‘Huna Baghdad’: competing visions in television programming in Monarchic Iraq1

ABSTRACT

This article examines the formative years of the first television station in the Middle East and the Arab World: Baghdad Television. The Hashemite Monarchy recognized television’s potential as an effective tool of reconciliation with an increasingly disenchanted population and a means for homogenization and knowledge production. However, the professionals responsible for maintaining television came from social and economic backgrounds that suffered under or did not benefit directly from the Hashemites and their stakeholders. This specialized cadre opposed the undemocratic features of the government as evidenced in the content they created, produced, directed, or performed on Baghdad Television. Television specialists had their own vision of what the future of Iraq should look like. Their expectations manifested in a sociocultural attunement process facilitated through television wherein aired content, explicitly or tacitly, contradicted government messages and highlighted deeply rooted economic, political, and social problems in Iraq. This article relies on archival research, statistical reports, interviews, memoirs, televised performances, news segments, radio broadcasts, and newspapers to trace the history of Baghdad Television during Monarchic Iraq.     

The 2000-2001 GEP-ISFG Collaborative Exercise on mtDNA: assessing the cause of unsuccessful mtDNA PCR amplification of hair shaft samples

We report the results of Spanish and Portuguese working group (GEP) of International Society of Forensic Genetics (ISFG) Collaborative Exercise 2001-2002 on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis. 64 laboratories from Spain, Portugal and several Latin-American countries participated in this quality control exercise. Five samples were sent to the participating laboratories, four blood stains (M1-M4) and a sample (M5) consisting of two hair shaft fragments. M4 was non-human (Felis catus) in origin; therefore, the capacity of the labs to identify the biological source of this sample was an integral part of the exercise. Some labs detected the non-human origin of M4 by carrying out immuno-diffussion techniques using antihuman serum, whereas others identified the specific animal origin by testing the sample against a set of animal antibodies or by means of the analysis of mtDNA regions (Cyt-b, 12S, and 16S genes). The results of the other three human blood stains (M1-M3) improved in relation to the last Collaborative Exercises but those related to hairs yielded a low rate of success which clearly contrasts with previous results. As a consequence of this, some labs performed additional analysis showing that the origin of this low efficiency was not the presence of inhibitors, but the low quantity of DNA present in these specific hair samples and the degradation.As a general conclusion the results emphasize the need of external proficiency testing as part of the accreditation procedure for the labs performing mtDNA analysis in forensic casework.     

Responsive Government? Public Opinion and Government Policy Preferences in Britain and Denmark

The ability of a political system to respond to the preferences of its citizens is central to democratic theory and practice; yet most empirical research on government responsiveness has concentrated on the United States. As a result, we know very little about the nature of government policy responsiveness in Europe and we have a poor understanding of the conditions that affect cross-national variations. This comparative study examines the relationship between public opinion and policy preferences in the United Kingdom and Denmark during the past three decades. We address two key questions: First, are the government's policy intentions driven by public opinion or vice versa? Second, do political institutions influence the level of government responsiveness? We suggest that public opinion tends to drive the government's policy intentions due to the threat of electoral sanction, and that this is more pronounced in proportional systems than in majoritarian democracies.     

“State ineffectiveness in deterring organized crime style homicide in Mexico: a vicious cycle”

Institutional weaknesses in the criminal justice system (limited court capacity and the increasingly sophisticated armament of splintering drug trafficking organizations) limit the effectivity of Mexican states to deter organized crime style homicide. Court capacity, expressed by increasing sentencing rates in states where the oral court system was institutionalized, remains insufficient against the post-2006 organized crime related homicide epidemic. The illegal arms market, combined with long-standing deficits in firepower between organized crime and municipal police forces, limit the state’s capacity to alter the arms balance toward policing forces. Taken together, limited court capacity and the tactical imbalance of weapons held by drug trafficking organizations create a vicious cycle which continually perpetuates state ineffectiveness to deter and punish organized crime style homicide.

     

Institutional trustworthiness and national security governance: Evidence from six European countries

This article examines the relationship between the institutional trustworthiness of security agencies in the context of data‐intensive security practices. It focuses on the public's acceptance of the way digital surveillance technologies feed into large‐scale security data analytics. Using the case of deep packet inspection (DPI), survey data gathered in six European countries (n = 1,202) demonstrates that security agencies' institutional trustworthiness directly and indirectly influences public acceptance of DPI. Against a backdrop of declining public trust in government and a climate of intense international terrorist threat, governments around the world are appealing to citizens to trade privacy for enhanced security. This article supports calls for security agencies and their respective governments to engage with the democratic process to enrich security and privacy at all levels of public security governance and for the common good.