Fanning the flames: How the European Union is fuelling a new arms race - Executive Summary

At the time of writing in March 2022, a war has broken out in eastern Europe following the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops. Towards the end of 2021 unrest in the Balkans came close to boiling point. Tensions in the South China Sea continue to simmer and threaten regional and global stability. Wars and violence continue in Afghanistan, in Central Africa, Iraq, several countries across the Sahel, Syria, and Yemen among other countries and regions experiencing constant violence and consequent displacement. Some of the world's most powerful nations are sabre-rattling, drafting and deploying troops, stockpiling military materiel, and actively preparing for war – including the European Union (EU) and some of its member states. Contrary to the EU's founding principle of promoting peace, it too has been charting a course to establish itself as a global military power. History has shown, however, that far from contributing to stability and peace, militarism fuels tension, instability, destruction and devastation.In a 'watershed moment', in response to the war in Ukraine, the EU announced that it would, for the first time, fund and supply lethal weapons to a country under attack through the European Peace Facility (EPF). While this move is unprecedented, it is not unexpected. The EU has been pursuing a military path since the entry in to force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, which provides the legal underpinning to create a common security and defence policy. Less than a decade later, in a new point of departure, the EU created specific budget lines to allocate funding to military-related projects. This decision firmly set the EU on a new and deeply worrying trajectory, where international political and social problems were to be addressed not only through dialogue and diplomacy, but also through the threat of military solutions

First radial velocity results from the MINiature Exoplanet Radial Velocity Array (MINERVA)

The MINiature Exoplanet Radial Velocity Array (MINERVA) is a dedicated observatory of four 0.7m robotic telescopes fiber-fed to a KiwiSpec spectrograph. The MINERVA mission is to discover super-Earths in the habitable zones of nearby stars. This can be accomplished with MINERVA's unique combination of high precision and high cadence over long time periods. In this work, we detail changes to the MINERVA facility that have occurred since our previous paper. We then describe MINERVA's robotic control software, the process by which we perform 1D spectral extraction, and our forward modeling Doppler pipeline. In the process of improving our forward modeling procedure, we found that our spectrograph's intrinsic instrumental profile is stable for at least nine months. Because of that, we characterized our instrumental profile with a time-independent, cubic spline function based on the profile in the cross dispersion direction, with which we achieved a radial velocity precision similar to using a conventional "sum-of-Gaussians" instrumental profile: 1.8 m s$^{-1}$ over 1.5 months on the RV standard star HD 122064. Therefore, we conclude that the instrumental profile need not be perfectly accurate as long as it is stable. In addition, we observed 51 Peg and our results are consistent with the literature, confirming our spectrograph and Doppler pipeline are producing accurate and precise radial velocities.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures, submitted to PASP, Peer-Reviewed and Accepte

Governing the Global Land Grab: Multipolarity, Ideas and Complexity in Transnational Governance

Since 2008, a series of new regulatory initiatives have emerged to address large-scale land grabs. These initiatives are occurring simultaneously at multiple levels of social organization instead of a single, overarching institutional site. A significant portion of this activity is taking place at the transnational level. We suggest that transnational land governance is indicative of emerging shifts in the practice of governance of global affairs. We analyze such shifts by asking two related questions: what does land grabbing tell us about developments in transnational governance, particularly with regard to North-South relations, and what do these developments in transnational governance mean for regulating land grabbing?Desde 2008, ha surgido una serie de nuevas iniciativas regulatorias para tratar acaparamientos de tierra a gran escala. Estas iniciativas están sucediendo simultáneamente a niveles múltiples de la organización social en vez de un lugar institucional predominante. Una porción importante de esta actividad está tomando lugar al nivel transnacional. Sugerimos que la gobernanza de tierras trasnacionales es indicativa de los cambios que están surgiendo en la práctica de gobernanza de los asuntos globales. Analizamos tales cambios haciendo dos preguntas relacionadas: ¿qué nos dice el acaparamiento de tierras sobre los desarrollos en la gobernanza trasnacional, particularmente con las relaciones norte-sur?, y ¿qué significan estos desarrollos en gobernanza trasnacional para regular el acaparamiento de tierras

Cyberwar : figures et paradoxes de la rhétorique des jeux vidéo de guerre

Cyberwar : Figuren und Paradoxa der geltenden Rhetorik bei Video-Kriegsspielen. Videospiele entstanden in der Zeit des Kalten Kriegs im Rahmen des militärisch-industriellen Komplexes der USA. Dieser, der trotz Frieden ständig wächst, hat den Videospielen ihre Struktur verliehen, bestehend aus ästhetischen Codes und Konventionen. Daraus sind über die Jahre die ultra-realistischen Kriegsspiele von heute entstanden. So wäre es nicht gekommen, wenn die kommerziellen Interessen der Freizeitindustrie und die der Armee nicht übereinstimmen würden, was aufgrund der gegenseitigen Beeinflussung zwischen technologischem Krieg und interaktiver Massenunterhaltung der Fall ist. Wenn diese „ neue Konfiguration der virtuellen Macht“, wie es James Der Derian formuliert hat, auch mächtiger erscheint denn je, leidet sie dennoch unter gewissen Paradoxa, die Ausdruck finden über die gewählte Ästhetik, die Spielmechanismen und die Ideologien, die durch die Machart der Produkte hindurchschimmern. Der Darstellung des sauberen Krieges im Sinne der Produktionen des militärisch-industriellen Komplexes der USA steht die Inszenierung des totalen Kriegs gegenüber, die viel eher mit den eigentlichen spielerischen Konventionen übereinstimmt. Globaler gesehen, angesichts der Tatsache, dass bewaffnete Auseinandersetzungen an sich nach dem Kalten Krieg weitgehend ihren Sinn verloren haben, setzen die Videospiele einen künstlichen Feind in Szene, diffus und ungreifbar, symbolisiert durch die Figur des Gegenübers, in dem die zeitgenössischen Ideologien recycelt werden, um dessen Vernichtung zu rechtfertigen.Cyberwar : figures and paradoxes in the rhetoric of war video games. Video games were born within the American military-industrial complex when the Cold War was at its height. The complex has also continuously expanded during periods of peace and has structured the games over a long-term timescale through aesthetic conventions and codes forging today’s ultra-realistic games over a period of many years. This would not of course have happened if the commercial interests of the leisure industries and the army had not turned out to be convergent at the time when technological warfare and interactive mass entertainment came together. However, while this “ new configuration of virtual power” as formulated by James Der Derian seems more powerful than ever, it is not devoid of paradoxes which are expressed through aesthetic choices, play mechanisms and ideologies filtered by the products. The representation of war itself inherent in the productions of the American militaryindustrial complex is set against a scene of total war that is more in accordance with game-oriented conventions. More broadly, in the face of the characteristic loss of meaning pertaining to the post-Cold War period, video games stage an artificial enemy who is diffuse and elusive, symbolised by the Other’s face, and recycle contemporary ideologies to find a justification for his eradication.Les jeux vidéo sont nés en pleine guerre froide au sein du complexe militaro-industriel américain. Celui-ci dont la taille n’a cessé de s’accroitre y compris en période de paix les a structuré durablement par ses codes et ses conventions esthétiques forgeant au fil des années les jeux de guerre ultra-réalistes d’aujourd’hui. Il n’en serait bien sûr pas ainsi si les intérêts marchands des industriels des loisirs et ceux de l’armée ne se révélaient convergents à l’heure du truchement entre guerres technologiques et divertissements de masse interactifs. Pourtant, si cette «nouvelle configuration du pouvoir virtuel» formulée par James Der Derian parait plus puissante que jamais, elle n’est pas dépourvue de paradoxes qui s’expriment à travers les choix esthétiques, les mécaniques ludiques et les idéologies filtrant de ses produits. À la représentation de la guerre propre attenant aux productions du complexe militaro-industriel américain, répond la mise en scène de la guerre totale davantage en accord avec les conventions proprement ludiques. Plus globalement, face à la perte de sens caractéristique de la période post-guerre froide, les jeux vidéo mettent en scène un ennemi artificiel, diffus et insaisissable symbolisé par la figure de l’autre et recyclent les idéologies contemporaines pour trouver la justification de son anéantissement.Fortin Tony. Cyberwar : figures et paradoxes de la rhétorique des jeux vidéo de guerre. In: Revue des sciences sociales, N°35, 2006. Nouvelles figures de la guerre. pp. 104-111