Brian Frydenborg

www.policymic.com — Yes, people kill people. But guns make a huge difference in how many people get killed. Like any dangerous product - cars, airplanes, explosives - sensible regulation of guns clearly plays a positive role in reducing both misuse of this product and the number of deaths resulting from such misuse. The map itself was part of a scholarly study by researchers from Boston Children's Hospital and published this March in JAMA Internal Medicine. Image Credit: JAMA Internal Medicine The map is not without exceptions and outliers, but the general trend is clear: States with more gun regulations had lower rates of gun deaths, and states with less gun laws had higher gun death rates, both in terms of suicide and homicide.

www.policymic.com — Why has the House of Representatives become more dysfunctional than the Senate over this past year? The shift, now at its most obvious with the current self-inflicted shutdown and debt ceiling crisis, is because of the political insanity of the Republican Tea Party South and the increase in partisanship related to Congressional redistricting. A few years ago, the dominant talk of our government's dysfunction centered on how the Senate was broken, largely due to record levels of partisanship and the unprecedented, serial abuse of the filibuster by Republicans. But now, those days seem almost quaint.

www.policymic.com — When you look at the entirety of events over the last twelve years - 9/11, the wars, our degenerating politics, broken government, and economic catastrophes - the picture is bleak. We've watched our country sputter and fail at home and abroad, and the truth is undeniable: We haven't learned from, admitted, or understood our mistakes, and we aren't on a better track now than we were on September 10, 2001. That's the opposite of progress. For Al-Qaeda, 9/11 was about much, much more than just killing Americans.

www.policymic.com — Foreign Policy Magazine and the Fund for Peace have an annual Failed States Index that you should definitely check out. It's one of the best guides to the state of the world and of any given country, and its presentation, on either of the organization's sites, is done beautifully. Just like with ESPN, you can see MVPs, " most improved" and " most worsened," and many other trends and stats over time. There are all kinds of great articles on both sites showcasing various aspects and trends, including case studies, surveys, and interviews.

www.policymic.com — Most experts agree that it is very unlikely that that rebel groups launched the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) chemical attacks we've been hearing about in the news, and that the culprits were instead Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government forces. Here are the main reasons why: 1. Syria's government has one of the biggest chemical weapons stockpiles and programs in the world. Yeah, I know you're saying that you heard the same thing about Iraq form Bush & co. But unlike Iraq, Syria never had a Gulf War which, as part its aftermath, instituted an intrusive United Nations WMD inspections and dismantling regime that essentially destroyed, peacefully, Saddam's WMD program, which was, at the time, one of the world's largest.

www.policymic.com — Attempts at making historical analogies are more often than not tedious, tiresome, and incorrect. The latest in this petulant trend involves accusing the Obama administration of creating another "phony" war in Syria along the lines of Bush and Iraq. This analogy is obviously wrong on so many levels. The first reason why involves the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). In Iraq, the U.S. was acting in response to phantom WMD and programs that no longer existed. In Syria, the impending U.S. intervention is in response to chemical weapons that were used to kill over 1,400 people, including over 400 children, making it the worst chemical attack in over two decades.

www.policymic.com — In order to understand how the failed state of Somalia's misery came to an upscale Nairobi mall, the sad story of modern Somalia must be told. Well into the 20th century, virtually all of Africa was dominated by rapacious Western colonial powers. Somalis put up a vigorous fight but eventually fell to British and Italian imperialism. Britain took control of Italy's portion of what is now Somalia after WWII, giving away parts of Somalia to Ethiopia in 1948, just before the UN allowed Italy to resume control with a trusteeship.

In order to understand the revolutions and protests unfolding around the world, from the unstable situation in Syria to the “Occupy Moscow” and “Occupy Wall Street” protests, one only needs to start at Howard Dean on one level, and the American and French Revolutions on the other.

Over 2,000 years ago, Cicero noted that “We are in bondage to the law in order that we may be free” (Pro Cluentio 53). Today, rule of law is considered essential to any society for it to be able to conduct its affairs through self government, considered the ideal at least in the so-called “Western” world and certainly as promoted by the United Nations. There are several basic requirements for any society to function based on rule of law, as opposed to, say, brute force or fear. There must not only be laws, most of which are viewed as just by most of the population, and therefore followed in part because the population subscribes to them, but there must be ways of enforcing the law, adjudicating disputes, deterring illegal action, and punishing those who break the laws. Police, then, form a vital function for any law-based (and in the “Western” and UN view, any just) society, for police at times perform all of these functions. Just laws in combination with threat of punishment covers deterrence for the majority of the population; having just one or the other results in higher levels of non-compliance, as people will break laws they do not respect when they are able, and the less restrained will break laws without a societal force that will make them see the threat of personal loss from punishment outweigh the personal gain from breaking the law. Police alone are not a sufficient condition for rule of law, though; how the police are trained and how they perform their jobs are vital, as are courts, jails, judges and lawyers. Policing and its functions are covered specifically in several parts of the Conceptual Model of Peace Operations (CMPO). This paper will focus on two examples of post-war police reform as carried out by the same actor, the United States Government, in Japan after WWII and in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.