The ICC indictment against Al-Bashir and its repercussions for peacekeeping and humanitarian operations in Darfur

The impact of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on peace processes has received much scholarly attention. We argue, based on the ICC arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, that ICC indictments against government officials not only can be detrimental to the prospects for peace, but can also negatively affect everyday practices of peacekeepers and humanitarian workers. We draw on a combination of quantitative and qualitative data in order to develop our argument. We interrogate some measurable consequences of the indictment in relation to the work of the United Nations – African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) as well as humanitarian actors in Darfur. We do so using a data set compiled to support the work of UNAMID. We also draw on interviews with UN and UNAMID staff, aid workers, and representatives of the conflict parties. Our analysis shows that the indictment of President al-Bashir was perceived by the Sudanese government as the continuation of a confrontational approach pursued by the international community. We further show that the indictment accelerated patterns of obstruction and intimidation of peacekeeping actors, other third-party actors, and local staff associated with these. This complicated the everyday activities of peacekeepers and humanitarian efforts.     

‘You do act differently when you're in it’: lingerie and femininity

This paper examines British women's accounts of buying and wearing lingerie taken from in-depth interviews exploring experiences of shopping in sex shops. Lingerie forms one part of a sexual consumer culture that is positioned within a neoliberal discourse of postfeminism. Women's engagement with the representation of lingerie, the way they enact lingerie buying and wearing in their everyday lives and the ways they speak about these practices show complex and often incongruous strategies of accommodation and negotiation. Such strategies can make lingerie pleasurable and liveable whilst at the same time expressing forms of anxiety, ambivalence or laughter directed towards the performance of femininity and feminine sexuality required and represented by lingerie. I contend that it is precisely through this often contradictory engagement with lingerie that strategic counter discourses emerge, by which women can resist some of the respectable norms of female sexuality. Women position themselves in ambivalent ways in relation to the visual imperative of feminine sexuality represented by lingerie, particularly through an embodied discourse of comfort and discomfort, or through the playful and pleasurable performance of non-naturalised gender roles.     

Networks of noncompliance: grassroots resistance and sovereignty in militarised Burma

This paper examines repression and state–society conflict in Burma through the lens of rural and urban resistance strategies. It explores networks of noncompliance through which civilians evade and undermine state control over their lives, showing that the military regime's brutal tactics represent not control, but a lack of control. Outside agencies ignore this state–society struggle over sovereignty at their peril: ignoring the interplay of interventions with local politics and militarisation, and claiming a ‘humanitarian neutrality’ which is impossible in practice, risks undermining the very civilians interventions are supposed to help, while facilitating further state repression. Greater honesty and awareness in interventions is required, combined with greater solidarity with villagers' resistance strategies.     

介导鸭疫里默氏杆菌耐β-内酰胺类药物发生的研究

采用平板二倍稀释法检测了临床分离的54株耐β-内酰胺类药的鸭疫里默氏杆菌(RA)的最低抑菌浓度(MIC值),进一步开展了耐药泵表型检测、β-内酰胺酶表型和基因型检测以及脉冲电泳指纹图谱和耐药泵相关性研究.结果显示,54株RA临床分离株对苯唑西林、青霉素、头孢噻肟和头孢吡肟的耐药率分别为100%、100%、66.7%和98.15%;耐药泵抑制剂氰氯苯腙可使53株RA对β-内酰胺类药物MIC值显著下降(P＜0.01),MIC下降倍数最高达到2048倍,耐药率依次下降为88.89%、46.30%、22.22%和38.89%;54株RA的β-内酰胺酶表型和基因型检测结果均为阴性;54株RA基因组经Sma Ⅰ酶切后以82%相似性系数为界,可分为13个脉冲电泳群,同一群的不同菌株可以认为是同一菌株不同克隆亚体或突变体.Ⅱ群、Ⅲ群、Ⅶ群、Ⅷ群、Ⅺ群和Ⅻ群对头孢吡肟和V群对头孢噻肟的耐药是由耐药泵介导的,而其他群的菌株则出现了其他机制.说明,耐药泵只是介导RA对β-内酰胺类药物耐药的主要因素之一.     

Organising Everyday Resistance: An Ethnographic Study of Rickshaw Drivers in Bogotá

Workers in the informal transport sector are often exposed to multiple forms of workplace violence, for instance by the police and their colleagues. Through a collection of rich ethnographic stories and using the concept of popular resistance, this article investigates how and under what conditions rickshaw drivers in Bogotá resist violence in their workplace. The results reveal that rickshaw associations have been essential in articulating acts of everyday resistance to the legal ban on this activity, such regulating routes, fees and stops. However, associations have created new forms of oppression, being labelled as mafia-like organisations, showing that resistance can also translate into new forms of domination. Contrary to the argument that everyday resistance is uncoordinated, this article shows that acts of everyday resistance can be organised by actors that switch between different individual and collective strategies. Thus, organisations can provide a framework to resist the law on an everyday basis.     

Justice Under Global Capitalism?

Under conditions of polycentric globalisation, a positive concept of justice is definitively impossible. Justice is aimed at removing unjust situations, not creating just ones. The justice of fundamental rights coerces expansive social systems into self-restriction. Human rights in particular take the role of counter-principles to communicative violations of body and soul, a protest against inhumanities of communication, without it ever being possible to say positively what the conditions of humanly just communication might be. The article analyses some consequences of this view for social counter-movements and counter-institutions.

中华和谐精神的形成原因、特征及在抗日民族解放战争中的作用

和谐是中华民族民族精神和文化传统的核心内容,对中国的历史发展起了重要的作用。抗日民族解放战争的胜利是中华民族团结抗战、一致对外的和谐精神的胜利,从逼蒋抗日到淞沪和福建抗战、察哈尔抗战、桂林抗战文化城的形成,充分体现了和谐团结在抗战中的作用。抗战胜利的历史经验对今天构建社会主义和谐社会提供了诸多启迪。     

Extending the Reach of Human Rights to Encompass Victims of Rape: M.C. V. Bulgaria

This note analyses a recent case of the European Court of Justice in which the applicant, a 14-year old rape victim, alleged that Bulgarian criminal law violated her rights under Articles 3 and 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights in pursuing a practice of only prosecuting rape where there was evidence of the use of physical force and active resistance. In upholding the applicant’s claims, the Court re-affirmed the positive obligation on states to adopt measures to ensure that fundamental rights under the Convention were secured. In particular, in the case of rape, this required the enactment and application of criminal laws effectively prescribing all acts of non-consensual sex and not just those involving physical violence. In this way the Court affirmed not only that rape was, in essence, a violation of personal sexual autonomy but also that legal systems which failed adequately to protect against all forms of rape risked operating in breach of Convention obligations.Application no. 39272/98, 4 December 2003.     

朱德与太行精神的孕育和发扬

朱德同志在革命战争年代,曾率领八路军总部和三师主力,转战山西并指挥华北战役,和山西解放区军民共同度过了长达两年零七个月的峥嵘岁月。为太行精神的孕育和发扬做出了巨大的贡献,主要体现在朱德指挥华北抗战坚韧不拔的精神是太行精神的最初孕育、朱德指挥八路军与华北人民血肉相连的团结精神是太行精神的重要内容、朱德与华北军民顾全抗日大局的奋斗精神是太行精神的拓展发扬三个方面。     

Paraíso terrenal, mujeres bellas, gente cordial: Gender Performances and Narratives of Modernity in La Sierra

La Sierra (Martínez and Dalton, 2005), a portrait of a paramilitary-run community on Medellín's eastern edge, is both anthropological study and self-conscious creator of narratives. The documentary is both globally and locally inserted, and straddles both generic and public/private boundaries. The article discusses the film's self-conscious examination of gender performances, describing the way it plays out the conflicting demands of masculinity on the male body. It argues that the responses of feminine desire and identity to the various masculine models may subvert dominant codes through (re) citation and failed interpellation. Central to the article's argument is the notion that through female desire, the film performs Colombian undecidability surrounding masculine violence.