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Funding text #1 We thank all the hospitals and clinical microbiology laboratories who submitted data and isolates to the reference laboratories as part of their surveillance programmes. We acknowledge the assistance of laboratory personnel who made important contributions to the microbiological data in this study: Wendy Keijzers, Ilse Schuurman, and Agaath Arends in the Netherlands Reference Laboratory for Bacterial Meningitis, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Marie-C?cile Ploy, Carole Grelaud, and all the microbiologists of the French Regional Observatory of Pneumococci Network (Limoges, France); Alice Enefer, Anna Lewis, Karina Micah, Samuel Rose, Chenchal Dhami, and Roger Daniel at the Public Health England Respiratory and Vaccine Preventable Bacteria Unit, London, UK; Xilian Bai, Aiswarya Lekshmi, Jay Lucidarme, Andrew Walker, Lloyd Walsh, and Laura Willerton at the Public Health England Meningococcal Reference Unit in Manchester, UK; Ana Paula Silva de Lemos and Samanta Cristine Grassi Almeida at the .View all Funding text #2 We thank all the hospitals and clinical microbiology laboratories who submitted data and isolates to the reference laboratories as part of their surveillance programmes. We acknowledge the assistance of laboratory personnel who made important contributions to the microbiological data in this study: Wendy Keijzers, Ilse Schuurman, and Agaath Arends in the Netherlands Reference Laboratory for Bacterial Meningitis, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Marie-Cécile Ploy, Carole Grelaud, and all the microbiologists of the French Regional Observatory of Pneumococci Network (Limoges, France); Alice Enefer, Anna Lewis, Karina Micah, Samuel Rose, Chenchal Dhami, and Roger Daniel at the Public Health England Respiratory and Vaccine Preventable Bacteria Unit, London, UK; Xilian Bai, Aiswarya Lekshmi, Jay Lucidarme, Andrew Walker, Lloyd Walsh, and Laura Willerton at the Public Health England Meningococcal Reference Unit in Manchester, UK; Ana Paula Silva de Lemos and Samanta Cristine Grassi Almeida at the .View all Funding text #3 The following authors received support for work unrelated to this study: MPGvdL has received grants from Pfizer, Merck, and the Robert Koch Institut; RB has done contract research on behalf of Public Health England for GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, and Sanofi Pasteur, but received no personal remuneration; MC has received grants from Pfizer; SAC has done contract research on behalf of Public Health England for GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, and Sanofi Pasteur, but received no personal remuneration; SD has received a grant from Pfizer; SJG did contract research (carriage studies) for vaccine manufacturers (GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer) on behalf of Public Health England, but received no personal remuneration; MH has received grants from Pfizer and the Federal Office of Public Health, and personal fees (for being on an advisory board) from Pfizer and Merck Sharp & Dohme; HH has received grants from Astellas and Pfizer; KAJ has received a grant from Wellcome Trust and personal fees from GlaxoSmithKline; SNL has done contract research for vaccine manufacturers (GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, and Sanofi Pasteur) on behalf of St. George's University of London, but received no personal remuneration; DJL has received grants from GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer; SM has received a grant from Sanofi Pasteur; CM-A has received grants from Quiastat, Roche, Pfizer, and Genomica, and personal fees from Roche, Pfizer, and Qiagen; LS has received a grant from GlaxoSmithKline; H-CS has received a grant from Pfizer; MI has received non-financial support from GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer, personal fees from Pfizer (speaker fees) and Merck Sharp & Dohme (speaker fees), and grants from Merck Sharp & Dohme; M-KT has received grants from GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, and Sanofi Pasteur; ASk has received grants and non-financial support from Pfizer, and personal fees from Pfizer, Merck Sharp & Dohme, and Sanofi Pasteur; CLS has received grants from Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline for investigator-led research; EV has received grants on behalf of her institution (Intercommunal Hospital of Créteil) from Pfizer and Merck Sharp & Dohme; MT has received grants from GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer; NKF's institution (Public Health England) has received funding for investigator-initiated research from GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, and Affinivax, but NKF received no personal remuneration; AvG has received a grant from Sanofi Pasteur; NMvS has received a grant from Pfizer, a fee for service paid to their institution from Merck Sharp & Dohme and GlaxoSmithKline, and also has a patent (WO 2013/020090 A3) on vaccine development against Streptococcus pyogenes, unrelated to this study, with royalties paid to University of California San Diego, CA, USA; and MKT has a patent (630133) for a vaccine for serogroup X meningococcus with GlaxoSmithKline. All other authors declare no competing interests. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 license ; Background: Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, and Neisseria meningitidis, which are typically transmitted via respiratory droplets, are leading causes of invasive diseases, including bacteraemic pneumonia and meningitis, and of secondary infections subsequent to post-viral respiratory disease. The aim of this study was to investigate the incidence of invasive disease due to these pathogens during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: In this prospective analysis of surveillance data, laboratories in 26 countries and territories across six continents submitted data on cases of invasive disease due to S pneumoniae, H influenzae, and N meningitidis from Jan 1, 2018, to May, 31, 2020, as part of the Invasive Respiratory Infection Surveillance (IRIS) Initiative. Numbers of weekly cases in 2020 were compared with corresponding data for 2018 and 2019. Data for invasive disease due to Streptococcus agalactiae, a non-respiratory pathogen, were collected from nine laboratories for comparison. The stringency of COVID-19 containment measures was quantified using the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker. Changes in population movements were assessed using Google COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports. Interrupted time-series modelling quantified changes in the incidence of invasive disease due to S pneumoniae, H influenzae, and N meningitidis in 2020 relative to when containment measures were imposed. Findings: 27 laboratories from 26 countries and territories submitted data to the IRIS Initiative for S pneumoniae (62 837 total cases), 24 laboratories from 24 countries submitted data for H influenzae (7796 total cases), and 21 laboratories from 21 countries submitted data for N meningitidis (5877 total cases). All countries and territories had experienced a significant and sustained reduction in invasive diseases due to S pneumoniae, H influenzae, and N meningitidis in early 2020 (Jan 1 to May 31, 2020), coinciding with the introduction of COVID-19 containment measures in each country. By contrast, no significant changes in the incidence of invasive S agalactiae infections were observed. Similar trends were observed across most countries and territories despite differing stringency in COVID-19 control policies. The incidence of reported S pneumoniae infections decreased by 68% at 4 weeks (incidence rate ratio 0·32 [95% CI 0·27–0·37]) and 82% at 8 weeks (0·18 [0·14–0·23]) following the week in which significant changes in population movements were recorded. Interpretation: The introduction of COVID-19 containment policies and public information campaigns likely reduced transmission of S pneumoniae, H influenzae, and N meningitidis, leading to a significant reduction in life-threatening invasive diseases in many countries worldwide. Funding: Wellcome Trust (UK), Robert Koch Institute (Germany), Federal Ministry of Health (Germany), Pfizer, Merck, Health Protection Surveillance Centre (Ireland), SpID-Net project (Ireland), European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (European Union), Horizon 2020 (European Commission), Ministry of Health (Poland), National Programme of Antibiotic Protection (Poland), Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Poland), Agencia de Salut Pública de Catalunya (Spain), Sant Joan de Deu Foundation (Spain), Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (Sweden), Swedish Research Council (Sweden), Region Stockholm (Sweden), Federal Office of Public Health of Switzerland (Switzerland), and French Public Health Agency (France). ; Peer reviewed

Resumen en castellano que será usado para la base de datos del Ministerio TESEO (máx. 4000 caracteres) La ingente producción crítica sobre el Romanticismo en general y el Romanticismo británico en concreto -tradicionalmente centrado en estudios sobre las grandes figuras poéticas de los denominados "the Big Six" por Moore y Strachan (2010, 1)- ha ido paulatinamente abriendo nuevos campos, rechazando y resistiéndose a ser considerado un canon restrictivo. Sin duda con la ya aceptada expresión cronológica "the long Eighteenth Century" y la inclusión de obras literarias y culturales de discursos diferentes, el concepto de Romanticismo actualmente se ha expandido hasta límites insospechados en décadas anteriores y permite indagar en postulados que no solo revisan los conceptos clásicos de creatividad, libertad o imaginación romántica, sino que permiten sacar a la luz discursos paralelos que los revisan y cuestionan. Entre ellos, este trabajo ha seleccionado a la parodia como discurso crítico de modas, conductas, autores, estilos y obsesiones románticas que, convertida en un recurso retórico de ingenio, humor e inteligencia dentro de producciones culturales y literarias parte de las que fueron las líneas canónicas románticas de finales del siglo XVIII y de las primeras décadas del XIX para generar otras líneas también románticas, pero de estilo muy diferente. En este contexto ha resultado esencial en la historia del Romanticismo británico y en los años 90 la extraordinariacontribución de Strachan, su compilación de textos paródicos románticos que estableció las bases de donde partimos para defender "otro Romanticismo" que es necesario sacar a la luz. De ahí que este trabajo proponga la valoración y el análisis de un triple corpus de parodias de la época romántica británica poco analizadas hasta ahora: The Anti-Jacobin (1797-98) de diferentes autores guiados por George Canning, Frere y Ellis y editada por Gifford, Warreniana (1824) de William Frederick Deacon, y Rejected Articles (1826) de P. G. Patmore, original imitación en prosa de la obra en verso Rejected Adresses (1812) de Horace y James Smith. Por una paite, tiene interés especial por tratarse de obras de autores tradicionalmente fuera del canon académico, y por otra, por converger con el canon romántico per se, complementándolo y ofreciendo otro ángulo desde parámetros literarios y en textos periodísticos, artísticos y culturales con formatos muy diferentes y explotando los recursos sobre todo de la poesía que tradicional y equívocamente se concibió y explicó durante muchos años como único género romántico. Este trabajo por lo tanto pone de manifiesto en primer lugar un tipo de obras paródicas en el contexto de las lagunas existentes a lo largo de su historia crítica para su estudio. En segundo lugar, contextualiza la parodia en el movimiento romántico revelando no solo la dificultad histórica de definir sus límites sino su consideración crítica actual. Incide en las dificultades del término parodia y apunta contribuciones a lo largo de la historia que explican su éxito en el contexto romántico. Se prueba todo ello en tres obras específicas de periodismo literario donde la parodia literaria expone abiertamente el uso y abuso de autores románticos y sus estilos. Se demuestra que la parodia se vuelve arma útil al servicio de posturas políticas, de campañas publicitarias, o para reflejar el juego del mercado literario. El trabajo propone en suma un punto de partida para la recuperación, revisión y visibilidad de textos paródicos de la época romántica en el contexto de la prensa donde periódicos, revistas, anuncios y panfletos muestran una revisión original y crítica de cuestiones contemporáneas en distintos formatos, partiendo siempre de un estilo imitativo y burlesco de obras conocidas románticas y con un afilado tratamiento. El estudio de este "otro Romanticismo" permite así contribuir a las claves del Romanticismo tradicional desde un ángulo nuevo y con una perspectiva renovadora. ; The enormous critical production on Romanticism in general and British Romanticism m particular - traditionally focused on studies ofthe great poetic figures of the so-called "Big Six" by Moore and Strachan (201O, 1 )- has gradually opened up new fields, rejecting and resisting from being considered a restrictive canon. Without doubt, with the now accepted chronological expression "the long Eighteenth Century" and the inclusion of literary and cultural works from different discourses, the concept of Romanticism has now expanded to limits unsuspected in previous decades and allows us to investigate postulates that not only revise the classic concepts of creativity, freedom or romantic imagination, but also bring to light parallel discourses that revise and question them. Among them, this work has selected parody as a critica! discourse of fashions, behaviours, authors, styles and romantic obsessions that, converted into a rhetorical resource of ingenuity, humour and intelligence within cultural and literary productions, starts from what were the canonical romantic lines of the late 18th century and the first decades of the 19th century to generate other Iines that are also romantic, but with a very different style. In this context, the extraordinary contribution of Strachan, his compilation of parodie romantic texts, has been essential in the history of British Romanticism and in the 1990s, establishing the basis from which we started to defend "another Romanticism" that needs to be brought to light. Hence this work proposes the evaluation and analysis of a triple corpus of parodies from the British Romantic period that has been little analyzed until now: The Anti-Jacobin (1797-98) by different authors guided by George Canning, Frere and Ellis and edited by Gifford, Warreniana (1824) by William Frederick Deacon, and Rejected Articles (1826) by P. G. Patmore, an original prose imitation of the verse work Rejected Addresses (1812) by Horace and James Smith. On the one hand, it has a special interest in dealing with works by authors traditionally outside the academic canon, and on the other hand, in converging with the Romantic canon per se, complementing it and offering another angle from literary parameters and in journalistic, artistic and cultural texts with very different formats, and exploiting the resources above all of poetry that was traditionally and mistakenly conceived and explained for many years as the only romantic genre. This work therefore reveals first of all a type of parodie works in the context of the gaps existing throughout its critical history to its study. Secondly, it contextualizes parody in the Romantic movement by revealing not only the historical difficulty of defining its limits but also its current critical consideration. It highlights the difficulties of the term parody and points to contributions throughout history that explain its success in the Romantic context. All this is proven in three specific works of literary journalism where literary parody openly exposes the use and abuse of romantic authors and their styles. It is shown that parody becomes a useful weapon in the service of political positions, advertising campaigns, or to reflect the game of the literary market. In short, the work proposes a starting point for the recovery, revision and visibility of parodie texts from the Romantic period in the context of the press where newspapers, magazines, advertisements and pamphlets show an original and critical revision of contemporary issues in different formats, always starting from an imitative and burlesque style of well-known romantic works and with a sharp treatment. The study ofthis "other Romanticism" thus allows us to contribute to the keys oftraditional Romanticism from a new angle and with a renovating perspective.

Biden administration officials trekked to Seoul in late May to discuss a path toward a new "Special Measures Agreement" (SMA) that will define the parameters of military cooperation between the U.S. and South Korea for years to come.The talks, said the U.S. embassy, "underline the enduring vitality of the U.S.-ROK alliance, which remains the linchpin of peace, security, and prosperity for Northeast Asia, the broader Indo-Pacific, and beyond." The South Koreans have a more practical goal of holding down costs, taking "the position that our defense burden sharing will come at a reasonable level to ensure conditions for a stable stationing of" U.S. troops.The U.S. presidential election is still more than five months away, but Washington officials and their foreign friends are already preparing for the possible victory of former President Donald Trump. Their goal is to lock in what amount to "America last" policies that Trump is most likely to challenge.So it is with those devoted to the U.S. alliance with the Republic of Korea. Then-President Trump's policies and rhetoric caused much distress in Seoul and resulted in an impasse over cost sharing. South Korean officials welcomed the return of the status quo after Trump's defeat, with the Biden administration allowing the ROK's cheap ride to continue.However, South Korea now faces the possibility of Trump's return. At best, it would mean a repeat of his insistence that South Koreans pay more for America's protection. At worst, it would mean a withdrawal of U.S. forces. The result has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth in both capitals.In response, the Biden administration has accelerated negotiations over the next SMA. The new accord won't take effect until 2026 but would bind the incoming administration. The State Department claimed to have disinterested motives, but it's hard to ignore the fact that concluding the deal before the next president is inaugurated would deny Trump the opportunity to set policy.Unsurprisingly, the talks have reportedly been going well, since both sides have an incentive to finish before the campaign heats up. Today, South Koreans pay about $1.2 billion annually to underwrite the U.S. military presence. The two governments are likely to set a small increase in the ROK's payment.Some alliance advocates argue that Washington is getting a good deal. For instance, Troy University's Dan Pinkston cited "the amount that Korea contributes by paying for all the electricity used by US forces here, the land used for military drills, the salaries of civilian workers on the bases and so on." As a result, Pinkston contended "that it is actually cheaper for the US to have these troops based here in Korea than to ship them back to the US."Pinkston also pointed to "the intangibles at the heart of the alliance that benefited the US, such as support from Korea in cyber warfare, anti-piracy operations around the world, counter-terrorism campaigns, support for Washington in the UN and others."In reality, the arrangement is a sweet deal for South Korea by any measure. In exchange for a billion dollars and change — 90% of which is spent in the ROK — Seoul gets a guarantee that the world's superpower will use military force, including nuclear weapons, to protect it from any and all enemies. South Korean payments are not a contribution to the U.S., which is maintaining its garrison for the South's benefit. American forces act as a tripwire to ensure that Washington political leaders have no practical choice but to go to war for the ROK, irrespective of America's interests. The troops perform no other effective role, certainly not in confronting China, the most obvious East Asian challenge for U.S. influence.Moreover, contrary to Pinkston's view, South Korea does not offer a cheap location for U.S. military personnel. Force structure does not exist for its own sake but is based on security commitments. If Washington cuts its support for Seoul, it should eliminate corresponding units, personnel, and hardware rather than relocate them.Nor does the alliance as such offer extra benefits for Americans. Washington is defending the ROK; Seoul is not defending the U.S. Moreover, Washington and Seoul can work together on other issues of mutual interest even without an American security guarantee.Nevertheless, the Biden administration appears determined to prevent any debate over Washington's commitment to South Korea. However, Trump could thwart this expensive cooperation by moving beyond host nation support and reconsidering America's force presence altogether.There are a range of good reasons to consider such a move. For one, the alliance's costs and risks are growing. The Korean war was terrible, but American liability was limited to the battlefield. Washington fought ferociously without risking the homeland.That would no longer be the case today. In years past, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea hoped that its conventional threat to Seoul, which sits uncomfortably close to the border, offered sufficient deterrent to allied military action, including preventive U.S. strikes. Now, Pyongang possesses a nuclear arsenal expanding in size and a missile force increasing in range. The Asan Institute and Rand Corporation warned that, in a few years, "North Korea could have 200 nuclear weapons and several dozen intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and hundreds of theater missiles for delivering the nuclear weapons."Although a preemptive attack from the DPRK would be suicidal, Pyongyang is likely more interested in deterring U.S. involvement in a Korean conflict. Should war occur, would a U.S. president be prepared to risk one or more American cities in defense of the South? Should a US president do so?Such a conflict would be a human tragedy. The ROK is a worthy friend and ties between the American and South Korean people—family, cultural, economic, and more—are strong. Nevertheless, such interests do not warrant risking America's very survival.In reality, the South is capable of defending itself. Trump sensibly asked: "They're a very wealthy country, so why wouldn't they want to pay?" In 1953, South Korea was an economic wreck, its people impoverished and its politics authoritarian. Absent American support, the North's Kim Il-Sung probably would have absorbed the South. However, the ROK soon began to race past the DPRK economically. Two decades later, Seoul embraced democracy, and it has now achieved a major international presence.Although the ROK's military has lagged behind the country's resources, the force is capable. One U.S. military official traveling to the ROK described the latter's military "as among the best in the world.""From a person who has worked with a lot of different countries, I put them at the high-end of capability," the official said — not as "an absolute replacement for a U.S. capability, but combined it is very strong." And that is without them seeking to replace U.S. forces. (Ironically, some South Koreans worry more about losing American money than troops, fearing fewer sales and jobs.)The prospect of a U.S. withdrawal is not without concerns. A transfer of defense responsibility raises the possibility that South Korea could seek nuclear weapons as a deterrent against the North. The thought horrifies the usual suspects and has led U.S. policy makers to work desperately to convince South Koreans that US "extended deterrence" remains strong.That was reflected in last year's so-called Washington Declaration, which assumed Washington would continue to risk the destruction of American cities and slaughter of American people to protect the South. Even if South Koreans believe that Americans would do so, why should we? An ROK bomb might not be a good solution, but it might be the best among several bad options.The SMA negotiations pale in importance compared to such issues. Why should Washington risk its people's future to protect a nation capable of handling its own defense, irrespective of the price the latter is willing to pay? American personnel should not be rented out to even the best of friends, especially when the U.S. has no vital interests at stake.Instead of arguing about host nation payments, the two governments should refashion the relationship and limit America's role. The current treaty should become a blueprint for mutual cooperation. Then the U.S. troop presence should be phased out, thus terminating host nation support after the withdrawal is complete.

Both Claudia Sheinbaum and Xóchitl Gálvez have gone on tour in the United States since their campaigns began, both courting the votes of the millions of Mexican nationals living on the northern side of the border. The National Electoral Institute (INE) has continued to expand the ways that Mexican nationals can vote while abroad, hoping to both increase turnout and make Mexican nationals feel more connected to their country of origin despite living in the United States and, in the case of people without authorized immigration status, being unable to visit Mexico and subsequently return to their home in the US.The discourse of the Morena government has done far more to recognize Mexican nationals than previous governments have. Both Morena's founder, President Andres Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), and its current presidential candidate, Sheinbaum, have praised emigrants for their contributions to the Mexican economy in the form of remittances, while also celebrating that more and more migrants have been returning to Mexico in the past decade. This discourse is in line with the general emphasis that Morena has on centering the most economically vulnerable. Mexicans who leave for the United States without authorized immigrant status tend to be those seeking to escape economic precarity, making them an important part of the population that Morena was founded on trying to reach.While the recognition and praise as "Heroes Paisanos" ("Compatriot Heroes") is nice and might in and of itself be helpful for winning consular votes, what concrete benefits can the Mexican government offer its emigrant constituents? Expansion of consular services can go a long way without causing much political controversy. Mexican consulates already offer a much more expansive set of services than any other country with comparable numbers of immigrants in the United States, specifically when it comes to monitoring and supporting Mexican nationals in their interactions with US law enforcement, but getting a passport or consular ID appointment can feel impossible. Not having a valid photo ID presents a wide array of impediments to basic mobility and access to services, and for many Mexican nationals without immigration status in the US, a passport or consular ID is their only option. Resources invested in expanding access to these appointments can provide a simple but necessary lifeline for unauthorized immigrants who do not have another way to acquire a valid photo ID.Recently, however, AMLO has been pushing for far more ambitious and impactful plans. His government has cooperated extensively with the Biden Administration on matters ranging from accepting people who have been removed from the United States and securitizing the Mexican-Guatemalan border, and is now seeking a broad package of benefits from the US in exchange. Among his ideas are a $20 billion Marshall Plan-style investment in Latin America, the removal of the Cuban Blockade and sanctions on Venezuela, and, most consequentially for migrants, a mass immigration status regularization program for people from Latin America who have been living and working in the United States for 10 years or more, commonly known as amnesty.As far-fetched as any form of amnesty seems in the current US political environment, relief for unauthorized immigrants who meet certain requirements is an idea that has been present throughout the history of immigration policy. Traditionally, amnesty has been offered as a counterweight to increases in enforcement in other areas of immigration law, as was the case in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act that granted a path to Permanent Residence and subsequently Citizenship to almost three million qualifying immigrants. Since then, narrower forms of permanent or temporary legal forgiveness of unauthorized status have taken effect to protect certain nationalities or, in the case of DACA, people who were brought to the country as children, from deportation. These more recent protections have been the result of administrative adjustments and have not been codified by Congress, meaning they remain vulnerable to changes in administration or challenges in the courts. In the years since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 and the placement of immigration enforcement within it, dramatically increasing securitization and detention of immigrants have far outpaced any new forms of relief. The result has been a bloated system that inflicts more punishment for lesser offenses at enormous human and economic costs, enriching security contractors and smugglers while cutting off opportunities for immigrants to build lives for themselves through formal channels.It is long past time to counter the mass securitization of immigration policy with new paths to authorized status, and the Morena government has every right to continue to use its leverage to press for amnesty wherever possible. Beyond the obvious humanitarian benefits to the recipients of regularized immigration status, amnesty has a host of benefits for both the US and Mexico as a whole. Immigration from Mexico to the US has also been hovering around a net-zero rate for years. Many more Mexican nationals would be free to go back and forth if they knew that they were not jeopardizing their ability to re-enter the United States by doing so, enabling them to contribute to their communities on both sides of the border. Authorized status would also allow Mexican nationals to legally work in the United States, which would increase both formal domestic production in the US and potential remittances that boost the Mexican economy.If they continue to push for this relief until some form of it is granted, AMLO and Sheinbaum will succeed in widely expanding not only their party's voter base but also their economic and cultural impact as Mexican nationals in the United States are afforded the opportunity to formally contribute to the well-being of both nations.

Both Claudia Sheinbaum and Xóchitl Gálvez have gone on tour in the United States since their campaigns began, both courting the votes of the millions of Mexican nationals living on the northern side of the border. The National Electoral Institute (INE) has continued to expand the ways that Mexican nationals can vote while abroad, hoping to both increase turnout and make Mexican nationals feel more connected to their country of origin despite living in the United States and, in the case of people without authorized immigration status, being unable to visit Mexico and subsequently return to their home in the US.The discourse of the Morena government has done far more to recognize Mexican nationals than previous governments have. Both Morena's founder, President Andres Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), and its current presidential candidate, Sheinbaum, have praised emigrants for their contributions to the Mexican economy in the form of remittances, while also celebrating that more and more migrants have been returning to Mexico in the past decade. This discourse is in line with the general emphasis that Morena has on centering the most economically vulnerable. Mexicans who leave for the United States without authorized immigrant status tend to be those seeking to escape economic precarity, making them an important part of the population that Morena was founded on trying to reach.While the recognition and praise as "Heroes Paisanos" ("Compatriot Heroes") is nice and might in and of itself be helpful for winning consular votes, what concrete benefits can the Mexican government offer its emigrant constituents? Expansion of consular services can go a long way without causing much political controversy. Mexican consulates already offer a much more expansive set of services than any other country with comparable numbers of immigrants in the United States, specifically when it comes to monitoring and supporting Mexican nationals in their interactions with US law enforcement, but getting a passport or consular ID appointment can feel impossible. Not having a valid photo ID presents a wide array of impediments to basic mobility and access to services, and for many Mexican nationals without immigration status in the US, a passport or consular ID is their only option. Resources invested in expanding access to these appointments can provide a simple but necessary lifeline for unauthorized immigrants who do not have another way to acquire a valid photo ID.Recently, however, AMLO has been pushing for far more ambitious and impactful plans. His government has cooperated extensively with the Biden Administration on matters ranging from accepting people who have been removed from the United States and securitizing the Mexican-Guatemalan border, and is now seeking a broad package of benefits from the US in exchange. Among his ideas are a $20 billion Marshall Plan-style investment in Latin America, the removal of the Cuban Blockade and sanctions on Venezuela, and, most consequentially for migrants, a mass immigration status regularization program for people from Latin America who have been living and working in the United States for 10 years or more, commonly known as amnesty.As far-fetched as any form of amnesty seems in the current US political environment, relief for unauthorized immigrants who meet certain requirements is an idea that has been present throughout the history of immigration policy. Traditionally, amnesty has been offered as a counterweight to increases in enforcement in other areas of immigration law, as was the case in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act that granted a path to Permanent Residence and subsequently Citizenship to almost three million qualifying immigrants. Since then, narrower forms of permanent or temporary legal forgiveness of unauthorized status have taken effect to protect certain nationalities or, in the case of DACA, people who were brought to the country as children, from deportation. These more recent protections have been the result of administrative adjustments and have not been codified by Congress, meaning they remain vulnerable to changes in administration or challenges in the courts. In the years since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 and the placement of immigration enforcement within it, dramatically increasing securitization and detention of immigrants have far outpaced any new forms of relief. The result has been a bloated system that inflicts more punishment for lesser offenses at enormous human and economic costs, enriching security contractors and smugglers while cutting off opportunities for immigrants to build lives for themselves through formal channels.It is long past time to counter the mass securitization of immigration policy with new paths to authorized status, and the Morena government has every right to continue to use its leverage to press for amnesty wherever possible. Beyond the obvious humanitarian benefits to the recipients of regularized immigration status, amnesty has a host of benefits for both the US and Mexico as a whole. Immigration from Mexico to the US has also been hovering around a net-zero rate for years. Many more Mexican nationals would be free to go back and forth if they knew that they were not jeopardizing their ability to re-enter the United States by doing so, enabling them to contribute to their communities on both sides of the border. Authorized status would also allow Mexican nationals to legally work in the United States, which would increase both formal domestic production in the US and potential remittances that boost the Mexican economy.If they continue to push for this relief until some form of it is granted, AMLO and Sheinbaum will succeed in widely expanding not only their party's voter base but also their economic and cultural impact as Mexican nationals in the United States are afforded the opportunity to formally contribute to the well-being of both nations.

학위논문(석사)--서울대학교 대학원 :행정대학원 글로벌행정전공,2019. 8. Kwon, Huck-ju. ; This study attempts to analyze the weaknesses and constraints of the Iraqi tax administration that cripple the capacity and effective mobilization of tax revenues that should provide sufficient financial resources for the public treasury. Additionally, this study surveys the literature on the topic of tax administration reforms of Korea and draws some useful insights and lessons to suggest recommendations for the problems highlighted and contribute to shaping future development policies and applying them in the context of Iraq. Qualitative research was utilized to generate data by reviewing and analyzing primary and secondary data to unravel the main weaknesses and constraints. The first phase of data collection was completed through the review and analysis of related Iraqi income tax laws, tax administration's publications and reports, and the field collection of secondary data about the number of tax defaulters compared to active tax filers. The second phase of data collection of primary data was completed through field interview with three senior departmental directors as participants who have been working at the Iraqi Tax Administration for not less than (18) years Some problems identified through the study that create weaknesses in the enforcement by the tax administration, including, among other things, the shortage of human and physical resources. The lack of government support and protection for the tax administration and tax officials in particular, poor remunerations and motivational incentive schemes, and other problems discussed in this research. Finally, in the light of the problems identified, recommendations have been made to discuss ways through which tax administration can be strengthened based on successful experiences of Korea's tax administration reforms, which played a key role in the improvement of the country's capacity in revenue mobilization and overall fiscal health. ; 본 연구는 재무부에 충분한 금융 자원을 제공해야 하는 세금의 효과적인 유통과 함께, 제 기능을 하지 못하는 이라크의 조세행정의 약점과 제한사항에 대한 분석을 시도 하였다. 이에 더해 본 연구는 한국의 조세행정 개혁 주제에 대한 문헌들을 조사하여 강조되고 있는 문제점들을 위한 제안을 제시하는 유용한 교훈 및 통찰을 도출하였으며, 이를 통해 향후 개발될 정책들을 형성하고 이라크에 적용하는데 기여하고자 하였다. 본 연구에서 주된 약점들과 제한사항들을 해결하는 주요한 자료와 이차적인 자료를 검토하고 분석하는데 질적 연구 방법을 사용하였다. 첫 번째 단계의 자료 수집은 이라크 소득세와 관련된 분석과 검토, 조세행정의 출판물들과 보고서들, 그리고 적극적 세금신고자들과 비교한 세금 체납자들의 수에 대한 이차적인 자료의 현장 수집을 통해 완성이 되었다. 두 번째 단계의 주요한 자료의 자료 수집은 이라크 조세를 담당하는 행정부처에서 18년 미만의 경력을 가진 3인의 부처 책임자들의 현장 인터뷰를 통해 완성 되었다. 본 연구에서 대부분의 문제들은 다른 것들을 포함한 조세행정 집행과정에서의 약점과 인적·물적 자원이 부족한 것으로 확인되었다. 정부의 지원의 부족과 조세 행정을 위한 보호와 특히 세무공무원들, 낮은 보수들과 동기부여를 할 수 있는 장려 제도, 그리고 기타 문제들을 본 연구에서 다뤘다. 최종적으로 언급한 문제들을 고려하여, 본 연구는 조세행정이 국가의 세입 유통과 전체적인 재정 건전성 향상의 핵심적인 역할을 하는 한국의 조세행정개혁의 경험을 토대로 강화될 수 있음을 제언하였다. ; Table of Contents ABSTRACT I TABLE OF CONTENTS III ABBREVIATIONS V LIST OF TABLES V LIST OF CHARTS V CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY 1 1.2 IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY 1 1.3 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 4 1.4 OBJECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH 6 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 7 2.1 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 7 2.2 THE CAPACITY OF A STATE 10 2.3 ANTI-CORRUPTION CAMPAIGN 13 2.4 KOREAN ADMINISTRATIVE REFORMS OF THE TAX AUTHORITY 14 2.5 KOREA'S ATTEMPT TO REDUCE UNDERREPORTING IN RETAIL BUSINESSES 17 2.6 THE INTRODUCTION OF TAX INCENTIVES FOR ELECTRONICALLY TRACEABLE PAYMENT (TIETP) 19 CHAPTER 3: CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK 27 3.1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 27 3.2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND DATA COLLECTION 27 3.3 PARTICIPANT SELECTION 29 3.4 DATA PROCESSING AND ANALYSIS 29 3.5 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY 30 CHAPTER 4: TAX ADMINISTRATION OF IRAQ 31 4.1 OVERVIEW OF IRAQ'S GENERAL COMMISSION FOR TAXES 31 4.2 LOW LEVEL OF TAX REVENUES CONTRIBUTION IN IRAQ 32 4.3 THE STRUCTURE OF THE IRAQI TAX SYSTEM 35 4.4 PLANNED REVENUE TARGETS VS. ACTUAL TAX REVENUES FOR PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL 40 4.5 PRESUMPTIVE SYSTEM FOR TAXATION IN IRAQ 44 4.6 PUNITIVE LEVIES IN THE IRAQI INCOME TAX LAWS 47 4.7 TAX INFORMATION SYSTEMS USED BY TAX ADMINISTRATION IN IRAQ 52 4.7.1 Contracts and Receipts Information System 52 4.7.2 Customs Permits System 54 4.7.3 Reporting Tax Evaders System 55 4.7.4 Field Inspection of Taxpayers System 55 4.7.5 The Information System of Coordination Between Real Estate Rental Tax and Income Tax: 57 4.7.6 Tax Clearance Certificates (TCC) 58 4.7.7 Commercial Bookkeeping Regulation for Income Tax Purposes No. (2) 1985 59 CHAPTER 5: ANALYSIS OF THE TAX ADMINISTRATION IN PRACTICE: EVIDENCE FROM INTERVIEWEES 61 5.1 ANALYSIS OF INTERVIEW 61 5.1.1 Profile of Interviewees 61 5.1.2 Tax Administration Resources 61 5.1.3 Stakeholders Support for Tax Administration 64 5.1.4 Criminal Penalties in the Income Tax Law 66 5.1.5 Institutional Arrangement of the GCT 68 5.1.6 Best Practices to Improve Taxpayer Compliance 71 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION 73 6.1 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS 73 6.2 RECOMMENDATIONS 75 6.3 POLICY IMPLICATIONS 81 6.4 CONCLUSION 84 REFERENCES 86 LEGISLATION 90 ABSTRACT IN KOREAN 91 List of Tables Table 1. Estimated Federal budget of Iraq (2012-2017) 34 Table 2. Planned and Actual Revenues 2017 40 Table 3. Comparison of Taxpayers by Percentage- Business and Professions Department 42 Table 4. Comparison of Taxpayers by Percentage- Companies Department 44 List of Charts Chart 1. Flow chart of the Iraqi Tax system 39 ; Master

Метою цієї статті є дослідження розвитку козакознавчих студій у Миколаєві та Херсоні наприкінці ХІХ – на початку ХХ ст. Дослідження козацької історії у загалом провінційних за своїм економічним та культурним потенціалом, порівняно з Одесою, Миколаєві та Херсоні були одним з основних (поряд з антикознавством (Ольвія, скіфські кургани), дослідження історії цих міст з кінця ХVIII – у ХІХ ст.) струменем місцевої історіографії, що дозволяв їй привертати увагу представників інших центрів, бути активними учасниками історіографічного процесу на півдні України, а іноді і ширше. Важливим чинником розвитку козакознавства був інтерес до цієї теми з боку аматорів історії, що, розуміючи історичне значення документальних та археологічних артефактів допомагали історикам опрацьовувати та зберігати ці джерела. ; Целью этой статьи является исследование развития козакознавчих исследований в Николаеве и Херсоне в конце XIX – начале ХХ в. Исследование казацкой истории в целом провинциальных по своему экономическому и культурным потенциалом по сравнению с Одессой, Николаеве и Херсоне были одним из основных (наряду с антиковедении (Ольвия, скифские курганы), исследование истории этих городов с конца XVIII – XIX в. – основа местной историографии, позволяла ей привлекать внимание представителей других центров, быть активными участниками историографического процесса на юге Украины, а иногда и шире. Важным фактором развития казаковедения был интерес к этой теме со стороны любителей истории, которые, понимая историческое значение документальных и археологических артефактов помогали историкам обрабатывать и хранить эти источники. ; The main center of historical research in the territory of Southern Ukraine in the XIX and XX centuries. Odesa was the largest socio-economic and cultural center in the region. Therefore, most historiographers mainly studied how the historiography developed at the Novorossiysky University, leading Odesa societies. But important historiographic phenomena were also in other southern Ukrainian centers. The development of historiography in the territory between the Bug and the Dnieper, the main cities of these lands, Kherson and Mykolayiv should be studied better. Although these territories are known to have been one of the historical centers for the development of the Ukrainian Cossacks, in particular Kamyanska and Oleshkivska Sich, and the Bug Cossack Army.The purpose of this article is to study the history of the Cossacks in these centers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to trace their connections, and to accept their views. The relevance of this approach is evidenced by the availability of articles on the study of the Cossacks in certain regional branches of historical science. Some aspects have already attracted the attention of researchers whose works are taken into account as a historiographic basis of this article. The source-documentary base of our article is, first of all, the works of Mykolayiv and Kherson cossacks, newspaper publications, memoirs.The first history of the Cossacks in Mykolayiv was studied by M. Kiryakov, in Kherson - O. Rusov. Both paid attention to the fact that the Cossacks carried out military and maritime campaigns, and the Kherson author made an important accent on the fact that historians should pay much attention to the Turkish and Tatar historical sources. In the 1890s in Mykolayiv studied the history of the Ukrainian Cossacks, a student of V. B. Antonovich P. A. Ivanov In the magazine «Kievskaya starina» in 1891 year. P. A. Ivanov published documents from the archives of the Nicholas Military Governor's Office on the resettlement of Cossacks to Taman.A great contribution to the collection and research of the Cossack heritage was made by the employees of the Natural History-Historical (Historical-Archaeological) Museum S.I. Gaiduchenko F. T. Kaminsky In the work "History of Ukraine-Rus", the head of the Ukrainian society "Prosvita" Mykolayiv M. M. Arkas paid much attention to the history of the Ukrainian Cossacks. He accepted the populist version that the Cossacks emerged from the fugitives who escaped the Polish order, in the hope of starting a new life, free and equal. He described the Ukrainian people who went to the Cossacks as vicarious people, conquerors who attacked and robbed Tatars, Turks, Muscovites, Poles, Lithuanians and their own, Ukrainian, Masters. The device of Zaporozhian Sich reminded the author of West European knight orders. M. M. Arkas believed the uprising of 1648 was popular. Separate section M. M. Arkas devoted to the last years of Sich's existence and its liquidation. The description of the liquidation of the Sich draws attention to the sharp opposition between Russians and Zaporozhians. The historian paid much attention to the fate of the Cossacks after the liquidation, until the Crimean War. Many images of the Cossacks were in the illustrations to the book. Reviewers of the book М. М. Arkas basically believed that he well described the history of the Cossacks.Chief historian in Kherson in the late ХІХ nineteenth and early ХХ centuries. was a student of V. B. Antonovych Viktor Ivanovych Goshkevych, founder and director of the Kherson Museum. In 1903 year the researcher published a book on treasures and the search for treasures in the Kherson region. In the book, in an interesting way, he combined stories about the findings of Cossack subjects and legends about the Cossack treasures. In the department of history of the Cossacks V.I. Goshkevych conducted excursions in the Ukrainian language. The museum was constantly replenished with items from the history of the Cossacks. V. I. Goshkevych conducted excavations on the territories of Kamenska, Oleshkivska and Chortomlytskaya Sich.It is concluded that the research of Cossack history in Mykolayiv and Kherson was one of the main directions of local historiography. This allowed local historians to draw attention to their research by representatives of other centers, to be active participants in the historiographical process in the south of Ukraine, and sometimes also outside its borders. An important factor in the development of Cossack was the interest in this topic from the side of the lovers of history. They understood the historical significance of documentary and archaeological artifacts that helped historians, first of all, V. I. Goshkevych, to process and store these sources.

Метою цієї статті є дослідження розвитку козакознавчих студій у Миколаєві та Херсоні наприкінці ХІХ – на початку ХХ ст. Дослідження козацької історії у загалом провінційних за своїм економічним та культурним потенціалом, порівняно з Одесою, Миколаєві та Херсоні були одним з основних (поряд з антикознавством (Ольвія, скіфські кургани), дослідження історії цих міст з кінця ХVIII – у ХІХ ст.) струменем місцевої історіографії, що дозволяв їй привертати увагу представників інших центрів, бути активними учасниками історіографічного процесу на півдні України, а іноді і ширше. Важливим чинником розвитку козакознавства був інтерес до цієї теми з боку аматорів історії, що, розуміючи історичне значення документальних та археологічних артефактів допомагали історикам опрацьовувати та зберігати ці джерела. ; Целью этой статьи является исследование развития козакознавчих исследований в Николаеве и Херсоне в конце XIX – начале ХХ в. Исследование казацкой истории в целом провинциальных по своему экономическому и культурным потенциалом по сравнению с Одессой, Николаеве и Херсоне были одним из основных (наряду с антиковедении (Ольвия, скифские курганы), исследование истории этих городов с конца XVIII – XIX в. – основа местной историографии, позволяла ей привлекать внимание представителей других центров, быть активными участниками историографического процесса на юге Украины, а иногда и шире. Важным фактором развития казаковедения был интерес к этой теме со стороны любителей истории, которые, понимая историческое значение документальных и археологических артефактов помогали историкам обрабатывать и хранить эти источники. ; The main center of historical research in the territory of Southern Ukraine in the XIX and XX centuries. Odesa was the largest socio-economic and cultural center in the region. Therefore, most historiographers mainly studied how the historiography developed at the Novorossiysky University, leading Odesa societies. But important historiographic phenomena were also in other southern Ukrainian centers. The development of historiography in the territory between the Bug and the Dnieper, the main cities of these lands, Kherson and Mykolayiv should be studied better. Although these territories are known to have been one of the historical centers for the development of the Ukrainian Cossacks, in particular Kamyanska and Oleshkivska Sich, and the Bug Cossack Army.The purpose of this article is to study the history of the Cossacks in these centers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to trace their connections, and to accept their views. The relevance of this approach is evidenced by the availability of articles on the study of the Cossacks in certain regional branches of historical science. Some aspects have already attracted the attention of researchers whose works are taken into account as a historiographic basis of this article. The source-documentary base of our article is, first of all, the works of Mykolayiv and Kherson cossacks, newspaper publications, memoirs.The first history of the Cossacks in Mykolayiv was studied by M. Kiryakov, in Kherson - O. Rusov. Both paid attention to the fact that the Cossacks carried out military and maritime campaigns, and the Kherson author made an important accent on the fact that historians should pay much attention to the Turkish and Tatar historical sources. In the 1890s in Mykolayiv studied the history of the Ukrainian Cossacks, a student of V. B. Antonovich P. A. Ivanov In the magazine «Kievskaya starina» in 1891 year. P. A. Ivanov published documents from the archives of the Nicholas Military Governor's Office on the resettlement of Cossacks to Taman.A great contribution to the collection and research of the Cossack heritage was made by the employees of the Natural History-Historical (Historical-Archaeological) Museum S.I. Gaiduchenko F. T. Kaminsky In the work "History of Ukraine-Rus", the head of the Ukrainian society "Prosvita" Mykolayiv M. M. Arkas paid much attention to the history of the Ukrainian Cossacks. He accepted the populist version that the Cossacks emerged from the fugitives who escaped the Polish order, in the hope of starting a new life, free and equal. He described the Ukrainian people who went to the Cossacks as vicarious people, conquerors who attacked and robbed Tatars, Turks, Muscovites, Poles, Lithuanians and their own, Ukrainian, Masters. The device of Zaporozhian Sich reminded the author of West European knight orders. M. M. Arkas believed the uprising of 1648 was popular. Separate section M. M. Arkas devoted to the last years of Sich's existence and its liquidation. The description of the liquidation of the Sich draws attention to the sharp opposition between Russians and Zaporozhians. The historian paid much attention to the fate of the Cossacks after the liquidation, until the Crimean War. Many images of the Cossacks were in the illustrations to the book. Reviewers of the book М. М. Arkas basically believed that he well described the history of the Cossacks.Chief historian in Kherson in the late ХІХ nineteenth and early ХХ centuries. was a student of V. B. Antonovych Viktor Ivanovych Goshkevych, founder and director of the Kherson Museum. In 1903 year the researcher published a book on treasures and the search for treasures in the Kherson region. In the book, in an interesting way, he combined stories about the findings of Cossack subjects and legends about the Cossack treasures. In the department of history of the Cossacks V.I. Goshkevych conducted excursions in the Ukrainian language. The museum was constantly replenished with items from the history of the Cossacks. V. I. Goshkevych conducted excavations on the territories of Kamenska, Oleshkivska and Chortomlytskaya Sich.It is concluded that the research of Cossack history in Mykolayiv and Kherson was one of the main directions of local historiography. This allowed local historians to draw attention to their research by representatives of other centers, to be active participants in the historiographical process in the south of Ukraine, and sometimes also outside its borders. An important factor in the development of Cossack was the interest in this topic from the side of the lovers of history. They understood the historical significance of documentary and archaeological artifacts that helped historians, first of all, V. I. Goshkevych, to process and store these sources.

In 2009, when Israel was bombing Gaza, one of the most prominent advocates of the realist school of international relations, John Mearsheimer, wrote an article explaining that while the nominal goal of Israel's "Operation Cast Lead" was to counteract Hamas rocket attacks, the underlying purpose was "to get the Palestinians in Gaza to accept their fate as hapless subjects of a Greater Israel." He predicted it would fail in this purpose and that armed conflict would persist until the underlying issue of the status of the Palestinian territories was resolved. Sadly, this analysis proved to be as prescient as his more famous warning about mounting tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine.In both Eastern Europe and the Middle East, we can see the bitter fruits of policymakers ignoring these warnings. The United States is pumping arms and money into local wars that both threaten to spiral into far larger conflicts. In both cases, the stated war aims of our local proxies are unlikely to be achieved any time soon — if at all. And in each case, veteran advocates of a more restrained U.S. foreign policy have advocated a long-term ceasefire and moves toward diplomatic resolution of the underlying conflict.University College London professor of international relations Philip Cunliffe, however, has argued that the Left's foreign policy restrainers are being inconsistent. He thinks we were being driven by "sober realism" on Ukraine but have now "lost it" and let ourselves be swayed by humanitarian emotions about the Palestinians.This critique doesn't survive a closer look. It misunderstands the relationship between realist critiques of the aims of war and moral horror at the consequences of war. And it ignores everything the two cases have in common.A Tale of Two Wars Neither the terrorist attack on October 7 nor Russia's invasion of Ukraine were morally justified. They were, however, both predictable and widely predicted. Cautious voices at the heights of the Western foreign policy establishment had been saying that encouraging Ukraine's long-term ambitions to join NATO could inflame tensions with Russia since the end of the Cold War. And there were numerous similar warnings that Netanyahu's strategy of simultaneously digging his boot deeper into the necks of the Palestinians and trying to make a separate peace with surrounding Arab states, thus depriving the Palestinians of the one thing they had going for them — the support, however ambiguous and inconsistent, of those states — was a recipe for exactly this kind of explosion.In both cases, failure to see the warning signs has been compounded by subsequent U.S. policy. While this policy may finally be changing in Ukraine, the Biden administration's default approach to both conflicts has been to write blank checks. In both cases, there have been signs of regret and hesitation along the way — weapons systems that aren't sent to Ukraine for a few months out of concerns that they're too escalatory (and then get sent anyway) or Biden begging Netanyahu for "humanitarian pauses" even as 1.7 million of the more than 2 million residents of Gaza had already been displaced and thousands of children lay dead. Both Zelensky and Netanyahu have pushed back hard against such squeamishness and both men have, more often than not, gotten their way — even though, in both cases, it seems quite unlikely that our allies' stated goals will be achieved on the battlefield.Ukraine retaking both Crimea and every last inch of the Donbas seems supremely unlikely even given another five or 10 years of more war. Similarly, counterinsurgency campaigns with the goal of "eradicating" some terrorist or guerilla force are a dime a dozen around the world. It's far less common for such campaigns to lead to the actual extinction of the targeted force. As Israeli propaganda itself emphasizes, the top leadership of Hamas is not in Gaza but Qatar. Moreover, after seven weeks of "total war" that Israeli officials themselves are eager to compare to atrocities like the Allied bombing of Dresden, it's not yet clear how much the Gaza-based operations of Hamas have been hampered. Meanwhile, as even Elon Musk has realized, displacing millions of Palestinians from their homes and killing and maiming vast numbers of innocents is a recipe for supercharging future recruitment to Hamas or even more radical organizations. As is so often the case around the world, trying to solve long-term geopolitical problems by dropping bombs creates many corpses and few solutions.In both cases, the most likely consequence of a less belligerent course of action would be some sort of territorial compromise that falls considerably short of perfect justice. I've argued elsewhere that liberal democratic principles which in other contexts would be accepted by most Westerners across the political spectrum would entail simply offering West Bank and Gaza Palestinians citizenship in the single state that has de facto existed between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea for the last 56 years. But I'm not deluded about that happening in the short term — and even if a "two-state solution" involved Israel's full retreat to its pre-1967 borders, that would mean the State of Palestine would be created in 22% of the shared homeland. Similarly, as hawks have long fretted, any sort of negotiated peace in Ukraine will mean Russia retaining some of the land it illegally seized in the course of a bloody war that it started. These are bitter pills to swallow.Nevertheless, you'll find realist scholars and commentators advocating peace in both contexts — and for the same reasons. In both cases, pointlessly prolonging the wars would lead to enormous and avoidable suffering for civilian populations. In both cases, the families of the soldiers whose lives would be sacrificed by pointless extension of the wars can be spared. And in both cases, moves toward diplomatic resolution can head off the terrifying possibility of these wars spiraling into larger regional or even global conflicts.Cunliffe's CritiqueCunliffe accuses advocates of peace in both conflicts of selectively choosing not to share graphic images of the Ukrainian victims of the Russian invasion while over-sharing images of Palestinian death and destruction. Providing hyperlinks of articles by me and Branko Marcetic, he says the "strangest saddest cases" on the anti-war Left are those of us "who for long years managed to preserve their intellectual poise and political integrity in the face of monolithic mass conformity, elite hostility, and relentless gaslighting by the mainstream media, only to eventually crumble and succumb to supporting the 'latest thing.'"This is a misunderstanding on several levels. For one thing, I know of no case of a left-wing critic of both wars whose position on Israel/Palestine wasn't the same two years ago. Second, the idea that "mass conformity, elite hostility, and relentless gaslighting by mainstream media" flow in the direction of advocacy for the Palestinians feels like news from an alternate dimension. While I've never particularly enjoyed being called a "Putin apologist" for advocating de-escalation and peace negotiations in Ukraine, that sort of rhetorical ugliness doesn't even begin to touch the tidal wave of firings, deplatformings, denunciations from politicians of both parties, and mass public shaming that's come down on advocates of peace in Israel/Palestine since October 7. (There have also been some incidents of free speech crackdowns the other way, as institutions try to prove their "even-handedness," but no one really denies that it's been lopsided.) Nothing remotely equivalent has happened to advocates of a negotiated solution in Eastern Europe. There are no trucks driving around university campuses displaying the names of "anti-Ukraine" students and professors. There are no laws against boycotting Ukraine on the books in any state.Finally and most importantly, Cunliffe misunderstands the relationship between humanitarian concern about the carnage of war and realism about what can be achieved by war. Outrage about one side's crimes can be — and often is — used to whip up support for wars that will only make everything worse. So, for example, Russian crimes in Ukraine are often showcased for the purpose of bolstering support for prolonging a war whose continuation won't move the eventual ceasefire line very far, but will result in decades of Ukrainian children being blown up by unexploded cluster bombs. Furthermore, the grisly atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7 are being used to justify mass death and displacement in Gaza, which will do nothing to reduce the threat of future terrorism. But the objection to such deceptive military solutions to long-term geopolitical problems isn't just that they won't work.Anti-war protestors levitating the Pentagon through the power of meditation won't work either — but if someone wants to dedicate an afternoon to giving it a shot, that's fine with me. The problem with these awful and pointless wars is that they won't achieve their stated objectives but they will result in vast numbers of dead, maimed, and psychologically broken human beings.Cunliffe isn't wrong that restrainers feel moral horror about this in the case of Gaza. He's wrong to think we don't feel it in the case of Ukraine — or that advocacy of restraint in both cases isn't a consistent position.Dear RS readers! It has been an extraordinary year and our editing team has been working overtime to make sure that we are covering the current conflicts with quality, fresh analysis that doesn't cleave to the mainstream orthodoxy or take official Washington and the commentariat at face value. Our staff reporters, experts, and outside writers offer top-notch, independent work, daily. Please consider making a tax-exempt, year-end contribution to Responsible Statecraft so that we can continue this quality coverage — which you will find nowhere else — into 2024. Happy Holidays!

We present the photometric calibration of the 12 optical passbands observed by the Javalambre Photometric Local Universe Survey (J-PLUS). Methods. The proposed calibration method has four steps: (i) definition of a high-quality set of calibration stars using Gaia information and available 3D dust maps; (ii) anchoring of the J-PLUS gri passbands to the Pan-STARRS photometric solution, accounting for the variation in the calibration with the position of the sources on the CCD; (iii) homogenization of the photometry in the other nine J-PLUS filters using the dust de-reddened instrumental stellar locus in (chi - r) versus (g-i) colours, where chi is the filter to calibrate. The zero point variation along the CCD in these filters was estimated with the distance to the stellar locus. Finally, (iv) the absolute colour calibration was obtained with the white dwarf locus. We performed a joint Bayesian modelling of 11 J-PLUS colour-colour diagrams using the theoretical white dwarf locus as reference. This provides the needed o ffsets to transform instrumental magnitudes to calibrated magnitudes outside the atmosphere. Results. The uncertainty of the J-PLUS photometric calibration, estimated from duplicated objects observed in adjacent pointings and accounting for the absolute colour and flux calibration errors, are similar to 19 mmag in u, J0378, and J0395; similar to 11 mmag in J0410 and J0430; and similar to 8 mmag in g, J0515, r, J0660, i, J0861, and z. Conclusions. We present an optimized calibration method for the large-area multi-filter J-PLUS project, reaching 1-2% accuracy within an area of 1022 square degrees without the need for long observing calibration campaigns or constant atmospheric monitoring. The proposed method will be adapted for the photometric calibration of J-PAS, that will observe several thousand square degrees with 56 narrow optical filters.© ESO 2019 ; We dedicate this paper to the memory of our six IAC colleagues and friends who met with a fatal accident in Piedra de los Cochinos, Tenerife, in February 2007, with special thanks to Maurizio Panniello, whose teachings of python were so important for this paper. We thank the anonymous referee for useful comments and suggestions. Based on observations made with the JAST/T80 telescope at the Observatorio Astrofisico de Javalambre (OAJ), in Teruel, owned, managed, and operated by the Centro de Estudios de Fisica del Cosmos de Aragon. We acknowledge the OAJ Data Processing and Archiving Unit (UPAD) for reducing and calibrating the OAJ data used in this work. Funding for the J-PLUS Project has been provided by the Governments of Spain and Aragon through the Fondo de Inversiones de Teruel; the Aragon Government through the Reseach Groups E96, E103, and E16_17R; the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE) with grants PGC2018-097585-B-C21 and PGC2018-097585-B-C22; the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under AYA2015-66211-C2-1-P, AYA2015-66211-C2-2, AYA2012-30789, and ICTS-2009-14; and European FEDER funding (FCDD10-4E-867, FCDD13-4E-2685). This work was also supported by the MINECO through grant ESP2016-80079-C2-1-R and RTI2018-095076-B-C21 (MINECO/FEDER, UE) and MDM-2014-0369 of ICCUB (Unidad de Excelencia "Maria de Maeztu"). F. J. E. acknowledges financial support from the Tec2Space-CM project (P2018/NMT-4291). Funding for the SDSS and SDSS-II has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, the Max Planck Society, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The SDSS Web Site is www.sdss.org.The SDSS is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions. The Participating Institutions are the American Museum of Natural History, Astrophysical Institute Potsdam, University of Basel, University of Cambridge, CaseWestern Reserve University, University of Chicago, Drexel University, Fermilab, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics, the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, the Korean Scientist Group, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (LAMOST), Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), New Mexico State University, the Ohio State University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the United States Naval Observatory, and the University of Washington. The Pan-STARRS1 Surveys (PS1) and the PS1 public science archive have been made possible through contributions by the Institute for Astronomy, the University of Hawaii, the Pan-STARRS Project O ffice, the Max-Planck Society and its participating institutes, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, The Johns Hopkins University, Durham University, the University of Edinburgh, the Queen's University Belfast, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network Incorporated, the National Central University of Taiwan, the Space Telescope Science Institute, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant No. NNX08AR22G issued through the Planetary Science Division of the NASA Science Mission Directorate, the National Science Foundation Grant No. AST-1238877, the University of Maryland, Eotvos Lorand University (ELTE), the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium).Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. This research made use of Astropy, a community-developed core Python package for Astronomy (Astropy Collaboration 2013), and Matplotlib, a 2D graphics package used for Python for publication-quality image generation across user interfaces and operating systems (Hunter 2007). ; Peer reviewed

El capítulo 1 contiene una justificación del hilo conductor de esta tesis doctoral (el papel de la sociedad civil), junto con las hipótesis y objetivos principales: destacar la importancia de las redes sociales, matizar la supuesta desmovilización vecinal en los años ochenta, explicar la movilización social autonomista en base a la difusión de determinados discursos sobre el autogobierno y cómo el proceso autonómico influyó en los discursos del PCE, PSA y PSOE. En el segundo capítulo, planteamos la perspectiva teórica que guía la tesis, basada en la construcción social de la realidad, la teoría de marcos y los contextos de micromovilización. Seguidamente, el capítulo tercero está dedicado a la metodología. Atendiendo a la problemática de las fuentes (estado, localización, tipología), tratamos las dificultades del acceso a los archivos, la importancia de la historia oral y una visión general de las entrevistas recogidas. En cuarto lugar, desarrollamos un estado de la cuestión doble. Por un lado, analizando la literatura científica existente sobre movimientos sociales urbanos en Europa (concretamente Portugal) y América Latina (Chile). También, exponiendo el caso de España y sus diferentes territorios. Por otro lado, explicando de qué manera se ha abordado el movimiento andalucista y su relación con el proceso autonómico. Tras explicar la historiografía tanto sobre los movimientos sociales urbanos como sobre el movimiento andalucista, empezamos a analizar las condiciones materiales de existencia (migraciones, transformaciones urbanas, etc) que favorecieron la aparición del asociacionismo vecinal. En este capítulo 5, tratamos además el papel de las redes sociales, el asociacionismo y la contribución al mismo de la Iglesia de base y fuerzas políticas antifranquistas, con su discursos y formas de actuación. A continuación, analizamos las alianzas, los repertorios de protesta y la defensa de la cultura popular por parte de las asociaciones vecinales. Finalmente, exponemos el desarrollo del movimiento vecinal en seis ciudades (Córdoba, Granada, Jaén, Linares, Motril y Sevilla). En el capítulo 6, destacamos la contestación que sufren los últimos ayuntamientos franquistas, el papel de los concejales demócratas y el desgaste de alcaldes y concejales. A continuación, analizamos las elecciones municipales de 1979 y el grado de trasvase de activistas vecinales a los nuevos ayuntamientos. Para concluir, exponemos la evolución del movimiento vecinal en los años ochenta, con viejos y nuevos retos: problemática urbana en general, movilización a favor del Sí en el referéndum andaluz del 28 de febrero de 1980, defensa de los consumidores, movilizaciones anti OTAN e influencia en las políticas de participación ciudadana. Finalmente, en el capítulo 7, abordamos el movimiento andalucista y el proceso autonómico, desde la perspectiva de la construcción de una identidad andaluza en la esfera semipública (partidos políticos andalucistas, labor de intelectuales y periodistas, asociaciones culturales, colectivos andalucistas, iniciativas culturales, etc) y la esfera pública (movilizaciones de diciembre de 1977 y 1979, la campaña del referéndum del 28-F de 1980 y el desbloqueo del proceso autonómico). ; SUMMARY The first chapter contains a justification of the thread running through this doctoral thesis (the role of civil society), together with the hypotheses and main objectives: to underscore the importance of social networks, nuance the supposed neighbourhood demobilisation in 1980s, explain how certain discourses on self-government conditioned social mobilisation in favour of autonomy and how the autonomic process influenced the discourses of the PCE, PSA and PSOE. The second chapter outlines the theoretical perspective guiding the thesis, based on the social construction of reality, the theory of frameworks and micro-mobilisation contexts. The third chapter is devoted to the methodology. In accordance with the problems in the sources (condition, location and typology), it studies the difficulties in the access to archives and the importance of oral history and gives an overview of the interviews made. A double state of the art is developed in the fourth chapter. On one hand it analyses scientific literature on urban social movements in Europe (comissões/associações of the population in Portugal) and Latin America (people's movements in Chile). It also describes the case of the different regions in Spain. On the other hand, it explains how the Andalusianist movement has been approached and its relationship with the process of obtaining autonomy. After explaining the historiography both of urban social movements and the Andalusianist movement, the necessary material conditions (migration, urban changes, etc.) that favoured the emergence of neighbourhood associations will be analysed. The fifth chapter also discusses the role of social networks, associationism and the contribution of the ground-level Church and anti-Francoist political forces, with their discourses and ways of working. It goes on to study the alliances, repertoire of protests and the defence of popular culture by the neighbourhood associations. Finally, it describes the neighbourhood movement in six towns and cities (Córdoba, Granada, Jaén, Linares, Motril and Seville). The sixth chapter highlights the opposition to the last Francoist town corporations, the role of democratic councillors and the wearing down of mayors and councillors. It then analyses the 1979 local elections and the degree of transfer of neighbourhood activists to the new corporations. To conclude, it describes the evolution in the neighbourhood movement in the 1980s, with old and new goals: urban problems in general, mobilisation in favour of the Yes vote in the Andalusian referendum on February 28th 1980, consumer protection, anti-NATO mobilisations and influence in policies of citizen participation. Finally, seventh chapter addresses the Andalusianist movement and the autonomic process, from the viewpoint of the construction of an Andalusian identity in the semi-public sphere (Andalusianist political parties, the work of intellectuals and journalists, cultural associations, Andalusianist collectives, cultural initiatives, etc.) and in the public sphere (mobilisations in December 1977 and 1979, the campaign for the referendum on February 28th 1980 and unblocking the autonomic process). ; Tesis Univ. Granada.

IntroductionWhen teaching social welfare policy, it is important to determine the ideological influences upon our policy choices and ability to rationalize those choices. We are able to do this by examining the history of a particular policy, comparing policies in different nations and by incorporating discourse and/or narrative analysis. This article is particularly useful in demonstrating the nature of discourse and the impact of ideology upon welfare reform in the United States. It may be incorporated in classes on discourse, however I have included an example of an abbreviated syllabi for a class in social welfare policy.Author RecommendsCassiman, Shawn A. 2006. 'Of Witches, Welfare Queens and the Disaster Named Poverty: The Search for a Counter‐Narrative.'Journal of Poverty 10: 51–66.This article critiques the explanatory frameworks associated with welfare receipt and draws attention to the gendered nature of the construction of welfare queens by drawing upon historical similarities in the treatment of witches. The conclusion argues that rather than evidence of individual fault, responsibility rests with society, as poverty is a "man" made disaster.Kissane, Rebecca Joyce and Richard Krebs 2007. 'Assessing Welfare Reform Over a Decade Later.'Sociology Compass 1/2: 789–813. DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2007.00029.xComparing the declines in welfare caseloads across states, or what is often articulated as welfare reform success, the authors draw attention to both improvements and challenges in the lives of welfare recipients and offer some policy recommendations.Lubiano, Wahneema 1992. 'Black Ladies, Welfare Queens and State Minstrels: Ideological Warfare by Narrative Means.' Pp. 323–63 in Raceing Justice, En‐Gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality, edited by Toni Morrison. New York, NY: Pantheon Books.This chapter draws attention to the gendered and racialized nature of the construct of welfare queens. The author argues that contemporary narratives are informed by the historical narratives associated with black women in the United States, with the 'welfare queen' the latest tale.McCormack, Karen 2004. 'Resisting the Welfare Mother: The Power of Welfare Discourse and Tactics of Resistance.'Critical Sociology 30: 355–83.McCormack draws attention to the discursive construction of the welfare mother while also identifying some of their tactics to resist negative constructions. She discovers that some women both resist and participate in the discourse, distancing themselves from 'others' in an effort to legitimate their need and demonstrate their deserving status.Schram, Sanford F. 2006. Welfare Discipline: Discourse, Governance, and Globalization. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.This text draws our attention to the global nature of the welfare discourse while offering a critique of globalization as the explanation for welfare state retrenchment. The author incorporates gender and race in his powerful critique of the trends in welfare states. He concludes by offering an alternative to the globalization argument in the form of compassionate liberalism.Online Materials:Sociology Eye, http://sociologycompass.wordpress.com/Institute for Research On Poverty, Current News: http://www.irp.wisc.edu/initiatives/outreach/dispatch/2009/03/dispatch03162009.htm Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign: http://www.economichumanrights.org/index.shtml Ten‐Year Anniversary of Welfare Reform: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=‐2235473050770963875&ei=xb‐‐SavrGo_‐qwK9_rT7Cw&q=welfare+reform&hl=en Discussion by Sharon Hays, author of Flat Broke With Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform (2003): http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.aspx?fID=573&rID=3587 Sample Syllabus: Topics for Lecture & Discussion Weeks I & II: Introduction & Overview The History of Social Welfare Policy: From the English Poor Laws to the birth of the welfare state. Reading: Trattnor, Walter I. 1994. From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in the United States (5th ed.). New York, NY: Free Press. Weeks III & IV: Social Security and Housing Policies Weeks V–VII: Talking About Welfare Reform Readings: Week V‐Welfare reform arguments: Fraser, Nancy and Gordon, Linda 1994. 'A genealogy of dependency: Tracing a keyword of the welfare state.' Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 19: 309–336.And, Excerpts from:Ellwood, David T. 1989. Poor support: Poverty in the American family. New York, NY: Basic Books.Murray, Charles 1984. Losing Ground: American Social Policy from 1950–1980. New York, NY: Basic Books. Week VI: Life as a Single Mother on Welfare or in Low‐Wage Work Chapters 1, 2, 3, & 4 in Edin, Kathryn & Lein, Laura 1997. Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low‐Wage Work. Thousand Oaks, CA: Russell Sage Foundation. Week VII: After Welfare Reform Cassiman, Shawn 2008. 'Resisting the Neo‐liberal Poverty Discourse: On Constructing Deadbeat Dads and Welfare Queens.'Sociology Compass 2/5: 1690–1700, DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2008.00159.xKissane, Rebecca Joyce and Richard Krebs 2007. 'Assessing Welfare Reform Over a Decade Later.'Sociology Compass 1/2: 789–813. DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2007.00029.xExcerpts from:Hays, Sharon 2003. Flat Broke With Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Focus Questions
Some possible discussion questions:

How does ideology shape social welfare policy?
How does social welfare policy reflect ideological influences?
How do gender and race impact social welfare policy?
What is discourse?
How do we, as individuals, students, and scholars, contribute to the social welfare policy discourse?


Seminar/Project Idea:
Group Project: Counter‐narratives: on contributing to the discourse Drawing upon class readings, notes and current media, each group will critique an assumption (as represented discursively) about recipients of a social welfare policy; welfare, health care, housing, education, or unemployment. They will ground their work in the literature, paying particular attention to historical shifts in the discourse. Students will then identify how extreme economic 'events' contribute to (or provide opportunity for) shifts in discourse and/or policies of their choice. Finally, they will offer their own contribution to the discourse, based upon their critique and presented to the class through a PowerPoint presentation.Note
* Correspondence address: Shawn A. Cassiman, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work, St. Joseph's Hall, Rm. 403, University of Dayton, 300 College Park, Dayton, OH 45469‐1442, USA. Email: cassima@notes.udayton.edu

Venture capital and military startup firms in Silicon Valley have begun aggressively selling a version of automated warfare that will deeply incorporate artificial intelligence (AI). Those companies and their CEOs are now pressing full speed ahead with that emerging technology, largely dismissing the risk of malfunctions that could lead to the future slaughter of civilians, not to speak of the possibility of dangerous scenarios of escalation between major military powers. The reasons for this headlong rush include a misplaced faith in "miracle weapons," but above all else, this surge of support for emerging military technologies is driven by the ultimate rationale of the military-industrial complex: vast sums of money to be made.The New Techno-EnthusiastsWhile some in the military and the Pentagon are indeed concerned about the future risk of AI weaponry, the leadership of the Defense Department is on board fully. Its energetic commitment to emerging technology was first broadcast to the world in an August 2023 speech delivered by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks to the National Defense Industrial Association, the largest arms industry trade group in the country. She used the occasion to announce what she termed "the Replicator Initiative," an umbrella effort to help create "a new state of the art — just as America has before — leveraging attritable, autonomous systems in all domains — which are less expensive, put fewer people in the line of fire, and can be changed, updated, or improved with substantially shorter lead times."Hicks was anything but shy about pointing to the primary rationale for such a rush toward robotic warfare: outpacing and intimidating China. "We must," she said, "ensure the PRC [People's Republic of China] leadership wakes up every day, considers the risks of aggression, and concludes, 'today is not the day' — and not just today, but every day, between now and 2027, now and 2035, now and 2049, and beyond."Hick's supreme confidence in the ability of the Pentagon and American arms makers to wage future techno-wars has been reinforced by a group of new-age militarists in Silicon Valley and beyond, spearheaded by corporate leaders like Peter Thiel of Palantir, Palmer Luckey of Anduril, and venture capitalists like Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz.Patriots or Profiteers?These corporate promoters of a new way of war also view themselves as a new breed of patriots, ready and able to successfully confront the military challenges of the future.A case in point is "Rebooting the Arsenal of Democracy," a lengthy manifesto on Anduril's blog. It touts the superiority of Silicon Valley startups over old-school military-industrial behemoths like Lockheed Martin in supplying the technology needed to win the wars of the future:"The largest defense contractors are staffed with patriots who, nevertheless, do not have the software expertise or business model to build the technology we need… These companies built the tools that kept us safe in the past, but they are not the future of defense."In contrast to the industrial-age approach it critiques, Luckey and his compatriots at Anduril seek an entirely new way of developing and selling weapons:"Software will change how war is waged. The battlefield of the future will teem with artificially intelligent, unmanned systems, which fight, gather reconnaissance data, and communicate at breathtaking speeds."At first glance, Luckey seems a distinctly unlikely candidate to have risen so far in the ranks of arms industry executives. He made his initial fortune by creating the Oculus virtual reality device, a novelty item that users can strap to their heads to experience a variety of 3-D scenes (with the sensation that they're embedded in them). His sartorial tastes run toward sandals and Hawaiian shirts, but he has now fully shifted into military work. In 2017, he founded Anduril, in part with support from Peter Thiel and his investment firm, Founders Fund. Anduril currently makes autonomous drones, automated command and control systems, and other devices meant to accelerate the speed at which military personnel can identify and destroy targets.Thiel, a mentor to Palmer Luckey, offers an example of how the leaders of the new weapons startup firms differ from the titans of the Cold War era. As a start, he's all in for Donald Trump. Once upon a time, the heads of major weapons makers like Lockheed Martin tried to keep good ties with both Democrats and Republicans, making substantial campaign contributions to both parties and their candidates and hiring lobbyists with connections on both sides of the aisle. The logic for doing so couldn't have seemed clearer then. They wanted to cement a bipartisan consensus for spending ever more on the Pentagon, one of the few things most key members of both parties agreed upon. And they also wanted to have particularly good relations with whichever party controlled the White House and/or the Congress at any moment.The Silicon Valley upstarts and their representatives are also much more vocal in their criticisms of China. They are the coldest (or do I mean hottest?) of the new cold warriors in Washington, employing harsher rhetoric than either the Pentagon or the big contractors. By contrast, the big contractors generally launder their critiques of China and support for wars around the world that have helped pad their bottom lines through think tanks, which they've funded to the tune of tens of millions of dollars annually.Thiel's main company, Palantir, has also been criticized for providing systems that have enabled harsh border crackdowns by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as well as "predictive policing." That (you won't be surprised to learn) involves the collection of vast amounts of personal data without a warrant, relying on algorithms with built-in racial biases that lead to the systematic unfair targeting and treatment of people of color.To fully grasp how the Silicon Valley militarists view next-generation warfare, you need to check out the work of Christian Brose, Palantir's chief strategy officer. He was a long-time military reformer and former aide to the late Senator John McCain. His book Kill Chain serves as a bible of sorts for advocates of automated warfare. Its key observation: that the winner in combat is the side that can most effectively shorten the "kill chain" (the time between when a target is identified and destroyed). His book assumes that the most likely adversary in the next tech war will indeed be China and he proceeds to exaggerate Beijing's military capabilities, while overstating its military ambitions and insisting that outpacing that country in developing emerging military technologies is the only path to future victory.And mind you, Brose's vision of shortening that kill chain poses immense risks. As the time to decide what actions to take diminishes, the temptation to take humans "out of the loop" will only grow, leaving life-and-death decisions to machines with no moral compass and vulnerable to catastrophic malfunctions of a sort inherent in any complex software system.Much of Brose's critique of the current military-industrial complex rings true. A few big firms are getting rich making ever more vulnerable huge weapons platforms like aircraft carriers and tanks, while the Pentagon spends billions on a vast, costly global basing network that could be replaced with a far smaller, more dispersed military footprint. Sadly, though, his alternative vision poses more problems than it solves.First, there's no guarantee that the software-driven systems promoted by Silicon Valley will work as advertised. After all, there's a long history of "miracle weapons" that failed, from the electronic battlefield in Vietnam to President Ronald Reagan's disastrous Star Wars missile shield. Even when the ability to find and destroy targets more quickly did indeed improve, wars like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, fought using those very technologies, were dismal failures.A recent Wall Street Journal investigation suggests that the new generation of military tech is being oversold as well. The Journal found that small top-of-the-line new U.S. drones supplied to Ukraine for its defensive war against Russia have proved far too "glitchy and expensive," so much so that, irony of ironies, the Ukrainians have opted to buy cheaper, more reliable Chinese drones instead.Finally, the approach advocated by Brose and his acolytes is going to make war more likely as technological hubris instills a belief that the United States can indeed "beat" a rival nuclear-armed power like China in a conflict, if only we invest in a nimble new high-tech force.The result, as my colleague Michael Brenes and I pointed out recently, is the untold billions of dollars of private money now pouring into firms seeking to expand the frontiers of techno-war. Estimates range from $6 billion to $33 billion annually and, according to the New York Times, $125 billion over the past four years. Whatever the numbers, the tech sector and its financial backers sense that there are massive amounts of money to be made in next-generation weaponry and aren't about to let anyone stand in their way.Meanwhile, an investigation by Eric Lipton of the New York Times found that venture capitalists and startup firms already pushing the pace on AI-driven warfare are also busily hiring ex-military and Pentagon officials to do their bidding. High on that list is former Trump Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. Such connections may be driven by patriotic fervor, but a more likely motivation is simply the desire to get rich. As Ellen Lord, former head of acquisition at the Pentagon, noted, "There's panache now with the ties between the defense community and private equity. But they are also hoping they can cash in big-time and make a ton of money."The Philosopher KingAnother central figure in the move toward building a high-tech war machine is former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. His interests go far beyond the military sphere. He's become a virtual philosopher king when it comes to how new technology will reshape society and, indeed, what it means to be human. He's been thinking about such issues for some time and laid out his views in a 2021 book modestly entitled The Age of AI and Our Human Future, coauthored with none other than the late Henry Kissinger. Schmidt is aware of the potential perils of AI, but he's also at the center of efforts to promote its military applications. Though he forgoes the messianic approach of some up-and-coming Silicon Valley figures, whether his seemingly more thoughtful approach will contribute to the development of a safer, more sensible world of AI weaponry is open to debate.Let's start with the most basic thing of all: the degree to which Schmidt thinks that AI will change life as we know it is extraordinary. In that book of his and Kissinger's, they asserted that it would spark "the alteration of human identity and the human experience at levels not seen since the dawn of the modern age," arguing that AI's "functioning portends progress toward the essence of things, progress that philosophers, theologians and scientists have sought, with partial success, for millennia."On the other hand, the government panel on artificial intelligence on which Schmidt served fully acknowledged the risks posed by the military uses of AI. The question remains: Will he, at least, support strong safeguards against its misuse? During his tenure as head of the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Board from 2017 to 2020, he did help set the stage for Pentagon guidelines on the use of AI that promised humans would always "be in the loop" in launching next-gen weapons. But as a tech industry critic noted, once the rhetoric is stripped away, the guidelines "don't really prevent you from doing anything."In fact, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and other good government advocates questioned whether Schmidt's role as head of the Defense Innovation Unit didn't represent a potential conflict of interest. After all, while he was helping shape its guidelines on the military applications of AI, he was also investing in firms that stood to profit from its development and use. His investment entity, America's Frontier Fund, regularly puts money in military tech startups, and a nonprofit he founded, the Special Competitive Studies Project, describes its mission as to "strengthen America's long-term competitiveness as artificial intelligence (AI) [reshapes] our national security, economy, and society." The group is connected to a who's who of leaders in the military and the tech industry and is pushing, among other things, for less regulation over military-tech development. In 2023, Schmidt even founded a military drone company, White Stork, which, according to Forbes, has been secretly testing its systems in the Silicon Valley suburb of Menlo Park.The question now is whether Schmidt can be persuaded to use his considerable influence to rein in the most dangerous uses of AI. Unfortunately, his enthusiasm for using it to enhance warfighting capabilities suggests otherwise:"Every once in a while, a new weapon, a new technology comes along that changes things. Einstein wrote a letter to Roosevelt in the 1930s saying that there is this new technology — nuclear weapons — that could change war, which it clearly did. I would argue that [AI-powered] autonomy and decentralized, distributed systems are that powerful."Given the risks already cited, comparing militarized AI to the development of nuclear weapons shouldn't exactly be reassuring. The combination of the two — nuclear weapons controlled by automatic systems with no human intervention — has so far been ruled out, but don't count on that lasting. It's still a possibility, absent strong, enforceable safeguards on when and how AI can be used.AI is coming, and its impact on our lives, whether in war or peace, is likely to stagger the imagination. In that context, one thing is clear: we can't afford to let the people and companies that will profit most from its unbridled application have the upper hand in making the rules for how it should be used.Isn't it time to take on the new-age warriors?This article has been republished with permission from Tom Dispatch

During its four years of photometric observations, the Kepler space telescope detected thousands of exoplanets and exoplanet candidates. One of Kepler's greatest heritages has been the confirmation and characterization of hundreds of multi-planet systems via transit timing variations (TTVs). However, there are many interesting candidate systems displaying TTVs on such long timescales that the existing Kepler observations are of insufficient length to confirm and characterize them by means of this technique. To continue with Kepler's unique work, we have organized the "Kepler Object of Interest Network" (KOINet), a multi-site network formed of several telescopes located throughout America, Europe, and Asia. The goals of KOINet are to complete the TTV curves of systems where Kepler did not cover the interaction timescales well, to dynamically prove that some candidates are true planets (or not), to dynamically measure the masses and bulk densities of some planets, to find evidence for non-transiting planets in some of the systems, to extend Kepler's baseline adding new data with the main purpose of improving current models of TTVs, and to build a platform that can observe almost anywhere on the northern hemisphere, at almost any time. KOINet has been operational since March 2014. Here we show some promising first results obtained from analyzing seven primary transits of KOI-0410.01, KOI-0525.01, KOI-0760.01, and KOI-0902.01, in addition to the Kepler data acquired during the first and second observing seasons of KOINet. While carefully choosing the targets we set demanding constraints on timing precision (at least 1 min) and photometric precision (as good as one part per thousand) that were achieved by means of our observing strategies and data analysis techniques. For KOI-0410.01, new transit data revealed a turnover of its TTVs. We carried out an in-depth study of the system, which is identified in the NASA Data Validation Report as a false positive. Among others, we investigated a gravitationally bound hierarchical triple star system and a planet-star system. While the simultaneous transit fitting of ground- andspace-based data allowed for a planet solution, we could not fully reject the three-star scenario. New data, already scheduled in the upcoming 2018 observing season, will set tighter constraints on the nature of the system. © ESO 2018. ; Russian Science Foundation, RSF: 14-50-00043 ; LAT-08/2016, 2014-0707 ; Russian Foundation for Basic Research, RFBR: 17-02-00542 ; Lietuvos Mokslo Taryba ; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG ; Norges ForskningsrÃ¥d: 188910 ; National Science Foundation, NSF: AST-1615315 ; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG: DR 281/30-1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council, STFC ; European Regional Development Fund, FEDER: ESP2016-80435-C2-1-R ; European Commission, EC ; NNH05ZDA001C ; Danmarks Grundforskningsfond, DNRF: DNRF106 ; Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency, EACEA ; Ministério da Educação e Ciência, MEC ; National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA: NNX13A124G, NNX13AF62G ; Science and Technology Facilities Council, STFC: ST/P000312/1, ESP2015-65712-C5-4-R ; Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, MINECO ; Acknowledgements. Funding for the Stellar Astrophysics Centre is provided by The Danish National Research Foundation (Grant DNRF106). This research has made use of the NASA Exoplanet Archive, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. E.A. acknowledges support from NASA Grants NNX13A124G, NNX13AF62G; from National Science Foundation (NSF) grant AST-1615315; and from the NASA Astrobiology Institutes Virtual Planetary Laboratory, supported by NASA under cooperative agreement NNH05ZDA001C. S.W. acknowledges support from the Research Council of Norway grant 188910 to finance service observing at the NOT, and support for International Team 265 (Magnetic Activity of M-type Dwarf Stars and the Influence on Habitable Extra-solar Planets) funded by the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern, Switzerland. J.F. acknowledges funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) through grant DR 281/30-1. Based on observations made with the Nordic Optical Telescope, operated by the Nordic Optical Telescope Scientific Association at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain, of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. The data presented here were obtained in part with ALFOSC, which is provided by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA) under a joint agreement with the University of Copenhagen and NOTSA. Based on observations obtained with the Apache Point Observatory 3.5-m telescope, which is owned and operated by the Astrophysical Research Consortium. Based on observations collected at the German-Spanish Astronomical Center, Calar Alto, jointly operated by the Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie Heidelberg and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC). This work was supported in part by the Ministry of Education and Science (the basic part of the State assignment, RK no. AAAA-A17-117030310283-7) and by Act no. 211 of the Government of the Russian Federation, agreement no. 02.A03.21.0006. E.H. and I.R. acknowledge support by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) and the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) through grant ESP2016-80435-C2-1-R, as well as the support of the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme. E.P., G.T., and Š.M. acknowledge support from the Research Council of Lithuania (LMT) through grant LAT-08/2016. C.D.C. is supported by the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate Program by grant number 2014-0707 from the EACEA of the European Commission. S.E. acknowledges support by the Russian Science Foundation grant No. 14-50-00043 for conducting photometric observations of exoplanets of Kepler's mission. S.I. acknowledges Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project No. 17-02-00542) for support in the processing of the observations. K.P. acknowledges support from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council through STFC grant ST/P000312/1. H.J.D. acknowledges support by grant ESP2015-65712-C5-4-R of the Spanish Secretary of State for R&D&i (MINECO). KOINet thanks the telescope operators for their invaluable help during some of the observing campaigns at the IAC80 telescope. The IAC80 telescope is operated on the island of Tenerife by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in the Spanish Observatorio del Teide. C.v.E. is grateful for the invaluable help and contribution of all the telescope operators involved in this work. Eric Agol acknowledges support from a Guggenheim Fellowship.

A whole generation goes by, and nothing changes for
Bossier Parish apparently playing fast and loose with the law when it comes to
squeezing money from the citizenry.

The Bossier
Watch transmission of Apr. 16 contained a couple of minutes of commentary
and video of a sign reading "VOTE SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 2024 BOSSIER PARISH
LIBRARIES" planted near a roadway. The hosts recounted they had seen some
around, although the exact location of this one was unknown. On that date is
the spring municipal runoff elections in Louisiana, where a 7.43 mils property
tax renewal to fund Bossier Parish libraries reengaging in 2026 for 10 years is
the one item that will appear on ballots parish-wide.

What follows is a reprint of a post
I made at my Louisiana-centric blog site, Between the Lines, on Dec. 30, 2010
that reviewed events of four years previous. (Keep in mind nearly 18 years ago
that the Arthur Ray Teague Parkway stopped at the southern end of the
now-Brookshire Grocery Arena). It's amazing how little things (and people
involved) change:

As 2011 approaches and observing that Bossier
Parish seems to have no difficulty, even in trying economic times, in finding
money to service road construction, as well as reviewing the past year and
digesting the renewed enthusiasm that the people have acquired courtesy of
over-reaching national government to monitor the activities of government, it
makes me think back some years ago about an object lesson concerning how
government operates. The specific example is Bossier Parish's, and the apparent
whimsy of situation might amuse save for the unsettling consequences implied
had things turned out differently.

Perhaps somebody remembers in the days leading up
to the 2006 fall elections that a sign touting an affirmative vote for Bossier
Parish raising property taxes essentially threefold, at what was then the
southern end of the Arthur Ray Teague Parkway, was moved a short distance away
only a few days before that election. Blame me for the consternation.

I first noticed the sign on Sep. 21 and became
simultaneously curious and concerned. It didn't state who sponsored it, and it
was in a spot I thought might be part of the public right-of-way, and certainly
was on public property (Bossier City's). Obviously, it was an attempt to
encourage passage of the measure which should bring pause to anyone who
believes in fairness by government: Bossier City was permitting a pro-vote
sign, supporting a Bossier Parish measure which would enrich the parish coffers
by $2 million a year, to be placed on its property, regardless of whether its
citizens supported such a measure.

According to the Unified Development Code for both
the city and parish, this is permissible under certain circumstances. Article
9 Section 10 states: "Temporary signs containing no commercial message and
related to an election or other event or matter of public interest may be
erected in any zoning district of the city or parish but not within the public
right-of-way." Note, however, that the Code does not mention placement on
government property.

After a couple of phone calls I got hold of Parish
Engineer Joe "Butch" Ford, who said a private entity had put up the
sign (and a similar one elsewhere). At least no government was using taxpayer
dollars to try to influence its citizens voting behavior. Still, apparently it
was on city property and the right-of-way question he couldn't answer, so on I
called the Bossier City engineer to find out the answer to the latter.

He took time out of his busy day to relay to me
that the public right-of-way extended to the back side of the barricade
blocking the end of the pavement (about 25 feet from the roadway). However, the
sign was located on the front side of the barricade, meaning it was in the
public right-of-way and therefore illegally placed.

I then placed another call to the Metropolitan
Planning Commission (I had placed one the day before but, like the call to
Ford, had been close to the end of the workday and, unlike the one to him, was
not answered). The employee there said they would deal with the situation, once
I informed him of it. Since this was early Friday afternoon, I didn't know
whether anything would happen before the weekend.

Early the next Monday, now five days prior to the
election, I got a call from the Bossier MPC director Sam Marsiglia, who said it
was legal to have the sign there because "it's a public sign." He alleged that
a government had put it there, and that was legal. I informed him that the
parish engineer had said otherwise and tried to explain that wouldn't look very
good if a government was using taxpayer dollars to sway their votes so a
government wouldn't do that, but he was insistent and said I should call Parish
Administrator Bill Altimus about the matter.

I had duties to attend to so it was about 20
minutes later that I dialed Altimus. He cheerfully informed me the sign would
be moved. As soon as I hung up, Marsiglia called, saying it would be moved to
the Reeves Marine property (adjacent east of the barricades) and to check back
with him if it wasn't done. (It would have been out of the right-of-way simply
by moving it behind the barricades but would have remained on city property.)

This, I might add, is simply wonderfully
neighborly behavior by the city and parish and Reeves Marine. Silly me, I
thought whenever illegal campaign signs were discovered they either were
destroyed or confiscated to a location where their owners could liberate them.
Instead, not only were the interests behind the sign being allowed to move it,
within only minutes of being informed of that necessity Reeves Marine
graciously volunteered to host the sign. What a friendly place! Future
candidates for office, now you know, if you place a sign on Bossier City
property and/or illegally, it won't be destroyed or removed, they'll let you
move it, maybe even to Reeves Marine. (If you ask nicely, maybe they'll even
move it for you!)

(Note: in a subsequent communication, even Bossier
City elected officials seemed confused over the incident. At my request, city
councilman Scott Irwin wrote to Mayor Lo Walker, whose office's reply did not
even discuss the legal issue and did not address the propriety of an
electioneering sign on city property, adding "With your concurrence I will
consider this ITEM CLOSED." Maybe not; maybe this issue of propriety is
something that ought to be addressed by the city.)

Regardless of the sign's position (or of any
others; there were several other similar ones touting the bond issue around the
parish), the proposition narrowly failed. It took one concerned citizen to make
the system work properly regarding the sign. Sep. 30, 2006, it took a majority
of concerned citizens voting to make the Bossier Parish Police Jury see the
truth that it didn't need to raise taxes to make sure the parkway was extended
expeditiously and, even with deteriorated economic conditions, then to proceed
to fulfill the other projects that had argued could be completed only with the
increased taxation.

And confirmation of this came earlier this month,
when the extension to the Parkway opened (through where the sign originally had
been) without the extra tax dollars having gone into its construction. Lesson:
watch government very closely lest it take what it does not need nor deserve
from the people.

And now to 2024 … the sign displayed on Bossier
Watch seemed awfully close to the road, meaning it's in the right-of-way, and
the Bossier UDC hasn't changed since making that placement illegal. Thus, it would
be incumbent on either the parish or whatever municipality may have such signs to
remove these.

And where are they coming from? Campaign
finance disclosure law would mandate that any political committee spending
money on electioneering at this date close to the election would had to have
filed a report about the expenditure for signs. None has, meaning either some
PAC somewhere illegally hasn't reported this or no registered PAC has done it.
That leads to a loophole in the law (R.S. 18:1501.1): any person who spends in
opposition or support of a candidate or ballot item must report that – unless
the aggregate contributions and expenses involved don't exceed $500. It is possible
that, if there are few enough of these signs, that their cost didn't exceed
that figure, and that someone or a few people got together and did that.

So, the public never may know who is doing this, and
what their potential relationship is to Bossier Parish's government and libraries.
In fact, it may be quite close, given the wording of the sign which ambiguously
doesn't advocate for or against the ballot item. It merely exhorts the viewer
to vote on that day and slips in "BOSSIER PARISH LIBRARIES." By doing this, if
discovered government employees actually were involved, the parish could claim
it wasn't electioneering but merely informing the public there was an election
on Saturday, Apr. 27.

Of course, the signs' presentation implies something
critical about libraries will appear on the ballot and, further, people should vote
in whatever manner available to support libraries. After all, who is against libraries?

If anybody in Bossier Parish government knows
about this, they need to go public. At the very least, parish government must remove
any such signs on public rights-of-way; tolerance of this denotes acceptance
not only of illegal behavior but also endorsement of a political preference.
And state lawmakers would do well to clarify statute to make it expressly
illegal for any government to spend any dollars to electioneer, even if in a
manner that doesn't explicitly advocate for or against something on the ballot.
Because when it comes to gorging themselves on taxpayer dollars, government
will try any dodge available to keep other peoples' money rolling in.