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May 16, 2008
Durham and Amsterdam's Data Wars project: website launch
Just a quick post to say that the Amsterdam and Durham Universitys' Data Wars project (which I'm working on as research associate) has just launched its new website. As the website says,
Data Wars is a three-year research project which investigates new spaces of governing in the war on terror. The project analyses the ways in which the mobility of people and the mobility of money are being governed in the war on terror, and aims to understand how commercial data - including financial records and passenger information - become used for security decisions in Europe. Data Wars also examines the wider social and political implications of these security developments.
The website also has a del.icio.us news feed - which you can subscribe to, or read on the Data Wars site, for the latest stories about the data-led war on terror. The use of data in security and conflict is currently a significant and controversial area of development: hopefully, the new website and news feed will be useful for those wishing to follow the European aspects of this.
Posted by jon_mendel at 02:58 PM | TrackBack
May 01, 2008
Distribute Iraq's oil revenues directly to the public?
Not many entries lately - I have been finishing up an article on the role of networks in the construction of the Afghan state, and a paper on Iraqi resources for the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.
More on the latter paper - in particular - is still to come. However, one interesting link to flag up for now: I was very interested to read Xavier Sala-i-Martin and Arvind Subramanian's paper on "Addressing the Natural Resource Curse: An Illustration from Nigeria". They argue in favour of "directly distributing the oil revenues to the public", and suggest that - as well as Nigeria - Iraq could be a state in which this policy proved effective.
While their analysis is certainly not perfect - for example, Lindy Davies raises some issues with the account of causality in play in the paper - I do think that this is an interesting proposal, and potentially suggests a means to address some of the problems in Iraq.
More on this to follow...
