THE CIA'S SECRET POWERS

The secret powers conferred by the National Security Act of 1947 have been used over the years to train, arms, and develop the terrorist enemies, such as al-Qaida, that are now the chief justification for those powers in the public mind. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, CIA programs have shifted power from moderate to Islamist Muslim groups, contributed to vastly increased heroin production in the area, and helped consolidate the ISI as Pakistan's drug-financed intelligence agency a “state within a state” that has promoted both al-Qaida and terrorism in other areas such as Kashmir. The secret powers, by preventing rational discussion, have spawned disastrous policy decisions that even the CIA itself has opposed, notably the decision to supply Stingers to the Afghan rebels. The most conspicuous deep political consequence of these policies in Pakistan and Afghanistan has been the indirect training and arming of cadres who eventually participated in the specific events of 9/11: the culmination of a series of terrorist attacks against the territorial United States for which the CIA itself had already, in 1998, secretly admitted partial responsibility. This responsibility is reflected in the present inability of the U.S. government and media to report honestly on what actually happened in the 9/11 attacks.     

Sentencing commissions: Lessons for future reformers

1978–1982, Director, Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission, St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.A.; B.A., University of Oklahoma 1964; M.A., University of Oklahoma 1966.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Cultural Criminology: An Invitation</Emphasis>… to What?

Since the mid 1990s, a strand of criminology emerged that is concerned with the co-constitution of crime and culture under the general rubric of ‘cultural criminology’. In the titles Cultural Criminology Unleashed and Cultural Criminology: An Invitation, criminologists spearheading this brand of criminology make claims for its originality and its status as a subversive alternative to conventional criminological approaches to studies of crime and deviance. The basis for the ‘new’ cultural criminology is its ostensible ability to account for the culture and subcultures of crime, the criminalization of cultural and subcultural activities, and the politics of criminalization. This paper offers a comparison of cultural criminology to 1960s and 1970s labeling theory to assess whether or not cultural criminology has developed a grammar of critique capable of resolving fundamental contradictions that haunt critical criminology and contesting contemporary administrative criminology. Points of comparison are made through ontological categories of power and criminal identity and a consideration of the epistemological categories of the respective bodies of literature.     

Solution or Smokescreen? Evaluating Industry Self-Regulation of Televised Food Marketing to Children

It is well established that children's exposure to television advertising for unhealthy food products contributes to the epidemic of childhood obesity. Given this finding, public health officials recommended that the government restrict unhealthy food marketing to children if the industry does not accomplish that goal voluntarily. Food marketers responded by adopting industry self-regulation several years ago, but this study finds that it has produced only marginal improvements in the overall nutritional quality of foods advertised to youth. Unless federal policy-makers intervene, it appears that unhealthy food marketing to children will continue to contribute to childhood obesity in the future.     

American National Security and the Death of Space Sanctuary

At the beginning of the space age, the United States relied upon the general acceptance of a sanctuary narrative of outer space in order to help support its reconnaissance activities over the Soviet Union. The notion that space could be a sanctuary thus served as a diplomatic tactic, one designed to thwart Soviet opposition to American overflight. While the Soviets eventually achieved parity—having later acquired the ability to surveil the United States—the notion of sanctuary became untenable once the Soviet Union began to further leverage space power for the aim of attacking American satellites and naval assets. The crucial moment, as revealed in recently declassified documents, occurred in 1976 when the Ford Administration recognized the need for an American anti-satellite capability. Subsequently, while the Carter Administration appeared to pursue comprehensive space arms control, what was really in play was a gambit, one designed to eliminate the Soviet’s co-orbital anti-satellite capability and maintain strategic parity in space.     

Exposing the conditions of precarity: compounding victimization and marginalized young people

Events of victimization that upend young lives and expose them to conditions of precarity are examined. Drawing on Judith Butler’s recent reflections on precarity, this article contributes to the extant critical victimology literature by linking precarity to selfhood and narrative. Narrative analysis is used to analyze two young people – Beatrice and Randall – who experienced sexual victimization and a number of subsequent victimizations at the hands of corporate and state organizations. To account for these subsequent persecutions, the concept of compounding victimization to expose the link between successive victimization that intensifies the experience of precarity.