Breaking Silos of Legal and Regulatory Risks to Outperform Traditional Compliance Approaches

European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research - The ever-evolving legal and regulatory landscape and resulting pressure on organizations to adapt and comply is just one of many factors that have...     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Sheldon S. Wolin:</Emphasis> Tocqueville between two worlds: The making of a political and theoretical life

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Sheldon S. Wolin: Tocqueville between two worlds: The making of a political and theoretical life Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press 2001, 650 S., $ 24,95

     

Victims and new wars

Interpretations of ‘new wars’ are contradictory. While some stress the asymmetry of intentions, strategies, and capabilities of antagonists, others emphasize the identity of warring parties in sharing the same space of political violence. Introducing elements of a political anthropology of victimhood, this paper suggests that the polarity in new wars is driven by self-representations of collective victimhood. Modes of total warfare in the twentieth century shifted the moral centre of gravity towards representations of humanity as a transcendent victim. The universalist sacred of protecting humanity as a victim, however, masks the polarity between antagonists who legitimize aggression by defensive propositions in the name of suffered victimhood. On the one hand, moral justifications of revenge for victimhood support claims for the asymmetry of polarity. On the other hand, this asymmetry of proliferating victims conceals an ongoing symmetry of rivalry. Ultimately, the focus on political agency and on moral justifications maintains the illusion that the other is the aggressor. A new moral economy requires acknowledging the deep interdependence of rivals. The aggressor has always been aggressed. If the moral core of warfare is in the de-humanization of the enemy, possible paths of reconciliation require the moral recognition of the enemy's same humanity.     

Beeinflusst Angst politische Einstellungen? Eine Analyse der öffentlichen Meinung während des Golfkriegs 1991

This article examines the effects of anxiety aroused by the Gulf War in 1991 on political attitudes among German citizens. Building on several strands of previous research, I argue that anxiety affects attitudes toward policies concerning the war at the Gulf. I also hypothesize that anxiety conditions the impact of war-related attitudes on more general attitudes toward political actors. The empirical analysis shows that anxiety decreases support for the US-led military intervention at the Gulf, sending German troops to Turkey and the German government’s conduct during the Gulf crisis. At the same time, anxiety increases the impact of these war-related attitudes on general evaluations of political actors, thereby rendering the latter more responsive to political events.     

Determination of butane in respiratory gases by means of GC/MS and GC/MS-MS

Butane is inhaled in order to achieve a pleasurable state of intoxication. An overdose can lead to death. In two deaths from our own investigation material the circumstances were suspicious for the inhalation of liquid gas, and the presence of butane should be demonstrated in the respiratory gases. For detection, a method of ion trap gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) and tandem-mass spectrometry (GC/MS-MS) was developed, whereby the gas samples from the lung tissue were directly injected into the GC. The GC/MS tests revealed the presence of butane. Moreover, it was found that during the MS-MS tests reaction products appeared which had formed in the ion trap. Systematic investigations of these reaction products showed that these appeared regularly and could be used as additional backup for the proof of butane. Thus phenomena in the ion trap were used which would not have been expected to occur in normal mass spectrometry or tandem-MS and had not been described in the forensic literature so far. The detected amount of butane could be quantified by means of serial dilutions with nitrogen and room air. The described method shows that small molecules or gases can be demonstrated with the ion trap mass spectrometer.     

Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSBP): an extreme form of child abuse with a special forensic challenge

Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSBP) is a special form of child abuse in which an adult repeatedly produces symptoms of illness in a person under his/her care. In most cases the perpetrators are mothers who repeatedly and in different ways produce or feign symptoms of illness in their children in order to obtain medical treatment for them. MSBP is thus a special form of child abuse that is also of importance in the field of forensic medicine and a particular challenge to the medicolegal expert. We report two cases of poisoning with different substances (clozapine and clonidine) detected by toxicological investigations at our Department of Legal Medicine. The relevance of the problem for the medicolegal expert and the importance of an interdisciplinary co-operation are pointed out.