‘Tear-gas’: authorised at home, banned in war? Not so for the USA
‘Tear-gas’ may come to symbolise the Trump Administration’s heavy-handed response to the popular reaction against the killing of George Floyd, a middle-aged black man, by a white police officer. The President’s rolling thunder of insensitive, divisive tweets extolling law and order and deriding the legitimate demands by the Black Lives Matter movement has contributed to irresponsible use of force against essentially peaceful protesters, onlookers, and members of the press. Police brutality combined with widespread lack of accountability – unless a person gets killed or an incident is captured on media – has led to multiple types of excesses. When President …
Impunity through knowledge management: The legacy of South Africa’s CBW programme
Book review: Brian Rappert and Chandré Gould, The Dis-Eases of Secrecy: Tracing History, Memory & Justice (Jacana Media: Johannesburg, 2017), 261p. It took me almost a year to write this book review. There are reasons why. First, the book is not that easy to read. While one can read it linearly (that is one page after another, as one would normally do), it instead invites readers to follow the logic of the argument, which entails dashing back and forwards from one part in the book to another. Second, the insights are profound, and the reader needs to let them sink …
Why stopping acid attacks is a matter of chemical weapons control
By Brett Edwards, James Revill, and Valentina Cartei December 2, 2015 11.13am GMT Republished from The Conversation The use of acid as part of violent crime is apparently on the rise in the UK, and various efforts are being made to reverse what’s become a very disturbing trend The Daily Express has started a campaign to “end the evil of acid attacks”, hot on the heels of a similar initiative by The Sun. Both campaigns focus on restricting access to the types of acid most commonly used in such attacks. The Express has launched a petition demanding that “the sale …
CW disarmament and constructive engagement on Syria
Hearing before the Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Strasbourg, 30 September 2013 …