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...read about why women actually kill.

As people search for ways to amuse themselves in quarantine, many are catching up on the true crime TV shows, podcasts and films that have proliferated in recent years. In LitHub last week, scholars of gender and violence Asele Angel-Ajani and Nimmi Gowrinathan offered [[link removed]] a corrective to a popular true crime subgenre: breathless speculation about the pathologies of women who kill. Drawing on the words of women who have engaged in violence both in and out of militant groups, Angel-Ajani and Gowrinathan argue that, in practice, there is little distinction between those who kill in response to partner violence and those who join armed struggles for self-determination. In both instances, women often understand their violence as a response to patriarchal oppression — killings classified as “crimes” are no less likely to be expressions of the killer’s political ideals than killings classified as “war.”

Defense supply chain woes

Since World War II, the US military has relied on private industry to produce a constant stream of the stuff — guns, bombs, extraordinarily expensive but effective toilet covers [[link removed]], extraordinarily expensive and constantly [[link removed]] breaking [[link removed]] fighter jets — it wants. Perverse [[link removed]] incentive structure aside, that system usually works pretty well — the military is a good customer to have, and companies are eager to keep their best customers happy. The problem with having a private defense industrial base, though, is that when the economy tanks, so does the defense supply chain [[link removed]]. With the exception of industry giants like Lockheed Martin, which announced [[link removed]] 1,000 new hires in early April, the defense industrial base is hurting.

Due to COVID-19, many smaller defense manufacturers are shutting down production, leaving some projects on an indefinite delay. The Defense Department is working to maintain its contractors’ solvency by paying out existing contracts sooner, but it is unclear how long that strategy will work.

At least one part of the defense industry is still functioning just fine. According to the Pentagon, there have been “no reported delays on contractor submitted invoices.”

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] From fascination to fear

Sometimes, internet publishing is its own art form. Lovely Umayam’s history of radiation [[link removed]] is excellent, and the site built around it is a joy to scroll through. The piece covers radiation’s enduring effects on science, security and popular culture, with historical images scattered throughout.

The long arc of humanity’s relationship to radiation has seen dominant attitudes go from fascination to fear. Marie Curie spent her life engaged in radiation experiments that produced massive scientific and medical advances, but also ultimately killed her. Similarly, radium became a prominent additive for a time, before manufacturers and users of things like radioactive paint began to die off.

Curie’s notebooks are now stored in a lead box to contain the radiation leaking off of them — the work of one of humanity’s most important scientists is too dangerous to leave out in the open.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE WHEN THE INTERNATIONAL MEETS THE LOCAL: II

Last week on Deep Dive, we learned about how international organizations can engage with local groups to prevent local-level violence. This week, we’ll get into recent research on the opposite of that kind of engagement: how local militant groups can bait international election monitoring organizations into not doing their job at even the state level.

In the election monitoring process, democratic legitimacy in the eyes of the international community is conferred by two separate, yet equally important, processes: the election observers who check for irregularities in voting processes, and the monitoring organizations who decide if the irregularities add up to election fraud. In the latest issue of the journal International Organization, political scientists Kerim Can Kavakli and Patrick Kuhn tell their stories [[link removed]]. DUN DUN [[link removed]].

Kavakli and Kuhn are interested in the interaction between the two sides of the election monitoring process. There is no immutable standard that elections must meet to be deemed legitimate — election practices viewed by observers at one place and time might be declared fraudulent by the international community, while the same practice might be given a pass somewhere else. Kavakli and Kuhn dug into what drives this double standard and who benefits from it.

Specifically, they wanted to find out whether the identity of the parties hurt by observed election irregularities had any effect on the decision to declare elections illegitimate. As it turned out, the identity of the victim did seem to matter, but only in certain circumstances.

Elections featuring Islamic opposition parties were basically just as likely to be declared illegitimate as those that did not, but when the presence of Islamic opposition parties was paired with attacks by Islamist armed groups the international community’s tune changed dramatically. When an election threatened to bring an Islamic party to power in a country with an active Islamist armed group, election monitors suddenly became much more likely to look the other way when the incumbent party rigged the vote in its own favor.

That preference seems to be a reflection of the security concerns of the North American and European countries that play leading roles in most international organizations. The bias against Islamic parties existed before September 11, 2001, but it grew much more pronounced once the US began its Global War on Terrorism — specifically Islamist terrorism, despite policymakers’ frequent unwillingness to admit as much. What’s more, the identity of the election observers compounds the bias. Election monitors from outside of North Atlantic Treaty Organization exhibit no bias against Islamic parties in conflict situations, while American and European observers have frequently allowed Islamic parties to bear the brunt of election fraud in areas where Islamist terrorism is a concern.

Finally, Kavakli and Kuhn found that Islamist armed groups have a great deal of agency in getting the international community to ignore its ostensible mandate in election monitoring. The more people an armed group kills in the year leading up to an election, the more likely the international community is to abet election abuses to keep Islamic parties from power.

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Jorge Valencia chronicled [[link removed]] Holy Week celebrations in Mexico in the COVID-19 era. Each year, the Mexico City borough of Iztapalapa hosts a hugely popular passion play, in which an actor playing Jesus reenacts the stations of the cross, including dragging a 200-pound crucifix on a 1.2 mile procession. This year, however, with public gatherings banned, the passion play took place with the audience in their homes, watching via livestream.

Laila Ujayli examined [[link removed]] the ways COVID-19 could change the way people imagine security policy. Large-scale military spending has proven to be of little use in the face of the virus, while much of the human suffering the pandemic has produced can be traced back to failures in national public health infrastructures and social safety nets. A refocus on human security could reorder security spending priorities and increase resilience to future diseases and other disasters.

Orla Barry spoke [[link removed]]to people who lost loved ones during COVID-19 and have not been able to conduct traditional mourning rituals due to quarantine rules. Funerals, wakes, burials and other events to facilitate grieving have been canceled for fear of spreading COVID-19, even as the virus is causing a huge increase in deaths. Mourners described the lack of rituals as disorienting — as one man who lost his father said, “There's no crescendo to the death. It happened, and it's gone. It's like everyone's ignoring it.”

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL PLAYED

The quarantine entertainment we need [[link removed]].

If only this [[link removed]] guy drove a Peugeot, with its lion [[link removed]] logo, instead of a Toyota Camry.

COVID-19 had a lot of people finding novel ways to celebrate the first nights of Passover last week, but Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot may have found the most remarkable [[link removed]]one of all.

There’s a lot of competition for the grossest pun in this article [[link removed]] but “the Pentagon can’t afford to be loose with the stomach health of its forces” has got to lead the pack.

Indications that your community lockdown has turned into The Purge [[link removed]], rated one to 10 with one being “the line between fact and fiction is being well-maintained and laws are still basically laws” and 10 being “Blumhouse Productions’ The Purge is now a documentary and you are its main subject”:

Masked “Easter carolers” acting [[link removed]] as though that is a thing: four out of 10 . Your town police department just blasting [[link removed]] The Purge siren as night falls: 13 out of 10.

If you had trouble getting through the recent Deep Dive about why experts choose to delay offering predictions, here’s [[link removed]] a handy summary in a single tweet.

Some [[link removed]] businesses actually benefit from mass lockdown.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni directed Ugandans to remain in their homes as much as possible due to COVID-19, avoiding even outdoor exercise. To underscore the point, Museveni made an incredible video demonstrating [[link removed]] how to exercise inside by running laps inside his office. It works as comedy, but as a home workout tutorial, it leaves something to be desired. Museveni’s office is the size of a small aircraft hangar, which is not an advantage most Ugandans — or most anyone else for that matter — share.

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Critical State is written by Sam Ratner and is a collaboration between The World and Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX, BBC, and WGBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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