Common Definitions

This week is meant for reflection, consolidation, and critical analysis. So far we have reviewed a number of problems that have been designated as serious enough to merit international criminal justice responses.  From a social constructionist perspective we need to begin to ask why these problems have been identified for such responses.

Are these problems truly as serious as world leaders and international agencies such as the United Nations would have us believe? (For example, in a recent TV interview filmmaker Michael Moore [Bowling for Columbine] asserted that 3,000 deaths at the World Trade Center out of 290 million people means that domestic terrorism is a very low risk.) Are their other global issues possibly being ignored that in the long run might be even more critical? 

First, we must ask whether there are commonalities beyond the standard definitions of international and transnational crime. Remember our original definitions:

International criminal law can also be categorized according to whether the conduct in question is international, constituting an offense against the world community, or whether the act is transnational, effecting the interests of more than one state. For example, international crime would encompass acts that threaten world order and security, crimes against humanity and fundamental human rights, war crimes, and genocide; whereas the transnational crime category would include drug trafficking, transborder organized criminal activity, counterfeiting, money laundering, financial crimes, terrorism, and willful damage to the environment.

What does it mean to "threaten world order and security?" Is global pollution less of a threat than terrorism? 

Are some of the items such as "fundamental human rights violations" so clearly understood by everyone that little discussion is needed? Note, for example, that  in most societies the use of the death penalty has been abolished and the American reliance upon the practice is cited as a human rights violation. Yet. the majority of Americans remain convinced of the practice's moral basis in eye for an eye justice.

Related to financial transnational crimes we must ask whose interests are being served by the current identified list. Are there political, economic, and cultural factors at play in the process? Might not current economic trade policies be equally as damaging for the internal stability and economies of certain countries as drug trafficking? Certainly advocates of alternative positions such as the Green Party would say so.

Environmental opponents of agreements such as the World Trade Organization's GATT treaty see such "business deals" as "A Bill of Rights for Transnational Corporations:"

It isn't difficult to regard WTO rules as representing an international bill of rights for transnational corporations. To appreciate why the WTO might be described in this way requires an understanding of the negotiation process that created it. Because international trade has historically been considered an arcane subject restricted entirely to commercial interests, trade negotiations have traditionally conducted by trade ministers with no apparent awareness that other societal values might be at stake. For example, when the Conservative Government of Brian Mulroney was asked what if any environmental assessment had been carried out of the impending free trade agreement with the United States, it responded somewhat incredulously that its trade deal was entirely a commercial agreement and that the environment had not even come up once. This assessment was offered of course, about an agreement that dealt explicitly with energy, agriculture, environmental standards, forests and fisheries. Moreover, even as the ambit of trade negotiations grew to encompass many more spheres of human activity, no real efforts were made to include other facets of governments.

Similarly, despite constant denials, most of the world views America's concern with the Iraq regime as not based upon its human rights violations, but ultimately upon oil reserves. There are any number of current governments with human rights violations as lengthy as Iraq's.

Overstatements?

One of the major critics of the contemporary discussion of international crime is Alan Block. His essay "Bad Business" appears in the Farer reader (at pp. 217). In it, Block states that many of our current assessments of the threats posed by international crime may be based on inadequate information.  His overall statement is:

I find it difficult to see clearly what differentiates contemporary transnational organized crime from old fashioned international organized crime. I suspect that behind this scholarship is a perception of increasing social vulnerability expressed in the conceptualization that transnational organized crime represents a threat to social and political life even in some of the world's most stable and prosperous nations (pp.220).

In particular, Block discusses drugs, nuclear smuggling, computer crime, and immigration-related crime. For example, on drugs Block first discusses the health risks they entail.  He points out that as a public health problem consumption of drugs is in all likelihood less serious than cancers associated with industrial pollution or heart disease stemming from obesity. Of course, tobacco has killed more than all illicit drugs ever consumed. Given these facts, Block questions why a multi-billion dollar international criminal justice apparatus spends so much time on trying to stop illegal drugs from being produced and distributed. In his perspective, international organized crime in areas such as drugs, people smuggling, and money laundering are being driven by demand and criminal syndicates are making the most of the opportunities being afforded them to cash in on illegal goods and services. Therefore, efforts to stop such criminal endeavors will be most difficult. Given the limited resources globally that can be expended for deterrence efforts, policy decisions need to be better informed ( a topic for later in the course). 

Of course, thinking outside the straight jacket of current dominant opinion on any issue is difficult. While current dominant politicians bash the media as liberal when it attempts to offer opinions that differ from the party line, such discussion is critical to informed thought. Reviewing recent media reporting on the possibilities of war with Iraq, some critics fault the press for not being vigilant enough in fostering debate.

Behind the Great Divide

By PAUL KRUGMAN

NY TIMES 2/18/2003

There has been much speculation why Europe and the U.S. are suddenly at such odds. Is it about culture? About history? But I haven't seen much discussion of an obvious point: We have different views partly because we see different news.

Let's back up. Many Americans now blame France for the chill in U.S.-European relations. There is even talk of boycotting French products.

But France's attitude isn't exceptional. Last Saturday's huge demonstrations confirmed polls that show deep distrust of the Bush administration and skepticism about an Iraq war in all major European nations, whatever position their governments may take. In fact, the biggest demonstrations were in countries whose governments are supporting the Bush administration.

There were big demonstrations in America too. But distrust of the U.S. overseas has reached such a level, even among our British allies, that a recent British poll ranked the U.S. as the world's most dangerous nation — ahead of North Korea and Iraq.

So why don't other countries see the world the way we do? News coverage is a large part of the answer. Eric Alterman's new book, "What Liberal Media?" doesn't stress international comparisons, but the difference between the news reports Americans and Europeans see is a stark demonstration of his point. At least compared with their foreign counterparts, the "liberal" U.S. media are strikingly conservative — and in this case hawkish.

I'm not mainly talking about the print media. There are differences, but the major national newspapers in the U.S. and the U.K. at least seem to be describing the same reality.

Most people, though, get their news from TV — and there the difference is immense. The coverage of Saturday's antiwar rallies was a reminder of the extent to which U.S. cable news, in particular, seems to be reporting about a different planet than the one covered by foreign media.

What would someone watching cable news have seen? On Saturday, news anchors on Fox described the demonstrators in New York as "the usual protesters" or "serial protesters." CNN wasn't quite so dismissive, but on Sunday morning the headline on the network's Web site read "Antiwar rallies delight Iraq," and the accompanying picture showed marchers in Baghdad, not London or New York.

This wasn't at all the way the rest of the world's media reported Saturday's events, but it wasn't out of character. For months both major U.S. cable news networks have acted as if the decision to invade Iraq has already been made, and have in effect seen it as their job to prepare the American public for the coming war.

So it's not surprising that the target audience is a bit blurry about the distinction between the Iraqi regime and Al Qaeda. Surveys show that a majority of Americans think that some or all of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi, while many believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in Sept. 11, a claim even the Bush administration has never made. And since many Americans think that the need for a war against Saddam is obvious, they think that Europeans who won't go along are cowards.

Europeans, who don't see the same things on TV, are far more inclined to wonder why Iraq — rather than North Korea, or for that matter Al Qaeda — has become the focus of U.S. policy. That's why so many of them question American motives, suspecting that it's all about oil or that the administration is simply picking on a convenient enemy it knows it can defeat. They don't see opposition to an Iraq war as cowardice; they see it as courage, a matter of standing up to the bullying Bush administration.

There are two possible explanations for the great trans-Atlantic media divide. One is that European media have a pervasive anti-American bias that leads them to distort the news, even in countries like the U.K. where the leaders of both major parties are pro-Bush and support an attack on Iraq. The other is that some U.S. media outlets — operating in an environment in which anyone who questions the administration's foreign policy is accused of being unpatriotic — have taken it as their assignment to sell the war, not to present a mix of information that might call the justification for war into question.

So which is it? I've reported, you decide.

 

Research Question:

For this question, refer to either the particular crime(s) you have been studying about through news tracking or Web site visits. Answer the following questions: (a) who is most harmed or threatened by this type of crime(s); (b) are their differing estimates about the global seriousness of the crime(s); and (c) are there other types of similar problems being ignored by focus on the crime(s) you have been reviewing?

Critique: 

Critique one of the student summaries posted in the last two weeks.

Please post your responses to threaded discussion.

Locate a student summary on a transnational crime topic from the last two weeks that is most similar to your own research area.  Write a critique of their findings and ask additional questions about their research. For example, are their problems with the statistical sources? What areas seem to be under-investigated? Does their topic fit the common definition of transnational crime we have been developing?
 

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