The proposed trials by the US Military Commissions

2003 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 409-423
Author(s):  
Sarah Finnin

On 11 September 2001 three hijacked commercial airliners were crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York, the Pentagon in Virginia, and a field in Western Pennsylvania, killing approximately 3,000 people. The unprecedented magnitude of these terrorist attacks led the United States government to assert that the acts were not just criminal acts but ‘acts of war’. This characterisation is more than just a question of semantics. Labeling the September 11 attacks as ‘acts of war’ gives the US government the basis to respond militarily — a response that is significantly different to traditional law enforcement, both legally and practically. Another significant difference is that prosecution of alleged perpetrators can occur under the laws of war (or international humanitarian law), as opposed to domestic or international criminal law.

Author(s):  
Danylo Kravets

The aim of the Ukrainian Bureau in Washington was propaganda of Ukrainian question among US government and American publicity in general. Functioning of the Bureau is not represented non in Ukrainian neither in foreign historiographies, so that’s why the main goal of presented paper is to investigate its activity. The research is based on personal papers of Ukrainian diaspora representatives (O. Granovskyi, E. Skotzko, E. Onatskyi) and articles from American and Ukrainian newspapers. The second mass immigration of Ukrainians to the US (1914‒1930s) has often been called the «military» immigration and what it lacked in numbers, it made up in quality. Most immigrants were educated, some with college degrees. The founder of the Ukrainian Bureau Eugene Skotzko was born near Western Ukrainian town of Zoloczhiv and immigrated to the United States in late 1920s after graduating from Lviv Polytechnic University. In New York he began to collaborate with OUN member O. Senyk-Hrabivskyi who gave E. Skotzko task to create informational bureau for propaganda of Ukrainian case. On March 23 1939 the Bureau was founded in Washington D. C. E. Skotzko was an editor of its Informational Bulletins. The Bureau biggest problem was lack of financial support. It was the main reason why it stopped functioning in May 1940. During 14 months of functioning Ukrainian Bureau in Washington posted dozens of informational bulletins and send it to hundreds of addressees; E. Skotzko, as a director, personally wrote to American governmental institutions and foreign diplomats informing about Ukrainian problem in Europe. Ukrainian Bureau activity is an inspiring example for those who care for informational policy of modern Ukraine.Keywords: Ukrainian small encyclopedia, Yevhen Onatsky, journalism, worldview, Ukrainian state. Keywords: Ukrainian Bureau in Washington, Eugene Skotzko, public opinion, history of journalism, diaspora.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alcir Santos Neto

This study probes the limits and possibilities of US military efforts to facilitate the transition from warfighting to nation-building. Most comparative studies conceive the complexity of this transition along a spectrum from conflict to humanitarian assistance to post-conflict stabilization. While the last two stages have often been interpreted as a coordinated act of civil-military ‘nation-building’; the spectrum, in fact, represents an ideal type simplification. At one level, outcomes depend on the players involved, including: sovereign nations, national militaries, international and regional institutions, UN peacekeepers, private security contractors, and non-governmental humanitarian providers, among others. On the other hand, because the number, types, and causes of case outcomes are highly diverse and contingent upon many possible factors (among them for example: political, economic, military, organizational, humanitarian, cultural, and religious), institutions like the US military face serious difficulties both planning and coordinating post-conflict scenarios. Assuming this complex backdrop, the present study offers a qualitative analysis of two recent US government reports by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) and the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) on US military engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq. In both cases, the US government sought to ‘nation-build’ by facilitating post-war stabilization and humanitarian assistance, detailing its genuine efforts to record both processes. While results indicate some limited successes in both cases, they also indicate a familiar pattern of uneven performance failures consistent with other cases internationally. The analysis concludes with recommendations for further research that may better control the contingencies of post-conflict management.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (20) ◽  
pp. 109-135
Author(s):  
Veronica A. Wilson

For personal or political reasons undocumented and controversial to this day, Greenwich Village lesbian photographer Angela Calomiris joined forces with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during the Second World War to infiltrate the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). As Calomiris rose through CPUSA ranks in New York City, espionage efforts resulted in the Attorney General's office declaring the avant-garde Film and Photo League to be a subversive communist organisation in 1947, and the conviction of communist leaders during the Smith Act trial two years later. Interestingly, despite J. Edgar Hoover's indeterminate sexuality and well-documented harassment of gays and lesbians in public life, what mattered to him was not whether Calomiris adhered to heteronormativity, but that her ultimate sense of duty lay with the US government. This article demonstrates how this distinction helped Calomiris find personal satisfaction in defiance of patriarchal conservative expectations and heteronormative cold war gender roles. This article, which utilises FBI files, press coverage, some of Calomiris's papers and her memoir, concludes with a brief discussion of Calomiris's later life in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she continued to craft her identity as a left-liberal feminist, with no mention of the service to the FBI or her role in fomenting the second Red Scare.


Jurnal ICMES ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Hilal Kholid Bajri ◽  
Nugrah Nurrohman ◽  
Muhammad Fakhri

This article is a study of the involvement of the United States (US) in the Yemeni War thas has already taken place since 2015 by using the 'CNN Effect' theory. The authors analyzed documents and mass media coverage and conducted discourse analysis on US mainstream media news, namely CNN and the New York Times. The result of this research shows that CNN and the New York Times did not report the Yemeni War proportionally so that public opinion ignored this war and did not encourage further action from the US government and United Nations to stop the war. This way of reporting is in line with US’ economic-political interests in Yemen and US support for the Saudi Arabia.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
John Parsons

Narratives of security and threat are continually used to justify morally contentious activities. In the past three years, the United States’ government has increasingly promoted narratives of “criminal migrants” and “immigrant invasions.” In response to perceived threats, the US-Mexico border has undergone a process of militarization. During this time, various border militias have continued to operate along the southern US border. My research was conducted over 11 months with two militias operating on the US-Mexico border I have labeled Border Watch. This militia provides a snippet of how morality is operationalized in the legitimization of actions and how morality is intrinsically linked to security in the lived experiences of its volunteers. In this article, I argue that the volunteers make sense of their experiences away from the border through the narrative espoused by the US government. The resonance between experience and narrative defines the latter as truth and the ability to dismiss counter-narratives. For the volunteers of Border Watch who adhere to a notion of citizenship through the lens of the citizen-soldier ideal, the narrative delivers a moral imperative to act in defense of the nation. Within the nexus of danger, security, and morality, the volunteers of Border Watch conceptualize their project as one in which moral citizens protect the nation and its citizens from an evil Other.


Author(s):  
E. Douglas Bomberger

Nineteen seventeen, the year the United States entered World War I, was transformative for American musical culture. The European performers who had dominated classical concert stages for generations came under intense scrutiny, and some of the compositions of Austro-German composers were banned. This year saw the concurrent rise of jazz music from a little-known regional style to a national craze. Significant improvements in recording technology facilitated both the first million-selling jazz record and the first commercial recordings of full symphony orchestras. In a segregated country, as the US military wrestled with how to make use of several million African Americans who had registered for the draft, James Reese Europe broke down racial barriers with his Fifteenth New York National Guard Band. This book tells the story of this year through the lives of eight performers: orchestral conductors Karl Muck and Walter Damrosch, violinist Fritz Kreisler, pianist Olga Samaroff, contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink, jazz cornetists Dominic LaRocca and Freddie Keppard, and army bandmaster James Reese Europe. Their individual stories, traced month by month through the eventful year of 1917, illuminate the larger changes that convulsed the country’s musical culture and transformed it in uniquely American ways.


Author(s):  
Simon James Bytheway ◽  
Mark Metzler

This chapter examines how central bank cooperation became a multilateral enterprise during the opening weeks of the First World War. It was the Bank of England that took the initiative to establish a network of Allied central banks. The US Federal Reserve System was framed in 1913 and went into operation shortly after the war began in Europe. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) also joined the Allied central bank network as soon as it could, well before the US government entered the war. In early 1915, backed by the FRBNY, US private banks began to finance the enormous military purchasing programs run by the British and French governments in the United States.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-99
Author(s):  
L. Estachy

Fernand Braudel, the economic historian, gave a key for reading the power struggles occurring today between the United States and China. «Just as a country at the center of a world-economy can hardly be expected to give up its privileges at international level, how can one hope that the dominant groups who combine capital and state power, and who are assured of international support, will agree to play the game and hand over to someone else?» In other words, the ruling circles in the United States, the hegemonic power of today, want to keep their leadership, China, the rising and challenging power, would like to replace the USA as the hegemonic country: the trade war starting in 2018 should be analysed in this context . The paper will deal with the recent developments of this hegemonic struggle: within the American establishment, the Pentagon and the US Department of Commerce have regained control over «Wall Street» which has resulted in an updated version of the US military-industrial complex, with China replacing the USSR in a new "cold war". Complex strategies are developped on both sides, involving manufacturing, technology, trade, financial, diplomatic and military issues. Referring to this geo-economic key for reading, a number of actions taken by the US government since 2018 aims in particular at checking China’s mounting economic and financial power. For the United States, it is about challenging the development of China’s influence in the world, in particular along the new maritime Silk Roads.


2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 268-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul J. Freitas

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the United States government became a supplier of aviation war risk (AWR) insurance for airliners, as well as a reinsurer for commercial insurance. Here we quantitatively examine the consequences of these offerings. The AWR offering is primarily needed for widebody and jumbo jets; smaller aircraft like the Embraer 195 are far less capable of creating damage in excess of the $50 million AWR deductible. Widebody and jumbo jets are also the only aircraft capable of creating long-term government liability through its commercial reinsurance. The US government's assumed risk through its insurance involvement can reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars. This risk level can create a perceived financial incentive for government to force airline passengers through invasive and dangerous search procedures. Thus, governmental insurance offerings can create a conflict of interest at infringes air passengers' civil liberties.


Author(s):  
Ana Elizabeth Rosas

In the 1940s, curbing undocumented Mexican immigrant entry into the United States became a US government priority because of an alleged immigration surge, which was blamed for the unemployment of an estimated 252,000 US domestic agricultural laborers. Publicly committed to asserting its control of undocumented Mexican immigrant entry, the US government used Operation Wetback, a binational INS border-enforcement operation, to strike a delicate balance between satisfying US growers’ unending demands for surplus Mexican immigrant labor and responding to the jobs lost by US domestic agricultural laborers. Yet Operation Wetback would also unintentionally and unexpectedly fuel a distinctly transnational pathway to legalization, marriage, and extended family formation for some Mexican immigrants.On July 12, 1951, US president Harry S. Truman’s signing of Public Law 78 initiated such a pathway for an estimated 125,000 undocumented Mexican immigrant laborers throughout the United States. This law was an extension the Bracero Program, a labor agreement between the Mexican and US governments that authorized the temporary contracting of braceros (male Mexican contract laborers) for labor in agricultural production and railroad maintenance. It was formative to undocumented Mexican immigrant laborers’ transnational pursuit of decisively personal goals in both Mexico and the United States.Section 501 of this law, which allowed employers to sponsor certain undocumented laborers, became a transnational pathway toward formalizing extended family relationships between braceros and Mexican American women. This article seeks to begin a discussion on how Operation Wetback unwittingly inspired a distinctly transnational approach to personal extended family relationships in Mexico and the United States among individuals of Mexican descent and varying legal statuses, a social matrix that remains relatively unexplored.


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