Month: January 2008

India’s Role in the Illegal Trafficking of Body Parts

This worrisome story in the New York Times sheds light on an increasingly brazen network of doctors and bandits who have organized an international trafficking ring in human body parts, such as kidneys.  While increasing numbers of Indians, and residents of other less-developed countries willingly sell their kidneys many, like the gentleman in the story, are the victims of deception and fraud.

GURGAON, India — As the anesthetic wore off, Naseem Mohammed said, he felt an acute pain in the lower left side of his abdomen. Fighting drowsiness, he fumbled beneath the unfamiliar folds of a green medical gown and traced his fingers over a bandage attached with surgical tape. An armed guard by the door told him that his kidney had been removed.

Mr. Mohammed was the last of about 500 Indians whose kidneys were removed by a team of doctors running an illegal transplant operation, supplying kidneys to rich Indians and foreigners, police officials said. A few hours after his operation last Thursday, the police raided the clinic and moved him to a government hospital.

Many of the donors were day laborers, like Mr. Mohammed, picked up from the streets with the offer of work, driven to a well-equipped private clinic, and duped or forced at gunpoint to undergo operations. Others were bicycle rickshaw drivers and impoverished farmers who were persuaded to sell their organs, which is illegal in India.

Although several kidney rings have been exposed in India in recent years, the police said the scale of this one was unprecedented. Four doctors, five nurses, 20 paramedics, three private hospitals, 10 pathology clinics and five diagnostic centers were involved, Mohinder Lal, the police officer in charge of the investigation, said.

Human Security Resources

A general trend has developed, amongst governments, academics, and (especially) activists working in IGOs and NGOs worldwide that has moved the focus of security away from traditional concepts–such as protecting borders from external threat–to a new approach that focuses specifically on human security. What is “human security?” Well, the Human Security Report Project, at Vancouver, Canada’s Simon Fraser University, defines human security in this way:

Unlike traditional concepts of security, which focus on defending borders from external military threats, human security is concerned with the security of individuals…

For some proponents of human security, the key threat is violence; for others the threat agenda is much broader, embracing hunger, disease and natural disasters. Largely for pragmatic reasons, the Human Security Report Project has adopted the narrower concept of human security that focuses on protecting individuals and communities from violence.

Traditional security policy emphasizes military means for reducing the risks of war and for prevailing if deterrence fails. Human security’s proponents, while not eschewing the use of force, have focused to a much greater degree on non-coercive approaches. These range from preventive diplomacy, conflict management and post–conflict peacebuilding, to addressing the root causes of conflict by building state capacity and promoting equitable economic development.

The website has an informative and very useful set of links to various organizations, governmental institutions, research institutes, etc., that focus on issues of human security.

Another excellent source for information related to human security is the Human Security Gateway. Below is a thumbnails which will take you to a screen shot of their home page. (Notice the RSS feed icons in the left sidebar.)

human_security_gateway_homepage1.jpg

The History of Warfare since World War II–via Foods Fighting

We spent much of last Friday’s session understanding various realist approaches to international relations and the importance therein of concepts like anarchy, survival, power and war. Here’s a clear–and highly original–attempt to demonstrate the history of world warfare since WWII. For a menu of the foods and which countries they are meant to represent, click here. Before doing so, which foods do you think represent Great Britain, Germany, France, China, and the United States, respectively?  You can view the film here.

Another Foreign Policy List: How to Steal an Election Without Breaking a Sweat

Foreign Policy magazine frequently publishes “lists” that are meant to illuminate, in a sometimes ironic manner, political phenomena that are receiving much discussion.  In a recent issue, the focus turns to elections.   From their introduction:

From Abuja to Islamabad, autocratic regimes have become adept at manipulating “free and fair elections” to stay in power. Here’s how they do it—and how to stop them.

Here is their list, with some real-world examples of each:

  1. Control the process—Kenya’s constitution invests an enormous amount of power in the executive branch. This allowed President Mwai Kibaki to create a vast system of patronage throughout the government based largely on tribal ties. The head of the Electoral Commission of Kenya, Samuel Kivuitu, has recently admitted that he was pressured by the president’s office to announce results before he could verify their authenticity.
  2. Manipulate the media—In the months leading up to the recent presidential election in Georgia, President Mikheil Saakashvili’s government shut down Imedi TV, an opposition-friendly television station founded by one of the president’s rivals and managed by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
  3. Keep out the observers—During the 2005 Egyptian parliamentary elections, judges at individual polling stations made seemingly arbitrary decisions about whether to allow outside monitoring. The result? Some stations were monitored and some were not. Monitors were beaten by police in one southern city, and eight were arrested and released elsewhere.
  4. Misreport results—Nadia Diuk, senior director for Europe and Eurasia at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), relays a tale from Azerbaijan’s 2000 elections: “The light went out in the room where the counting was to take place, and the flashlights of the observers just caught sight of a bundle of ballots sailing through the air to land on the counting table.” [This is my favorite! :)]
  5. Foster incompetence and chaos—Nigeria’s 2007 national and state elections take the chaos prize. Ballots arrived late to polling stations, if at all, or were printed with missing or incorrect information. Polling places and procedures were changed at the last minute. With security lax, reports were rampant of militants harassing voters and youth gangs breaking into polling places and making off with ballot boxes.
  6. Resort to the crude stuff— A favorite tactic in Egypt is to deploy riot police in strategic polling locations to keep out voters for the opposition Muslim Brotherhood—while state employees arrive in buses and are ushered in en masse. In 2005, a bloody showdown in the streets of Alexandria between government-backed thugs wielding machetes and Brotherhood supporters seeking to cast their votes became international news, embarrassing the regime.

The Important Role of the State

A country’s roads and road system can give outsiders a quick and readily available idea of how well that country is governed. Here are some examples:

A video of part of the drive from the Kenyan city of Mombasa (pop. 700,000) to the town of Kilifi (pop. 75,000). (Try to ignore the cackling of the passengers and driver.)

Here are some photographs of the main highway between Moscow and the Siberian city of Yakutsk. The road is a vital federal highway, believe it or not! See many more photographs here.

russian-road-33.jpg

russian-road-24a.jpgrussian-road-25a.jpgsiberia-06-302.jpg

Also take a look at these incredible and frightening photographs from the world’s most dangerous highway. Find many more of these photographs here.

death-road-16.jpg

Mingst and Snyder–Chapter 3 Reading Questions

Morgenthau, Hans–“A Realist Theory of International Politics”
  • Does Morgenthau’s explanation of realist theory focus on any of the levels of analysis in particular? Explain.
  • Morgenthau writes “political realism is aware of the moral significance of political action. It is also aware of the ineluctable tension between the moral command and the requirements of successful political action.” What does he mean by this and why is this important for international relations?
  • How does Morgenthau define political power, and how is it used in internaitonal politics?

Continue reading “Mingst and Snyder–Chapter 3 Reading Questions”

Lies, Damned Lies, and Excel Charts!

I provide links to many sources that collect data on various political phenomena because I think that describing and measuring are extremely useful tools in helping us understand politics. As Mark Twain was well aware, and as I mentioned in PLSC240 today, often-times researchers (and especially!) politicians use data and statistics to obfuscate reality rather than to illuminate. No sooner had I returned to my office than I saw the following chart on the web (courtesy of democrats.org). Here is a typical example of “massaging” the data to promote a preferred interpretation of political reality. Here’s the original chart:

sotu_speeches_11.jpg

The inference that the creators of the chart want the observer to make is that the number of instances of applause from Bush’s State-of-the-Union (SOTU) speeches has, except for a spike in the immediate pre-Iraq invasion period of January 2003, been dropping, and significantly. Notice the range of the y-axis. Why did the chart creators decide to make 55 the minimum value? I have to give them the benefit of the doubt, however, as this seems to be a built-in feature of Excel (that’s why I encourage students to start using R for graphing capabilities). When I created the chart above myself in Excel, the program chose 55 as the minimum value of the y-axis. What would the chart look like if one were to make the y-axis minimum value zero? Here’s the result:

bush_sotu_zero_axis.jpeg

Now, the impression made upon the observer is that the drop in applause is not that great at all, and most likely within the range of what is called “random error”. Which chart is the correct one? Well, one way of determining the right answer to this would be to compare the SOTU applause trends of other presidents. Is every president guaranteed 40 or 50 bursts of applause no matter how lame the speech is or how unpopular the president is amongst those present? If so, then a minimum value on the y-axis of 40 or 50 would be more appropriate than zero, but I don’t know the answer off-hand.

UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset

 

konfliktkart_8908.jpg

The Centre for the Study of Civil War at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) and Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, are the home for the Armed Conflict Dataset.  The dataset allows users access to information on such variables as name of conflict, antagonists, whether/not there was third-party intervention, etc., for all global conflicts between 1946 and 2002.  The website also has other data sources and illuminating charts and graphs, an example of which is reproduced below.

dyads_year_reg1.gif

This chart shows the number of conflicts in various regions of the world over time.

Thanks in part to Hillary and “Obama-san”, fresh image of U.S. Abroad

In Chapter 5, Mingst discusses two main categories of the power of states–tangible and intangible. Amongst the intangible sources of power are national image, public (whether domestic or international) support, and leadership. Based on this article in the Christian Science Monitor, the Democratic primary seems to have increased the level of tangible U.S. power.

Paris – Regardless of which Democrat pulls ahead as the candidates race toward Nevada and South Carolina, the rapid political rise of a Harvard-educated Illinois senator with a Kenyan father is bringing ripples and some tides of excitement in the near and far corners of a weary world.

Who’s The One? Japanese watched the results of the New Hampshire Democratic primary in Tokyo Wednesday. Shizuo Kambayashi/APIt’s clear that the buzz around America’s first realistic black candidate has fed the imagination of many non-US observers, who see the controversial superpower as offering something different…

…”[Barack Obama is] what the rest of the world dreams America can be,” says JacquesMistral, a transatlantic specialist and director of economic studies at the French Institute for International Relations in Paris. “He looks like a Kennedy type, and that he’s black is very new. In Europe, the idea that a woman can win is accepted. But for a black person to win would represent a radical change – for the US, and the world.”

It is too early to say that “Obama-mania” is sweeping the planet, particularly after the junior senator’s second place showing in New Hampshire. The public in Europe and Asia have only recently focused on Mr. Obama, though in Africa he’s been news for some time.

But in a world where nearly every poll shows America’s image seriously dragging after the Iraq war onset, and scant interest in Republicans, Obama has made a significant splash, especially among the young…

…In Japan, where US elections are sometimes taken more seriously than the election of the Japanese prime minister, the rise of Obama is as intriguing a subject as the romance between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the Italian singer Carla Bruni.

“Obama-san is great,” says Azusa Shiraishi, a sophomore at Seinan Gakuin University in Fukuoka. She compares Obama with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and thinks “he could bring different perspectives of the US to us as well as American people. That would be great.”

Roundtable–Globalizing Sport: National Rivalry and International Community in the 1930s

As we discussed in PLSC250, Woodrow Wilson set out an idealistic vision of the post-WWI world in his famous “Fourteen Points” address to Congress in 1918. As we all know, the vision was almost immediately undermined and finally turn asunder when Nazi Germany showed the rest of Europe–and the world–that military and economic power would triumph over cooperation and peace. Barbara J. Keys has written a compelling monograph on a little-researched aspect of that era–the role of sport in international politics. Of course, many are familiar with Hitler’s use of the Berlin Olympics in 1936 as a propaganda tool, but that is but one event. In Globalizing Sport: National Rivalry and International Community in the 1930s, Keys demonstrates “how sports revealed international contact zones as well as distinctive qualities of nationhood.”*   Here is a lengthy excerpt from Thomas Zeiler’s introduction to a roundtable at H-Diplo on the Keys’ book:

  “I see great things in baseball.”  Although we cannot confirm that poet Walt Whitman actually authored this famous quote back in the 1840s, we do know that he later believed the sport to be a shaper of American character that reflected the country’s democratic institutions, striving disposition, and rising geo-political and economic greatness.  In the
middle of the next century, intellectual historian Jacques Barzun also viewed the sport as a mirror of national traits.  In God’s Country and Mine:  A Declaration of Love Spiced with a Few Harsh Words (1954), he offered the oft-quoted words, “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.”  A half century after this publication, we come to Barbara Keys’ masterful work on how sports revealed international contact zones as well as distinctive qualities of nationhood.  Arriving in the age of globalization, her study properlysituates sports as a transnational movement amidst and between the national of Whitman and Barzun and the vast global arena.

Of course, as readers will discover, Keys’ focus is not on baseball, but she does examine the primary influence of nationalism on sporting events, particularly the Olympics movement and also other aspects such as athleticism and soccer.  Among many others, the main contribution of this book to the literature on diplomacy, sports, and culture regards Keys’ analysis of the tension between the manipulation of sports as an expression of national identity and sports’ position as a transnational carrier of culture abroad. 

*From Zeiler’s introduction to the roundtable in H-Diplo.