Though conceived as a common law evidentiary privilege, for use within a trial, to protect discreet pieces of evidence in the public interest, the primary purpose of the state secrets privilege today is to conceal executive policy and activities. Following 9/11, the Bush administration began to utilize the state secrets privilege in a new way by demanding that cases, in which state secrets were allegedly involved, be dismissed before trials even began. President Obama has continued to expand the use of the privilege as broadly as his predecessor. My dissertation explores this dilemma of policy continuity. The resulting study is focused on the intersection of the institutional and personal presidency, and the embededness of secrecy within the executive branch. It finds that the institutional protections of the state secrets privilege far outweigh the personal preferences, ideology or scruples of whichever individual inhabits the Oval Office.

The power to conceal: executive power and the state secrets privilege

This thesis examines the employment of particular carceral tactics both inside and outside Israeli prisons in the context of the Zionist colonial occupation of Palestinian territories. Together these tactics are considered to form an overarching strategy to crush Palestinian resistance to the forty-five year-old occupation. Central to this study is application of Michel Foucault’s model of carceral practices which occur within the walls of the modern prison and extend capillary-like into wider Palestinian society, to the extent it resembles a Foucauldian “carceral archipelago” of control. Various components of Foucault’s concepts of power, discipline, punishment and resistance are applied in order to analyse overlapping canons of colonialism and Zionism, and the response of Palestinians to them. Occupied Palestinians are also linked with Giorgio Agamben’s concept of people killed with impunity homo sacer whom Agamben refers to as living a “bare life” without human or political rights, at the margins of society or beyond. Colonial-era laws and regulations are found to have dehumanised Palestinians as a mass security threat to Israel. This categorization is in turn used to justify mass incarceration, detention without trial, torture, extra-judicial executions, collective punishments and the commodification of Palestinian prisoners exemplified in lop-sided prisoner exchanges. The thesis finds Zionist carceral practices entrench the occupation and immiserate Palestinian society, disrupting economic, social and political cohesion, and the potential of the Palestinian people. The thesis identifies hunger strikes, the commandeering of Zionist prison space as sites of Palestinian nationalist education and political recruitment, and a refusal to vacate their own land as clear mechanisms of Palestinian resistance. An oppression-resistance cycle is evident, reinforcing the centrality of the prisoner and the prison in Palestinian life. Contemporary behaviour by Israel indicates this cycle will continue for as long as Zionist carceral practice criminalizes all resistance to its occupation.

Otherwise occupied : an analysis of the causes and consequences of Zionist carceral practice : a thesis presented in fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts in Politics at Massey University, Turitea, New Zealand

Background: Flow diverters are becoming one of the main endovascular procedures used to treat aneurysms. Flow diverter devices (FDDs) have multiple types approved for endovascular procedure use. Although their indications are not well described, they are usually used for large or giant, wide-necked, and recurrent aneurysms. Multiple FDDs can be deployed to treat giant aneurysms to ensure and accelerate aneurysm occlusion and mitigate complications. We report a case of endovascular treatment of an intracranial aneurysm using three silk FDDs complicated by a delayed migration of the stents along the parent artery, along with a literature review of the related cases. Methods: We conducted a PubMed Medline database search by the following combined formula of subjects headings: ((((((intracranial aneurysm[MeSH Terms]) AND (endovascular procedure[MeSH Terms])) OR (endovascular technique[MeSH Terms])) AND (endovascular[Title/Abstract]) AND (Flow diverter[Title/ Abstract])) OR (flow diversion[Title/Abstract])) OR (Pipeline[Title/Abstract])) AND (Multiple[Title/Abstract]). Results: The result was eight cases of endovascular treatment of intracranial aneurysms with multiple FDD. The male-to-female ratio in these cases was 5:3, and there is a wide age range from 22 months to 69 years old. The cases differed in the type and number of FDDs used, yet, they all had similar results with aneurysm occlusion and recovery of the patient with no observed complications. Conclusion: Tandem flow diverter deployment has technical challenges and complications such as complete obstruction can occur. Planning and learning from experience with those new technologies are the typical way to overcome such complications in the future.

Failure of tandem flow diversion for intracranial aneurysms: Literature review and illustrative case

Flow diverters are becoming one of the main endovascular procedures used to treat aneurysms. Flow diverter devices (FDDs) have multiple types approved for endovascular procedure use. Although their indications are not well described, they are usually used for large or giant, wide-necked, and recurrent aneurysms. Multiple FDDs can be deployed to treat giant aneurysms to ensure and accelerate aneurysm occlusion and mitigate complications. We report a case of endovascular treatment of an intracranial aneurysm using three silk FDDs complicated by a delayed migration of the stents along the parent artery, along with a literature review of the related cases.We conducted a PubMed Medline database search by the following combined formula of subjects headings: ((((((intracranial aneurysm[MeSH Terms]) AND (endovascular procedure[MeSH Terms])) OR (endovascular technique[MeSH Terms])) AND (endovascular[Title/Abstract]) AND (Flow diverter[Title/ Abstract])) OR (flow diversion[Title/Abstract])) OR (Pipeline[Title/Abstract])) AND (Multiple[Title/Abstract]).The result was eight cases of endovascular treatment of intracranial aneurysms with multiple FDD. The male-to-female ratio in these cases was 5:3, and there is a wide age range from 22 months to 69 years old. The cases differed in the type and number of FDDs used, yet, they all had similar results with aneurysm occlusion and recovery of the patient with no observed complications.Tandem flow diverter deployment has technical challenges and complications such as complete obstruction can occur. Planning and learning from experience with those new technologies are the typical way to overcome such complications in the future. 

Use of Pipeline Flex Flow Diverter in the Treatment of an Internal Carotid Artery Dissection: A Case Report

If we concur with Foucault‘s view of racism as an elementary, structural characteristic of the modern nation-state (through the use of biopolitical technologies ranging from social exclusion to mass murder), there is little doubt that Israel can be theorized as a racial state. Israel‘s biopolitics largely operates in what Eyal Weizman has termed ― the politics of verticality — namely, Israel‘s simultaneous attempt to control three spatial levels — the land, the air, and even the subterranean level — in order systematically manage (and subjugate) its Palestinian neighbors. Because there was never an intention to constitute the Palestinian inhabitants as part of the Israeli citizenry or view them as a distinct people per se, Israeli biopolitics formed Palestinians as subjects susceptible to unchecked domination. The subsequently enacted controlling apparatuses utilized by Israel to reproduce power relations have taken on numerous features, coercive and noncoercive, legalistic and nonlegalistic, in an attempt to both normalize the occupation and perpetuate its existence. The population in Israel discursively forms a separate Jewish nationalist identity, while Palestinians and the Arab minority within Israel proper are inferiorly constituted. By mere virtue of their presence in the Occupied Territories (OT), Palestinians are thus collectively punished. For the sake of maintaining a Jewish state, Israel has also applied varying pressures on the Palestinian citizens of Israel in order to slow their rate of reproduction while not applying those same pressures to Jewish-Israelis. 

In the following essay, I will argue that the Israeli Supreme Court (ISC) has largely institutionalized a form of bio-politics in its decision-making process. An examination of caselaw generated by the ISC vis-a-vis the OT since the outbreak of the second intifada in late 2000 not only reveals a largely deferential mode of judicial review, but also a continued perpetuation of population control as resembled within Foucault‘s formulation of biopolitics. The Court‘s significance lies primarily in its willingness to use law as a mean to stall, defer, postpone, suspend, and generally legitimate conditions on the ground. This ― new hegemony has also generated extensive ― interest in the age-old demographic question among Israeli academics, policy planners, and government officials who have argued for a ― policy of containment‖ to preserve ― the Jewish character of Israel. Appreciating the Jewish nationalist identity foundational to Israel‘s existence is crucial in the broader examination of Israel‘s conduct toward the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the ISC‘s foundational role in legitimating these practices.

The Interplay of Foucauldian Biopolitics and Jewish Nationalism in the Israeli Supreme Court Decision-Making Process

The Justice Department under the Bush Administration repeatedly invoked the State Secrets Privilege (SSP) in high-profile national security litigation cases challenging many of the controversial practices instituted in response to the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. Furthermore, in all national security-related litigation still pending from the Bush Administration era and in newly developed cases, the Obama Administration has, to the dismay of many, declined to reverse this policy. From litigation challenging the practice of extraordinary rendition to the issue of wiretapping US citizens without judicial approval, the Obama Justice Department has continued to invoke the SSP, concluding that any legal challenges against national security-related programs would necessitate disclosure of high-secret discovery materials and could potentially harm American national security. This paper critiques some of the arguments advanced for how to reform the privilege, such as the State Secrets Reform Act, S. 2533, “A bill to enact a safe, fair, and responsible state secrets privilege Act” that would significantly seek to constrain presidential authority in this area. I argue against congressional reform, and instead assert that the proper basis for reformation should come from the judiciary itself. The conventional default deference given to the Executive Branch should be dramatically curtailed in favor of a more robust procedural guarantee of judicial review. This argument stands against proposed reform from Congress, and instead focuses on ways in which federal judges can better police presidential assertions of privileged information in national security litigation.

The Bush and Obama Administrations' Invocation of the State Secret Privilege in National Security Litigation: A Proposal for Robust Federal Judicial Review

Ahmad Chehab

Papers

Use of Pipeline Flex Flow Diverter in the Treatment of an Internal Carotid Artery Dissection: A Case Report

The Interplay of Foucauldian Biopolitics and Jewish Nationalism in the Israeli Supreme Court Decision-Making Process

The Bush and Obama Administrations' Invocation of the State Secret Privilege in National Security Litigation: A Proposal for Robust Federal Judicial Review