Counter-Insurgency, Ecocide and the Production of Refugees Warfare As A Tool of Modernization

In a much-quoted article written during the height of the U.S. war in Vietnam, Harvard professor Samuel Huntington made the following observations: The most dramatic and far-reaching impact of the war in South Viet Nam has been the tremendous shift in population)?om the countryside to the cities. In the early 1960s it was still accurate to speak of South Viet Nam as 80 to 85 percent rural. Today no one knowsfor certain the size of theurban population, but it is undoubtedly more than double and perhaps triple what it was a few years ago. He went on to note that "The principle reason for this massive influx of population into the urban areas is, of course, the intensification of the war following the commitment of American combat troops in 1965. " Deducing the implications of this for wars against rural revolutionary forces, Huntington suggested the need to qualify Sir Robert Thompson's claim that People's Revolutionary War is immune to the direct application of military force. "If the 'direct application of mechanical and conventional power ' takes place on such a massive scale as to produce a massive immigration from countryside to city," Huntington argued, "the basic assumptions underlying the Maoist doctrine of revolutionary war no longer operate. The Maoist-inspired rural revolution is undercut by the American-sponsored urban revolution." Buoyed by the fact that the National Liberation Front's 1968 Tet Offensive had not galvanized support for the revolution among Vietnamese urban dwellers, Huntington went on to summarize the implications of urbanization for the future of Vietnam: Dr,]irn Glassman isassociatedwith thecommunit

The East Asian Developmental State is Dead

Streaming video requires Flash Player, RealPlayer, or Windows Media Player to viewThe East Asian developmental state is dead ... or, better, as it has been conceived by its major neo-Weberian theorists, it never lived. Thus, while some contemporary commentators on East Asian political economy have lamented the decline of the developmental state in key sites of its former dominance, like South Korea, I argue that the developmental state was always a different entity than it was made out to be by those who have promoted it as an alternative to neoliberalism. Examining the case of South Korean chaebol (conglomerates) in the 1960s-70s (the key period of South Korea's "take-off"), I suggest a better characterization of the developmental state is that it was a Cold War-military contractor-developmental state, one whose performance in fomenting rapid economic and industrial growth is not replicable because of the unique geographical-historical circumstance that brought it into being — and is not desirable because of the consequences that this state's performance had for others in East Asia.Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesEvent Web page, streaming video, event photo

Regulatory regionalism and anti-money-laundering governance in Asia

With the intensification of the Financial Action Task Force's (FATF's) worldwide campaign to promote anti-money-laundering regulation since the late 1990s, all Asian states except North Korea have signed up to its rules and have established a regional institution—the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering—to promote and oversee the implementation of FATF's 40 Recommendations in the region. This article analyses the FATF regime, making two key claims. First, anti-money-laundering governance in Asia reflects a broader shift to regulatory regionalism, particularly in economic matters, in that its implementation and functioning depend upon the rescaling of ostensibly domestic agencies to function within a regional governance regime. Second, although this form of regulatory regionalism is established in order to bypass the perceived constraints of national sovereignty and political will, it nevertheless inevitably becomes entangled within the socio-political conflicts that shape the exercise of state power more broadly. Consequently, understanding the outcomes of regulatory regionalism involves identifying how these conflicts shape how far and in what manner global regulations are adopted and implemented within specific territories. This argument is demonstrated by a case study of Myanmar

The new imperialism? On continuity and change in US foreign policy

The unilateral militarism of the George W Bush administration has rekindled interest in imperialism within geography and elsewhere in the social sciences, leading some authors to refer to a new imperialism, or neo -imperialism. This paper critically interrogates the notion that the foreign policy of this administration represents a significant break from past US practices, with the use of concepts from Gramsci and Poulantzas to analyze the class and class-fractional bases of US foreign policy both during and after the Cold War. It is argued that there are certain important continuities in contemporary US imperialism and that there are also differences that owe to the present, post-Cold-War context. It is suggested that if this analysis of continuities is correct then the problems and dangers posed by the “new imperialism’' may not be as readily resolvable within a capitalist framework as is suggested by various contemporary commentators.

From reds to red shirts: political evolution and devolution in Thailand

There is no abstract for this paper.

Male-to-female sex ratios of abnormalities detected by fluorescence in situ hybridization in a population of chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients

Distorted sex ratios occur in hematologic disorders. For example, chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) displays disproportionate sex ratios with a large male excess. However, the underlying genetics for these disparities are poorly understood, and gender differences for specific cytogenetic abnormalities have not been carefully investigated. We sought to provide an initial characterization of gender representation in genetic abnormalities in CLL by using fluorescence<em> in situ</em> hybridization (FISH). We confirm the well known skewed male-to-female (M/F sex ratio) of ~1.5 in our CLL study population, but also determine the <em>genotypic M/F sex ratio values</em> corresponding to specific FISH DNA probes. Genetic changes in CLL detectable by four FISH probes were statistically compared with respect to gender. Initial FISH evaluations of 4698 CLL patients were retrospectively examined and new findings of the <em>genotypic M/F sex ratios </em>for these probes are reported. This study represents the largest CLL survey conducted in the United States using FISH probes. The CLL database demonstrated that FISH abnormalities (trisomy 12, 13q14.3 deletion and 17p13.1 deletion) probes had skewed M/F ratios of ~1.5. Also, by statistical analysis it was shown that ATM gene loss (11q22.3q23.1 deletion) solely or with other abnormalities was considerably higher in males with an M/F ratio of 2.5 and significantly different from M/F ratios of 1.0 or 1.5. We hypothesize that interactions involving these autosomal abnormalities (trisomy 12, and deletions of 11q22.3, 13q14.3, and 17p13.1), and the sex chromosomes may provide the genetic basis for the altered <em>phenotypic M/F ratio</em> in CLL