Mapping fears: the use of commercial high-resolution satellite imagery in international affairs

In October and November 2001, the Pentagon purchased the rights to all images of Afghanistan taken by the Ikonos remote sensing satellite, a high-resolution satellite owned and operated by Space Imaging, Inc. Ikonos is one of a growing number of privately owned and operated remote sensing satellites. It is suggested that Ikonos and other high-resolution satellites carry at least two challenges to national security policy makers. The first is a challenge to operational security – the ability to plan, prepare and carry out military operations in a controlled information environment. Second, commercial remote sensing presents a political challenge to policy makers. Policy makers today face a greater challenge in their efforts to maintain control over the content of debate concerning national and international security priorities and objectives. It is argued here that the nature of the security policy debate itself is in the midst of a fundamental shift in tone and quality as a result of remote sensing satellite technology. It was principally this latter challenge – and not a concern over operational security – that led to the Pentagon's purchase of all Ikonos images during the opening phases of the war in Afganistan.     

Does Child Undernutrition Persist Despite Poverty Reduction in Developing Countries? Quantile Regression Results

The eradication of child undernutrition and extreme poverty are important objectives for most societies. Countries with higher national incomes usually improve in both dimensions, but not always at the same rate. Using quantile regression, we show that poverty rates tend to decline with increased income at a roughly constant elasticity. In contrast, while the prevalence of child wasting declines at that same elasticity where it is most widespread, the elasticity becomes smaller as wasting becomes less prevalent. This finding suggests a greater need for increasingly targeted interventions to achieve a given reduction in undernutrition as its prevalence declines.     

Attention to Counter-Attitudinal Messages in a State Election Campaign

Research following the "selective exposure" model has focused on avoidance of political messages with which a person might disagree. But positive attention to such "counter-attitudinal" messages is worthy of study, in part because normative theories of democracy value exposure to information that might disturb citizens' political predispositions. Surveys of youth (N = 417) and parents (N = 430) examine attention to newspaper, television, and Web messages about candidates. While there is somewhat more attention to messages about and for a person's favored political candidate or party, forms of political involvement (knowledge, curiosity, and discussion) that predict this "attitude-consistent" attention also predict counter-attitudinal attention at least as strongly. Parents' education and students' exposure to civics lessons also predict both kinds of attention. These results suggest that attention to counterattitudinal political messages is worthy of further study as an important goal of political socialization and a criterion of citizen performance in democracy.     

Soviet propaganda and the neutron bomb decision

Abstract

In July 1977, newly elected President Jimmy Carter suddenly found himself confronted with a difficult neutron bomb decision. With a narrow victory in Congress, pro neutron‐bomb forces had successfully presented the President with the authority to proceed with production. Unfortunately, as the months passed, Carter failed to move swiftly with production of the neutron warheads which many NATO alliance members saw as a much needed deterrent to the Warsaw PACT'S massive armor superiority.

Confronted with mounting international and domestic opposition to the neutron weapon, Jimmy Carter, in the fall of 1977, insisted that the NATO allies officially support American production of the warheads before the United States would produce it. Spurred on by Carter's indecision and by certain NATO members’ reluctance to officially support the weapon, the Soviet Union shifted its propaganda machine into high gear in a massive effort to sway international opinion against the weapon.

During the first few months of 1978, Western Europe saw a flood of protests against this so‐called “inhumane” weapon. Domestic communist and left‐wing socialist opposition to the neutron bomb precipitated a precarious right‐left split within many Western European socialist parties. Nowhere was this split more graphically illustrated than within the ruling West German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and his moderate technocrats basically favored the neutron bomb, but feared crippling left‐wing SPD opposition and possible defections if West Germany complied with American demands to break with over 30 years of U.S.‐West German nuclear precedent and agree officially to American production of a nuclear weapon, the neutron bomb.

Only after much American cajoling did the allies move toward official NATO support for production. Carter had failed to understand the disastrous political implications which left‐wing opposition had created within the NATO countries and refused to let Schmidt and other leaders off the hook. And then in an amazing move, after Schmidt and the NATO allies had risked political ruin to reach an agreement to support the neutron bomb, President Carter pulled the rug from under them on April 7,1978, when he indefinitely delayed a decision on the weapon.

With this decision, Carter had set a dangerous precedent by yielding to Soviet pressure and had missed an opportunity to win the favor of skeptical NATO allies and critics who asserted he was too weak and indecisive. But above all, Carter had unnecessarily alienated and angered NATO leaders like Schmidt who risked possible political ruin by supporting the neutron bomb.     

A Molecular Key for the Identification of Blow Flies in Southeastern Nebraska*

Abstract: Immature blow flies (Calliphoridae) are typically the first colonizers of cadavers. Identification of the early instars using traditional, morphology‐based keys is difficult because of their small size, similarity, and simplicity in external morphology. Information derived from molecular genetic data would augment the accurate identification of immature flies. Nine species of blow flies commonly found in southeastern Nebraska were used to examine the utility of molecular‐based keys. Polymerase chain reaction–restriction fragment length polymorphisms (PCR–RFLP) were investigated with 10 common, inexpensive, restriction enzymes from an amplicon of approximately 1500 bp spanning the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I gene. A simple molecular taxonomic key, comprising RFLP from the restriction enzymes HinfI and DraI, enabled the differentiation of all species used. Further development of PCR–RFLP, including more extensive and intensive examination of blow flies, would benefit forensic laboratories in the accurate identification of evidence consisting of immature blow flies.     

Product counterfeiting and the media: examining news sources used in the construction of product counterfeiting as a social problem

Product counterfeiting has received increased attention due to its economic and public health impact. Media framing of product counterfeiting shapes how the public and policymakers understand the problem. While there is a large body of literature examining crime and the media generally, empirical studies have yet to focus on the media construction of product counterfeiting. This study presents the results of a content analysis using a random sample of newspaper articles referencing product counterfeiting in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal from 2000 to 2009. Articles were coded for common patterns in sources of information. While the results indicate the presence of a wide variety of themes, product types, and industries, government and business sources are overrepresented among the sources cited, leading to some level of consistency in the presentation of the impact of and appropriate responses to product counterfeiting. Implications for understanding how the public and policymakers understand product counterfeiting are discussed.     

Schools with a Difference: Policy Discourses and Education Reform in Britain and Germany

Throughout the 1990s, corruption cases, policy failure and scandals tarnished Belgium's international reputation. In this article, we analyse the effect of federalism and political culture on corruption and policy failures and their impact on the likelihood of such occurrences becoming scandals. Survey material suggests that there are few differences between French- and Dutch-speakers in the perception and tolerance of corruption. We then list a number of variables that can explain corruption in Belgium and argue that the independent effect of federalism is very limited. Next we demonstrate that federalism has played a much more significant role in lowering the risk of policy failure, while at the same time creating a few new vulnerabilities. Finally, we argue that the regional political elites do not often engage in policy learning and frequently put forward federalism as the main solution to the avoidance of policy failure and scandal. In this sense, regional political elites do not seize the opportunity for policy experimentation and transfer that is generally seen as one of the main virtues of a federal system of government.     

At the limits of spatial governmentality: A message from the tip of Africa

Urban studies scholars drawing on Foucault's analysis of governmentality have investigated how urban social orders are increasingly more concerned with the management of space rather than on the discipline of offenders or the punishment of offences (Merry, 2001). This paper examines the 'rationality' and efficacy of spatial governmentality in post-apartheid Cape Town, and shows how the city has increasingly become a 'fortress city' (Davis, 1990), much like cities such as Los Angeles, Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro. These 'global cities' are increasingly characterised by privatised security systems in middle class suburbs, shopping malls and gated communities (Caldeira, 1999). These spatial forms of governmentality draw on sophisticated security systems comprising razor wire and electrified walls, burglar alarms and safe rooms, as well as vicious guard dogs, neighbourhood watches, private security companies, and automated surveillance cameras. On the other side of the race and class divide are urban ghettoes characterised by growing poverty and everyday violence. These socio-spatial inequalities continue to be reproduced despite urban planning initiatives aimed at desegregating the apartheid city. Although the media and the middle classes highlight the dangers of crime and violence, they tend to ignore the structures of inequality that fuel the growth of crime syndicates and violent drug economies that are reproducing these urban governance crises. Given the diminished resources of the neo-liberal state, the policing of middle class residential and business districts is increasingly being 'outsourced' to private security companies. In working class neighbourhoods of Cape Town such as Manenberg, the state has attempted to re-establish governance by resorting to new forms of spatial governmentality. The paper draws attention to the limits of these attempts to assert state control through the management of space. Spatial governance in places like Manenberg will continue to be relatively ineffectual given existing levels of social inequality and racial polarization. Such processes are reproduced by massive unemployment and racialised poverty resulting from socio-spatial legacies of apartheid and Cape Town's shift from a manufacturing to a tourist, IT and financial services economy. Although this paper focuses on attempts at re-establishing governance in a crime and gangster-ridden working class neighbourhood of Cape Town, it addresses these issues in relation to city-wide shifts to new forms of spatial governmentality after apartheid.