From Empire to Iraq and the "War on Terror": The Transplanation and Commodification of the (Northern) Irish Policing Experience

Charting the enduring export appeal of policing models from (Northern) Ireland, this article sheds some light on the processes by which policing models are communicated and actively promoted to the global policing environment. The authors demonstrate how the transplantation of the Irish colonial model (ICM) represents an early example of the globalization of policing. The legacy of counterinsurgency expertise embedded within the ICM remains a historical constant and is a key factor in relation to the increasing commodification of the contemporary Northern Irish policing model, a model that successfully blends counterterrorism experience with a template for democratic policing reform. By juxtaposing these models, the authors provide a conceptual framework through which to assess the contemporary substance of policing transfer. The authors conclude by suggesting that the seductiveness of these policing models is largely attributable to lessons in counterinsurgency and notions of "Ireland as the solution" to a host of complex security scenarios.

Area laws and entanglement distillability of thermal states

We study the entanglement distillability properties of thermal states of many-body systems Following the ideas presented in [6, A Ferraro et al., Phys. Rev Lett 100, 080502 (2008)], we first discuss the appearance of bound entanglement in those systems satisfying an entanglement area law Then, we extend these results to other topologies, not necessarily satisfying an entanglement area law We also study whether bound entanglement survives in the macroscopic limit of an infinite number of particles.

Voyage(s) to Sarajevo: Jean-Luc Godard and the Image of War

This essay discusses Jean-Luc Godard’s artistic response to the Bosnian War (1992-95), and its representations in the Western mass media. For Godard, the reluctance of Europe’s advanced liberal democracies to intervene meaningfully in Bosnia – their insistence that 'humanitarianism' rather than protective intervention was the order of the day – was tantamount to supporting Serbian fascism, and – a fortiori – regressing to a policy of appeasement reminiscent of the days of the Munich Agreement. Although Godard's stance set him against some of his former compatriots on the left, speculating on his ideological motivations is beside the point. Rather, it is is in his filmmaking, in his vision of cinema, and how it relates to other histories of the image, that Godard’s sensibility can be most keenly felt and understood. As the essay points out, even his recent contribution to Jean-Michel Frodon's compilation film, Bridges of Sarajevo/Les ponts de Sarajevo (2014, 114 mn.), persists in posing questions about how the past continues to shape the present, and how Sarajevo and its contemporary history still delineates the identity of Europe. 

The Climate of War: Violence, Warfare and Climatic Reductionism

National security agencies and other interested parties now often regard conflict as the inevitable consequence of climate change. This inclination to reduce war to the vicissitudes of climate is not new however. Here I examine some of the earlier ways in which violence was attributed to climatic conditions, particularly in the United States, and trace links between these older advocates of climatic determinism and the recent writings of those insisting that climate change will usher in a grim world of chronic warfare. It ends by drawing attention to the writings of some critics who are troubled by the ease with which climatic reductionism is capturing the public imagination.

Review of Mark F. Chingono. The State, Violence and Development. The Political Economy of War in Mozambique, 1975–1992.

Book review of: Mark F. Chingono. The State, Violence and Development. The Political Economy of War in Mozambique, 1975–1992. Avebury (Aldershot, Brookfield USA, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney), 1996. 291 pp. Foreword by Keith Hart. Tables. Appendix. Selected Bibliography. Index. £42.00. $71.95. Cloth.