The ghost of Machiavelli: An approach to operation Gladio and terrorism in cold war Italy

In 1990, a document was made public in Italy that shed new light on the secret aspects of the Cold War in Western Europe. The document, dated 1 June 1959, had been compiled by the Italian military secret service SIFAR and is entitled “The special forces of SIFAR and Operation Gladio”. It explained that a secret stay-behind army linked to NATO had been set up in Italy for the purpose of unconventional warfare. Ever since, there have been allegations in Italy that the Gladio stay-behind army was linked to acts of terrorism during the Cold War. Despite their importance for criminal, legal and social investigations into the secret history of the Cold War, these questions have received next to no attention among the English-speaking research community since the documents' discovery, partly due to language barriers. With no claim to deal with the stay-behind armies in an exhaustive manner, this essay attempts to analyse and contextualise the Italian data.     

Methods and motives: Exploring links between transnational organized crime and international terrorism

The nexus with transnational organized crime is increasingly a focus for security planners in their analyses of terror groups. Their approach is best described by the phrase “methods, not motives.” While the motives of terrorists and organized criminals remain divergent most often, our research indicates this is not always the case. For that reason, this report argues that such a general approach has become too restrictive and can be misleading since the interaction between terrorism and organized crime is growing deeper and more complex all the time. In short, the lines of separation are no longer unequivocal. The report analyzes the relationship between international organized crime and terrorism in a systematic way in order to highlight the shortcomings of the “methods, not motives” argument. In so doing, the report considers the factors that most closely correspond to crime-terror interaction and identifies those regions of developed and developing states most likely to foster such interactions. Likewise, the paper will suggest an evolutionary spectrum of crime-terror interactions that serves as a common basis for discussion of such often used terms as “nexus.” The centerpiece of the report is a groundbreaking methodology for analysts and investigators to overcome this growing complexity, identify crime-terror interactions more quickly and to assess their importance with confidence. The approach is derived from a standard intelligence analytical framework, and has already proven its utility in law enforcement investigations. The report is the product of a recently concluded and peer-reviewed 18-month NIJ sponsored research project, and includes empirical evidence drawn from numerous case studies developed in the course of the research program. This project was supported by Grant No. 2003-IJ-CX-1019 awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the US Department of Justice. Research assistance on this project was provided by Allison Irby, Douglas M. Hart, Patricia A. Craig-Hart, Dr. Phil Williams, Steven Simon, Nabi Abdullaev, and Bartosz Stanislawski. Drafting and editing help was provided by Laura Covill.     

Gangs in Nigeria: an updated examination

This paper analyzes gangs in Nigeria, providing an updated examination of their current strategies and activities. The premise of this analysis partly draws on Social Identity Theory, with respect to gang affiliation. Particularly explored are (1) gang cultism as a common phenomenon on college campuses in Nigeria (through their malicious, secret, fraternity-like activities) and (2) the role of Islam in Nigerian gangs. The case study of the ‘Yan Daba, urban gangs particularly found in the northern part of Nigeria, is used to illustrate the authors’ arguments. A brief comparison of Nigerian Muslim gangs with European Muslim gangs is also provided.     

Wielding Occam's Razor: Pruning Strategies for Economic Loss

The English Court of Appeal is currently faced with three analyticallydistinct approaches to the question of when one party owes anothera duty of care in respect of her economic interests, all ofwhich bear the authority of the House of Lords. Unable to choosebetween them, it has recently adopted a fourth approach combiningwhich combines them, in the apparent belief that the combinationwill eradicate any individual deficiencies. Against the backgroundof a recent case, the author argues that this is a holding strategyat best and methodologically deficient. He also challenges thecontinuing lip-service paid by courts to models of liabilitybased upon ‘assumptions of responsibility,’ examiningand criticising the causes of their persistence in the law inthe face of widespread academic criticism. Instead, the authorargues, the House of Lords should now clearly endorse a singlereasoning strategy to economic loss cases based on the three-stageapproach in Caparo Industries v Dickman. Properly understood,this approach offers the best prospect of facilitating consistentand transparent decision-making in the longer term.     

Sourcing from China: stopping the IP leaks from your clients' supply chain

Legal context: It is no secret that IP in China is a challenge. However, commercialactivity in or with China is now predictable enough that companiescan, and should, plan for it by taking control of their supplychain. This requires a combination of legal and practical measures.This article sets out some of these steps. Key points: In order to minimize the risks of IP leakage their supply chainsin China, there are three key stages of protection: (i) Pre-sourcing;(ii) Negotiating strong contracts with suppliers; and (iii)Managing the relationship with your supply chain. Practical significance: If your clients do business in China or source products fromhere and cannot answer the following questions, their IP isat risk of infringement. They need to take steps to proactivelymanage their supply chain.

• Do your clients know which factoryis producing their products?How many links are in your clientssupply chain, each one increasingthe chances for IP infringement?
• Do your clients' agreements with their suppliers adequatelyprotect their IP?
• Have your clients taken steps to prevent‘midnight productionruns’ and ‘backdoor sales’by their suppliers?
• How is the IP being provided to them?Do your clients need togive them everything for production?
• What steps have been taken post-production to ensure thatyourclients' suppliers don't continue to manufacture theirproducts?

     

Agamben’s Grammar of the Secret Under the Sign of the Law

This paper suggests that a grammar of the secret forms a concept in Agamben’s work, a gap that grounds the enigma of sovereignty. Between the Indo-European *krei, *se, and *per themes, the secret is etymologically linked to the logics of separation and potentiality that together enable the pliant and emergent structure of sovereignty. Sovereignty’s logic of separation meets the logic of relation in the form of abandonment: the point at which division has exhausted itself and reaches an indivisible element, bare life, the exception separated from the form of life and captured in a separate sphere. The arcanum imperii of sovereignty and the cipher of bare life are held together in the relation of the ban as the twin secrets of biopower, maintained by the potentiality of law that works itself as a concealed, inscrutable force. But the ‘real’ secret of sovereignty, I suggest, is its dialectical reversibility, the point at which the concept of the secret is met by its own immanent unworking by the critic and scribe under the *krei theme, and subject to abandonment through the work of profanation; here, different species of the secret are thrown against one another, one order undoing the other. The secret founded upon the sacred is displaced by Agamben’s critical orientation toward the immanent: what is immanent is both potential and hiddenness.     

Public–Private Partnerships in International Agricultural Research: An Analysis of Constraints

Public–private partnerships are a potentially important means of conducting pro-poor agricultural research in many developing countries. Yet within the international agricultural research sector, there are few examples of successful collaboration that have contributed to food security, poverty reduction or agricultural development. This study hypothesizes that partnerships between public research agencies and private, multinational firms are constrained by fundamentally different incentive structures; prohibitive costs, both direct and indirect; mutually negative perceptions between the sectors; and high levels of competition and risk associated with valuable assets and resources. Based on a survey of key stakeholders and a review of the literature, findings suggest that the primary impediments to partnership are perceptions, competition and risk, while issues of costs and conflicting incentives are secondary. These findings suggest that investment in innovative organizational mechanisms and supportive public policies could facilitate more, and more successful, public–private partnerships in pro-poor agricultural research.     

<Emphasis Type="Bold">A</Emphasis>nti-corruption agencies: between empowerment and irrelevance

The anti-corruption activity of the 1990s is characterized by the rise of new players, such as specialized anti-corruption bodies. Anti-corruption agencies (ACAs) are public bodies of a durable nature, with a specific mission to fight corruption and reducing the opportunity structures propitious for its occurrence in society through preventive and/or repressive measures. Independently of their format and powers, ACAs encounter various constraints to their mandate, which explains the meagre results obtained by some of them. This introductory paper tries to understand the rise, future, and implications of this new kind of “integrity warrior” and to locate them in the evolving doctrine of corruption control. The objective of this edited volume is to re-launch the debate on ACAs as the most innovative feature of the anti-corruption movement of the last two decades.     

“Guide to developing a culture of lawfulness,”

This paper has argued that regulatory and law enforcement measures cannot, on their own, deal with the scope of global crime and corruption. Rather, they need to be complemented and supported by a society that embraces a culture of lawfulness. This is difficult to establish. Yet, there are examples, in diverse circumstances, of major changes in values and attitudes towards the rule of law within a relatively short time frame. While there is no “one size fits all” approach, certain key principles can provide a useful guide for societies seeking to foster a culture of lawfulness. These have been found in the most successful and enduring programs.     

Money and Marriage: Sexually Transmitted Debt in England

In recent years of economic recession, the problems faced byspouses and partners (especially wives) who provide third partyloan security (usually a second mortgage over the family home)for the business debts of their spouse or partner has emergedas an increasing evidence social and legal problem, especiallyin the United Kingdom, and also Australia (where the problemhas become know as ‘sexually transmitted debt’).In this article, the central findings of the first major empiricalstudy of ‘sexually transmitted debt’ are discussed,after first placing the problem in its legal and social context.     

The crime control industry and the management of the surplus population

This essay examines what we are calling the ‘crime control industry’ and how the growth of such an industry relates to growing inequality and the need to ‘manage’ or ‘contain’ the ‘surplus population.’ Profits are a major moving force in this process, rather than the goal of reducing crime and suffering. An important component of this industry is the ‘prison industrial complex,’ one of the fastest growing industries in the U.S. Also included is a rapidly growing private security industry that includes private police and security guards, along with a growing supply of technology to aid in the ‘war on crime.’ Other components include drug testing companies, gated communities, and a booming gun industry. We conclude by outlining possible explanations for the growth of this industry.     

The ‘Cross+check’ system: Integrating profiling approaches for police and security investigations

It is an investigative truism that “information is the lifeblood of an investigation.” Yet in many investigations police and security personnel fail to fully utilize the diverse range of different types of information readily available to them which can add significant value to an investigation. In effect, potentially useful information simply falls between the cracks in an investigation. In serious, complex and/or high profile crimes and security type terrorism threats, the risks of missing such informational gaps and cracks pose a very real and present danger. To address this “falling between the cracks” informational phenomenon the current author devised and developed a deliberate low-tech ‘Cross-Check’ system that the average investigator can be trained in to use on a daily basis without the need for expensive or sophisticated equipment. The C+C system teaches an investigator to think in a logically grounded and creatively systematic manner using different types of information about a crime or security problem. The core of the C+C system is its ability to bring together and focus on the interrelationships between four qualitatively different levels of information. The goal of the C+C system is to generate and then prioritize the investigative leads that logically flow out of systematically ‘cross+checking’ informational interrelationships in order not only to plan and manage an overall investigative strategy but also to develop leads into evidence. This paper presents the theoretical, conceptual, and operational frameworks of the C+C system as a knowledge management tool in relation to the integration of several police and security profiling approaches as well as illustrating its practical application with a case example of an arson investigation.     

Is Sex Too Good for the Working Class? Education and Oppression

The United States has three school systems, one of them excellent, another borderline in quality, and the third thoroughly inadequate. Together they satisfy the needs of the economy. Since the earliest days of the republic, national and state governments have resisted expenditures for children of the working class, not only for their education but also for purposes of health, housing, nutrition, and the financial and psychological security of their parents—all of these relevant to quality of education and educational achievement. Significant improvement in schooling for all children requires societal changes that are spelled out in this article, along with proposals about how to implement those changes.     

Crisis intervention skills training for police negotiators in the 21st century

Summary While Crisis Management training and intervention skills are not new areas for police officers or for police crisis negotiators, it is certainly true that such training must be included in the overall preparation for police officers in general and for police crisis negotiators in particular. Not to do so ignores the need for such skills in the day-to-day functions and calls-for-service of these groups. It has been the experience of this author, in talking with police negotiators, that more and more calls for their services are being made, in situations which are non-hostage related, than ever before. These areas continue to include barricaded individuals, suicidal persons, family disputes in which one member of the family is holding other members of the family against their will, and abuse situations including spouse abuse and child abuse. Additional areas include those in which there are juveniles involved as well as within school settings. Some of the latter may involve hostages while others do not. Finally, it is becoming less unusual for negotiators to be summoned only to find that the subject has engaged in acts designed to evoke fatal responses from those officers involved. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as “death by cop.” Further, it is also important that those indirectly involved in these situations receive this type of Crisis Intervention training. These may include first response officers, first response police and security personnel in our public and private schools, security officers in our hospitals and courthouses, and others who, due to their particular jobs, may be involved in these types of incidents.     

Holding Organized Crime Leaders Accountable for the Crimes of their Subordinates

Criminal law doctrine fails to provide an adequate solution for imputing responsibility to organized crime leaders for the offenses committed by their subordinates. This undesirable state of affairs is made possible because criminal organizations adopt complex organizational structures that leave their superiors beyond the reach of the law. These structures are characterized by features such as the isolation of the leadership from junior ranks, decentralized management, and mechanisms encouraging initiative from below. They are found in criminal organizations such as the American Mafia, the Japanese Yakuza, and even outlaw motorcycle gangs. The paper offers a doctrine that may transcend this shortcoming. Referred to as “leaders’ liability,” this doctrine will be assessed and appraised through a comparison with competing theories such as accomplice liability, Organisationsherrschaft, and conspiracy.     

Governing budgetary commons: what can we learn from Elinor Ostrom?

This article discusses the insights that Elinor Ostrom’s work on common-pool resources and governing the commons can provide for the literature on fiscal commons. Institutional approaches to public finance often employ the metaphor of ‘budgetary commons’. Although intuitively appealing, the notion of budgetary commons faces the danger of becoming a catch-all term that is simply taken as a starting point for an inquiry, without scrutinising the fit between the metaphor and the actual setting. In addressing this shortcoming, the literature on budgetary commons can learn from Elinor Ostrom and the analytical approaches she has advocated in her research on natural commons. This article brings out insights from Ostrom’s work that would be particularly useful for institutional analysis of budgeting. It shows that institutional approaches to public finance can draw on Ostrom’s work with regard to the general approach for examining institutional configurations and their evolution over time, the analytical structures she uses for conceptualising the problems occurring on the commons, the desire to understand institutional complexity in real-life settings, and her scepticism of over-simplified models that are often used for describing and understanding the problems of common-pool resources.     

The Ins and Outs of the Jains in Tamil Literary Histories

The Jains and their texts play a key role in the literary histories of the Tamil-speaking region. However, in their modern form, dating from 1856 to the present, these histories have been written almost exclusively by non-Jains. Driving their efforts have been agendas such as cultural evolutionism, Dravidian nationalism or Śaiva devotionalism. This essay builds on ideas articulated by the contemporary Tamil theorist K. Civatampi, examining how various models of periodization have frozen the Jains in the ancient past. Further, it will explore how this unfolding historical drama, which gloriously climaxes in Tamil literature, has attributed the Jains, as dramatis personae, merely a role in early Jain texts; their role as communities transmitting these texts has been ignored. In contrast to this typical pattern, this article will also introduce a literary history written in 1941 by the Jain A. Cakravarti Nāyaṉār (1880–1960). It will explore whether or not his voice, which emerged from within the same academic community contributing to the strange absence of Jains in the contemporary awareness of Tamil literary, was successful in finding another way for Jains of being heard, and for non-Jains, of listening.     

Organised Criminals as “Agents of Obligation”: The Case of Ireland

Relying on Brown's (2005a, b) thesis that contemporary shifts in penal policy are best understood as a reprisal of colonial rationality, so that offenders become “non-citizens” or “agents of obligation”, this article argues, firstly, that this framework (with certain important refinements and extensions) finds support in developments in Irish criminal justice policy aimed at offenders suspected of involvement in “organised crime”. These offenders have found themselves reconstituted as “agents of obligation” with duties to furnish information about their property and movements, report to the police concerning their location and, importantly, refrain from criminal activity or face extraordinary sanctions. Secondly, it is submitted that this draconian approach to the control of organised crime is built on false premises; specifically the idea that “organised crime” as such exists and is best controlled through restrictions on the freedom of key groups or “core nominals”.     

Toward “Safer” and “Better” Communities?: Canada’s Youth Criminal Justice Act,Aboriginal Youth and the Processes of Exclusion

After a decade of high incarceration rates, the Canadian Department of Justice has revised its approach to juvenile justice. Enshrined in the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), the renewed youth justice system stresses the importance and responsibility of community for crime control. While on the surface the state’s appeals to such programmes as restorative justice seem laudable, caution should be exercised in fully endorsing this approach. While community initiatives have been criticized for “widening the net of social control” and intruding state control deeper into social life, their exclusionary potential is perhaps more troubling. Following Derrida’s metaphysics of presence, I suggest that ‘community’ perpetually finds meaning in opposition to the other. In this environment, Aboriginal youth, who are among the most marginalized in Canadian society, will likely be the most unfavourably effected. This paper does not, however, entirely reject the Act’s appeal to community. Nevertheless, I argue that for meaningful challenges to contemporary constructions of community and youth justice to occur the discursive limits forced upon ‘community’ must be fractured and fashioned in ways that renounce homogeneity. We strongly believe the solution to youth crime is in the community. Give the community the ability to deal with it and they will (Canada 1997).