Any Nearer to Victory in the Fifty Years War?:Assessing the European Commission’s Leadership, Weapons and Strategies towards combating Cartels

Some 50 years after its creation EU competition policy remains firmly entrenched as one of the most developed examples of supranational governance within the European Union. Although there has been a marked increase in interest among political scientists in competition policy in recent years there are still gaps in terms of overall coverage. One area that has been largely overlooked centres on cartels. Cartel policy has emerged as a highly salient issue and main priority of the Commission's competition policy since the late 1990s. Certainly, the recent restructuring of the EU cartel enforcement regime, the imposition of ever higher fines and a determined EU Competition Commissioner have fuelled growing media attention while new notices and regulations increasingly occupy the interests and minds of practitioners. The European Commission has constantly extended its activities on the competition policy front and its increasingly aggressive strategies to combat cartels provides political scientists with a fascinating case study of governance in action and illustrates the ways – such as leniency programmes, higher fines, enhanced and better equipped resources as well as internal reorganisation in which the European regulator is pursuing such conspiracies. This article traces the evolution and development of EU cartel policy since its inception and assesses the Commission's strategies and considers just to what extent the European Commission is winning its war against business cartelisation.

Phenomenology and system engineering of micro- and nano-antenna FPA sensors for detection of concealed weapons and improvised explosive devices

The ability of millimetre wave and terahertz systems to penetrate clothing is well known. The fact that the transmission of clothing and the reflectivity of the body vary as a function of frequency is less so. Several instruments have now been developed to exploit this capability. The choice of operating frequency, however, has often been associated with the maturity and the cost of the enabling technology rather than a sound systems engineering approach. Top level user and systems requirements have been derived to inform the development of design concepts. Emerging micro and nano technology concepts have been reviewed and we have demonstrated how these can be evaluated against these requirements by simulation using OpenFx. Openfx is an open source suite of 3D tools for modeling, animation and visualization which has been modified for use at millimeter waves. © 2012 SPIE.

Standoff detection of weapons and contraband in the 100 GHz to 1 THz region

The techniques and technologies currently being investigated to detect weapons and contraband concealed on persons under clothing are reviewed. The basic phenomenology of the atmosphere and materials that must be understood in order to realize such a system are discussed. The component issues and architectural designs needed to realize systems are outlined. Some conclusions with respect to further technology developments are presented.

Locally Unwanted Sea Use: The Case of Syrian Chemical weapons disposal in the Mediterranean

This paper discusses the opposition to the disposal of Syrian chemical weapons in the Mediterranean Sea. Following insights from Green criminology and recent calls in that discipline for the inclusion of new social movements and resistance, it discusses in detail how the issue was framed in terms of environmental and ecological justice by different protest actors. This process is aided by an analytical model that brings together the sociology of protest and social movements, insights from reflexive modernisation and the study of southern European civil societies. Methodologically, the focus is on mobilisations that took place in Greece in general and the island of Crete in particular. Data have been harvested through the examination of online sources, such as newspapers, blogs and dedicated social networks. The analysis of the findings suggests that these mobilisations were initially stimulated by real concern, but subsequently these were only carried through by certain movement entrepreneurs who didn’t hesitate to pepper these concerns with false claims and/or linkages to an already active anti-imperialist discourse.

Invention and uninvention in nuclear weapons politics

If there is one uncontroversial point in nuclear weapons politics it is that uninventing nuclear weapons is impossible. This article seeks to make this claim controversial by showing that it is premised on attenuated understandings of invention and the status of objects operative through familiar but problematic conceptual dualisms. The claimed impossibility of uninvention is an assertion that invention is irreversible. Drawing on “new materialism” this article produces a different understanding of invention, reinvention, and uninvention as ontologically similar practices of techno-political invention. On the basis of empirical material on the invention and re-invention of nuclear weapons, and an in-depth ethnography of laboratories inventing a portable radiation detector, both the process of invention and the “objects” themselves (weapons and detectors) are shown to be fragile and not wholly irreversible processes of assembling diverse actors (human and non-human) and provisionally stabilizing their relations. Nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented! Why not?