Security Implications of Japan's Information Gathering Satellite (IGS) System

Countries which previously limited their space activity to civilian purposes have increasingly come to employ dual-use technology as a first step into the world of military space. Japan's Information Gathering Satellite (IGS) system, intended to support disaster relief situations, and provide information for diplomatic and defense policy decision-making, is exemplary of this trend. Not coincidentally, the program was approved shortly after the 31 August 1998 North Korean launch of a Taepo Dong missile that sailed over Japan. While the program had been unsuccessfully proposed previously, Japanese politicians, surprised by the launch, became amenable to the point of perhaps rushing their decision. This article suggests that what capabilities these satellites render appear to Japanese policy makers to be a secondary concern to the initiation of an autonomous intelligence capability.     

The spectre of Haiti: structural antiblackness,the far-right backlash and the fear of a black majority in Brazil

Abstract

This article situates the far-right backlash in Brazil within the larger Latin American context, including its colonial legacy, leftist governments’ failure to deliver promises of inclusion, and the US–China geopolitical dispute over the region’s strategic natural resources. By situating Bolsonaro’s electoral victory within these dynamics, our analysis presents an alternative to two common perspectives. First, studies of the region’s political moment and of Brazilian society in particular do not pay enough attention to institutional and everyday racism, and instead focus mostly on comparative analysis of governmental policies and social class dynamics. Second, critical perspectives that take into account racial inequalities are often not attuned to structural dynamics of gendered antiblackness, and instead present racism as a broad set of practices that negatively affect non-white people in related manners. Our context-specific analysis of the electoral reemergence of the far right in Brazil aims at contributing to an understanding of persistent dynamics of racial inequality within the region as part of a long, enduring and foundational odium of Black people.