Les dockers dakarois. L’organisation du travail dans un port ouest-africain, 1910–1990s

This paper deals with the long-term evolution of dock labor in Dakar. Through the utilization of archival sources and their analysis, this investigation explores the changes that occurred in this sector and primarily the reform plan developed during the world wars but that was never introduced into the labor regulations, mainly due to the colonial regime. In addition, this paper studies the legal changes since the 1970s when the dockers’ statute was settled. Furthermore, this research uses oral testimony from retired Senegalese dockers to study the way these workers observed these structural changes. It is the first time that this topic has been explored for the port of Dakar from a historical long-term perspective.     

Jimmy Carter and the Sale of the AWACS to Iran in 1977

It appeared that as 1977 dawned, the political climate in the United States might render multi-billion dollar arms sales into unstable regions a thing of the past. Jimmy Carter triumphed in the presidential election of November 1976 on a popular platform of arms control and the introduction of human rights considerations into American foreign policy. His transition from that idealistic candidate to the president who agreed to sell Iran a fleet of highly advanced AWACS aircraft, as part of a record breaking $5.7 billion arms package, is therefore outwardly confusing. Yet, when examining the entrenched policy path that Carter inherited regarding arming Iran, and the larger needs of Cold War containment, the logic of Carter’s decisions essentially to betray his own policies in this case becomes clear.     

Buyer Beware: How Market Structure Affects Contracting and Company Performance in the Private Military Industry

Private military and security companies are integral components of the defense and intelligence operations of some of the world's most powerful states. Despite the increasingly pivotal role of contractors, analysts have yet to develop theories explaining when governments should outsource national security responsibilities or what conditions cause private defense markets to function efficiently. This inquiry addresses this gap in the literature by demonstrating that varying market structures—that is, the quantity of firms providing similar services and the number and purchasing power of those buying these services—have significant effects on costs, oversight, and company performance in the private defense industry. A principal–agent framework is developed to explain variation in the performance of firms in different markets across the industry. Evaluation of three private defense markets yields the surprising conclusion that monopsony, rather than a competitive market, is the ideal structure for governments outsourcing aspects of national defense.     

Public Perceptions of Income Inequality in Hong Kong: trends,causes and implications

This article examines the patterns and changes in public perceptions of domestic income inequality in Hong Kong in the past two decades and explains individual variations in these perceptions. It found that the perceived seriousness of income disparities had been persistently high, while the perceived unjustness of income disparities showed a fluctuating trend. Our findings lent partial support to the structural position thesis that the privileged groups are less likely than the underprivileged groups to consider existing income disparities to be serious and unjust. Nonetheless, the popular understanding of poverty is still biased towards ‘individual’ explanations, and this perhaps explains why the government is less willing to tackle the economic and political foundations of poverty in Hong Kong.     

The Capitalocene Part II: accumulation by appropriation and the centrality of unpaid work/energy

This essay – Part II – reconceptualizes the past five centuries as the Capitalocene, the ‘age of capital’. The essay advances two interconnected arguments. First, the exploitation of labor-power depends on a more expansive process: the appropriation of unpaid work/energy delivered by ‘women, nature, and colonies’ (Mies). Second, accumulation by appropriation turns on the capacity of state–capital–science complexes to make nature legible. If the substance of abstract social labor is time, the substance of abstract social nature is space. While managerial procedures within commodity production aim to maximize productivity per quantum of labor-time, the geo-managerial capacities of states and empires identify and seek to maximize unpaid work/energy per ‘unit’ of abstract nature. Historically, successive state–capital–science complexes co-produce Cheap Natures that are located, or reproduce themselves, largely outside the cash nexus. Geo-managerialism’s preliminary forms emerged rapidly during the rise of capitalism. Its chief historical expressions comprise those processes through which capitalists and state-machineries map, identify, quantify and otherwise make natures legible to capital. A radical politics of sustainability must recognize – and seek to mobilize through – a tripartite division of work under capitalism: labor-power, unpaid human work and the work of nature as a whole.     

Concentration-time profiles of ethanol in capillary blood after ingestion of beer.

Blood ethanol profiles were determined in experiments with healthy volunteers after they had drunk beer. When 330 ml of light beer (1.8% w/v ethanol) was consumed in 5 min by four men and four women, the average peak blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) reached was 8 mg/100 ml (range 2-11). After nine men had drunk 660 ml of beer (3.0% w/v or 3.6% w/v ethanol) in 25 minutes on an empty stomach, the average peak BAC was 32 mg/100 ml (range 26-44) and 37 mg/100 ml (range 23-54) respectively. When the same two beers were consumed by another nine men together with a meal, the peak BAC was 24 mg/100 ml (range 20-29) and 28 mg/100 ml (range 20-39) respectively. The peak BAC occurred earlier when beer was ingested together with food; mean 32 min (range 30-50) compared with 41 min (range 30-70) with an empty stomach. The rate of disappearance of alcohol from blood (beta-slope) was 12 mg/100 ml/h in the fed state and 15 mg/100 ml/h when subjects were fasted. The apparent volume of distribution of ethanol (Vd) was 0.65 l/kg (SD 0.07) for the empty stomach condition but exceeded unity when beer was ingested together with food. It seems that part of the dose of alcohol when consumed with food never reaches the systemic circulation.