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This paper examines the most significant processes of securitization and desecuritization occurring at the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) from its inception in 2008 until 2017, when UNASUR began to experience a gridlock. The analysis begins with the hypotheses of desecuritization of armed conflict among the South American countries, as well as their approach to problems drug-related. To this end, the paper is based on a critical theory of security with focus on securitization, and offers an expanded and/or discursive conception of security that goes beyond the military dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the activity related to the production of weapons in the period between the end of the twenties and the early forties, in the electrochemical site of Bussi in Abruzzo. The Site was a strategic plant for the Italian government which productions were subjected to the strictest military secret. The plant was producing chemical weapons (phosgene and mustard gas) and super explosives such as the T4, the most powerful explosive in the world that together with the pentrite, always produced on site, were considered essential products for the defense of the Italian country. In particular, the T4 was produced for the first time in the plant with a process that was using only domestic raw materials, so an independent process that set Italy free from German imports. Additional military productions of interest of the Abruzzo's plant were the chlorate-based explosives for which it was initiated a completely new industrial cycle that boosted even further the capacities of Montecatini. Finally, in the paper we report the production of antiknock compound for fuels and the complex relationship between the Italian State (site of Bussi) the General Motor Chemical Company and the Du Pont de Nemours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the manner in which the U.S. intelligence community analyzes foreign leaders who have significant incentives to be deceptive. Topics discussed include a history of the practice of leader profiling since 1943 by the Office of Strategic Services, examination of declassified Central Intelligence Agency records, and main uses of leadership analyses, as well as useful sources of information for leader assessments.

Copyright of Economics & Environment / Ekonomia i Środowisko is the property of Fundacja Ekonomistow Srodowiska i Zasobow Naturalnych and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article provides information on the Russian nuclear forces for 2006. The country continues to reduce its total nuclear forces in 2005, however, it plans for a new weapon systems and upgrades of existing one. Russian President Vladimir Putin attempts to reassert the country's nuclear strength and reinstate large-scale military exercises. Statistical data on the operational Russian strategic offensive weapons, nonstrategic and defensive weapons and projected strategic warheads from 2006 to 2015 are presented.

This article begins by exploring the media visibility of anonymity online, in particular in relation to trolls and online bullying. It then explores anonymity in the case of Chelsea Manning who leaked US military secrets but only lost anonymity sometime after her leak was made public. This discussion explores issues of responsibility and the reasons for being anonymous. The article then briefly discusses anonymity based on the discussion of the Manning case in relation to the Snowden case, where Snowden refused anonymity, and the Pentagon Papers. The article concludes by pointing out that issues of responsibility in relation to anonymity remain similar whether digital or not, but that anonymity now exists in a context in which there is greater ability to share information between many more people, faster and with radically lowered costs of publishing than before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how details of British Prime Minister Anthony Eden's secret accord with French and Israeli officials signed on October 24, 1956 to invade Egypt and seize the nationalized Suez Canal came to light in the following two decades despite opposition from officials. Topics covered include the efforts of Labour Members of Parliament to secure a Suez inquiry and official history, and arguments that emerged in the analysis, and the social underpinnings of secrecy in Britain.

This Article examines secret agency policies. Clearly when the directives relate to military or national security matters, secrecy is essential. But should the public be viewers of the DACA Manual's guidance on when administrative relief will be provided to immigrants brought to the U.S. as children by their undocumented parents? What about the Department o f Justice policy related to the dismissal of False Claims Act cases or the written procedures that are used by Assistant United States Attorneys in providing criminal discovery to defense counsel? Written policies veiled in secrecy can be detrimental to achieving transparency and legitimacy in government. In focusing on these written internal policies that do not pertain to a specific legal matter, this Article looks beyond the Freedom of Information Act and its exemptions. It discusses the need to maintain an appropriate balance between government transparency and the need for some matters to be kept private, and the importance of agency expertise, accountability, and efficiency in determining a need for transparency. Factored into this equation are the ethical repercussions of secret policies when government employees leave the agency with inside information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contests over the control of information are central to the perpetuation and critique of militarism. This article examines one of the most prominent sets of state document leaks in recent political history: the online posting of hundreds of thousands of US war logs and diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks. Bold statements were advanced in 2010 and afterward regarding what these releases made visible. In contrast, this article considers how disclosure and nondisclosure came bundled together. With reference to the tensions of keeping secrets and producing transparency, I suggest that the promise attached to the released documents did not just derive from the argument that they revealed modern statecraft, nor that such knowledge was tantalizingly out of reach, but from the manner in which what had been rendered knowable could be revisited over time. Through this argument I want to explore the affective knots, conceptual tangles, and problematic story lines associated with exposing militarism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Ensemble classifier system is applied to biometric verification. • For each base classifier, the classifier's competence is separately calculated. • A lip geometrical features measurements are proposed. • Experiments confirmed our method outperforms other state-of-the-art methods. Abstract Machine learning approaches are largely focused on pattern or object classification, where a combination of several classifier systems can be integrated to help generate an optimal or suboptimal classification decision. Multiple classification systems have been extensively developed because a committee of classifiers, also known as an ensemble, can outperform the ensemble's individual members. In this paper, a classification method based on an ensemble of binary classifiers is proposed. Our strategy consists of two phases: (1) the competence of the base heterogeneous classifiers in a pool is determined, and (2) an ensemble is formed by combining those base classifiers with the greatest competences for the given input data. We have shown that the competence of the base classifiers can be successfully calculated even if the number of their learning examples was limited. Such a situation is particularly observed with biometric data. In this paper, we propose a new biometric data structure, the Sim coefficients, along with an efficient data processing technique involving a pool of competent classifiers chosen by dynamic selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reveals some of the problems that arose between military censors and the media during the First World War. The article is written on the basis of the military censorship materials of the Supreme Commander headquarters of the Russian army, the censorship department of the Minsk military district and the materials of the periodical press. The authors conclude that the conflict was predetermined both by the imperfection of the censorship legislation, which provided an opportunity for the censors to evaluate the publications of newspapers and magazines at their own discretion, and by the censorship omissions of the media, which printed inaccurate news and placed information that the enemy could use. The result was ineffective military censorship and the failure of the press to fulfill its important mission: to contribute to the formation of public opinion in the rear in the interests of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concept of born classified as embodied and incorporated by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in 1946 for dissemination of classified information which continued till 1960. The move was largely spurred by an urgent need to regulate access to restricted data related to nuclear technology on account of security concerns. The act dealing with the regulation of restricted data was partly amended in December 1967 in response to criticism of an ambiguous definition of restricted data and to make the regulations commensurate with constitutional requirements. These changes were effective till the dissolution of the agency in 1975.

The article presents information about the Pentagon Papers case in which the U.S. government tried and failed to subdue publication of a classified, top-secret government history of the Vietnam war. In 1978, Howard Morlland, a journalist with one published article to his credit, with no scientific training, after just six months of research, the basic design concepts and various design features of U.S. thermonuclear weapons. Morland was convinced that what he had so easily deciphered could not be considered secret knowledge and thus he could not spell the difference between thermonuclear proliferation and the thermonuclear status quo.

The article discusses the possible consequences on the continuance of inventing nuclear weapons by the superpower nations. Each of this nation's aim focuses on national security. The system of thinking based on security through military dominance has been their core strategy in achieving world peace. However, this mode of analysis is becoming obsolete and is far more positively dangerous in that it will bring about catastrophic damages to the humanity. At a certain point, where tests of thermonuclear weapons in the Pacific and Siberia dramatized this transition. Understandably, accidents and misunderstandings are always a possibility should this misadventure continues, thus, the term stalemate.

The article offers insights on the nuclear weapons policy in United States. It is a popular knowledge that nuclear weapons were incorporated by the government in the plans for the defense of Europe. They were developed for many tactical military uses such as on anti-submarine campaign, air campaign and ground campaign. According to the author, there are three reforms which the U.S. government should consider concerning its nuclear policies. The first action concerns the need of the U.S. government to be open to its officials, representatives and people regarding nuclear-related information. The second one concerns the need of the government to be open to its major allies regarding its nuclear technology and the last one, concerns the improvement of civil defense.

The main factor undermining the Russian army during World War I was not revolutionary propaganda but the predominance of peasants among the soldiers. The underlying peasant mindset, which persisted despite orders from above, led to fraternization with the enemy, the unintentional revelation of military secrets, and the development of views on internal and external enemies that contributed to military defeat and revolutionary upheavals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last few months of 1932, the Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski solved the problem of finding the internal connections of the rotors and reflector of the Enigma cipher machine used by the German army at that time. This allowed the Polish Cipher Bureau to construct an analogue of the machine, and subsequently to find effective methods for deciphering secret messages. Rejewski performed this feat virtually alone using cryptographic material provided by the Polish secret services. His knowledge of the theory of permutation groups was essential in solving this problem. This article describes in detail how to find the complete wiring of the rotors and reflector of Enigma, as well as other specifics, using data that Rejewski had at his disposal, by systematically presenting the resolution of all cases that could have been encountered. Similarly, we complete those stages of the procedure that were only outlined by Rejewski. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the Nuclear Posture Review, a congressionally ordered assessment of current and future plans for the U.S. nuclear arsenal from the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush. Position on nuclear war planning system; Details on the concept of adaptive planning; Views on the idea regarding the effectiveness of a nuclear weapon.

From June 2013, documents leaked by the National Security Agency (NSA) dissident Edward Snowden revealed that Western intelligence agencies are capable of bulk collection of electronic communications flowing through global telecommunication systems. Surveillance data shared by the “Five Eyes” eavesdropping agencies of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand include journalist’s communications. In the wake of the Snowden leak, Zygmunt Bauman and colleagues called for a systematic assessment of the scale, reach and character of contemporary surveillance practices. This paper explores a specific part of Bauman’s task by assessing the impact of the Snowden revelations on confidential source-based journalism. Interviews were conducted with a range of investigative journalists who have experience of covering national security in Five Eyes countries. All expressed serious concern over the intelligence agencies’ greatly enhanced capability to track journalists and to identify and neutralise their sources. The paper concludes that there is clear evidence of a paradigmatic shift in journalist–source relations as those interviewed regard Five Eyes mass surveillance as a most serious threat to the fourth estate model of journalism as practised in Western democratic countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main factor undermining the Russian army during World War I was not revolutionary propaganda but the predominance of peasants among the soldiers. The underlying peasant mindset, which persisted despite orders from above, led to fraternization with the enemy, the unintentional revelation of military secrets, and the development of views on internal and external enemies that contributed to military defeat and revolutionary upheavals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the information control provisions as defined by the U.S. Atomic Energy Act of 1940 which embodies the principle of born classified which regulates access to restricted data. The concept of restricted data has given rise to intense debate from within as well as outside of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission due to a vaguely defined usage of the term. The restricted data was supposed to include scientific and technical information related to nuclear technology and its applications. It is suggested that there is an urgent need for reviewing and amending the regulations concerning the access to restricted data and properly defining its usage.

The article focuses on professional hazards faced by researchers engaged in collecting information on military subjects. Some examples of related court cases that were brought forward in the courts of England, Norway and the United States are exemplified. It discusses the "ABC trial," which involved three Britons Crispin Aubrey, John Berry and Duncan Campbell, which was brought at London's Old Bailey Court in 1978. They were tried for several offenses under Britain's 1911 and 1920 Official Secrets Acts.

The article discusses the advantages and disadvantages of releasing the information on the size of the American Atomic stockpile, particularly its relation to the democratic process of the U.S. government. U.S. Senator Brian McMahon proposed to the Atomic Energy Commission that serious consideration should be given to the advisability of disclosing information regarding the size of the Atomic stockpile, during the first meeting of the new session of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, from which he serves as chairman.

Copyright of Mediterranea - Ricerche Storiche is the property of Mediterranea-Ricerche Storiche and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)