Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Between 1953 and 2003, 19 major shifts have occurred in Israel's strategic environment. With only one exception (Egypt's decision to launch the War of Attrition in 1969) Military Intelligence (AMAN), Israel's national estimating agency, has failed to provide a warning against the emerging threat or to properly assess a promising opportunity. This paper covers the period of 1953-1973 and presents eight of the 19 cases. Each of these presentations is made of three parts: (a) the context in which the intelligence estimate took place; (b) AMAN's performance; and (c) the causes for quality of AMAN's performance.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The environmental ethics literature—and the environmental movement in general—have long praised Aldo Leopold's essay, "Thinking Like a Mountain," as among the movement's canonical works. Leopold pleads for empathy with the geological, with the earth itself. If we practice the exercise of thinking like a mountain, we might extend our empathies (and our political and moral support) to causes that might not live at our human pace.

But "thinking" has many modes and perspective is fraught with potential power issues. As John Berger argued (and Simon Schama elaborated), there are ways of seeing, and that "perspective" can represent power relations in not altogether expected ways. We gaze at the mountain, wishing its approval, identifying with its power and aspiring to partner with such a permanent co-conspirator. These potential confusions (or even pathologies) reside alongside Leopold's entirely laudable empathy.

The classic American national parks offer innumerable opportunities to ponder this puzzle. Elevated to near sacred status, they offer promises at the scale Leopold pursues, and the parks work at a democratic scale, too, capturing the imagination of a remarkably broad swath of the American public. From Moran's Teton paintings to Muir's poetic descriptions of Yosemite, moral grandeur is in play, even if it is also tested by the crass commercialism and banality of everyday American life. In its highest modernism, America could carve a mountain so we could see its very eyes, which at least seem to gaze back at us, tolerating our presence at the mountain's "foot." Struggles have formed around that gaze, sometimes along surprising lines. But more is at stake than the odd American spectacle of carved mountains. As the environmental movement continues to sort out basic elements of its political thought, these visions of mountains that see and hear reflect a larger effort to assess how "nature" (including natural sites) function politically in American culture, both generally and in the specific—and currently controversial—context of American environmental politics.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Robert P. Steed (email: steedr@citadel.edu) will present this paper, if accepted. Abstract:

Partisan change in the South over the past half century has been dramatic. Not surprisingly, research on the southern Republican Party has focused largely on those areas and electoral levels where growth has occurred. Much less attention has been given to those mountain areas of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee where the party historically enjoyed its main support.

Traditionally, mountain Republican activists and organizations differed from their newly developing counterparts in urban/suburban areas of the South in terms of demographics, ideology, and party activity. Analysis of data from the Southern Grassroots Party Activists Survey I (conducted in 1991) suggests that these differences still exist as of the 1990s and still carry potential consequences for intra-party unity in the region (see Steed, Baker and Moreland 1995).

The paper proposed here will extend our previous analysis into the early Twenty-first Century. Utilizing data from the Southern Grassroots Party Activists Survey II (conducted in 2001), the paper will compare mountain Republican activists with non-mountain Republican activists in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee with regard to personal and political backgrounds, activity patterns, ideological and issue orientations, and party perspectives and will examine whether or not there are continuing differences between these two groups of party officials with a view toward understanding the place of mountain Republicans within the southern Republican Party during a period of rapid partisan transformation. The paper will also address the larger issue of the nationalization of southern party politics as it relates to these mountain regions.

The data for the paper come from the south-wide survey of local party officials (precinct officers and county chairs) funded by an NSF grant and directed by Charles Prysby and John Clark (for a description of the project, see Clark and Prysby 2004).

References:
Robert P. Steed, Tod A. Baker, and Laurence W. Moreland, “Forgotten but not Gone: Mountain Republicans and Contemporary Southern Party Politics,” Journal of Political Science 23 (1995): 5-27.

John A. Clark and Charles Prysby, Southern Political Party Activists: Patterns of Conflict and Change, 1991-2001, University Press of Kentucky, 2004).

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper develops an Ethnic Group Identity Index that seeks to create a qualitative measure of ethnic group identity. After creating the index, the paper will use a case study of Chechnya to measure their ethnic group identity.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: A qualitative study design used to explore the experiences of married bisexual men, who participated in gay/bisexual websites as a way to find their social support. In this study, we can find that the websites provide an important tool for married bisexual men to get social support, and the websites provide experimental experiences for the bisexuals to construct the comprehension of bisexual sexuality. Additionally, the Internet provides opportunities for married bisexual men to search for the real self and release their pressure from marriage. Additionally, the bisexuals use the websites to socialize, realize themselves, develop friendship networks, and even find romance. The websites serve an alternative way for bisexuals to come out and transfer into a bisexual lifestyle.