Pakistan and the Future of U.S. Policy

A spreading Islamic insurgency engulfs the amorphous and ungoverned border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. After initial victories by the United States and the Northern Alliance in autumn 2001, hundreds of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters fled Afghanistan to seek refuge across the border in Pakistan's rugged northwest. Since 2007, the number of ambushes, militant offensives, and targeted assassinations has risen sharply across Afghanistan, while suicide bombers and pro-Taliban insurgents sweep through settled areas of Pakistan at an alarming pace. For better and for worse, Pakistan will remain the fulcrum of U.S. policy in the region -- its leaders continue to provide vital counterterrorism cooperation and have received close to $20 billion in assistance from the United States, yet elements associated with its national intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, covertly assist militant proxy groups destabilizing the region.Instead of "surging" into this volatile region, the United States must focus on limiting cross-border movement along the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier and supporting local Pakistani security forces with a small number of U.S. Special Forces personnel. To improve fighting capabilities and enhance cooperation, Washington and Islamabad must increase the number of Pakistani officers trained through the U.S. Department of Defense International Military Education and Training program. In addition, U.S. aid to Pakistan must be monitored more closely to ensure Pakistan's military does not divert U.S. assistance to the purchase of weapons systems that can be used against its chief rival, India. Most important, U.S. policymakers must stop embracing a single Pakistani leader or backing a single political party, as they unwisely did with Pervez Musharraf and the late Benazir Bhutto. America's actions are not passively accepted by the majority of Pakistan's population, and officials in Islamabad cannot afford to be perceived as putting America's interests above those of their own people. Because the long-term success of this nuclear-armed Muslim-majority country depends on the public's repudiation of extremism, and our continued presence in Afghanistan is adding more fuel to violent religious radicalism, our mission in the region, as well as our tactics, our objectives, and our interests, must all be reexamined

Mattering pedagogy in precarious times of (un)learning

This paper considers how feminist new materialist thinking may offer a resource for re-orienting pedagogy and didactics in light of pressing global issues. In this respect, the paper applies feminist new materialist thinking in a somewhat normative agenda. However, pedagogy and didactics are always already normative, or are engaged in practices that play a role in as well doing ‘business as usual’ or in assisting in opening up to various, yet more un-usual ways of relating and being of the world. Pedagogy is a worlding practice, specifically, as it facilitates ways of relating, thinking, sensing, acting, and is involved in the shaping of a ’collective intelligence’. I argue that one fruitful approach may be to focus on entanglements and affects and on finding ways of facilitating a sensing living/being of such entanglements. The paper concludes by introducing affective geology to suggest possible steps towards a transformation of our ways of knowing, sensing, and relating

A network of exchange:Towards the empowerment of children in medical research

Pediatric research is needed to expand knowledge about diseases and to improve treatment options. But how could we best do that? In this qualitative research we aimed to find out what children themselves considered important when they participate in research. Why do they decide to take part, or why not? What is the role of their doctor? We interviewed children about their experiences with taking part in research. Other children became our co-researchers to strengthen our analysis of the interviews. Children told us that researchers should listen to them more closely. They explained that they participate in research to help other children in the future, they hope for improvement of their own situation, and they want to help their doctor. But they do want to be involved in the decision-making. To that end, research should be adjusted to their individual situation, and researcher should take into account their illness and research experience, information needs, and the support from others such as their parents and doctors. We advocate the innovative notion of involving patients and children from the general public in medical research as co-researchers. We challenge clinical researchers to tailor each study towards children’s personal needs and wishes, and to make research outcomes more relevant to them. Specific attention is required to increase awareness among children from the general public of the need for pediatric research. Involving and engaging children in research will decrease the gap between academia and society

Optimizing school-supported clinical learning: an investigation in the context of nursing education

Optimizing school- supported clinical learning: an investigation in the context of nursing education The integration of school and practice learning in health professions education (HPE) is important for students’ development of conceptual knowledge and their transfer of learning across settings. Moreover, aligning expectations across different learning contexts can help design training trajectories that are both effective and accountable to society. A body of research about interventions and practices that successfully connect school and practice learning exists, such as portfolios, shared assessment standards and practice assignments. At the same time, it is known that resources and guidelines originating from the school context can be perceived as bureaucratic and lacking in practical relevance, thus merely leading to added workload. To date, our understanding of opportunities and threats in the use of school structures, standards and support to enhance and regulate clinical learning as well as underlying mechanisms is limited. This thesis aimed to investigate these opportunities and threats and their underlying mechanisms in the context of nursing education, and to integrate these into a model that can be used for future studies on “school-supported clinical learning”. In one scoping literature review as well four empirical studies we investigated how clinical learning is understood in the literature and among stakeholders, how students navigate clinical learning within and across settings, and how and why challenges in the use of tools, structures and support at the bridge between school and practice are experienced. We found that competency frameworks and formats can challenge students push their limits and seek various learning opportunities in spite of a task-oriented ward culture. Assignments, reflection tools, development plans and peer review meetings in school can support students to create a deeper understanding of patient care, to develop a critical attitude based on their experiences across settings and to structure their self-regulated learning. Threats include rigid criteria and guidelines directed at individual performance, extensive written formats, assessment criteria guiding students’ selection of learning opportunities, and self-regulated learning becoming a task instead of a social act. We introduced a conceptual model including the individual as well as the shared influence of school and practice on students’ clinical learning processes and on different types of learning outcomes. The model can be used for further studies on school-supported clinical learning. We concluded that school-supported clinical learning can help students to learn beyond the tasks that patient care dictates, to compare and contrast different experiences and to gain a deeper understanding of the profession and of patient care. This requires a move away from assessment-driven, individualized learning with detailed criteria. Instead it requires a mutual agreement between school and practice on the desirable outcomes of clinical education. Collaborations should focus on facilitating staff and students to achieve these outcomes in a way that suits each clinical ward and supports individual students, and on providing tools and aids that can be used around patient care

Isolated Identities: The Impact of Government Policies and Socialization Agents on the Root Causes of the Current Conflict in South Sudan

In his book Power Sharing and International Mediation in Ethnic Conflicts, Timothy Sisk has argued that “What is most important is not whether ethnic group identity is innate and fixed or contrived and manipulable; it is that members of an ethnic group perceive the ethnic group to be real. Perceptions are critical in understanding the extent to which intergroup relations can be peaceful or violent” (Timothy Sisk, 1996, p. 13). In South Sudan, Identity Groups are not only perceived to be real, they are real, and as such serve as the basis ethnic differentiation. Before the separation and independence of South Sudan in 2011, Sudan was inhabited by over five hundred distinct ethnic groups; South Sudan seceded with sixty-four of these ethnic groups. Importantly, each of these groups had unique cultures, traditions and religious beliefs that shaped their identities. This multi-ethnic and multi-communal setting created an environment conducive to social conflict, in that it set the stage for the absence of a unified Sudanese identity. The result was protracted civil conflict (Azar, 1990), resulting in decades of political instability and civil wars. First, there were two post (1956) independence civil wars with the North, and second, following its independence in 2011, a civil war broke out within South Sudan. The net result is that since independence in 1956, these civil wars totalled thirty-nine years of conflict that killed over three million and three hundred thousand people on both sides, mostly from South Sudan – totals not to be envied. This paper initially seeks to trace the origins of identity groups in Sudanese/South Sudanese history, both before and after the Turko-Egyptian and Anglo-Egyptian condominium eras beginning in 1821 and lasting until 1956. Further, it will trace the continuing impact of colonial and independent Sudanese government policies on creating isolated identities as the root causes of the protracted social conflict seen in Sudan following independence in 1956. Finally, through the author\u27s first-hand experience growing up in South Sudan, the paper explores how these identity groups have been perpetuated into the present through an examination of the socialization process. In conclusion, the paper will document how a lack of a common shared identity created dysfunction in South Sudan\u27s Transition Government, resulting in instability, insecurity and widespread human suffering

Burning the dead: Human bones subjected to fire in southwestern Swedish megalithic graves

In diesem Beitrag wird über eine Reihe neuer Radiokarbondaten von verbrannten menschlichen Knochen berichtet, die aus Megalithgräbern in Südwestschweden geborgen wurden. Ziel war es, mögliche chronologische Muster dieser Deponierungen aufzudecken. Es werden sowohl die Lage der Knochen innerhalb des Grabes als auch die Charakterisierung der verbrannten Knochen erörtert. Die Megalithgräber im Untersuchungsgebiet wurden hauptsächlich für aufeinanderfolgende Körperbestattungen während des Neolithikums genutzt, aber auch in jüngeren Perioden immer wieder begangen. Daher wurde bisher angenommen, dass die verbrannten menschlichen Knochen aus späteren Perioden stammen, als die Brandbestattung die vorherrschende Bestattungspraxis war, obwohl es Hinweise auf neolithische Brandbestattungen gibt. Die Radiokarbondaten zeigen, dass die meisten verbrannten Knochen tatsächlich aus einer nachneolithischen Wiederverwendung der Gräber stammen. Unerwarteterweise wurden einige Deponierungen auch in das Neolithikum und die Frühbronzezeit datiert, was parallele Praktiken von Körper- und Brandbestattungen während dieser Zeiträume bestätigt. Außerdem deuten die Ergebnisse darauf hin, dass die Platzierung der verbrannten Knochen und die Behandlung der menschlichen Überreste im Laufe der Zeit variierten.In this paper, a series of new radiocarbon dates on burnt human bones recovered from megalithic graves in southwestern Sweden is reported. The purpose was to reveal possible chronological patterns of these depositions. Both the location of the bones within the grave and the characterisation of the burnt bones are discussed. The megalithic graves in the study area were mainly used for successive inhumation burials and have been subjected to extensive reuse throughout prehistory. Burnt human bones have therefore been assumed to originate from later periods when cremation was the dominant burial practice, although indications of Neolithic cremations occur. The radiocarbon dates demonstrate that most of the burnt bones derived from later reuse of the graves. More unexpectedly, several depositions also dated to the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, confirming parallel practices of inhumation and cremation during these periods. Furthermore, the results indicate that the placement of the burnt bones and the treatment of the human remains to some degree varied over time

“I want to taste your language” : Sovereign Erotics and Language in Indigenous Women’s Poetry on Turtle Island

This paper builds on an extensive pool of Indigenous women’s artistic and intellectual expressions to explore Indigenous women’s erotic poetry as a decolonizing intervention that challenges and transcends linguistic boundaries. Indigenous women are often regarded as keepers of knowledge and language in their communities. They contribute to “the well-being of the community and the nation as a whole” (Maracle 41), they are “caretakers of this land” (42), and they are resurgence (Simpson 27-37). Indigenous women are disproportionately impacted by settler colonialism, which makes their critiques of heteropatriarchy, racism, and settler colonialism as interlocking systems even more telling.  Linguistic borders across Turtle Island are multiple and involve colonial languages such as French, Spanish and English, as well as the more than 150 Indigenous languages spoken across these lands. Indigenous women’s poetry – and more generally Indigenous literatures in Turtle Island – know a rich linguistic variety: while some texts are written in one of the colonial languages (English, French, Spanish), others are composed in an Indigenous language (e.g. Inuktitut, Cree, Innu), and perhaps most include an array of languages. Particularly, in what is now called Canada, the colonially-imposed English/French divide is being challenged by Indigenous writers, scholars, and translators. In this paper, I argue that one way that Indigenous women poets do so is through the erotic which contests and transcends the colonial languages and connects to and takes root in Indigenous languages. I analyze selected poems by Melissa Begay (Dine), Tiffany Midge (Hunkapapa Sioux), Chrystos (Menominee), Tenille Campbell (Dene and Métis), Janet Rogers (Mohawk/Tuscarora), and Natasha Kanapé Fontaine (Innu) to see how the erotic and language are interrelated. This paper thus examines the potential of an Indigenous sovereign erotics across languages in Indigenous women’s erotica