National Security State

Hai-Nyzhnyk P., Chupriy L., Fihurnyi Y., Krasnodemska I., Chyrkov O. (2018). Aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine: ethnonational dimension and civilizational confrontation. Saarbrucken (Germany): LAP Lambert Academic Publishing. 229 p.

The expert-analytical study analyzes the preconditions, course and contemporary socio-political consequences of the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine and the Ukrainian nation, which has signs of not only direct and covert, but also inter-state conflict and even civilizational confrontation.

Cross-border solidarity has captured the interest and imagination of scholars, activists and a range of political actors in such contested areas as the US-Mexico border and Guantanamo Bay. Chandra Russo examines how justice-seeking solidarity drives activist communities contesting US torture, militarism and immigration policies. Through compelling and fresh ethnographic accounts, Russo follows these activists as they engage in unusual and high risk forms of activism (fasting, pilgrimage, civil disobedience). She explores their ideas of solidarity and witnessing, which are central to how the activists explain their activities. This book adds to our understanding of solidarity activism under new global arrangements, and illuminates the features of movement activity that deepen activists' commitment by helping their lives feel more humane, just and meaningful. Based on participant observation, interviews, surveys and hundreds of courtroom statements, Russo develops a new theorization of solidarity that will take a central place in social movement studies.

The considerations in this article relate to the relationship between state security and the necessity of introduction restrictions on constitutional rights and freedoms of man and citizen. In order to present the multidimensionality of this relationship, the author first explained the concept of state security with regard to the meaning of constituent concepts, namely the concept of state and the notion of security. Subsequently, the analysis of constitutional provisions was carried out from the point of view of their relationship with the concept of state security and in the context of protection of constitutional freedoms and human and civil rights. The analysis has proven that in many cases the implementation of state security requires restrictions on constitutional freedoms and rights of man and citizens. These restrictions should respect the principle of proportionality.

The publication contains basic information about crisis management and hypothetical examples of crisis situations. The presented exercise scenarios concern various types of threats, thanks to which a wider perspective on the presented issues becomes possible. They were used as a background for didactic classes in the subject of Management in crisis situations over the past few years.

Publikacja zawiera podstawowe wiadomości dotyczące zarządzania kryzysowego oraz hipotetyczne przykłady sytuacji kryzysowych. Zaprezentowane scenariusze ćwiczeń dotyczą różnych rodzajów zagrożeń, dzięki czemu możliwe staje się szersze spojrzenie na prezentowaną problematykę. Były one wykorzystywane jako tło do zajęć dydaktycznych z przedmiotu Zarządzanie w sytuacjach kryzysowych, na przestrzeni kilku ostatnich lat

The cases of Snowden and Manning have contributed to the re-opening of the public and academic debate about national security, individual freedom and democracy. This debate began after 9/11 when the war on terror renewed the state-building process that had begun after World War II. Although historians have reconstructed the historical making of the national security state, the essay sheds new light on the debate culminating in the National Security Act by analyzing the writings of the social scientist that first urged upon Americans the perils of a “garrison state”: Harold D. Lasswell. His scientific essays and public speeches recognized the international role of the United States and the related necessities of national security, but suggested adjustments that—in his mind—would avoid the rise of a garrison state. What emerges was the question of the political legitimation of the national security state, a legitimation that Lasswell based upon the consensus of the American middle class.

The objective scope of the analysis contained in the text concerns legal solutions to penalisation of the crime of espionage with regard to information security. As the main goal, the text performs an analysis of the crime of espionage in the Polish substantive penal regulations, including a comparative analysis of corresponding Swedish substantive penal regulations.
          In order to elaborate the research problem, the text addresses the following research questions: (1) To what degree do the legal solutions concerned with the penalisation of the crime of espionage provide effective prosecution and combating of this type of crime? (2) What changes in the scope of legal solutions penalising the acts of espionage can be proposed?
          While the analysis contained in the text is for the most part a dogmatic and doctrinal approach, a comparative interpretation (with regard to substantive penal regulations penalising the crime of espionage in Poland and Sweden), as well as teleological and functional interpretations (with a view to reinterpreting selected, established or debated doctrinal approaches) are also applied.

Publisher: BBC News
Date: 2004

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/3032147.stm

Bush Doctrine, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Fascism, George W. Bush, Iraq War, National Security State, Neo-Conservatives, Osama Bin Laden, Paul Wolfowitz, Pre-emptive War, Project for the New American Century, PNAC, Regime Change, Saddam Hussein, September 11th Attacks, Terrorism, U.S. Empire, U.S. Foreign Policy, War On Terror

The Caspian Project is a weekly digital magazine organized by the online analytical resource, Modern Diplomacy. Dr. Matthew Crosston is the Senior Editor of the project, which aims to acquaint people with this critically undervalued region of the world. The analyses go far beyond the standard issue of energy and encapsulates economics, politics, culture, religion, global affairs, conflict and peace.

This edition of the Caspian Project testifies to the enormous wealth of analytical opportunity seen all across the region. While in the past we have enjoyed producing single-issue specializations (which we did over the past two weeks with The Russian Debate and The Persian Gambit, to great fanfare and applause), the true essence of the Project is to have great diversity for the readers every issue. No. 11 as it turns out is something of a hybrid of these two aspects: readers with this issue get quite a bit of diversity while also getting to enjoy a mini-specialization, as a number of the articles inside deal with different aspects of the Russian intelligence community, namely, the Federal Security Service or FSB.

So, on top of some very thought-provoking and hard-hitting articles dealing with the ethics, surveillance, and transnational activities of Russian intelligence, readers ALSO get to learn more in this issue about the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Turkmenistan’s human rights record, and Kazakhstan’s entrance into the WTO. It is an issue, therefore, that cuts across domestic politics, global affairs, security, economics, and international organizations. This is something we at Modern Diplomacy hold dearly when it comes to the Caspian Project: so much that is happening in the world today, affecting so many countries, transects in one way or another the greater Caspian sea region. It shall always be a hub of activity and importance, far beyond the standard call about energy and natural resources.

Fabrizio says in Machiavelli’s Art of War that he has “[…] never used war as an art, because [his] art is to govern [his] subjects and to defend them, and, so as to be able to defend them, to love peace and know how to make war.” What is the “art of war” for Machiavelli and how is this concept depicted in his three major political works —The Prince, Discourses on Livy, and Art of War—?

The argument of this essay is that this “art” —which Machiavelli thinks crucial for the ruling politician– is the ability in the use of political force. As politics is a continuous struggle, in order to keep dominion over his state, the ruler has to be prepared to face internal and external threats from political enemies; the ruler has to be at the same time a commander and a politician —a “fox” and a “lion,” Machiavelli would say. In Art of War and the Discourses on Livy, this idea is depicted in a subtle way; while, in The Prince, it is openly stated as fundamental true of politics; nonetheless, the conception of the art of war —as fundamental for every ruler, regardless the regime, as the way to face internal and external rivals— stands as a core idea for Machiavelli’s political thought in the three of them.

https://auctoritasnonveritas.org/2017/01/03/to-peace-through-war-machiavelli-and-the-survival-of-the-state/

Artykuł ma na celu przedstawienie istoty funkcjonowania
służb wywiadu i kontrwywiadu w kontekście problemów związanych
ze stosowaniem pojęcia „służby specjalne” w Polsce po 1989
roku. Zawarta została w nim charakterystyka służb wywiadu i
kontrwywiadu jako służb pełniących podstawową rolę informacyjną
w państwowych procesach decyzyjnych, spełniających istotne funkcje
w zakresie ochrony porządku konstytucyjnego i zasobów informacyjnych
państwa oraz zajmujących szczególną pozycję w przestrzeni
walki informacyjnej. Pojęcie „służby specjalne” w Polsce było
zazwyczaj łączone ze służbami wywiadu i kontrwywiadu, z uwagi
na zarysowaną powyżej specyfikę ich działalności. Było to zgodne z
dyskursem naukowym w tym zakresie, a także z praktyką tworzenia
prawa w przedmiocie funkcjonowania instytucji systemu bezpieczeństwapaństwa. Przełom w tym względzie nastąpił w 2006 roku,kiedy utworzone Centralne Biuro Antykorupcyjne zostało ustawowo
określone mianem służby specjalnej, mimo, że nie spełniało funkcji
wywiadowczych ani kontrwywiadowczych.

Abstract
The Special Services in Poland after 1989 – the Problem of the Definition
The aim of the paper is to present the essence of the activity
of intelligence and counterintelligence services according to the
problems regararding to the using of the term “special services” in
Poland after 1989. It contains the characteristics of the intelligence
and counterintelligence services that play the main and core informational role in the state’s decision making processes and
which are essential in the matter of providing the protection for its
legal order and also the state’s fundamental information resources.
They have also a specific position and role in the information warfare
in the both local and global relations. The concept of “special
services” in Poland has been usually refered to the intelligence and
counterintelligence due to their specific place and role that was
mentioned above. It was an issue of scientific and legal traditions.
But in 2006 a specific kind of a breach or a split took place in this
area, when the new state security service – the Central Anti-
Corruption Bureau – was established. It was also named as the
“special service”, despite the fact that it differs significantly from
the previous services described so, and it is rather the some kind of
police service than the intelligence or counterintelligence service,
which could fulfil the core informational role in the state’s decision
making processes.

Este livro é um contributo para a expansão dos estudos de informações e de segurança na Universidade, realizado na perspectiva da História do Presente e sobretudo através da aplicação da técnica da open sources intelligence (osint), reunindo uma selecção de cerca de 230 artigos publicados semanalmente entre 2004 e 2007, de modo ininterrupto, em dois meios de comunicação social de grande tiragem: num jornal económico diário e numa revista semanal de actualidades. No jornal tratava-se de uma coluna intitulada "Informações Estratégicas" e na revista de uma página intitulada "Fronteiras", a qual, para além do artigo, continha também uma secção designada "Secretas" com três notícias breves sobre serviços de informações estrangeiros ou com estes relacionadas.

Resumen

El presente artículo propone una revisión de los Planes de Defensa Nacional de México, centralizándonos en el Plan DN-III-E que se enfoca a la atención de la población civil afectada por fenómenos naturales y provocados por el hombre en el marco de las cinco misiones generales del Ejército y Fuerza Aérea Mexica-nos. Este Plan considera el despliegue militar desde el nivel local hasta el nacio-nal como respuesta a las emergencias masivas que puede sufrir la población en coordinación con las autoridades civiles de protección civil.

Palabras clave: Defensa Nacional, Fuerzas Armadas Mexicanas, Ejército Mexi-cano, Relaciones Civil-militares, protección civil.

Abstract

This is an analisis about the expansion of the military´s rol as guarantor of na-tional security by means of the national defense plan three (DN-III-E), ap-proached in the civil population assistance in emergency caused by natural phe-nomenon.

Key words: National Defense, Mexico´s Military, Mexican Armed Forces, Civil-military relations, population assistance.

Since May 1998, Ethiopia and Eritrea relation has been resulted in a structural national
security crisis defned by two years’ war, two decades of ‘no war, no peace’ stalemate and
‘fragile normalization’ since June 2018. Their security predicaments are basically results
of antagonistic nation building, foreign and national security policies. The nation-building
project to forge the ‘Sawa based militarized single national identity’ in Eritrea and the
‘federalization’ of the age-old unitary Ethiopian state further deepen and widen the national
security dilemma of both states. The national security and militarization predicament
between the two states are, therefore, the result of militarized ‘social reengineering’ and
national security in Eritrea where Ethiopia has been made to be an ‘existential threat to its
Singaporization vision’. And hence, Eritrea, following its military defeat in the 1998-2000
war, opted into subversive and proxy war strategies via hosting and training Ethiopian
armed insurgencies and supporting opposition parties inside Ethiopia with an ultimate goal
of ousting the TPLF-EPRDF dominated government. Isaias’s strategy become successful
in replacing the TPLF dominated EPRDF by Oromo dominated EPRDF, aka. ‘OromaraEPRDF’, when Abiy Ahmed became chairman of EPRDF and subsequently prime minster
of Ethiopia. President Isaias described the ‘successes of his 20 years insurgency strategy
of neutralizing TPLF-EPRDF and the epoch of normalization as “game over”. Conversely,
from 2001 to March 2018 Eritrea has been branded as an “existential enemy to Ethiopia’s
renaissance vision and securitization of poverty”. As a result, the late Prime Minister Melese
Zenawi followed a policy of “deter, isolate and defeat” against Eritrea which was successful
in deterring and isolating Isaias’ international engagements via the UNSC sanctions but
failed to oust him. Since July 2018, President Isaias and Abiy Ahmed offcially declared
the “end of 20 years’ war” and beginning of new epoch of normalization, open border and
regional integration. However, after six months of ‘honeymoon’ normalization, the borders
of Ethiopia and Eritrea unilaterally closed by Eritrea and the prospects for reconciliation
and regional security become ‘fragile and elusive’. Finally, a vicious dilemma of national
security, militarization and normalization gaining turn out to be a governing regime. This
article, therefore, analyzes the post-2000 national security, militarization and normalization
dilemma between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Les armées sont aujourd’hui très largement confrontées à des formes de conflictualités, non pas nouvelles, mais de moins en moins classiques. Ces conflits, dits de quatrième génération, opposent des armées régulières à des groupes non-étatiques, pour la plupart, dont les membres ne relèvent pas de la définition du combattant donnée par les Conventions de Genève de 1949. L’absence de régulation efficace des conflits par un droit devenu obsolète, a favorisé l’émergence de questions relevant d’une autre source de légitimité normative : la morale.
Comment dès lors envisager d’adapter les interventions militaires à cette situation nouvelle en attendant des militaires qu’ils sachent, au besoin, s’affranchir du droit tout en respectant une certaine forme de morale ? Appliquer la morale certes, mais de quelle morale parlons-nous ? Qui doit l’appliquer ? Tous, au nom de l’universalisme du concept ? Certains seulement au nom de son relativisme ?
Le contexte d’intervention des armées modernes comme celles de la France, pose donc difficulté en ce qu’il voit s’affronter la raison d’Etat et son corollaire qu’est l’efficacité militaire, le droit international, la morale en tant que système de valeurs imposées « de l’extérieur » et l’éthique individuelle du militaire. Cette notion de raison d’Etat est au cœur d’une autre préoccupation : est-il pertinent, légitimement et moralement, de faire reposer le poids de la morale dans l’action militaire sur les seules épaules des militaires ? La moralité du recours à la force ne doit-elle pas être envisagée au niveau politique ?
Ce sont ces questions qui méritent, si ce n’est des réponses, au moins un début de réflexion. L’intérêt n’est pas ici de philosopher mais d’apporter un éclairage sur des situations d’une extrême complexité, pour que chacun comprenne bien que la morale n’est qu’une solution « par défaut », un pis-aller, lorsque le droit n’est plus efficace ou qu’il est bafoué au nom des intérêts supérieurs des nations.
En ce début de 21ème siècle, au cœur de l’instabilité internationale et de ses contradictions, les armées françaises ont tout intérêt à se poser la question du rôle de la morale dans l’action militaire. Loin des codes déontologiques, des discours bien-pensants et des textes historiques sortis de leurs contextes, une véritable réflexion doit être menée. Cette réflexion doit nous aider à déterminer s’il est légitime de faire peser le fardeau de la morale sur les seuls militaires ou si, au contraire, ce fardeau relève de la responsabilité des autorités politiques, et donc de l’Etat, qui décident d’engager des troupes dans des conflits où il faut bien l’admettre, la morale ne semble pas être appréhendée par nos adversaires comme elle peut l’être dans nos forces. L’idée n’est pas de déresponsabiliser le militaire. Elle est comme le dit l’adage de « rendre à César ce qui est à César ». Au politique la responsabilité morale de l’engagement et des moyens choisis, aux militaires l’honneur de servir la France avec abnégation jusqu’à tuer pour elle, jusqu’à mourir pour elle. Au militaire également d’assumer la responsabilité juridique de ses actes.
Cet ouvrage a pour ambition d’apporter une contribution à cette réflexion et de l’ouvrir au niveau national. Non pas qu’il donnera des solutions à toutes les problématiques, mais au moins a-t-il vocation à alimenter un débat qui tarde à naître en France. Le propos doit être sans concession et s’ouvrir très largement à de nombreux domaines. Si les bonnes questions, quand bien même pourraient-elles être dérangeantes, ne sont pas posées, jamais nous ne trouverons de solutions acceptables aux problèmes auxquels les armées sont quotidiennement confrontées.

Dennis Gabor devised a new concept for optical imaging in 1947 that went by a variety of names over the following decade: holoscopy, wavefront reconstruction, interference microscopy, diffraction microscopy and Gaboroscopy. A well-connected and creative research engineer, Gabor worked actively to publicize and exploit his concept, but the scheme failed to capture the interest of many researchers. Gabor’s theory was repeatedly deemed unintuitive and baffling; the technique was appraised by his contemporaries to be of dubious practicality and, at best, constrained to a narrow branch of science. By the late 1950s, Gabor’s subject had been assessed by its handful of practitioners to be a white elephant. Nevertheless, the concept was later rehabilitated by the research of Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks at the University of Michigan, and Yury Denisyuk at the Vavilov Institute in Leningrad. What had been judged a failure was recast as a success: evaluations of Gabor’s work were transformed during the 1960s, when it was represented as the foundation on which to construct the new and distinctly different subject of holography, a re-evaluation that gained the Nobel Prize for Physics for Gabor alone in 1971. This paper focuses on the difficulties experienced in constructing a meaningful subject, a practical application and a viable technical community from Gabor’s ideas during the decade 1947-1957.

By the autumn of 2013, the Middle Eastern regional security complex (RSC) had taken on a new configuration, which was substantially different from—and much more explosive than—the one that existed prior to the large-scale popular uprisings that broke out across the Arab world in the winter of 2010-11. Foreign policies adopted between 2000 and 2010 by the Ba‘thi regime in Damascus, the leaderships of Hizbullah and HAMAS, and the Israeli government to parry overlapping internal and external threats created an unprecedented patchwork of strategic rivalries and alignments. Large-scale popular unrest in Iraq and Egypt in early 2011, along with the outbreak of full-scale civil war in Syria later that same year, generated an even more intricate web of interstate security dynamics. The reconfigured RSC that emerged out of the “Winter of Arab Discontent” is only beginning to be explicated, and can best be addressed by tracing the connection between domestic political conflicts and shifts in external belligerence and alignment across the region.

Closely associated with China’s growing prominence in international politics are discussions about how to understand Chinese history, and how such perspectives inform the way a stronger China may relate to the rest of the world. This article examines two narratives as cases, and considers how they fit against more careful historical scholarship. The first is the nationalist narrative dealing with Qing and Republican history, and the second is the narrative on the Chinese world order. Analyses of Chinese nationalism tend to see a more powerful China as being more assertive internationally, based in part on a belief in the need to address and overcome past wrongs. Studies of historical regional systems in Asia point to the role that a peaceful ‘Confucian’ ethos played in sustaining a stable Chinese-led order, and highlight the promise it holds for checking regional and international tensions. The two perspectives create an obvious tension when trying to understand China’s rise, which can suggest that using historical viewpoints to understand contemporary developments may be doomed to incoherence. This article argues that difficulties in applying knowledge of the past to analyses of China’s role in contemporary world politics indicate a relative inattentiveness to Chinese and Asian history. It illustrates how the nature of China’s rise may be more contingent on the external environment that it faces than popular received wisdom may indicate. The article suggests that a more extensive engagement with historical research and historiography can augment and enrich attempts to appreciate the context surrounding China’s rise.

"Apparatus of Repression in Peoples' Poland 1945-1989" is an annual scientific journal of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), available in open access.
The journal specializes in the issues related to security apparatus and mechanisms of political repressions in Poland and other countries in the Soviet bloc. For example - political police, security services, special services, intelligence, counterintelligence, judiciary and prison systems, biographies of perpetrators, the fate of victims; finally, the relations of this apparatus with other party and state structures, including military and para-military ones.
We are especially interested in comparing these services to analogous institutions in other totalitarian and non-democratic countries and of the so-called free world.
Please send your submissions to: redakcja.arwpl@ipn.gov.pl; filip.musial@ipn.gov.pl; elzbieta.pietrzyk@ipn.gov.pl.

We hope you will consider submitting your research to "Aparat Bezpieczeństwa w Polsce Ludowej" ("Apparatus of Repression in Peoples' Poland 1945-1989").

The IC's history is one of competiveness among the DoD intelligence agencies, the FBI, and the CIA.  The government has studied organizational issues and modified the IC multiple times, including enhancing the powers of the chief intelligence official.  Vignettes are provided detailing specific incidents of intelligence failure that resulted from or were enhanced by an IC unwilling to work together.

In the Fall of 2014, Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the United States and the San Francisco Bay Area became the site of nightly demonstrations that deployed a range of disruptive practices and direct actions. The content and style of these protests reflected both the national political issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement, and highly local and regional struggles over gentrification and displacement. In this article, I analyze these protests in relation to the regional political economy of the tech-industry, the real estate booms, and the attendant 'eviction epidemic' in the region. In doing so, I lay out an analysis of the relationship between policing and gen-trification in the Black Lives Matter protests in the Bay Area. In the first section, I analyze the regional political economy as the context in which these protests must be understood. In a second section, I argue that the protests created a regional protest geography that, in turn, was met by a regionalized repressive security state. Finally, I read the disruptive practices deployed by these protests as a series of complex and sophisticated contestations which embodied connections among policing, gentrification, and the regional political economy. As such, the Black Lives Matter protests produced an intersectional analysis and can be read as a regional uprising aimed to disrupt the security state.

Convergence of cyberspace and terrorism, that is cyberterrorism, might be an underrated issue for the moment due to the absence of real world examples. However, the ongoing transformation from old to new terrorism and changing perceptions of war and state security proves the opposite. Cyberterrorism is a resourceful, innovative, and an unconventional way to produce unpredictable and online threats against the traditional state marked by strict physical borders. Due to the significance of new terrorism for state security and IR, it is important to understand why current definitions are remaining to be ambiguous, complex, and insufficient in combating future cyberterrorist threats. Characterizing such a complicated phenomenon might not be an easy task, whilst without knowing what cyberterrorism is, and what it is not, we cannot develop better solutions or generate better responses for state security. Departing from these concerns, this thesis asks: what could be the proper definition for cyberterrorism? The aim is to provide a new, operational framework to address lacking insights in the current literature.

Cyberspace is everywhere in today’s world and has significant implications not only for global economic activity, but also for international politics and transnational social relations. This compilation addresses for the first time the “cyberization” of international relations - the growing dependence of actors in IR on the infrastructure and instruments of the internet, and the penetration of cyberspace into all fields of their activities. The volume approaches this topical issue in a comprehensive and interdisciplinary fashion, bringing together scholars from disciplines such as IR, security studies, ICT studies and philosophy as well as experts from everyday cyber-practice.

An investigative writer reports on an incident of menacing at a local library in a notarized affidavit that was filed at the Fairfield Police Department (Connecticut) on September 18, 2015, as a formal criminal complaint. The incidents recounted in the affidavit are similar to incidents he had experienced over many years—in this instance a particularly flagrant, threatening, fear-inducing, and ominous incident with conspiratorial elements.

The Caspian Project is a weekly digital magazine organized by the online analytical resource, Modern Diplomacy. Dr. Matthew Crosston is the Senior Editor of the project, which aims to acquaint people with this critically undervalued region of the world. The analyses go far beyond the standard issue of energy and encapsulates economics, politics, culture, religion, global affairs, conflict and peace.

The 10th edition of The Caspian Project is now out and it has several unique distinctions: it is the first edition with an editorial introduction and takes a more holistic and adversarial approach to investigating Iran's entrance into the global community given the recent nuclear accord. It is a great example of the diversity and discord that exists in global affairs, testifying to how there is no one single simple answer to such complex interactions within the international system.

Sri Aurobindo & Karl Marx both have ideas of state. However, Sri Aurobindo's idea of inadequacy of state is sometimes compared with Marx's idea of Statelessness. Both of them rejected the existence of any ideal state in reality. But the inner concept is truly very much different in nature. Sri Aurobindo was never in favor of Marx's statelessness thesis. He called the state instead as a nation-state. Both of them conceived state as an inorganic weapon of repression, thus they were against this tyrannical side of the state theory.

Author: Fareed Khan
Compliled from the writings and speeches of Howard Zinn, PhD.

Civil Liberties, Corporate Taxes, Corporate Welfare, Democratic Decay, Electoral Reform, Fascism, Free Speech, Free Speech Under Assault, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Human Rights, Information Security And Privacy, National Security State, Neo-Fascism, Neo-Fascism In The U.S., Occupy Movement, Occupy Wall Street, Political Reform, Political Revolution, Privacy, Social Justice, Social Revolution, The 1 Percent, The 1%, The 99 Percent, The 99%, War Crimes

If you spend some time listening to reputable news shows all across the West you will start to notice several recurring ‘interpretations’ that explain all things Russian and Vladimir Putin. Rather than being enlightening about this complex country and perhaps even more complex leader, a series of increasingly incredulous ‘pop-psychology-analyses’ emerge instead. What follows are just five of the most commonly touted, with subsequent breakdowns for those who wish to read more accurate alternative considerations:

The crime-fighting character Batman was created 75 years ago; yet, his age has not been an impediment to achieving tremendous recent successes in popular culture. The two latest “Dark Knight” films, released in 2008 and 2012, rank among the top 20 highest grossing films worldwide. Strangely, Batman is a super-hero without a physical superpower. Indeed, his successes are largely due to the development and application of scientific and technical achievements. This paper analyzes and explains the importance of Batman’s application of various scientific discoveries in The Dark Knight and other popular Batman films. Specifically, I argue that the most recent version of the dark knight reflects the dubious nature of the war on terror. To counter the threats he encounters in Gotham City, Batman is willing to employ an electronic spying device that appears to emulate the remarkable capabilities of the U.S.  National Security Agency. In addition to secretly monitoring electronic communications, Batman also employs various weapons and transportation technologies that make possible the extrajudicial rendition of foreign nationals and the enhanced interrogation of prisoners. Ultimately, these applications of science challenge the legitimacy of Batman’s crime-fighting efforts, in much the same way the aims of America’s “war on terror” were undercut by similar methods.

There are numerous think tanks, both in the United States and Russia, which are deeply concerned about the state of Russian-American relations. Places like the Moscow Carnegie Centre or the Brookings Institution in Washington DC are regular go-to places for the media when seeking expert opinion and analysis. However, these centers of independent knowledge production have had a decided slant in allocating blame for the poor bilateral relations to the Russian side, with the explanations ranging from the fairly simple to the rather mystically esoteric.