Books on the topic 'Incidental perception'

Historians often ignore, treat cursorily, or relegate to footnotes specific incidents in international relations in order to facilitate the construction of a larger narrative. The contributors to this volume argue that researchers do so to their peril, as individual or seemingly isolated incidents can play significant roles in the overall course of history. Incidents are crucial in determining the mental maps that decision makers form regarding the countries and individuals with whom they interact. Incidents can either initiate or block new policies with consequences that are both far-reaching and unexpected. People make foreign policy and an understanding of what elements of an incident were important to these individuals at key points essential to an appreciation of policies subsequently advocated. How individuals view other cultures and nations, how they react to the actions of such nations, and their perceptions of such actions all form key components in this study. Using a variety of examples, these essays show the value of detailed examinations of events, illuminating such matters as British policy in the Far East, French imperial policy, Italian military actions in the interwar period, British attitudes toward Hitler, and the effect of the Soviet Union on British thinking in the 1930s.

Gertrude Stein’s conservative politics and her decision to remain in France during World War II have been much discussed, and her wartime texts have been criticized for a cryptic style that insufficiently responds to its moment. In considering these issues, this chapter expands the book’s central claim that indirection, self-interference, and ethical self-scrutiny are civilian strategies for writing about war from a distance. In her genre-mixing alternative to war reportage, Wars I Have Seen, Stein records dates, statistics, and oral testimony. Yet the text also contains reverse epiphanies: lyric outbursts within the prose that signal and dwell on moments of fear. Rather than indicative revelation, reverse epiphanies, or éclats, contain disturbing incidents and rein in the perception of threat. This chapter contends that Stein’s use of reverse epiphanies, understatement, and meta-rhetoric was inflected by her understanding of French cultural restraint, which she aimed to emulate while writing about life under occupation.

Legacy plays an increasing role in international criminal justice. But it remains under-theorized as a concept. Court strategies navigate between reproduction of the past and societal transformation. Many of the lasting effects of criminal proceedings are not tied to judgements, but specific incidents or performative aspects of trials, and their reception. This chapter examines legacy strategies and their critiques. It shows that the turn to legacy is partly an expression of the role of courts as social agents and geared towards the production of ‘global’ legacies. Legacy cannot be authoritatively construed by institutions, but shifts with perceptions over time. The chapter establishes a fivefold typology of legacy, including juridified legacy, institutional/systemic legacy, performative legacy, reproductive legacy, and receptive legacy. It argues that court-mandated legacy involves a certain degree of social construction and claims of ownership over the past that sit uncomfortably with the thicker fabric of remembrance and collective memory.

This book offers an analysis of every American presidential assassination and various attempted assassinations, examining the events surrounding each event and the people involved. The assassinations and attempted assassinations of American presidents were pivotal events that reverberated throughout the nation, even in cases where the murder was botched. The individuals behind each plot are often fascinating studies in obsession and distorted perception of reality—like President James Garfield's assassin, who spent an extra dollar on the gun he chose for the act simply because it would look better in a museum display after the event. For the first time under one cover, this text offers a concise study of every presidential assassination, attempt, and rumor. Each chapter focuses on a single American assassination, providing an analysis of the president, the assassin, and the events that shaped their arrival at that place in time. The chapter then describes the assassination or attempt itself and the long-term impacts of the crime. Accounts of the more contemporary incidents involving Presidents John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush especially demonstrate the evolution of the monumental task of protecting the U.S. president in a free and open society.

Sex offenders are incarcerated in substantial numbers for a variety of non-violent and violent crimes, with or without diagnoses of paraphilias. The treatment of sex offenders in correctional contexts is arguably one of the most challenging undertakings for psychiatrists. Sex offenders comprise a highly stigmatized population that typically engenders intense negative feelings in both the professional and lay communities. The growing number of sex offenses in recent years has had a profound impact on public perception. In 2012, the latest year for which comprehensive data have been compiled, there were 73,080 incidents of sex ‘crimes against persons’ in the United States involving 79,625 individual victims and individual 76,927 offenders. The potential contributions of psychiatry to sex offender management span a considerable segment of the patient’s life: from post-arrest evaluation and emergent care, through adjudication in the courts, incarceration, possible civil commitment, and supervised release. Nevertheless, psychiatrists, as physicians and healers, bring much needed medical expertise to the discussion. Foremost is the ability of psychiatry to demonstrate that sex offenders are a heterogeneous population. Further, a rational, effective, and humane approach to the social problem of sex offending depends upon accurate assessment, diagnosis, and treatment approaches to the offender. Psychiatrists can also inform the ongoing debate about competency, dangerousness, the appropriateness of civil commitment, life-long sex offender registration, compulsory medication and other medically relevant issues in sex offender management. This chapter reviews the nosology, assessment, diagnosis, best and evidence-based practice issues relevant to the care of convicted sex offenders in correctional settings.

This book provides a history of the South China Sea conflict and lays out the stakes for each of the bordering states and China’s interaction with them – namely, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Indonesia; it also examines the U.S. government’s role in the region. China’s Naval Operations in the South China Sea is highly topical; it examines the evolving perception of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) of the South China Sea (SCS), and Beijing’s accompanying maritime strategy to claim the islands and waters, particularly in the context of the strategies of the neighbouring stake-holding nations. In addition to long-standing territorial disputes over the islands and waters of the SCS, China and the other littoral states — Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Indonesia — have growing and often mutually exclusive interests in the offshore energy reserves and fishing grounds. Many other countries outside of the region worry about the protection of sea lines of communication for military and commercial traffic, oil tankers in particular. These differences have been expressed in the increasing frequency and intensity of maritime incidents, involving both naval and civilian vessels, sometimes working in coordination against naval or civilian targets. Each chapter on the littoral states closely examines that state’s territorial claims to the islands and waters of the SCS, its primary economic and military interests in these areas, its views on the sovereignty disputes over the entire SCS, its strategy to achieve its objectives, and its views on the U.S. involvement in any and all of these issues.

The inviolability of diplomatic personnel and premises is a cornerstone of interstate relations and international law. As epitomized by the murder of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi, host countries are not always willing or capable to protect foreign diplomats and missions, which have become increasingly vulnerable to terrorism and other forms of political violence. Consequently, states with a large diplomatic presence have complemented host countries protection with a host of additional measures ranging from relocating embassies to fortified suburban locations to the deployment of military, police, and private security guards. By increasing the separateness of foreign envoys from local societies and informing local societies’ perceptions of the sending states, however, diplomatic security policies may not simply protect diplomats, but also reshape the institution and practice of diplomacy. In spite of its theoretical and policy relevance, diplomatic security has received very sporadic scholarly attention. This volume fills this gap by providing a comparative analysis of diplomatic protective policies enacted by the US, China, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Israel and Turkey. Moreover, the book investigates the reasons underlying the evolution of diplomatic security policies over time and their variations across countries, examining the factors underlying the choosing of protective actors and arrangements. It then examines the effectiveness of these arrangements analyzing how diplomatic security policies have been reformed in response to major incidents and the extent to which they can secure diplomats without hindering their ability to interact with local society and tarnishing the image of the sending state.

The descriptions and examples of unethical behaviors in sport in this book will challenge readers to rethink how they view sport and question whether participating in sport builds character―especially at the youth and amateur levels. Sport potentially can teach character as well as social and moral values, but only when these positive concepts are consistently taught, modeled, and reinforced by sport leaders with the moral courage to do so. The seeming moral crisis threatening amateur and youth sport―evidenced by athletes, coaches, and parents alike making poor ethical choices―and ongoing scandals regarding performance-enhancing drug use by professional athletes make sports ethics a topic of great concern. This work enables readers to better understand the ethical challenges facing competitive sport by addressing issues such as gamesmanship, doping, cheating, sportsmanship, fair play, and respect for the game. A compelling read for coaches, sport administrators, players, parents, and sport fans, the book examines specific examples of unethical behaviors―many cases of which occur in amateur and educational sports―to illustrate how these incidents threaten the perception that sport builds character. It identifies and investigates the multiple reasons for cheating in sport, such as the fact that the rewards for succeeding are so high, and the feeling of athletes that they must behave as they do to "level the playing field" because everyone else is cheating, being violent, taking performance-enhancing drugs, or doing whatever it takes to win. Readers will gain insight into how coaches and sport administrators can achieve the goals for youth, interscholastic, intercollegiate, and Olympic sport by stressing moral values and character development as well as see how specific recommendations can help ensure that sport can serve to build character rather than teach bad behavior in the pursuit of victory.

After the multiple murders that took place on 3 and 4 May 2023, the Government of Serbia adopted a series of measures to improve gun control and increase safety in schools and among youth. The aim of this study is to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of these measures. The research was based on different sources of data: the state authorities’ official reports, expert literature, media reports, interviews conducted with police officers, the Armed Violence Monitoring Platform (AVMP) database, and a survey of the citizens’ satisfaction with measures, their perception of security and trust in institutions. Most of the measures that have been adopted are related to firearms, while a smaller part refers to the safety of young people and education. Also, measures related to firearms have been implemented more than others, and some are still in effect (gun control, moratorium on the issuance of gun permits). The public call for handing over arms produced results in terms of a large number of collected weapons (significantly larger than before), but there is a question of why previous such actions were not accompanied by appropriate media campaigns, which would have produced similar results. Another question is why there are no current campaigns that would educate citizens about the dangers of firearms, their misuse and the way they are to be kept and handled, as these things are very important for the prevention of armed violence. Also, the collection of firearms showed problems regarding their transport, accommodation and disposal after handing over. Measures for the safety of young people were mostly of declarative (tougher penal policy) and formal nature (establishment of councils and working groups). The only measure that was immediately implemented and visible to citizens was the placement of police officers in schools. It is possible that some students, school staff or parents did feel safer because of this, but there is no evidence that the presence of police managed to reduce violence. This measure, as well as the measures related to gun control, significantly increased the scope of work of the general jurisdiction police, creating a situation in which other forms of crime may flourish. Most of the measures were not implemented even though more than six months have passed since their adoption. Some of them, like tougher penalties for firearms-related offences or lowering the threshold for criminal liability, require legislative changes. In addition, the research and experience of other countries do not support the idea that tougher penal policies would decrease criminality. The conclusions show that the measures were motivated by political interests to satisfy the public and that they were not adopted by professionals from the fields of public security, justice or education, which is why some have turned out to be impossible to implement (restricting access to the Dark Net, reducing the threshold for criminal responsibility, gun control in the short term) or are unsustainable for the system (police presence in schools, testing students for the presence of psychoactive substances). Analysis of data from the regional Armed Violence Monitoring Platform, which records media-covered incidents involving firearms, indicates that the number of such incidents did not change much after 3 and 4 May. Also, other data sources show that levels of violence and incidents involving firearms are not decreasing and that implemented measures have not changed anything in this sense. The results of the public opinion survey show that the number of citizens who are not satisfied with the measures is slightly higher than the number of those who are. Satisfaction with safety measures in schools (47% of the respondents) is a bit higher than satisfaction with measures related to gun control (54% of the respondents). Six months after the adoption of these measures, the satisfaction of citizens is visibly decreasing - 44% of them are satisfied with the measures, while 56% are not. Comparing the results of public opinion polls in 2023 with those from 2022, it is evident that citizens’ trust in institutions has dropped significantly: 63% trust the police (76% in 2022), 49% trust the courts (57%), and 50% trust the prosecutor’s office (56%). Also, the perception of citizens’ safety considering the environment has decreased at all levels: in their homes, neighbourhoods and in Serbia in general. Finally, the survey also showed that more citizens now feel threatened by phenomena such as murder (56%) and illegal possession of firearms (61%) than was the case in 2022 (murder 49%, illegal possession of firearms 54%). It should be noted here that we are talking about two different public opinion surveys here, and their comparison should be viewed with some reservation. Although both were conducted using a national, representative sample, the 2023 survey was conducted online and was not conducted on a random sample, while the 2022 survey was conducted face-to-face on a random sample.

Why do some American intelligence officials maintain fallout shelters and private contingency plans to evacuate their families in the event of a Russian nuclear strikeâ–even in today's post-Cold War era of U.S.-Russian partnership? The frightening answer lies within the pages of War Scare, a terrifying assessment of the prospect for nuclear holocaust in our day. Written by Peter Vincent Pry, a former CIA military analyst, War Scare provides a history of our country's little-known brushes with nuclear war and warns that, contrary to popular opinion and the assurances of our political leaders, the possibility of a Russian attack still exists. Nuclear deterrence has been the foundation of Western security for the last 50 years, but since the end of the Cold War, Russian military doctrine has become more destabilizing, and much more dangerous, than is commonly believed. By making use of a wealth of declassified and unclassified material, Dr. Pry illustrates how Russia's brutal past continues to shape the consciousness and decision making of its leaders, many of whom are unreconstructed ideologues from the old Soviet regime. Gripped by a perpetual perception of imminent threatâ–a war scareâ–the Russian General Staff, which controls the technical capability of launching a nuclear strike, has shown itself to be unstable at best. The author explores recent history and near–disasters such as the Bosnian crisis, the Norway missile incident, and U.S. air strikes on Iraq from the perspective of the Russian General Staff, believing that only by understanding their viewpoint can we minimize the risk of unintentionally provoking a deadly attack. Wary of NATO expansion and reeling from the Russian economy's descent into chaos, the General Staff may interpret Western military exercises and operations in the Middle East and elsewhere as concealing surprise aggression against Russia. This is a grave situation, indeed, as even after the START I, II, and III agreements, Russia will retain enough nuclear weapons to destroy the worldâ–not to mention significantly expanded chemical and biological warfare capability. War Scare convincingly shows that we ignore these facts at our peril.