Canadian women and the (re)production of women in Afghanistan

Canadian women have been at the forefront of the international movement for women's rights in Afghanistan since the rise of the Taliban in the late 1990s. Focusing on the prominent group Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan (CW4WAfghan), this paper looks at the role its advocacy assumes in the context of the ‘War on Terror’. In Canada, as in the United States, government agencies have justified the military invasion of Afghanistan by revitalizing the oppressed Muslim woman as a medium through which narratives of East versus West are performed. While CW4WAfghan attempts to challenge dominant narratives of Afghan women, it ultimately reinforces the Orientalist logic on which the War on Terror operates. Drawing on Chandra Talpade Mohanty's study of feminist pedagogy, this paper explores the implications of CW4WAfghan's discourse and its dissemination through the Canadian school system. It highlights how CW4WAfghan's portrayal of Canadian values and responsibilities is at odds with feminist efforts to reconceptualize the gendered nature of war and national identity.     

Mind games: cognitive bias,US intelligence and the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia

This article examines the impact of cognitive bias on the analytic output of the United States intelligence community during the Prague Spring. Utilising a range of primary sources, including declassified documents, oral history and contemporary accounts, this article argues that as a result of heuristic biases, analysts formed the mindset that the Soviet Union would not invade Czechoslovakia, and did not alter that assumption in the face of increasing evidence to the contrary. Consequently analysts possessed a distorted understanding of both Soviet intentions and the prevailing political environment and did not accurately convey the likelihood of military action to consumers.     

Subject for discussion: is sexual abuse of a sleeping person possible or fantasy or simulated?

There have been reports of sexual acts on sleeping women since ancient times. Whether this is possible at all has been under controversial discussion by lawyers and lay people. The paper presents two cases of non-consenting penetrating intercourse with sleeping women and various legal and expert opinions. The authors discuss the possible influence of drugs and alcohol.     

Wildlife Crime: The Problems of Enforcement

Environmental and wildlife crime appear recently to be benefitting from an increasing profile amongst those agencies tasked with their control, as well as receiving growing criminological attention. Despite this, those with responsibilities in this area report that it remains marginalised, receiving limited resources and suffering from a lack of political impetus to push such problems higher up the agenda. This is particularly so for those agencies, such as the police, that may be seen to have many more pressing objectives. This discussion paper considers the problems of relying on an enforcement approach to controlling such offences, taking, as an example, those activities that may be termed ‘wildlife crime’, focusing on the situation in England and Wales. Firstly, the legislative framework that criminalises harm or exploitation of wildlife is presented, alongside the main enforcement methods used. Next, the problems facing an enforcement approach are critically considered, the key issues being: under-resourcing and marginalisation, the large ‘dark-figure’ of wildlife crime, the possibility of corruption, the lack of seriousness with which such crimes are viewed, and the lack of deterrent effect. Finally, responses to the problems of enforcement are presented, categorised as either methods to improve enforcement or, as the author advocates, methods which are alternatives to enforcement (such as adopting a crime prevention approach). The paper concludes with suggestions for future research in this field.