The Falkland Islands War of 1982: a legal, diplomatic and strategic evaluation

The Falkland Islands War of 1982 was fought over competing claims to sovereignty over a group of islands off the east coast of South America. The dispute was between Argentina and the United Kingdom. Argentina claims the islands under rights to Spanish succession, the fact that they lie off the Argentine coast line and that in 1833 Great Britain took the islands illegally and by force. The United Kingdom claims the islands primarily through prescription--the fact that they have governed the islands in a peaceful, continuous and public manner since 1833. The British also hold that the population living on the islands, roughly eighteen hundred British descendants, should be able to decide their own future. The United Kingdom also lays claim to the islands through rights of discovery and settlement, although this claim has always been challenged by Spain who until 1811 governed the islands. Both claims have legal support, and the final decision if there will ever be one is difficult to predict. Sadly today the ultimate test of sovereignty does not come through international law but remains in the idea that "He is sovereign who can defend his sovereignty." The years preceding the Argentine invasion of 1982 witnessed many diplomatic exchanges between The United Kingdom and Argentina over the future of the islands. During this time the British sent signals to Argentina that ii implied a decline in British resolve to hold the islands and demonstrated that military action did more to further the talks along than did actual negotiations. The Argentine military junta read these signals and decided that they could take the islands in a quick military invasion and that the United Kingdom would consider the act as a fait accompli and would not protest the invasion. The British in response to this claimed that they never signaled to Argentina that a military solution was acceptable to them and launched a Royal Navy task force to liberate the islands. Both governments responded to an international crisis with means that were designed both to resolve the international crisis and increase the domestic popularity of the government. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was facing an all-time low in popularity for post-War Prime Ministers while Argentine President General Galtieri needed to gain mass popular support so he could remain a viable President after he was scheduled to lose command of the army and a seat on the military junta that ran the country. The military war for the Falklands is indicative of the nature of modern warfare between Third World countries. It shows that the gap in military capabilities between Third and First World countries is narrowing significantly. Modern warfare between a First and Third World country is no longer a 'walk over' for the First World country.

The law of the sea: the United States, Canada and the deep seabed

The Falkland Islands War of 1982 was fought over competing claims to sovereignty over a group of islands off the east coast of South America. The dispute was between Argentina and the United Kingdom. Argentina claims the islands under rights to Spanish succession, the fact that they lie off the Argentine coast line and that in 1833 Great Britain took the islands illegally and by force. The United Kingdom claims the islands primarily through prescription--the fact that they have governed the islands in a peaceful, continuous and public manner since 1833. The British also hold that the population living on the islands, roughly eighteen hundred British descendants, should be able to decide their own future. The United Kingdom also lays claim to the islands through rights of discovery and settlement, although this claim has always been challenged by Spain who until 1811 governed the islands. Both claims have legal support, and the final decision if there will ever be one is difficult to predict. Sadly today the ultimate test of sovereignty does not come through international law but remains in the idea that "He is sovereign who can defend his sovereignty." The years preceding the Argentine invasion of 1982 witnessed many diplomatic exchanges between The United Kingdom and Argentina over the future of the islands. During this time the British sent signals to Argentina that ii implied a decline in British resolve to hold the islands and demonstrated that military action did more to further the talks along than did actual negotiations. The Argentine military junta read these signals and decided that they could take the islands in a quick military invasion and that the United Kingdom would consider the act as a fait accompli and would not protest the invasion. The British in response to this claimed that they never signaled to Argentina that a military solution was acceptable to them and launched a Royal Navy task force to liberate the islands. Both governments responded to an international crisis with means that were designed both to resolve the international crisis and increase the domestic popularity of the government. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was facing an all-time low in popularity for post-War Prime Ministers while Argentine President General Galtieri needed to gain mass popular support so he could remain a viable President after he was scheduled to lose command of the army and a seat on the military junta that ran the country. The military war for the Falklands is indicative of the nature of modern warfare between Third World countries. It shows that the gap in military capabilities between Third and First World countries is narrowing significantly. Modern warfare between a First and Third World country is no longer a 'walk over' for the First World country.

Feature Selection and Classification Using Age Layered Population Structure Genetic Programming

The curse of dimensionality is a major problem in the fields of machine learning, data mining and knowledge discovery. Exhaustive search for the most optimal subset of relevant features from a high dimensional dataset is NP hard. Sub–optimal population based stochastic algorithms such as GP and GA are good choices for searching through large search spaces, and are usually more feasible than exhaustive and deterministic search algorithms. On the other hand, population based stochastic algorithms often suffer from premature convergence on mediocre sub–optimal solutions. The Age Layered Population Structure (ALPS) is a novel metaheuristic for overcoming the problem of premature convergence in evolutionary algorithms, and for improving search in the fitness landscape. The ALPS paradigm uses an age–measure to control breeding and competition between individuals in the population. This thesis uses a modification of the ALPS GP strategy called Feature Selection ALPS (FSALPS) for feature subset selection and classification of varied supervised learning tasks. FSALPS uses a novel frequency count system to rank features in the GP population based on evolved feature frequencies. The ranked features are translated into probabilities, which are used to control evolutionary processes such as terminal–symbol selection for the construction of GP trees/sub-trees. The FSALPS metaheuristic continuously refines the feature subset selection process whiles simultaneously evolving efficient classifiers through a non–converging evolutionary process that favors selection of features with high discrimination of class labels. We investigated and compared the performance of canonical GP, ALPS and FSALPS on high–dimensional benchmark classification datasets, including a hyperspectral image. Using Tukey’s HSD ANOVA test at a 95% confidence interval, ALPS and FSALPS dominated canonical GP in evolving smaller but efficient trees with less bloat expressions. FSALPS significantly outperformed canonical GP and ALPS and some reported feature selection strategies in related literature on dimensionality reduction.

Feature Selection and Classification Using Age Layered Population Structure Genetic Programming

The curse of dimensionality is a major problem in the fields of machine learning, data mining and knowledge discovery. Exhaustive search for the most optimal subset of relevant features from a high dimensional dataset is NP hard. Sub–optimal population based stochastic algorithms such as GP and GA are good choices for searching through large search spaces, and are usually more feasible than exhaustive and determinis- tic search algorithms. On the other hand, population based stochastic algorithms often suffer from premature convergence on mediocre sub–optimal solutions. The Age Layered Population Structure (ALPS) is a novel meta–heuristic for overcoming the problem of premature convergence in evolutionary algorithms, and for improving search in the fitness landscape. The ALPS paradigm uses an age–measure to control breeding and competition between individuals in the population. This thesis uses a modification of the ALPS GP strategy called Feature Selection ALPS (FSALPS) for feature subset selection and classification of varied supervised learning tasks. FSALPS uses a novel frequency count system to rank features in the GP population based on evolved feature frequencies. The ranked features are translated into probabilities, which are used to control evolutionary processes such as terminal–symbol selection for the construction of GP trees/sub-trees. The FSALPS meta–heuristic continuously refines the feature subset selection process whiles simultaneously evolving efficient classifiers through a non–converging evolutionary process that favors selection of features with high discrimination of class labels. We investigated and compared the performance of canonical GP, ALPS and FSALPS on high–dimensional benchmark classification datasets, including a hyperspectral image. Using Tukey’s HSD ANOVA test at a 95% confidence interval, ALPS and FSALPS dominated canonical GP in evolving smaller but efficient trees with less bloat expressions. FSALPS significantly outperformed canonical GP and ALPS and some reported feature selection strategies in related literature on dimensionality reduction.