The role of journalists’ questions in campaign forums

This article examines the role of journalists’ questions in campaign agenda‐setting, through an analysis of questions and answers from the 1984 campaign forums. The intention is to identify more fully the conditions and techniques in operation as the agenda is being composed and to illuminate ways in which questioners and candidates vie for dominance.

While the audience may see panel members as uninhibited inquisitors, the setting and context of forums circumscribe panelists’ actions and exert a moderating effect. Panel members are screened and can be vetoed by candidates, and they are bound by demands of television, concerned about embarrassment, reluctant to antagonize candidates, and influenced by the existing campaign agenda. They have influence in introducing topics and guiding discussion, but their questions can be disarmed or neutralized by an array of devices. To the extent that the forums contribute to the public agenda, the power to shape the contribution rests primarily with candidates and secondarily with questioners.     

Old and very old adults as witnesses: event memory and metamemory

Older people constitute an important category of eyewitnesses. Episodic memory performance in older persons is poorer than in younger adults, but little research has been made on older persons’ metacognitive judgments. Since more persons of advanced age will likely be called upon as witnesses in coming years, it is critical to characterize this population’s metacognitive abilities. We compared event memory metacognition in old adults (66-year-old, n = 74) to very old adults (87 or 90 years old, n = 55). Participants were tested on their memory of a film, using questions with two answer alternatives and the confidence in their answer. As expected, the very old group had a lower accuracy rate than the old group (d = 0.59). The very old group, however, monitored this impairment, since their over-/underconfidence and calibration did not differ from the old group but they displayed a poorer ability to separate correct from incorrect answers (discrimination ability). Possibly, the very old group was able to monitor the level of their over-/underconfidence because they applied general self-knowledge about their memory skills. In contrast, the discrimination of correct from incorrect answers may be more dependent on ability to attend to the features of each retrieved memory.     

Introducing Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT)

Abstract

We introduce the latest member of the intelligence family. Joining IMINT, HUMINT, SIGINT and others is ‘SOCMINT’ – social media intelligence. In an age of ubiquitous social media it is the responsibility of the security community to admit SOCMINT into the national intelligence framework, but only when two important tests are passed. First, that it rests on solid methodological bedrock of collection, evidence, verification, understanding and application. Second, that the moral hazard it entails can be legitimately managed. This article offers a framework for how this can be done.     

US grand strategy and its contradictions

US global expansion at the beginning of the 21st century is far more ambitious than anything pursued or imagined by previous imperial powers. American elites are presently seeking to reshape the world geopolitical terrain, with hundreds of military bases in more than 120 countries added to hundreds more installations across its own territory. This new militarism is rooted in a new imperialism, part of a grand strategy that aspires to nothing short of world domination—the project of neoconservatives that received new life with the Bush presidency and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It involves far‐reaching changes in the US armed forces, including high‐tech innovations, weaponization of space, new global flexibility, overall growth of the war economy, a bolstering of Empire through economic globalization, military interventions in the Middle East and beyond. As in the past, Empire cannot long survive without mass belief‐systems such as nationalism, religion, and political ideologies that can justify burdensome adventures and deflect public attention away from the terrible costs of war. In this context an urgent question for the fate of the planet is whether US ruling elites can for long sustain their drive toward global domination where the preferred mode of rule is military force and political coercion. It is argued here that the contradictions of US grand strategy are bound to intensify over time, leading to more social polarization, ecological crisis, blowback, and various forms of local and national resistance to Empire. These contradictions can be expected to sharpen both domestically and globally.     

Hollywood and the Spectacle of Terrorism

As terrorist actions, both state and non-state, have spread in both frequency and destructive power since the 1960s, the topic has become an enduring source of narratives, fantasies, and myths that have contributed to Hollywood filmmaking with its familiar emphasis on international intrigue, exotic settings, graphic violence, and the demonization of foreign threats. Images of political violence have a strong appeal in the US, where the gun culture, civic violence, crime sprees, and a thriving war economy permeate the landscape. The al Qaeda attacks of 9/11 heightened public fascination with terrorism, fueled by mounting fear and paranoia, and this was destined to inspire a new cycle of films in which on-screen terrorism dramatizes elements of real-life threats that now include possible weapons of mass destruction. The “war on terror,” driven as much by US strategy to reconfigure the Middle East as by the events of 9/11, serves as the perfect backdrop for film industry productions of violent high-tech spectacles, now a major staple of media culture. For cinema as for politics, the “Middle East” now exists as a mystical category largely outside of time and space, a ready source of dark fears and threats. At the same time, corporate-driven globalization, viewed as a cultural as well as economic and political process, feeds into modern terrorism as political violence (including militarism) sharpens its capacity to attack, disrupt, and surprise—the same features now so integral to the Hollywood film industry. We see jihadic terrorism as not only a virulent form of blowback against US imperial power but as possibly the darkest side of neo-liberal globalization.     

Book review

Civil liberties, repression and the law

Richard Polenberg: Fighting Faiths: The Abrams Case, the Supreme Court, and Free Speech (New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1987.)

Richard O. Curry, ed., Freedom at Risk: Secrecy, Censorship and Repression in the 1980's. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988.)     

Reflections on Politics and Academia: An Interview with Michael Parenti

Michael Parenti, the author of more than twenty books on a wide variety of topics, has taught political science and social science at several universities. He is a founder of the Caucus for a New Political Science. In recent years he has been devoted to writing and public speaking, lecturing across the United States, Canada, and elsewhere. He received his PhD in political science from Yale University. He currently lives in Berkeley, California. The following interview was conducted in early February 2012.1 ¹ Michael Parenti would like to thank Carl Boggs for his efforts in putting this interview together. He considers it a privilege to be interviewed by someone of Carl's caliber.      

The Portland region: Where city and suburbs talk to each other—and often agree

Abstract

Portland, OR, is often cited as an example of successful regional governance and planning. The metropolitan area appears to match many of the precepts of the popular “compact city” model of urban growth and to demonstrate the capacity of local and state government to shape growing metropolitan regions. Given this reputation, it is important to evaluate the relevance of the Portland experience for other communities, distinguishing unique local circumstances from generalizable characteristics.

This analysis explores the spatial character of metropolitan Portland in the 1990s, summarizes the politics of regional planning, examines weaknesses in the Portland approach, and offers suggestions for other metropolitan areas. The study finds that many of Portland's accomplishments center on urban design, but that the region's most distinguishing characteristic is its attention to political process. The discussion concludes with suggestions about the value of extensive civic discourse, incremental policy making, and institution building.     

Defence lawyers and probation officers: offenders' allies or adversaries?

The shift in recent decades towards an explicitly punitive agenda for criminal justice in Western jurisdictions has been well-documented in the criminological literature. People accused of offences and convicted offenders progress through a punitive criminal justice system replete with crime control values. Furthermore, in criminal justice policy development, the notion of victims' rights and the quest to rebalance the system in favour of victims now override concerns about rights. In the light of this state of affairs, it seems necessary to assess the role of practitioners within the criminal justice system who, by virtue of their professional mandates, can be expected to act as much needed allies for defendants as they progress through the system. These practitioners are defence lawyers and probation officers. Insufficient attention has been paid to the role of both and they have not previously been considered as two parts of a greater whole despite their obviously complimentary nature. In an effort to address this gap in knowledge, this article draws on two different studies to offer an exploratory discussion of how both practitioners interact with their clients and whether or not the practitioners can be viewed as effective allies of those implicated with the criminal process.