Suchergebnisse

Yesterday, a bluesky discussion focused on whether the Federation of Planets was essentially the UN with US domination or something else.  While I have written far more here about Star Wars, I have actually used Star Trek more in my teaching, and I have watched far more Trek (there is simply many more hours of Trek content).  Plus having written about NATO (the ebook is less than $18!), I have a few views on the matter.To start, what is the United Federation of Planets and what is Starfleet?  The Federation is an alliance of planets, more so than it is a true federation a la the US.  Not even a confederation like Canada.  How so?  The planets still have their own foreign policies--we see plenty of meetings of diplomats from members to various proceedings.  Note, diplomats, not just leaders or representatives.  Just as I always like to make fun of Texas secessionists for having their embassy in Texas when it should be in Washington, DC or London or some place beyond the territory of the "country" it is representing, federal units (with the funky exception of Quebec) don't have embassies and ambassadors.  This is a short cut, a bit of evidence, for the basic idea that the units in the federation are more independent, more akin to nation-states than they are to units in a federal country.  So, yeah, the name is deceptive.  Starfleet adds to the confusion because it is the military (despite denials) of the Federation.  This would make the Federation appear more like a country if it had a monopoly--if Starfleet was the only armed force within the federation.  However, I seem to remember various planets within the fed having their own armed starships including Vulcan.  So, despite the name, the Federation is not akin to a single country.  It is easier to dispense with the idea that the Federation is the European Union.  How much of the series and movies are about economic regulations and subsidizing agriculture?  Ok, more directly, the European Union, despite many attempts, does not really have a military, and it does not have a common foreign policy.  The EU forces that have shown up in Bosnia and elsewhere only do so (this will be brutal, sorry) after NATO has done all of the heavy lifting. It was NATO that ended the Bosnia conflict, it was NATO that compelled Serbia to let peacekeepers into Kosovo, it is NATO deterring the Russians from attacking the Baltics, and so on.  In trade negotiations, the EU acts as a single actor and with great power.  In other stuff?  Not so much. Which leaves the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.  Clearly, from the name and from Gene Roddenberry's idealism, the United Federation of Planets is just a spacey UN, right?*  The stuff above that makes the Federation not a country but many countries or nation-states works toward the UN idea--a bunch of different sovereign entities constantly negotiating, sending diplomats hither and yon to settle all kinds of issues.  The big questions are what is the Federation for and what is Starfleet for?  The classic answer is collective security: to deter aggression by any member against any member by providing assurances that any target of aggression will receive assistance from the rest of the community.  Until Alexander Wendt has his way, the entire imagination of the role of the UN is focused on members.  The UN is a universal organization...on Earth--the only countries that are not in the UN are Taiwan and ... depending on how you count the Vatican and Palestine and various unrecognized separatist folks.  The key things about this notion of collective defense are that no member is excluded from its protection, and it is not aimed at any particular aggressor.  The UN does not have a standing military, but has "sent" massive interventions when the membership have agreed, to thwart North Korea's aggression in 1950 (because the Soviet diplomats were stupidly boycotting the UN Security Council at the time) and Iraq's in 1990-91.  In both cases, it was really the US military and some allies under a UN banner in the former and nearly so in the latter.  One could argue that Starfleet is mostly a Terran/American endeavor and its activities are simply under a federation banner.  But again, the aim is at members.  In the original Trek, maybe some of it was aimed at fostering peace among members, but for most of Trek's history, Starfleet was aimed at protecting its members from non-members.Which gets us to NATO, which is not really a collective security organization, but a collective defense organization.  It is not so much aimed at protecting Greece from Turkey, but all of the members from external threats--mostly the Soviet Union/Russia but also terrorism, maybe China, etc.  "An attack on one is an attack on all", Article V, the heart of the alliance, is aimed at outsiders. All of NATO's military endeavors have been on the border of or entirely outside the territory of its members.  Kind of like how much of Starfleet's activities are at the borders, patrolling nearby neutral zones, or going beyond to intervene, despite the Prime Directive, in non-members.  How many episodes are akin to the Kosovo effort?  A boodle. Of course, the parallel is not perfect, since Starfleet is a coherent military organization from the academy to the command staff and in between, which NATO is not.  Its captains may buck orders (Kirk more so than others, but all of them did so), but not because their home country/planet had different rules than the Federation for operating in place x or y.  That is, the Steve and Dave book on the Federation would focus far less on the political systems of members states and far more on the personalities of individual ship captains, compared to our work on NATO (our book and articles focused mostly on whether countries had coalition governments or not, what kinds of coalitions they had, and personality of presidents and prime ministers only kicked in if there were no coalitional bargaining).Of course, there is no perfect parallel between the Federation and an existing Terran international organization, but given the focus of the Federation and the activities of Starfleet, NATO appears to be the closest, and I didn't even discuss enlargement.   *  I'd argue that Babylon 5 comes a lot closer to that, but that is a post for another day.   

La presente investigación tiene como objetivo central realizar una cartografía del estado actual de la filosofíaen función de comprender el debate vigente sobre la verdad, el conocimiento y la ciencia en un mundo signado por la tecnología y sus correspondientes implicaciones en la educación. En este sentido, usando el método genealógico, se analiza la emergencia del concepto 'tecnología' en función de identificar las condiciones de posibilidad tanto históricas como conceptuales que permiten apreciar cómo la aplicación y consolidación de la moderna ciencia motivaron una ruptura en lo que hasta entonces se conocerá como técnica para dar lugar a la denominada tecnología en la actualidad. De este modo, la relación de la tecnología y el ser humano es analizada bajo la confrontación de dos ópticas opuestas, por un lado, se tomarán las reflexiones realizadas por Heidegger y, por otro, las planteadas por Ortega y Gasset con el objeto de visibilizar la disputa de la visión de la tecnología. Los frutos de este debate permitirán apreciar las implicaciones de la revolución tecnológica y científica en la educación considerando sus límites y posibilidades. Entre los principales hallazgos se encuentra que la ciencia moderna impactó directamente en la consolidación de la tecnología frente a la tradicional técnica bajo criterios positivistas que han monopolizado el concepto y conocimiento de la verdad, dejando de lado otros ámbitos como el arte, la política o el amor. Esto ha desembocado en un crecimiento de posiciones relativistas culturales. Estos aspectos han marcado el mundo contemporáneo con un impacto radical en el campo educativo. ; First, this research will be done a cartography about main streams of philosophy to understandpresent discussion about truth, knowledge and science considering a world marked by technologyand the corresponding implications in education. In this sense, using the genealogical methodI analyze the emergence of the technology concept to identify both the historical and conceptualconditions of possibility. This allows us to appreciate how the application and consolidation ofmodern science caused a break in the conception of technique to move to technology. In this way,the relationship between technology and the human being is analyzed under the confrontation oftwo opposite perspective, on the one hand, the reflections made by Martin Heidegger and on theother hand, the approaches made by Ortega y Gasset to make visible the dispute of the vision oftechnology. The results of this debate will allow us to appreciate the implications of the technologicalrevolution in different fields of education, considering its limits and possibilities. Among the mainfindings is that modern science direct influences on the consolidation of technology as opposed tothe traditional technique under positivist criteria that have monopolized the concept and knowledgeabout truth, set aside other spheres such as art, politics, or love. This has led to a growth of relativisticcultural positions. In addition, these aspects have marked the contemporary world, also affecting theeducational field. ; O principal objectivo desta investigação é mapear o estado actual da filosofia a fim de compreender o debate actual sobre a verdade, o conhecimento e a ciência num mundo marcado pela tecnologia e as suas implicações para a educação. Neste sentido, utilizando o método genealógico, analisa-se a emergência do conceito de "tecnologia" para identificar as condições históricas e conceptuais de possibilidade que nos permitem apreciar como a aplicação e consolidação da ciência moderna levou a uma ruptura no que até então era conhecido como técnica para dar origem à chamada tecnologia actual. Desta forma, a relação entre a tecnologia e o ser humano é analisada sob o confronto de duas ópticas opostas, por um lado, serão tomadas as reflexões feitas por Heidegger e, por outro, as levantadas por Ortega y Gasset com o objectivo de tornar visível a disputa da visão da tecnologia. Os frutos deste debate permitir-nos-ão apreciar as implicações da revolução tecnológica e científica na educação, considerando os seus limites e possibilidades. Entre as principais conclusões está que a ciência moderna tem tido um impacto directo na consolidação da tecnologia em oposição à técnica tradicional sob critérios positivistas que monopolizaram o conceito e o conhecimento da verdade, deixando de lado outras áreas como a arte, a política ou o amor. Isto levou a um crescimento de posições relativistas culturais. Estes aspectos marcaram o mundo contemporâneo com um impacto radical no campo educacional.

The lore of La Llorona, the woman who wails, is a pervasive archetype in Latin American cultures. While stories vary by country and region, the most common telling is associated with Mexican folklore, in which an anguished woman cries for her drowned children—in some retellings, their death results from her murderous rage at being betrayed by her lover; in others their deaths result from an accident. These stories have traditionally served as cautionary tales, often positioning Latinas as tragic forces within their communities (Morales, 2010); however, Chicana scholars have reconceptualized La Llorona to symbolize a feminist power. This autoethnographic study reflects on the lore of La Llorona as a metaphor for a Latina's "resistance in society" (Anzaldúa, 1987, p.33) or as Morales (2010, p.3) states, "the voice who cries out against injustice". Specifically, through the application of Chicana/Latina feminist and critical epistemologies, the authors explore the works of Gloria Anzaldúa, Nela Martinez Espinosa, Dolores Huerta, and Nisia Floresta— Latina feminist authors and politicians, who have used their voices to fight injustices within their communities. Furthermore, the authors reflect upon how these heroines have influenced their own identities as "women who wail"—as feminist Latina educators who work toward a pedagogy for social justice. ; La tradición de La Llorona, la mujer que se lamenta, es un arquetipo generalizado en las culturas latinoamericanas. Si bien las historias de la Llorona varían según el país y la región, la narración más común está asociada con el folklore mexicano, en el cual una mujer angustiada llora por sus hijos ahogados; en algunas versiones, la muerte es el resultado de su ira asesina al ser traicionada por su amante; en otros, la muerte es el resultado de un accidente. Estas historias han servido tradicionalmente como cuentos de advertencia, a menudo posicionando a las latinas como fuerzas trágicas dentro de sus comunidades (Morales, 2010). Sin embargo, los especialistas chicanos han reconceptualizado a La Llorona como símbolo de poder feminista. Este estudio autoetnográfico reflexiona en base a la historia de La Llorona como una metáfora de la "resistencia de la mujer latina" en la sociedad (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 33), o como afirma Morales (2010, p. 3) "la voz que clama contra la injusticia ". En especial a través de la aplicación de la teoría feminista Chicana/Latina y la epistemología crítica, las autoras exploran los trabajos de Gloria Anzaldúa, Nela Martínez Espinosa, Dolores Huerta y Nisia Floresta, las cuales como autoras y políticas Latinas feministas han utilizado sus voces para luchar contra las injusticias sociales en sus comunidades. Además, las autoras reflexionan sobre cómo estas heroínas han influenciado sus propias identidades como "mujeres que se lamentan", como feministas Latinas educadoras que trabajan por una pedagogía en favor de la justicia social. ; A tradição de La Llorona, a mulher que lamenta-se, é um arquétipo geral nas culturas latino-americanas. Embora as histórias de La Llorona variem por país e região, a narração mais comum está associada ao folclore mexicano, no qual uma mulher angustiada chora por seus filhos afogados; em algumas versões, a morte é o resultado de sua ira assassina por ser traída por seu amante; em outros, a morte é o resultado de um acidente. Tradicionalmente, essas histórias servem como contos de advertência, muitas vezes posicionando as Latinas como forças trágicas em suas comunidades (Morales, 2010). No entanto, especialistas chicanos reconceptualizaram La Llorona como um símbolo do poder feminista. Este estudo autoetnográfico reflete sobre a história de La Llorona como uma metáfora para a "resistência das mulheres Latinas" na sociedade (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 33) ou como Morales (2010, p. 3) afirma, "o voz clamando contra a injustiça". Especialmente a través da aplicação da teoria feminista chicana / latina e da epistemologia crítica, as autoras exploram os trabalhos de Gloria Anzaldúa, Nela Martínez Espinosa, Dolores Huerta e Nisia Floresta, que como autoras e políticas feministas Latinas usaram suas vozes para combater injustiças sociais em suas comunidades, e os autores refletem sobre como essas heroínas influenciaram suas próprias identidades como "mulheres que lamentam-se", como educadoras Latinas feministas que trabalham para uma pedagogia em prol da justiça social.

[ES] En esta investigación, se presenta un estudio sobre la pedagogía social desde una perspectiva comparada con el objetivo de ofrecer un panorama internacional de la situación actual de la pedagogía social en el mundo de hoy. La revisión de la literatura sitúa a la pedagogía social en un escenario de ambigüedades y divergencias en cuanto a su estatus científico y profesional. Por un lado, la historia de la pedagogía social muestra que los académicos y profesionales (Chyrek & Sünker, 2009; Rosendal, 2009; Kornbeck, 2009; Úcar, 2011) han seguido caminos separados, y por el otro lado, el concepto de pedagogía social responde a planteamientos ideológicos, políticos y culturales propios de cada país (Hämäläinen, 2013), lo que provoca que sea utilizado en diferentes contextos y con diferentes significados (Lorenz, 2008, Kornbeck & Rosendal, 2009). Este hecho justifica el esfuerzo de comprender el movimiento de formación y transformación de la pedagogía social en el mundo. Sin embargo, la carencia de un cuerpo teórico unificado y homogéneo de la pedagogía social y la ambigüedad conceptual que lo rodea, acentúa el dilema sobre si la pedagogía social es una área de conocimiento, un campo profesional, un campo de investigación, o las tres a la vez. Nos trasladamos en un escenario dónde no tenemos una respuesta inmediata sobre qué es la pedagogía social, qué tipo de saber es o cuáles son sus métodos específicos de trabajo. Esta falta de definición conceptual deriva a una inexactitud y a una confusión epistemológica, lo que ha desencadenado la aparición de múltiples perspectivas polarizadas sobre el concepto. Esto, al mismo tiempo, ha generado la necesidad de emprender un estudio con un alto nivel de reflexión y madurez destinado a comprender la complejidad de la pedagogía social. Se presenta un estudio que analiza la situación actual de la pedagogía social desde la perspectiva académica, formativa y profesional, con el objetivo de desarrollar una serie de indicadores para construir una visión actualizada, global e integrada de la pedagogía social. Los principales resultados de la investigación confirman que es posible definir un núcleo teórico, transdisciplinar y común a nivel internacional sobre la pedagogía social y, describir las características propias de cada contexto. [EN] In this research, we present a study on social pedagogy from a comparative perspective with the aim of offering an international overview of the current status of social pedagogy in the world today. The literature review places social pedagogy in a scenario of ambiguities and divergences regarding its scientific and professional status. On the one hand, the history of social pedagogy shows that academics and practitioners (Braches-Chyrek & Sünker, 2009; Rosendal, 2009; Kornbeck, 2009; Úcar, 2011) have followed separate paths, and on the other that the concept of social pedagogy responds to ideological, political and cultural approaches characteristic of each country (Hämäläinen, 2013a), which results in it being used in different contexts and with different meanings (Lorenz, 2008, Kornbeck & Rosendal, 2009). The above justifies the effort to understand social pedagogy training and how the discipline is being transformed around the world. However, the lack of a unified homogeneous theoretical body of social pedagogy and the conceptual ambiguity surrounding it accentuate the dilemma over whether social pedagogy is an area of knowledge, a professional field, a research field, or all three at once. We have moved into a stage where we do not have an immediate answer as to what social pedagogy is, what kind of knowledge it is or what its specific working methods are. This lack of a conceptual definition causes epistemological confusion and inaccuracy, and has led to the emergence of multiple polarized perspectives on the concept. This, in turn, has generated the need to undertake a study with a high level of reflection and maturity aimed at understanding the complexity of social pedagogy. We present a study that analyses the current situation of social pedagogy from the academic, training and professional viewpoints, with the aim of developing a series of indicators to construct an updated, global and integrated view of it. Our principle findings confirm that it is possible to define a theoretical, transdiciplinary and international common ground on social pedagogy and describe the specific features characteristic of each context.

The WSU Stewart Library Annual UC-UI Symposium took place from 2001-2007. The collection consists of memorabilia from the symposium including a yearly keepsake, posters, and presentations through panel discussions or individual lectures. ; Audio Recording ; David Eccles and the Origins of the Utah Construction Company a commemorative lecture presented at the 2007 Utah Construction/ Utah International Symposium The Beginning of an Era by Dr. Thomas Alexander Thursday, October 18, 2007 1 It's a pleasure for me to be here today and let me thank a number of people for this opportunity. Thanks to Beverly Ahlstrom and to my daughter Tracy Alexander Zappala for their help with the research. Thanks to Richard Sadler and Joan Hubbard here at Weber State for inviting me to give this presentation. I thank Brooke Ann Alexander, another daughter for her help with the pictures that I put together today and thanks to John Sillito and the staff of Special Collections here at the Stewart Library for their help with the documents here. To Brad Cole and the staff of the Leonard J. Arrington Archives at Utah State University for their help and Greg Thompson and his staff at the University of Utah Marriott Library for their help. Most particularly let me thank Utah International and the Eccles, Wattis and Dee families for sponsoring this symposium. I'm grateful for the opportunity to be here today. On May 12th of 1849 Sarah Hutchison Eccles gave birth to David Eccles who joined his older brother, John, among William Eccles and Sarah's expanding family that eventually included seven children. After working hard selling resin stick as lighters and products of his fathers lathe in Scotland and obtaining less than a year of schooling David immigrated with his family from Scotland to Utah in 1863. The family settled first here in Ogden and then successively in Liberty and Eden in Ogden Valley. Cataracts had blinded William Eccles, but he turned utensils on his lathe by feel and David peddled those products from a pack in Ogden and Brigham City and points between. The family moved to Oregon City in 1867 and William Eccles, David now age eighteen and his younger brother Stewart found work cutting cord wood. The back braking labor of felling and 2 sawing timber became David's entree in to the business in which he grounded his fortune. In 1869 after two years in Oregon the Eccles family moved to Ogden because of the joining of the Union and Central Pacific that same year. Ogden became Utah's transportation center and it surpassed Provo as Utah's second largest city. David and Stewart returned to lumbering. In the winter of 1869- 70, now twenty years old David found additional work in Wyoming as a freighter and in Eden on his father's homestead. The entrepreneurial spirit evidence in his business ventures in Scotland however impelled him to brake loose from working for others. Capitalizing on the skills he had learned in Oregon he negotiated a contract to furnish logs for the Wheeler Saw Miller which was located at the confluence of Wheeler Creek and the Ogden River just west of the present site of Pine View Dam. With his earnings he purchased two oxen. To his great regret an accident killed the oxen as they pulled logs for him. The death of his team forced him to return to work for others. He worked for the Union Pacific and the Alameda Coal Mine in Wyoming. Recognizing David's industriousness the boss gave him a job for which he was not qualified, because of the lack of schooling in Scotland he had not learned to do arithmetic properly and he soon lost the job as a bookkeeper for the company. Soon Chinese workers willing to work for much lower wages replaced the Euro Americans in the job there at the coal mine. The boss fired him and he returned to Eden. After returning to Ogden Valley he again engaged in logging. 3 David recognized the need for better education to supplement his entrepreneurial skills and during the winter of 1872- 73 and again in a later winter he enrolled in a private school in Ogden's old City Hall that was run by Louis F. Moench. Moench a well educated immigrant from Germany's Rhineland later became principal of Weber Stake Academy, and now Weber State University. He's best known today as the lyricist of a familiar Latter- day Saint hymn written first in German as " Sehet, ihr voelker" and translated in to English as " Hark All Ye Nations." Many of you are familiar with that hymn. Although he attended only two terms David learned enough to develop the skill of adding a row of figures in what seemed to observers like lightening speed. The winter of 1872- 73 proved extremely busy for this ambitious young man. In addition to attending school he negotiated a freighting contract to take a load of coffins from Ogden to Pioche, Nevada. You wonder perhaps what all of this stuff that David did during his early life has to do with Utah Construction. Well his earnings in lumbering formed the basis of his fortune. The earnings in lumber provided the funds for his investment in First National Bank and investment in the sugar industry. The investment in the bank then led to his investment in Utah Construction. And the investment in Sugar led to Utah Construction's first large contract. If you don't learn anything else from this presentation today you ought to get those three points. To understand his success then, we need to understand these things. Now during the summer of 1872, David had a contract to furnish logs for a mill owned by Bishop David James on Monte Cristo forty- five miles east of Ogden after he finished the contract he reached an agreement with 4 two colleagues to share the cost of building a mill during the summer of 1873, the next year. He used a loan and the money he'd earned from freighting coffins for his share of the capital for that mill. Firm of Henry E. Gibson, W. T. VanNoy and David Eccles operated the mill and the following year they opened a lumber yard in Ogden. As David managed the mill on Monte Cristo he found time to come down the mountain to Huntsville to dance. There he renewed his acquaintance with a young woman Bertha Marie Jensen whom he'd previously seen in Huntsville and had met at Monech's school. In contrast with David's impoverished family, Bertha a native in Denmark had relatively fixed parents. Then in spite of their social differences the two feel in love and married in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City on December the 17th of 1885. The marriage produced twelve children. After his marriage David continued in the lumbering business. He logged and processed lumber on Monte Cristo with Gibson and VanNoy and then with Gibson. Then in 1881 after dispute because Gibson traded a span on his horses for some worthless oxen he broke with Gibson and formed his own company and after this time he was independent. Convinced of the need to retail his own products David opened a lumber mill on the corner of 24th Street and Lincoln Avenue in Ogden at which he always considered his primary business. Even when he became bank president and president of Utah Construction he kept his office at the lumber yard. Eccles soon moved his timber operation to Scofield a mining district in Carbon county about fifty miles northwest of Price. Concurrently he opened lumber operations in Idaho. 5 Engaging in business with John Stoddard who lived in Wellsville, he began to taking an interest in one of his fellow Scotsman's daughters, Ellen. That interest bloomed into love between the two. Born in January 1867 and nearly eighteen years younger than David, Ellen was only a couple weeks shy of age eighteen at the time of her marriage to David in the Logan Temple on January the 2nd 1885. Although the LDS church continued to encourage plural marriages in 1884 the federal government had inaugurated an intense campaign against polygamist Mormons and David kept his marriage to Ellen secret. At various times she lived with her father's family in Cache County at Scofield and in Oregon. The marriage produced nine children. Between 1884 and 1889 David continued to run his lumber business, but he entered in to local politics as well. He served as an alderman and mayor here in Ogden. While serving as mayor he bridged the gap between the Mormon and non- Mormon business communities by championing the organization of the Ogden Chamber of Commerce in April of 1887. He also oversaw the construction of a new city hall. At the time David also expanded his lumber operations. Between 1883 and 1889 he opened new timber stands in Oregon the opportunity to market lumber from the lush stands of the mountain west and pacific coast became part of the incentive for the construction of railroads through the west. And the available railroad transportation led to a boom in railroad logging. As entrepreneurs moved into the Rocky Mountains, California and the Pacific Northwest, to harvest evergreens Eccles got in on the ground floor of the logging business. 6 In 1883 he purchased a mill to manufacture railroad ties at North Powder from John Stoddard. Organizing the firm of Spencer, Ramsey and Hall in 1887 Eccles established sawmills at Veneta, Oregon and Chandroth, Washington. Fluming or floating logs to Veneta, the company cut the logs into ties, loaded them on railroad cars and shipped the out to fuel the ever expanding railroads throughout the west. In 1888 Eccles closed his operations at Scofield and moved the mill to Telocaset about thirty miles north of Baker, Oregon, and about eight mile from North Powder on the Union Pacific Railroad. Eccles' loggers at Scofield had been cutting illegally on public lands and after the inauguration of the Cleveland administration in 1885 General Land Office Commissar William A. J. Sparks began a sustained attack on illegal use of public resources. In addition, the General Land Office lumber inspectors had reportedly been extorting bribes from the company. That was somewhat of an incentive to close the operations down. In 1887 Eccles began his associations with Charles W. Nibley and you see the two of them here on the advertisement for the Oregon Lumber Company. Nibley a Scottish immigrant like Eccles earned a fortune in lumbering and in the beet sugar business before he became Presiding Bishop of the LDS Church stockholders in addition to Eccles, who held a controlling interest in the company. In 1889 David moved Ellen's family to North Powder. Eccles and Nibley induced the Union Pacific Railroad to use rails salvaged from other operations to construct in 1890 a twenty mile long narrow gauge railroad from Salisbury eight miles south of Baker northeast through the Sumpter Valley and he himself invested in that railroad as well. In addition the U. P. contracted with Eccles' firm 7 to furnish 500,000 ties each year which they shipped on their new railroad to various destinations. In 1891 the company shipped its first timber from Sumpter Valley and in 1892 Eccles opened a mill at Baker. By 1893 the company had operations at Hood River, Meacham, North Powder, Baker and Pleasant Valley. Eccles' company managed to weather the economic depression that followed the financial collapse in 1893 and the company was able to keep its employees, because they honestly told the workers about the dangers of working for the company under these stringent economic conditions. At the same time they promised the workers that they would treat them fairly. Into the early twentieth century the company continued its operations. In 1902 Eccles opened the mill at Anglish Oregon and about forty miles northwest of Portland. The town again lay on the Columbia River and also on the railroad line. In 1903 Eccles purchased the Lost Lake Lumber Company at Hood River also on the Railroad line and the Columbia River and he consolidated with the Oregon Lumber company. In 1905 Eccles induced the Union Pacific to construct a spur line the Hood River Railroad from Hood River twenty- five miles up to Parkdale. This allowed them to access the lush stands of fir in the region. In the mean time Eccles began to invest in other businesses. He reluctantly bought stock in the Utah Sugar Company, the parent company of Utah- Idaho Sugar. In spite of his reservations about investing in that company his connection with U& I proved a god send for him. He also began to invest in banking and it was the banking business that eventually led him to invest in Utah Construction. In 1881 a group associated with Horace S. Eldridge then president 8 of Deseret National Bank and manager of ZCMI chartered the First National Bank in Ogden. The bank located its offices at the corner of Washington Boulevard and 24th street. At the time the only Ogden stock holder was Neil C. Fliger. In 1883 the First National Bank increased its capital from a $ 100,000 to $ 150,000 and David invested in the bank and was elected to the board of directors. In 1888 the board elected David H. Parry as president of the bank and in 1889 Eccles was elected, or in 1892 Eccles elected vice president. In 1894 he purchased Parry's stock and was elected president of the bank. In 1898 he became a director of the Deseret Savings Bank and Deseret National Banks in Salt Lake City. These banks later became the basis of the First Security Bank system, now part of the Wells Fargo Bank system. As a faithful Latter- day Saint he also responded to calls to help his church. He never served a mission himself but sent sons on missions. He made his initial investment in the Utah Sugar Company because of a request from Heber J. Grant. Later when President Lorenzo Snow decided to issue bonds to help satisfy the church's creditors David Eccles subscribed to $ 200,000 worth of Latter- day Saint bonds. Eccles also paid off a $ 7,000 debt of the Ogden fifth ward by inducing President Lorenzo Snow to allow the ward to credit his tithing toward the debt toward that ward. Imagine trying to do something like that now. While David Eccles amassed a fortune from lumbering, the earning from which he invested in other business, two other young men, Edmund O. and William H. Wattis began to make their mark in business. E. O. and W. H. farmed together in Uintah and you'll hear some more about them from Stan Layton later 9 on, but they also began taking grading contracts often with their uncles George L., Charles J, Amos B., and Warren W. Corey. In 1881 the Corey Brothers and Ira E. Spalding organized Corey Brother Construction Company as a private company. In 1886 the Wattis brothers joined with their uncles and Spalding and incorporating Corey Brothers. The corporation constructed railroads in various states. Sometime after this incorporation David Eccles offered to purchase a share in the company, but reportedly the opposition of Warren Corey kept him out. Already however, Corey Brothers had begun financing their operations by borrowing $ 50,000 from Eccles' First National Bank. For the Portland to Astoria job for which the Corey Brothers contracted to grade the railroad line the contract required the company to pay the contractors at the completion of each twenty mile section of the railroad. As they moved along in the construction the company ran short of funds, in part because they had to front the cost of construction. Financial problems also arose because a company they were doing some work for in Nevada went bankrupt and because of the financial stringency. The depression of 1893 was probably the second worst depression that we had in the history of the United States. When Corey Brothers could find no financing to conclude the railroad contract local authorities auctioned their equipment to meet their obligations. In the mean time, the Corey Brothers soon reached First National Banks lending limit of ten percent of their capital. Warren Corey came to bank to borrow some more money. Well bank officials told him that David Eccles wasn't there. He was in his office over at the lumber company where he always 10 had his office, so Corey went and sought him out. What David did was to say, " Look, I don't want to talk with you. I want to talk to W. H. Wattis he's the general manager of the company." So Wattis came in to Eccles office and Eccles asked him, " Look what's the matter. Why do you need more money?" Wattis replied, " That nothing was the matter if we could get rid of the Coreys." He told Eccles that job wasn't good enough for seven families to live off. Unable to meet their obligations as the depression deepened the Corey Brothers filed for bankruptcy in 1895. To settle their debts the Wattis's and Corey's had to sell a great deal of their property in downtown Ogden and on the bench, east downtown to the First National Bank. As a bankrupt company Corey Brothers passed into receivership and the receiver sold the company assets now totaling about $ 7,000 to a new company incorporated on November the sixth of 1895 with capital of $ 10,000. Significantly with the new Corey Brothers they had a new set of senior partners all officers of the First National Bank. After the reorganization the officers of the bank, Thomas D. Dee, James Pingree, Joseph Clark, and David Eccles owned two- thirds of Corey Brothers Construction Company. Eccles held the largest block of stock with thirty- six shares. Dee, Pingree and Clark each held ten percent among the Corey Brothers only Warren Corey and his wife, Julia, with thirty- two percent and Amos Corey with one percent remained as stock holders and William H. Wattis held only one percent of the stock in this company. In what was an apparent effort to avoid calamities similar to that the company had experience in 1895 David Eccles insisted that company carry no 11 long term debt. In a bow to the Corey Wattis partnership however and because David Eccles had considerable confidence in him William H. Wattis was appointed vice president and general manager of the company. The new owners elected Dee as president of the company and Pingree as secretary and treasurer. Since the company had come under the wing of First National Bank however, David Eccles as bank president and the largest stock holder became a major power in the company. Soon however as Wattis had hoped the new owners of Corey Brothers shut the Corey brothers out of the business. On January the 8th of 1900 E. O. and W. H. Wattis together with their brother Warren L. Wattis incorporated the Utah Construction Company. They subscribed stock worth $ 8,000 from an initial offering of 24,000. Then on February the 8th of 1900, David Eccles, Thomas Dee, James Pingree and Joseph Clark, you'll remember their names from the bank together with the Wattis brothers purchased the remainder of the stock. Utah Construction agreed to purchase Corey Brothers assets except their books, probably weren't any good anyway, for $ 24,000. In the reorganization the Wattis brothers and W. H.' s wife Marie held $ 8,000 in shares, the same amount as David Eccles. Dee held $ 4,000 worth and Clark and Pingree $ 2,000 worth each. The directors reappointed W. H. Wattis as vice president and general manager and Dee was appointed as president. Wattis' reappointment came on the motion of David Eccles who had a considerable confidence in this younger mans ability. Eccles told his wife Bertha that the Utah Construction Company was one business that he did not have to concern himself about and that Mr. 12 Wattis knew the construction business and was competent to handle it. He also had similar confidence in E. O. Wattis whom he eventually place in charge of the companies San Francisco office. Under new management Utah Construction still had to finish the contracts that Corey Brothers had previously negotiated. The one Corey relative that they hired was Lester S. Corey, who served in various positions and eventually became company president. Completing the Corey Brothers contracts, Utah Construction finished a number of jobs including grading a road from Idaho Falls to St. Athenie for the Oregon Short Line, a subsidiary of railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman's Union Pacific Railroad. They also continued negotiating contracts for other jobs. In 1901 Utah Construction took a contract with Oregon Short Line to grade a line from its terminus in Utah to Las Vegas, Nevada. This construction project put O. S. L. and Harriman's Union Pacific system in competition with the Los Angeles and Salt Lake railroad owned by William Andrews Clark, who was a banking and mining magnate from Montana and who served for a time as Montana's senator. The Union Pacific had surveyed a line from Utah to Los Angeles in the nineteenth century, but Clark insisted that the franchise had lapsed because Union Pacific had not constructed the line very soon. This difference in opinion led to a frantic race between the two lines to completely construction through choke points. That is Narrow Canyons where workers could construct only one line. Both the Utah Construction Company and the L. A. S. L had crews that they pushed into the breach. Beginning at choke points construction crews actually graded road beds between places where other crews had already laid tracks. 13 Lester Corey served as Utah Construction's forwarding agent. In that capacity he had to make sure that hay, oats, and other supplies reached the camps ahead of the construction crews. From that vantage point Corey watched the progress and the confrontation between Utah Construction and Clark's company. They sent men and teams over land to places as much as fifty or more miles ahead of the rail end, those are Corey's words as he watched this. Laying rails at the rate of a mile a day the O. S. L people reached a choke point in Caliente Canyon, about sixty miles as the crow flies from Modena, Utah which was the last town in Utah before the tracks went into Nevada. Crows however don't fly the circuitous route that Utah Construction had to take to get into Caliente Canyon and down to Meadow Valley Wash in southern, southwestern Nevada where the town of Caliente was located. The Utah Construction crews reached Caliente Canyon before the L. A. S. L. crews did. Although the story is a bit unclear, Utah Construction must have already graded road bed through the canyon because the O. S. L. crews pulled in laying track on the way. When they got to the canyon they found that L. A. S. L. crews had strung a wired fence across the road bed, behind the fence stood a squad of toughs with rifles aimed at the O. S. L. construction crew. O. S. L. chief engineer, William Ashton, order his men to push the construction cars up to the fence and then he dumped a load of ties across the fence. In the face of these riflemen then, Ashton jumped the fence to call their bluff. Well as it happened the shooters weren't bluffing, at least not exactly. As soon as Ashton reached the other side of the fence the rifle men greeted him with volley of shots. 14 Fortunately the shots were all bang and no lead because the shooters had loaded their rifles with blanks. Both sides laughed at the confrontation and cooler heads prevailed. Utah Construction crews then packed up and returned to Utah and Idaho to carry several bank widening contracts. U. P. and L. A. S. L. took a year to negotiate an agreement and the line eventually became part of the Union Pacific system and Utah Construction returned to finish the road into Las Vegas. Significantly one of the stations in Caliente Canyon is named Eccles probably after David Eccles. After the organization of the company Eccles understood that Utah Construction could not really prosper if they continued to take small contacts for portions of railroad lines or for realigning various railroad lines the way the Corey Brothers had done. He wanted to undertake a very large project, but he needed help to negotiate it. His help came from Henry Havemeyer. As we've noted before through the good offices of Thomas Cutler, Eccles had already met Havemeyer. Cutler's Utah- Idaho Sugar Company had sold a fifty- one percent interest to Havemeyer's sugar trust. In June of 1902 after Cutler had introduced them, Havemeyer left Cutler twiddling his thumbs in the outer office and spent most of the day with David Eccles. The wily New Yorker apparently thought he could wear Eccles down, having cut his teeth though on the rough and tumble of western business Eccles held his own. After having his fill of Havemeyer's tactics Eccles finally told him bluntly, " We don't have to sell. We don't owe a dollar. This is what we'll do and nothing under that." Accepting Eccles proposal Havemeyer purchased fifty- one percent of the Ogden, Logan 15 and Oregon sugar companies that Eccles owned for more than the combined total of the three companies, and he consolidated them into the Amalgamated Sugar Company. Although he stood his ground in these negotiations, Eccles recognized that he could not battle a powerful company like the American Sugar Refining Company, so he bargained for the best deal he could. Significantly instead of detesting Eccles for his unyielding stand Havemeyer found Eccles a capable and impressive businessman and they became close friends. In Bertha Eccles' words, " Havemeyer didn't lose any respect for him because he stood up for what he knew was right." In fact he kept Eccles on as company president. Later when Havemeyer sent one of his technical experts to investigate Amalgamated Sugar Company plants the expert returned with the complaint that Eccles managers and other employees didn't have any advanced education. Havemeyer then defended Eccles, he told him, " Any man Mr. Eccles employs as a superintendent or to work around the mill is satisfactory and you must not interfere with Mr. Eccles." Now Havemeyer's friendship with Eccles proved more that propitious. Following the death of Callis B. Huntington in 1900 Edward H. Harriman gained control of the Southern Pacific Railroad. He already owned a controlling interest in Union Pacific and with the control of S. P. he effectually monopolized all of the railroad traffic from Salt Lake City to California. Previously S. P. had divided its patronage between the Denver and Rio Grande and the Union Pacific. With the 16 acquisition of Southern Pacific however, like a first rate monopolist Harriman began to squeeze the D. & R. G. In the mean time ownership of D. & R. G. had passed from Jay Gould to his eldest son George Jay. George Gould then owned a controlling interest in railroads stretching from Buffalo New York to Ogden Utah and he intended to extend that railroad from Baltimore to Oakland. To accomplish the western leg of his dream Gould turned to E. T. Jeffery who was president of Denver and Rio Grande in which Gould had a controlling interest. Gould and Jeffery tried to conduct surveys in secret over Beckworth Pass and down the Feather River Canyon to Oroville in California. But Arthur Caddy and Walter Barknet who had long planned for such a railroad learned of these efforts. Pressing Gould with claims that they'd already staked. Barknet negotiated an agreement with Gould on February the sixth of 1903 to provide for a new company to build this railroad from Salt Lake City to Oakland. On March the third then, a month after the two had signed this agreement and less than a year after Eccles had negotiated the sale of the controlling interest in his sugar plants to Havemeyer eleven men sat down at the California Safe Deposit Building on California Street in San Francisco. And you should remember that name, California Safe Deposit because it becomes important later on to the company. They signed and agreement to construct the Western Pacific Railroad from Salt Lake City to Oakland by way of Beckworth Pass, the Feather River and Oroville. Beckworth Pass lay more that 2,000 feet lower than Donner Pass which the Southern Pacific controlled. 17 Virgil Boge whom Gould sent out to conduct surveys found that they could construct a road with a grade of one percent, making it much more efficient that the Southern Pacific's grade over Donner Pass. After word of the new railroad reached Ogden the Company Officers learned that the contract for the western leg of the rail road from Oakland to Oroville had gone to E. B. & A. L. Stone of San Francisco. No one however had won the contract for the eastern end of the road which was to cross the Sierra Nevada, span all of Nevada and then cross Utah into Salt Lake City. No one in Utah Construction except David Eccles had an association with anyone with influence who could recommend them to Gould's representatives. He was in the word of Lester Corey, " The only one of our group who was known in eastern circles." Moreover " Eccles firmly believed that the company could do the job, so he agreed to go to New York and see what could be done," those are Lester Corey's words. Since he had a working relationship with Henry Havemeyer Eccles went to see the sugar magnate. Because of Havemeyer's confidence in Eccles' ability he recommended Eccles to the W. P. officers. Eccles said that " Havemeyer told Gould and his associates that anything that Eccles would sign his name to they could be sure he would see it through." Significantly Eccles, personally obligated himself to the successful performance of the contract, gave his personal word for it. In the midst of these negotiations on July eleventh, 1905 Thomas D. Dee contracted phenomena and died. On August seventh vice president W. H. Wattis called a meeting of the board of directors, the directors then elected David Eccles 18 president of the company. On September thirtieth, Eccles met with the board to ratify the first of the results of his negotiations with the Gould people. The directors agreed to sign first what to have been six contracts and seven supplemental contracts that authorized Utah Construction to prepare a roadbed for laying of rails from Salt Lake City to Oroville, California. The first contract obligated Utah Construction to grade between Salt Lake City and Silver Zone Pass, a pathway through the Toano Range about a hundred and ten miles west of Salt Lake City. Readers should understand that Utah Constructions obligation on this as on many previous contract consisted on preparing road bed on which the railroad laid its tracks rather than to lay the tracks as well. It did some jobs where it laid tracks but a lot of these involved grading road bed. Eccles then tasked Andrew H. Christenson with supervising the contract from Salt Lake City end and Edmund O. Wattis to superintend the Oroville end. Each section of the line had its own problems. In crossing the Bonneville Salt Flats near Wendover the construction crews faced a vast span of water soaked salt under pinned by mud. To solve the problem by laying lumber on the salt laying tracks on the lumber and hauling train loads of earth and gravel until the train bed would hold the locomotives and railroad cars. Consulting with supervisors and engineers the company broke new technological ground. This is the old technology, horses and wagons and scrappers. Here's an example on a construction project on the way they went ahead with their horses and wagons. Before 1905 construction company 19 workmen had prepared the road bed with horse drawn plows scrappers and dump wagons. Crews blasted through rock with dynamite but horse drawn equipment did virtually all of the earth moving. Since numatic drills available in the nineteenth century were bulky and difficult to move crews did most of the drilling by hand to place dynamite and nitroglycerin. On the Utah Construction job however, on the western construction job, Utah Construction began to move its technology into the twentieth century. Crews began to use in Lester Corey's words, " Air compressor, power drills, small steam locomotives, dump cars of four to eight cubic yards capacity, and steam shovels." You can see in this picture one of the trains with dump cars and the steam shovel operating, this is at Beckworth Pass. Since much of the hardest work took place in California and Western Pacific had its office in San Francisco as construction near completion in 1908 Utah Construction opened what they anticipated would be a temporary office in San Francisco. Eccles sent E. O. Wattis to head this office which was located in the Flood Building on Market Street between Turk and O'Farrell. After completion of the Western Pacific job the company began to secure contracts for work on the west coast and instead of closing this temporary office, it remained opened. E. O. and his associates Henry J. Lawler, John G. Tyler and John Q. Barlow aggressively sought contracts on the west coast as well. With the exceptions of the difficulties encountered on Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats Utah Construction crews had a relatively easy time constructing the road through Utah and Nevada. The seventy five mile Feather River Canyon in 20 northwestern California between Cady and Oroville however seemed like something from another world. On the surface a span of seventy five miles that dropped only one foot in a hundred seems like a walk in a park, at a glance. If you look at a topographic map of Feather River Canyon however, it reveals something quite different. The canyon is so steep that contour lines seem to lie on top of one another. And photographs from the canyon reveal a gloriously rugged landscape. And you'll see one of those pictures here. In some places surveyors had to hang by cable to drive the center line and field space across the canyon. In some places crews had to work very hard because they had to build a railroad grade with curves of only twenty degrees. Utah Construction blazed a trail and brought supplies in by mule train to set up camps and used these as bases for blasting out wagon road to haul in provisions and equipment. Eleven men lost their lives working on a rope bridge at Cromberg. Five died in and explosion at Beckworth Pass. At the confluence of Grizzly Creek the crews had to raft around shear cliffs. Utah Construction blasted forty tunnels of between forty and 7,500 feet in addition to building bridges, trestles and doing cuts and fills. E. O. Wattis moved his family to Oroville just beyond the north fork of the Feather River and his daughter reported that they could hear blasting from their home. As the construction proceeded, Utah Construction in general and David Eccles in particular faced a new problem caused in large part by the panic and recession of 1907. On October 22nd 1907 W. H. Wattis approached J. Dalzell Brown, Western Pacific's treasurer and asked him for payments due the 21 company. Lying to Wattis, Brown told him that the company didn't have any money on hand when in fact Western Pacific had deposited in the California Safe Deposit and Trust Company in San Francisco. Wattis had to leave San Francisco but Brown promised to send him the checks to Salt Lake City. Later Brown who was also the treasurer and vice president of California Safe Deposit, he had both those companies together, sent Utah Construction two checks totaling $ 236,000 drawn on California Safe Deposit. John Pingree who was the cashier of First National Bank of Ogden had left the business when the checks arrived and James F. Burton who was assistance cashier received the checks and sent them to California Safe Deposit for credit instead of depositing them in the San Francisco banks at the First National generally did business. Dalzell Brown and the other bank officers however knew something that Wattis and Brown didn't know. Through out the month of October 1907 California Safe Deposit was insolvent, in fact only deposits from Western Pacific from failing earlier and the bank apparently tried to protect itself by paying only nominal amounts from W. P. had deposited. More over California Safe Deposit had not kept the more than $ 400,000 required by the state of California for its financial institutions. Thus in an age before deposit insurance First National stood at risk. Employees at California Safe Deposit nicely credited First National's account for the checks, this was on October the 28th 1907 but they paid out no money, they simply credited the account. Safe Deposit proved quite unsafe deposit however because it closed its doors two days later on the October 30th. 22 To compound the difficulty at the same time because of the recession Western Pacific ordered construction curtailed by forty percent. In spite of Western Pacific's curtailment, Utah Construction had obligated its self to pay subcontractors their retained percentages, but W. P. didn't have to pay Utah Construction. In effect Utah Construction faced involuntary bankruptcy. Now David Eccles had guaranteed the contract with Western Pacific personally so he felt personally responsible for the losses incurred by the banks failure and the obligations to the subcontractors. As a result he negotiated a personal loan of $ 100,000 from Desert Savings Bank which he deposited in First National Bank, the remaining $ 125,000 came from Utah Construction's undivided profits. Thus Utah Construction and David Eccles absorbed this loss. Utah Construction however agreed to repay the bank losses and though the documents on this matter are not clear Eccles may have recovered some of the money that he advanced. After the completion of the contract Utah Construction tried to recover its losses from Western Pacific. Western Pacific insisted that since California Safe Deposit had credited Utah Construction with the checks that they gave him that the company had no liability. Safe Deposit was bankrupt of course and the checks were no good. Utah Construction officers believed that Western Pacific should repay the money. Officers of Utah Construction and Western Pacific then agreed to submit their disagreement to arbitration on April 29th 1910 the two companies's turned the dispute over to Charles P. Ells. Ells ruled for Western Pacific and Utah Construction then appealed to the California Superior Court in 23 San Francisco in 1912. The California Superior Court also ruled in favor of Western Pacific and to add insult to injury ordered Utah Construction to pay court costs and attorney fees to Western Pacific. Utah Construction the appealed to the California Supreme Court and on January the 9th 1917, five years after David Eccles' death the Supreme Court sustained the lower court decision in favor or Western Pacific. Now I discussed this case with an attorney friend that told me that a Utah company probably didn't stand the chance of beating a California company in California court in 1912. He said that the company might have stood a better chance had they applied in federal court. In spite of this setback Utah Construction had made its mark as one of the west's major construction companies. The company received $ 22.3 million dollars for a contract that kept its crews and subcontractors busy from 1906 through the end of 1909. The company hired more that 7,700 workers it drew many of them from Europe through an employment agency in Chicago. At about the same time the company contracted to construct this line. It agreed to build a line for the Nevada Northern Railroad in Nevada from Cobre on the Southern Pacific line southward to Ely. Eccles also purchased an interest in a livestock company, which is son and executor of estate David C. Eccles sold to Utah Construction in 1913 to obtain money to pay his fathers inheritance tax. The owners incorporated as the Vineyard, Land and Stock Company. Between 1908 and 1911 the company also undertook a number of smaller projects which kept their crews busy. All of these 24 activities proved extremely profitable. In 1900 the incorporators had purchased the assets of Corey Brothers for $ 24,000, in 1906 the company increased its capital to $ 500,000, on December the 31st of 1912 a few weeks after Eccles' death the company had paid stock of $ 903,000, moreover it had additional resources of assets over liabilities totaling $ 1.4 million. David Eccles had invested $ 8,000 in a company in 1900 that was worth $ 24,000. At the time of his death in 1912 the value of the stock and undistributed profits of Utah Construction Company totaled $ 2.3 million. In 1971 Leonard Arrington interviewed Marriner S. Eccles, the son of David and Ellen Stoddard Eccles. Marriner had had both the Utah Construction Company and First Security Corporation. Eccles told Arrington that Utah Construction was then worth in excess of $ 60 million, this was in 1971. Now I'm quoting from Marriner Eccles, " The Eccles family holding in First Security are chicken feet compared to Utah Construction." David Eccles died on December the 5th of 1912 running to catch a train in Salt Lake City he had a heart attack from which he did not recover. By today's standards where billionaires seem to abound, his estate seems relatively small. David C. Eccles administrator of that estate valued it at $ 7.3 million. In 2007 dollars however the estate would be worth about $ 154 million. Bertha got a widows share of one- third the estate and his children by both Bertha and Ellen received equal shares of the remainder. As a plural wife Ellen received none of the estate. His heirs paid inheritance tax of $ 297,000. 25 At his death Eccles' stock in Utah Construction Company were valued at $ 235,000, that from an $ 8,000 investment. It was the fifth largest block of stocks that he owned exceeded only by Amalgamated Sugar Company, Lewiston Sugar Company, Utah- Idaho Sugar Company, and the Oregon Lumber Company. In effect his $ 8,000 investment in Utah Construction in 1900 had grown 2,938 percent in twelve years. That's a fairly decent return on your investment. Now to what did David Eccles owe his success? The origins of his fortune lay in hard work and thrift. During 1872 while he ran the mill on Monte Cristo he seldom slept in a bed. He worked until dark, laid down where ever he could find a place to nestle himself and began to work again at dawn. He spent virtually none of the money that he earned saving it as an investment to improve his position as a capitalist. Although he accumulated some debt during the early years shortly after his marriage to Bertha he paid that off and he ordered his business affairs so that he carried no long term debt. He had excellent business acumen and extraordinary ability to recognize significant economic trends. He based his fortune on lumbering during a time of cheap or free land and a rapidly expanding market. Then instead of carrying all the all of his eggs in one basket, he diversified into eighty- three companies in a wide range of business ranging alphabetically from Adams Copper Mining and Smelting Company in Washington County to ZCMI in Salt Lake City, that's A to Z. He was an excellent judge of the abilities of people with whom he associated and of the opportunities open to him. He recognized the particular strength of people like Thomas Dee and William H. and Edmund O. Wattis. He 26 knew how to cultivate the friendship of people that could that help him. Without his association with Henry O. Havemeyer it seems unlikely that Utah Construction would have obtained the large contract to build the eastern leg of the Western Pacific Railroad Company. Clearly Utah Construction Company owes much of the credit for the early successes which provided a foundation for its future to David Eccles. Thank you. © 2007 WSU Stewart Library, All rights reserved.

Die Arbeit befasst sich mit staatlichem Machtverhalten gegenüber dem Internationalen Strafgerichtshof (IStGH). Es wird argumentiert, dass Staaten ihre Bekenntnisse zum IStGH 'maßschneidern' und 'einhegen', abhängig davon, inwieweit sie eine Möglichkeit sehen, internationale Kooperationsprobleme zu lösen. Aus politikwissenschaftlicher Sicht ist es erstaunlich, dass so viele Staaten das Römische Statut ratifizieren, obschon es einen massiven Eingriff in die eigene Souveränität bedeutet. Wenn man jedoch miteinbezieht, dass viele Vertragsstaaten die Kooperation verweigern, muss die Glaubwürdigkeit von Bekenntnissen in Form von reiner Ratifikation in Frage gestellt werden. Dementsprechend werden folgende Forschungsfragen aufgeworfen: Wie lassen sich Bekenntnisse zum IStGH messen, jenseits der Ratifikation des Römischen Statutes? Und: Was erklärt das Ausmaß umfassender Bekenntnisse zum IStGH? Konzeptionell wird die Annahme zugrunde gelegt, dass Staaten sich gegenüber dem IStGH in einem Delegationsdilemma befinden. Es gibt es starke Anreize, zu ratifizieren und ein Vertragsstaat zu werden. Gleichzeitig besteht die Sorge, dass der Gerichtshof entweder zu schwach sein könnte, um sich gegen Politisierungsversuche einzelner Staaten zu schützen oder gar so stark werden könnte, dass er das eigene Mandat überschreitet und sich damit der Kontrolle der Staaten entzieht. Damit ist die Ratifikation für die Staaten äußerst riskant und nichtsdestotrotz für viele Staaten unabdingbar. Um dem Dilemma zu entkommen, nutzen die Staaten die Strategien der 'Maßschneiderung' und 'Einhegung' der eigenen Bekenntnisse indem sie Vertragsstaat werden, aber bspw. Änderungsverträge nicht ratifizieren. Somit können Staaten die Vorteile der Mitgliedschaft nutzen und gleichzeitig einen strategischen Handlungsspiel- raum behalten. Das Ausmaß dessen hängt davon ab, inwieweit die Staaten Kooperationsprobleme des internationalen Rechts lösen können. Diese sind beispielsweise, dass es in Anbetracht des Fehlens einer globalen Exekutivmacht schwer ist einzuschätzen wer sich rechtskonform verhalten wird und wer nicht. Die eigene Rechtstreue kann damit zum strategischen Nachteil gegenüber anderen Staaten werden. Mit dem IStGH existiert ein internationaler permanenter Strafgerichtshof, der die Macht hat, Völkermord, Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit, Kriegsverbrechen und das Verbrechen der Aggression zu untersuchen und zu ahnden. Die Schaffung eines solchen Gerichtshofes senkt die hohen 'Monitoringkosten' für Staaten, die anfallen, wenn diese dezentral oder nur in Institutionen für Einzelfälle mit zeitlich begrenztem Mandat überwacht werden. Darüber hinaus bietet die freiwillige Unterwerfung unter einen solchen Gerichtshof die Möglichkeit, die Glaubwürdigkeit bereits gemachter Bekenntnisse zu Verträgen der Menschenrechte und des Kriegsvölkerrechts zu erhöhen. In der Arbeit wird ein zweistufiges y-zentriertes Forschungsdesign umgesetzt. Dessen Ziel ist es, das Konzept der Einhegung und Maßschneiderung staatlicher Bekenntnisse nachzuweisen und die Erklärungskraft der Lösung von Kooperationsproblemen als theoretisches Argument zu überprüfen. Im ersten Schritt wird der Index of Commitment to the ICC zur Messung unterschiedlicher Ausmaße staatlicher Bekenntnisse entwickelt. Dadurch gelingt es die 'black box' der Vertragsstaaten zu öffnen, und Variation innerhalb der Gruppe der Vertragsstaaten zu erzeugen. Im zweiten Schritt wird der Index als abhängige Variable betrachtet und mit Hilfe von verschiedenen Regressionsanalysen überprüft, wie stark die Erklärungskraft der aus der Theorie abgeleiteten Hypothesen ist und wie sich diese im Vergleich zur Erklärungskraft in Bezug auf die reine Ratifikation als alternative abhängige Variable zeigt. Das zentrale Ergebnis der empirischen Überprüfung ist, dass tatsächlich nur sehr wenige Staaten einen hohen Indexwert erzielen und somit ein umfassendes Bekenntnis zum IStGH zeigen. Nur 26 von 195 Staaten haben keine oder kaum 'maßgeschneiderte' und 'eingehegte' Bekenntnisse, wie z.B. Deutschland, Belgien oder Kroatien. Die meisten der untersuchten Staaten weisen ein äußert hohes Maß an 'Einhegung' und 'Maßschneiderung' auf. Diese sind im Extremfall so stark (z.B. bei Bangladesch, Burundi oder Afghanistan), dass sie sich kaum von denen unterscheiden, die kein Vertragsstaat sind. Damit wird deutlich, dass sich das Delegationsdilemma gegenüber dem IStGH für die Staaten unterschiedlich stark zeigt. Zwar spielt der Grad an Demokratie eine wichtige Rolle in Bezug auf das Ausmaß der 'Eingehung' und 'Maßschneiderung' der Bekenntnisse, mindestens genauso entscheidend ist jedoch, welche Möglichkeiten für die Staaten bestehen, durch die Unterwerfung unter den IStGH, internationale Kooperationsprobleme in Bezug auf Humanitäres Völkerrecht und Menschenrechte zu lösen. ; The study deals with states' power political behavior towards the International Crim- inal Court (ICC). It argues that states constrain and customize their commitment dependent on their possibilities to solve cooperation problems of international law. From the view of political science, it is puzzling that so many states became a state party to the Rome Statute although this means a serious intrusion into their national sovereignty. However, as many states parties refuse cooperation (as e.g. in the case of Omar Al-Bashir who could travel unhindered through several states parties' territories, though there was an international arrest warrant) we have to scrutinize the credibility of those commitments. The questions arises as to how can we conceptualize and measure commitment to the ICC in a broader way, beyond ratification of the Rome Statute? And, how can we explain the extent of comprehensive commitment to the ICC? Conceptually, the study draws on the delegation dilemma to the ICC. On one hand, states have strong incentives to become a state party. On the other, there is reason to fear that the court could become either too weak to cope with trials of politicization or too strong and exceed its own mandate. Ratification is a risk but meanwhile necessary. In order to solve the dilemma states constrain and customize their commitments including not ratifying additional or amending agreements. Thus, they can become a state party and concurrently leave room for strategical behavior while being a state party to the ICC. The states' extent of constraining and customizing depends upon their possibilities of solving cooperation problems of international law with the ICC. The states (in the absence of a strong enforcement mechanism) do not know which of the other states will comply with the law and which will not. Their own compliance can become a strategic disadvantage in relation to states that don't comply. With the ICC a permanent international institution is provided that is able to inves- tigate and prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. The creation of such a court reduces monitoring costs that would occur when those norms were otherwise monitored by many different monitoring agencies. Moreover, the self-binding to such a court increases the credibility of commitment al- ready made to humanitarian law and human rights law. Making those theoretical arguments testable in an empirical analysis, the present study uses a two-step y-centered research design to measure and explain the states' compre- hensiveness of commitments to the ICC. In the first methodical step, the Index of Commitment to the ICC will be suggested as the measuring device for a comprehensive commitment to the court. In this way it becomes possible to open the black box of states parties and to show different levels of commitment to the court. In the second methodical step the explanatory power of the theoretical argument of solving cooperation problems with the ICC will be tested by means of regression analyses. Therefore, the hypotheses will be tested explaining the index positions compared to the mere ratification of the Rome Statute. The central empirical finding is that there are only very few states that reach a high index value; thus, they commit themselves comprehensively, such as Germany, Bel- gium or Croatia. Most of the states parties have constrained and customized their commitments. Those are in part so strong that their commitment behavior is almost comparable to those of non-party states, such as Bangladesh, Burundi or Afghanistan. The regression analyses point out that those states constrain and customize the com- mitments the least that have a high level of democracy and ratified a high number of treaties of humanitarian law and human rights law. This shows that states commitment to the court is not only related to the level of democracy but also to the states commitment to humanitarian law and human rights law, since the ICC is able to solve cooperation problems of international relations.

211 páginas ; RESUMEN: Colombia requiere desarrollar un mercado financiero acorde con las necesidades de un mundo globalizado y, por tanto, en el que la profundidad del mercado de derivados garantice que éstos se transan con facilidad, transparencia y a precios justos. Sólo entonces se podrá tener en Colombia fácil acceso a contratos de opciones, un derivado financiero cuya utilidad y ventajas para cumplir con diversas funciones económicas como la cobertura de riesgos, entre ellos el cambiario, pero también la de especulación y la de arbitraje, no han sido adecuadamente utilizadas en el mercado colombiano. No sobra enfatizar que las opciones permiten diseñar múltiples estrategias especulativas y de cobertura que se ajusten adecuadamente a la forma como el inversionista crea que se moverán los precios del subyacente, ya que se pueden combinar distintos tipos de opciones o incluso éstas con otros derivados financieros para adoptar un perfil de riesgo que se acomode a la volatilidad esperada en el mercado del subyacente de que se trate, en el caso particular que nos ocupa, esto es para la cobertura de riesgo cambiario peso/dólar, a la forma como evolucionará la tasa representativa del mercado para la divisa de los Estados Unidos de América.La importancia del mercado mundial de derivados se refleja en el hecho de que, entre diciembre de 1999 y diciembre de 2005, ha incrementado en cerca de un 300% en las operaciones extrabursátiles (mercado OTC), mientras que el volumen de estos instrumentos en el mercado organizado ocupa apenas la sexta parte del mercado OTC. Se puede indicar lo mismo de las opciones. El mercado OTC de derivados sobre la tasa de cambio se ha incrementado en un 200% entre diciembre de 1999 y diciembre de 2005, o sea que ha crecido a un ritmo significativo aunque inferior al del mercado de derivados en su conjunto; pero, en cualquier caso, el mercado organizado de opciones sobre divisas sigue siendo un mercado de muy poca profundidad. En Colombia el mercado de derivados es muy poco profundo y el de opciones en particular es muy poco conocido y cuenta con muy poca información. Adicionalmente, no se cuenta con una legislación apropiada para la valoración y la contabilización de estos instrumentos especialmente aplicable al sector real, y todo esto ha contribuido a la poca difusión y escaso conocimiento especialmente en este sector que ha llevado a que no se aprovechen de manera adecuada las ventajas de las opciones como mecanismo para la cobertura del riesgo cambiario. Y es que, ante el hecho de una economía que tiende cada vez mas a la globalización, como está ocurriendo con la colombiana, la volatilidad de la tasa de cambio peso/dólar será mayor y afectará negativamente los negocios de su mercado externo, contra lo cual, quienes participan en él, deberían concentrarse en su negocio, y transferir el riesgo cambiario haciendo cobertura del mismo, en un mercado financiero que, en la medida que sea mas profundo en cuanto a productos derivados como las opciones, podrá ofrecer productos mas confiables y con mayor facilidad de acceso. En el desarrollo de este mercado financiero, le corresponde un papel fundamental a las autoridades monetarias y de vigilancia, sobre todo las del sector real, para que, de manera conjunta con las del sector financiero, desarrollen una normatividad que incentive dicho mercado, ya que en la actualidad hay una gran carencia de esa legislación. ; ABSTRACT: Colombia needs to develop a financial market to cope with an increasingly globalize world in which the liquidity of the derivatives market should allow to deal easily, with total transparency and at just value. Only then Colombia will have a financial market with easy access to options contracts, which is a kind of derivative that serves several economic functions such as risk hedging, in particular currency risk, speculating and arbitraging. It is important to point out that derivatives allow the investor to design manifold speculative strategies to face adequately the risk, according to the price movements that will probably undergo the underlying. Options may be combined in several ways or with other derivatives to complies to the volatility of the underlying, in particular of the COP/USD exchange which is the focus of this written. The derivatives market had increased in near 300% in the OTC market between december of 1999 and december of 2005, whereas the volume of these instruments in the organized market was only the sixth part of the OTC market. During the same period, the OTC foreign exchange options market had increased by about 200%, which means that it had grown to a significant rate but a slower rate than the market of derivatives as a whole. But in any case, the organized FX options market continued to be a market with very little depth. Likewise, in Colombia the derivatives market is of very little depth, and the one of options, particularly the FX options market, is not very well known and there is little information about it. Additionally, there is not an appropriate legislation to value and are no accounting standards for valuating and accounting options especially for the real sector. All this has contributed to the little knowledge on how the perform and about their advantages to hedge for currency exchange risk. The point is that with a globalize economy, the volatility of foreign exchange rates will tend to be more volatile, possibly affecting in a negative way those business which trade in the foreign mark, if they do not concentrate in their core and transfer the FX risk to the financial market, that is to those who know how to deal with. But the financial market will be competitive to hedge against currency risk only when the derivatives market is very deep and there is easy access to its structures products. Monetary and supervising authorities have an important roll to play in the derivative market since they have to rule it, especially for the real sector. Only If these authorities joint to the supervising agencies for the financial sector and they come together with general rules for both sectors, will be possible to develop and promote the derivatives market and consequently the options one. ; Especialización ; Especialista en Finanzas Corporativas

In his inaugural address, John F. Kennedy proclaimed, "In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger." We are such a generation. JFK's words ring truer today than at the time of his inauguration in 1961 or any time since. The People's Republic of China (PRC), under the control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is more a peer competitor economically, militarily, and diplomatically than the Soviet Union JFK's America faced. And the CCP is every bit as resolved as the Soviets to shift global norms away from the defense of freedom.Naïve arrogance keeps too many Americans from seeing that China has become a tech powerhouse. China has a credible path to gaining technological parity (and in some cases, superiority) in military applications. Yet too many believe all the US needs to do is to keep the CCP from stealing American technologies (essential – yes, sufficient – no). They have not accepted the fact that the US trails in key technologies and risks falling behind in others. They don't fully appreciate how harmful America losing its innovative edge would be to its prosperity and security, now and in the future.America must awaken from complacency and dedicate itself to winning the race for tech leadership.China is Competing for Tech LeadershipEver since JFK's call to win the space race accelerated investment in talent and discovery, America has enjoyed the advantage of being home to much of the most innovative technologies. This has propelled its prosperity by making its products in high demand and advanced its security by giving its military an advantage over any foe. Yet the CCP's multi-decade focus on achieving leadership in key technologies has undercut America's advantage.A recent study found China leading in 37 out of 44 crucial technologies based on the proportion each nation had of the most highly cited research reports. For those frustrated that open-source publication accelerates the dissemination of dual-use technologies, the good news is China is publishing even more than America. Neither the classified insights the US gains nor the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) network of military science academies are included in the comparison. The picture may change if they were. Yet dominant Chinese market shares in critical minerals, batteries, EVs, solar cells, telecommunications, and more lend credence to China's technological advances. A report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) suggests......no one should have been surprised when China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide vehicle. China publishes four times the most cited papers as the US on hypersonic and advanced aircraft engines. It also leads in other sciences vital to hypersonic flight. Achieving speeds above Mach 5 requires advances in low-friction surfaces to reduce and dissipate heat produced by air friction. It also demands the development of novel materials able to handle high temperatures and high forces on control surfaces. China publishes three times as many highly cited papers as the second-place country (often, but not always the US) on novel metamaterials, eight times as many on coatings and three times as many on high-specification machining processes. These are areas where China manufacturing producing nearly twice as much output as the US, gives the PRC an advantage. The CCP's penchant for secrecy is reflected in its research focus. Their research leadership in photonic sensors, quantum communications, advanced optical communications, and post-quantum cryptography could allow the CCP to make their communications impenetrable by the West and make the West's classified communications vulnerable. The ASPI study shows the US leading in research publications in high-performance computing, integrated circuits design and fabrication, and natural language processing. But it trails China in machine learning, advanced analytics, and protective cybersecurity technologies.It shows the US leading in terms of research in small satellites and space launches, but trailing China in drones, autonomous systems, and advanced robotics. Finally, it shows the US leading in quantum computing research, but trailing China in post-quantum cryptography, quantum communications, and quantum sensors. China Contesting Military LeadershipHow does this translate into military applications? During the decades America spent fighting terrorism, the CCP rapidly built its military capabilities. The US military is sprinting to retool to deter great power conflict. At the time of JFK's address, defense spending represented 9% of GDP. Today it is at a post-World War II low of 3.5%. Since the time of JFK's inauguration, the Department of Defense's (DoD) research funding has declined from 36% of global R&D to a mere 3% now. Today's America's military is more a consumer than a provider of technology. The CCP has fused its quest for technological and military leadership. It is no different in the US. The contest for technological military superiority is in great part determined by which side can more quickly adapt commercially developed technologies. The CCP has the advantage of building anew while the US is handicapped by needing to replace an installed base of aging technology and bloated base structure that is aggressively defended by elected representatives in Congress prioritizing keeping federal jobs in their districts. The CCP has aggressively steered its industry to focus on technologies that give its military a technological edge, while US industry remains focused on gaining the greater payback from consumer markets. Captains of American industry gave Xi Jinping a standing ovation during his US visit last year, even as the US military is increasingly reliant on industry for its innovative edge.Inflection PointWe are at an inflection point. Depending on its response, America will continue to provide leadership that benefits both the nation and the world or surrender leadership to an ascendant China, at great risk to its future prosperity and national security. How can America successfully defend its innovative edge to underwrite freedom in its hour of maximum danger? How can we ensure the US stays a step ahead in new technologies? The US military can only build an offset advantage on technologies where the US leads.SolutionsAs we consider what it takes to preserve an innovative edge, I am reminded of a conversation I had as President of the University of Colorado with an institute director in Boulder who claimed national leadership in studying oceans. When I asked how it was that a university in the Rockies was good at studying oceans he replied, "It turns out that the first thing you need to study oceans in money, the second thing you need is graduate students." I am sure the fact that the campus in Boulder leads in satellite research and development didn't hurt either. Colorado is no closer to space than to oceans, yet success in research and development does not require proximity.Research FundingLet's begin, then, by considering how the US is doing providing money for research, then consider tech talent. As it turns out, not so well on either.Business. America's biggest source of research funding is business, yet Congress recently allowed a tax incentive for spending on research and development to expire. Renewing the R&D tax incentive is urgent.Federal. Concerned that China is approaching the US in total research spending......the Chips and Science Act authorized a significant increase in research support, but indications are that Congress will fail to appropriate the level of research funding authorized by the act. Fully funding the authorized research spending is essential for the US to retain its innovative edge.Productivity. Studies have found that research is becoming less disruptive. The concern is that using committees to allocate funds and professors fixated on gaining tenure both lead to the pursuit of incremental advances rather than breakthrough work. Governments should treat the search for the best ways to fund science as though it were itself a scientific problem, experimenting with how and who it funds. The US should also aggressively pursue how AI can be transformational in accelerating scientific discoveries in all fields. Collaboration. Innovation productivity is fueled by iterative collaboration among those who specialize in a specific field. New rules and chilly politics in both countries has resulted in US-Chinese academic collaborations peaking in 2019 and falling since. As research collaboration with China abates, the US must increase its collaboration with allies. US scientists currently collaborate twice as much with Chinese partners as they do with those from Europe. Yet Europe has much to offer. For example, the EU is a strong competitor to China in all quantum technologies, including post-quantum cryptography, where the US lags China. It is vital that the US and its European and Asian allies tighten research collaboration to build an aggregate lead in critical technologies. Bolster geopolitical benefits. Many universities encourage faculty to bypass open source publication and instead steer them toward filing a patent, perhaps a classified patent, to facilitate greater commercialization. This financially benefits the inventor and the university and could have geopolitical benefits. The National Science Foundation programs promoting greater commercialization and the Department of Defense's (DoD) academic partnerships should include an emphasis on bolstering geopolitical benefits.Some small steps could further facilitate research:New NSF Directorate. The Chips and Science Act created a new Technology, Innovation and Partnerships Directorate in the National Science Foundation to help ensure a greater focus on critical technologies. It emerged from concerns that China concentrates its research on technologies that give it a security edge, while US government funding is widely disbursed and US commercial research is focused on consumer markets.OSC. The DoD's new Office of Strategic Capital seeks to help advance "critical technologies vital to national security" that might not otherwise get funded.TalentThe state of tech talent is a substantial factor in tech leadership.Declining STEM enrollment. While a wide range of talent is essential to an innovative ecosystem, college graduates play an important role. Ongoing declines, driven in large measure by simple demographics, paint a worrisome picture. US college enrollment in 2021 was 15% below 2010 and is expected to drop further still, due to declining births following the 2008 financial crisis. The resulting drop in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) graduates will exacerbate the shortage of tech talent. Targeted funding should be provided to reverse the disincentive to pursue STEM degrees caused by their often costing up to twice as much to deliver or earn as liberal arts degrees. Considering that the PRC is now graduating twice the number of STEM PhDs as the US, significantly more funding should be provided for STEM scholarships and doctoral fellowships.Declining International STEM Students. With the US ranking near the bottom in the percentage of graduates pursuing STEM fields, it has long relied on attracting the world's best and brightest. The overwhelming share of these students have historically come from two countries–China and India. Visas for Chinese students and academics have fallen by two-thirds since peaking in 2015. A recent surge in students from India provides hope that they can take up the slack. The US must continue to attract international STEM students to contribute to the preservation of its innovative edge.Regulations – StandardsComparative regulatory regimes, defining global standards, and establishing secure supply chains are also important to the tech race. AI governance. A debate on AI governance is raging between two factions: on one side are those fixated on the consequences of far-off Artificial General Intelligence, together with market leaders seeking to insulate themselves from future competition. On the other side are pragmatists who fear excessive regulation would limit opportunities and favor China. This is playing out in the military in the context of when to keep a person in the loop, making decisions for otherwise autonomous weapons. The big geopolitical question is whether AI will be more beneficial for open or closed systems, democracy or authoritarianism, free market or a centrally planned economy. While centrally planned economies are less efficient than free-market economies and eventually break down, especially at scale, might the opposite be true of AI-empowered centrally planned economies? Will AI orient free-market economies toward oligopolies with concentrated control of platforms? In last November's OpenAI drama, "Those who think we should slow down and be careful mounted a coup against those who think we should speed up and be careful." The outcome means AI will now move faster. Expect to see more companies going beyond experimentation and discovering real use cases. How deep fakes and AI-generated misinformation impacts the upcoming election will likely influence public attitudes toward AI. The EU views itself as a regulatory superpower and has taken the lead in regulating AI, while a divided Congress in the US will give the courts and states outsized importance. While keeping a close eye on the risks of AI, it is important to ensure that governance efforts don't disadvantage the US. Tech standards. China would like standards to embrace its digital approach directed toward controlling users while US seeks to advance tech that empowers users. The Biden administration took a positive step recently by issuing the first-ever "National Standards Strategy for Critical and Emerging Technology." While agreements excluding the US that define terms of digital trade are advancing, the US reserved longstanding opposition to taxes on cross-border data flows, requirements to store data in an export markets such as China, and demands to share source code of software with importing countries including China. The administration took a pause to reconsider its positions.Progressives argue the rules could hinder efforts to rein in "Big Tech" companies via antitrust moves and regulation. Others argue the US abandoning its leadership role on tech standards harms businesses of all sizes and in the words of Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), is a "win for China, plain and simple."It is vital for the US to step forward soon to reassert its leadership in achieving consensus on the terms of the fast-growing digital economy.Export and outbound investment restrictions. Seeking to prevent contributing to the CCP's military capabilities, the US implemented export controls for advanced semiconductors and chip-manufacturing equipment in October 2022, tightening them in October 2023. Last August, it added outbound investment restrictions on technologies with important security implications–semiconductors, AI, and quantum computing.While the US may add further restrictions, their negative consequences must also be noted. They restrict sales of domestic companies that could be invested in further innovation and spur development of capabilities within China that could become formidable competition. Additionally, they have prompted reprisals by China, which limited exports of critical minerals gallium and germanium and more recently, graphite. Export and investment restrictions contribute to the US preserving its innovative edge but are no substitute for steps that would accelerate American innovation.Supply Lines. Supply sources for high-tech products that are not overly reliant on China is essential. The chip plants being built in the West help, but Taiwan will remain the dominant supplier. Even considering chips alone, resilience requires more than just fabrication, but also testing and advanced packaging. While there has been a far greater emphasis of supply chain resilience in recent years, establishing robust alternatives to China has been hampered by the current bipartisan resistance to negotiating trade agreements.Huawei having a 70% market share in Africa and a strong presence across the Global South impedes US tech leadership. While Open RAN may provide a solution, a greater resolve to support international infrastructure is necessary. ConclusionPreserving tech leadership involves a sometimes-dizzying array of variables. There is no silver bullet that will keep America's edge in innovation. Keeping a national advantage in technology is essential to the US prevailing in its strategic competition with authoritarian powers. The tech race remains America's to lose. America's innovative culture is more willing to fail fast and learn faster. America still holds the most important high ground–chip design, AI, and quantum computing. Despite these advantages, it must shake off today's complacency and take this race seriously. Threats posed by complacency rival threats posed by the PRC. Together, they amount to a giant red flag waving.As we assume "the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger," let JFK's charge on innovation be our watchwords–to "dream of things that never were and ask 'Why not?'"

I am pleased to introduce the next issue of the International Journal for Educational Integrity. This issue includes revised papers from two key conferences in 2009: the 4th Asia Pacific Conference on Educational Integrity (4APCEI, Wollongong University, Australia), and the Center for Academic Integrity Annual International Conference (Washington University, US), as well as two original papers. The issue is truly international, with authors representing the United States, the Ukraine and Australia. Daniel Wueste, Director of the Rutland Institute for Ethics, and Teddi Fishman, Director of the recently renamed International Center for Academic Integrity, provide a framing piece for the issue, with their paper from 4APCEI which explores the limitations of customer service approaches in higher education. Wueste and Fishman, while acknowledging the seductive appeal of likening students to "customers", particularly as part of the "total quality movement", provide a rigorous critique of this potentially dangerous discourse. The authors demonstrate how education differs quite significantly from commerce and argue that "looking to professional practice for help in understanding the educational enterprise holds considerably more promise than looking to business practiceâ€. Wueste and Fishman are forthright in their assertion that education is based on a reciprocal relationship between teacher and learner (rather than a transaction between vendor and vendee), and that intrinsic to this relationship is a shared commitment to integrity. Following on from Wueste's and Fishman's call for a re-articulation of values in higher education, are two papers from the CAI conference. Joanna Gilmore, Denise Strickland, Briana Timmerman, Michelle Maher (all from the University of South Carolina) and David Feldon (University of Virginia), investigate plagiarism by graduate students. Working with a sample of 113 masters and doctoral students from three university sites, representing technology, engineering, mathematics, or mathematics or science education, the researchers examined students' research proposals and conducted semi-structured interviews. Their key finding was that while plagiarism was a prevalent issue (almost 40% of the proposals contained notable plagiarism), this appeared to be largely unintentional due to a lack of disciplinary enculturation. Notably, this lack of disciplinary enculturation was further compounded for English as a Second Language (ESL) students at the pre-proposal stage, who also had to grapple with cultural differences, English language issues and a variety of other factors. William Hanson from Anderson University in California uses grounded theory and graph theory based analysis to create a "faculty ethics logic model" based on his research at a small, religiously affiliated university. Hanson sought to operationalise participant realities of the primary forces that drive teaching or resolving ethics issues and discovered that informal elements, rather than formal institutional influence, played a major role in response strategies. In particular, faculty members used existing knowledge, resources/artefacts, goals and beliefs and their actions were shaped by work group influence and collective norms within a Christian framework. Hanson concluded that ethics policy "cannot be wholly forced upon its members… informal institutional principles originate from faculty†and that teachers "must be considered as primary change agents in ethics reform." This research has important implications in the context of academic integrity, pointing as it does to the central, although often informal role of teachers in nurturing and promoting academic integrity on campus. Jason Stephens (University of Connecticut), Volodymyr Romakin (Petro Mohyla State University, Ukraine) and Mariya Yukhymenko (University of Connecticut) extend previous studies which have compared cheating behaviours of US undergraduate students with students from other cultures, by investigating academic motivation and misconduct by Ukrainian students. Based on a self-report survey with a sample of 189 students from each country, their study investigated the differences between US and Ukrainian students' task value, goal orientations, moral beliefs and cheating behaviours. Significant differences between the two groups were found, most notably that Ukrainian students reported lower judgements about the wrongfulness of cheating behaviours, and correspondingly higher levels of engagement in cheating behaviour. In particular, academic task value was a significant predictor of cheating beliefs and behaviours for the Ukrainian students: the more useful and interesting the course was perceived to be, the less likely the Ukrainian students were to cheat - a finding which has clear implications for all educators, but particularly those working with Ukrainian students. The final paper by Australian authors, Robert Kennelly, Anna Maldoni and Doug Davis (University of Canberra) provides appropriate closure to this issue. While Wueste and Fishman opened the issue by exhorting us to re-examine the value and purpose of higher education, Kennelly et al. do just that by reminding readers that educational integrity requires more than a pledge from students not to cheat. All stakeholders, from those at the highest administrative level, to those instructors teaching occasional tutorials, need to be deeply committed to the learning needs of the diverse classroom. International EAL (English as an Additional Language) students in Australian universities have long carried the burden associated with the customer service model of higher education critiqued by Wueste and Fishman. International EAL students pay high tuition fees, have additional expenses and responsibilities to fulfil English language requirements (in most Australian universities, a minimum International English Language Test Score (IELTS) of 6.00 for undergraduate entry), and in many instances, find at arrival that this IELTS score is inadequate for the level of oral and written communication required. Furthermore, with decreasing government funding and the demise of student unions, the level of on-campus services has gradually declined, so that students not only struggle with their academic load, they are often lonely and isolated. The discipline-based approach to academic and language development trialled, evaluated and recommended by Kennelly et al. goes some way to addressing the academic needs of this group of students. Using data from six consecutive semesters, the authors provide compelling evidence that team-taught, disciplined-based support programs have the potential to improve international EAL students' competence in academic and critical literacy skills, while simultaneously building English language proficiency. I trust you will enjoy this issue of the International Journal for Educational Integrity, and invite you to submit manuscripts for review for Volume 7(1), to be published in mid-2011. Volume 6(2) is being guest edited by Chris Moore and Ruth Walker, on the topic of 'digital technologies and educational integrity' and is due to be published in December this year. Tracey Bretag, IJEI Editor tracey.bretag@unisa.edu.au

Many are seeing the current impasse over the future of U.S. aid to Ukraine as the ultimate manifestation of congressional dysfunction. Following several attempts, the Senate in February passed a $95 billion bill that includes most of the Biden administration's previous requests, minus border funding. That bill sits in limbo in the House, with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who, while signaling he wants a vote on it, has so far been unwilling to bring it to the floor. Last month House Democrats introduced an arcane "motion to discharge" petition, which could allow supporters to bring the bill to a vote if 218 members agree. While 191 have signed the petition, the odds of finding another 27 appear daunting, given the number of progressive Democrats who oppose military assistance for Israel, and opposition by Republicans to bypassing the Speaker.This situation — while distressing to the Ukrainians, and it seems, the foreign policy establishment — presents an opportunity to reestablish some measure of congressional control, if only in a limited area. Members of Congress wary of presidential overreach and endless military intervention can use this delay to push the administration to define its strategy for Ukraine more transparently. Such a definition is essential for Congress, and the voters they represent, to evaluate the total costs, in treasure and risk of escalation, of our current policy.A common task for government bureaucrats is drafting responses to congressional questions for the record sent to their agencies. These QFRs range from in-the-weeds clarifications of budgets to essentially rhetorical questions on why a particular senior administration official is clueless, and everything in between. The best QFRs can cause policymakers to question some of their assumptions. Since the Ukraine war began, the administration's statements have been opaque, often contradictory, and sometimes lacking in elementary logic. We are past the point where the American people deserve straight answers on where this war is going, what our real critical interests are, and how we can best achieve them.Before approving further military assistance for Ukraine, lawmakers should ask, preferably in hearings with administration officials, or at least in detailed letters, a number of overarching questions.The first should be: Can you define what constitutes victory in this war? Does it require Ukraine recapturing all its internationally recognized territory, as President Zelensky and others maintain? Or can victory be defined more simply as preventing the collapse of the current government? What do we mean by providing Ukraine aid "as long as it takes"? The Biden administration should provide actual analysis, based on U.S. national interests, and not simply Ukrainian government talking points.Second, if our definition of victory is the expulsion of all Russian forces from Ukrainian territory, how plausible is that from a military perspective? Can the Biden administration provide a historical example in which a numerically smaller force, without air superiority, successfully attacked a larger force entrenched in strong defensive positions hundreds of miles long, dislodged that force, and inflicted more casualties on the defender than it suffered itself while on the offensive?Next, there has been much speculation about the risks of nuclear escalation, and whether Russian statements are merely aggressive bluffing, with no likelihood such weapons would be used. During the Cold War, wasn't it U.S. doctrine to implicitly threaten to use tactical nuclear weapons, not just to deter the Soviet Union from attacking the US homeland or using nuclear weapons in Europe, but to deter a conventional attack by the Warsaw Pact? If those threats were credible, why would Putin not consider using tactical nuclear weapons if he were facing a conventional defeat in which Ukraine threatened to retake Crimea and the Donbas, areas Russia now considers part of its territory?Fourth, a major talking point has been that a Russian defeat would deter China from attacking Taiwan, and represent a victory for the democratic world over an authoritarian axis. If this is a rationale to keep the war going, wouldn't China take us at our word, and decide that a Russian defeat is an unacceptable red line? Why wouldn't China begin providing munitions, artillery, tanks, and aircraft to Russia to prevent such an outcome?Fifth, in addition to Ukraine's shortage of ammunition and weapons, we increasingly hear about a manpower shortage, and an inability to replace casualties. Despite the battlefield situation, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men remain outside the country or are in Ukraine but making extraordinary efforts to avoid being drafted. Is this due to dissatisfaction with the current government, or a sense that while it was important to save the country in 2022, it's not worth continued fighting to retake Crimea and Donbas, or something else? Regardless of its cause, why should the American taxpayer be more committed to a Ukrainian victory than hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens themselves are?And finally, following Ukraine's unsuccessful counteroffensive last year, Russia is now undertaking limited attacks in several areas, using its superiority in artillery and airpower to wear down Ukrainian defenses. The Biden administration often states that its objective is to give Ukraine as strong a position on the battlefield as possible going into any negotiations. Is it possible that Ukraine is now in the best position militarily that it can reasonably hope for? Is it time for us to urge Ukraine to begin negotiations now, based on realities on the ground, rather than strive for maximum objectives, before it loses any more territory, and its bargaining position is further weakened?***Questions such as these would help start the dialogue on how our policy should evolve. The result may be a security assistance package much smaller than what the administration is proposing. There may be consensus to include, for example, artillery ammunition and shorter range air defense missiles to defend Ukraine's current positions, while excluding longer range munitions and aircraft. Those systems, by allowing strikes inside Russia, might encourage Ukraine to pursue unrealistic victory conditions, reducing the chances for diplomacy.For this approach to succeed, two elements are essential. First, members of Congress must make clear their sympathy for the Ukrainian people and their suffering. The point is not whether Ukraine is justified in seeking the return of its territory — it certainly is. The question is whether this goal is in any way realistic. Since the answer is likely "no," to continue throwing away lives as a performative gesture is immoral as well as pointless. Congress might consider a bill that separates out humanitarian assistance and voting for that now, since those funds are needed regardless of military policy.Second, this approach must be a bipartisan effort, with lawmakers on the left and right working together toward a common goal. So far certain Republicans have been in the lead on this issue, with Democrats lagging behind. More than a year has elapsed since the fiasco in late 2022, when the Congressional Progressive Caucus was forced to retract its already anodyne call for diplomacy. Progressives must overcome their fear of White House displeasure and attack from the Washington foreign policy establishment. People will take notice when similar questions are raised by members of both the Freedom Caucus and "the Squad." Members of Congress who favor endless military intervention have no problem with bipartisan cooperation, and those who think differently need to catch up.With the current effort in the House to act on the Senate's bill, the window is closing to ask tough questions. If Congress is to have any meaningful voice, these issues must be addressed as soon as possible.

On Nov. 15, FBI director Christopher Wray warned that the United States faced growing dangers at home from the war between Hamas and Israel thousands of miles away. A "rogue's gallery" of terrorist groups--including Hezbollah, al Qaeda and ISIS-- had called on followers to attack the United States, the primary source of arms and financial aid to Israel. With the threat of terrorism already raised, the latest Middle East war elevated the threat "to a whole other level," he told the House Committee on Homeland Security. Wray said Iran, "the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism," had also directly and indirectly targeted U.S. personnel both at home and abroad. It has hired criminals to plot assassinations against high-ranking current and former U.S. officials as well as dissidents living on American soil. Hezbollah, Iran's most powerful proxy, has sought to buy weaponry, seed operatives and raise funds in the United States, he told the powerful committee.Beyond the threat from countries and organized militias, Wray cited the danger of a "lone actor" inspired by tensions in the war to launch attacks "on our own soil." The FBI has "aggressively" tracked the trends, with recent arrests in Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles and at Cornell University. Although the FBI had not identified a specific plot, it was concerned about how "intentions might evolve."Christine Abizaid, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told the congressional hearing that the United States will need to carefully monitor how the Middle East war unfolds "and the degree to which it may help renew otherwise declining terrorist actors across the globe." The "inherently unpredictable" range of terrorist actions will require "agile responses to emerging threats and crises" that play out both at home and overseas. At the House hearing, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said U.S. intelligence expects the threat of violence by lone offenders or small group attacks in 2024 "will remain high" and may happen "with little or no warning." Foreign terrorist groups, such as al Qaeda and ISIS, "are rebuilding overseas, and they maintain worldwide networks of supporters that could target the Homeland."Wray Testimony Excerpts"It's been more than five weeks since Hamas terrorists carried out their brutal attacks against innocent Israelis, dozens of American citizens, and others from around the world, and our collective efforts remain on supporting our partners overseas and seeking the safe return of the hostages. But this hearing, focused on threats to our homeland, is well-timed given the dangerous implications the fluid situation in the Middle East has for our homeland security."In a year when the terrorism threat was already elevated, the ongoing war in the Middle East has raised the threat of an attack against Americans in the United States to a whole other level."Since October 7th, we've seen a rogue's gallery of foreign terrorist organizations call for attacks against Americans and our allies. Hizballah expressed its support and praise for Hamas and threatened to attack U.S. interests in the Middle East. Al-Qaida issued its most specific call to attack the United States in the last five years. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula called on jihadists to attack Americans and Jewish people everywhere. ISIS urged its followers to target Jewish communities in the United States and Europe."Given those calls for action, our most immediate concern is that individuals or small groups will draw twisted inspiration from the events in the Middle East to carry out attacks here at home. That includes homegrown violent extremists inspired by a foreign terrorist organization and domestic violent extremists targeting Jewish Americans or other faith communities, like Muslim Americans."Across the country, the FBI has been aggressively countering violence by extremists citing the ongoing conflict as inspiration. In Houston, we arrested a man who'd been studying bomb-making and posted about killing Jewish people. Outside Chicago, we've got a federal hate crime investigation into the killing of a six-year-old Muslim boy. At Cornell University, we arrested a man who threatened to kill members of that university's Jewish community. And in Los Angeles, we arrested a man for threatening the CEO and other members of the Anti-Defamation League. I could go on."On top of the so-called "lone actor" threat, we cannot—and do not—discount the possibility that Hamas or another foreign terrorist organization may exploit the current conflict to conduct attacks here, on our own soil."We've kept our sights on Hamas and have multiple investigations into individuals affiliated with that foreign terrorist organization. And while, historically, our Hamas cases have identified individuals located here who are facilitating and financing terrorism overseas, we continue to scrutinize our intelligence to assess how the threat may be evolving."But it's not just Hamas. As the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, the Iranians have directly, or by hiring criminals, mounted assassination attempts against dissidents and high-ranking current and former U.S. officials, including right here on American soil. Or take Hizballah, Iran's primary strategic partner, which has a history of raising money and seeking to obtain weapons here in the United States. FBI arrests in recent years also indicate that Hizballah has tried to seed operatives, establish infrastructure, and engage in spying here domestically—raising our concern that they may be contingency planning for future operations in the United States."And while we're not currently tracking a specific plot, given that disturbing history, we're keeping a close eye on what impact recent events may have on those terrorist groups' intentions here in the United States, and how those intentions might evolve. "Now, I want to be clear: While this is certainly a time for heightened vigilance, it is by no means a time to panic. Americans should continue to be alert and careful, but they shouldn't stop going about their daily lives."All across the country, the FBI's men and women are working with urgency and purpose to confront the elevated threat. That means working closely with our federal, state, and local partners through our FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Forces; taking an even-closer look at existing investigations and canvassing sources to increase awareness across the board; and doing all we can—working with our partners—to protect houses of worship here in the U.S."Bottom line: We're going to continue to do everything in our power to protect the American people and support our partners in Israel."Protecting Americans from the threat of terrorism is and remains our number one priority. But as you all know, the range of threats we battle each and every day is enormous."But I can tell you, it would be absolutely devastating if the next time an adversary like Iran or China launches a major cyberattack, we don't see it coming because 702 was allowed to lapse. Or, with the fast-moving situation in the Middle East, imagine if a foreign terrorist organization overseas shifts intentions and directs an operative here who'd been contingency-planning to carry out an attack in our own backyard. And imagine if we're not able to disrupt that threat because the FBI's 702 authorities have been so watered-down."Abizaid Testimony Excerpts "We continue to closely monitor, evaluate, and take appropriate actions with respect to potential threats to the United States in the wake of the 7 October Hamas attacks against Israel and the resulting regional tensions. …We are monitoring the actions of a range of terrorist actors for key signs of terrorist escalation, including from Iran-aligned proxies in the region; al-Qa'ida and ISIS branches and affiliates from West Africa to Southeast Asia; and other terrorist organizations or lone actors who may seek to exploit the conflict."The cascading effects of Hamas' brutal and highly complex attacks inside of Israel underscore the need for vigilance against a diverse array of terrorist actors who retain the capability and intent to conduct operations against the United States and our interests. Today's Middle East conflict and the potential implications thereof hits center-mass for a national CT effort that otherwise had been tracking an overall reduced threat emanating from ISIS and al-Qa'ida in the region and was adjusting to a more discrete, though geographically dispersed, terrorist threat. "How this conflict unfolds in the coming days, weeks and months – and the degree to which it may help renew otherwise declining terrorist actors across the globe – will require careful monitoring. In the meantime, the United States must be careful to preserve the capabilities to address an inherently unpredictable range of terrorist adversaries and enable agile responses to emerging threats and crises, even as we confront a myriad of other national security challenges that play out both overseas and in the United States…"These categories of terrorists and threat actors generally align as violent Sunni extremist groups such as ISIS and al-Qa'ida; Iran and Iranian-aligned terrorist groups such as Lebanese Hizballah, some militant groups in Iraq and Syria, the Yemen-based Houthis, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ); and Homegrown Violent Extremists and other lone actors such as Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists with a foreign nexus." CT pressure by the United States and foreign partners during the last 15 years has been critical in degrading the capabilities of the most concerning threats, particularly by disrupting experienced leaders and operatives and exerting sustained pressure against key networks. Consistent with the last two years of testimony to this committee, we assess the most likely threat in the United States is from lone actors, whether inspired by violent Sunni extremist narratives, racially or ethnically motivated drivers to violence, or other politically motivated violence."This is not to say that the threat from organized foreign terrorist groups is gone. Indeed, despite success at deterring sophisticated, hierarchically-directed terrorist attacks in the Homeland since 2001, as of 2022, terrorism threat reporting remained at roughly the same level as in 2010, when al-Qa`ida was at its relative peak, before the death of Osama bin Laden and rise of ISIS. Today's current conflict will undoubtedly fuel even more threat reporting…"Three key themes characterize our leading CT challenges: regional expansion of global terrorist networks despite degradation of their most externally focused elements; the growing danger from state involvement with terrorism; and the reality that lone actors are the most likely to succeed in carrying out terrorist attacks."The United States is safer today because of the suppression of the most dangerous elements of ISIS and al-Qa`ida's global networks. Thanks in large part to American and regional partner CT operations, both organizations have suffered significant losses of key personnel and sustained CT pressure is constraining their efforts to rebuild in historical operating areas. Al-Qa'ida is at a low point in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where its revival is unlikely because it has lost target access, leadership talent, group cohesion, rank-and-file commitment, and an accommodating local environment."Meanwhile, since early 2022, ISIS has lost three overall leaders and more than a dozen other senior leaders in Iraq, Syria, and Somalia—including some who had been involved in planning attacks outside the region—as a result of pressure from the United States and international allies, regional governments, and local opposition forces. These terrorist losses have been partially offset by an increased external threat from ISIS-Khorasan in Afghanistan and the expansion of both ISIS and al-Qa'ida networks across Africa, although these remain largely regionally focused. Thus far ISIS-Khorasan has relied primarily on inexperienced operatives in Europe to try to advance attacks in its name and, in Afghanistan, Taliban operations have for now prevented the branch from seizing territory that it could use to draw in and train foreign recruits for more sophisticated plots…"That said, given Afghanistan's history and the mix of terrorist and insurgent groups that have long operated from its territory, a top CT priority remains protecting against threats emerging from that country. In North and West Africa, we are concerned that the erosion of democratic norms and the withdrawal of some traditional partners could further embolden terrorist groups who already pose a threat to U.S. interests in the Sahel..."In the Middle East, Al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) remains al-Qa'ida's most dedicated driver of external plotting despite its own losses of key personnel and resources. Remaining senior members of the Yemen-based group continue to produce media reinforcing the cohesion of al-Qa'ida's global network as well as calls for attacks against our interests globally. How AQAP, ISIS, or other regional groups may seek to capitalize on HAMAS' 7 October attack to recruit and rebuild anti-West attack capabilities will be critical to assess as tensions and violence rise as the conflict continues."Our CT enterprise remains focused on the Iranian Government's persistent global activity, including in the Homeland, targeting multiple populations over the past four years, such as Israeli or Jewish interests; Iranian dissidents; and U.S. officials in retaliation for the death of IRGC-QF Commander Qasem Soleimani in 2020. Lebanese Hizballah, a number of Iran-aligned militant groups in Iraq and Syria, the Houthis, PIJ, and Hamas all have long-standing relationships with Iran and have received materiel, financial support, and training from Iran. These groups and surrogates pose an asymmetric threat to the United States and Israel, and the prospect of the Iranian Government's provision of more lethal and sophisticated capabilities to them remains a serious concern."More relevant to the Homeland, we are watching for signs that Iran could pursue additional operations here, though we assess they would be unlikely to do so given the consequences amidst the current conflict. Iran and its proxies do have a history of external operations; Iranian state agents have pursued several dozen lethal plots and assassinated at least 20 opponents across four continents since 1979, while Lebanese Hizballah has conducted international terrorist attacks in Argentina, Saudi Arabia, and Bulgaria."Over the last several years, Iran has plotted against the United States, other Western interests, and Iranian dissidents more aggressively than they have at any time since the 1980s and become increasingly explicit in threats to carry out retaliatory attacks for the death of Iranian officials, especially against current and former U.S. officials whom it holds primarily responsible for Soleimani's death."As of mid-October, Iran is allowing its partners and proxies in the region to conduct attacks amidst the Israel-Hamas conflict. For the United States, this has included Shia militant rocket and unmanned aircraft system attacks against U.S. facilities in Syria and Iraq, leveraging a longstanding capability. Both Iran and Lebanese Hizballah are conducting or permitting dangerous actions that demonstrate their increased risk tolerance within the current crisis. So far, they appear to be avoiding dramatic actions that would immediately escalate the contours of the current conflict or open up a concerted second front with Israel. However, in the present regional context, their actions and those of their proxies carry great potential for miscalculation."Violent extremists who are not members of terrorist groups will probably remain the most likely to carry out a successful attack in the United States over the next several years. The recent resurgence of such attacks in Europe, and the context of the ongoing Hamas-Israel conflict reinforces our assessment. By their lack of affiliation, lone actors are difficult to detect and disrupt. While these violent extremists tend to leverage simple attack methods, they can have devastating and outsized consequences, as we have experienced in the Homeland with attacks in San Bernadino, CA; Orlando, FL; El Paso, TX; and in Buffalo, NY, to name a few."Since 2010, violent extremists influenced by or in contact with ISIS, al-Qa`ida, and other foreign terrorist organizations have conducted 40 attacks in the United States that have killed nearly 100 and injured more than 500 people. In 2022, there were two such attacks in the United States, which is a decline of about 70 percent compared to the seven attacks in 2015—the height of ISIS's territorial control in Iraq and Syria and English-language messaging efforts. This averages out to a decline of almost 7 percent year-on-year during this period. The last Foreign Terrorist Organization-inspired lethal attack was in August 2021. However, we are on high alert for whether the current conflict in the Middle East may prove to be a catalyst for individuals to mobilize for attacks.."Mayorkas Testimony Excerpts"The world has changed after Hamas terrorists viciously attacked thousands of innocent men, women, and children in Israel on October 7, 2023, brutally murdering, wounding, and taking hostages of all ages…Although the terrorism threat in the United States has remained heightened throughout 2023, Hamas's attack on Israel, along with other recent events, have sharpened the focus of potential attacks on targeted individuals and institutions perceived as symbolic of or tied to the conflict. These tensions, coupled with the widespread sharing of graphic and disturbing content related to this conflict, increase the prospects for violence in the United States."In 2024, we expect the threat of violence from violent extremists radicalized in the United States will remain high, marked by lone offenders or small group attacks that occur with little to no warning. Foreign terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS are rebuilding overseas, and they maintain worldwide networks of supporters that could target the Homeland."Among state actors, we expect Iran, the principal funder of Hezbollah and Hamas, to remain the primary state sponsor of terrorism and continue its efforts to advance plots against individuals in the United States. Foreign terrorists continue to engage with supporters online to solicit funds, create and share media, and encourage attacks in the United States and Europe while their affiliates in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East prioritize local goals."In Afghanistan, ISIS's regional branch, ISIS-Khorasan, continues to harbor intent to conduct external operations and maintains English‑language media releases that aim to globalize the group's local grievances among Western audiences. "Over the past year, domestic violent extremists (DVEs) and homegrown violent extremists (HVEs) inspired by foreign terrorist organizations have engaged in violence in reaction to sociopolitical events. These actors will continue to be inspired and motivated by a mix of conspiracy theories; personalized grievances; and racial, ethnic, religious, and antigovernment ideologies, often shared online."The threat of a "lone wolf" actor attempting to exploit the conflict between Israel and Hamas and incited to violence by an ideology of hate is of particular concern. Foreign terrorist organization and lone offender reactions based on perceptions of U.S. support to Israel could further escalate the threat to Jewish, Muslim, and Arab-American communities in the United States and to U.S. government officials. As the conflict endures, graphic visuals will likely continue to circulate online and garner significant media attention, potentially acting as a catalyst for various violent actors who have shared and continue to share this kind of material…The PRC [China] and Iran likely will remain the most aggressive actors within the United States."

 this is not a picture of meThe dominance of intellectual property in film is driven by one central affect, or affective composition, nostalgia, the sense that something about the past was once better. It is unclear, however, if this mood is oriented towards the actual films of the recent past, or childhood itself. What is it we are nostalgic for? In asking this question I am taking a Spinozist definition of an emotion, an affect, that affects tell us something about ourselves, our bodies and capacities, and something about the object that has affected us, but they do so in a confused and jumbled way,  making it difficult to understand which is which. If one wanted to offer a Spinozist definition of nostalgia, since none is offered in the definitions of the affect, at least directly, then one could say that it is joy with the idea of an absent cause. This makes it especially ambivalent, since it is not clear if the cause is only momentarily lost or gone for good. Is it possible to experience it again, to regain that joy or does it become an object of sadness. The reign of intellectual property depends on the confusion regarding the object of desire and the ambivalence of the affect, making us believe that it is the intellectual property of the past we desire, want to see again and again, when it might just be childhood itself.  How can we come to form an adequate idea of this nostalgia, understand its true causes?My answer to this question are framed between two half remembered statements. The first, from wayback in graduate school, was something that Max Pensky said in a class on Walter Benjamin. That was over twenty years ago, and I cannot recall it exactly, but it was something to the effect of nostalgia is often a memory of a prior stage of commodification. The second is something that Boots Riley once said in an interview, that so many decisions made by the people with money, producers, studios, etc., are predicated on real ignorance of music, movies, etc. that they are producing. To put it in Spinozist terms, they only know the effect, that it made money. Boots Riley said this in explaining why his own unapologetically communist agitprop group The Coup got a record deal. The record label wanted to sign another group from Oakland. That is just one example, but there are more. The massive success of Star Wars in the seventies is often cited as the explanation for so many science fiction films, Alien, Outland, hell, even Félix Guattari got a meeting for his science fiction screen play. Of course this list also includes films like Krull and Lazerblast. To put it back in Benjamin's terms, this mad grasp for money coupled with a poor understanding of the success of Star Wars explains one of the weirdest toys from my childhood, the Alien action figure my brother got one Christmas. Making a toy from an R-rated movie, that scared the hell out of me as a kid, makes sense only if you think in terms of effects and broad categories. Alien is science fiction like Star Wars, and Star Wars toys made a lot of money. It seems unimaginable to us now because it would not happen today. The same is true of another object of misplaced nostalgia, The Star Wars Holiday Special. The reason that it is such an object of nostalgia despite being by every account terrible is because it would not happen today: no studio would waste valuable intellectual property having on a TV special in which the characters that were being marketed as everything from toys to bed sheets made space for a musical number with Bea Arthur. 
Film studios have in some sense gotten better at managing their intellectual property. The Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Holiday Special is less a strange mashup of space opera and variety TV than it is a moment in cross platform synergy, drawing attention to the Disney channel and keeping interest for the next installment of Guardians of the Galaxy Film. We should be clear what success means in this context, it means return on investment, and not some other criteria, exchange value not use value.  The period of the highpoint of the IP film, from roughly 2008 until now, is a period of consistent return on investment. Which is not to say that all of these films predicated on Intellectual Property are guaranteed success, even the MCU, in which every movie is a commercial for the next movie, is breaking under the contradiction between brand synergy and narrative closure. Even the contemporary forms of data extraction which know not only what people watch, but for how long, and when they binge, cannot create a guaranteed model for reproducing success. It produces copies. The current culture industry is aimed more towards making Krull than Alien, of extracting a few things that work, space princes, cool weapon, quest, monster sidekick, etc., into another film than gambling that the popularity of a space opera would translate into a horror movie about an alien and an evil corporation. The existence of Barbenheimer can in some sense be understood as a celebration, not of failure or even originality, but the inability for the culture industry to program everything. It turned a moment of counter-programing into a cultural event. Part of the joy of it was the feeling that there will not be another event like it, Saw Patrol notwithstanding. It was made by the audience and not the industry. What is true, however, is that the failures are less interesting than they used to be. In the summer of ninety eighty-two The Thing and Bladerunner were released on the same day, both flopped, but transformed their respective genres to become classics. That is what I am nostalgic for, for failure. I do not think that kind of failure is coming back. So in that way nostalgia is for me a sad affect, a memory of a phase of commodification that seemed more creative, more uncertain, if only because it is measured against the current real subsumption of creativity under property. I will let J-Church play us out. I am also nostalgic for an earlier day of punk rock, but that is a different story. 

On February 29, 2024, former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney passed away at the age of 84. During his tenure at the helm of Canada's government, Mulroney advanced trade and environmental policies that are still impacting the Canada-US relationship forty years on. Among the many accolades he received in his career, Mulroney was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service in 2003. In this collection, Canada Institute experts reflect on his extensive legacy.My Perspective on Prime Minister Brian MulroneyHon. David H. WilkinsAdvisory Board Member, Canada Institute; Former Ambassador of the United States to CanadaIt felt colder than usual that December day in 2005. I had just endured a Canadian press "scrum" and was flying out of Toronto Pearson. As I walked the concourse, there was my face on every television and fronting the covers of all the newspapers.And it wasn't good.The day before I had challenged then-Prime Minister Paul Martin's campaign criticisms of the United States. To say the speech was not received well in some quarters is an understatement, and as I waited on my flight back to Ottawa, I fielded dozens of calls from people eager to hammer me.So when the phone rang yet again, and I was asked to "hold for Brian Mulroney" I braced myself for more criticism.Instead, that call was – and remains – one of the top moments of my life. Mulroney knew I was taking hits, and as one who had absorbed many hits, Mulroney reached out personally to encourage and inspire me.He changed my perspective on criticism and put wind beneath the wings of a new ambassador eager to learn the job and do it well. I am indebted to him for that kindness, and so many he and Mila granted Susan and me over the years.I once had the privilege of enjoying a long and private lunch with Brian at his law firm in Montreal where he regaled me with stories of my hero, Ronald Reagan, and his dealings with a bevy of historical figures including Margaret Thatcher, the Bush and Clinton families, Princess Diana, and seemingly every larger-than-life leader on the world stage. He spoke of hard fights and devastating political costs, but never once of political enemies. In more than two hours of conversation which he carried virtually by himself, he expressed animus toward none. It occurred to me then how Brian Mulroney was different than most. He left political battles on the field and wasn't one to settle old scores. He loved to give big speeches, get lots of laughs and command attention, but he didn't wilt away from the spotlight. He understood he was a controversial figure and trusted his legacy to history. He had perspective.President Ronald Reagan once said, "I've always believed that a lot of the trouble in the world would disappear if we were talking to each other instead of about each other."I like to believe Reagan was thinking of his good friend Brian Mulroney. In 2008, at my request, Brian graciously traveled to South Carolina to address a major state legislative dinner. In true Mulroney fashion, he kept us laughing and challenged us to do the hard things without becoming hard. He knew it could be done because he did it.The Importance of Mulroney's Free Trade Legacy, and the Precedent it Sets for TodayDanielle GoldfarbGlobal Fellow, Canada InstituteImagine if Canada did not have a free trade agreement with the United States. It is almost unfathomable today to imagine this possibility, despite the deal being so controversial in Canada at the time. Without Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's successful completion of a free trade agreement with the United States - and later the NAFTA - Canadian living standards would be far worse than they are today.Canada has a small, open economy, located next door to the world's largest. The Canada-US Free Trade Agreement, the NAFTA, and now the CUSMA provided and continue to provide Canadian businesses with secure and relatively free access to the much larger US market. The agreements also made it relatively more attractive for companies to locate part of their supply chains in Canada, as part of regional supply chains. And without the deals, it is hard to see how Canada would have been able to mitigate the impacts of crises such as the 9/11 attacks and their impact on border security, or Donald Trump's tariff threats during the 2016 presidency. The tremendous importance to Canadian interests of these deals cannot be overstated. And they have led to widespread acceptance among Canadians. Canadians today understand that free trade with the United States and Mexico (and also with others) is essential for this country's prosperity, and does not pose a threat to Canadian independence. Moreover, the deals established frameworks, precedents, and cross-border working relationships that arguably matter even more today during this moment of geopolitical and technological disruption.When Mulroney negotiated the original agreement, he likely never imagined the degree to which China would be integrated into the global economy, or how much of our economic activity would be conducted online. So many things have changed. We are now in the midst of a digital data and AI revolution. We face considerable uncertainty, including the 2024 election and its aftermath, Donald Trump's new threat of sweeping tariffs, the fact that China, Russia, and India play by a different set of economic and political rules than do the NAFTA countries, and new threats to global supply chains from actors such as Yemen's Houthis. Despite so many differences between now and then, the free trade deals provide an anchor and starting point for the three countries to navigate the many challenges we face together in this moment. We would be far worse off without that anchor.Reminiscences of Canadian Prime Minister Brian MulroneyHon. Earl Anthony WaynePublic Policy Fellow, the Wilson Center; Career Ambassador (Ret.) to Afghanistan, Mexico, and ArgentinaBrian Mulroney was a great supporter of the US-Canada partnership and of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The United States owes him many thanks for his steadfast collaboration as we built stronger bilateral collaboration, and to create new jobs and generate more prosperity for both countries and across North America. Though I did not know him well, I had several memorable opportunities where our paths crossed.Prime Minister Mulroney had a warm relationship with President George H.W. Bush, which I learned when working on President Bush's National Security Council Staff covering Canada and Europe in 1990-91. My NSC colleagues and I commented on how friendly and trusting the conversations were between the Prime Minister and the President. They often exchanged stories about politics and joked with each other. I still remember clearly taking notes for one phone call where President Bush was wishing Prime Minister Mulroney well as he was passing through some challenging times in Canadian politics, and the Prime Minister responded by saying something to the effect of "well, George, you know more people in Canada today think Elvis is still alive than support me as Prime Minister," but then added right away that he was committed to keep working with President Bush to see the ongoing North American trade negotiations to achieve successful results as well as to keep working take full advantage of the opportunities to solidify the openings to bring more freedom, democracy, and security to Europe. It was clearly a conversation between two friends who shared common objectives and a determination to make as much progress together.The next opportunity that I had to interact with Prime Minister Mulroney was many years later in 2018. We were both invited to testify in a US Senate hearing about the importance of preserving the achievements of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which were being questioned by the Trump Administration. First, the Prime Minister was gracious and friendly to all, including warmly responding when I reminded him of my work for President Bush many years later. He was happy to share stories and insights with me and former Mexican Trade Minister Jaime Serra as we waited for the hearing to start. Then, Mr. Mulroney gave an enthusiastic and compelling testimony about the values that tied the United States and Canada together and the economic progress that had been made possible because of NAFTA for the US, Canada, and Mexico. While I gave a fact-filled and detailed focused testimony and responses to the Senator's questions, Prime Minister Mulroney very effectively talked to the senators as a fellow politician about creating jobs and supporting companies in their states, all of which he argued was made possible by NAFTA. Mr. Mulroney had well chosen facts about how individual US states were benefiting from NAFTA trade and investment to drive home his comments to the Senators. It was a pleasure to see him in action and an honor to join the Prime Minister in that Senate testimony. Brian Mulroney's Environmental Advocacy: of Stars, Lakes, and Acid RainDeanna HortonGlobal Fellow, the Canada InstituteWhile I had met Prime Minister Mulroney on several occasions, and had spent time with him in Japan in 1991, his longstanding impact did not become apparent to me until much later. In 2016, I organized a session in Toronto with former chiefs of staff to Prime Ministers, including Mulroney's Hugh Segal. Segal talked about Mulroney's well-known quote about world leaders never turning to their spouses and asking "I wonder what Canada is up to today?". He then encapsulated Mulroney's attitude as "It's my job to scan global events to see where Canada can be inserted, where I can play a role on Canada's behalf, so that there are IOUs I can use on trade, consular problems, acid rain, or defence that can help Canada.'"Mulroney's dedication was underlined further through an exercise I conducted that same year with junior fellows at Massey College at the University of Toronto which used acid rain as the basis for a crisis simulation. Mulroney was the apex of what Corporate Knights founder Toby Heaps called the "Acid Rain Formula", arguably still one of the most compelling examples of advocacy at the highest level. Mulroney credits his relationship with George H.W. Bush, starting when he was Vice-President, such that by the time he was elected President in 1988 "he knew the acid rain file better than any of his officials" and when he travelled to Ottawa in February, 1989, he told Mulroney of this "determination to move forward with setting limits (on acid rain pollutants) with legislation and then moving to a discussion with Canada leading to an accord that I think will be beneficial to both countries". In an address to a Joint session of Congress in 1988, Mulroney said, "We are reducing our emissions by 50 percent. We ask nothing more than this from you. What would be said of a generation of Americans and Canadians who found a way to explore the stars but allowed their lakes and forests and streams to languish and die?" The graduate students who participated were no doubt impressed with this very rare inspiration and commitment from the highest level of government. A Prime Minister and his Community Focus on AirportsVancouver Airport AuthorityAdvisory Board Members, Canada InstituteUnder the Mulroney regime, the transfer of the first 4 Local Airport Authorities were transferred to local control in 1992 and Vancouver Airport Authority may not have existed in its present form without this major shift in airport governance policy.In the mid-1980s there was a move to create a Canadian Airports Authority (CAA) modeled on the British Airports Authority crown corporation. Transport Canada had reorganized CATA (The Canadian Air Transportation Administration, similar to the FAA), and took airports out of CATA to create the Airports Authority Group in preparation for transition to a crown corporation. McKinsey and Company was hired to evaluate whether the local airport authority model or a national CAA should be pursued. The McKinsey report recommended transitioning to a national Airports Authority to gain commercial experience as a first step, and then moving to privatization of airports over time. The Mulroney Government rejected that option and went ahead with the transfer of federal airports to airport authorities where there was strong community interest to take on local control. So, while Brian Mulroney is remembered for many major policy achievements, like the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement, we owe our existence as Vancouver Airport Authority to the Mulroney legacy.

On February 29, 2024, former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney passed away at the age of 84. During his tenure at the helm of Canada's government, Mulroney advanced trade and environmental policies that are still impacting the Canada-US relationship forty years on. Among the many accolades he received in his career, Mulroney was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service in 2003. In this collection, Canada Institute experts reflect on his extensive legacy.My Perspective on Prime Minister Brian MulroneyHon. David H. WilkinsAdvisory Board Member, Canada Institute; Former Ambassador of the United States to CanadaIt felt colder than usual that December day in 2005. I had just endured a Canadian press "scrum" and was flying out of Toronto Pearson. As I walked the concourse, there was my face on every television and fronting the covers of all the newspapers.And it wasn't good.The day before I had challenged then-Prime Minister Paul Martin's campaign criticisms of the United States. To say the speech was not received well in some quarters is an understatement, and as I waited on my flight back to Ottawa, I fielded dozens of calls from people eager to hammer me.So when the phone rang yet again, and I was asked to "hold for Brian Mulroney" I braced myself for more criticism.Instead, that call was – and remains – one of the top moments of my life. Mulroney knew I was taking hits, and as one who had absorbed many hits, Mulroney reached out personally to encourage and inspire me.He changed my perspective on criticism and put wind beneath the wings of a new ambassador eager to learn the job and do it well. I am indebted to him for that kindness, and so many he and Mila granted Susan and me over the years.I once had the privilege of enjoying a long and private lunch with Brian at his law firm in Montreal where he regaled me with stories of my hero, Ronald Reagan, and his dealings with a bevy of historical figures including Margaret Thatcher, the Bush and Clinton families, Princess Diana, and seemingly every larger-than-life leader on the world stage. He spoke of hard fights and devastating political costs, but never once of political enemies. In more than two hours of conversation which he carried virtually by himself, he expressed animus toward none. It occurred to me then how Brian Mulroney was different than most. He left political battles on the field and wasn't one to settle old scores. He loved to give big speeches, get lots of laughs and command attention, but he didn't wilt away from the spotlight. He understood he was a controversial figure and trusted his legacy to history. He had perspective.President Ronald Reagan once said, "I've always believed that a lot of the trouble in the world would disappear if we were talking to each other instead of about each other."I like to believe Reagan was thinking of his good friend Brian Mulroney. In 2008, at my request, Brian graciously traveled to South Carolina to address a major state legislative dinner. In true Mulroney fashion, he kept us laughing and challenged us to do the hard things without becoming hard. He knew it could be done because he did it.The Importance of Mulroney's Free Trade Legacy, and the Precedent it Sets for TodayDanielle GoldfarbGlobal Fellow, Canada InstituteImagine if Canada did not have a free trade agreement with the United States. It is almost unfathomable today to imagine this possibility, despite the deal being so controversial in Canada at the time. Without Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's successful completion of a free trade agreement with the United States - and later the NAFTA - Canadian living standards would be far worse than they are today.Canada has a small, open economy, located next door to the world's largest. The Canada-US Free Trade Agreement, the NAFTA, and now the CUSMA provided and continue to provide Canadian businesses with secure and relatively free access to the much larger US market. The agreements also made it relatively more attractive for companies to locate part of their supply chains in Canada, as part of regional supply chains. And without the deals, it is hard to see how Canada would have been able to mitigate the impacts of crises such as the 9/11 attacks and their impact on border security, or Donald Trump's tariff threats during the 2016 presidency. The tremendous importance to Canadian interests of these deals cannot be overstated. And they have led to widespread acceptance among Canadians. Canadians today understand that free trade with the United States and Mexico (and also with others) is essential for this country's prosperity, and does not pose a threat to Canadian independence. Moreover, the deals established frameworks, precedents, and cross-border working relationships that arguably matter even more today during this moment of geopolitical and technological disruption.When Mulroney negotiated the original agreement, he likely never imagined the degree to which China would be integrated into the global economy, or how much of our economic activity would be conducted online. So many things have changed. We are now in the midst of a digital data and AI revolution. We face considerable uncertainty, including the 2024 election and its aftermath, Donald Trump's new threat of sweeping tariffs, the fact that China, Russia, and India play by a different set of economic and political rules than do the NAFTA countries, and new threats to global supply chains from actors such as Yemen's Houthis. Despite so many differences between now and then, the free trade deals provide an anchor and starting point for the three countries to navigate the many challenges we face together in this moment. We would be far worse off without that anchor.Reminiscences of Canadian Prime Minister Brian MulroneyHon. Earl Anthony WaynePublic Policy Fellow, the Wilson Center; Career Ambassador (Ret.) to Afghanistan, Mexico, and ArgentinaBrian Mulroney was a great supporter of the US-Canada partnership and of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The United States owes him many thanks for his steadfast collaboration as we built stronger bilateral collaboration, and to create new jobs and generate more prosperity for both countries and across North America. Though I did not know him well, I had several memorable opportunities where our paths crossed.Prime Minister Mulroney had a warm relationship with President George H.W. Bush, which I learned when working on President Bush's National Security Council Staff covering Canada and Europe in 1990-91. My NSC colleagues and I commented on how friendly and trusting the conversations were between the Prime Minister and the President. They often exchanged stories about politics and joked with each other. I still remember clearly taking notes for one phone call where President Bush was wishing Prime Minister Mulroney well as he was passing through some challenging times in Canadian politics, and the Prime Minister responded by saying something to the effect of "well, George, you know more people in Canada today think Elvis is still alive than support me as Prime Minister," but then added right away that he was committed to keep working with President Bush to see the ongoing North American trade negotiations to achieve successful results as well as to keep working take full advantage of the opportunities to solidify the openings to bring more freedom, democracy, and security to Europe. It was clearly a conversation between two friends who shared common objectives and a determination to make as much progress together.The next opportunity that I had to interact with Prime Minister Mulroney was many years later in 2018. We were both invited to testify in a US Senate hearing about the importance of preserving the achievements of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which were being questioned by the Trump Administration. First, the Prime Minister was gracious and friendly to all, including warmly responding when I reminded him of my work for President Bush many years later. He was happy to share stories and insights with me and former Mexican Trade Minister Jaime Serra as we waited for the hearing to start. Then, Mr. Mulroney gave an enthusiastic and compelling testimony about the values that tied the United States and Canada together and the economic progress that had been made possible because of NAFTA for the US, Canada, and Mexico. While I gave a fact-filled and detailed focused testimony and responses to the Senator's questions, Prime Minister Mulroney very effectively talked to the senators as a fellow politician about creating jobs and supporting companies in their states, all of which he argued was made possible by NAFTA. Mr. Mulroney had well chosen facts about how individual US states were benefiting from NAFTA trade and investment to drive home his comments to the Senators. It was a pleasure to see him in action and an honor to join the Prime Minister in that Senate testimony. Brian Mulroney's Environmental Advocacy: of Stars, Lakes, and Acid RainDeanna HortonGlobal Fellow, the Canada InstituteWhile I had met Prime Minister Mulroney on several occasions, and had spent time with him in Japan in 1991, his longstanding impact did not become apparent to me until much later. In 2016, I organized a session in Toronto with former chiefs of staff to Prime Ministers, including Mulroney's Hugh Segal. Segal talked about Mulroney's well-known quote about world leaders never turning to their spouses and asking "I wonder what Canada is up to today?". He then encapsulated Mulroney's attitude as "It's my job to scan global events to see where Canada can be inserted, where I can play a role on Canada's behalf, so that there are IOUs I can use on trade, consular problems, acid rain, or defence that can help Canada.'"Mulroney's dedication was underlined further through an exercise I conducted that same year with junior fellows at Massey College at the University of Toronto which used acid rain as the basis for a crisis simulation. Mulroney was the apex of what Corporate Knights founder Toby Heaps called the "Acid Rain Formula", arguably still one of the most compelling examples of advocacy at the highest level. Mulroney credits his relationship with George H.W. Bush, starting when he was Vice-President, such that by the time he was elected President in 1988 "he knew the acid rain file better than any of his officials" and when he travelled to Ottawa in February, 1989, he told Mulroney of this "determination to move forward with setting limits (on acid rain pollutants) with legislation and then moving to a discussion with Canada leading to an accord that I think will be beneficial to both countries". In an address to a Joint session of Congress in 1988, Mulroney said, "We are reducing our emissions by 50 percent. We ask nothing more than this from you. What would be said of a generation of Americans and Canadians who found a way to explore the stars but allowed their lakes and forests and streams to languish and die?" The graduate students who participated were no doubt impressed with this very rare inspiration and commitment from the highest level of government. A Prime Minister and his Community Focus on AirportsVancouver Airport AuthorityAdvisory Board Members, Canada InstituteUnder the Mulroney regime, the transfer of the first 4 Local Airport Authorities were transferred to local control in 1992 and Vancouver Airport Authority may not have existed in its present form without this major shift in airport governance policy.In the mid-1980s there was a move to create a Canadian Airports Authority (CAA) modeled on the British Airports Authority crown corporation. Transport Canada had reorganized CATA (The Canadian Air Transportation Administration, similar to the FAA), and took airports out of CATA to create the Airports Authority Group in preparation for transition to a crown corporation. McKinsey and Company was hired to evaluate whether the local airport authority model or a national CAA should be pursued. The McKinsey report recommended transitioning to a national Airports Authority to gain commercial experience as a first step, and then moving to privatization of airports over time. The Mulroney Government rejected that option and went ahead with the transfer of federal airports to airport authorities where there was strong community interest to take on local control. So, while Brian Mulroney is remembered for many major policy achievements, like the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement, we owe our existence as Vancouver Airport Authority to the Mulroney legacy.

An upcoming electoral contest with a backstory became
even more interesting last week, driven by a rare political opportunity – an
open judgeship, with this on the state's highest court, no less.Due to a reapportionment itself controversial because
it involved Republicans essentially surrendering a safe seat on the Louisiana
Supreme Court, a new majority-minority district without an incumbent that split
Monroe and moved south into splitting Baton Rouge attracted three black Democrats
in a race this fall. One, First Circuit Court of Appeals Judge John Michael Guidry, was getting a
second shot at a spot on the state's highest court after having run a strong
campaign almost a decade ago in a different district that was not M/M. Terms that
don't come up often (of ten years length), an age limit of 70, and that incumbents
basically never lose means his second chance is extraordinary.

Guidry, backed by business interests, almost found
himself the winner by default almost immediately after qualifying. Someone connected
with Guidry sued to remove the other two candidates from the ballot, Second Circuit
Court of Appeals Judge Marcus Hunter and Louisiana Housing Corporation Chief of
Staff Leslie Chambers, who is drawing support from trial lawyer interests. Both
were argued not to have paid state income taxes in the past, where legally they
must have done so to file candidacies, and also that Chambers wasn't domiciled in
the district.

Democrat District Court Judge Don Johnson didn't
boot either off the ballot, despite that indisputably both had returns filed
late and not received by the state prior to qualifying. Both argued that they thought
the reruns had been accepted, even though Hunter had two years' worth filed the
day before qualifying began. But ever since the Supreme Court allowed Democrat
former Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins to stay
on the ballot despite falsely attesting to a majority of queries on his
qualification papers for a reelection attempt in 2022, it has become difficult
to disqualify anyone.

This isn't the only questionable financial matter
Hunter has found himself involved with. In 2019, at a tax sale he bought a
distressed property at 114 Texas St., Shreveport. The building, in place since
at least the last decade of the 19th century and 80 years later was a
popular entertainment venue, had been vacant for over two decades. At the time
of purchase, it had deteriorated to the point potentially it could not be salvaged.

Hunter then did nothing with the property for
three years, although he said he had plans
to convert it to low-income housing financed through the LHC, prior to Chambers'
association with it. Back then, his ally Stephen Jackson,
now a Democrat state representative, sat on the LHC Board of Directors then representing
that area as a parish commissioner; since his election to the Legislature, he
was replaced. Jackson himself made news, that he rather would not have, by his conviction
last year before his election of impersonating
a police officer and still has ongoing legal problems set for adjudicating.

By Jun., 2022 the Shreveport Historic Preservation
Commission recommended demolition as Hunter apparently dithered. Then, in Sep.,
2022 the building mostly burned, from a fire that looked to be arson, perhaps
started by vagrants but never determined. The city began demolition proceedings
that Hunter opposed, but which a court
ordered in October that happened shortly thereafter. The lot now sits
empty, still owned by a partnership registered at Hunter's Monroe address with seemingly
no plans afoot for it.

Judicial contests in Louisiana can turn on unusual
circumstances, since in theory the job involves judicial decisions, not
policy-making, that leave voters in a vacuum of information about how well
someone will serve on the bench, with only a policy-making cue, party label, to
guide them. As well, unlike candidates for legislative and executive offices or
appointees, judicial candidates don't have to file public financial disclosure information,
so only rarely does the public get an idea about their financial dealings.

If those campaigning on behalf of his opponents
(technically, judicial candidates can't conduct their own campaigns, so surrogates
do so) want to paint Hunter, a former state representative who, as many lawyers
in the chamber desire, escaped to the much higher-paid/full-time job of judge, as
sloppy with financial affairs as a means of casting doubt on his competence as
a jurist, he certainly has given them the ammunition to do so.