Civil-Military Coordination in Peacebuilding: The Obstacle in Somalia

Author(s): Chukwuma Obinwa / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The complex nature of peacebuilding as an instrument of conflict resolution has increasingly collided the military and the civilian actors to share the same field of operation, thereby undermining the independence, impartiality and neutrality of either the military or the civilian actors. Despite the fact the military has often accentuated the need for “correspondence”, the civilian actors have conveyed concern regarding the effect of civil-military coordination on the capacity to remain independent, neutral and impartial in undertaking their main functions. This paper examines the cultural, organizational, operational and normative factors that condition the approaches of the civilian actors such as nongovernmental organizations and the military actors toward the civil-military coordination. This paper also discusses the obstacles to the (CIMIC) and offers more effective recommendations for enhancing the civil-military coordination (CIMIC) in order to achieve the economic, political and security order sought in the Somalia peacebuilding process.

Literary Archetypes Between Universal Myth and Historical Moment: Shelley’s Frankenstein

Author(s): Kalea Ramsey / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

This research uses Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as an anchor to look back and forth between the novel and the precursor texts and themes on which Shelley both draws and which she also transforms in light of the critical influences of her historical moment, straddling as it did a transition from the rationalism of the Enlightenment to the emotional, social and creative energies unleashed by Romanticism. This paper focuses on the themes of transgression, fear, isolation, damnation and redemption, and their importance in outlining the journeys of Victor Frankenstein and the monster he created, as well as other related works in history. The major comparisons in this research are that of Frankenstein with the archetypal figure of Prometheus, ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, and Paradise Lost. The first was directly referenced by Mary Shelley in the allusions of Walton and Victor Frankenstein, and the latter is the epigraph of the book, which appears as one of the books that shaped the Monster’s education. Stemming from ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, the Wandering Jew and the biblical Cain and Abel story are extended archetypes, further showing traits that could be found among the Mariner, Frankenstein, the Monster, and Satan, forming an interconnected web that weaves all these characters together. Frankenstein is also known as the ‘Modern Prometheus’: through her writing, Mary Shelley aimed to historicize and reconceptualize universalist assumptions about the nature and relevance of archetypes in literature. By historicizing the role of Prometheus and imbuing it in Victor Frankenstein, Shelley portrayed the figure of an ambitious scientist who assumed the role of God and disregarded the law of nature. She charaterized Victor such that his traits resemble those of Prometheus, yet far from reproducing an idealized archetype, Shelley brings a Greek myth down to earth, transforming it so that it can speak to the people of her time. This paper reads Frankenstein in relation to how its context transforms the universalist archetypes on which Shelley drew to give her characters and themes literary depth and texture. Shelley inflects Victor Frankenstein and his Monster with traits associated with the archetypal figures of Prometheus, Satan, and the Ancient Mariner, simultaneously relating the resulting hybrid characters to the pressing concerns of her particular historical moment and demonstrating that universal archetypes continue to be rich sources both for the creative process and for bringing perennial themes to life for successive generations of readers.

The Universality of the Right to Education - A New Perspective

Author(s): Elena Roxana Vişan / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Against the backdrop of global change, and with a view to ensuring equal rights and freedoms for all, the need for deeper treatment of the universal nature of the right to education has emerged, while systematically preparing for quality education. The context of postmodern social development, global education policy outlines new priorities on equal opportunities, curriculum design, training organization, with a view to grounding a universal approach to all actors in the education process.

The Relation Between Law and Morality

Author(s): Emima Alistar (Hîrlav) / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Most specialists agree that between law and morals there is a close connection, because the moral principles of good, justice and truth are appliances and promoted by the rule of law, even if the right and the moral retains its identity. However, over time, their views on the problem of knowing what is the relationship between law and morals were contradictory. Between law and morals, I consider that there is only an apparent contradiction, because the two concepts are complementary. The right would seem a trap for lawyers in that could make them to resist the temptation to not see beyond the letter of the law, given that the need for law enforcement and understanding of its spirit. A true man of law must not only know the law but also to look beyond it and realize that the main attraction of the moral law.

Resale Price Maintenance: What Future, What Past?

Author(s): Varun Chakravarty / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The paper deals with a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of vertical price restraints in the American, European and Indian market. Resale price maintenance refers to the efforts of a manufacturer to restrict the range of prices charged by a retailer of the manufacturer’s product. In this paper there will be an analysis of evolution of resale price maintenance in US with the inception of Sherman Act to Leegin Creative Leather case for maximum and minimum resale price maintenance. There will also be an analysis of evolution of US competition law from Per-se to Rule of reason with regard to incident of checking the anti-competitive market practice. A detailed analysis with respect to US, EU and Indian stand on competition law will be given in this research paper.

Court-Appointed Lawyer in the Criminal Trial

Author(s): Silviu-Ștefan Petriman / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The article presents a few issues about the importance and necessity of a court-appointed lawyer in the criminal trial. In order to secure the right to defence, if the suspect or defendant has not appointed a lawyer to represent his/her interests, the judicial body has the obligation to take measures in order to appoint a public defender. Therefore, the protection of such rights must be material and objective, not only theoretical and illusory. But the appointment of a lawyer only is not enough to provide effective assistance. The public defender is appointed on written demand of court, justice of peace, preliminary chamber judge, criminal investigation or search body, bar council. The suspect or defendant is not allowed to elect a public defender. If appointed, the public defender has the obligation to provide legal assistance less when there is a conflict of interest between the lawyer or a suspect or defendant. This measure is determined both for consolidating the idea of fair, transparent justice and for securing a fair trial to the individuals criminally accused.

Theoretical and Practical Aspects of the Infringement of Myth Hole in Romania

Author(s): Alexandru Peicea / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

It is widely known that corruption worldwide generates harmful effects, affecting the economy of the whole planet over time, the good development of social relations and the trust of citizens in their own state, governors and civil servants. Taking bribes is one of the most serious offenses under the Romanian Penal Code, which is also the result of the punishment stipulated by the law to be applied to the persons committing such offenses. In order to prevent and combat this harmful phenomenon, the Romanian legislature regulated in a special law higher punishments for committing the bribery offense for persons occupying a certain position in the state or having a certain quality, circumstance which increases the degree of social danger created for social relations protected by the rule of criminalization. This paper aims to deal with the constitutive content of the bribery offense in Romania and to present relevant judicial practice issues in this field.

Brief Considerations on the Relevance of the Inter-Religious Dialogue for the Mediation of the Conflicts and the Abolition of the Religious Violence from an Orthodox Perspective

Author(s): Stelian Manolache / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

In a globalized world, where the poverty from side of the world is in contrast with the richness of another part, where the big cultures try to put in the shadow the small cultures of the world, religion will assume as main missionary objective the research of the manner in which the ethical discourse, the spiritual values and the philanthropic actions - determinant markers of any contemporary religion – can mediate the conflicts, the disputes and the violence inspired by religion or with inter-religious connotations. We intend to present brief considerations on the capacity of the institutionalized Christian religion to fulfill, through dialogue, the ontological and social vocation for the absorption of the violence through an irenic social-philanthropic action inspired by religion.

“White Terror and Ghosts of Kenya”: Postcolonial, Socio-Political Imagery and Narratives of Kenyan Diasporas

Author(s): Radoli Lydia Ouma / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

“White Terror” (2013), a BBC documentary details colonial atrocities in Kenya and thereafter state of emergency. I argue, ghosts (memories) of the atrocities still haunt a few remaining colonial survivors. Socio-political colonial structures were inherited in post-independence Kenya. The documentary based on Harvard’s History Professor Caroline Elkins (2005) research was evidenced in a legal suit of five colonial survivors against the British government for torture. Post-2007 ethno-political conflicts in Kenya can be linked to misappropriations in the 1954 Swynerton land tenure reforms. British occupation of native land sparked an insurgency that resulted in a state emergency (1952-1960), and later turned into struggle for independence. To Kenyans, Mau Mau (largely Kikuyus) were freedom fighters, but inhuman savage terrorists to colonial agents. Geographical annexing of land placed the Kikuyu, a dominant ethnic group close to the colonial capital, while the rest of the tribes were disbursed in the peripheries. In postcolonial Kenya, political and economic disparities herald power struggles between dominant ethnicities, in the case of Kenya; Kikuyu, Luo and Kalenjin. Postcolonial theory was a result of colonial experience, “the testimonies of the third world countries and discourses of minorities within geographical and political divisions of “East and West”, “North and South” (Bhabha 1994). First generational Kenyans survived colonialism, but retain narratives of the struggle over colonial domination. Using a postcolonial and discourse theoretic qualitative methodology for documentary and interviews analysis, this paper traces narratives of postcolonial Kenya and impacts on present day social political challenges.

The Current Digital Arena and its Risks to Serving Military Personnel

Author(s): Sebastian Bay,Nora Biteniece / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The last few years have provided an abundance of examples of how malicious actors can exploit user data to the detriment of social media users, armed forces, and society. This study explores what kind of user data is available in the digital environment and demonstrates how a malicious actor can exploit this data in the context of a military exercise. The results of an experiment conducted by a NATO StratCom COE research team suggest that in the current digital arena an adversary would be able to collect enough personal data on soldiers to create targeted messages with precision, successfully influencing their chosen target audience to carry out desired behaviors.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Analyzing Images in the Online Information Environment

Author(s): Nora Biteniece / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

As social media, and the web as a whole, become more visual, organizations and governments can no longer rely solely on textual analysis when seeking to better understand their audiences in the online environment. Methods for thorough analysis of the online information environment, including visual content, must be developed. This chapter discusses the type of information images contain and how it can be extracted, and proposes a computer based image retrieval to extract valuable information from large volumes of images and aggregate it in a meaningful way.

The Effects of Banning the Social Network VK in Ukraine

Author(s): Anton Dek,Kateryna Kononova,Tatyana Marchenko / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

In May 2017, the President of Ukraine put into effect a decision of the National Security and Defence Council (NSDC) to impose economic sanctions on 468 Russian companies. The largest Russian social network, VKontakte (VK), was banned, among others. Because of the ban, the audience for VK in Ukraine decreased significantly and the social network site dropped out of the top ten most popular sites in the country. To better understand the effects of the VK ban, a study was organised to monitor changes in posting dynamics, to analyse user demographics before and after the ban, and to identify the rhetoric used in posts before and after the ban. The dataset includes more than 300,000 Ukrainian VK user profiles. Because the ban does not apply to the territories occupied by Russia, the study examined two target regions: government controlled areas (GCA) subject to the ban, and non-government-controlled areas (NGCA) where the ban was not imposed. The study took place between 1 May 2016 and 14 June 2018. This period was divided into three intervals: before the ban, the first ‘user exodus’, and the second ‘user exodus’. Our analysis shows that VK is markedly less popular in the area controlled by the Ukrainian government (19% less, compared to NGCA). However, those few users left after the ban are more active, producing 4.37 times as much content as those in non-governmentcontrolled-areas. Moreover, these VK profiles are more densely connected. To study the rhetoric appearing in user posts, we used a clustering algorithm that could identify accounts posting about ideological issues. When compared with the majority of other profiles, the characteristics of ideological posts stood out. Before the ban a typical VKuser would write, on average, one post every four days; after the ban the frequency dropped to one post every ten days. Ideological users55 were notably more active — they wrote four posts per day before the ban and 1.6 posts after the ban. Ideological users were also significantly more connected — after the ban the average number of friends for an ideological user grew from 197 to 501, and such users subscribed to 2.25 times more groups than typical VK-users. Our analysis of reposts from ideological groups showed that although the number of users decreased by a factor of three, the activity level of these groups remained unchanged. However, taking into account that most pro-Ukrainian groups left VK after the ban, those who continued to use the network were increasingly posting to an echo-chamber. We conclude that the VK ban was effective in some ways. The network lost a significant portion of its audience and its popularity decreased, but those users who retained their VK profiles after the ban became more connected on average and began consuming more information from a greater number of groups. Despite the fact that the number of ideological users also dropped, those who continued to use VK lost their opposition, so rhetoric became less diverse.

Division Abroad, Cohesion at Home: How the Russian Troll Factory Works to Divide Societies Overseas but Spread Pro-Regime Messages at Home

Author(s): John D. Gallacher,Rolf E. Fredheim / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

In the last 6 months increasing quantities of information have been released regarding exactly how attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election may have been carried out. In this study we use a combination of quantitative analysis, machine learning and natural language processing to map out the topics of conversation promoted by the Russian troll factory, the Internet Research Agency (IRA) between 2015 and 2018. We show how this activity involves coordinated messaging across multiple social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Instagram), and how this seeks to promote both sides of controversial debates with inflammatory material. Additionally, we demonstrate how real-world events are utilised to spread division in societies abroad with a common pattern of progressively provocative content. Finally, we show how this same agency uses these platforms for a very different purpose for domestic audiences, and spreads single pro-regime messages without attempts to intensify divisions at home. These results demonstrate how any successful solutions to counter this type of activity will need to tackle the problem from a multi-platform approach, and also must consider how alternative audiences may be targeted in different ways by hostile influence.

Countering Subversion Online: What Role for Public Policy?

Author(s): Edward Christie / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

This final chapter aims to offer a synthesis of the main vulnerabilities that liberal democracies contend with, as they encounter contemporary forms of political subversion, and to propose a set of policy principles to guide ongoing reflections on how to best respond to that challenge. Four areas of vulnerability are identified, namely individualized political messaging; group dynamics and political polarization; platform algorithms and self-radicalization; and falsehood dissemination dynamics. In discussing each of these areas, insights are drawn from both very recent and more established academic research, at the crossroads of psychology, social psychology, communication studies, and political science. This leads to framing elements for the formulation of proposed policy principles, followed by examples of recent measures in selected countries.

Conclusion

Author(s): Giorgio Bertolin / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Throughout this publication, we have explored some of the ways in which technology can be exploited to influence our behavior. In this brief section, we offer some recommendations. Given current trends, it is likely that more and more personal data will be available online in the coming years. This issue is particularly delicate with regard to the personal data of people belonging to sensitive categories (such as servicemen/-women, government officials, and decision-makers). On the one hand, it will be necessary to devise ways to curb current trends for what concerns these categories, i.e. reducing the amount of information available on these individuals. On the other hand, it is equally important to consider how to mitigate the negative effects of data proliferation once data is already available and can be exploited by malicious actors. The research presented here has demonstrated that current standards must be improved to reduce the risks posed by personal data exploitation. Conducting experiments, such as the one described in this volume should be a staple component of tactical-level exercises and could significantly improve the awareness of our servicemen/-women.

IN THE ARMS OF VICIOUS REALITY

Author(s): Selma Dolovac / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Let me introduce myself – my name is Child. Surname? Well, Child. Nationality, religion? Again, Child. Age? Newly-born Child, living in…well, in the world of children. I beg your pardon? How come I’m here? Well, it wasn’t my will. And, believe me, nobody asked me anything. I even resisted for nine months. They were a li le rough and, against my will, I simply stepped into this... no, I fell into this world. And, believe me, I met with problems immediately – I didn’t hear quite well, especially with my le ear. Probably due to many rifl e salvoes, fi red as a salute to me. Or, perhaps, to get me accustomed to that terrible music. It’s probably a sign that they already have one person more. God, I’m going to be a real hero! What then, I ask myself, being as lonely as I am, and le to to my own thoughts, while I watch them with open eyes, so drunk and dazed.

SNOWBALL FIGHTS

Author(s): Višnja Baćanović / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

At the meeting of sociology students from South-Eastern Europe in Ljubljana, in 2002, the representatives of each country were asked to present their homeland. Lacking inspiration, but of the mind that we had to do something about it, the students from Croatia and we, the students from Serbia, have decided to make, I dare say, a performance. We went out and had a snowball fight. Croats against Serbs (or the other way round). As soon as we had finished our snowball fight, we set down to the table to have more fun. We don’t know even now if our colleagues from Bulgaria, Romania or Moldavia were fully aware of our intention, but we were. The talks we had then were very important for each of us.

THE TITLE IS IN YOUR MIND, IN YOUR HEART, IN YOUR SOUL

Author(s): Taufik Abul Suud / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

IDENTIFICATION

Author(s): Dejan Pataki / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

How many times in my life have I heard “Why do you interfere?!”, or “Let it be, you can’t do anything about it!”. And, certainly, the most frequent phrase: “As if my voice would change anything”. I keep asking myself what is the matter here? Do people underestimate themselves and clearly say “I’m just a nobody”, or willingly sink into a collective molasses, saying: “That’s the way we are”. In my case, the problem with identification emerged for the first time in the first grade of elementary school, when records on nationality began to be kept. The ones asked before my turn answered: “Yugoslavian”, “Turkish”, “Serbian”, Hungarian”…I have a surname which corresponds to the nation quoted last, and to the fact that my grandfather speaks Hungarian fluently. Until then, I probably haven’ seen Hungary even in the pictures, and as I admitted knowing how to count up to ten in my grandfather’s language (I could also count in English, but that wasn’t a part of my dilemma), I declared myself as a citizen of Zrenjanin.

THERE IS A PEOPLE...

Author(s): Jelena Mirkov / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Serbs, the best people, heavenly people, innocent lamb, democratic and patriotic people. Without concern to the circumstances, they stand behind their promises, and above all, behind the men who honestly defended their country, national heroes, as they call them. There are never enough epithets for this people who, unfortunately, is not an imaginary, but a real one, with a real country. But who are they at all, and does the world know of them?