thinking

Personnel Change or Personal Change? Rethinking Libya’s Political Isolation Law


Nearly three years after the fall of the Qaddafi regime, Libya’s revolution has stalled. Militias continue to run rampant as the government struggles to perform basic functions. Theoretically to protect the revolution, Libya passed its Political Isolation Law (PIL) in May 2013, effectively banning anyone involved in Qaddafi’s regime from the new government. The law has raised serious questions: Does it contribute to effective governance and reconciliation? Does it respect human rights and further transitional justice? Will it undermine Libya’s prospects for a successful democratic transition?

In this Brookings Doha Center-Stanford "Project on Arab Transitions" Paper, Roman David and Houda Mzioudet examine the controversy over Libya’s PIL and the law’s likely effects. Drawing on interviews with key Libyan actors, the authors find that the PIL has been manipulated for political purposes and that its application is actually weakening, not protecting, Libya. They caution that the PIL threatens to deprive Libya of competent leaders, undermine badly needed reconciliation, and perpetuate human rights violations.

David and Mzioudet go on to compare the PIL to the personnel reform approaches of Eastern European states and South Africa. Ultimately, they argue that Libyans would be better served if the PIL were replaced with a law based on inclusion rather than exclusion and on reconciliation rather than revenge. They maintain that Libya’s democratic transition would benefit from an approach that gives exonerated former regime personnel a conditional second chance instead of blindly excluding potentially valuable contributors.

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Authors

  • Roman David
  • Houda Mzioudet
Publication: Brookings Doha Center
Image Source: © Ismail Zetouni / Reuters
      
 
 




thinking

Rethinking Local Affordable Housing Strategies

Bruce Katz focuses on the housing challenges facing Washington state in this presentation at the Housing Washington 2004 conference. In the speech Katz reviews Washington's particular challenges and then outlines a "winning affordable-housing playbook" applicable anywhere.

The metro program hosts and participates in a variety of public forums. To view a complete list of these events, please visit the metro program's Speeches and Events page which provides copies of major speeches, powerpoint presentations, event transcripts, and event summaries.

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Authors

Publication: Housing Washington 2004
     
 
 




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After COVID-19—thinking differently about running the health care system

       




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Clouded thinking in Washington and Beijing on COVID-19 crisis

In 2015, an action movie about a group of elite paratroopers from the People’s Liberation Army, “Wolf Warrior,” dominated box offices across China. In 2020, the nationalistic chest-thumping spirit of that movie is defining Chinese diplomacy, or at least the propaganda surrounding it. This aggressive new style is known as “wolf warrior diplomacy,” and although…

       




thinking

Clouded thinking in Washington and Beijing on COVID-19 crisis

In 2015, an action movie about a group of elite paratroopers from the People’s Liberation Army, “Wolf Warrior,” dominated box offices across China. In 2020, the nationalistic chest-thumping spirit of that movie is defining Chinese diplomacy, or at least the propaganda surrounding it. This aggressive new style is known as “wolf warrior diplomacy,” and although…

       




thinking

Rethinking lone wolf terrorism


The man who drove a truck through packed crowds celebrating Bastille Day, killing more than 80, may have acted alone, according to the early reports. We don't know if he was inspired by a jihadist ideology or linked to any specific group. In any event, these extremist groups are increasingly embracing a "lone wolf" approach, and the West should prepare for more such attacks.

I've argued that such lone wolf" attacks are deadly but often fail in the long-term. Part of the reason is that historically many are poorly prepared and incompetent, bungling the attack or at least not killing as many as a more skilled and trained individual might.

Yet the horrific body count in Nice, along with the 49 dead in recent Orlando nightclub shooting, shows how deadly even an unskilled loser like Omar Mateen can be.

This deadliness is not new – Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, largely acting alone, killed 168 people when they bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 – but it suggests the potential lethality of lone wolves.

A Weaker Islamic State

The Islamic State is putting more emphasis on lone wolves out of desperation.

In the past, it urged its sympathizers to go to Syria to help the fledgling state defend itself and expand. However, the United States, France, and other countries and local fighters hitting hard at the Islamic State's core in Iraq and Syria. Other major areas of operations, like the Islamic State's "province" in Libya, are also under siege. The self-proclaimed state is short of funds, and the number of foreign recruits is declining.

Like all terrorist groups, the Islamic State needs victories to inspire new recruits and prevent existing members from losing hope. CIA Director John Brennan foresaw this in testimony and warned, "as the pressure mounts on [ISIS], we judge that it will intensify its global terror campaign to maintain its dominance of the global terrorism agenda."

A silver lining is that lone wolf terrorism, even if lethal, usually fails in a strategic sense. As one IRA terrorist said, "you don't bloody well kill people for the sake of killing them."

Violence with no strategy behind it terrifies, but it can backfire against a group and the cause it embraces. McVeigh and Nichols, for example, discredited other far right movements. McVeigh claimed he was dealing a blow against a tyrannical government, but the death of 19 children and three pregnant women in the bombing made it hard even for anti-government zealots to defend him.

In Nice, the driver killed children out to watch the fireworks, and the dead included innocent Muslims, like the grieving young man asking Allah to accept his mother into heaven may (and should) become the face of the attack, hardly a heroic move in a holy war that would inspire others.

Although the Islamic State's moves smack of desperation, that is no comfort to anyone concerned about terrorism.

Difficult To Prevent

Terrorist groups that draw on foreign fighters or otherwise are organized tend to be more deadly and dangerous in the long-term, but lone wolves are exceptionally hard to stop. The very organizational connections that give most terrorism direction are by definition lacking, and thus it is harder to find and disrupt the attacks. So more attempts, and likely some successful ones, seem inevitable.

One clear recommendation – and the one least likely to be heeded in the aftermath of a terrorist attack – is to ensure community support. If a community has good relations with the police and society in general, it has fewer grievances for terrorists to exploit and is more likely to point out malefactors in their midst.

Even though he was never arrested, Mateen came to the FBI's attention because a local Muslim found him worrisome. In France in particular, however, relations between the Muslim community and the government are often poisonous, and a terrorist attack will probably make this worse as France's already popular far-right movement becomes strong. And this will only mean more lone wolves will slip through in the future.

This piece originally appeared on NPR's Parallels.

Authors

Publication: NPR
Image Source: © Pascal Rossignol / Reuters
         




thinking

Rethinking Incentives to Save for a Secure Retirement


Event Information

September 9, 2011
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT

Room 216
Hart Senate Office Building
Constitution Avenue and 2nd Street, NE
Washington, DC

Register for the Event

Americans — especially low- and middle-income workers — are simply not saving enough for retirement. The current retirement income deficit—the gap between what Americans will need in retirement and what they will actually have—is well over $6 trillion. This gap will be insurmountable without a significant change to current tax policy to help incentivize more Americans to save for their own retirement.

On September 9, the Retirement Security Project at Brookings hosted a briefing in collaboration with the Senate Special Committee on Aging to examine new ways to help Americans save for retirement without increasing government spending. A panel of experts on tax, retirement and budget policy explored ideas to modify the tax incentives for retirement savings.

After the panel, participants took audience questions.

Audio

Transcript

Event Materials

     
 
 




thinking

Clouded thinking in Washington and Beijing on COVID-19 crisis

In 2015, an action movie about a group of elite paratroopers from the People’s Liberation Army, “Wolf Warrior,” dominated box offices across China. In 2020, the nationalistic chest-thumping spirit of that movie is defining Chinese diplomacy, or at least the propaganda surrounding it. This aggressive new style is known as “wolf warrior diplomacy,” and although…

       




thinking

Planetary thinking

The Swedish climate truthsayer Greta Thunberg has set sail for the United States in a zero-emissions racing yacht to generate waves in a different part of the world—including at next month’s United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York. She will arrive in America at a time of growing transatlantic awareness of the threat posed by climate change.…

       




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Rethinking Political Islam


      
 
 




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Rethinking unemployment insurance taxes and benefits

       




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Rethinking Cuba: New opportunities for development


Event Information

June 2, 2015
9:00 AM - 2:30 PM EDT

Saul/Zilkha Rooms
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Register for the Event

Para Español, hacer clic aquí



On December 17, 2014, President Barack Obama and President Raúl Castro announced that the United States and Cuba would seek to reestablish diplomatic relations. Since then, the two countries have engaged in bilateral negotiations in Havana and Washington, the United States has made several unilateral policy changes to facilitate greater trade and travel between the two countries, and bipartisan legislation has been introduced in the U.S. Congress to lift the travel ban. Meanwhile, conversations are ongoing about ending the 50-plus-year embargo and Cuba has continued the process of updating its economic system, including establishing new rules for foreign investment and the emerging private sector.

In light of the significant shifts underway in the U.S.-Cuba relationship, new questions arise about Cuba’s development model, and its economic relations with the region and the world. On Tuesday, June 2, the Latin America Initiative at Brookings hosted a series of panel discussions with various experts including economists, lawyers, academics, and practitioners to examine opportunities and challenges facing Cuba in this new context. Panels examined macroeconomic changes underway in Cuba, how to finance Cuba’s growth, the emerging private sector, and themes related to much-needed foreign investment.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #CubaGrowth

Video

Audio

Transcript

Event Materials

     
 
 




thinking

Thinking is working, too!

Quiet solitude, or 'fallow time', should be viewed as an essential part of the work cycle.




thinking

Larch Corner is a Passivhaus wooden wonder that shows how we should be thinking about carbon

Mark Siddall of LEAP measures and calculates everything, thinks about it, and then calculates it again.




thinking

Electrify Everything: Why our thinking has to be as flexible and resilient as our buildings

It is hard keeping up with the latest ideas in green building, but things are changing fast.




thinking

Rethinking death to better understand the effects of chemicals

Thought experiments worked for Einstein. Can they help protect the environment too?




thinking

Quick-thinking obstetrician delivers a drowning baby moose to safety

"It was cool to be in the right place at the right time," says Dr. Sciascia.




thinking

Rethinking The Food Label To "Inspire Food Literacy"

The UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism's News21 program and Good Magazine have shortlisted the three finalists in a competition to design a better food label. They "asked for designs that were informative, instructive and




thinking

Energy Star Finally Starts Thinking About Health, Durability and House Size

One of the big beefs with Energy Star for housing is that all it cared about was energy; beat the standard code by 15% and you got it. No matter that the best way to make a house efficient is to make it tight, leading to all kinds of air quality




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Food, Water, and... Permaculture? Rethinking Disaster Relief for Haiti and Beyond

A growing number of environmentalists are re-envisioning 'disaster relief' as something that can provide hope for the future, not just a hot meal and somewhere to sleep. Their tool of choice? Permaculture.




thinking

It’s time to start thinking of driving like smoking

Cars are killing us, and it is time to limit the damage to drivers and to people around them, just like we did with smoking.




thinking

Thinking about building a geodesic dome? Don't.

They were wonderful mathematical constructs, but they are terrible buildings.




thinking

We're thinking about food in the wrong way

Fretting about authenticity and appearance detracts from more important concerns.




thinking

How our thinking changed in 2019: recycling and plastics

We are now prisoners of the petrochemical industry.




thinking

2050 is too late to start thinking about embodied carbon

A conference on sustainable construction in the Can of Ham is in denial about upfront carbon emissions




thinking

Should your kitchen have a recirculating or a direct-exhaust hood? I am exhausted just thinking about it

It is a real problem when designing energy efficient homes, and it seems that there is no good solution except ordering in.




thinking

Denmark allows fast and heavy "speed pedelecs" in the bike lanes. What were they thinking?

We always write "Learn from Denmark." We take it back.




thinking

How our thinking changed in 2019: Upfront Carbon Emissions

Nobody cared much about this a few years ago. They do now.




thinking

Rio+20’s ‘Look at the Bright Side’ Phase Doesn't Hide the Process Needs Re-Thinking

The commitments made by countries and the intention to set Sustainable Development Goals are good achievements, just not enough to justify a summit like this. Is it time to re-design the UN environmental meetings to work for us?




thinking

What Were They Thinking? USGBC in Connecticut Gives Award to Nestle Waters' Headquarters

The bottled water company responsible for profound and pointless waste of water and fossil fuels is praised for low flush toilets and white roofs.




thinking

Rethinking public washrooms after the coronavirus

We have to stop building highways and start building toilets as we face a whole new public bathroom crisis.





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We Were All Thinking It

Hey there! I am pleased to announce that I have a new album out! It is instrumental metal and is about our oncoming climate apocalypse. Check it out below, and if you like what you hear, feel free to purchase a copy!




thinking

Russia is fast becoming a coronavirus epicenter, with health workers still reporting PPE shortages. Putin is already thinking about reopening.

On Thursday, the country reported its largest one-day increase in new cases of 11,231 — yet President Putin already has his eyes on reopening.





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Ekta Kapoor shares old family photo, wants to know what dad Jeetendra is thinking

Ace producer Ekta Kapoor shared a close bond with her family - dad Ravi Kapoor, aka Jeetendra, mum Shobha and brother Tusshar. Ekta recently shared a lovely throwback family photo, which features the four in their younger days, but looking awfully distracted!

Sharing the photo on Instagram, Ekta wrote, "Well well! We have come a long way! Guess wat my dad is thinking."

 
 
 
View this post on Instagram

Well well! We have come a long way! Guess wat my dad is thinking 😹😹😹😆

A post shared by Erk❤️rek (@ektarkapoor) onMay 4, 2020 at 6:28am PDT

Well, can you guess what veteran actor Jeetendra is thinking about in the photo?

Several of Ekta's industry friends and Insta followers commented on the post. Ronit Roy wrote, "Wow! Yes a loooong looooong way," while Akshay Dogra said, "Well all that matters is happiness on point here too!" while Rahul Dev commented, "She's got 'the look'."

While in lockdown, Ekta Kapoor has been entertaining her fans with some throwback memories. She recently shared a video of her dancing with close friends Anita Hassanandani and Krystle D'Souza.

Catch up on all the latest entertainment news and gossip here. Also, download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps.

Mid-Day is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@middayinfomedialtd) and stay updated with the latest news




thinking

Anees Bazmee mourns Irrfan Khan's death, says 'my heart sinks thinking about it'

April 29, 2020, is going to be one of the darkest days for all Irrfan Khan fans and Hindi cinema. His untimely demise has shaken one and all, especially the people from the fraternity who worked with him and knew him as a person and not just an actor. The actor was undergoing treatment for Neuroendocrine cancer and was admitted at Mumbai's Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital due to a colon infection. The actor's last rites were performed on the same day in the presence of his family, close relatives and friends. Irrfan is survived by his wife Sutapa and sons, Babil and Ayaan.

Soon after news of Irrfan's death broke on the internet, social media was flooded with messages from fans and celebrities expressing their grief. Filmmaker Anees Bazmee mourned his death by sharing a throwback picture with Irrfan from the sets of their film ‘Thank You’. The picture shows Anees explaining a scene to Irrfan. Sharing the picture, he wrote, "I still can't believe he is no more with us, my heart sinks thinking about it. We have lost one of this generation's greatest actor. To work with @irrfank was a magical and special privilege. #FlashbackFriday (sic)".

On April 28, the Piku actor was admitted to Mumbai's Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani hospital with a colon infection and was in the Intensive Care Unit. In 2018, Irrfan was diagnosed with neuroendocrine tumour and was undergoing treatment for the same.

Catch up on all the latest entertainment news and gossip here. Also, download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps.

Mid-Day is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@middayinfomedialtd) and stay updated with the latest news




thinking

Study Shows How People Trick Themselves into Thinking Something is Heavier Than It Really is

If a person holds the car steering wheel at certain angles (1, 4, or 5 on the clock) then it's likely you're over or underestimating how much force you




thinking

Rethinking Antitrust Tools for Multi-Sided Platforms 2018

This report investigates how competition agencies can respond to the challenges posed by the multi-sided nature of platform markets, which are particularly common in the digital economy.




thinking

Rethinking due diligence practices in the apparel supply chain

Two years ago today, the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka collapsed, killing over 1,100 people and injuring another 2,500. The dead and injured were garment workers. This blog post looks at due diligence in the apparel supply chain.




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Big City thinking needs Big City analytics: Identifying Sydney's Centres of Gravity - 7 Apr

Greater Sydney generates 23% of the Nation's GDP and will be a city of 8 million, up from 4 million, in the next 40 years.




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SARAH VINE: Panic buyers display the unthinking cruelty of those who care only for themselves

SARAH VINE: Scenes of the healthy and ablebodied riding roughshod over the old and frail make me question whether we have what it takes to face this crisis.




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Justin Gatlin insists he is not thinking about facing Usain Bolt following impressive Diamond League meeting win in Rome

Justin Gatlin insisted he was not thinking about beating Usain Bolt to gold at the World Championships later this year after another stunning win in the 100 metres.




thinking

Aussie parents charged after allegedly tricking their kids into thinking they were sick

The father, 49, and mother, 38, both from Perth, convinced doctors their children - a girl and two boys - had Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.




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Liz Jones's Diary: In which I try positive thinking 

I woke at 3am last night, could not get back to sleep. Thought my throat was itchy. No nice thoughts to comfort myself with




thinking

Laura Anderson teased for 'thinking she's a bride' in princess gown

The 33-year-old former air hostess looked sensational in a lilac gown with a sweeping hemline, although she was teased by her co-star Eyal Booker




thinking

Cancer faker who conned four judges into thinking he was dying faces jail

A con artist who hoodwinked four New South Wales judges with sham medical reports claiming he had terminal cancer is set to be jailed.




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The most miniatures ever created for a 'Star Wars' movie was 'Phantom Menace,' despite everyone thinking it was all CGI

Disney Plus' show "Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian" doesn't just reveal secrets from the show, but from the "Star Wars" franchise, too.In episode 2 of the show, titled "Legacy," Industrial Light & Magic CCO John Knoll revealed that "The Phantom Menace" used the most miniatures of any "Star Wars" movie.It's a shocking revelation as most believe the movie was heavily done using computer-generated imagery.Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.If you are watching the new Disney Plus show, "Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian," you might have caught a fascinating tidbit in the second episode, which launched on the service Friday, called "Legacy."It comes around the nine-minute mark of the episode. During the round table conversation "The Mandalorian" creator Jon Favreau has with some of the major




thinking

Hamilton gets empty feeling thinking about F1 without fans

PARIS (AP) - Driving around Formula One tracks without fans cheering at Silverstone and Monza would literally feel "very empty" for world champion Lewis...




thinking

Ted Cruz website fools supporters into thinking he backs Hillary Clinton for president

Ted Cruz supporters who visited tedcruz.com were shocked when they viewed the homepage. It showed an image of Hillary Clinton with the text: 'Next President of the United States of America!!!'




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Liz Jones's Diary: In which I try positive thinking 

I woke at 3am last night, could not get back to sleep. Thought my throat was itchy. No nice thoughts to comfort myself with