Genocide documentary as intervention

Gifted filmmakers such as Joshua Oppenheimer, director of The act of killing, are attempting to use the power of documentary to provoke social and political change in post-conflict settings. What roles do interventionist filmmakers play in processes of national reconciliation and transitional justice? Can The act of killing really be a catalyst for change in Indonesia? This article contends that the genocide documentary is a form of antagonistic intervention that warrants systematic and critical re-evaluation. It holds that claims regarding the remedial impact of documentaries such as The act of killing are difficult to substantiate, the main problem being attribution, cause and effect. Intervention in the mind of the director seems to follow the logic of a synchronous circuit, where trauma based on revealed truth leads to transitional justice. Each component in the circuit has a corresponding political argument. This article will examine three interrelated arguments linking genocide documentary and political intervention: (1) re-traumatization, (2) power-laden truths and (3) the narrowing of impunity gaps. This article contributes to debates about genocide and intervention by presenting evidence from Indonesia, including rare interviews with the protagonists in Oppenheimer's award-winning film, surveys of Indonesian audiences and data gathered from a global online petition as well as Chinese microblogs in order to better understand how audiences respond to genocide documentaries and why it is so difficult to generate political action outside the theatre.     

Counterterrorism policy in liberal-democratic societies: locating the ethical limits of national security

This article considers the moral limits to national security policies. While it may seem self-evident that there are, and ought to be, limits to counterterrorism policies, there is an increasingly widespread public opinion that political leaders can, and must, do everything they can to protect against terrorist acts. Liberal-democratic societies are facing the threat of domestic terrorism, and for a political leader to say that ‘we cannot stop all terrorist acts and, indeed, neither should we’ would sound the death knell for their career. This article seeks to specify the limiting conditions around counterterrorism policy by reference to policymakers’ public justifications offered for counterterrorism policy. This article presents three normative elements that underpin counterterrorism policy to show that there are important reasons to limit counterterrorism policy, and to suggest that these limits ought to be recognised by political leaders and citizens alike in liberal-democratic societies. Having set out three limiting factors on counterterrorism policy, the article then shows that these factors do indeed play a role in UK counterterrorism policy development—that is, in recognising the justificatory apparatus for national security policies, limiting conditions ought to be found that are sensible to, and accepted by, the proponents of such policies.     

A case of cranial surgery in the Talmud

The history of Jewish discourse on law and philosophy was transformed from an oral teaching to a written teaching around the beginning of the Common Era. The result of these written laws and commentaries is known today as the Talmud. Many pages of the Talmud discuss illnesses and diseases and their potential treatments, however very few of these potential treatments involve invasive surgery. In one instance, involving a painful skin ailment called ra'aton, the authors of the Talmud suggest cranial surgery as the cure and describe the preparation of a potential anesthetic, the surgery environment, and the removal of a growth. Although this account raises several questions about the ailment itself, it provides us with a rare look at invasive cranial surgery dating back nearly 2,000 years.     

Understanding the Vancouver Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Cluster: A Case Study of Public Laboratories and Private Research‡

Conventional analyses of conventional industrial clusters look at the local, regional,1 In this paper “regional” refers to a sub-national entity, such as a state, province, state or collectivity of a few provinces or states. View all notes national and global factors affecting their ability to compete and grow. However, it is beginning to become apparent that in at least a few cutting-edge, high-technology areas, firms compete directly on a global basis for talent and markets. A case study of the fuel cell cluster in Vancouver, Canada appears to confirm this proposition. Policy makers have realized that this cluster must compete on the world market if it is to succeed. The cluster is endowed with several favourable factors including a high quality of life for its human capital and strong support for demonstration projects.     

Landscapes of Urbanization and De-Urbanization: A Large-Scale Approach to Investigating the Indus Civilization’s Settlement Distributions in Northwest India

Survey data play a fundamental role in studies of social complexity. Integrating the results from multiple projects into large-scale analyses encourages the reconsideration of existing interpretations. This approach is essential to understanding changes in the Indus Civilization’s settlement distributions (ca. 2600–1600 b.c.), which shift from numerous small-scale settlements and a small number of larger urban centers to a de-nucleated pattern of settlement. This paper examines the interpretation that northwest India’s settlement density increased as Indus cities declined by developing an integrated site location database and using this pilot database to conduct large-scale geographical information systems (GIS) analyses. It finds that settlement density in northwestern India may have increased in particular areas after ca. 1900 b.c., and that the resulting landscape of de-urbanization may have emerged at the expense of other processes. Investigating the Indus Civilization’s landscapes has the potential to reveal broader dynamics of social complexity across extensive and varied environments.     

The Regional Economic Impact of an Earthquake: Direct and Indirect Effects of Electricity Lifeline Disruptions

This paper develops a methodology to estimate the regional economic impacts of electricity lifeline disruptions caused by a catastrophic earthquake. The methodology is based on specially designed input-output and linear programming models. A simulation of a major earthquake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone near Memphis, Tennessee, indicates the potential production loss over the recovery period could amount to as much as 7 percent of gross regional product. Reallocation of scarce electricity across sectors could reduce the impacts substantially. Additionally, an improved restoration pattern of electricity transmission substations across subareas could reduce losses even more.