AimsThe aim of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of the revised self-rated version of the Dysexecutive Questionnaire (DEX-R) within a non-clinical sample.MethodsThe study was hosted online, with 140 participants completing the DEX-R, GAD-2 and PHQ-2. Sixty participants also completed the FrSBe, with 99 additionally completing the DEX-R again 3 weeks later. Correlations with demographic factors and symptoms of anxiety and depression were conducted. Rasch and factor analysis were also used to explore underlying subconstructs.ResultsThe DEX-R correlated highly with (...) the FrSBe, indicating sound concurrent validity. Internal consistency, split-half reliability and test-retest reliability were excellent. Age and symptoms of depression and anxiety correlated with DEX-R scores, with older age associated with less dysexecutive problems. The Rasch analysis confirmed the multidimensionality of the rating scale, and a three-factor structure was found relating to activation-self-regulatory, cognitive and social-emotional processes. Frequencies of responses on DEX-R items varied, many were not fully endorsed indicating specific relevance of most but not all items to patients.ConclusionInterpretations of DEX-R ratings of dysexecutive problems should consider mood and individual variation. Systematic comparison of DEX-R responses between healthy and clinical groups could help identify a suitable cut off for dysexecutive symptoms. (shrink)

Late in the afternoon of July 11, 1995, the Bosnian Serb army, under the command of General Ratko Mladic, seized the northeastern Bosnia town of Srebrenica. Declared a by the United Nations two years earlier, the predominately Muslim community had swollen from a prewar population of 9,000 to over 40,000, many of whom had been from elsewhere in Bosnia. As Mladic's troops swarmed over the town, the women, children, elderly, and many of the men took refuge two (...) kilometers away in the United Nations's Srebrenica headquarters, staffed by a Dutch battalion, in the village of Potocari. Meanwhile, the remaining Srebrenica men and boysfled through the woods on foot, trying to reach Muslim-controlled territory, nearly 40 miles away. (shrink)

Genghis Khan is supposed to have said, “Man’s highest joy is victory: to conquer one’s enemies, to hunt them down, to deprive them of their possessions, to make their loved ones weep, and to bed their wives and daughters.” Today, no ruler would dare utter such sentiments, and what the Khan called man’s highest joy would now be condemned everywhere as crimes against humanity and “grave breaches”—lawyerspeak for the most serious war crimes. Nevertheless, the U.S. killed more civilians in a (...) few minutes at Hiroshima than the Golden Horde did in its ruthless conquest of China; and the last ten years alone have witnessed civil wars and genocides of nearly incomprehensible cruelty and atrocity. Whether we think of General Mladic handing out candy to Muslim children in Srebenica shortly after ordering thousands of their fathers and brothers shot, or doped-up child soldiers in Sierra Leone chopping the arms off other children, or Saddam Hussein gassing Kurdish villagers, we confront the perplexing phenomenon that the past half-century has combined an incredible outpouring of humanitarian laws, treaties, and declarations with levels of wartime criminality that may exceed those in the Thirty Years’ War. Any light that philosophers might shed on this grotesque disconnect between moral ideals and reality would be welcome. So would more focused inquiry on the moral basis of international humanitarian law, or on the distribution of blame among politicians, perpetrators, planners, and passive supporters of mass atrocities. (shrink)