Humanitarian Action and Military Intervention: Temptations and Possibilities.

Although the war in Liberia in July 2003 claimed hundreds of lives, the international community was reluctant to intervene. In this article, the author debates the question: does international military intervention equal protection of populations? The role of humanitarian organisations in military intervention is considered. Aid organisations cannot call for deployment of a protection force without renouncing their autonomy or appealing to references outside their own practices. Such organisations provide victims with vital assistance and contribute to ensuring that their fate becomes a stake in political debate by exposing the violence that engulfs them, without substituting their own voices for those of the victims. The political content of humanitarian action is also outlined and military intervention in the context of genocide is discussed. The author concludes that the latter is one of the rare situations in which humanitarian actors can consider calling for an armed intervention without renouncing their own logic

The overhang hangover

We revisit the debt overhang question. We first use non-parametric techniques to isolate a panel of countries on the downward sloping section of a debt Laffer curve. In particular, overhang countries are ones where a threshold level of debt is reached in sample, beyond which (initial) debt ends up lowering (subsequent)growth. On average, significantly negative coefficients appear when debt face value reaches 60 percent of GDP or 200 percent of exports, and when its present value reaches 40 percent of GDP or 140 percent of exports. Second, we depart from reduced form growth regressions and perform direct tests of the theory on the thus selected sample of overhang countries. In the spirit of event studies, we ask whether, as overhang level of debt is reached: (i)investment falls precipitously as it should when it becomes optimal to default, (ii) economic policy deteriorates observably, as it should when debt contracts become unable to elicit effort on the part of the debtor, and (iii) the terms of borrowing worsen noticeably, as they should when it becomes optimal for creditors to pre-empt default and exact punitive interest rates. We find a systematic response of investment, particularly when property rights are weakly enforced, some worsening of the policy environment, and a fall in interest rates. This easing of borrowing conditions happens because lending by the private sector virtually disappears in overhang situations, and multilateral agencies step in with concessional rates. Thus, while debt relief is likely to improve economic policy (and especially investment) in overhang countries, it is doubtful that it would ease their terms of borrowing, or the burden of debt.Debt overhang, kernel estimation, debt contracts, investment, debt relief

YouTube birth and the primal scene

Motherhood has recently re-emerged as ‘material’ for artistic practice, and as a viable subject of academic research that both recognizes and extends earlier feminist assertions that the maternal is a key site for the anxious psychosocial negotiations of identity, subjectivity, equality, ethics and politics. Additionally, pregnancy and birth have graphically entered the public domain. Hundreds of thousands of short films of live birth, for instance, circulate around the globe on video sharing platforms such as YouTube, some with followings of many million viewers. Yet, how might we understand the desire to perform and spectate birth? ‘YouTube birth’ raises questions about performing and spectating birth in digital culture, and the meaning of watching our own birth with a mass public of millions of viewers. In this paper I explore these questions through revisiting the psychoanalytic notion of the ‘primal scene’. The primal scene is the Freudian articulation of the crucial role of infantile sexual and violent fantasies in structuring psychic life, linked to the loss of, or denial of, the material/maternal body as source or origin. Although within feminist scholarship the primal scene as a theoretical concept is radically out of date, it may be productive to revisit primal fantasies in the digital age, and the ways digital technologies shift our relation to ‘analogue’ notions of place, scene, birth, origin and loss. Exploring the continued place of psychoanalysis in helping to understand issues to do with origin, reproduction and temporality, I ask both what psychoanalysis might have to offer our understanding of performing and watching birth, and how a psychoanalytic configuration of the primal scene may itself need to change in relation to digital primal fantasies and technologies that function through fungibility and loss-less-ness

In the Shadow of Akimbo Corporatism: Arched Athleticism and the 'Becoming-Human' of a People.

The importance of Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari’s development of ‘encounter’ is brought into sharp relief as key to the notion of ‘athleticism’. Here, both are developed as indispensable to each other, forming an a-radical/ana-material groundless ground to power, politics, literary sensibility, indeed sense itself – though all played in a minor key. It is a nuanced encounter which, at one and the same time, if working as encounter, produces an acephaletic knowledge, a body-knowledge, without the Ego-I. This, in itself would have been enough. But in an age of massifying systems, drone warfare and horrific migrations, where corporate tentacles bend the rules akimbo, one finds that this turn to a Deleuzean athleticism offers a different kind of political analysis, a radical difference, which, despite (or because of) the odds, enables a politics of hope and indeed, of a ‘becoming-human’

De las catacumbas a los últimos confines: violencia, sentido y representación en los periplos del martirio

En este trabajo propongo un análisis transversal de las figuras del mártir y del martirio. Recurriendo a la noción de mediación, en la primera parte analizo el rol protagónico de las representaciones del martirio en las prácticas de la memoria durante la segunda mitad del siglo XVI. Analizo algunas de las condiciones que contribuyeron a la emergencia de una "cultura del martirio" y el rol de las mediaciones en tal surgimiento. En la segunda parte, estudio la forma en que el (re)descubrimiento de las catacumbas romanas, abrió un campo de producción de sentido en torno a la figura del martirio. En la tercera parte, centrándome en la Compañía de Jesús, analizo algunas mediaciones a través de las cuáles las figuras del martirio transgredieron las fronteras de iglesias y conventos para proyectarse a los últimos confines en un mundo en plena expansión.Neste artigo proponho uma análise transversal das figuras do mártir e do martírio. Usando a noção de mediação, na primeira parte eu tento analisar o papel de liderança de representações de martírio em práticas de memória durante a segunda metade do século XVI. Eu analiso algumas das condições que contribuíram para o surgimento de uma "cultura do martírio" e o papel da mediação nesta emergência. Na segunda parte, eu estudo como a (re) descoberta das catacumbas romanas abriu um campo de produção de significados em torno da figura do martírio. Na terceira parte, com foco na Companhia de Jesus, analiso algumas mediações pelas quais as representações do martírio transgrediram as fronteiras de igrejas e conventos para se projetar nas fronteiras de um mundo em plena expansão mundial.This paper proposes a cross-sectional analysis of martyr and martyrdom. Through the notion of mediation, in the first part I analyze the leading role of representations of martyrdom in memory practices during the second half of the sixteenth century. I analyze some of the conditions that contributed to the emergence of a "martyrdom's culture" and the role of mediation in such emergence. The second part studies how the (re)discovery of the Roman catacombs encouraged the production of meanings around the figure of martyrdom. In the third part, focusing on the Society of Jesus, I analyze a few instances of mediation through which the figures of martyrdom transgressed the boundaries of churches and convents to project themselves to the last frontiers of a world in full expansion.Fil: Salamanca Villamizar, Carlos Arturo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Comorbidity of eczema, rhinitis, and asthma in IgE-sensitised and non-IgE-sensitised children in MeDALL: a population-based cohort study

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A future for Hashima: pornography, representation and time

This article sets out to investigate the relationship between ruins, futurity, and ‘ruin porn’ - a visual mode of representation that all too often seeks to fix post-industrial ruins as mere aesthetic objects, devoid of history and/or temporality. It does so by focusing on performance, which, in this context, is understood as a processual mode of art-making that provides spectators with an experience of time. In this expanded definition of performance, as one may perhaps expect, the performativity of the object is not limited to the theatrical event alone; rather, it now inheres in sometimes uncanny durational aspects of both still and moving images. The essay proceeds in three stages. Part one provides a historical and theoretical overview of the type of performance inherent in ‘ruin porn’; part two critiques two images from Yves Marchand's and Romain Meffre's Gunkanjima (2013), a photo album that attempted to document the ruins of Hashima, an island situated 15 kilometres from Nagasaki City in the East China Sea; and part three investigates the very different aesthetic at work in Lee Hassall's film Return to Battleship Island (2013) which was made in response to AHRC- funded project, ‘The Future of Ruins: Reclaiming Abandonment and Toxicity on Hashima Island’ (2013). In this reading of Return to Battleship Island , the onus is on showing how Hassall's film, in its representation of Hashima's crumbling apartment blocks and industrial buildings, intentionally sought to contest the atemporal logic of ‘ruin porn’ by attempting to endow the viewing experience with a sense of futurity. Crucially, this does not mean that film represented the future as an object, but, on the contrary, tried to make it palpable, as something one undergoes physically in the very act of reception

Bisphenol A and its analogues: A comprehensive review to identify and prioritize effect biomarkers for human biomonitoring

Human biomonitoring (HBM) studies have demonstrated widespread and daily exposure to bisphenol A (BPA). Moreover, BPA structural analogues (e.g. BPS, BPF, BPAF), used as BPA replacements, are being increasingly detected in human biological matrices. BPA and some of its analogues are classified as endocrine disruptors suspected of contributing to adverse health outcomes such as altered reproduction and neurodevelopment, obesity, and metabolic disorders among other developmental and chronic impairments. One of the aims of the H2020 European Human Biomonitoring Initiative (HBM4EU) is the implementation of effect biomarkers at large scales in future HBM studies in a systematic and standardized way, in order to complement exposure data with mechanistically-based biomarkers of early adverse effects. This review aimed to identify and prioritize existing biomarkers of effect for BPA, as well as to provide relevant mechanistic and adverse outcome pathway (AOP) information in order to cover knowledge gaps and better interpret effect biomarker data. A comprehensive literature search was performed in PubMed to identify all the epidemiologic studies published in the last 10 years addressing the potential relationship between bisphenols exposure and alterations in biological parameters. A total of 5716 references were screened, out of which, 119 full-text articles were analyzed and tabulated in detail. This work provides first an overview of all epigenetics, gene transcription, oxidative stress, reproductive, glucocorticoid and thyroid hormones, metabolic and allergy/immune biomarkers previously studied. Then, promising effect biomarkers related to altered neurodevelopmental and reproductive outcomes including brainderived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), kisspeptin (KiSS), and gene expression of nuclear receptors are prioritized, providing mechanistic insights based on in vitro, animal studies and AOP information. Finally, the potential of omics technologies for biomarker discovery and its implications for risk assessment are discussed. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first effort to comprehensively identify bisphenol-related biomarkers of effect for HBM purposes.European Union Commission H2020-EJP-HBM4EU 733032HBM4EU Initiativ