The Football Lads Alliance and Democratic Football Lad’s Alliance: an insight into the dynamism and diversification of Britain’s counter-jihad movement

ABSTRACT

In response to 2017’s terror attacks in Britain, the Football Lads Alliance (FLA) and latterly, the Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA) were formed. Self-described as street-protest movements that encourage rival ‘football firms’ to reject acrimonious hostilities to unite against the Islamist extremism and extremists it believes are threatening Britain, its culture, values and way of life. As new incarnations of the British counter-jihad movement, this article affords new insights into how the movement and constituent parts are dynamically identifying and mobilising behind an increasingly diverse range of identities and socio-political issues. Contributing new knowledge about the FLA and DFLA, neither of which have been subjected to scholarly inquiry, this article makes a timely contribution to an embryonic scholarly canon. Contextualising the counter-jihad movement, this article explores how ‘football’ afforded the FLA and DFLA with a shared identity around which to mobilise. Highlighting how this is different to other far-right and counter-jihadi groups, their ideologies and activities are explored in relation to their establishment, support base and function. In conclusion, this article positions both groups within an ‘identity-oriented’ paradigm of new social movements as a means of offering new understanding and explanation.     

The Use of Postage Stamps to Teach Social Studies Topics

In recent studies, youths in the United States have demonstrated a remarkable lack of cultural literacy. As the world is becoming increasingly interconnected, it is imperative that students enhance their understanding of other cultures. A classroom correspondence match with a Peace Corps volunteer through the Coverdell Peace Corps World Wise Schools program can help students make this improvement by traveling the globe and raising their cross-cultural awareness—without leaving the classroom. In this article, a returned Peace Corps volunteer and current classroom instructor presents classroom strategies he has used from the Coverdell Peace Corps World Wise Schools program. Using Robert Hanvey's (1976) four levels of cross-cultural awareness, the author demonstrates how this unique program can dramatically improve students' cross-cultural awareness.     

Brazilian Gold,Cuban Copper and the Final Frontier of British Anti-Slavery

This paper concerns the problems that transnational mining companies posed for British abolitionists in the years after emancipation in Britain's Caribbean empire. British-owned mines, operating in Cuba and Brazil, were the largest slave enterprises in the western hemisphere c. 1840. Abolitionists were, of course, outraged by the existence of London-based companies that exploited slave labour, but an attempt in 1843 to prohibit the owning of slaves by British subjects anywhere in the world, regardless of local jurisdiction, proved ineffectual. This paper explores the reasons for this failure and raises questions about the potency of abolitionism within early Victorian political culture.     

Partnership for continuing professional development: The impact of the Post Qualifying Award for Social Workers (PQSW) on social work practice

This article is based on a small-scale inquiry to evaluate the impact of the Post Qualifying Award for Social Workers (PQSW) on social work practice. The author sought the views of key stakeholders in one of the regional UK Post Qualifying Consortia, although practical constraints prevented the direct inclusion of service users' views. A post-hoc questionnaire and semi-structured interviews explored the impact of the PQSW awards on individual social work candidates and their employing agencies. The findings contribute to current debates around how training can be used to ensure delivery of the modernised social services required by the Government. While this is a small, locally based inquiry, its findings are relevant to ongoing national developments across the continuum of social work training and education. The findings suggest that the awards in general have a positive impact on practice for both individuals and organisations. Factors which increase or impede that impact were multi-faceted and complex, involving individuals, organisational cultures and wider contextual influences. The key to success, it is suggested, is partnership - proactive and committed working together between employers, individual workers and those prescribing/providing the training and education.     

The Right Tools for the Right Job: Social Work Students Learning Community Development

The place of community development within social work varies across nations and time. The tensions in the 1970s in the UK gave way to decades when social work has been dominated by issues relating to protecting and caring for individuals. We now have a resurgence of community development activity, bringing together varied disciplines such as urban planning and health promotion as well as social work. Within the UK there are now requirements for community development knowledge and skills within qualifying social work training. This paper reflects on experiences in promoting community development practice learning in social work qualifying placements within Health and Social Care Trusts in Northern Ireland. Issues are raised about the diversity and complexity of expectations on qualifying training, and the challenges that face universities, colleges and employing organisations in developing practice learning in this curriculum area. The prospects for improving community development learning within both qualifying and post qualifying education and training are considered particularly in the light of inter-professional and inter-organisational initiatives that put community development in the context of health promotion, housing, crime, poverty and other social issues that might be addressed at community level to improve the health and social well-being of citizens.     

Overcoming Liability Concerns in Vaccine Trials Involving Pregnant Women

Without the protection of vaccines, the health of pregnant women may be compromised. But assessing the safety and efficacy of vaccines in pregnancy requires research in pregnancy. Furthermore, vaccinating women while they are pregnant may convey immunity to the fetus in utero, but assessing this possible benefit of maternal immunization also requires research. This article argues that one factor inhibiting vaccine research involving pregnant women is that vaccine manufacturers fear incurring liability if they fund such research. We argue that vaccine research in pregnancy can be ethical, and we explore some methods for overcoming vaccine manufacturers' fear of liability.     

Are substance use prevention programs more effective in schools making adequate yearly progress? A study of Project ALERT

This exploratory study sought to determine if a popular school-based drug prevention program might be effective in schools that are making adequate yearly progress (AYP). Thirty-four schools with grades 6 through 8 in 11 states were randomly assigned either to receive Project ALERT (n = 17) or to a control group (n = 17); of these, 10 intervention and nine control schools failed to make AYP. Students completed three self-report surveys. For lifetime cigarette use and 30-day alcohol use, Project ALERT was more effective in schools that made AYP. However, in these schools, Project ALERT negatively affected students' lifetime marijuana use. This study provided some preliminary evidence that prevention programming may not work as well in poorer performing schools; however, further exploration is needed.     

Child care subsidies and childhood obesity

In this paper, we study the impact of child care subsidy receipt on low-income children’s weight outcomes in the fall and spring of kindergarten using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort. Our results suggest that subsidy receipt is associated with increases in BMI and a greater likelihood of being overweight and obese. Using quantile regression methods, we find substantial variation in subsidy effects across the BMI distribution. Specifically, child care subsidies have no effect on BMI at the lower end of the distribution, inconsistent effects in the middle of the distribution, and large effects at the top of the distribution. Our results point to the use of non-parental child care, particularly center-based services, as the key mechanism through which subsidies influence children’s weight outcomes.     

Honeynet games: a game theoretic approach to defending network monitors

A honeynet is a portion of routed but otherwise unused address space that is instrumented for network traffic monitoring. It is an invaluable tool for understanding unwanted Internet traffic and malicious attacks. We formalize the problem of defending honeynets from systematic mapping (a serious threat to their viability) as a simple two-person game. The objective of the Attacker is to identify a honeynet with a minimum number of probes. The objective of the Defender is to maintain a honeynet for as long as possible before moving it to a new location within a larger address space. Using this game theoretic framework, we describe and prove optimal or near-optimal strategies for both the Attacker and the Defender. This is the first mathematically rigorous study of this increasingly important problem on honeynet defense. Our theoretical ideas provide the first formalism of the honeynet monitoring problem, illustrate the viability of network address shuffling, and inform the design of next generation honeynet defense systems.