Moralizing violence?: social psychology, peace research, and just war theory

States regularly use fear of terrorist threats to gain support for domestic political agendas and promote geostrategic interests. Consecutive U.S. presidents have cited the theory of the just war to defend these policies and particular violations of national sovereignty. Those doubtful of whether existing threats justify violations of privacy and territorial integrity also use fear -- of corruption, mission creep, and unintended consequences -- claiming that such interventions are a cure worse than the disease, yet one about which domestic audiences are easily misled. To combat abuse of moral arguments for the use of force, some in peace and conflict studies advocate military force be restricted to self-defense, per strict interpretation of the United Nations Charter (as in international legal positivism), or restricted completely (as in pacifism). Because the goal of reducing violent conflict is nearly universally acceptable, these varieties of noninterventionism are rarely scrutinized. In social psychological peace research (SPPR) on public opinion, however, positivism and prescriptive pacifism mask the diversity of opinion on whether and when intervention is necessary to curb aggression, prevent atrocity, and/or restore stability in failed states. This project critically examines SPPR's positivistic premises and the political implications of moral skepticism generally. In an intellectual history of the discipline, I contrast scientific emphasis on certainty in the formulation of threat and risk-avoidance with the humanities' appreciation of the ethical implications of uncertainty, also at the heart of just war theory. Taking Albert Bandura's social cognitive theory (SCT) of moral dis/engagement as a case study, I argue that SPPR skepticism of individual citizens' moral judgment implicitly endorses elite or consensus-driven models of social and political change. The determinism, consequentialism, and institutional gradualism of SPPR approaches, I argue, contradict stated progressive aims and the egalitarian individualism behind liberal conceptions of the rule of law and international human rights regime. Using just war's ethical framework and a non-consequentialist Kantian theory of moral judgment, I construct a reasoning model and coding manual for use in public opinion research on international conflict. These instruments operationalize moral dis/engagement in a manner consistent with political liberalism and humanitarian law, including the Responsibility to Protect

La constitución ecuatoriana y sus contradicciones con la política migratoria respecto a los ciudadanos cubanos

En el trabajo se analiza el papel de la política migratoria del Estado ecuatoriano en función de gestionar el flujo de migrantes cubanos en el período 2008 a 2017, así como enfrentar y resolver sus consecuencias negativas. El enfoque politológico, desde donde se aborda el problema y el uso de categorías de la Ciencia Política, permite formular y sistematizar conocimientos específicos en materia de fenómenos políticos, procesos y comportamientos institucionales. Al evaluar el papel de la política migratoria del Estado ecuatoriano e indagar en qué medida ha sido efectiva aquella política, en función de gestionar de manera segura el flujo de migrantes cubanos, se concluye que si bien el Ecuador evolucionó de un esquema restrictivo hacia una concepción humanista de gestión de la movilidad humana, ha resuelto de manera parcial el flujo de cubanos, logrando –mediante la imposición del visado para ingreso al país– disminuir el tráfico ilícito de personas de la referida nacionalidad. The paper analyzes the role of the State’s migration policy Ecuadorian people in order to manage the flow of Cuban migrants in the period from 2008 to 2017, as well as face and resolve its consequences negative The political approach, from where the problem is addressed and the use of categories of Political Science, allow to formulate and systematize specific knowledge in matters of political phenomena, processes and institutional behavior. In evaluating the role of the Ecuadorian State’s immigration policy and to investigate to what extent that policy has been effective, depending on securely manage the flow of Cuban migrants, it is concluded that although Ecuador evolved from a restrictive scheme towards a humanistic conception of human mobility management, has resolved the flow of Cubans, achieving - through the imposition of the visa for entry into the country-, decrease the illicit traffic of people from the referred nationality

Defining and documenting execution viewpoints for a large and complex software-intensive system

An execution view is an important asset for developing large and complex systems. An execution view helps practitioners to describe, analyze, and communicate what a software system does at runtime and how it does it. In this paper, we present an approach to define and document viewpoints that guide the construction and use of execution views for an existing large and complex software-intensive system. This approach includes the elicitation of the organization's requirements for execution views, the initial definition and validation of a set of execution viewpoints, and the documentation of the execution viewpoints. The validation and application of the approach have helped us to produce mature viewpoints that are being used to support the construction and use of execution views of the Philips Healthcare MRI scanner, a representative large software-intensive system in the healthcare domain. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Áreas monetarias en Sudamérica

Tesis doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Departamento de Analisis Económico, Teoría Económica e Historia Económica. Fecha de lectura: 03-11-201

Some Mammal Remains from a Jackson County Cave

Excavation of a trench in the floor of a cave at Springbrook, Jackson County, Iowa, yielded bones of nine species of mammals. At a depth of 19 to 24 inches the jawbone of a porcupine and the upper right canine tooth of a black bear were found. There are no museum records of either species in Iowa. Intermingled with these remains were clam shells and ashes probably left by cave dwelling Indians. Historical literature indicates that the bear probably was extinct in Iowa before the Civil War and the porcupine before the advent of white settlers

A top-down strategy to reverse architecting execution views for a large and complex software-intensive system:An experience report

This article is an experience report about the application of a top-down strategy to use and embed an architecture reconstruction approach in the incremental software development process of the Philips MRI scanner, a representative large and complex software-intensive system. The approach is an iterative process to construct execution views without being overwhelmed by the system size and complexity. An execution view contains architectural information that describes what the software of a software-intensive system does at runtime and how it does this. The application of the strategy is illustrated with a case study, the construction of an up-to-date execution view for the start-up process of the Philips MRI scanner. The construction of this view helped the development organization to quickly reduce about 30% the start-up time of the scanner, and set up a new system benchmark for assuring the system performance through future evolution steps. The report provides detailed information about the application of the top-down strategy, including how it supports top-down analysis, communication within the development organization, and the aspects that influence the use of the top-down strategy in other contexts. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved