The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands Crises of 2004, 2010, and 2012: A Study of Japanese-Chinese Crisis Management

The diplomatic situation between Japan and China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands has become increasingly precarious over the past decade. Weak diplomatic ties and lack of trust between the two nations has made a clash not only more likely, but also unlikely to be effectively contained. This article compares the events and management of three diplomatic crises concerning the islands, including the deportation of Chinese activists who landed on the islands in 2004, the detention of a Chinese fishing boat captain who collided with a Japan Coast Guard vessel in 2010, and the 2012 nationalization of three of the islands by the Japanese central government. These case studies reveal the lack of reliable high-level communication mechanisms between Tokyo and Beijing, diminishing back-channel diplomacy and the asymmetrical influence of each respective Foreign Ministry as just a few of the structural barriers to effective Sino-Japanese crisis management.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory , by Bhikhu Parekh
Multicultural Questions , edited by Christian Joppke and Steven Lukes
Peoples, Cultures and Nations in Political Philosophy , by Paul Gilbert
Race and Ethnicity in Modern Britain , by David Mason
Citizenship and Immigration in Postwar Britain , by Randall Hansen
The Ashdown Diaries , vol. 1: 1988–1997 , by Paddy Ashdown
Diaries: Into Politics , by Alan Clark
Life in the Jungle: My Autobiography , by Michael Heseltine
Left Behind: Lessons from Labour's Heartland , by Peter Kilfoyle
Ann Widdecombe: Right from the Beginning , by Nicholas Kochan
William Hague: In His Own Right , by Jo-Anne Nadler
Factionalism in Chinese Communist Politics , by Jing Huang
Cadres and Corruption: The Organizational Involution of the Chinese Communist Party , by Xiaobo Lu
Late Victorian Holocausts: El Ni·o Famines and the Making of the Third World , by Mike Davis
Going to the Wars , by Max Hastings
Governing with Judges: Constitutional Politics in Europe , by Alec Stone Sweet
No Place Like Home: A Black Briton's Journey through the American South , by Gary Younge
Parliament under Blair , by Peter Riddell
New Labour in Power , edited by David Coates and Peter Lawler
New Labour and Thatcherism , by Richard Heffernan
The Retreat of Social Democracy , by John Callaghan. Manchester University Press
Labour's First Century , edited by Duncan Tanner, Pat Thane and Nick Tiratsoo
The Labour Party: A Centenary History , edited by Brian Brivati and Richard Heffernan     

GSR2005--continuity of the ENFSI proficiency test on identification of GSR by SEM/EDX.

Within the framework of the ENFSI Expert Working Group "Firearms" a proficiency test on the detection and identification of GSR by energy-dispersive scanning electron microanalysis (SEM/EDX) is carried out in a 2 years term. The latest test was performed in 2005/2006 and was denoted as GSR2005. Seventy-five laboratories from 28 countries participated in this proficiency test and submitted in total 83 independent data-sets. The participating laboratories were requested to determine the total number of PbSbBa containing particles on a synthetic test sample following their own laboratory specific methods of automated GSR particle search and detection by SEM/EDX. Furthermore size and position of the detected particles had to be reported by the laboratories and were evaluated statistically. The results were compiled by means of z-scores according to the IUPAC and EURACHEM guidelines-assessing individual laboratory achievements (inter-laboratory) as well as intra-laboratory performance-and were compared to the results of the previous proficiency test run GSR2003 (1). The comparison shows that there is a noticeable improvement in the method's detection capability.     

Destroyed by Love: nation,memory, and humanity in South Asia

Remembered experiences of violence, humiliation, and loss suffered in the 1971 war of Bangladesh offer a site for writing a new contemporary history in South Asia. Love, not for humanity but for nation, in survivors' memories was the site of violence in the war. The state's history-writing project cultivated hate against neighbors deemed enemies and encouraged violence against them. More than four decades later, the awareness of intersubjective relationships leads survivors—victims and perpetrators—to search for meaning beyond their national labels. The quest leads to the renewal of insāniyat, a South Asian concept of humanity, which survivors suggest is the site of human freedom from violence.