It is worth considering that the withdrawal of state sponsorship may actually create greater instability as happened in the Caribbean for example from the 16th to the 18th century when unemployed privateers would turn to piracy in peacetime. While some of these activities can be materially lucrative (e.g. ship piracy and ransom), they may be motivated by other psychological factors such as an anti-social disposition or a politico-religious ideology for example. State counter-actions may work to displace the physical and virtual sites from which pirates, hackers, and terrorists operate, but new sites will always emerge even if particular actors or organizations are dismantled. The reason is that the panoptic powers of states are never uniform and cooperation between states is often ephemeral in global politics.

Explosion in Norway (Updated/Updated Again)

A likely bombing near the PM's office in Norway. I don't have time to write at the moment, but there are a number of policies and political factors that make Norway a target for jihadists. But there are also reasons why those of other ideological stripes are very unhappy with the current red-green government.

Concerns, prayers, and sympathies to our many friends in Oslo.

UPDATE: Follow the news on your source of choice. The small-arms attack on a Labour-Party Youth Camp is appalling, but consistent with shifting tactics of transnational jihadist. I find the combination of large vehicle bomb and small-arms attack elsewhere a bit surprising, but I suppose it (1) leaves no doubt about the orientation of the attack and (2) screams "no one is safe."

DOUBLE UPDATE: right-wing extremist. Death toll at 80. Should have backtracked much earlier. I sent out a tweet six hours ago querying about whether the Norwegian far right had a militant strain. Should have raised that on the blog. Anyway, shades of Oklahoma City. Makes sense of the non-standard operating procedure and the dual targeting.

Friday Nerd Blogging: Robopo-collapse

I am less impressed with Daniel Wilson’s new book than my frenemy Drezner appears, and quite possibly because I so wanted it to be what Wilson admits, at the end of this diavlog, that it is certainly not: World War Z for anti-zombites, a fictionalized near-future scenario that throws lights on present-day socio-political conditions through the metaphor of killer robots rather than supernatural threats.

How Wilson fails so spectacularly is the subject of my latest essay in Current Intelligence:

In my view, there is almost no politics involved: nothing about how political institutions or political actors respond to or enable zero hour, or how they relate to one another as the war unfolds. International relations scholars will be particularly disappointed: the only nations that figure prominently (America, the UK and Japan) operate largely without one another yet in seemingly perfect coordination. It is a techno-utopian scenario brought about by… technological collapse. Really? Who would have thought a book about a zombie plague would have seemed realistic by comparison?

What passes for political narrative is remarkably unsophisticated. Humans appear to have only a single identity after zero hour, that of ‘non-machine,’ quickly banding together in all sorts of unrealistic combinations to fight ‘Rob'. The argument seems to be that when faced with an existential threat dumb city-dwellers will perish or hang their hopes on Red America… one waits in vain for predictable tensions to emerge among the human characters as life becomes increasingly brutish and short, but any that arise are quickly resolved, leaving the book plotless and dry. Factionalism among the robots themselves is somewhat more interesting but ultimately unexplained.

The most interesting aspect of the book is Wilson’s depiction of human vulnerability to technological dominion. His emphasis on specific technological foils with which to critique humanity’s increasing reliance on robotics – which as Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen phrase it in their book Moral Machines, might be termed “bonds, bondage and bombs” – is curiously selective. True, Wilson explores sex-bot culture and the genuine emotional ties humans are developing with electronic objects, detailed more by David Levy’s recent nonfiction work Love and Sex With Robots. And he mocks humans’ emerging reliance on smart cars and smart houses, though in the diavlog he quite rightly points out that these are no doubt positive trends from a human security perspective.

But Wilson barely explores cyborgism at all – or rather how knowledge and socio-political identities themselves are being mediated by humanity’s interface with machine intelligence... and Robopocalypse is largely disconnected from the trend in real-life robotics that has most brought the debate over artificial intelligence and killer machines to the fore: the movement toward the development of autonomous lethal robots.

Read the rest here.

Terror, Counter-Terror, and Insurgency in Harry Potter, or Why Harry Won

In the waning days of classes, one of my colleagues asked a student if she’d been among those celebrating outside of the White House the night that President Obama announced the killing of Osama Bin-Laden. “Of course,” she responded, “I mean, they got Voldemort!”

For many readers who aged along with its titular hero, the Harry Potter series inextricably intertwines with the war on terrorism. This connection stems from more than a mere accident of timing. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000) provides readers their first glimpse of the Death Easters as they carry out a terror attack against the wizarding’s greatest sporting event, the Quidditch World Cup. The Goblet of Fire also expands upon themes first introduced in The Prisoner of Azkaban (1999): state policies of arbitrary detention, torture, wrongful imprisonment, star-chamber style justice, and the use of all four by officials to advance their careers.

Such tropes surely already resonated in the United Kingdom—the “Good Friday” accords were, after all, signed in 1998—but they took on new dimensions with the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the Bush Administration’s policy responses. Indeed, for those inclined to see Harry Potter as, at least in part, a parable for terrorism, counter-terrorism, and the flawed responses of the state, the Goblet of Fire’s sequels—Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix (2003) and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2006)—do not disappoint.

Harry Potter and Foreign Policy, or Voldemort is not Osama Bin Laden

One draft of a piece that will not be appearing anytime soon. I will post the other version, a strategic-studies analysis of the outcome of the Deathly Hallows, later on.

The sixth Harry Potter film, the Half-Blood Prince (2009), opens with Harry standing side-by-side with his mentor, recently reinstated Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore. Blinding flashbulbs illuminate Harry’s vacant stare, rendering the scene a literal, as well as figurative, flashback to the immediate aftermath of the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, in which three clandestine forces clashed within the Ministry of Magic itself: Voldemort’s Death Eaters, Dumbledore’s Order of the Phoenix, and Dumbledore’s Army (the “DA”)—students trained in secret by Harry in “defense against the dark arts.” Harry’s indifference stems from shock: his godfather, Sirius Black, died in the battle, and in the background we hear the voices of Voldemort and Black’s killer, the insane Bellatrix Lestrange.

Flash forward to a modern glass-and-metal office building in London. Disbelieving office workers leave a conference table and walk to its picture window as storm clouds appear from nowhere. Darkness rapidly engulfs the sky. The camera tacks into the thunderous clouds themselves as they form into the image of a skull: the Death Eater’s Dark Mark. Three inky-black vaporous streams emerge from it. They look and move like the trails of impossibly agile sidewinder missiles. The three, which fans of the films recognize as flying Death Eaters, zoom down over the Thames as the camera moves into position behind them. They streak on through Trafalgar square and the streets of London. They’re no longer sidewinders, but rather supersonic air-launched cruise missiles. They pass into the heart of the wizarding world in London, Diagon Alley, and slam into Olivander’s Wands.

The camera pulls back to give a birds-eye view of the shop exploding—sending glass flying and knocking bystanders to the ground. The camera cuts to street level to show Fenrir Grayback, a werewolf and ally of Voldemort, roughly dragging Olivander—head obscured under a blindfolding black hood—away from his shop. In the company of two Death Eaters, Grayback launches into the air with Olivander. But before they leave London, the three fly along the Millennium Bridge. The force of their passage rips the bridge from its supports. It collapses, along with terrified pedestrians, into the Thames.

The opening of the Half-Blood Prince continues a trend begun in the Order of the Phoenix, in which danger bleeds seamlessly from the wizarding world into our own, and back again. None of this sequence, I should add, is a faithful translation of the book onto the screen. In the novels, Voldemort is the only Death Eater capable of unassisted flight. Readers learn of Olivander’s abduction via exposition. In the opening chapter of the Half-Blood Prince, recently sacked Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge informs the Prime Minister of Britain that Voldemort is behind the destruction of a (fictional) bridge: “The Brockdale Bridge – he did it… he threatened a mass Muggle killing unless I stood aside for him and….” David Yates’ direction takes a basic fact about the Death Eaters—they are, by organization and tactics, terrorists—and renders it visceral. Its imagery blurs the distinction between magic and modern weaponry. Terrorism and warfare, it suggests, aren’t so different in Diagon Alley from the streets of Baghdad.

Observations on Traffic Safety From Indonesia

A few days ago this startling report hit the newsstands in Jakarta, proclaiming Bali to have surpassed Phuket in highway "carnage":

Bali’s roads have become the scene of unprecedented carnage, with 758 people dying in traffic accidents in just three months, 200 more fatalities than all of last year, police said on Friday. An average of more than eight people a day died on the resort island’s roads in March, April and May...May was the deadliest month, with 286 deaths and 360 injuries, followed by March with 248 dead and 302 injured. The death toll in April was 224, with another 281 injured.

I can't comment on the validity of the numbers but if true then per capita (Bali's population now stands at about 4 million) that is about seven times the US traffic fatality rate for 2009.

Traveling around the island, I could see why. I found it remarkable that we didn’t witness at least one deadly wreck during our days there. In the country-side, drivers sped along curvy, one-lane roads with abandond, narrowly missing oncoming traffic. In Kuta, the traffic was intense and chaotic, a dizzying writhing snake of taxis, cars packed in nearly bumper to bumper with three times as many mopeds maneuvering neck and neck, lane to lane.

Few scooters carried helmeted riders, even fewer outsie the city. Those that did usually carried at least one un-helmeted toddler as well, napping unsecured on the handlebars ready to slide off any moment; or a five-year-old on the back, gripping the seat with his legs while using his hands to text on a mobile phone. The mopeds move lithely in between the cars; no rules exist about minimum safe distance. Our taxi once swiped a motorcyclist as it passed us; the rider simply shrugged off the impact and carried on. Meanwhile, our driver had a television documentary playing on his screen in the front of the car.



When we had to ride in cars – from Jimbaron Bay to Kuta, to Yeh Gangga Village for a horse trek, or Sanur Beach for kite-surfing lessons – I distracted myself from the expectation of an imminent accident by thinking and asking about the emergent order in this seeming chaos. What were the rules? Why weren’t they being followed? How did motorists manage to get by in the chaos?

Six Years of Gay Marriage in Canada and the World Did Not End

Fact: 6 years after gay marriage
Happy Cat is still happy.

It’s the 6th anniversary of gay marriage in Canada and – financial meltdowns in Europe and America aside – the world hasn’t ended. Society has remained intact. Babies are being born, flowers are blooming, a Canadian hockey team still can’t win the Stanley Cup and otters are still cute.

Actually, Canada is more than fine. In an article in the Calgary Herald, Naomi Lakritz argues:

While divorce rates have increased greatly since the introduction of Divorce Laws in 1968, actual divorce rates have been decreasing in Canada since the 1990s. The 50 per cent (failure rate) fallacy is false . . . In Nova Scotia, Ontario, British Columbia, the Yukon and Nunavut, the total number of new divorce cases has declined six per cent over the four-year period ending in 2008/2009," says an IMF news release.
Indeed, while divorces per 100,000 population reached 362.3 in 1987, they were down to 220.7 per 100,000 in 2005, the year same-sex marriage became law. So much for the myth that same-sex marriage would aid the dissolution of straight marriages. They dissolve quite nicely on their own, thanks to their internal dynamics, such as domestic violence, alcoholism, gambling and infidelity. These figures, by the way, come from such eminent sources as the Vanier Institute of the Family and Statistics Canada.
And, according to Statistics Canada, "the number of marriages in the country was 149,236 in 2006, down nearly 2,000 from the previous year, but up from 148,585 in 2004." Looks like some sort of minor demographic blip occurred there in 2006, but that figure is still up from 2004, when much of the silly fearmongering was taking place prior to Bill C-38 being passed.
Indeed, a November 2009 report entitled Divorce: Facts, Causes and Consequences, by Anne-Marie Ambert of York University in Toronto, found that "divorce rates have gone down substantially during the 1990s and have remained at a lower level since 1997, with minor yearly fluctuations."

So clearly ALL of the predictions of the religious right have come true…. in that they haven’t. At all.

Considering that less than 30 years ago that many people were arrested, committed or persecuted for homosexuality in many Western countries, the progress has been impressive, (no matter what might be coming out of the mouths of Tea-Partiers.) A list of countries/regions/areas/cities with same-sex marriage or civil unions is impressive and growing. Even if it is a little patchy in America, there is clear momentum in support for equal marriage rights. Obama supporting the Respect for Marriage Act is a positive (if slightly delayed) step forward.

Obviously, it’s not a totally rosy picture. It’s still a crime punishable by death in 7 countries and homosexual acts are outlawed by 113. The Uganda situation is particularly odious. But even the UN Human Rights Council has taken the step of passing its first resolution on LGBT persons in June. Even if there is still a lot of work to do, there seems to be a decent amount of momentum (and opposition).

And best wishes to New Yorkers getting ready to take the plunge!

Cross-posted at The Cana-Blog

Did it take you (or your assistant) five minutes to Google that?

Anyone think Kathryn Lopez (of the National Review) actually reads the social-scientific articles she links to? This is from a screed attacking college co-ed housing:

And, if you want to get even more practical, W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, points out: “Needless to say, binge drinking and casual sex tend to distract students from their studies. For instance, young women who engage in such activities are more likely to be depressed, and tend to do poorly when they get distracted by drinking and sex.”

The first article she links to, independent of its merits and some of its other purported findings, studies a cohort from Grades 7-12. That's right: it doesn't even deal with sexual activity among college students.

The second article requires some significant stretching to lead the conclusions that having sex in college negatively impacts educational outcomes. It looks at the relationship between lifetime sex partners for women age 22-24 and different levels of educational attainment. The authors find that the average college attendee had 5.73 partners and respondents who did not had, on average, 6.35 sex partners. Put differently, it does not measure the impact of sex in college on anything at all.

And people wonder why "it has lots of footnotes" doesn't carry much weight with academics when we evaluate popular nonfiction.....

Update: James Joyner, a week ago, no less, on the source of the whole thing.

Raising the Debt Ceiling and Avoiding Economic Catastrophe

I keep meaning to write a follow up post on U.S. public opinion on climate change and how and why it matters for the world. But, the ongoing political posturing over raising the debt ceiling keeps commanding my attention. Everything I’ve read suggests that failure to resolve this by August 2nd would be what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called a "self-inflicted wound" on the part of the United States and potentially send the world in to an economic tailspin of perhaps unprecedented proportions. While we can’t know for sure what would happen, most sane observers of this unfolding catastrophe – Sebastian Mallaby, James Lindsay, Dan Drezner, the U.S. business community, David Brooks, David Frum - suggest that this is one of those things in life that it would be wiser not to find out by trying our luck.

Punishment Over Peace?: Gaddafi in a Post-Amnesty World

It has been five months since protests in Tripoli sparked widespread 'civil unrest'/war, a NATO enforced no fly zone, and partial (and unclear) international interventions. Rough death toll figures range from 10,000-30,000. Perhaps the biggest uncertainty is how this will all end. While there is some hope that rebel forces will tip the balance of power, Gaddafi's forces are strong and have made recent advances.
One possibility that hasn't been readily considered is the potential benefit of granting Gaddafi amnesty in exchange for a peaceful end to the civil unrest. So why isn't amnesty being seriously considered by the international community?
There are multiple possible answers; however it is worth considering Libya as part of a 'post-amnesty' international justice agenda focused on prosecution. It seems that transitional justice has become a norm, based on the assumption that 'true peace' cannot be sustained without justice. I'm not arguing amnesty is the best option- but it is worth thinking about why amnesty has increasingly become an international taboo.

Friday Nugget Blogging

Since I see Dan is kindly filling in on Friday Nerd Blogging while I'm on vacation, my casual Fridays post this week (if it is indeed Friday, I really have no idea...) takes a different tack, following on an old tradition from my days at Lawyers, Guns and Money...

Quote of the week is from my youngest little nugget, quoted in an NPR story on how American kids are reacting to the Women's World Cup:

"I've watched every one of their games. I'm pretty intense about it, because I don't usually see the U.S. men's team do very well."

Now on Twitter, James Joyner objects to my son's big-hearted, women-friendly kudos, stating rather condescendingly that the comparison is apples and oranges because these are

"very different levels of competition... our women are ahead of curve; men well behind it."

Well, it's hardly fair deny women the opportunity to play on co-ed teams with men and then use that as a way to dismiss their victories, but the fact that people like Joyner will do precisely that is probably the best argument for getting rid of gender apartheid in sports.

At any rate, Bill Plashke at the LA Times concurs - though only somewhat - with my son:

If I was asked to assemble a team of American athletes to compete against similarly composed teams from the rest of the world in any sport, the most important decision would be the easiest. I would take a team of women.

I would take a team that would play like a team, unselfish and unaffected, tough and tireless, playing for victory not credit, playing for each other instead of themselves. I would take a group like the U.S. women's soccer team, and not because it is playing Japan on Sunday for the World Cup championship, but because of how it played in reaching this stage, stoic through their storms, sharing through their failure, winning not with shots off fancy feet, but passes off rock-hard heads.

I would take groups like the women's teams that have won three of the four Olympic soccer gold medals, six of the nine basketball gold medals, and three of the four softball gold medals in such overpowering fashion that the International Olympic Committee eliminated the sport. I would take our women not only because Title IX has empowered them into a huge advantage over the rest of the world, but also because they consistently win in ways that our men sometimes neglect or ignore.

With their status often based on nightly highlights and rich endorsements, the men's team athletes in this country are increasingly about themselves... Perhaps because they receive little of the attention and none of the riches, most of our women athletes are all about one another.

I do wonder if Plashke's perspective begs the question though: are women's teams better because they are women and women have some sensitivity toward cooperative play and teamwork that men lack? Are they better because they have to be in order to excel in the absence of "attention" and "riches," as Plashcke puts it?

I am uncomfortable with these kinds of essentialisms and with the pro-gender-apartheid argument they support. And I don't see them at the root of my son's argument.

Harry Potter, Social Misfits, and the Popular Crowd

Amanda Marcotte (via Zack Beauchamp):

"Harry isn't a nerd," I said, "Harry is a jock." I mean, Harry has an existential crisis that gives him some depth, but social outcast and/or geek he's not. The opposite, in fact.

I realized then that the "band of misfits" theme has so much power over the American imagination (maybe not the British, which could explain Rowling's choices) that people just sort of shove Harry and his friends into that mold, and then rely on a handful of rationalizations for it---Harry wears glasses, Hermione is a bookworm, Ron is a redhead---in order for that theory to make sense. We're used to the X-Men or Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Scooby Gang, so much so that we don't see that Harry's trajectory is the inverse of Buffy's. Buffy is a former cheerleader whose magic powers actually make her a geek and an outcast. Harry is a nobody-special who finds out that he's special, and becomes not just the star athlete and hero of his school, but an actual celebrity. Sure, there's ups and downs, but his trajectory is away from being the outcast and towards being the homecoming king.

E.D. Kain provides a more nuanced analysis:

Well…almost. Potter may be a chip off the old block, but he’s not an arrogant bully like his father was. Likewise, Potter may not be an outcast himself but he attracts outcasts. Hagrid, Neville, Luna Lovegood, Dobby – these are all social outcasts attracted to Potter because he gladly welcomes social outcasts into his circle, and because he identifies with them in spite of his own celebrity (or perhaps because of it).

Marcotte uses the Snape/Potter animas as an example of the nerd/jock tension, but I don’t think that holds out either. That mutual hatred was born before Harry was a twinkle in his father’s eye. Snape hates the part of Harry that is a reflection of James. If Snape and Harry were classmates, instead of Snape and James Potter, it’s quite likely things would have gone differently between them.

Nevertheless, I agree with Marcotte’s larger point. Harry is no social outcast himself, even if he doesn’t really recognize his own popularity or use it to gain advantage over others. He’s not your typical pop-culture jock either, or your typical hero. His greatness has been largely thrust upon him. More importantly, his success is almost always thanks to the help of his friends. It is his loyalty and his friendship that defines him and bulwarks him against his enemies, not his role as a jock or an outcast. He is Frodo-like in this regard, doomed to failure without the faithful Sam to carry his burden for him.

Friday Nerd Blogging: Late to the Party (Part the Second)

We saw HPatDHpt2 (as the young'ns are calling it) this evening. It was quite good: action-packed, emotionally satisfying, and all that. We sat next to a group of hipster teenagers who were extremely psyched throughout the whole thing--they clapped, they cheered, and were very upset when my daughter interjected commentary ("That's a lot of Death Eaters!"). This provided an important reminder of how a whole generation of kids grew up with -- or, more accurately, aged along with -- the Harry Potter novels. Anyway, I may be doing a review for a "real" online outlet this weekend; I'll post a link if it comes together.

But that's not the subject of this post. I discovered web comics relatively recently; although that makes me very late to the party, I still want to point to two superlative sf/fantasy publications available online.

First, Girl Genius. While my wife was out of the country last year, I stayed up all night reading the adventures of Agatha Heterodyne and her (ever-increasing) cast of supporting characters. Produced out of the gleefully demented minds of Phil and Kaja Foglio, Girl Genius has won numerous accolades -- in this case, well-deserved ones.

Impunity Gap: Sri Lanka

(see first post in this series: Mind the Impunity Gaps)

There is increasing pressure for justice in Sri Lanka for crimes committed in the long civil war between the Government and secessionist Tamil Tigers (LTTE) and that ended in May 2009. While the Sri Lankan government has publicly pledged to ensure justice, there are legitimate concerns its current approach will not be genuine and sufficiently punitive, and will place the burden of guilt for war crimes and crimes against humanity on the LTTE while institutionalizing impunity for crimes committed by Government forces.

"Sri Lanka's Killing Fields"
The airing of a documentary called "Sri Lanka's Killing Fields" on UK's Channel 4 sparked new interest and pressure. It has now been shown to wide acclaim at the UN in New York and Geneva and recently by human rights groups in Washington, DC. The footage is indeed shocking. It documents extrajudicial killings, torture, and sexual violence allegedly committed by Government forces against Tamil civilians. The documentary is available on YouTube.

The Sri Lankan government has reacted angrily to the footage and accompanying accusations; it also claims that portions of the film have been doctored or are misleading. A BBC Hardtalk interview with a Sri Lankan MP and adviser to the President is revealing with regard to the determination of the Government's denial and rejection of international pressure to investigate its own crimes.

UN Probe Alleges Crimes Committed by "Both Sides"

Friday Nerd Blogging: Continuing the Tradition (Part the First)

When I was in graduate school I tried my hand at writing speculative fiction (SF) and fantasy. I even hung out on usenet groups and joined an online writing circle. I flatter myself that, with enough work, I might have improved the quality of my scribblings from "crappy" to "passable."

It turns out that I chose the wrong career. It isn't just in the social sciences that atrocious writing, wooden characters, and unimaginative plot lines present no barrier to awards and honors!

As David Moles writes:

Last month [i.e., two months ago] the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America gave a Nebula award to a piece that contained no science worth speaking of. There was very little fiction in it either, if fiction is the narrative of imagination; whatever images might have been in its author’s mind, what made it onto the page was determinedly unimaginative, and less narrated than vaguely gestured at. It put forward no fantasy, unless the fantasy that the world is an uncomplicated place populated chiefly by straw men and contrived examples is a fantasy. What writing was in it was mostly bad.

Moles isn't kidding. Eric James Stones' "The Leviathan Whom Thou Hast Made" is just plain awful. But it has inspired some truly entertaining critical discussion. Check out Martin Lewis' review. Also of interest: Abigail Nussbaum's commentary on the Hugo short-story nominees.

What's wrong with "Leviathan" isn't just that it's badly written and that all its characters seem to have been created either to spout talking points (the titular Leviathan just happens to say something that echoes the book of Job) or act as straw men (the anthropologist who, against her better judgment, ends up helping the narrator, and along the way lobs softballs at him and acts like a stereotype of a disdainful atheist; interestingly, the one good point she makes--pointing out that the only reason the Mormon swales care that they're being raped is that their new religion has taught them to view sex as a sin--is completely ignored by both the narrator and the story). Worse than these is the fact that it's not a story so much as a thought experiment that posits a situation in which none of the negative associations of Christian missionary work are applicable....

Nussbaum is certainly correct on this last point, but I think it would be a shame to the let political objections get in the way of the story's utter lack of aesthetic merit.

Pan-Social-Media Bleg

I'm looking for good histories of Taiwan; I'm particularly interested in political histories.

Cross-posted, in various forms, at Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

Mind the Impunity Gaps

This is the first of a series of posts on "impunity gaps" in justice for atrocities that constitute genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. There has been a resurgence of optimism for international and transitional justice because the ICC's judicial intervention in Libya and recent high-profile arrests and trial completions at the ICTR and ICTY. But I would like to shed some light on impunity gaps that persist for and within high-profile cases and for low-profile cases beyond the International Criminal Court.

An impunity gap can manifest itself in several ways:

• There are no genuine international or national justice measures and/or there is a blanket amnesty.
• There are non-judicial and/or non-punitive accountability mechanisms, such as truth commissions or local traditional justice, but these are perceived by victim communities and/or the international community as disguised impunity.
• There is an imbalance in justice. Either not all parties to the conflict and/or only elite or low-level perpetrators are held accountable. (I would refer to this as a gap in the breadth and depth or criminal responsibility respectively.)

Arguably, this doe not really narrow the universe of cases. Most countries that require justice for atrocities can, at best, achieve partial accountability because of a lack of capacity or political will. I will focus on impunity gaps that pose the greatest risk for a resurgence or entrenchment of violence and where political hypocrisy explains the gap.

Demanufacturing

E-waste in China
Photo Source: Greenpeace

Demanufacturing is the process of disassembling, recycling, remanufacturing, or refurbishing outdated industrial and consumer products, particularly electronics (i.e. e-waste management, asset recovery, or urban mining) but also including activities such as shipbreaking, automobile shredding, devulcanization of rubber tires, etc. The tail end of the capitalist industrial production process was traditionally relegated to developing countries in Asia, Latin America, and Africa as part of a broader ruthless and neo-racist practice of relocating polluting industries and processes in the periphery and semi-periphery. But demanufacturing firms are beginning to emerge in advanced industrial countries as a mechanism to ensure data security for e-waste, comply with environmental legislation/emerging global norms and conventions on toxic waste, make landfills more "efficient", as well as to generate employment and profit from the re-use of lucrative materials.

The problem of e-waste is obviously created by the failure of capitalist industrial production processes to incentivize green designs and to "internalize" post-consumption. While there have been some voluntary and state-led initiatives to push industries to design green by using the concept of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for the End-of-Life (EOL) stage of a product, the manufacturing industry in sectors like telecommunications and personal computing seem to have increasingly moved toward planned obsolescence with narrower and narrower time horizons (i.e. the iFad syndrome). Nevertheless, even if green design is still a dream in some sectors, the tide is turning toward more responsible demanufacturing in most of the world with a few exceptions. Only Afghanistan, Haiti, and the United States have yet to ratify the 1992 Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal. The US, Canada, and Japan still object to particular provisions of the convention which restrict the export of toxic materials from developed to less developed countries. The US also continues to use prison labor to demanufacture e-waste in order to avoid more restrictive labor protections afforded to the general workforce. Canada has ratified the Basel Convention but it uses dubious tactics to comply. (Canada's questionable behavior on this issue is actually not too surprising -- as those of us who live near mega-landfills in the US know -- our friends to the north are more than willing to export their sludge to the US in order to make their own country appear "green" while harming their neighbor's environment.) The domestic environmental lobby in the US, Canada, and Japan will need to be energized on this issue to compel adherence to the international convention. Meanwhile, the EU has moved toward the adoption of a complete ban on the export of toxic materials to developing countries.


While preventing the export of toxic e-waste to LDCs is laudable given the enormous health and environmental impacts and the incapacity of many of those states to enforce environmental regulations, there is still a need to share best industry practices, technology, and equipment in the demanufacturing sector with LDCs as they attempt to deal with their own share of e-waste. India, for example, generates approximately 800,000 tons of e-waste per year. Otherwise, the environmental movement against e-waste becomes little more than an attempt to use legislation to create/protect a new industry in the OECD countries without regard for a comprehensive global solution. The Preamble and Articles 10 and 14 of the Basel Convention do recognize the need for establishing regional and sub-regional technology transfer centers for the management and minimization of hazardous waste, but the obligation is completely voluntary on signatory countries.

Narrative Horror and the Downfall of Leaders #1: Rupert Murdoch

You have devoted your life to creating a great empire, one that stretches around the world and wields influence over politics and culture in a number of countries. Decades of criticism and conspiracy about the pernicious effects of your empire only testify to your importance. You have groomed your successors and shaped the climate they will work within. Biographers will not be able to knock the magnitude of your achievements. Your story is written. You are legendary, a mythical figure in your lifetime, hated, loved, known. So imagine the agony of losing this reputation in a single act and finding that all you built can be swept swiftly away. Instead of being remembered as a great empire builder you’ll be remembered for a single, tawdry episode. The horror!

International relations is full of leaders and legends who achieved much but will be remembered for a totally different and humiliating reason. The Spanish novelist Javier Marias calls this narrative horror:

Stuff Political Scientists Like #6 -- Soaking and Poking

This one was inspired by Kate Weaver, and her dirty, dirty mind.

Sometimes numbers just won't do. Political scientists occasionally require real-world knowledge and must come to terms with face-to-face human interaction. They have to do field research. Political scientists like to soak and poke.

Stop that. Don't make this sexual. Get your mind out of the gutter. This is serious business. There is no room for juvenile humor in a discussion of political science methodology. The boys at PSJR will get upset.
Political scientists who do field research believe that the world is like first grade. Everyone is special and unique, like snowflakes. They all have something interesting to say. You will hang on their every word. You will struggle to decipher the meaning of every tiny gesture. If they give you the finger, don't despair. That must mean something very different in the field.

If you want to soak and poke, you must start preparing very early. You will need to speak the local language fluently as every idiomatic expression tells you something new and different. Begin planning 8-10 years in advance. You might be tempted just to go to some Spanish-speaking country because you had a little in high school. But surely Spain will not satisfy the ruthless criteria for case selection in today's political science. Is it a critical case? Does it give you variation on your dependent variable? Does it help you set up a natural experiment? I didn't think so. Suck it up. You are learning Urdu. Also, you speak with a Mexican accent because your high school teacher was from Guadalajara. That will simply not do.

Still you might think strategically about it. The best place for soaking is Hungary. They have great bathhouses. And poking? Well, try Amsterdam. OK! I'm sorry!

Second you must wipe your mind clear of all preconceptions. Theory destroys meaning. You must forget all of your graduate training, everything you thought you knew. Break up with your boyfriend. It is best to forget all of your old ties if you are to integrate into a new society. Plus he is getting clingy. Hypnosis might help too.

You are now set to go out 'into the field.' Political scientists like saying 'in the field' because it makes them sound like secret agents when in fact they have more in common with farmers.

Soaking and poking requires 'participant observation,' getting as close as possible to your subject of study. But remember that soaking and poking is just a metaphor. Please do not feed your subjects. They cannot tolerate your diet.

For the best participant observation it is ideal for you to follow around your subject of interest at all times. You must know everything about them. But your very presence will alter their behavior, particularly if they know you are studying them. I recommend subterfuge.

First, before you make direct contact, get to know their schedule -- when they drop their children off at school, when they go to bed, what they like to eat. Second, stage a collision at their favorite local coffee store, ideally when they have papers in their hands so you can help them pick them up. Then initiate a conversation about an interesting article they have probably read because you found it in their garbage. Parlay that into an internship in their office where you can observe everything about them and collect anecdotes for your ethnographic masterpiece.

This might sound like stalking but it is in the name of science. Any political ethnographer worth his salt has had a restraining order at one time or another. If you can break up his or her marriage to get closer that's great. If you are not gay and he or she if of the opposite sex, you can always go Single White Female.

Now you are fast friends but you have to go further. Fight the civil war. Participate in the coup. Assassinate a foreign leader. You have to be there, become one with your subjects. Otherwise you will never truly understand. The Committee on Human Subjects can be dealt with later.

Not everyone is skilled at soaking and poking. Europeans seem to be more inclined to try it. They are excellent at ingratiating themselves into foreign cultures, particularly native ones. Their experience going topless at the beach pays off.

When you are done, you will have made a very important contribution. No one else will ever know more about life in a refugee camp during the second week of the Ethiopian-Eritrean border dispute. And from now on, you have a passive aggressive declaration making as a question for every single academic panel you attend in the future: "I am not sure if this theory works in the Ethiopian case....."

Wine, War and Alexander

As the Ashmolean Museum shows in its latest exhibition, Alexander of Macedon was the spectacular bearer of Hellenism into Asia who inspired dreams of a unified humanity. His royal dynasty boasted a rich court life in vast palaces with ample room for dinner parties. The tombs of the Temenids contained beautiful artifacts.On slow afternoons they would graduate into manhood by hunting big lions.

Less prominent in the exhibition is the flip-side: that the same warriors liked getting drunk, razing cities, and beating the crap out of each other.

Will Transparency Save the World Bank?

I confess that I am a World Bank junkie. There is nothing (well, very little) that perks my intellectual interest more than an in-depth discussion on the internal and external politics of the Bank. Over the past two weeks in DC, I have mercilessly subjected my graduate students to numerous conversations about the challenges facing the organization with experts within the Bank, US Senate, and the world of NGOs and think tanks. To my fabulous students, I want to say thanks for letting me nerd-out. To faithful Duck readers, I'd like to pose a few questions about the future of the Bank that arose from these conversations.

Laws of the Jungle

While rereading Kipling's 1894 classic The Jungle Book, I began to think about the curious ways in which the author constructed the relations between communities of animals in the jungle.  Here are a few observations:

1. The jungle is neither anarchic nor Darwinian in Kipling's narrative. It is in fact best understood as an interspecies society governed by a set of laws. To this extent, it seems to mirror the international society tradition. In Kipling's narrative, the laws are universal, but require an acknowledgment of sovereignty -- the laws must be articulated in the tongue and mannerism of each community. This is particularly the case when requesting asylum.

Is there a time and place for (humanitarian) shock and awe?

Don't feel bad though. It's disempowering.

Look. I get the whole ‘stop the portrayal of Africans as victims’ debate. I really do. Empowerment and portrays of empowerment are important.

But I can’t help but be slightly frustrated with this entry at UN Dispatch which discusses the “shock and awe” approach to fundraising for disasters.

Penelope Chester (apparently a professional Canadian humanitarian) quotes Peter Gill (who has written on the Ethiopian Famine) stating that the West :

certainly has no proper answers to the conflicts and dislocation that lead to starvation and deathIn northern Kenya, to which so many thousands of Somali pastoralists have fled in recent months, the West does have an answer of sorts – it can feed people in the world’s largest refugee camp, in the thin expectation of better times back across the border.

And that:

Ethiopia must keep addressing the image of destitution and the reality that too often underpins it, but it needs to promote other images as well. Instead of the risk of starvation, it also needs to be able to draw attention to impressive annual economic growth figures. Instead of food hand-outs, it also needs to be able to emphasise its big drive for inward investment.

War Powers, My Ass...

The House of Representatives recently just voted on a bill that would require the U.S. to remove its forces from Libya on the basis of the War Powers Act, arguing that the President had not received the Congressional go-ahead to keep the military in hostilities past a certain time threshhold. It earned the votes of 148 Congressmen of 435, 87 Republicans and 61 Democrats. The media presented it as demonstrating the muscles of the Tea Party libertarians defending congressional prerogatives against executive encroachment in true Jeffersonian tradition. I call bullshit and I have the crude data to prove it. Actually anyone with web access and a calculator could do the same.

I am always skeptical of these institutional arguments, having encountered them in my research. A common refrain in the literature on the domestic politics of the creation of the League of Nations, the UN, and NATO is that opponents were defending legislative rights. The truth is that these were almost always just cudgels for those who opposed the idea behind the treaties. If you don't want to participate in collective security, you can tell the world to go to hell, or you can say that the President does not have the authority to make that commitment. Or you can say both. Most said both, but the latter was a disingenuous argument. In politics! Yes, I'm sorry. It's true. Look away, child. Look away.

Of the 87 Republicans who voted for this bill, only 17 also voted against the extension of the Patriot Act. That's only 20%. I personally do not get really vexed about whether the government knows what I check out at the library or listens to me on the phone, although I respect those who do. I am not checking out the Anarchist Cookbook and almost all my phone calls concern what to pick up at the grocery store. But if there is a true libertarian litmus test, that's it. There are very few genuine libertarians in the world and even in the Tea Party. Not wanting to extend healthcare benefits to the uninsured does not make you a libertarian-- it makes you a dick. I will give the genuinely libertarian House members a shout out, those who voted against the Patriot Act and for this bill (Amas, Bartlett, Brown, Campbell, Duncan(TN), Gibson, Johnson(IL), Jones, Kingston, Labrador, Mack, McClintock, Paul, Rose, Schweikert, Woodall, Young(AK). At least you have principles.

Hugh Grant the Unlikely Victor in the News of the World Battle

The highlights of this story are largely well known: At a pub in Dover Hugh Grant secretly records former News of the World (NoW) reporter Paul McMullan detailing how NoW had regularly hacked into phones and raided the trash of celebrities to get the inside scoop. A feature is printed in the New Statesman. Further allegations come to the fore- including that the phone of former missing youth Milly Dowler, as well as the phones of deceased servicemen, have been hacked. Rupert Murdoch is shocked. The NoW is shut down as of Sunday July 10th.

It’s hard to know what to make of this story- complete with an absolutely unlikely list of characters. In keeping with all great news stories, this one has a couple of notable “good news/bad news” elements.
First, the good news is that the News of the World has been shut down. Seriously, with a list of headlines that include

My Big Fat Gypsy Divorce at just 19
FI Boss Has Sick Nazi Orgy With Hookers
Boozy bro Andy Carroll gave me black why eye

it can’t be considered much of a loss for the British media.

Friday Nerd Blogging

minor spoiler alert

Stereotypes and suspicion: Nicer words won’t change anything

A new report was released yesterday, ‘Suspect Communities’, comparing how UK media and government have framed Irish and Muslim communities since the 1970s. The authors find that the ideas underpinning counter-terrorism measures and the way politicians, policymakers and the media discuss who might be responsible for bombings have not changed over four decades. The key finding is that ambiguity surrounding who is an ‘extremist’ or a ‘terrorist’ has led to hostile responses in everyday life - at work, in shops, on the street  - from members of the public who think they are under threat from Irish-sounding or Muslim-looking people whom they associate with that threat. Hence, the report implies that government and media language is impacting on the everyday lives of communities judged suspect and everyone else who must live with them. In a debate in Parliament yesterday, the solution put forward by many was greater sensitivity of language by elites and more dialogue between the stigmatized, the elites, and the majority society.


While useful, the debate needs to go further. The crux with such reports is their method. This research team first analysed thousands of media texts and government documents, and found these to consistently frame these communities as suspect (and as communities, not individuals). They then did focus groups with members of those suspect communities to hear about living under suspicion. What the team did not do is try to explain why journalists or policymakers would consistently produce stigmatizing material. The consistency of the stigmatization suggests its nothing to do with any individuals, but a function of the institutional practices and professional imperatives of the fields of journalism and security policy. Most journalists don’t want to be racist. They think that by allowing a ‘moderate’ and ‘militant’ Muslim to debate they are providing balance – journalists don’t usually understand that they are reducing threatening and non-threatening minorities to equivalents in the eye of the non-Muslim audience. And policymakers know full well that homogenizing a community to tell it to ‘stop harbouring terrorists’ is not going to please everyone, but they really don’t want another bomb going off and will try any means to stop it. These are the pressures they face, and criticizing their language choices isn’t going to remove those pressures. So, if we are to move towards societies in which entire groups are not routinely lumped together as dangerous and disloyal, we need to begin to unravel these institutional and professional logics. A truly critical project would address these power relations and daily trade-offs instead of simply decrying the consequences.


This is an important topic. The Suspect Communities report supports a longstanding research finding (UK here, US here) that those who feel stigmatized tend either to retreat from public spaces (‘keep your head down’, ‘keep your mouth shut’) or become angry and try to resist slurs by turning them on their heads (reclaiming ‘queer’ in the 1970s, jihadi chic in the 2000s). Either way, the result is fear and alienation, which reduces trust on all ‘sides’ and makes reconciling interests and grievances through democratic institutions much more difficult.

Israel in Washington

Last week I had the great pleasure of visiting Boston and Washington DC.

During this academic junket research-related visit, sparkling conversation was had with some of the liveliest minds on foreign policy in the US, including the established heavy-hitters Andrew Bacevich and Edward Luttwak, as well as some of the sharpest younger thinkers around including the hawkish idealist and internationalist David Adesnik, the sardonically skeptical Dan Nexon from here at the Duck, and one of the most astute observers of Afghanistan-Pakistan, Christine Fair.

The subject of Israel ran like a razor-sharp wire through all of the conversation. It just seems to come up. The names above span the spectrum on the issue. Israel surfaces in so many different guises, whether strategic liability, focal point of American idealism, a destructive influence in domestic politics, and as the battlefield which wrecks academic careers.

What Should I Read While I'm in Indonesia?

Sorry for going AWOL for a couple of weeks - my lame excuse despite fascinating things happening in all my usual areas is the craziness of preparing for both a move and international travel with a teenager.

Paradoxically, as of Saturday the situation reverses: I'll be on vacation abroad meaning both more time to blog and possibly less inclination. If I do pop in after this week, it will most likely be with book reviews of what I'm reading on the beach.

So, Duck readers are encouraged to make suggestions/requests!

Besides the obvious (Storm of Swords and Robopocalypse) I am so far planning to download these to my Kindle:

Love and Sex with Robots, in which David Levy will explain to me why naming my new car (Flynn) is one step away from marrying my vacuum...

Please Stop Laughing at Us, Jodee Blanco's memoir/manifesto on how to counter-act bullying in our schools: after my daughter's experiences this part year, I intend to be fore-armed before tenth grade opens at Amherst Regional High School.

Playing With the Boys: Why Separate is Not Equal in Sports, grist for an ongoing debate I've been having with my nine-year-old son - especially since the start of the "Women's" World Cup - about the benefit of co-ed sporting teams and gender apartheid in world sports generally.

What else should I download? I'm looking for light, informative, marginally related to my interests yet non-academic non-fiction.