A torture-free cyber space : a human right

Definitions of torture range from the emotive to the legal. The media sometimes uses the term in a loose or informal sense – for example, to refer to the pain felt when one's sports team loses a crucial game. This dangerous practice detracts from the severity of torture as defined in law. When international human rights instruments describe the treatment of prisoners as torture, they are referring to severe suffering. News reports also use the term in a non-legal, informal sense to refer to the effects of cyber-bullying. In some instances cyber-bullying can meet the severity-of-suffering aspect of the legal definition of torture, as we will examine

The intelligence war against the IRA

Book revie

Long-term carbon sink in Borneo's forests halted by drought and vulnerable to edge effects

Less than half of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions remain in the atmosphere. While carbon balance models imply large carbon uptake in tropical forests, direct on-the-ground observations are still lacking in Southeast Asia. Here, using long-term plot monitoring records of up to half a century, we find that intact forests in Borneo gained 0.43 Mg C ha‾¹ per year (95% CI 0.14—0.72, mean period 1988-2010) above-ground live biomass. These results closely match those from African and Amazonian plot networks, suggesting that the world's remaining intact tropical forests are now en masse out-of-equilibrium. Although both pan-tropical and long-term, the sink in remaining intact forests appears vulnerable to climate and land use changes. Across Borneo the 1997-1998 El Niño drought temporarily halted the carbon sink by increasing tree mortality, while fragmentation persistently offset the sink and turned many edge-affected forests into a carbon source to the atmosphere

Drivers of diversification and pluriactivity among smallholder farmers—evidence from Nigeria

Diversification and pluriactivity have become a norm among farm business owners (FBOs) due to persistent low farm income. This study applies the resource-based theory to examine drivers of diversification and livelihood income-oriented towards a sustainable livelihood. Our framework develops hypotheses about the impact of internal and external resources on livelihood choices at the household level. We use a survey of 480 rural Nigerian farmers (agripreneurs), applying a Multivariate Tobit to test our framework. We find that education plays the most significant role in all types of employment options. The more FBOs are educated, the more the likelihood that they will choose non-farm or wage employment. This study revealed that while the agriculture sector’s share of rural employment is declining, non-farm is on the increase. More so, there is a decline in farming among the young generation, marital status bias and gender influence in resource allocation. The socioeconomic (income and food security) and socio-cultural (employment and rural-urban migration) implications of rural sustainability linked to UN Development Goals have been highlighted and analysed in this article

Interrogation, intelligence and security : controversial British techniques

Interrogation, Intelligence and Security examines the origins and effects of a group of interrogation techniques known as the ‘five techniques’. Through its in-depth analysis the book reveals how British forces came to use these controversial methods. Focusing on the British colony of Aden (1963–67), the height of ‘the troubles’ in Northern Ireland (1971), and the conflict in Iraq (2003), the book explores the use of hooding to restrict vision, white noise, stress positions, limited sleep and a limited diet. There are clear parallels between these three case studies and the use of controversial interrogation techniques today. Readers will be able to make informed judgements about whether, on the basis of the results of these cases, interrogation techniques that might be described as torture can be justified. This book will be of particular interest to security professionals, academics and members of the public interested in the torture debate, intelligence, the military, counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism, foreign policy and law enforcement