Suchergebnisse

In the rapidly evolving landscape of global politics, harnessing the power of digital technology has become paramount. With Bangladesh's election due by January 2024, the confluence of technology, women’s leadership, and cybersecurity is taking center stage.   To build the capacity of women political leaders in the digital space for the upcoming election, IRI conducted three […]
The post Equipping Women Leaders to Thrive in the Digital Age of Politics appeared first on International Republican Institute.

By curious coincidence, three prominent leaders have been put on trial in recent days for multiple serious crimes against their respective nations. The very different ways in which the trials were conducted, their impact on democracy, and the public reactions deserve examination.

Lessons from the International Criminal Court and the Special Court for Sierra Leone

Conference
3,4 May 2012
Freetown, Sierra Leone

International criminal justice has become a weapon in political struggles in different African states. International court and tribunals, whilst often portrayed as legal bastions immune from politics, have proven to be inherently political. Depending on the definition of what counts as 'political', the politics of international criminal justice can be found at different levels. For instance, international criminal courts are created by political decisions, adjudicate crimes which are frequently related to politics, and depend on a mysterious and seemingly magical 'political will' for the enforcement of their decisions. Moreover, recent studies have shown how the International Criminal Court has become implicated in political struggles by making a distinction between the friends and enemies of the international community which it purports to represent.

This conference studies the politics of international criminal justice at these different stages. Some of the main questions include:
• How should the politics of international criminal justice be conceptualized? What theoretical approaches are helpful in articulating the political aspects of criminal courts and tribunals?
• What lessons can be learned from experiences in countries affected by interventions of international criminal courts? What is the political role of international criminal courts in countries such as Sierra Leone, Uganda, Congo, Sudan, Central African Republic or Kenya?
• How can we improve the accountability of those engaged in the politics of international criminal justice?

The conference brings together academics from different disciplines, including international law and political science, and practitioners in the field of law and politics (including diplomats, politicians, judges, legal counsels). While its main focus is on the International Criminal Court and the Special Court for Sierra Leone, contributions from other areas of international criminal justice are welcomed as well.

Submissions and selection
If you would like to participate in the conference, please send us a 500-750 words abstract of the paper you plan to present before February 1st 2012. We will select a maximum of 10 papers that can be presented at the conference. Early submissions are welcomed. If you are invited to present, we would like to receive a short position paper two weeks before the conference. The position paper should be max. 2500 words, outlining the main argument.

Please send your paper proposal to:
Prof. dr. W.G. Werner
w.werner@rechten.vu.nl

Conference fee
The fee for the conference is 100 Euro. The money from the fees will be used to provide financial support for scholars or practitioners from (West-)African countries coming to the conference. If you would like to receive such support, please let us know before February 15th 2012.
Attendees from African countries are entitled to a waiver of the fee.

Israel targeted senior Hamas leaders, including Marwan Issa, the deputy of Mohammad Deif, in an airstrike overnight between March 10 and 11. Hamas continues to operate from the area of Nuseirat and other areas in the "central camps" area of Gaza, where the strike took place. Israel is still assessing the results of the strike, the IDF said on March 11.
The post IDF targets Hamas leaders in Gaza first appeared on FDD's Long War Journal.

Fundamental change is needed as many women near burnout, amid mounting social challenges and work-life imbalance.

In this post we welcome a discussion by guest authors on the recent volume Batman Saves the Congo: How Celebrities Disrupt the Politics of Development, by Alexandra Budabin and Lisa Ann Richey (University of Minnesota Press, 2021). The authors appreciate the critical feedback from Johanna Jarvela on this discussion. This book analyses what celebrity strategic … Continue reading Batman, White Saviourism and International Politics: A Colloquium

The European Union must find a collective and distinctive voice to seek to rein in Israel's bombardment of Gaza.

"Unity through Diversity" was the focus of the second annual Moldova Youth Forum, hosted by the International Republican Institute (IRI). This year's forum took place in Comrat, the capital of Moldova's Gagauzia region, from June 30 to July 2. The forum featured more than a dozen panels focusing on how to include the new generation […]
The post IRI's Second Moldova Youth Forum: Uniting Future Leaders appeared first on International Republican Institute.

Two distinguished Californians—John Chiang and Dave Puglia—joined PPIC's board of directors yesterday. Together, they bring to our organization a wealth of leadership experience, a strong record of public service, and a rich knowledge of the forces shaping our state.

David VitaleRaphaël Girard (University of Warwick - School of Law and University of Exeter - Law School) has posted Public Trust and the Populist Leader: A Theoretical Argument ((2022) 11 Global Constitutionalism 548) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This...

When under pressure, people revert to their true
natures. And insofar as political leadership goes, in the final session of the
2020-24 term of the Louisiana what we saw from the Legislature leadership was
ugly, hopefully the last gasp of a mentality that has left Louisiana in tatters.

In the House of Representatives, Republicans
Speaker Clay
Schexnayder and Pro Tem Tanner Magee
have come under much fire for their handling of the session. It all crystallized
in the last week of the session, when they muscled through a resolution
allowing state government to spend, as opposed to banking, about 10 percent
more of transitory revenue generation, and in the final half-hour of the
session, when most of the spending bills were presented for members' approval
with hardly any of them knowing any details about what they were asked on which
to vote.

This failure of leadership occurred at two levels,
beginning with their unwise squandering of dollars ahead of a bleaker revenue picture.
The Revenue
Estimating Conference foresees fiscal year taxes, licenses, and fees
falling from $15.277 billion in fiscal year 2024 to $15.103 billion in FY 2025,
$14.666 billion in FY 2026, then a bump upwards to $14.936 billion in FY 2027 –
a drop of over a billion bucks from FY 2023 just wrapping up. Given that new
commitments (at least in intention) of around $320 million annually were doled
out for education alone starting in 2024, maintaining this total level of
spending will be difficult.

This leads to consideration whether this
budget isn't some kind of poison pill left to the next governor and
Legislature. Frontrunner GOP Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry has made no secret of
wanting to rein in government, and neither is hidden the distaste that Schexnayder
and Republican Sen. Pres. Page
Cortez have for Landry and those legislators sympathetic to Landry's
right-sizing goal, who certainly would gain considerable power in the Legislature
with Landry in office.

Of course, one goal with the bloated budget was to
allow its backers to puff their chests out with pride in to leave in the history
books or as a resume-builder for future elections the fact that they "gave"
stuff to the people (as if one can be made a gift of your own resources; it's
not legislators' money, it's the people's) – a legacy of Louisiana's liberal
populism where politicians seeks to hoard as much money as they can then distribute
it as a way that makes themselves seem indispensable to the wellbeing of the
polity. But another motive also was using it as a tool of payback against those
with a different vision.

It's all right to have competing visions, where
the Schexnayders and Magees of the world take the grasshopper version of
blowing it all now in the face of a certain looming winter, and the fiscal
conservatives who voted against the enabling resolution to do this adhere to
the ant version of saving to deal with that future. Realize as well a good portion
of the excess spending authority went to non-priority items, mainly
transportation infrastructure, while $237 million went towards more critical things
such as stabilizing property insurance markets and coastal protection – which could
have been afforded without busting the cap. There absolutely was no need to
spend so much at this time.

For their trouble, most of the fiscal
conservatives had Schexnayder yank
their capital projects from the supplemental bill after the successful vote
to violate the cap. This turned into a tag team effort when liberal big spender
Democrat Gov. John
Bel Edwards subsequently used
his line item vetoes on those in the regular capital outlay bill.

The grasshopper view is a flawed vision and in and
of itself may disqualify those who follow it from being entrusted with elective
office. It's why Louisiana has lurched from fiscal crisis to fiscal crisis
historically while remaining relatively overtaxed, which manifested in the Edwards
era – who backed Schexnayder for Speaker and with whom has cooperated in
keeping bloated government – as declining
population and stagnant job and wage growth contrary to most other states.

But truly reprehensibly about these people is their
avoidance of taking responsibility for this and trying to blame others for their
failures. This excuse-making stems not just from bad policy-making, but from
bad leadership as an extension of trying to explain away policy mistakes.
Remarks by both Schexnayder and Magee after the session attempted to address widespread
complaints about budget priorities and the zero transparency involved in its
promulgation that hardly
was distinguishable from budgeting in the heyday of the Soviet Union.

In a radio interview, Magee (like
Cortez before him) adopted the spousal abuser role by blaming the victims
in causing the budgetary chaos, saying "You have a group of lawmakers who are
more interested in making headlines about obstructing government than they are
about doing the people's work." Note the breath-taking arrogance of this remark:
equating a desire to spend less as "obstructing … the people's work" and attempting
to cancel legitimation of opposition to his big-spending agenda, as well as the
avoidance of responsibility for his cabal's cutting $100 million out of health
care in the operating budget and $136 million out of Jimmie Davis Bridge
funding in the capital outlay budget.

In media remarks, Schexnayder attempted even more
vigorously to distance himself from accusations of failure to budget responsibly
and transparently. Also assuming the spousal abuser role by calling those who
voted against raising the cap "a small group of blockers, instead of helpers" –
similar to Magee voicing a sentiment that trying to keep government spending
under control was illegitimate – he mischaracterized outside assessments of the
budget in trying to defend his actions as the chief budget architect (and who
sat on the conference committees that approved removing dissenters' projects,
as did Magee, and the bridge money). "Someone sent me PAR
[Public Affairs Research Council] and CABL[Council
for a Better Louisiana]'s evaluations of the budget. The budget is a good
budget; a good, conservative budget that moves our state forward. That has
excellent projects in it."

PAR did say the operating, capital, and supplemental
bills had "many state priorities and positive developments," but also noted that
those "were overshadowed by the messy way lawmakers handled the spending of
taxpayer dollars" and "lawmakers wasted tens of millions on favored projects
for their districts that don't represent state priorities. They continued
unnecessary giveaways through tax break programs with uncertainty about their
long-term impact on the state treasury. And they stripped hundreds of millions
of dollars from the state health department with no idea what the impact might
be on services to the poor, elderly and people with developmental disabilities."

CABL noted that "lawmakers did enact spending
bills that make many wise investments in the future of Louisiana" where for the
"most part it spends non-recurring revenue on one-time expenses, mostly
infrastructure projects." But it also declared "there needs to be more time and
transparency when making decisions over such huge sums of money" and "It also
remains to be seen what the fiscal impact of this session's spending will mean
in a couple of years when some current taxes are removed from the State General
Fund."

Regarding these and other critiques of how the
process was handled, Schexnayder followed the playbook by saying this could
have been avoided if only the fiscal conservatives hadn't dissented. But that's
a failure of leadership in that only at the last minute relatively speaking did
Schexnayder convince enough of them to back a breach – by promising to retain
the majority of dollars to pay down unfunded pensions and use much of the authorized
excess on one-time expenses – and then he had an entire day after to clear up everything.
Maybe if he hadn't spent so much time trying to find ways to punish dissenters
he might not have produced such shoddy results.

And his laughable assertion that dissenters
deliberately disengaged themselves from the process so they didn't know about
contents is absurd on its face since he went out of his way to punish them, a
style of leadership that doesn't invite participation of your opponents. Nor does
it address similar complaints from others who voted to bust the cap.

These attitudes and behaviors by Schexnayder and Magee,
as representations of legislative leadership and policy-making, reveal
everything that is wrong with Louisiana and why it has fallen so far behind
other states by squandering its resources. Making mistakes and blaming others, neither
wisely nor warily, only continues a long history state politicians of doing the same. As for the
future as they and others who think like them seek elective office, voters
should know Schexnayder and Magee are the problem and having nothing to do with
the solution.

Philip Liste 2011, Völkerrecht-Sprechen: Die Konstruktion demokratischer
Völkerrechtspolitik in den USA und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Baden-Baden: Nomos (Studien der Hessischen Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, Bd. 11)
Details: http://www.nomos-shop.de/13672

Three prominent dual hatted Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders serve in key positions within the Taliban establishment, according to the United Nationals Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team. The Taliban is providing Al Qaeda with key support, including "welfare payments" and passports.
The post Al Qaeda leaders are prominently serving in Taliban government first appeared on FDD's Long War Journal.

Colleen Hroncich


LeDonna Griffin spent nearly 30 years in Omaha public schools as a teacher and administrator. So she's seen it all—the good, the bad, and the ugly. She knew the challenges in the system, and she was pretty sure she could help families create better options for their kids.
"One of the powerful things I often saw was that children were in their safest place—I mean emotionally, physically, ability to learn new information—in the home," says LeDonna. "With COVID happening and parents feeling very flustered in marginalized communities and looking for alternatives, Leaders to Legends came into existence out of a need. It was a need first. And then it all naturally took place."
Leaders to Legends started out as a consulting company assisting families with various education issues. The homeschool co‐​op came about from parents who were frustrated and told LeDonna "I can no longer have my child experiencing a lack of success." She started with one family asking for homeschool support and it grew from there. "We began in the public library at no fee and started to meet with multiple families. Within three months' time, we outgrew the library and are now housed in a building that we call the Parent Resource Center," she recalls.
The co‐​op currently meets three days a week, Tuesday through Thursday, year round. The families have a lot of control over the co-op—they vote on which curriculum to follow in each subject as well as different aspects of how the co‐​op is run. The school day often starts with affirmations, where they talk about why they attend Leaders to Legends—to grow to be their best self and make the world a better place. "Our whole model is based around 'how can I make the world a better place?'" LeDonna explains. "We have a whole mission and vision of building a healthy community that goes out and builds other healthy communities. So it just becomes a natural thing and doesn't take work—it's just 'this is who we are.' And that is the goal of Leaders to Legends."







The co‐​op also covers traditional academic subjects. For history, they typically use some type of unit study. "We just completed a George Washington Carver unit study," LeDonna says. "And then we had an open house where parents were invited, and they explained to the parents everything they learned—although parents are learning right along with them and doing some of the curriculum at home. It was a great way for them to practice public speaking." Each day there's a different special class, too: martial arts is on Tuesday, Wednesday is music class, and sewing is on Thursday. For music class, the students got to pick which instruments they're learning—half chose piano and half chose drums.







In this past school year, there were seven families with 17 children participating. LeDonna is hosting homeschool information sessions over the summer and has had quite a bit of interest. She expects to have 15 to 20 families enrolled by August. "The tides are definitely turning where parents are saying my child deserves a quality education and this is how I'm going to get them there," she says.
When asked what advice she would have for anyone who is considering starting a homeschool co‐​op, LeDonna doesn't hesitate. "The nature of homeschool itself is parent driven, right? My advice would be to allow the parents to drive this thing. Parents have a lot to say; it's unfortunate that not often enough are they asked. Coming from the public school sector, not often enough are they asked. If they're given that space, you'd be amazed what they can do and put together and invest in providing a quality education for their child."

On November 11, 2022, the Armed Forces of Ukraine successfully regained control of the right bank of the Kherson region, including the city of Kherson, from Russian occupation. Although this is a significant achievement, the region continues to face ongoing challenges. Despite the successful liberation of the entirety of the right bank of Kherson region, […]
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