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Last week's edition of Diplomacy Watch focused on how politics in Poland and Slovakia were threatening Western unity over Ukraine. A spat between Warsaw and Kyiv over grain imports led Polish President Andrzej Duda to compare Ukraine to a "drowning person … capable of pulling you down to the depths ," while upcoming elections in Slovakia could bring to power a new leader who has pledged to halt weapons sales to Ukraine.
As Connor Echols wrote last week, "the West will soon face far greater challenges in maintaining unity on Ukraine than at any time since the war began."
A piece in Politico this week outlining the challenges facing the incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff C.Q. Brown as he prepares to take over from Gen. Mark Milley suggests that the divisions may be even more widespread.
"As Ukrainian forces push for a breakthrough before winter sets in, there is a growing sense in Washington and Europe that the West may be weary of the fight," wrote Lara Seligman. "On Capitol Hill, hardline Republicans oppose sending additional aid; across the Atlantic, Poland recently said it could not send any more weapons to Ukraine in the short term, and French officials recently hinted the country would soon reach that point as well."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been busy trying to win over skeptics around the world, but there is not much evidence that his audience in the Global South or the GOP caucus in Washington has been particularly receptive to his message.
In the U.S. Congress, future funding for the war in Ukraine has taken an outsized role in the ongoing battle for government funding, and little progress has been made this week. A small but growing (and increasingly vocal) group of Republicans in both the House and Senate have vowed to hold up government spending legislation if it includes more aid for Ukraine. The Wall Street Journal indicated that others are watching these fights closely.
"Intertwined with those contentious negotiations in Washington are rising concerns in European capitals about the war, particularly if Washington's support shows signs of flagging," the Journal reported. "While European backing for Ukraine generally remains solid, cracks are starting to surface as weapons stockpiles from some allies dwindle and others hesitate to fill the gaps."
This infighting in various capitals around the world comes at what Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies described to Politico as a turning point in the war. "If the counteroffensive fails, or if the counteroffensive does not get through the Russian defensive zone in a major way, I think that fears of a forever war will get stronger," said Cancian.
From the perspective of the incoming U.S. Joint Chiefs chairman, it will likely become increasingly difficult to navigate both the domestic political and battlefield realities. "Milley was in the enviable position of having a lot of stuff and a lot of political support so that makes it easy," Cancian told Politico. "Brown is in the position of having less stuff and less political support."
In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:
—Some Western politicians are pushing the government in Kyiv to hold elections, despite the ongoing war and the imposition of martial law. Visiting Ukraine's capital last month, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said that it was"time for Ukraine to take the next step" in the "development of democracy, namely to hold elections in 2024." But Ukrainian officials have expressed serious skepticism that new elections would be prudent, or even possible. "Ukrainian officials say that in order to hold a major vote during wartime, considerable financial, logistical and legal hurdles must be overcome," the Washington Post reported. "In private, some say that the prospect is outright impossible, and could provide Moscow's security forces with a means to infiltrate and weaken Ukraine from within." The Biden administration has maintained that the timing for a new election will be Ukraine's decision.
—Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky met with defense ministers from France and Britain, as well as NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg ahead of an arms production forum in Kyiv. The forum, according to Ukraine's foreign minister, will bring together representatives of 165 military contractors from 26 nations.
"It will be an important opportunity for Ukrainian companies to forge new partnerships with the industry across the alliance and beyond," Stoltenberg said at a news conference with Zelensky on Thursday. "The stronger Ukraine becomes, the closer we come to ending Russia's aggression."
—Significant territorial gains have been hard to come by for either side this year, according to a new study by the New York Times. "Despite nine months of bloody fighting, less than 500 square miles of territory have changed hands since the start of the year. A prolonged stalemate could weaken Western support for Ukraine," the Times reported. The Times' analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War showed that August 2023 was the month in which the least territory changed hands since the invasion last year.
—Ukraine is continuing to search for safe alternatives for its grain exports following Russia's withdrawal from the Black Sea grain initiative in July. Last week, Ukraine successfully tested a new route, and a second ship made it through this week. Three more vessels have safely entered Ukrainian waters in recent days, officials told the New York Times. In the past week, the Times reported, "it appears that Russia has made no public attempt to impede the progress of commercial vessels along the new route."
U.S. State Department news:
In a press briefing on Tuesday, State Department spokesman Mattew Miller spoke about the state of Ukraine support amid the ongoing disputes on Capitol Hill."We have been encouraged by the bipartisan support that we have gotten from Congress since the beginning of this war. I think it is quite clear, if you look at the debate in Congress, that there are bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress that support continued aid to Ukraine," Miller said. "Now, look, there's a process that we have to go through in working with Congress. I think it was important that President Zelenskyy was able to travel to the Hill last week and communicate directly with members of Congress about what is happening on the ground. We have been able to talk to Congress about accountability mechanisms that we have in place for the aid that we've provided. We've heard them say we want to hear accountability; we've made clear we have accountability mechanisms and we're happy to talk to you more about what those look like."

Problem setting. National liberation movements have always occupied an important place in international relations and domestic politics. As a rule, they are a reaction to legal, political, economic or cultural injustice on the part of the state in which they originate. Representatives of the movement are trying hard to defend their rights to their own identity, and sometimes to independence and self-determination. The «Green Book» of the Irish Republican Party is the conditional name of the official protocols of the Irish Republican Army, which at some point in time became open to the public. These documents allow us to better understand the political and economic goals of the IRA, the structure of the organization, tactics, as well as the morale and ideology of volunteers. The publication of these sources is a very important factor for their further study in order to improve measures to prevent separatist terrorism and guerrilla warfare, which in the XXI century are gaining new meanings and opportunities for implementation.
Recent research and publications analysis. Despite the great interest in the study of national liberation or separatist movements and their ideological basis, there is still no unambiguous explanation of the conditions for the emergence of separatism and the significant spread in society of ideas of self-determination of a particular ethnic group. It is customary to take into account a rather superficial understanding of the main purpose and reasons for the struggle of individual liberation movements, which sometimes turn into armed formations such as the IRA. As a result, researchers ignore the program documents and statutes of various separatist organizations, which allow us to better analyze the basic principles and purpose of their activities.
Paper objective. The purpose of the article ‒ is to consider the content of IRA program documents, which are conventionally called the «Green Book», the features of ideological principles and practical methods of functioning of the republican army.
Paper main body. The origins of separatism in Ireland date back to the 12th century under the leadership of Art Og McMorrow Caven, who as King of Leinster (Eastern Ireland) waged a very successful guerrilla war. the culmination of nationalism was the guerrilla war in 1916, when the social movement of the Irish people against Britain reached incredible proportions. It was during this period that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) intensified its activities, transforming local nationalism into a politically motivated struggle against the clear features of separatism and later terrorism under the auspices of the IRA. The British Crown tried for a long time to stop the organization, but it failed to do so due to the strong system and tactics of the IRA guerrilla struggle.
The Green book consisted of three main parts, which together constituted a separate collection of documents that had been hidden from the public for decades and only after the official cessation of the IRA's publication were published its basic tenets. the arrest of the Chief of the General Staff of the Provisional IRA, Seamus Twomi. Many researchers of the history of the Irish Republican Army believe that there are other parts of this collection, but at the moment there is no information about them.
Upon joining the organization, the future recruit took an oath of allegiance to the IRA's top management, promising total commitment to the organization's ideas and understanding that a volunteer could be imprisoned and tortured at any time. In addition, the recruit must be clearly aware of his or her own political motives and articulate them clearly when joining the IRA. The republican movement did not support any political and economic blocs in either the West or the East, that is, against military organizations such as NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
The IRA declares that it is in the interests of other oppressed nations of Europe, as well as neutral non-aligned peoples of the Third World. and labor resources, the destruction of original culture and language, and, most importantly, the loss of independence in deciding their own destiny. Republican ideology, in fact, created the ideal soldier who is ready to fight for their freedom and the state until death. At the moment when the recruit was imprisoned, it remained important for him to remain calm, steadfast and in no case to release secret information, because it would threaten not only the detainee, but also the activities of the entire organization of the Republican Army.
All these guidelines, described in the Green book, are important for understanding the political and ideological goals of the Republican insurgents. It is quite clear that an IRA volunteer could be a person with clear convictions, ready to endure torture and psychological pressure and in no way betray his brothers and the «high idea» of the Irish state, which does not depend on anyone.
Conclusions of the research. The functioning of the IRA is impossible without its ideological justification and the behavior of the insurgents in an armed uprising. Such a statutory document for the IRA was the «Green Book», which is extremely important in understanding the purpose and features of the organization of the republican-insurgent movement. Thanks to access to such program documents, we can analyze the content, reasons, features of not only the organization as a whole, but also the moral aspect and psychology of a person joining the ranks of such an organization or national liberation movement. Considering the content of the «Green Book», the explanation of the political and economic component and the psychological state of IRA volunteers becomes quite clear.
The «Green Book» is valuable primarily because it explains the morale of an IRA member, tells about his willingness to give his life at any time for the highest value of the ideas of the republican movement, also explains the way of life of such a person in society and the importance of the mystery of the organization. It should be noted that any national liberation movement, except for the outer shell of militancy, has a developed structure, as well as, above all, the motivation and ideological beliefs of volunteers, which always becomes the most powerful driving force of any liberation movement. Studying and understanding such documents helps us to better understand the nature of such uprisings, the emergence of separatism within a particular ethnic group and allows us to use this knowledge to prevent their formation by developing holistic concepts of interethnic dialogue within a single state, but also apply this experience globally.

This past week,
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak released the government's 2021 budget.
Included in the package was an announcement of a £1 billion Towns Fund and notification
of the 45 communities in
England to receive support for infrastructure improvements. This is part of
the Government's Levelling Up promise made in the 2019 Conservative Party
manifesto, which would shift money to the left behind, post-industrial
communities of Britain that have suffered job and population losses over the
past four decades.

Soon after the
announcement, the Chancellor came under withering assault from the Labour
Party, which accused the government of allocating money generously to areas
represented by Tory MPs at the expense of communities more deserving of
assistance. Labour MP Steve Reed charged "the government of using taxpayers'
money to 'shore up' Tory votes with 'cosmetic' projects in hand-picked
constituencies" in The
Guardian. Labour Leader Keir Starmer said it "looks fishy". The Guardian's own
analysis showed that 39
out of 45 areas receiving funds have Tory MPs.

Did Boris Johnson's government
dole out cash to communities for political purposes rather than sending aid to
communities with the most need? It has long been suggested that distributive
politics—derisively called pork barrel spending—is largely absent from the
British political system. The Guardian
and Labour's claims, however, suggests otherwise.

The problem with these
allegations is that alternative hypotheses are not examined. What if, for
example, the communities in the most need just happen to be represented by Tory
MPs? To unpack what's going on requires a multivariate analysis controlling for
both political and social need variables in the dispensation of aid from the
Towns Fund.

To test the claim that
politics—rather than community need—drove the decisions to give certain communities
Levelling Up funds, I collected data on all 533 English constituencies. First,
I simply noted which constituencies were represented by Tory MPs (indicated by
a 1, 0 otherwise). Next, I downloaded information pertaining to community need.
The
English government produces several measures on the deprivation of
communities, including data on health, education, and employment. Parliamentary
constituencies are then ranked from the most deprived ("1") to the least
deprived ("533") based upon an aggregation of these several measures of
deprivation. Finally, I pulled together information on the marginality
of each constituency in the 2019 general election, which is simply the
percentage point difference between the first and second place finisher.
Smaller values indicate more electorally competitive constituencies.

The dependent variable
for the analysis is whether the constituency received funds from the Towns Fund
in the budget announced last week—1 if yes, 0 otherwise. I then ran a logistic
regression with the aforementioned independent variables: Tory MP, Deprivation
Rank, and Marginality. The results appear below.Labour's claims have
merit: constituencies with Tory MPs are significantly more likely to have
received funds from the Towns fund as compared to constituencies represented by
the opposition parties. And, the more marginal the constituency, the greater
the chance of getting money from the fund as denoted by the negative sign on
the marginality variable and its significance (p <.049).

However, there is also
evidence that deprivation matters—so the decision to dispense cash is not only about
propping up Conservative party electoral fortunes. The deprivation variable is
negative and significant, meaning that better off communities are less likely
to receive Levelling Up funds. Money is flowing to communities in need, but
poorer communities have an even better shot if they elected a Tory MP in 2019
and did so in a tight election. For those of you interested in how well this
simple model operated, 92 percent of cases were correctly predicted.

Now that we know that
politics and need matter, how much do they affect the process and which factors
are most important? Looking at the marginal effects of the variables, it would
seem that marginality and having a Tory MP dwarf deprivation in the decision to
give communities infrastructure assistance. Having a Tory MP alone increases a
constituency's chance of getting money from the Towns Fund by twelve percentage
points while shifting from a completely uncompetitive seat to one that was
essentially even electorally accounts for an increase of 14 percentage points
in the chances of getting money from the Fund. Similarly, moving from the least
deprived constituency to the most deprived constituency increases a
constituency's chances by 21 percentage points. In other words, having a Tory
MP has the single largest effect on whether a community received a Towns Fund
grant.

To illustrate how these
factors work in tandem on the probability of a constituency receiving financial
assistance from the Towns Fund, I've created a few scenarios.

Let's assume, first, a
constituency where the winning party won by only 5 percentage points that is
ranked 100th in deprivation. This constituency is represented by a
Labour MP. The probability that constituency receives a grant is only 7 percent,
which I calculated using Stata's margins command based upon the logit results
reported above.

If we simply drop a
Conservative MP into that constituency, the probability of getting a grant
increases to 33 percent (with the point estimates outside the confidence
intervals).

If we take the same
scenario above but make the constituency more deprived—moving from 100th
in deprivation to 50th—there is scant change in the probabilities:
10 percent if a Labour MP represents the constituency, and 40 percent if a
Conservative MP does (again, the confidence intervals do not overlap).

Finally, marginality has
important effects as well. Again, looking at a Labour represented constituency
that's 100th in deprivation where the MP won by 15 percentage
points, the probability of receiving a grant is only 6 percent. With a Tory MP,
that increases to 28 percent.  Compare
that to the first set of probabilities. The probability of receiving a grant
hardly moves at all for the Labour represented constituency. It declines for
the Conservative represented constituency by 5 percentage points, however.

Taking all of this
together and the patterns are clear: The Department of Treasury seems to have made
its grant allocation decisions based primarily on political factors and not on the
clear social needs of communities. Tory MPs in marginal constituencies were far
more likely to benefit from the Towns Fund scheme than Labour MPs representing
areas with higher levels of deprivation.

Today, the Department of Political Science celebrated its graduates at our traditional Friday-Before-Graduation party. Alas, this year--because of COVID-19--we had to celebrate via Web Ex. We laughed, we cried, we shared memories over the past four years we've spent together.

Every year, a faculty member is chosen to give a charge to the graduates. I became the new head this past December after a stint filling in for a semester while Dr. Wilmer was on sabbatical. I decided to give the charge myself this year. What follows is the speech I delivered to these fantastic students who will go out into the world and do wonderful things. I will miss them, but at the same time, our nation needs their energy, their passion, and their brilliance now more than ever.




A Charge to the MSU Class
of 2020: The Citizen as Essential Worker

September 11, 2001.
I'll wager a bet that none of you graduating today have a clear memory of that
moment. I certainly do, and whenever I hear mention of 9-11, my mind snaps instantly
back to a particular image:  A plume of
smoke pouring from the North Tower of the World Trade Center right before—in
the background—a plane steers toward the South Tower. That plane is Flight 175,
destined to slam into that second tower shortly after 9 a.m. Eastern Time. Why does
my mind go there? I think it's because that image encapsulates the realization
that—at that exact moment—it was clear what America was facing: A terrorist
attack and likely war with those harboring the monsters who killed thousands of
innocent men, women, and children. That still frame, to me, is one of those key
turning points in a nation's history. We are still wrestling with the
consequences of that horrible day nearly twenty years later.

Right
now, we are living through another momentous time which will shape our
collective futures for a generation or more. What's your picture representing
this moment?

For
me, it's a photo of a young man with black hair and bronzed skin. He's clad in
green medical scrubs, standing astride an intersection in downtown Denver. His
arms are crossed, he's wearing a medical mask, and he's—angry? Determined?
Outraged? It's hard to see with his mouth covered.

In
front of him is a large pickup truck—a brand-spanking new silver Ram 1500. An
older, heavy-set woman, wearing a T-shirt with USA emblazoned on the front, is
leaning out of the passenger window—(Screaming? Glaring? It's not clear)—at the
medical worker blocking her car. She's holding a placard with the words, "Land
of the Free" flush against the side of the truck's door. Is she going to or
departing from a rally opposing the stay at home order put in place by
Colorado's Governor? We don't know—and that's fitting because there is so much
uncertainty in the depths of this pandemic.

For
me, that's the COVID-19 moment. With whom do you identity, graduates? The
defiant healthcare worker or the woman demanding her freedom?

It
was a stifling hot summer in Philadelphia when 56 men affixed their signatures
to parchment, detailing to the world how King George had violated the social
contract—and that the only remedy was to sunder the binds tying the 13 American
colonies to England. Freedoms had been withheld and denied, yes. But those
freedoms had been trampled upon by a government that was not representative.
The colonies had no members of Parliament. We had no say in the decisions made
for us. The Declaration is often remembered—and idealized—because it is viewed
as an expression of the freedoms that people ought to enjoy by virtue of their
humanity—rights that no government should easily deny.

But
as much as Jefferson's Declaration is one of independence from Britain, it is also
a Declaration of Inter-dependence among those proclaiming the birth of a new
nation. Let's not forget the concluding sentence:

"And for the support of this
Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we
mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

Back
to that picture in Denver. It's easy to say don't tread on me—like that woman
in the ginormous pickup truck. Oh, I bet it felt so damn good to release all that
frustration. Haven't we felt some of that? Don't you hunger for
companionship—to go to the grocery store sans mask, to hug your friends, to
belly up to the bar for a drink with your buddies after a long day of school?

But
then there's that man clad in protective gear in front of that car, reminding
us that those hugs, those trips to the grocery store without sanitizer, those
shared beers, or an in-person graduation celebration—can come at great cost.
Perhaps not for us—but maybe for that nurse in the ER, the grocery store clerk
checking us out, the bartender pouring that beer, or the elderly relative
sitting in the Field House as you walk across the stage.

Freedom
without responsibility to each other is just another form of tyranny. The
Founding Fathers got it; they knew that a declaration of freedom is worth no
more than the paper upon which it is printed without care for each other. The
freedoms we now enjoy were collectively earned and are collectively defended.
Are the costs we bear now any higher than those born by previous generations
charged with protecting this nation? It is a point worth pondering.

Our
inter-dependence is essential, so I find it disturbing that the Department of
Homeland Security's definition of so-called essential workers neglected perhaps
the most important job of all: Citizen. Our allegiance in this liberal
democracy of ours is to each other—we are all essential. To be free, we citizens
must all hang together— at six feet apart (!)—or surely, we will hang
separately.

Graduates
of the Class of 2020. I remind you that to establish justice, ensure domestic
tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity required the
founders to strive for a more perfect union.
To be more perfect: Together. Your charge is to work on that union as citizens,
mindful of what we owe each other, while being kind to ourselves and others
during these turbulent times.

As one of the largest and most influential speech communities of the region, Jamaica has been the focus of more linguistic research than most other Caribbean speech communities. However, most of this research has traditionally been devoted to the study of Jamaican Creole, a variety that is maximally distinct from standard metropolitan varieties of English and thus of considerable interest for linguistic research. Acrolectal Jamaican English, on the other hand, for a long time was assumed to be identical or near-identical with British English, which has constituted the historical linguistic norm for Jamaica due to the island's past as a former British colony. Thus, although differences to British English were often acknowledged in descriptions of acrolectal Jamaican English, they were typically only mentioned in passing and were never elaborated or investigated in further detail. Recent studies of the acrolectal end of the Jamaican creole continuum, most notably Shields (1989) and Mair (2002a), have argued that following Jamaica's political independence from Britain in 1962, a change in language attitudes has taken place, which has lead to greater public acceptance of local forms of (Jamaican Creole) speech and to a concomitant change in notions of "correctness" or "standardness", i.e. changing norms for what is considered to be educated Jamaican English. The emergent local standard of English in Jamaica has been shown to differ from standard metropolitan varieties of English both on the lexical and morphosyntactic, as well as on the phonetic and phonological level (Shields 1989, Sand 1999, Mair 2002a; Irvine 2004; Deuber 2009; Jantos 2010a, 2010b). Besides influence from Jamaican Creole, other factors mentioned in these studies as influential in the shaping of the emergent Jamaican standard are American English, which has been repeatedly described as increasingly influential in the region, as well as independent developments (Mair 2002a). The present dissertation aims to contribute to this emerging body of research by investigating in further detail the phonetics and phonology of the Jamaican acrolect. Using as a data base the Jamaican component of the International Corpus of English (ICE), the dissertation examines sociophonetic variation in educated (acrolectal) Jamaican English across speakers from different stylistic text categories and age groups with respect to three selected variables: rhoticity and "linking /r/", both of which are highly variable in Jamaican English, as well as the phonetic realization and phonological patterning of the low and mid vowels. The aim of the study is to investigate whether there is evidence for an emerging local standard, to provide a more detailed description of the phonetic and phonological properties of this standard, and to assess the relative influence of competing factors conditioning phonetic and phonological variation. The results show that both rhoticity and "linking /r/" exhibit a high degree of variability in educated Jamaican English, contradicting traditional characterizations of this variety as predominantly rhotic. Although rhoticity is primarily influenced by phonetic and phonological factors, it is also subject to stylistic variation in the form of text categories, which are assumed to roughly correlate with the level of formality of the speech situation. In the domain of the vowels, Jamaican Creole and British English clearly constitute the two dominant influences. Vowels in educated Jamaican English will be shown to vary in their phonetic realization along a continuum between these two varieties, depending on the degree of formality of the speech situation. An exception to these findings is the phonetic realization of the STRUT vowel, which does not exhibit stylistic variation and can thus be considered to constitute a stable feature of the emergent local Jamaican standard. In the light of these findings, American influence on the phonetics and phonology of the emergent Jamaican standard seems highly improbable, especially in the domain of the vowel system, although it cannot be completely dismissed with regard to rhoticity. By contrast, evidence for an emerging, distinctly local standard can be found in the fact that educated Jamaican English differs vastly from other varieties of English with regard to both rhoticity and linking /r/, as well as in the phonetic realization of the vowels investigated. ; Gegenstand der vorgelegten Dissertation ist das akrolektale Englisch gebildeter jamaikanischer Sprecher. Während sich der Schwerpunkt der linguistischen Forschung historisch gesehen auf die in Jamaika gesprochene Kreolsprache (Jamaican Creole) konzentriert hat, ist den jeweiligen nationalen Varietäten des Englischen in der Karibik nur wenig Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet worden, da traditionell davon ausgegangen wurde, dass diese entweder identisch mit dem britischen Standard seien oder von diesem nur leicht abwichen. Seit der politischen Unabhängigkeit Jamaikas von Gro ßbritannien im Jahre 1962 ist jedoch nicht nur ein Wandel in den Einstellungen der dortigen Bevölkerung gegenüber dem Jamaican Creole aufgetreten, es entwickelte sich ausserdem eine verstärkte Verwendung des jamaikanischen Kreols in Domänen, die traditionell dem Englischen vorbehalten waren. Damit einhergehend vollzog sich ein Wandel im Konzept dessen, was innerhalb Jamaikas als korrekte Sprachverwendung angesehen wurde; es begann sich also eine eigenständige lokale Norm herauszubilden. Studien aus neuerer Zeit (Shields 1989, Mair 2002a) belegen die Entwicklung dieses lokalen Standards in Jamaika, der sich sowohl auf lexikalischer, morphosyntaktischer und phonologischer Ebene von der historischen Norm, dem britischen Englisch, unterscheidet (Shields 1989; Sand 1999; Mair 2002a; Irvine 2004; Deuber 2009; Jantos 2010a, 2010b). Die vorliegende Studie verwendet Material aus dem jamaikanischen Subkorpus des International Corpus of English (ICE). Anhand von Aufnahmen jamaikanischer Sprecher aus den Jahren 1999-2004 werden drei linguistische Variablen untersucht: das Auftreten von /r/ in post-vokalischer Umgebung ("rhoticity"), welches, obwohl als stark variabel bekannt, bisher nicht empirisch untersucht wurde; das Bindephänomen des sogenannten "linking /r/"; sowie ein Teil des jamaikanischen Vokalsystems, in dem sich ein postulierter amerikanischer Einfluss besonders gut beobachten ließe. Ziel der Studie ist zum einen, bestehende Forschungslücken durch eine genauere phonetische und phonologische Beschreibung des gegenwärtigen jamaikanischen Akrolekts in Bezug auf die drei genannten Variablen zu füllen, diese im Hinblick auf Anhaltspunkte für einen sich entwickelnden lokalen Standard zu untersuchen sowie den Einfluss verschiedener Faktoren im Hinblick auf die Herausbildung dieses Standards einzuschätzen. Zu diesem Faktoren gehören zum einen das britische Englisch, das in Jamaika in der Kolonialzeit als historische Norm fungierte, zum anderen das Jamaican Creole sowie das amerikanische Englisch, dem ein immer stärkerer Einfluss in der Region zugeschrieben wird. Die Ergebnisse der Studie zeigen, dass sich sowohl "rhoticity" als auch "linking /r/" im jamaikanischen Englisch in hohem Grade variabel verhalten, im Gegensatz zu traditionellen Beschreibungen, die das jamaikanische Englisch als katorisch "rhotic" klassi zieren. Beide Variablen werden von einer Reihe phonetischer und soziolinguistischer Faktoren beinflusst, darunter die den jeweiligen Sprechern zugeordnete Textkategorie. "Linking /r/" wird zudem häufi g durch Einsetzen eines Glottalverschlusses ersetzt. Im Bereich der Vokale sind hauptsächlich die Einflüsse des britischen Englisch sowie des Jamaican Creole relevant, zwischen deren phonetischen Realisierungen die in der Studie untersuchten Sprecher in Abhängigkeit vom Grad der Formalität der Sprechsituation variieren. Einzige Ausnahme hiervon ist der Vokal STRUT, der keinerlei stilistische Variation zeigt und damit als stabiler Bestandteil des lokalen jamaikanischen Standards anzusehen ist. Amerikanischer Einfluss auf das akrolektale gebildete jamaikanische Englisch erscheint im Bereich der Vokale höchst unwahrscheinlich, ist jedoch im Hinblick auf "rhoticity" nicht vollkommen auszuschliessen. Hinweise auf einen eigenständigen jamaikanischen Standard finden sich in der Tatsache, dass sich das jamaikanische Englisch in Bezug auf die beiden /r/-Variablen, "rhoticity" und "linking /r/", stark von anderen Varietäten des Englischen, nicht zuletzt vom britischen Englisch, unterscheidet, sowie im Bereich der Vokale, die, obwohl deutlich beeinflusst vom britischen Englisch, mit dessen phonetischer Realisierung jedoch nicht vollkommen übereinstimmen.

Book reviewed in this article:THE GOVERNMENT OF NEW SOUTH WALES. By R. S. ParkerDOCUMENTS ON AUSTRALIAN FOREIGN POLICY 1937–49. Vol III: January–June 1940. Edited by H. Kenway, H. J. W. Stokes and P. G. EdwardsPUBLIC EXPENDITURES AND SOCIAL POLICY IN AUSTRALIA. Volume I: The Whitiam Years. 1972–75. Edited by R. B. Scotton and Helen FerberFROM WHITLAM TO FRASER: Reform and Reaction in Australian Politics. Edited by Allan Patience and Brian HeadILLUSIONS OF POWER: The fate of a reform government. By Michael SextonPOLITICS BETWEEN DEPARTMENTS: The fragmentation of executive control in Australian government. By Martin Painter and Bernard CareyCAPITALISM, SOCIALISM OR BARRARISM? The Australian Predicament: Essays in Contemporary Political Economy. By E. L. WheelwrightTRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS IN SOUTH EAST ASIA AND THE PACIFIC. Volume I. By Ernest Utrecht (with contributions by Kate Short)OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL OF AUSTRALIAN CORPORATIONS. By Michael LawriwskyFOREIGN INVESTMENT AND TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS IN AUSTRALIA: An Annotated Bibliography. By G. J. CroughAUSTRALIAN URBAN POLICY. By Max NeutzeFEDERAL POWER IN AUSTRALIA'S CITIES: Essays in Honour of Peter Till. Edited by Patrick N. TroyAUSTRALIAN CAPITAL CITIES: Historical Essays. Edited by J. W. McCarty and C. B. SchedvinTHE LAND RACKET: The Real Costs of Property Speculation. By Leonie SandercockPROTEST AND PUNISHMENT: The Story of the Social and Political Protesters transported to Australia 1788–1868. By George Rudè'THIS SIN AND SCANDAL': Australia's Population Debate 1891–1911. By Neville HicksTHE CONFIDENT YEARS: Australia in the Twenties. By Robert MurrayDEPRESSION DOWN UNDER. By Daisy McWilliams and others. Edited by Len FoxTHE ECONOMIC STATUS OF AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES. By Jon C. Altman and John Nieuwenhuysen. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)KULINMA: Listening to Aboriginal Australians. By H. C. CoombsKAROBRAN: The Story of an Aboriginal Girl. By Monica ClareRACE POLITICS IN AUSTRALIA. By C. M. TatzERNEST GILES: EXPLORER AND TRAVELLER 1835–1897. By Ray EricksenJAPANESE PRISONERS OF WAR IN REVOLT: The Outbreaks at Featherston and Cowra during World War II. By Charlotte Carr‐GreggDIE LIKE THE CARP!: The Story of the Greatest Prison Escape Ever. By Harry GordonLEGACY: The First Fifty Years. By Mark LyonsPOLITICS IN A UNION: The Hursey case. By Tas BullBIOGRAPHICAL REGISTER OF THE NEW SOUTH WALES PARLIAMENT 1901–1970. By Heather Radi, Peter Spearritt and Elizabeth HintonA SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF AUSTRALIAN MILITARY HISTORY 1891–1939. By Jean Fielding and Robert O'NeillLAST OF LANDS Antarctica. By J. F. Lovering and J. R. V. Prescott. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1979)PAPUA NEW GUINEA: Its Economic Situation and Prospects for DevelopmentPRACTICE WITHOUT POLICY: Genesis of Local Government in Papua New Guinea. By D. M. FenburyPOLITICS AND MODERNIZATION IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA Edited by Robert N. KearneyPEASANTS AND POLITICS: Grass Roots Reaction to Change in Asia. Edited by D. B. MillerMILESTONES ON MY JOURNEY: The Memoirs of Ali Sastroamijoyo, Indonesian Patriot and Political Leader. Edited by C. L. M. PendersPACIFIC ISLANDERS UNDER GERMAN RULE: A Study in the Meaning of Colonial Resistance. By Peter J. HempenstallTAIM BILONG MANI: The evolution of agriculture in a Solomon Island society. By John ConnellJAPAN'S POLITICAL SYSTEM. By Robert E. WardA THEORY OF JAPANESE DEMOCRACY. By Nobutaka IkeCHINA'S ROLE IN WORLD AFFAIRS. By Michael B. YahudaCADRES, COMMANDERS, AND COMMISSARS: The Training of the Chinese Communist Leadership, 1920–45. By Jane L. PriceTHE GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS OF HONG KONG. By Norman MinersCONGRESS AND THE RAJ: Facets of the Indian Struggle 1917–47. Edited by D. A. LowCOLLECTIVE IDENTITIES, NATIONALISMS AND PROTEST IN MODERN SRI LANKA. Edited by Michael RobertsDOCUMENTS OF THE CEYLON NATIONAL CONGRESS AND NATIONALIST POLITICS IN CEYLON 1929–1950. Edited by Michael RobertsARMIES AND PARTIES IN AFRICA. By Henry BienenA POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF AFRICA. By E. A. BoatengEXPANSION AND REACTION: Essays on European Expansion and Reactions in Asia and Africa. Edited by H. L. WesselingTHE IMPERIAL IMPACT: Studies in the Economic History of Africa and India. Edited by Clive Dewey and A. G. HopkinsRACISM AND POLITICAL ACTION IN BRITAIN. Edited by Robert Miles and Annie PhizackleaTHE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH INDIVIDUALISM: The Family, Property and Social Transition. By Alan MacfarlaneEMIGRANT GENTLEWOMEN: Genteel poverty and female emigration, 1830–1914. By A. James HammertonECONOCIDE: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition. By Seymour DrescherBEYOND ORANGE AND GREEN: The Political Economy of the Northern Ireland Crisis. By Belinda ProbertGERMANY 1866–1945. By Gordon A. CraigBONES OF CONTENTION: An Enquiry into East–West Relations. By Terence GarveyPOLITICS AND SOCIETY IN THE USSR. Second Edition. By David LaneSOVIET POLITICAL ELITES: The Case of Tiraspol. By Ronald J. HillTHE SHADOW OF THE WINTER PALACE: The Drift to Revolution 1825–1917. By Edward CrankshawWOMEN IN SOVIET SOCIETY: Equality, Development and Social Change. By Gail Warshofsky LapidusAPOSTLES INTO TERRORISTS: Women and the Revolutionary Movement in the Russia of Alexander II. By Vera BroidoMIDDLE EAST CONTEMPORARY SURVEY, vol. 1, 1976–77. Edited by Colin Legum and Haim ShakedARMED STRUGGLE IN PALESTINE: A Political‐Military Analysis. By Bard E. O'NeillTHE PHILOSOPHY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. By Morton WhiteU. S. OCCUPATION IN EUROPE AFTER WORLD WAR II: Papers and Reminiscences from the April 23–24, 1976 Conference held at the George C. Marshall Research Foundation, Lexington, Virginia. Edited by Hans A. SchmittPOLITICAL CORRUPTION IN AMERICA. By George C. S. BensonCORRUPTION: A Study in Political Economy. By Susan Rose‐AckermanPOLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN LATIN AMERICA. Volume I: Citizen and State. Edited by John A. Booth and Mitchell A. SeligsonTHE THIRD WORLD REVOLUTION. By Fred J. CarrierMY MISSIONS FOR REVOLUTIONARY BOLIVIA, 1944–1962. By Victor AndradeMODERN REVOLUTIONS AND REVOLUTIONISTS: A Bibliography. By Robert BlackeyCLASS IDEOLOGY AND ANCIENT POLITICAL THEORY. By Ellen Meiksins Wood and Neal WoodMARX'S THEORY OF POLITICS. By John M. MaguireTHE WEALTH OF SOME NATIONS. By Malcolm CaldwellTHE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DISTRIBUTION: Equality versus Inequality. By Michael Don WardGRACCHUS BABEUF: The First Revolutionary Communist. By R. B. RoseCRISIS MANAGEMENT: Confrontation and Diplomacy in the Nuclear Age. By Phil WilliamsPEOPLE AND AGENCIES. By Bernard Schaffer and Elizabeth O'KeeffeLIBERALS AND SOCIAL DEMOCRATS. By Peter ClarkeVICTORIANS AT HOME AND AWAY. By Janet and Peter PhillipsTHE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT OF HERBERT SPENCER. By DavidNO MAN'S LAND: Combat and Identity in World War I. By Eric J. LeedTHE SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATION SYSTEM IN SOCIAL SCIENCE: A Study of the Operation of Leading Professional Journals in Psychology, Sociology, and Social Work. By Duncan LindseySPORT IN HISTORY: The Making of Modern Sporting History. Edited by Richard Cashman and Michael McKernan

Ukraine has for months been asking the Biden administration for permission to use long-range US, British and French weapons to strike deeper in Russian territory, which would be a clear escalation in the war. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that the move would cross a red line for him, and recently announced that he was loosening Russia's nuclear doctrine for using nuclear weapons.Despite the risks of such escalation—and a lack of evidence that it would shift the war in Ukraine's favor—Biden's public reluctance to loosen his limits has been met in the war-hungry media primarily with derision.Lowering the barRussian President Vladimir Putin announced that "any nation's conventional attack on Russia that is supported by a nuclear power will be considered a joint attack on his country" (AP, 9/25/24).The US, Britain and France have all supplied Ukraine with long-range missiles, including Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS). But Biden has thus far limited their use to border areas. Britain and France are following Biden's lead on range limitations.Last month, in response to further advances by Russia into Ukraine, Ukraine launched a surprise invasion into Russian territory in Kursk. Since then, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pressed the US for more and longer-range missiles, Putin has increasingly raised the specter of nuclear retaliation.Under its 2020 nuclear doctrine, Russia could respond with nuclear strikes to nuclear or conventional attacks it deemed a "threat to its existence," if they came from a nuclear power. His new doctrine lowers the bar, so that a "critical attack" on Russia carried out with the "participation or support of a nuclear power" would be grounds for launching a nuclear response—including against the supporting power.In other words, if Ukraine used long-range missiles supplied by a NATO power to launch an attack on Russia that it deemed "critical," Putin could respond with a nuclear strike, against either Ukraine or against that NATO country.Dismissing the nuclear riskIn the opinion pages of US corporate media, the risk of nuclear war or other retaliation by Putin was quickly dismissed, as outlets pressed Biden for further escalation.The Washington Post (9/22/24) encourages the US to offer "NATO training and assistance" to help Ukraine attack targets hundreds of miles inside Russia. What could go wrong?The Washington Post editorial board (9/22/24) urged Biden to acquiesce to Zelenskyy under the headline, "Ukraine Needs Long-Range Missiles Before Winter's Onset." The board argued that since Putin has issued "red lines" in the past that could prompt nuclear war, and "has not followed through on his threats," therefore there's no reason to think now he would risk a wider war with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization at a time when his forces are already severely depleted.The board suggested that Putin is more likely to "align himself with Iran or its proxies to strike at US forces in the Middle East." Though it deemed that "a risk worth weighing," it didn't discuss it any further. It concluded: "Mr. Biden needs to give permission and set the ground rules quickly."Politico editor-at-large Matthew Kaminski (9/18/24) called Zelenskyy's request "a fair ask." He made a similar argument to the Post editors that Putin's "threatening noises" after each "allegedly escalatory step" from the US never turn into actions.The Wall Street Journal editorial board (8/28/24) simply dismissed worries of escalation out of hand:The Biden administration fears Mr. Putin might escalate his war if Ukraine puts more of his military at risk, but the war isn't winding down. Ukraine has been attacking Russian targets with domestically produced drones, and on Sunday President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the "first successful combat use of our new weapon—a Ukrainian long-range rocket drone" designed "to destroy the enemy's offensive potential."The Hill published a column by Joseph Bosco (10/1/24) that sneered, "Biden is clearly intimidated by Putin's threats of retaliation, as stated again last week regarding Zelenskyy's request for longer strike authority." Apparently readers were supposed to just dismiss those threats, because Bosco didn't even try to make an argument about them.Barely bothering to justifyThe Wall Street Journal's response (8/28/24) to worries that giving Ukraine long-range missiles will escalate the war: "the war isn't winding down" anyway.When it came time to justify the escalation, pundits seemed content to make noises about the need for victory, barely bothering to offer actual arguments about why long-range missiles in particular would achieve that goal.The Journal editors wrote that Biden's "latest bad excuse" for not giving Zelenskyy what he wants "is that such strikes wouldn't make much of a difference." They cited the neoconservative, military industry–funded Institute for the Study of War, which suggested that even if Russia has already moved 90% of its military aircraft out of reach of those missiles, as Biden officials argued, there were plenty of other things a trigger-happy military could hit. The Journal concluded with the vague claim that "the US can strengthen Ukraine's position and make negotiations to end the war more likely."The Post also cited the ISW, and wrote weakly that the long-range missiles "could" hit Russian "arms depots, air fields and military bases," which "perhaps…might force Mr. Putin to draw back his deadly cache further from Ukraine's borders."Politico's Kaminski simply argued that Ukrainians need "a morale and momentum shift," and "lowering the restrictions on missile use could help."Dubious expertsThe New York Times (9/12/24) says a "growing number" of experts think "the administration's reticence" to give Ukraine long-range missiles "makes no sense"—citing a letter whose 17 signatories were replete with pro-NATO and neoconservative think tank affiliations.Establishment media's news sections were sometimes little better than their opinion sections. The New York Times (9/12/24) splashed on its front page an article about the pressure on Biden to give Ukraine the green light that suggested a growing consensus among experts that Biden's reluctance is nonsensical:To a growing number of military analysts and former US officials, the administration's reticence makes no sense, especially since, they say, Ukraine's incursion into Kursk has yet to elicit an escalatory response from Moscow."Easing the restrictions on Western weapons will not cause Moscow to escalate," 17 former ambassadors and generals wrote in a letter to the administration this week. "We know this because Ukraine is already striking territory Russia considers its own—including Crimea and Kursk—with these weapons and Moscow's response remains unchanged."Two weeks later—and buried on page 9—the Times (9/26/24) reported quite a different story:US intelligence agencies believe that Russia is likely to retaliate with greater force against the United States and its coalition partners, possibly with lethal attacks, if they agree to give the Ukrainians permission to employ US-, British- and French-supplied long-range missiles for strikes deep inside Russia, US officials said.The intelligence assessment, which has not been previously reported, also plays down the effect that the long-range missiles will have on the course of the conflict, because the Ukrainians currently have limited numbers of the weapons and it is unclear how many more, if any, the Western allies might provide.'Silver bullet or powder keg'?USA Today's military expert (9/26/24) presents the possibility that "the war would drag on even longer" as a positive consequence to giving missiles to Ukraine.The same day, a USA Today headline (9/26/24) read, "Why Long-Range Missiles Could Be Either a Silver Bullet or a Powder Keg for Ukraine/Russia War." The promised "silver bullet" never fully materialized in the text, but the paper's sole quoted source—who was given several paragraphs—skewed the article entirely in that direction.That source was Fred Kagan of the neoconservative, military industry–funded American Enterprise Institute. Kagan is also affiliated with the Institute for the Study of War (which was founded by his wife, Kimberly Kagan) and was an influential proponent of "surges" in both Iraq and Afghanistan—in other words, he's about as hawkish as they come.Under the subhead, "How the weapons could help Ukraine fight Russia," the paper quoted Kagan explaining that long-range missile strikes could "reduce the effectiveness of Russian military action." It also paraphrased an anonymous "senior Defense official" who, unlike their administration, seemed to favor the move, noting that one "strategic effect" would be that "the war would drag on even longer." (The official presented this as a positive development, in that it would force Moscow to "to reconsider its costs.")USA Today also gave Kagan the last word, to argue that Putin's threats are "hollow":"The burden thus far has been put on those advocating for allowing Ukraine to strike legitimate military targets in Russia," Kagan said. "But I think the burden really needs to shift now to those who say that some fear of an unspecified escalation should continue to cause us to hold the Ukrainians back."Contrary opinions hard to findThe usually hawkish David Ignatius (Washington Post, 9/30/24) was one of the few voices in corporate media urging caution about helping Ukraine launch missiles at nuclear-armed Russia.It's been hard to find voices calling for restraint in major corporate media—with a few notable exceptions. One came in a Hill column (9/17/24) under a byline shared by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Donald Trump, Jr. They warned that "nuclear war would mean the end of civilization as we know it, maybe even the end of the human species." The op-ed took the opportunity to plug candidate Donald Trump as the one "who has vowed to end this war."Trump, of course, argued in his televised debate with Kamala Harris that "we're playing with World War III" in Ukraine. What he and his Hill proxies neglected to mention is that Trump, while in office, pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia, both of which greatly increased the likelihood of nuclear war or "World War III."Another pro-restraint take came from longtime Post columnist David Ignatius, who just over a year ago reported being compelled by Ukraine's "moral argument" for using cluster bombs (FAIR.org, 7/8/23). Ignatius (9/30/24) struck a markedly less hawkish tone recently, writing that "the Ukraine conflict is probably as close as we've come to the brink of all-out superpower war since the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis." He concluded: "We're very lucky, on balance, that [Biden] doesn't play a reckless game."Otherwise, one mostly had to look to outlets in the tank for Trump, or independent outlets like the Nation (9/18/24) and Current Affairs (9/25/24), for skepticism of military escalation.As Current Affairs' Nathan Robinson points out, even if Biden resists the pressure,with the foreign policy "blob" so willing to risk all of our lives, the next president, whether Trump or Harris, may well be less resistant to the pressures that push presidents toward taking extraordinarily risky gambles that imperil all of humanity.We could sure use a media more skeptical of that blob, rather than one that gleefully joins in.This article was republished with permission from FAIR

Today marks a solemn anniversary in Brazil: 60 years ago, the Brazilian military seized power from the government of João Goulart, marking the start of over two decades of military rule. Brazil's 2014 Truth Commission report is the country's only formal investigation into this period of dictatorial rule. The commission's 2,000-page report revealed some grisly details of the dictatorship's human rights abuses, identified over 400 individuals killed by the military, and shed light on Brazil's role in destabilizing other Latin American countries.To assist with the Truth Commission, then-Vice President Joe Biden hand-delivered declassified State Department records to former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff — who herself had been imprisoned and tortured by the military regime. The records offered details about the dictatorship and Washington's enabling of abuses, including a cable from former Ambassador to Brazil William Rountree arguing that condemning the regime's human rights "excesses" would be "counterproductive." Biden's delivery of the declassified records was symbolic, since the U.S. had supported the coup. The U.S. solidified its support for the putschists the year prior, drew up plans for a U.S. invasion if deemed necessary, and sent a naval task force to Brazil to support the military plotters. In the end, direct U.S. involvement wasn't needed — Goulart fled to Uruguay by April 4. The coup was carried out by Brazil's generals, but Washington celebrated it as a victory for its interests nonetheless. On the one hand, U.S. support for the coup laid bare the hypocrisy of America's supposed commitment to sovereignty and democracy. Gone was the Kennedy administration's promise to reject a "Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war." The Cold War logic of siding with anti-communist dictators for the purpose of defeating the Soviet Union prevailed. Washington may have lost China, but it won Brazil — or so the thinking went. However, even the most cynical arguments for aligning with undemocratic regimes for a strategic purpose often failed to bear fruit, given that many of these regimes departed from U.S. policy on key issues. Many historians of the U.S.-Brazil relationship contend that during this period their ties at times more closely resembled rivals rather than close partners. Rubens Ricupero, a former diplomat and minister of finance of Brazil, writes that, "Little by little, doubts turn[ed] into disappointment, and this le[d] to gradual disengagement in relation to the regime they had helped to create."When it first took power, Brazil's military dictatorship closely followed Washington's lead. Goulart was out, as was his "Independent Foreign Policy," a non-alignment stance that emphasized self-determination, decolonization, and non-intervention, devised by the ousted president's predecessor, Janio Quadros. In line with Washington's desires, the dictatorship, which rotated through five different military general-presidents between 1964 and 1985, broke off relations with Cuba and even assisted the U.S. in its occupation of the Dominican Republic in 1965.Washington also saw Brazil as a key ideological partner in destabilizing leftist regimes across Latin America. As one Brazilian general put it, the United States wanted Brazil "to do the dirty work." And it did. Most prominently, the Brazilian regime played a critical role in the overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile,. even secretly bringing members of the Chilean military to Brazil to discuss the potential coup. Brazil under the generals also participated in Operation Condor, the secret cooperation of right-wing military dictatorships in much of Latin America to assassinate, or "disappear" perceived leftists and other dissidents during the 1970s.Over time, the Brazilian regime's alignment with the U.S. waned and tensions bubbled up. Dr. Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira writes in his book "Brazil-United States: An Emerging Rivalry," that "automatic alignment with State Department guidelines could no longer continue for long, as it no longer effectively corresponded to the national interests of a developing country that aspired to become a power." Despite the fact that the U.S. wanted the benefits of outsourcing its dirty work, it was not willing to accept the consequences that came with greater military autonomy for Brazil. Dr. Eduardo Svartman, a political science professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, told Responsible Statecraft that one early issue that emerged was over Brazil's request for F-5 fighter jets."In the eyes of American politicians, if the great threat in Latin America was communist insurgents, there was no point to sell or transfer modern supersonic fighter jets to Latin American countries when helicopters would do the job much better," Svartman said. The Brazilian government disagreed, believing it was important to have a modern military in order to project power in South America. The generals accordingly grew more reliant on Europe, buying several Mirage fighter aircrafts from France. They eventually pushed the F-5 sale through several years later, but it was an early lesson that the U.S. may not be their most reliable partner. Though the U.S. remained an important supplier of critical components for Brazil's burgeoning national arms industry, Brazil's supply of U.S.-made arms imports decreased from 92% to 14% of its total arsenal over the course of the dictatorship. The U.S. also grew frustrated with Brazil's move towards positions associated with the non-aligned movement. Though Brazil was never a full member of the movement, in the early 1970s, it supported the decolonization of the Lusophone countries in Africa, emphasized non-intervention, and recognized the MPLA in Angola. Elements of the Independent Brazilian Foreign Policy had returned. Perhaps the biggest source of tension between the U.S. and Brazil was over the development of a nuclear program. Brazil refused to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, arguing that nuclear technology was vital for its development. After the U.S. suspended the supply of enriched uranium for Brazil's research reactors, the regime turned to West Germany and negotiated a major nuclear agreement in 1975.In an internal report, the CIA claimed that Brazil's nuclear ambitions posed a "fundamental challenge" to U.S.-Brazil relations. Without informing the Brazilians, newly-elected Vice President Walter Mondale tried to lobby the German government to cancel the agreement. Washington also grew frustrated with the generals' authoritarianism and human rights abuses. The regime passed a series of "institutional acts" — the first of which came just days after the coup — that gave them sweeping powers, including suspending the rights of opposition leaders and power to declare a recess in Congress. Ricupero writes that "with each new attack on the legal order or violation of rights, the embassy in Rio de Janeiro was forced into dialectical contortions to calm the State Department's unrest." Pressure on rising authoritarianism and the nuclear issue came to a head during the Carter administration, which applied human rights as a criteria for military assistance more directly. After the Carter State Department criticized Brazil for its human rights abuses in 1977, the Brazilian government retaliated by suspending the Joint Military Commission between the U.S. and Brazil, its Naval Mission, and a long-standing bilateral military accord. According to Washington's then-ambassador to Brasilia, Robert Sayre, "U.S.-Brazil relations just went to pieces."Despite a brief rapprochement with the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980, Brazil became critical of Washington's revival of more interventionist policies under his administration. Washington's decision to side with Britain against neighboring Argentina during the Falklands/Malvinas War in 1982 confirmed Brazilian suspicions that the U.S. was not a reliable partner. For the first time ever, "the hypothesis of war with the United States became an object of study in the Armed Forces," writes Bandeira.Brazil also opposed the so-called Reagan Doctrine, which sought to overthrow leftist governments in Central America and southern Africa. The U.S. had become not just a distant partner but something altogether new: an emerging rival. Many of these disputes between the two countries remained well into the period of democratization that began in 1985. There is a lot that is still unknown about this chapter in Brazil's history, and the U.S.' relationship to the military regime. Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive who also served as the liaison between the U.S. and Brazilian governments for the Truth Commission, estimates there are still thousands of records that remain classified, including many sensitive records from the CIA and the Department of Defense. "[T]he degree to which the United States is sitting on documentation about repression in Brazil is the degree to which the United States is not assisting Brazilian society in reminding itself about the horrors of what happened behind closed doors in secret detention centers," Kornbluh told Responsible Statecraft.To start, President Biden could honor a request from 16 Brazilian civil society organizations to declassify these records. The groups' appeal states that declassification would "provide valuable information about human rights violations committed during the Brazilian dictatorship and clarify the degree of the United States' involvement in or knowledge of these events. This act of transparency would also strengthen the foundations of the U.S.-America relationship, fostering trust and collaboration on important issues such as human rights, democracy, and regional stability." The Luiz Inácio "Lula" da SiIva government is unlikely to formally request these documents from Biden himself. In an effort to appease leaders of the Brazilian Armed Forces who still hold the 21-year dictatorship in high regard, Lula controversially canceled all formal demonstrations of the 60th anniversary. But even without an official commemoration, millions of Brazilians from Manaus in the Amazon to Florianopolis in the far south are organizing demonstrations to send a message of "dictatorship never again."

With Israel's invasion of Gaza inching toward the possibility of a long-term ceasefire, if not a formal resolution, we can begin to draw certain conclusions about the strategic course of the latest Middle Eastern conflagration. Above all, despite inflicting widespread destruction on the impoverished Gaza Strip, Israel's stated maximalist objective of destroying Hamas appears firmly out of reach. While part of this failure to strike a decisive blow follows from the inherent difficulty of counterinsurgency operations, Hamas's major allies — Iran, Hezbollah, Yemen's Houthis, and Shia Islamist militias in Iraq — also played a significant role. Crucially, these forces, constituting a loose coalition called the Axis of Resistance, are pressuring Washington to push Israel to the bargaining table by striking American weak points in the Middle East.Central to the Axis of Resistance's apparent logic in the latest conflict, and its struggle against the U.S.-Israel alliance more generally, lies the inescapable fact that its enemies possess overwhelming military, technological, and economic advantages. Yet the very global primacy of the United States that underlies this disproportion can make Washington uniquely vulnerable to smaller, more tactically nimble opponents.The regional ripples of the current war make this vulnerability especially clear. Rather than face the U.S. and Israel head-on, Iran and its allies took advantage of the overstretched American position in the Middle East. The efforts of Yemen's Houthis in the Red Sea provide perhaps the most dramatic illustration of this asymmetrical strategy. Central to the United States' international status is its naval dominance, which has allowed American policymakers to confer on their nation the mantle once worn by Britain in its imperial heyday: global manager and guardian of seaborne commerce.With just a few cheap drones and missiles, the Houthis instituted an effective blockade of the Red Sea, thus challenging this U.S. claim to be the worldwide arbiter of freedom of navigation. While U.S. forces have apparently proven relatively effective in destroying Houthi projectiles once launched, even President Joe Biden has admitted that U.S-UK airstrikes on Houthi positions in Yemen have largely failed to degrade the group's capacity for action. According to one metric, as of this writing the volume of traffic moving through the Red Sea's Bab al-Mandeb strait, as measured by weight, remains less than half of what it was this time last year.Elsewhere in the Middle East, other members of the Axis of Resistance similarly turned building blocks of American global preeminence into liabilities for Washington. In Iraq, Islamist Shia militias, formally integrated into the country's military as components of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) even as they sustain close links with Iran, have maintained a steady stream of attacks against U.S. military infrastructure. Though the U.S. withdrew from Iraq in 2011, its forces returned in 2014 as part of the battle against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In the minds of American planners, the bases thus established both bolster the U.S. presence in the world's major oil-producing region and its efforts to contain Iran. Now, though, they look more like sitting ducks than strategic assets. In fact, reflecting the entwinement of the Axis's goal of relieving pressure on Hamas with the narrower interests of its constituent parts, the consistent series of militia attacks likely contributed to Washington's recent ascension to formal negotiations with Iraq over a phased withdrawal of American troops — 2,500 of which remain in the country despite a 2020 resolution by the Iraqi parliament calling for their removal.The international struggle against ISIS also presented the U.S. an opportunity to gain a foothold in conflict-torn Syria, where American arms and training for rebel factions helped fuel a brutal civil war. The main U.S. presence in Syria is concentrated in the country's oil-rich northeast, though American forces also control the strategically vital al-Tanf border crossing with Iraq.The roughly 900 American troops in the country assist U.S.-allied Kurdish forces and allow Washington to deprive the Syrian state of critical oil revenue. But, like their counterparts in Iraq, they have lately been at the mercy of drone and rocket strikes, largely from the aforementioned Iraqi PMF. Indeed, analogous to the situation in Iraq, the precarity of U.S. positions in Syria as driven home by these assaults has reportedly spurred debate within the Biden administration about an American departure from that country as well.While such attacks in the Red Sea, Iraq, and Syria demonstrate the upside of the Axis of Resistance's regional campaign, its asymmetrical calculus is not without risks. Perhaps the best illustration of this was a recent drone strike, undertaken by Iraqi militia, against a secretive U.S. base in Jordan, near that country's tri-border region with Iraq and Syria. The attack killed three American troops, the first U.S. combat casualties in the present conflict.This result set off alarm bells in Tehran (and prompted the most wide-ranging series of American strikes yet against targets in Iraq and Syria). Central to the Axis's overall strategy, coordinated, if not — as many Western commentators insist — wholly directed, by Iran's national security apparatus, is the need to avoid full-scale conventional war with the United States. Without even factoring in the massive power disparity with the U.S., Iran's elite, in particular, can ill afford such a confrontation right now. The state is beset by a crisis of legitimacy, enflamed by its propensity for repression, and the nation's economy faces deep-rooted challenges, due in part to punishing American sanctions. As a result, Iran has taken steps to, temporarily at least, mitigate the chance of open conflict with the U.S. — most notably by curtailing strikes by PMF groups against American targets in Iraq.Yet, in taking that step, Iran's leaders likely feel secure in the knowledge that, despite the delicate balance required to tiptoe around the possibility of full-blown escalation, the Axis of Resistance's regional calculus has paid off significantly. In undertaking their broader campaign against the U.S., Hamas's regional allies leveraged Israel's intense dependence on its American patron. Without American support, Israel cannot hope to continue any major military campaign for very long — it is thus critically susceptible to pressure from Washington. While public opinion also plays a major role, the shower of blows rained upon American positions in the Middle East over the past few months has likely factored into U.S. policymakers' efforts to steer Israel away from its most maximalist aims and toward negotiations.Enabling both Israel's brutal assault on Gaza and the Axis of Resistance's ability to exert pressure on Tel Aviv through the U.S. are, of course, Washington's imperial ambitions. Iran and its allies have, unwittingly, presented American policymakers with a precious opportunity to pivot away from the kind of unilateralist overreach that, in large part, structures the present conflict. In doing so, they could begin to craft the kind of constructive foreign policy that puts the needs of U.S. citizens first — precious few Americans, after all, want to stumble into another Middle Eastern "forever war" just because of a few drones launched by Iraqi militias. And, perhaps most crucially, such a shift could perhaps prevent the kind of destruction unleashed on Gaza over the last few months — its scale a horrifying corollary to the depth of hubris that fuels American great power pretensions.

A mounting maritime dispute between China and the Philippines, underwritten by spiraling U.S.-China tensions, threatens to ignite the South China Sea. "China-Philippines relations are at a crossroads," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned his Philippine counterpart Enrique Manalo in a call on Dec. 20 following a string of contentious encounters in the South China Sea, including allegations that Chinese boats rammed a Philippine coast guard ship and fired water cannons at a resupply vessel. China, Wang Yi told Manalo, will "definitely safeguard its rights" and "respond resolutely" if the Philippines "colludes with malicious external forces to continue causing trouble and chaos." Wang's warning comes on the heels of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr's announcement earlier this year that his government is mulling a tripartite security pact with the U.S. and Japan. The Philippines and its treaty ally, the United States, have repeatedly accused China of harassing Philippine vessels in the South China Sea. "We condemn, once again, China's latest unprovoked acts of coercion and dangerous maneuvers against a legitimate and routine Philippine rotation and resupply mission," said Jay Tarriela, spokesperson for the National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea (NTF-WPS), on the heels of a confrontation earlier this month near the Second Thomas Shoal. "These actions reflect not only reckless disregard for the safety and livelihoods of Filipinos, but also for international law," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a Dec. 10 statement."The United States stands with our Philippine allies in the face of these dangerous and unlawful actions. We reaffirm that Article IV of the 1951 U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty extends to armed attacks on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft – including those of its Coast Guard – anywhere in the South China Sea," Miller added.China, which claims sovereignty over most of the South China Sea, previously accused Philippine coast guard ships of trespassing in what it describes as Chinese waters. A 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling found China's maritime claims in the South China Sea — commonly referred to as the nine-dash line — to be legally baseless. Beijing, which rejected the court ruling as "ill-founded" and "naturally null and void," has persisted in vigorously defending its expansive claims as part of a larger delimitation dispute also involving Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Taiwan. What exactly is at stake for China in its intensifying dispute with Manila and, by extension, its U.S. ally? "I think a lot of people in southeast Asia are mystified by why China is so pushy on this question," said Sarang Shidore, Director of the Global South Program at QI, adding that the unresolved issue of Taiwan's status is far more important to Beijing. "The South China Sea, these tiny features and islands, their economic potential is relatively small, there's fishing, but none of this rises to the level where you'd think China would be risking so much by pushing a very expansive claim," Shidore added. There are fishing and maritime disputes across the world, even including between allies, noted Lyle Goldstein, Director of Asia Engagement at Defense Priorities. "We have a major maritime territorial dispute with Canada… France and Britain go at it all the time over fisheries. It's fairly normal activity even among friends," Lyle told RS. The China-Philippines squall is far from the only theater in Beijing's ongoing maritime disputes, but it has escalated to a greater degree than many of the others due to Manila's readiness to push back against China's pressure tactics. Beijing has not engaged in an escalatory spiral with Malaysia and Brunei, despite their conflicting maritime claims, because these two states "are unlikely to make an issue of Chinese incidents and they don't really even talk about them," said Shidore, adding that their desire to preserve economic ties with China makes them "willing to absorb some costs." The Philippines has taken a more strident approach vis-à-vis Beijing than others in the South China Sea, said Shidore, partly as a byproduct of American presence in the region. "I think U.S. involvement is a big reason —the fact that the U.S. is present in the theater, and there is an alliance commitment, makes the situation not just a China-Philippines issue but a China-U.S. issue, and that's when everything changes from the Chinese perspective," he added. "The Chinese, I think, are more concerned about the U.S., at this point, than the Philippines," continued Shidore, "the U.S. presence is making them see red and emboldening all the nationalist and hawkish forces in the Chinese structures." American obligations under the 1951 U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty have raised concerns that Washington could find itself embroiled in a war in the South China Sea in the event of a direct military confrontation between China and the Philippines. "I think, unfortunately, all the signs are there for an escalating conflict," Goldstein said. "They [the Chinese] perceive that the stakes for them are very high," Goldstein explained. "I believe all this tension with the Philippines is an outgrowth of Taiwan tension," he said, noting that the Luzon strait, situated just south of Taiwan, has become an increasingly important fixture in U.S. preparations for a Taiwan contingency following the sharp spike in cross-strait tensions accompanying Nancy Pelosi's 2022 visit to Taipei. "The U.S. has been trying to put in place the groundwork to prepare for a day when they have to surge forces in a major way into Luzon," he said. Beijing, in reaction to these developments, has sought to dial up the pressure on Manila with threats and maritime shows of force. "The subtext is: if you are going to cooperate with the U.S. on the Taiwan scenario, your interests will suffer badly, and that, I think, is why this bullying is occurring," Goldstein said. Shidore said the White House, in light of growing regional tensions, should "pull back in being so frontal on this issue, whether rhetorically or materially, in terms of its presence in the theater." The U.S. has an active interest in exercising its substantial leverage over Manila "to nudge its more vulnerable partner to be more restrained in some of its actions," Shidore wrote in a piece published by The Diplomat last week. "We shouldn't be encouraging the Philippines to get into a fight with China — they are likely to lose that fight," said Goldstein. "We do have a treaty with the Philippines… but that treaty should be read very narrowly. It should be read as, we defend the main islands of the Philippines — if they are threatened acutely, we will be there," he added. "And if it means we need to put some defensive forces in those areas to reassure the Philippines, I'm okay with that. But my view is that we should not even consider going to war over rocks and reefs or different interpretations of the law of the sea. That would be extremely foolish and reckless, and it would be very hard to explain to American taxpayers." The China-Philippines maritime dispute does not, in of itself, reflect anything approaching an existential conflict. It has, however, become an increasingly dangerous proxy and potential flashpoint for underlying China-U.S. tensions in the South China Sea.

The Biden administration's foreign policy record in 2023 won't give the president much to boast about in next year's election. The U.S. is even more overstretched at the end of 2023 than it was at the beginning, and the president has had very few policy successes. For most of the year, there weren't any major debacles, but that changed over the last two months as the president gave the Israeli government a blank check to wage a brutal war in Gaza. The president committed Washington to support another foreign war in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel while the conflict in Ukraine settled into a stalemate. Even though the U.S. was under no obligation to support this war, the president made a point of turning it into one of his signature policies and linked it closely with support for Ukraine in his public rhetoric. Biden did not, and has not made a compelling case that unconditional support for Israel's campaign is in the best interests of the United States, and the costs of that support have been rising ever since. Furthermore, backing the war exposed U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria to renewed attacks from local militias, and it has also led to increasing risks for U.S. ships in the Red Sea as the Houthis have been launching attacks on commercial shipping to protest the war. The risks that the conflict could escalate and spread into other parts of the region have been growing, and so has the risk that the U.S. could become directly involved in a multi-front war. The president's instinct to back Israel to the hilt has made a wider war more likely and it has put U.S. forces in greater danger.U.S. support for Israel in Gaza has not only overshadowed the rest of Biden's foreign policy agenda, but it has also tied the U.S. to an indiscriminate bombing campaign and a punishing siege that is driving hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians into famine conditions. The Biden administration has not only torched whatever remained of Washington's credibility on human rights and international law, but it has closely associated the U.S. with the war crimes committed against Palestinian civilians.The damage to America's reputation has already been considerable, and the damage to American interests in the Middle East and beyond over the longer term will likely be significant.The setback for Biden's own agenda has been undeniable. The administration's biggest diplomatic initiative of 2023 — the ill-advised pursuit of Saudi-Israeli normalization — stalled when the war in Gaza showed the administration's understanding of the region to be fundamentally flawed. Having bought into the false assumption that U.S.-facilitated normalization agreements between Israel and Arab clients would stabilize the region, the administration failed to recognize how bad things were getting in occupied Palestine. Like their predecessors, the Biden administration did nothing to keep Netanyahu's coalition government in check as it pursued its creeping annexation of the West Bank. Believing that the Palestinians could be safely sidelined and that their grievances could be ignored, the administration was trying to find out what inducements it would take to get Mohammed bin Salman to endorse normalization. If they had been successful, it would have meant another security commitment and more costs for the United States, so it was just as well that this policy was derailed.It isn't clear how much of a factor the push for Saudi normalization was in contributing to Hamas' decision to attack, but it clearly wasn't helpful for the U.S. to waste so much effort on trying to entice the Saudis into a deal while tensions between Israel and the Palestinians was about to explode. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan's infamous line uttered shortly before the start of the war about how the region was quieter than it had been in decades reflected how much the administration had come to believe its own press releases. Support for the war has cost the U.S. a lot of goodwill in countries of the Global South, and the administration's stubborn opposition to a ceasefire has left the U.S. as deeply isolated at the United Nations as it has ever been on a major issue. The administration had earlier emphasized the importance of competing for influence with other major powers in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, but with its hardline position on Gaza it seems to have frittered away most of whatever gains it has made. Especially for an administration that constantly talks about the importance of America's leadership role, it has outdone itself in alienating and driving the rest of the world away from the U.S. on this issue.U.S. support for the war in Ukraine has been undermined by backing for the war in Gaza in two ways. First, it has diverted U.S. attention and resources away from Ukraine as the U.S. has turned its focus once again to the Middle East. It has also made a mockery of the administration's rhetoric in support of Ukraine. The U.S. spent the better part of two years extolling the importance of international law to rally support for Ukraine, and then demonstrated that the U.S. doesn't hold its own clients and partners to the same standard that it expects from other states. The Biden record this year wasn't all bad. On the plus side, the U.S. made some modest progress in stabilizing relations with China near the end of the year after months of deteriorating ties in the wake of the spy balloon incident in February. There was a small diplomatic breakthrough with Iran in the summer that led to the release of five Americans that had been wrongfully detained by the Iranian government. Unfortunately, the administration then reneged on releasing Iranian funds that had been frozen under "maximum pressure" sanctions because they didn't want to be seen as "rewarding" Iran following Hamas' attack.The administration also recently secured another prisoner release agreement with the Venezuelan government. While these were positive results, they were also hardly earth-shattering.The Biden administration had more success in working with established allies. They further developed the technology-sharing AUKUS arrangement with Australia and Britain, and they took advantage of a temporary improvement in relations between South Korea and Japan to strengthen ties with both. In both cases, the administration was pushing on an open door, and it is questionable whether either arrangement will endure, but they can at least point to these things as examples of advancing Biden's agenda. Even more than in previous years, the Biden administration's foreign policy in 2023 has been defined by too much reliance on military tools and too little effort put into diplomatic engagement. That may be one of the reasons why the public now broadly disapproves of Biden's handling of foreign policy. Both for his own sake and for the sake of U.S. interests, the president needs to make some major course changes in 2024 in Gaza and in his overall approach to the world.

News media manufactures consent, and one way that happens is by manufacturing amnesia — burying a government's past misdeeds makes it easier to sell future ones. The catastrophic floods that Storm Daniel unleashed on Libya, which have killed as many as 10,000 people, are both a natural disaster and a human-made one. In the week following Storm Daniel, a large portion of the media coverage described "war" as a reason the country was ill-equipped to handle the catastrophe. However, media discussion of NATO's contribution to what has become Libya's forever war has been almost non-existent. NATO's intimate involvement — albeit by proxy — in the current war in Ukraine makes the omission all the more remarkable.War in contemporary Libya is traceable to February 2011, when protests against Muammar Gadhafi's government evolved into an armed conflict. In the initial days of the fighting, the U.S. media amplified claims that the Libyan air force was bombing demonstrators despite statements by top Pentagon officials that there was "no confirmation whatsoever" that such bombing was happening. Western media outlets and politicians accused Gadhafi of carrying out a systematic mass slaughter of civilians, and of intending to do more of the same, particularly as government forces advanced on rebel-held Benghazi. In this climate, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1973 in March 2011, which authorized "all necessary measures" to protect civilians.NATO dubiously interpreted the resolution as granting it the right to overthrow the Libyan government. NATO forces — primarily Britain, France and the U.S. — subsequently conducted roughly 9,700 strike sorties and dropped over 7,700 precision-guided bombs during their seven-month campaign. The bombing not only assured eventual victory for the rebels — a mostly ragtag, disparate collection of local and tribal militias, Islamist fighters, and disaffected soldiers united only by their opposition to Gaddafi (whose death was facilitated by a NATO airstrike). It also killed scores of the civilians it claimed to be protecting and left Libya without a functioning government (in addition, it enabled the proliferation of tens of thousands of arms stockpiled by Gaddafi's government to insurgents throughout Libya, the Sahel, and beyond, notably in Syria).For most of the period since Gadhafi's overthrow, Libya has been afflicted by a civil war that has seen the country split between two heavily armed rival factions claiming to be the government: Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) in the east and the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord in the west.There is no evidence that NATO bombing directly contributed to the collapse of the dams that caused the catastrophic flooding in Derna (although the war reportedly interrupted rehabilitation work by a Turkish construction company). However, it is beyond question that NATO's intervention contributed to the destruction of the Libyan state and social fabric, helping bring about years of warfare, one consequence of which has been the inability to maintain critical infrastructure. Yet this context has been all but invisible in U.S. mainstream media coverage of the recent floods, even in those reports that identified "war" as a factor that helps explain the scale of the cataclysm.I used the news database Factiva to search material published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post — arguably the three most influential national newspapers — between Sunday September 10, the day that Derna was flooded, and Saturday September 16. I searched the words "Libya" and variations on "flood," such as "flooding" and "floods," and got 67 results, the great majority of them supposedly "objective" news reports rather than op-eds., Forty of the 60 included the word "war." But only three of these also used the term "NATO," or just 7.5 percent of the content. Two additional articles contained the words "NATO," "Libya," and "flood," but not "war," instead using the word "intervention" to describe NATO's role. Thus, only five articles — or 7.4 percent — of the week's total coverage of the floods referenced NATO.Typical of the coverage in those articles when "war" was mentioned as a contributing cause of the disaster was a Post report noting that Libya was "battered by more than a decade of war and chaos, and split between rival governments, with no central authority to shore up infrastructure or draw up plans to save residents." Later, the article stated that "Oil-rich Libya has been ravaged by conflict since the fall of its longtime dictator, Moammar Gadhafi, in 2011," again with no mention of NATO's contribution.Similarly, the Times ran a piece calling Libya "a North African nation splintered by a war, [which] was ill-prepared for the storm….[D]espite its vast oil resources, its infrastructure had been poorly maintained after more than a decade of political chaos." Regarding the events of 2011, the articles goes to note that "Libya endured 42 years of autocratic rule under Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi before he was overthrown in a revolt in 2011." This account suggests that Gaddafi's ouster was strictly an internal affair and completely obscures the decisive role played by NATO's campaign on the side of the anti-government forces, creating the conditions for further instability and warfare.According to the Journal, "The natural disaster [in Libya] was decades in the making — a result of years of official neglect of two nearby dams during the authoritarian regime of Moammar Gadhafi and the political crisis and war since his ouster in a 2011 revolution." The authors highlight the role that war played in setting the stage for the floods but gloss over how the NATO intervention against the Gadhafi government helped generate societal and governmental collapse, and post- Gadhafi warfare.Of course, simply mentioning NATO doesn't necessarily mean that a news article has given readers an accurate picture of what the alliance did in Libya. For example, a Post story says Gadhafi ruled Libya until "he was killed by rebel forces during a NATO-backed Arab Spring uprising." This phrasing is ambiguous at best: it gives readers no sense of what form NATO's "back[ing]" of Libya's "Arab Spring uprising" took. An analysis by the Post's Ishaan Tharoor, which was not published in the paper's print edition, was much closer to the mark when it says that "Libya's unstable status quo" is both the result of domestic political forces in Libya and of "the intervention of outside actors. That began with the NATO-led intervention in 2011."The Times, Journal, and Post repeatedly noted the link between the flooding in Libya and armed conflict in the country. However, with very few exceptions, the publications declined to acknowledge that, in 2011, NATO opted to bomb Libya until its government was overthrown. In this regard, the papers have failed to remind their readers that NATO's intervention was part of the chain of events that led to this month's calamity. Such a reminder would seem especially pertinent today in light of NATO's much-touted reinvigoration and northern expansion owing to its growing role in supporting Ukraine against the Russian invasion.

Jack Twyman is an intern at the ASI.Take a look at any national newspaper and, as an alien from outer space, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the United Kingdom was under siege by an aggressive foe. Constant news headlines decry the government to "Send in the army to halt migrant invasion", adding "Rescue boats? I'd use gunships to stop migrants". The Express is desperate saying "We can't stop migrant chaos", and that "Migrants take all new jobs in Britain."It comes as no surprise to say that is not remotely the case. In 2022, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) recorded the highest ever net migration to the UK at 606,000 people. The ONS also recorded the 45,746 people who arrived illegally. Of those, 25,119 would be allowed to stay in the UK as refugees. Accounting for this, illegal arrivals accounted for just under 8 per cent of the total of net migration. In 2023, as of 13th June,  there have been 9,062 illegal arrivals so far.  So what is leading the current UK government to assert that passing one of its five main targets is to pass new laws to stop small boats, and ensuring the swift detainment and removal of illegal entrants? Looking at opinion polls, the picture distorts further. An IPOS UK poll from March 2023 found that only 19 per cent of the public have passing new l was to stop small boats crossings as one of their top four priorities. Easing the cost of living, 67 per cent, reducing NHS waiting lists, 50 per cent, growing the economy, 36 per cent, halving inflation, 31 per cent, all out pace in importance for the public. Additionally, a Poll by the Law Society of England and Wales of 1,954 people in March 2022 found that almost two thirds of people said refugees who arrive in the UK illegally should have the same rights as those who come legally. However, it is still clear that a great deal of voters care deeply about the issue. Since government rhetoric has increased, and the Rwanda policy became more likely, trust in the Conservatives on asylum and immigration increased to 1 in 3 in March, up since February. POLITICO found that among 2019 Tory voters, 41 per cent see illegal migration routes are a priority. 'Why are my hard-earned taxes, in a time of rising inflation and economic uncertainty, being used to put migrants up in 4 star hotels?' voters argue. Rishi Sunak is so convinced that he claimed "stopping the boats is not just my priority, it's the people's priority." The government of course has the resources and funds available to continue allocating efforts into sustaining the refugees, but the impasse of claim processing has exacerbated the issue further. Data from The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford shows that decisions had already failed to keep pace with applications before the huge increase in claims in 2021 and 2022. This gap has only widened further, with outstanding cases awaiting final decision at the end of 2022 at 132,000 asylum applications.So there is a real issue is in processing, where slow rates have created a backlog that has created a situation where asylum processing centres are overwhelmed and overfilled. The government now spends on average £4,300 per asylum seeker per month in private-provided housing for refugees, equivalent to a £6.2m daily cost of housing asylum seekers in hotels. Last year, the UK spent £3.7 billion, or 29% of its aid budget, supporting refugees within the UK, drawing criticism from aid groups, international NGOs and domestic politicians alike. Surely there must be a better way? The obvious choice would be to train more civil servants to process the claims, but this is costly, currently inefficient, and would be a lengthy process. I propose that we procure private firms as processors, paying them per asylum claim processed. This outsourcing and privatisation will create a healthier competition and increase diligence and duty of care as the claim assessor stands to lose more than if they were in a non-commercial, government position. It will also avoid the currently concerning plans to house refugees in former military bases and so-called "rudimentary accommodation" in the words of Immigration Minister Rober Jenrick. Private firms are proven to respond quicker to market demands, and there will surely be a host of providers created overnight if this scheme was put forward. But there is still more to be done. We must ask ourselves the question why we currently prohibit asylum seekers from working whilst their claim is being processed? In an era of high job vacancies, should these migrants not be seen as an opportunity, or gift for the country? A proactive approach would see these migrants start contributing from the offset, giving the government the opportunity to recuperate some of the funds used to support them, and allowing the migrants to bring benefit to the economy. I would also propose allowing asylum seeker applications to be made in embassies abroad. Sure, there are foreseeable issues with this proposal in countries where there are a high number of prospective applications, but allowing application in France or other similar countries will prevent the need to dagerous journeys to be made overseas, and the subsequent strain on the emergency services responding the the dire humanitarian results. I am not alone in this proposal as in fact 68 per cent respondents for an Ipsos  poll of the UK public support this proposal. Ultimately, I am sureI align with the vast majority of my fellow countryfolk in not sharing Jenrick's belief  that Asylum seekers who arrive in the UK by crossing the Channel in small boats "cannibalise" communities.  Certainly he is correct that the continued uncontrolled situation threatens "the compassion that marks out the British people." Yet claiming that the protestors outside migrant hotels are a "warning to be heeded, not a phenomenon to be managed" is at best a reach. The Daily Express Editor Gary Jones recently claimed that after concerted effort by Stop Funding Hate was a signficiant factor in rethinking editorial direction around sensitive topics like the Channel migrants. This serves as a reminder how the public can exercise non-political rights to enact change and achieve a voice irrespective on whether elected representatives are in agreement. Sure, the UK is in danger of neglecting necessary action on the issue, however this is not equivalent with a mutli-million pound deal to ship arrivals to Rwanda and elsewhere, nor pay huge sums to house migrants in hotels, or former military bases. With a pragmatic approach that reaches out of government and into enterprise the situation can be more effectively dealt with, and far faster that without. Election ploy or not, securing the stability of UK society must be a priority.

This edition is the first issue of Dewa Ruci's Journal, in which all articles are in English. We deliberately changed the language of publication to English to facilitate information delivery to a wider audience. We realize that English is the official language for many countries rather than other languages in this world. The number of people who have literacy awareness and need scientific information about visual and performing arts regarding the archipelago's cultural arts is also quite large.The decision to change the language of publication to English does not mean that we do not have nationalism or are not in love with the Indonesian language. This change is necessary to foster the intensity of scientific interaction among writers who are not limited to Indonesia's territory alone. We desire that the scientific ideas outlined in Dewa Ruci's Journal are read by intellectual circles of the arts internationally. We also want to express our scientific greetings to art experts from countries in New Zealand, the USA, Australia, Europe, especially Britain, and other English-speaking countries such as the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, the Caribbean, Hong Kong, South Africa, and Canada. Of course, a change in English will also benefit intellectuals from countries that have acquired English as a second language, such as Malaysia, Brunei, Israel, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka. In essence, Dewa Ruci's Journal editor wants to invite writers to greet the scientific community at large.We are grateful that six writers can greet the international community through their articles. The first is Tunjung Atmadi and Ika Yuni Purnama, who wrote an article entitled "Material Ergonomics on Application of Wooden Floors in the Interior of the Workspace Office." This article discusses office interiors that are devoted to workspaces. The purpose of this study is to share knowledge about how to take advantage of space-forming elements in the interior design of a workspace by utilizing wooden floors like parquet. The focus is on choosing the use of wood by paying attention to the elements in its application. This research result has a significant meaning in the aesthetics, comfort, and safety of wooden floors in the workspace's interior and its advantages and disadvantages.The second writer who had the opportunity to greet the Dewa Ruci Journal audience was intellectuals with diverse expertise, namely Taufiq Akbar, Dendi Pratama, Sarwanto, and Sunardi. Together they wrote an article entitled "Visual Adaptation: From Comics to Superhero Creation of Wayang." This article discusses the fusion and mixing of wayang as a traditional culture with comics and films as contemporary culture products. This melting and mixing have given birth to new wayang creations with sources adapted from the superhero character "Avenger," which they now call the Avenger Wayang Kreasi. According to them, Wayang Kreasi Avenger's making maintains technical knowledge of the art of wayang kulit. It introduces young people who are not familiar with wayang kulit about the technique of carving sungging by displaying the attributes in the purwa skin for Wayang Kreasi Avenger. This creativity is an attempt to stimulate and show people's love for the potential influence of traditional cultural heritage and its interaction with the potential of contemporary culture.The next authors are Sriyadi and RM Pramutomo, with an article entitled "Presentation Style of Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun Dance in Pura Mangkunegaran." This article reveals a repertoire of Yogyakarta-style dance in Mangkunegaran, Surakarta, namely the Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun. The presence of this dance in Mangkunegaran occurred during the reign of Mangkunegara VII. However, the basic character of the Mangkunegaran style dance has a significant difference from the Yogyakarta style. This paper aims to examine the Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun dance's presentation style in Mangkunegaran to determine the formation of its presentation technique. The shape of the Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun dance style in Mangkunegaran did not occur in an event but was a process. The presentation style's formation is due to a problem in the inheritance system that has undergone significant changes. These problems arise from social, political, cultural, and economic conditions. The responses to these problems have shaped the Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun dance's distinctive features in Mangkunegaran, although not all of them have been positive.Hasbi wrote an article entitled "Sappo: Sulapa Eppa Walasuji as the Ideas of Creation Three Dimensional Painting." This article reveals Hasbi's creative process design in creating three-dimensional works of art, named Sappo. He got his inspiration from the ancient manuscripts written in Lontara, namely the manuscripts written in the traditional script of the Bugis-Makassar people on palm leaves, which they still keep until now. Sappo for the Bugis community is a fence that limits (surrounds, isolates) the land and houses. Sappo's function is to protect herself, her family, and her people. Sulapa Eppa means four sides, is a mystical manifestation, the classical belief of the Bugis-Makassar people, which symbolizes the composition of the universe, wind-fire-water-earth. Walasuji is a kind of bamboo fence in rhombus rituals. Eppa Walasuji's Sulapa is Hasbi's concept in creating Sappo in the form of three-dimensional paintings. The idea is a symbolic expression borrowing the Lontara tradition's idiom to create a symbolic effect called Sappo.Mahdi Bahar and his friends wrote an article entitled "Transformation of Krinok to Bungo Krinok Music: The Innovation Certainty and Digital-Virtual Contribution for Cultural Advancement." Together, they have made innovations to preserve Krinok music, one of Jambi's traditional music themes, into new music that they call Bungo Krinok. He said that innovation is a necessity for the development of folk music. In innovating, they take advantage of digital technology. They realize this music's existence as a cultural wealth that has great potential for developing and advancing art. The musical system, melodic contours, musical grammar, and distinctive interval patterns have formed krinok music's character. This innovation has given birth to new music as a transformation from Jambi folk music called "Bungo Krinok" music.Finally, Luqman Wahyudi and Sri Hesti Heriwati. They both wrote an article entitled "Social Criticism About the 2019 Election Campaign on the Comic Strip Gump n Hell." They explained that in 2019 there was an interesting phenomenon regarding the use of comic strips as a means of social criticism, especially in the Indonesian Presidential Election Campaign. The title of the comic is Gump n Hell by Errik Irwan Wibowo. The comic strip was published and viral on social media, describing the political events that took place. In this study, they took three samples of the comic strip Gump n Hell related to the moment of the 2019 election to analyze their meaning. From the results of this study, there is an implicit meaning in the comic strip of pop culture icons' use to represent political figures in the form of parodies.That is the essence of the issue of Volume 16 Number 1 (April Edition), 2021. Hopefully, the knowledge that has been present in this publication can spur the growth of visual and performing art science in international networks, both in the science of art creation and in scientific research of art in general. We hope that the development of visual and performing art science can reveal the various meanings behind various facts and phenomena of art life. Therefore, the growth of international networks is an indispensable need.Thank you.