Suchergebnisse

"A photography exhibition and catalogue featuring 75 black and white photos compiled by the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia in co-operation with National Archives of Malaysia. These photos highlight the history of Malaysia's formation and exemplify the symbolism contained in the Jalur Gemilang - Courage (red), Unity (blue), Royalty (yellow), Sincerity and Integrity (white), Islam (the crescent) and Malaysia's 13 states and Federal Government (the 14-pointed star and stripes). Quotes from all six Malaysian prime ministers, past and present, further enhance the message of patriotism and prosperity."--Back cover

The origin of the apartheid regime was based on the Calvinist idea of Afrikaners being "the nation privileged by God." This idea had resulted in sharp discrimination of the African population since the 1850's. This political process was even more strengthened during the Nationalist Party (NP) period of government after the 1948 elections. Afrikaner nationalism reached its peak in May 1961 with the unilateral declaration of an independent South African Republic. But the apartheid regime entered into a period of deep crisis at the end of the 70's, and the fragile status quo started to become untenable. The new Prime Minister PW Botha initiated a reform process, which was refused by conservative members. They withdrew from the NP and formed the Conservative Party (CP). Its strongly nationalistic rhetoric was caused by the increasing activity of black organizations, and was reflected in the results of the 1987 elections when it became the strongest opposition party with 30% of the votes. Nevertheless, the reform process continued. The new president FW de Klerk legalized the black organizations, released political prisoners, and arranged the national referendum in which white voters decided to end the apartheid regime. Together with the consecutive loss of influential positions in the army and the death of the CP's leader, it substantially weakened the position of the Afrikaner conservative right wing. Finally, one section of the right wing decided to terminate the boycott of negotiations and to participate in the forthcoming elections. The only Afrikaner party was called the Freedom Front (FF), but it gained only 2% of the votes. The peaceful course during and after the elections weakened the conservatives even further. In the elections of 1999 and 2004, the FF didn't exceed even 1% of votes and is now a marginalized political party. Some militarized illegal organizations still exist in South Africa, but the government has been successful in eliminating these groups. Afrikaner nationalism still exists, but due to the evolution of the political situation it is diminishing. Adapted from the source document.

This study offers an analysis of the role of private security companies (PSCs) in the Czech Republic that builds on the model of global security assemblages developed by Abrahamsen and Williams. It applies this model to the Czech experience with the privatization of security since the end of the cold war by utilizing available data, complemented with information derived from structured interviews with the owners of PSCs operating in the Czech Republic. It suggests that the Czech market with commercial security services exhibits several specific characteristics, including the relatively high total number of registered PSCs (7000+) and their professional associations (16), the size of the gray and black markets involving PSC services (30 to 40 percent of the entire market), and the phenomenon of so-called "reverse revolving doors," whereby former owners or top managers of PSCs directly, or through family members, enter into, or establish their own, political party. Overall, however, this study confirms the key conclusions from previous applications of the model regarding the partial disassembly of the Czech state's security functions and the corresponding re-articulation of relations among public and private actors in the provision of security. Adapted from the source document.

This paper provides a theoretical framework for a thesis that the transition to the Inflation targeting regime, either explicit or implicit, may be one of the causes of the long-term latent accumulations of the financial and structural imbalances, materializing much later and with more dire consequences. Due to the long-term systematic manipulation of interest rates, within the operational framework of the stabilization of consumer prices and the output gap, as well as of anti-deflationary fundamentalism, the economy can transform itself into a kind of black box, gradually and over time causing an escape of credit and monetary aggregates. Money supply tends to be more endogenous and elastic, changing the causality within a link between the money supply and its effective economic materialization, both in production processes of the real economy as well as in banking and financial services. Thereby, the economy lacks a needful defensive mechanism that would pull the overheating economy back through more exogenous and inelastic money supply, automatically adjusting market interest rates. In the empirical part we employed VECM tests to show that the money supply was exogenous before the implicit adoption of inflation targeting in the USA (1985), but endogenous after it. Adapted from the source document.