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A new book symposium launches today, in which guest contributors consider Katharine Millar’s Support the Troops: Military Obligation, Gender, and the Making of Political Community (Oxford, 2022). Katharine is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics. Her broad research interests lie in examining the gendered cultural narratives … Continue reading Support the Troops: Military Obligation, Gender, and the Making of Political Community

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This is my marmalade-making time of the year. Not because it's the only time I can get hold of Seville oranges – I can get hold of the MaMade tins any time of year, and have only ever gotten fresh ones to use one time that I happened to visit a friend in Arizona who […]

In this blog, we hear from APHA's Hira Naveed as she explains why she is proud to champion International Day for Women in Statistics and Data Science.

It is important, when considering immigration into the UK, to distinguish between migrants who come here to improve their lot in life and asylum seekers, who come to escape civil war or persecution in their home countries.Some who cross the channel and enter illegally are not asylum seekers, with a high proportion being economic migrants. They already have asylum in France. 45,755 crossed the channel in dinghies in 2022 and were not immediately returned. The system allows lawyers to tell people to claim they were trafficked in order to claim to be asylum seekers instead of the economic migrants they actually are.The UK has lost control of its borders, while qualified and skilled would-be legal immigrants face daunting costs, paperwork and delays. The two issues both have to be addressed if the problem is to be resolved.        For skilled personnel and those with jobs waiting in the UK, the solution is to auction visas that would allow them to come and settle and work. The visas would be paid for, not by the applicants, but by the firms wishing to employ them, and the auction process would ensure that those admitted would be the ones who would add the highest value to the British economy. This could be streamlined, with offices in the countries from which applicants sought to come to the UK. The UK could decide the overall numbers, and then have British and international firms bidding for the numbers they wanted to employ here.Several countries, including the US and some EU members, make business (or 'golden') visas available, sometimes with a fast track to citizenship, for those who invest a minimum sum or who purchase a requisite amount of property in the country. This ensures that the recipients will be net economic contributors to the countries they apply to. The UK should establish a similar scheme for foreign nationals prepared to invest here.For those who are crossing the channel in small boats, the policy should be to make it clear that those who enter the country illegally will not be allowed to stay. It must be resolved by Parliament that no international or European court will interfere with this determination. Instead of being housed in hotels or barges or other temporary accommodation, they should be immediately deported with no process that will prevent this. Australia and Denmark have used versions of this policy.Much more could and should be done to prevent them from coming in the first place. Just as people who buy used cars with cash are subject to surveillance in case terrorist use is planned, the UK, in cooperation with its European allies, should establish that purchasers of dinghies should be subject to surveillance to determine if they have any legitimate uses for them. It might be useful to have tracking devices incorporated into dinghies so that their movements can be tracked.Once it becomes more difficult for illegal crossings to be made, and there is certainty that none who do so will be allowed to stay, the UK will have reasserted control over its borders and will be able to process those applying to come here legitimately to take up jobs, or who are genuine asylum seekers, usually wishing to join relatives in the UK, and can be admitted as part of the UK's humanitarian contribution to a worldwide problem.

Die größten Social Media Plattformen haben ein Problem mit Desinformation. Insbesondere auf X, vormals Twitter, war nach dem Terroranschlag der Hamas am 07.10.2023 und dem Beginn des Krieges in der Ukraine eine Flut an Falschinformationen feststellbar. Daher hat die EU-Kommission vor Kurzem mitgeteilt, dass sie ein förmliches Verfahren nach Art. 66 Abs. 1 Digital Services Act (DSA) gegen X eingeleitet hat. Gegenstand der Untersuchung ist unter anderem, ob die Plattform hinreichend gegen dieses Problem vorgeht. X setzt dabei alles auf eine Karte: Wie aus dem X Transparency Report vom 03.11.2023 geschlossen werden kann, unterliegen Desinformationen nicht der sog. Content Moderation, sondern ihnen soll allein durch den Einsatz eines neuen Tools entgegengewirkt werden. Das heißt, dass die Nutzerinhalte auf X von Seiten des Betreiberunternehmens weder durch Algorithmen noch durch dazu beauftragte Personen auf Falschinformationen kontrolliert werden.

The Cross-Government and Public Sector Data Science Community provides regular opportunities for people in the public sector, with an interest in data science, to connect with their peers, learn new skills and collaborate. This autumn, we are hosting the first …

At the PPIC Water Policy Center, we've studied ecosystem restoration issues such as the importance of restoring more natural flow patterns, improving permitting, and storing water for the environment. This year, we brought in three CalTrout Ecosystem Fellows to look at another major challenge in river restoration: community engagement. This is the first of four posts on the topic!

I recommend Evan Ellis' post at Global Americans on his recently completed year at the U.S. State Department Policy Planning Staff. He now returns to the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute. It is a useful read both for its insider look and its discussion of "why does this matter?"Here is a key point:The problem is also compounded by the fundamental orientation of the State Department to tell our partners what we think and want, rather than listening to what they think and want. While seasoned diplomats know better in their personal interaction, I observed the balance of the work that came across my desk to be about "transmitting" rather than "receiving." Every high-level meeting involves the preparation of "talking points" seeking to advance an agenda, too seldom did they include questions about what our partners thought or needed.This echoes Lars Schoultz's In Their Own Best Interest, where he questions all "uplifting" aid, the effects of which are never measured. We can check boxes on delivery and execution, but not on whether it actually makes lives better. Making lives better requires starting with what our partners actually want. This has often been true, but is accentuated in the Trump era.In my own work, I did not see substantial evidence that the strategy and policy documents of each organization are actively used as guides to action by the other, beyond superficial references to fundamental documents such as the National Security Strategy. I also witnessed and participated in the drafting of some interagency documents, but beyond the somewhat useful exercise of meeting and coordinating about their wording, I did not perceive that the result meaningfully impacted the direction of either state or the other U.S. government entities involved.This is clearly a Trump administration problem, though past administrations were clearly not immune.  Unlike the past, though, the essential problem now is that policy is made by tweet, with government agencies scrambling to interpret it just like the rest of us. How do you feel like you're doing something meaningful when the president ignores you?I appreciate these kinds of perspectives. As a side note, as he does not address it, I know a number of people who have moved from academia to policy making and back, and I know their view of of the relevance and accuracy of academic work changed dramatically. I have not felt great temptation to try the policy making world myself, even as I recognize that even in small doses it would make us better analysts. Subscribe in a reader

Last year, I received an email asking if I would write an introductory essay for the Tor Essentials reissue of Kim Stanley Robinson's novel Icehenge. It took me approximately thirty seconds to convince myself that this was not some kind of hallucination, and another three or four to type YES! OF COURSE!!! and hit reply. It […]

Security cooperation and military aid efforts can fail, but they can also exceed expectations and provide strategic benefits. Ukraine appears to be one such success. For a relatively modest investment between 2014 and 2021, the United States has reaped a substantial gain in terms of Ukraine's military capacity and efficacy.

Under its terms of reference, one of the tasks of the 2024 independent review of Australia's national intelligence community is to consider whether the NIC's workforce decision-making reflects 'a sufficiently strategic response to current and ...

Die Beauty-Community boomt auf der Videoplattform YouTube. Die sich dort präsentierenden "Schminkmädchen" und "Beauty-Tussis" werden nicht nur häufig belächelt, sondern auch dafür kritisiert, dass sie...

Kendra Albert (Harvard Law School) has posted Imagine A Community: Obscenity's History and Moderating Speech Online (25 YALE J.L. & TECH. SPECIAL ISSUE 59 (2023)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This essay walks through the history of the "community"...