Al-Qaeda’s grievances in context:reconciling sharia and society

At a time when political debate in the West is preoccupied with the perceived impact of extremist ideas on individuals who embrace or support terrorism, this article uses the publicly articulated grievances of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda’s most prolific ideologue, as a case study to examine how a globally focused and distributed extremist narrative matches political realities on the ground. The approach of the article is to compare two political processes: the approach of Islamist extremists, as represented by Zawahiri, to constitutional reform as articulated through public appeals to potential supporters versus the reality of constitutional amendments and evolution of fundamental law in the Middle East and South Asia. Incorporating insights from studies on law and society and International Relations, the article demonstrates how Zawahiri’s interpretation of religious law emphasises wholesale adoption of sharia while the process of legal reform has invariably resulted in the creation of legal hybrids, mixing Islamic and non-Islamic legal traditions. This is not an article about theology or religious law but an effort to dissect the public relations of an international terrorist movement. The analysis pays particular attention to events in Zawahiri’s native Egypt, where evolving grievances concerning a series of constitutional amendments – including those following the Arab revolutions and the toppling of Mohammed Morsi – are assessed

How the “internal brakes” on violent escalation work and fail:Towards a conceptual framework for understanding intra-group processes of restraint in militant groups

This article advances the emergent literature on restraint within militant groups in three ways. First, it offers a framework for situating the “internal brakes on violent escalation”—understood as the practices through which group members shape the outer limits of their action repertoires—in relation to the interplay between conflict dynamics, intra-group processes and individual-level decision making. Second, it develops a basic analytical strategy for examining how such brakes operate at different levels of proximity to potential or actual instances of escalation. Third, it sets out four types of mechanisms through which internal brakes appear to generate or enable restraint

Terrorism as process narratives:a study of pre-arrest media usage and the emergence of pathways to engagement

Terrorism is a highly irregular form of crime where multiple factors combine to create circumstances that are unique to each case of involvement, or attempted involvement, in terrorist violence. Yet, there are commonalities in the way in which efforts to become involved unfold as processes, reflected as sequential developments where different forces combine to create conditions where individuals seek to plan acts of violence. The best way to frame this involvement is through analytical approaches that highlight these procedural dimensions but are equally sensitive to the nuances of each case. Analysing pre-arrest media usage of convicted terrorists, this paper focuses on the ways in which belief pathways and operational pathways interact in five distinct cases of terrorist involvement in the UK in what are termed “process narratives.

Brief of Intellectual Property Law Scholars As Amici Curiae in Support of Neither Party, WesternGeco LLC v. Ion Geophysical Corp., No. 16-1011, US Supreme Court

This amici curiae brief was filed on behalf of Intellectual Property Law Scholars in WesternGeco LLC v. Ion Geophysical Corp. in the U.S. Supreme Court. The question presented is: Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit erred in holding that lost profits arising from prohibited combinations occurring outside of the United States are categorically unavailable in cases in which patent infringement is proven under 35 U.S.C. § 271(f). In RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European Community, 136 S. Ct. 2090 (2016), the Supreme Court articulated a two-step method for assessing the extraterritorial reach of a US statute: 1. A court should determine whether the presumption against extraterritoriality has been rebutted—that is, whether the statute gives a clear, affirmative indication that it applies extraterritorially. If the presumption is rebutted, the statute may have extraterritorial reach. 2. But even if the presumption has not been rebutted, a court should look at the focus of the statute. If the conduct relevant to the statute\u27s focus occurred in the United States, then the case involves a permissible domestic application even if other conduct occurred abroad; but if the conduct relevant to the focus occurred in a foreign country, then the case involves an impermissible extraterritorial application regardless of any other conduct that occurred in U.S. territory. The brief of amici curiae makes the follow points: 1. The Supreme Court has not squarely answered the question as to whether the presumption against extraterritoriality applies separately to remedial provisions of a statute generally (here whether it applies to § 284). We argue it does. 2. We argue that the territorial reach § 284 necessarily depends the relevant provision of § 271 used to find liability. Here, under § 271(f), the presumption is rebutted (though it would not be generally for a case under § 271(a), with NTP v. Research in Motion may be a counter-example when one looks at the focus at step 2)). 3. We also argue that the Court should offer more guidance as to what happens even if the RJR test is satisfied. RJR Nabisco seems to operate in binary fashion -- either the statute has extraterritorial reach or it doesn\u27t. But Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T Corp., and earlier Supreme Court decision also interpreting 35 U.S.C. § 271(f), suggests that the presumption may still have a role in interpreting a statute. We offer two suggestions on how the presumption should operate in this context. First, courts should seriously and formally consider issues of comity and potential conflicts with foreign law in assessing whether to apply U.S. law extraterritorially. Second, that territoriality should remain relevant in assessments of proximate cause

Portfolio Vol. VI N 1

Wyman, John. Mrs. Brannon\u27s Bathtub . Prose. 1. Holbrook, Harold R. Sonnet . Poem. 7. Hayne, Barbara. Prayer of A Youth . Poem. 7. Egger, Ellen. An Evening . Poem. 7. Cuninggim, Merrimon. Lambda Pi Beta Mu . Prose. 9. Willett, Thelma. White Rosebuds . Poem. 11. Willett, Thelma. Span of A Life in Mine . Poem. 11. Willett, Thelma. Seventeen . Poem. 11. Willett, Thelma. Ave Atque Vale . Poem. 11. Willett, Thelma. The Ashes of Letters . Poem. 11. Miller, Albert. ...To One I Have Known and Loved . Prose. 12. Wyman, John. Browning the Artist . Prose. 14. Brannon, Pat. Revolution . Poem. 18. Forsberg, Nancy. Unnamed. Poem. 18. Kearns, Carolyn. A Co-Ed\u27s Wish . Poem. 18. Goetz, Marilyn. Fate\u27s Fury . Prose. 19. Harvey, Richard. Man Who Ate the Cheesecake . Prose. 21. Spike, Robert. Mechanikos . Poem. 22. Stodghill, Patricia. Anodyne . Poem. 23. Ladd, Donald. Torch-Light . Poem. 23

Portfolio Vol. VI N 2

Wyman, John. Mrs. Brannon\u27s Bathtub . Prose. 1. Holbrook, Harold R. Sonnet . Poem. 7. Hayne, Barbara. Prayer of A Youth . Poem. 7. Egger, Ellen. An Evening . Poem. 7. Cuninggim, Merrimon. Lambda Pi Beta Mu . Prose. 9. Willett, Thelma. White Rosebuds . Poem. 11. Willett, Thelma. Span of A Life in Mine . Poem. 11. Willett, Thelma. Seventeen . Poem. 11. Willett, Thelma. Ave Atque Vale . Poem. 11. Willett, Thelma. The Ashes of Letters . Poem. 11. Miller, Albert. ...To One I Have Known and Loved . Prose. 12. Wyman, John. Browning the Artist . Prose. 14. Brannon, Pat. Revolution . Poem. 18. Forsberg, Nancy. Unnamed. Poem. 18. Kearns, Carolyn. A Co-Ed\u27s Wish . Poem. 18. Goetz, Marilyn. Fate\u27s Fury . Prose. 19. Harvey, Richard. Man Who Ate the Cheesecake . Prose. 21. Spike, Robert. Mechanikos . Poem. 22. Stodghill, Patricia. Anodyne . Poem. 23. Ladd, Donald. Torch-Light . Poem. 23

The internal brakes on violent escalation:a typology

Most groups do less violence than they are capable of. Yet while there is now an extensive literature on the escalation of or radicalisation towards violence, particularly by ‘extremist’ groups or actors, and while processes of de-escalation or de-radicalisation have also received significant attention, processes of non- or limited escalation have largely gone below the analytical radar. This article contributes to current efforts to address this limitation in our understanding of the dynamics of political aggression by developing a descriptive typology of the ‘internal brakes’ on violent escalation: the mechanisms through which members of the groups themselves contribute to establish and maintain limits upon their own violence. We identify five underlying logics on which the internal brakes operate: strategic, moral, ego maintenance, outgroup definition, and organisational. The typology is developed and tested using three very different case studies: the transnational and UK jihadi scene from 2005 to 2016; the British extreme right during the 1990s, and the animal liberation movement in the UK from the mid-1970s until the early 2000s

A Perspective on Economic Impact

The institutions responsible for water resources management in the United States have originated as political responses to major social issues. Each agency institutionalized a procedure for structuring and comparing alternatives in the formulation of its total program. Each agency originally sought to promote effective resolution of its social issue (flood control, development of arid lands, soil erosion, etc.), but more recent efforts have sought better coordination among agency practices through a common procedure largely derived from economic theory. Any procedure, however, varies in application with the interpretation and judgment of individual planners. Today, public pressures have brought political directives requiring consideration of the local and nationwide impacts of projects that occur through direct, indirect, and secondary means in the spheres of economic, social and environmental effects. The body of the study reviews fourteen specific impact issues with the goals of providing planners a methodology for dealing with each one and of providing the theoretically inclined a basis for improving each methodology. The issues are reservoir effects on local property values, reservoir effects on the economy of the local county, changes in income and employment patterns around large reservoirs, patterns of land use change around reservoirs, reservoir effects on revenues and expenditures of local government, reservoir recreation benefits, application of marginal economic analysis to reservoir recreation planning, economic value of natural areas for recreational hunting, for stream fishing, the personal value of real property to its owner, reservoir project caused income redistribution, achievement of more flexible procedures for reservoir operation in order to match changes in demand for project output with time, estimation of flood damages by the time pattern in which they occur, and operation of reservoir systems for flood control. Each study ls presented in detail in a referenced report, and this report discusses the significance of the findings of the studies, individually and as a group

Extensive protein and DNA backbone sampling improves structure-based specificity prediction for C2H2 zinc fingers

Sequence-specific DNA recognition by gene regulatory proteins is critical for proper cellular functioning. The ability to predict the DNA binding preferences of these regulatory proteins from their amino acid sequence would greatly aid in reconstruction of their regulatory interactions. Structural modeling provides one route to such predictions: by building accurate molecular models of regulatory proteins in complex with candidate binding sites, and estimating their relative binding affinities for these sites using a suitable potential function, it should be possible to construct DNA binding profiles. Here, we present a novel molecular modeling protocol for protein-DNA interfaces that borrows conformational sampling techniques from de novo protein structure prediction to generate a diverse ensemble of structural models from small fragments of related and unrelated protein-DNA complexes. The extensive conformational sampling is coupled with sequence space exploration so that binding preferences for the target protein can be inferred from the resulting optimized DNA sequences. We apply the algorithm to predict binding profiles for a benchmark set of eleven C2H2 zinc finger transcription factors, five of known and six of unknown structure. The predicted profiles are in good agreement with experimental binding data; furthermore, examination of the modeled structures gives insight into observed binding preferences