Internet mediated crimes and theoretical approaches

Purpose: in the literature, the term ‘Internet crime’ has been coined to indicate the scenario in which a victim of homicide or other crimes is met through a chat room, and lured to death at the hands of the murderer. Various criticisms have been made of this new concept, on the grounds that the outcome is no different from that of other crimes committed without the use of Web resources, and so the method used has no particular influence. Indeed, it has been claimed that informatic crime just reflects a technological change in the nature of crime rather than a new form of criminal behavior attributable to the use of the Internet for criminal purposes. Method: our reflections were prompted by our experience as expert forensic psychiatry witnesses in three cases in which the aggressors had confessed to having had an exclusively virtual relationship with the victims, in which they spent a lot of time daily in a chat room. Conclusion: this scenario offers points for reflection on the nature of Web-mediated victim–aggressor interactions, to assess the effects on the planning and commission of the crime. Discussion. it’s our opinion that there really is such a thing as Internet-correlated crime, because in this case the quality and quantity of the Internet interactions progressively altered the men’s perception of the real relationship between themself and their victims.     

Animal rights is a social justice issue

The literature on social justice, and social justice movements themselves, routinely ignore nonhuman animals as legitimate subjects of social justice. Yet, as with other social justice movements, the contemporary animal liberation movement has as its focus the elimination of institutional and systemic domination and oppression. In this paper, I explicate the philosophical and theoretical foundations of the contemporary animal rights movement, and situate it within the framework of social justice. I argue that those committed to social justice – to minimizing violence, exploitation, domination, objectification, and oppression – are equally obligated to consider the interests of all sentient beings, not only those of human beings.     

Is delusional ideation a critical link in the nexus between personality disorder and violent offending?

Evidence suggests that consideration of personality disorder (PD) severity, incorporating both externalising and internalising features of PD, might help to clarify the PD – violence relationship; moreover, that separate developmental pathways might link externalising and internalising personality pathology with criminal violence. This study of 96 forensic patients with confirmed PD and a history of violent offending addressed the question of whether delusional ideation, measured by the Peters Delusions Inventory, might play a significant role in the link between severe PD and criminal violence. Severe PD, defined by summing scores across DSM-IV PD criteria, was significantly associated with delusional thinking, with violence, and with high levels of both externalising and internalising personality features. Delusional thinking was associated with violence via internalising but not externalising PD features, suggesting that the link between severe PD and violence may be partly mediated by delusional thinking.     

Fiji’s Foreign Relations: Retrospect and Prospect

Abstract

Of all the island states of the Southwest Pacific, Fiji’s foreign relations have been the most fraught since the advent of independence in the region, due largely to a succession of coups d'état. These have invariably precipitated adverse responses from major partners and aid donors, notably Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the European Union. The last coup in 2006 also unsettled relations in Fiji’s more immediate region, especially among some of its smaller Polynesian neighbours, contributing to Fiji’s unprecedented suspension from the Pacific Islands Forum. This article reviews Fiji’s foreign relations from the time of independence in 1970 through the period of successive coups to the 2014 elections. It also examines Bainimarama’s strategies in extending foreign relations in the broader international sphere as well as issues surrounding the ‘normalisation’ of relations with its traditional partners.     

Blurring the line between licit and illicit: transnational corruption networks in Central Asia and beyond

The anti-corruption norm in both scholarship and the policy world has too narrowly focused on the domestic and institutional context of bribe-taking and public corruption. Instead, we argue that corruption in the contemporary global economy requires a multiple set of connected transactions, processes, and relationships that take place within informal transnational networks that blur the line between illegal and legal activities. These networks include multinational companies, elites in host countries, offshore financial vehicles and conduits, middlemen and brokers, and destination financial institutions. We examine how these actors operate in Central Asia, a region that is widely identified as corrupt, yet is rarely understood as embedded in the types of global processes, offshore connections and transnational links specified in our analysis. Examples of offshore centers in tax planning from Central Asia, and partial results from a field experiment based on impersonating high corruption risks from four Central Asian states, provide evidence for how the various actors in transnational financial networks structure their dealings. We then present two brief illustrative cases of how these transnational networks have operated in energy explorations services in Kazakhstan and telecommunications contracts in Uzbekistan. Our findings have theoretical, practical, and normative implications for scholars and practitioners of Central Asian international political economy and other ‘high risk' regions.