Counter-Terrorism,Information Technology and Intelligence Change

Since 11 September 2001 Counter-Terrorism has been Intelligence's super-priority. It puts a special emphasis on the potential of advanced Information Technology for integrating different databases in different organizations. The problems of applying it fully are organizational and cultural, not technical. They should be met through emphasizing the unity of modern intelligence power, and through personnel policies across separate agencies designed to develop this holistic view. Central authority and leadership will be needed for these purposes.     

Imperialism and dependence

Abstract

“Indonesia [is] endowed … with what is probably the most strategically authoritative geographic location on earth …” So wrote Lawrence Griswold in Sea Power, the official journal of the Navy League of the United States in 1973. A nation so located, and with 130 million people, some of the world's richest deposits of oil, tin, bauxite, rubber, forestry reserves, and many other natural resources, is surely a place of major concern to the imperialist powers at a time when their empires are so rapidly shrinking. Particularly for the U.S. since the victory of the Vietnamese revolution, the vast resources and critical location at the juncture of the Pacific and Indian Oceans have likely made Indonesia, along with Iran and Brazil, a major lynchpin “of a new pro-U.S. constellation of power in the Third World.” There was no slip of the tongue when Richard M. Nixon referred to Indonesia as the “greatest prize in the Southeast Asian area.” Earlier some commentators had suggested plausibly that the massive American war effort in Vietnam after 1965 was linked intimately with the successful right-wing military takeover in October of that year in Indonesia, a takeover followed by one of the largest massacres in modern times and the establishment of a military dictatorship which has ruled the country for more than 11 years. During those years, the natural resources and large potential supply of cheap labor have motivated several multinational corporations to invest in Indonesia, and the profits from their operations have flowed to Japan, West Germany, and the U.S.     

Psychometric validation of the Brief Symptom Inventory 25 Forensic (BSI-25-F)

The Brief Symptom Inventory 25 Forensic (BSI-25-F) is a screening instrument for measuring the psychophysical distress of prisoners and forensic patients. The aim of the study was to validate the instrument. For this purpose, 165 forensic patients, 312 general psychiatric patients, and 1359 people from the general population completed the BSI-25-F. In addition, the data of the long-term prisoners who were studied when the instrument was originally developed were used for comparison. The item analyses revealed acceptable to very good item characteristics within the target samples of the prisoners and the forensic patients for the majority of the items. Reliability tests also showed acceptable to good values for the target samples. The differential validity but not the factorial validity could be proved. To conclude, the new BSI-25-F represents an economic, practicable, and reliable screening instrument for identifying prisoners who are in a need of treatment.     

Social Justice Beliefs Regarding Old-Age Provisions in Germany: A Latent Profile Analysis

Examining personal beliefs about social justice in the way a society provides financial security in old age may reveal potential conflicts about the distribution of wealth. Individuals differ with regard to how they believe old-age provisions should be distributed (e.g., based on principles of merit or self-reliance), and individuals often endorse more than one belief at the same time. Using latent profile analysis and data from the 2014 German Ageing Survey we identify five separate profiles of social justice beliefs among older adults (40–85 years) in Germany. Belief profiles were based on the extent to which people simultaneously endorse and/or reject meritocratic, redistributive, self-reliant, and fatalistic ideas regarding old-age provisions. Almost 20% of the sample demonstrated a belief system in line with the German meritocratic system. Roughly three-fifth did not show strong preferences for a specific social justice principle. However, we identified two belief profiles representing 22.4% of the sample which may reflect dissent from the current system. Sociodemographic characteristics, political identification, and indicators of social disadvantage (e.g., lower income, fears of decline in social status, and feelings of social exclusion) were differentially associated with the five belief profiles. Overall, the results showed that in particular people of lower socioeconomic status were critical with respect to the principles of the German pension system raising questions regarding the demand of political interventions.     

Structure and Process in Federal and Consociational Arrangements

Daniel J. Elazar uses the concepts of structure and processto distinguish between federal and consociational arrangements.While the distinction is appropriate and useful, it does havelimitations, and in some respects may be slightly misleading.It is argued here that under certain circumstances, politicalstructures can play an important role in defining or promotingcon-sociational arrangements, even if such structures were originallythe result of social forces. An additional point made is thatin both federations and consociations, the relationship betweenstructure and process is essentially reciprocal. It is suggestedthat more attention be paid to the differences in the kindsof structures found in the two forms of governance and, in turn,how they might be linked to differences in process. At thisstage, it appears that consociations are much more confederalin form, which has certain consequences for the manner in whichconflict is both structured and resolved.