This is the first comprehensive introduction to SVMs, a new generation learning system based on recent advances in statistical learning theory; it will help readers understand the theory and its real-world applications.

In the quarter-century since this book first appeared, there have been few moments of uncertainty as to the direction of international relations and international law to compare with the early years of the twenty-first century. Globalisation has brought undoubted benefits in the fields of commerce, technology and communications, but also increased dangers concerning the rapid spread of disease and the growth of international terrorism. The clearly understood rules and limitations as to state conduct apparent during the ColdWar period have disappeared and (for the moment at least) the optimism engendered by a renewed United Nations in the early 1990s has dissipated. Increasing resort to force by states, entities and individuals coupled with the apparently easy access to weapons of high destructive capacity pose a significant challenge to those wishing to establish a world order based on justice,mutual respect, toleration and forbearance.

Enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) is the basic premise that ‘all people matter’, a moral commitment to overcome the culture of ‘othering’ permeating everyday life around the globe. This premise, when considered in relation to the priorities and protocols of western journalism, throws into sharp relief the ways in which certain ‘us and them’ dichotomies, inflected in news reports, recurrently counterpoise the structural interests of ‘people like us’ against the suffering of strangers. Journalists’ routine, everyday choices about what to report – how best to do it, and why – necessarily implicate them in a discursive politics of mediation in what are increasingly globalised public spheres. This point is not lost on politicians, of course, anxious to make use of the news media for persuasive – or, more to the point, propagandistic – purposes. To take one example, Tony Blair, in the months leading up to his resignation as British prime minister, gave a series of ‘legacy’ speeches intended, in part, to help secure his place in the history books on his own preferred terms. In one such speech, delivered onboard the assault ship HMS Albion on 12 January 2007, he discussed the changing nature of the security challenges facing western countries in the post-9/11 era. Interestingly, singled out for attention in this regard were the problems posed by ‘a completely new world of modern communication and media’ for the armed forces.