Suchergebnisse

Book reviewed in this article:THE HOVERING GIANT: U.S. Responses to Revolutionary Change in Latin America. By Cole BlasierRATIONALITY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES: Contributions to the Philosophy and Methodology of the Social Sciences. Edited by S.I. Benn and G.W. MortimorePOLITICAL OBLIGATION. By Richard E. FlathmanELECTORAL BEHAVIOR A Comparative Handbook. Edited by Richard RoseABORIGINES IN COLONIAL SOCIETY, 1788–1850: From 'Noble Savage' to 'Rural Pest'. Edited by Jean WoolmingtonBLACK VIEWPOINTS: The Aboriginal Experience. Edited by Colin Tatz assisted by Keith McConnochieKANT AND THE PROBLEM OF HISTORY. By William A. GalstonTHE MAKING OF INDIAN POLICY 1853–1865 Relations of the Court af Directors, the India Board, the India Office and the Government of India. By Prashanto K. ChatterjiTOLERATION. By Preston KingTHE GERMAN PUBLIC MIND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: A Social History of German Political Sentiments, Aspirations and Ideas. By Frederick HertzINSIDE THE MONSTER: Writings on the United States and American Imperialism. By José Martí. Edited and with an introduction and notes by Philip S. FonerPUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION IN AUSTRALIA A Reader. Edited by R.N. Spann and G.R. CurnowPROBLEMS IN AUSTRALIAN HISTORY Religion in Early Australia: The Problem of Church and State. Edited with an introduction by Jean WoolmingtonW. DILTHEY: SELECTED WRITINGS. Edited, translated and introduced by H.P. RickmanTHE LAW IN CRISIS Bridges of Understanding. By C.G. WeeramantryBROADCASTING IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA. By Ian K. MackayNEW DIMENSIONS OF WORLD POLITICS. Edited by Geoffrey L. Goodwin and Andrew LinklaterTHE CABINET OFFICE TO 1945. By S.S. WilsonFREEDOM AND INDEPENDENCE A Study of the Political Ideas of Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind. By Judith N. ShklarTHE SOCIAL PROBLEM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF ROUSSEAU. By John CharvetJEAN BODlN AND THE RISE OF ABSOLUTIST THEORY. By Julian H. FranklinBLACK ARMADA. By Rupert LockwoodSIR MATTHEW NATHAN British Colonial Governor and Civil Servant. By Anthony P. HaydonTHE ART OF ANTICIPATION: Values and Methods in Forecasting. Edited by Solomon Encel, Pauline K. Marstrand and William PagePROGRESS AND PROBLEMS IN SOCIAL FORECASTING. Edited by Christopher Freeman, Marie Jahoda and Ian MilesTHE TRANSFER OF POWER, 1942–7, vol. VI, THE POST‐WAR PHASE New Moves by the Labour Government, 1 August 1945–22 March 1946. Edited by Nicholas Mansergh and Penderel MoonU.S. POLICY AND STRATEGIC INTERESTS IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC. By Yuan‐Li WuFOIJNDATIONS OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. By Peter B. HarrisINTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL SCIENCE. Third edition. By Carlton Clymer Rodee, Totton James Anderson, Carl Quimby Christol and Thomas H. GreeneTHE STRANGE NEUTRALITY, SOVIET‐JAPANESE RELATIONS DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR, 1941–1945. By G.A. LensenLAND TENURE IN PRE‐REVOLUTIONARY CHINA Kiangsu Province in the 1920s and 1930s. By Robert AshA CRITICAL GUIDE TO THE KWANGTUNG PROVINCIAL ARCHIVES DEPOSITED AT THE PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE OF LONDON. By David PongSOCIETY AND POLITICS IN GERMANY 1500–1750. By G BeneckeIN THE ANGLO‐ARAB LABYRINTH: The McMahon‐Husayn Correspondence and its Interpretations 1914–1939. By Elie KedourieTHE ARABS IN ISRAEL. By Sabri JiryisTHE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT, FROM COMINTERN TO COMINFORM. By F. ClaudinWOMEN AS CITIZENS A Comparative Review. By Josephine F. MilburnWHITE ON THE MEDIA. By Brian WhiteMATHEMATICAL APPROACHES TO POLITICS. Edited by H.R. Alker, Jr., K.W. Deutsch and A.H. StoetzelSOCIALIST OWNERSHIP AND POLITICAL SYSTEMS. By Wlodzimierz Brus, translated by R.A. ClarkePUBLIC, TRADE UNION AND COOPERATIVE ENTERPRISE IN GERMANY: The Commonweal Idea. By Walter Hesselbach, translated from the German by Karl KuhneSOVIET FOREIGN POLICY, 1962–1973 The Paradox of Super Power. By Robin EdmondsA HANDBOOK TO ELECTIONS IN UTTAR PRADESH 1920–1951. By P.D. Reeves, B.D. Graham and J.M. GoodmanUNTO GOD AND CAESAR Religious issues in the Emerging Commonwealth 1891–1906. By Richard ElyLEADERSHIP IN FIJI. By Rusiate NayacakalouLOCAL POLITICS AND THE RISE OF PARTY: The London Municipal Society and the Conservative Intervention in Local Elections 1894–1963. By Ken YoungSOLDIERS AND POLITICS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: Civil‐Military Relations in Comparative Perspective. By J. Stephen HoadleyA BLANKET A YEAR. Bv Leonard Broom and F. Lancaster JonesABORKINAL HEALTH. By Peter M. MoodieKASHMIR IN TRANSITION 1885–1893. By Dilip Kumar GhoseA RESEARCH GUIDE TO AUSTRALIAN POLITICS AND COGNATE SUBJECTS (ARGAP). By Henry Mayer with Margaret Bettison and Judy KeeneMINDFUL MILITANTS The Amalgamated Engineering Union in Australia, 1920–1972. By T. SheridanTHE FUTURE OF AUSTRALIAN FEDERALISM. By Gordon Greenwood. Second editionMELBOURNE STUDIES IN EDUCATION 1976. Edited by Stephen Murray‐SmithROYAL COMMISSIONS AND DEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEES IN BRITAIN A Case‐study in Institutional Adaptiveness and Public Participation in Government. By T.J. CartwrightLEGISLATIVE STAFFING: A Comparative Perspective. Edited by James J. Heaphey and Alan P. BalutisTHE SILENT DICTATORSHIP The Politics of the German High Command under Hindenburg and Ludendorff, 1916–1918. By Martin KitchenTRIAL OF FAITH Religion and Politics in Tocqueville's Thought. By Doris S. GoldsteinVOTING FOR THE QUEENSLAND LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 1890–1964. By Colin A. Hughes and B.D. GrahamVOTING FOR THE VICTORIAN LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 1890–1964 (1975).VOTING FOR THE NEW SOUTH WALES LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 1890–1964 (1975).VOTING FOR THE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN, WESTERN AUSTRALIAN AND TASMANIAN LOWER HOUSES 1890–1964 (1976).OUR PARTNERSHIP. By Beatrice Webb. Edited by Barbara Drake and Margaret I. Cole with an introduction by George FeaverA CONSTITUTION FOR THE SOCIALIST COMMONWEALTH OF GREAT BRITAIN. By Sidney and Beatrice Webb. With an introduction by Samuel H. BeerMETHODS OF SOCIAL STUDY. By Sidney and Beatrice Webb. With an introduction by T.H. MarshallTHE CORRESPONDENCE OF G.E. MORRISON, vol. I, 1895–1912. Edited by Lo Hui‐min

J. S. Moore (Ed.). The Goods and Chattels of Our Forefathers: Frampton Cotterell and District Probate Inventories, 1539‐1804. (Chichester: Phillimore. 1976. PpF. G. Emmison. Elizabethan Life: Home, Work and Land. (Chelmsford: Essex County Council. Plymouth, Massachusetts: Pilgrim Society and Plimoth Plantation. 1976. PpR. W. Heinze. The Proclamations of the Tudor Kings.F. A. Youngs Jr. The Proclamations of the Tudor Queens. (London: Cambridge University Press. 1976. PpA. Macfarlane (Ed.). The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616‐83. (London: Oxford University Press for The British Academy. 1976. PpPeter Earle. The World of Defoe. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 1976. PpD. Anderson. The Orrell Coalfield, Lancashire, 1740‐1850. (Buxton: Moorland Publishing Co. 1975. PpArthur Raistrick. The Lead Industry of Wensleydale and Swaledale: Vol. 1 The Mines; Vol. 2 The Smelting Mills. (Buxton: Moorland Publishing Co. 1975. PpR. A. Buchanan and S. G. Watkins. The Industrial Archaeology of the Stationary Steam Engine. (London: Allen Lane. 1976. PpRichard J. Colyer. The Welsh Cattle Drovers: Agriculture and the Welsh Cattle Trade before and during the Nineteenth Century. (Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 1976. PpDerek Fraser. Urban Politics in Victorian England: The Structure of Politics in Victorian Cities. (Leicester: The University Press. 1976. PpJ. Benson and R. G. Neville (Eds.). Studies in the Yorkshire Coal Industry. (Manchester: The University Press. 1976. PpDavid Kynaston. King Labour: The British Working Class, 1850‐1914. (London: George Allen and Unwin. 1976. PpRoderick Floud. The British Machine‐Tool Industry, 1850‐1914. (London: Cambridge University Press. 1976. PpH. E. Meller. Leisure and the Changing City, 1870‐1914. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1976. PpJoyce M. Bellamy and John Saville (Eds.). Dictionary of Labour Biography, Volume 3. (London: Macmillan. 1976. PpLeslie Hannah (Ed.). Management Strategy and Business Development: An Historical and Comparative Study. (London: Macmillan. 1976. PpGENERALJack Goody, Joan Thirsk, and E. P. Thompson (Eds.). Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200‐1800. (London: Cambridge University Press. 1976. PpJan de Vries. The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, 1600‐1750. (London: Cambridge University Press. 1976. PpSusil Chaudhuri. Trade and Commercial Organization in Bengal, 1650‐1720—With Special Reference to the English East India Company. (Calcutta: Mukhopadhyay. 1975. PpSurrendra Gopal. Commerce and Crafts in Gujarat, 16th and 17th Centuries: A Study in the Impact of European Expansion on Precapitalist Economy. (New Delhi: People's Publishing House. 1975. PpJan Breman. Patronage and Exploitation: Changing Agrarian Relations in South Gujarat, India. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. 1974. PpOlga Crisp. Studies in the Russian Economy before 1914. (London: Macmillan. 1976. PpF. B. Tipton, Jr. Regional Variations in the Economic Development of Germany during the 19th Century. (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press. 1976. PpPaul Bairoch. Commerce Extérieur et Développement Economique de l'Europe au XIXe siècle. (Paris: Mouton. PpJames M. Laux. In First Gear: The French Automobile Industry to 1914 (Liverpool: The University Press. 1976. PpJohn P. McKay. Tramsways and Trolleys: The Rise of Urban Mass Transport in Europe. (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1976. PpGeorge S. Bain and Farouk Elsheikh. Union Growth and the Business Cycle: An Econometric Analysis. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1976. PpWerner Sombart. Why is there no Socialism in the United States? English translation by Patricia M. Hocking and C. T. Husbands. Edited and annotated by C. T. Husbands. (London: Macmillan. 1976. PpGERMANYArno Herzig. Judentum und Emanzipation in Westfalen. Veröffentlichungen des Provinzialinstituts für Westfälische Landes‐ und Volkskunde. Reihe 1. Heft 17. (Münister: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung. 1973. PpHedwig Behrens. Mechanikus Franz Dinnendahl, 1775‐1826: Erbauer der ersten Dampfmaschinen an der Ruhr. Leben und Wirken aus zeitgenössischen Quellen. Schriften zur Rheinisch‐Westfälischen Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Vol. 22, Ed. Rheinisch‐West‐falisches Wirtschaftsarchiv. (Köln: Selbstverlag Rheinisch‐Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv. 1970. PpMonika Richarz (Ed.). Jüdisches Leben in Deutschland: Selbstzeugnisse zur Sozialgeschichte, 1780‐1871. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt. 1976. Pp Dokumentation zur Geschichte der jüdischen Bevölkerung in Rheinland‐Pfalz und im Saarland von 1800‐1945. Bd. 3: Die Juden in ihrem gemeindlichen und öffentlichen Leben. Bd. 4: Aufklärung, Gleichstellung, Reform und Selbstbesinnung: das Verhältnis der Juden zu den christlichen Religionsgemeinschaften. Bd. 6: Die nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Rheinland‐Pfalz, 193345. Bd. 7: Dokumente des Gedenkens. Hrsg. von der Landes‐archivverwaltung Rheinland‐Pfalz in Verbindung mit dem Landesarchiv Saarbrucken. (Koblenz: Selbstverlag der Landesarchivverwaltung Rheinland‐Pfalz. 1972‐4. PpHans Seeling. Die Eisenhütten in Heerdt und Mülheim am Rhein. Schriften zur Rheinisch‐Westfälischen Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Vol. 24. Ed. Rheinisch‐Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv. (Köln: Selbstverlag Rheinisch‐Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv. 1972. PpJuurgenKocka. Unternehmer in der Deutschen Industrialisierung. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht. 1975. PpWilhelm Wortmann. Eisenbahnbauarbeiter im Vormärz: Sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchung der Bauarbeiter der Köln‐Mindener Eisenbahn in Minden‐Ravensberg, 1844‐7. Neue Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Vol. 6. Ed. Ingomar Bog. (Köln Wien: Böhlau. 1972. PpHans Friedrich Gisevius. Zur Vorgeschichte des Preuβisch‐Sächsischen Eisenbahnkrieges: Verkehrspolitische Differenzen zwischen Preuβen und Sachsen im Deutschen Bund. Verkehrswissenschaftliche Forschungen. Schriftenreihe des Instituts für Industrie‐ und Verkehrspolitik der Universität Bonn, Vol. 24. Ed. Fritz Voigt. (Berlin: Duncker u. Humblot. 1971. PpHermann Kellenbenz and Juurgen H. Schawacht. Schicksal eines Eisenlandes. (Siegen: Industrie‐ und Handelskammer Siegen. 1974. PpHarald Winkel (Ed.). Finanz‐ und wirtschaftspolitische Fragen der Zwischenkriegszeit. Schriften des Vereins für Socialpolitik. Gesellschaft für Wirtschafts‐ und Sozialwissenschaften. Neue Folge, Band 73. (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot. 1973. PpEckard Wandel. Die Bedeutung der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika für das deutsche Reparationsproblem, 1924‐9. Tübinger Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Abhandlungen, Vol. 6. (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). 1971. PpMichael Schneider: Das Arbeitsbeschaffungsprogramm des ADGB: Zur gewerkschaftlichen Politik in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik. Schriftenreihe des Forschungsinstituts der Friedrich‐Ebert‐Stiftung. Vol. 120. (Bonn‐Bad Godesberg: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft GmbH. 1975. PpLotte Zumpe (Ed.). Wirtschaft und Staat im Imperialismus: Beiträge zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des staatsmonopolistischen Kapitalismus in Deutschland. (Berlin. 1976. Pp

Last week brought us the news that Dr. Craig Steven Wright, an eccentric Australian who has long claimed to be Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto, was bench-slapped by the High Court, where Mr. Justice Mellor ruled at the conclusion of the proceedings that Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto, not the author of the Bitcoin white paper, not the author of its software and, by extension, not the creator of Bitcoin.This bench ruling comes after years of litigation and weeks of hearings around the question of the provenance of the Bitcoin white paper and software. Full details of the court's findings on these points will be provided in a written judgment at a later date so I refrain from offering my own conclusions on the evidence, or an assessment of correctness of the ruling, here.As is public knowledge, I was one of the first lawyers – if not the first lawyer – to represent a client on the business end of Wright's years-long litigation campaign, when, in 2019, a Twitter user I know was the first crypto community member to receive legal threats from Wright's lawyers for claiming that Wright was not Satoshi, the very conclusion Mr. Justice Mellor also reached today. A short time later, an acquaintance of mine, Peter McCormack, dared to say the same thing. Peter was promptly sued by Wright in England. Wright won his case against Peter, albeit winning only nominal damages of £1 due to certain deficiencies in Wright's case.In my view, Wright's legal team chose to bring these claims in England for one reason, and one reason only: England is, and long has been, the easiest place in the English-speaking world to win a defamation action, because in England, the playing field is tilted so to the advantage of a claimant that even weak claims can win.This is not a new problem, and its roots go deep. Defamation is an ancient tort with its origins in the landed aristocracy seeking to protect their names and reputations from lesser men. The Anglo-Saxon tort of scandalum magnatum, a "fake news" tort for defaming great men of the realm (and thus not a tort capable of being inflicted on lesser men), was used as early as the 13th century. In later years, various other torts like seditious libel were used to punish political dissent – even where that dissent should be substantially true – and the imposition of these ancient rules in the Thirteen Colonies, most famously in the John Peter Zenger trial of 1735, served as focal points around which a new, young nation, the United States of America, began to develop its fledgling judicial system which led, eventually, to its free speech doctrine embodied today by First Amendment jurisprudence.In the modern formulation, defamation is the publication of a statement of fact to a third party, which is false, which is likely to cause serious harm to their reputation. In this respect it differs little from the tort in the United States. However, in England, the history of the tort – protecting the powerful from the powerless – has never been fully written out of its bones, because the burden of proof in a defamation action rests not with the claimant but with the defense. Not with the Saxon noble with the ear of the King, but with the humble pamphleteer who dared to speak out about his abuses. Not with the Member of Parliament accused of some lecherous or disreputable conduct, but the journalist who reported on it. Not with a person claiming to be Bitcoin's creator, offering nothing approaching definitive proof that he or she is (being a transaction or message signed with one of Satoshi's private keys), and armed with institutional financial backing, but the humble Twitter user who simply observed what appeared to be true, based on a cold assessment of the facts, and dared to repeat what he thought was true in writing. Put simply, at any time, in any defamation claim, the deck is always stacked against speakers and favors those who are most likely to be spoken about.On a practical level, this means that it is conceivable that a future plaintiff in England seeking to conceal certain truths or propound certain falsehoods, but with knowledge of the totality of the circumstances concerning that conduct, confidence that he or she can control those variables, and possessing the resources to reasonably predict that he or she will be able to use lawfare to intimidate others from discussing it, can stifle freedom of speech by using the threat of defamation litigation and, in some cases, being less than forthright with the courts. We need not look back to the Saxons to find a proven example of this: see, e.g., Jeffrey Archer, Baron Archer and former Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, who famously won a defamation case against the Star newspaper over a visit to a prostitute whose life was ruined by the case in the late 1980s, only to be sent to prison a decade and a half later, when his testimony was discovered to have been false.The point is not that Archer lied, or that he was punished for a lie. The point is that his initial case was so weak that he should never have won a civil action in the first place, or assumed that victory was possible, but the structure of English defamation law made a victory possible if not inevitable, thus incentivizing Archer to bring it anyway. Requiring a defendant to prove the truth of his statement, particularly where seeking to prove a negative, can be nearly impossible. It is far fairer and in the interests of justice to require a claimant, who starts the dispute, seeks the remedy, possesses direct knowledge of all of relevant facts about his past conduct, and is the party asking the state to intercede on his or her behalf with the full might of its power, to prove the truth under these circumstances.I offer no view on the truth or falsity of Wright's statements or evidence in this case. That is a matter for the High Court to address in its fuller ruling. What I do know is that the question of the truth of his claims should have been addressed years ago in Wright v. McCormack, but it was not dealt with because the burden of proof was on the defense and the cost of going through the exercise COPA - a coalition of very well-funded corporations - just went through was likely too much for an individual defendant like Peter to bear. In future, it is possible to make England a fairer place for speakers and help the English marketplace of ideas be a home for the truth. Ask claimants in a defamation action to bear the burden of proving their case. It's a simple change. Parliament should make it.

It's that time of year, and despite all the budgetary drama unfolding on Capitol Hill, lawmakers have already finished most of their holiday shopping for their favorite children: Pentagon contractors. Through cryptic "program increases" to the defense budget appropriations for fiscal year 2024, most with no listed author and little to no justification, Congress has added more than $25 billion to the Pentagon's procurement and research accounts for fiscal year 2024. Based on the continuing resolution that Congress passed in November, Congress has until February 2 to either pass another stopgap measure, or pass a final Pentagon spending bill, at which point we should be able to see which program increases make the cut. If history is any indication, almost all of them will be in the final bill.In the meantime, a new database created by Taxpayers for Common Sense reveals each of these program increases, whether they fund projects that weren't funded at all in the Pentagon's budget request, and whether they fund projects requested in Unfunded Priorities Lists (UPLs), extra-budgetary wish lists that Congress requires military service branch and combatant command leaders to submit to Congress each year.The numbersLawmakers on the House Appropriations Committees got to work early, adding 479 program increases for a combined $9.5 billion. When their Senate counterparts got to work, they included 636 program increases in their bill worth nearly $15 billion — so all in all 1,115 program increases. Broken down by bill section, there were 172 increases for procurement between the House and Senate at a cost of $14 billion, and 943 for research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) at a cost of $10.5 billion. When the House version of the Defense Appropriations bill came to the floor, lawmakers added 11 more program increases for procurement, and another 90 for RDT&E, for a combined $1.1 billion.While these kinds of adds are nothing new, their numbers do seem to be growing, particularly in the RDT&E category. In fact, the number of RDT&E top-ups has grown by 72% in the past four years, from 600 for FY2021, to 776 for FY2022, to 996 for FY2023, up to 1,033 for FY2024. More troubling still is that 1,010 of the total 1,216 increases, or $14.5 billion of the $25.7 billion lawmakers have added to these accounts, are for projects the Pentagon didn't fund at all in its budget request.Are they earmarks?According to Congress, these increases aren't earmarks, but in practice, they often serve the same purpose and are not subject to transparency reforms traditional earmarks have faced since 2007.Traditional earmarks, rebranded by Congress as "congressionally directed funding" or "community project funding," support projects that fund a specific entity for a specific purpose in a specific place. This made them a favored tool for lawmakers to funnel taxpayer dollars into their district or state. But these earmarks come with rules, requiring members to put their names on them, and in the House's case, requiring members to list their earmarks on their websites. Program increases are not bound by these rules. They have no name attached (apart from amendments, which list their sponsors) and generally lack any accompanying justification. In the Senate Appropriations Committee report on the Pentagon spending bill, a section on "funding increases" stipulates that "funding increases shall be competitively awarded, or provided to programs that have received competitive awards in the past." So Congress seems to differentiate these increases from earmarks on the basis that they're competitively awarded, unlike traditional earmarks. In practice, that rationale breaks down.Next-gen earmarksOne program increase allocates $2 million for "urban subterranean mapping technology," a fancy name for tunnel detection. This increase has appeared in every Pentagon spending bill since FY2020, for a total of $17 million over five years, but there's almost no publicly available information about this project. That is other than Sen. Joe Manchin's (D-W.Va.) regular celebrations of funding for West Virginia-based Marshall University to research urban subterranean mapping technology in press release after press release after press release after press release, all of which were published before the funds they celebrate were formally awarded.Some adds are even more blatantly noncompetitive. In the House, someone added $7 million for "Omniblast water sensor technology." If that sounds weirdly specific, it's because it is. The Omniblast water sensor is a trademarked product, owned by a company called Advanced Materials and Devices (AMAD), Inc. It goes without saying that program increases for patented products can only be fulfilled by the patent owners, so AMAD Inc. is more than a shoe-in for any "competitive" award process. And while AMAD Inc. was awarded a contract for "a wearable underwater blast sensor" in 2022, it was the only bidder, suggesting a not so competitive process in the past.As to whether this funding, like an earmark, is meant to serve the political interests of a specific lawmaker, we can't know for sure without knowing the author. But AMAD Inc. is based in Reno, Nevada, in the district of Rep. Mark Amodei's (R-Nev.), who sits on the House Appropriations Committee. While AMAD Inc. hasn't made any political contributions to Rep. Amodei's campaigns, it did spend $150,000 on lobbying in 2022, and $120,000 on lobbying in the first three quarters of 2023, expenses paid to a lobbying firm called Cornerstone Government Affairs. Cornerstone donated $3,000 to Rep. Amodei so far in the 2024 election cycle, its first time contributing to any of his campaigns.Unjustified adds, unjustifiable secrecyAsked about these program increases, a Senate Appropriations Committee staffer pointed to the unfunded priorities they fund as a justification. But there are two problems with that argument. One is that Unfunded Priorities Lists (UPLs) are just that: unfunded, meaning the Pentagon didn't find them important enough to include in its $826 billion request. Almost by definition, items on these UPLs are non-priorities for the Pentagon. The second problem is that UPLs only accounted for about $1.9 billion of the $25.7 billion lawmakers added to the Pentagon's request for procurement and RDT&E. The staffer also argued that the Pentagon sometimes "relies upon congressional increases to keep production lines open or to sustain readiness of the military." This tack obfuscates the fact that for a lot of the funds Congress adds, it subtracts funds from elsewhere in the Pentagon budget. While the offsets for the committee adds are as opaque as their authors, the offsets listed in amendments overwhelmingly raid the Pentagon's Operations and Maintenance account. That's Congress' prerogative, but lawmakers can't raid O&M to pay for procurement and research adds and then say with a straight face that those adds are about supporting military readiness.All this isn't to say that none of these projects are worth funding. There's more than 1,200 of them, so surely some are. But with the lack of transparency for who requests and approves them, whether the funds are competitively awarded, and whether they align with any cogent national security strategy, who's to say? If lawmakers think cramming another $25 billion for procurement and research into a $826 billion budget of an agency that just failed its sixth audit is worthwhile, they should at least let us know who's adding what and to what end.

Hello friends! Welcome to another episode of Fully Automated!



Our guest for this episode is none other than James A. Smith, co-host with David Slavick of The Popular Show. Smith is also the author of Other People's Politics: Populism to Corbynism (Zer0 Books, 2019) and coauthor with Mareile Pfannebecker of Work Want Work: Labour and Desire at the end of Capitalism (Bloomsbury, 2020).







Smith is a defender of the idea that the 2016-2020 "Bernie moment" was a real opportunity to advance the cause of socialism. While it can be tempting today to look back and think that it was doomed from the start, Smith argues that the failure was largely self-inflicted. This means there are lessons that can be learned from the failure. However, he notes, the left today "seems worryingly uncurious about the regressive influence earlier defeated lefts have sometimes inadvertently had."



Smith believes that the left needs to rethink its approach to political freedom. Following up on our recent episode with Efraim Carlebach on the 10-year anniversary of Mark Fisher's famous essay, "Exiting the Vampire Castle," we chat with Smith about his recent Sublation essay, "Capitalist Realism All Over Again" (3.17.2023).



As he puts it, the left has "struggled to apply the book's insights," all too often succumbing to political correctness and "anti-political moralism." Meanwhile, as evidenced in the government response to the coronavirus pandemic, capitalist elites are claiming that crises that are "too important to be hazarded to democratic oversight or protest." When the left abandons this fight, the right will try to fill in the gap, claiming that only it can stop the power grab.



We also ask Smith about some of his recent episodes, including his interview with Matt Taibbi, one of the main journalists behind The Twitter Files. Like Taibbi, Smith believes that capitalist elites today are leveraging state powers to censor social media activity, essentially constituting a strategy of "revenge against both left and right populism."



We also discuss a number of foreign policy matters, from the west's war for NATO expansion in Ukraine to the iconoclastic left's bankrupt analysis of Israel's war in Gaza. Concerning the latter, many otherwise insightful critics have suggested that Hamas is essentially a bonapartist organization, seeking to create an islamic state. How does Smith respond to these critics? Moreover, given the difficulty of imagining the construction of a working class party in Gaza today, what should be the left position on this terrible war?



Smith can be followed on Twitter/X @thepopularpod. Curious listeners can also follow up on Smith's work on Jacobin, where he has published numerous articles on the state of the British left:




"The Labour Party Is Ignoring Britain's Muslims. A Judge-Led Inquiry Won't Change That" (12.12.2023)



"Labour's Left Needs to Regain the Insurgent Spirit That Made Jeremy Corbyn Leader" (07.31.2023)



"The Labour Left's Fatal Contradictions Are Still Unresolved" (11.04.2021)




NOTE: This is a re-post of Episode 13 of Class Transmissions, which was posted on Feb 4, 2024. I want to thank Class Unity for letting me share this work with listeners of Fully Automated.



Please check out Class Unity's website: here



Class Unity can be followed on Twitter/X here: @Class_Unity

Can we surpass the representational nature of architecture drawing to consider and discuss the agency of architectural drawing in process and result? Over the course of three years from 2019, a cohort of architect–drafters, architect–theoreticians and a curator are meeting every six months in a reflective exchange to discuss the production and exhibition of a collection of drawings and drawing-related artefacts. The varying cast of the bi-annual symposia are participants from the United States, Canada and Europe including Michael Webb, Perry Kulper, Laura Allen, Bryan Cantley, Nat Chard, Mark Dorrian, Arnaud Hendrickx, William Menking, Shaun Murray, Anthony Morey, Mark Smout, Neil Spiller, Natalija (Nada) Subotincic, Mark West, Michael Young and Riet Eeckhout. Surpassing the representational nature of architecture drawing, a group of architects and I consider and discuss the agency of architectural drawing in process and result. Drawing architecture implies materializing an architecture within the drawing, where it can be sought, found and experienced. This refers to an action in the present progressive, an action by the author in the process of bringing into the world through drawing – architectural research through drawing. The artefacts, as drawings, that we are looking at are an end in themselves and not a preparatory means to build an environment as in how drawings are used in architectural practices for buildings. These symposia aim to reveal and come closer to the individual agency of each practice within the drawn discipline of architecture, to establish a way in which we can show this agency in an Exhibition at Montreal Design Centre in August–December 2022. The bi-annual symposium days were structured by round-table conversations and discussions that take place based on drawings or drawing-related artefacts brought in by the participants. In 'Drawing architecture' Session 1 in New York, we had an in-depth introduction of each participant's practice with Michael Webb, Perry Kulper, Bryan Cantley, Nat Chard, Arnaud Hendrickx, William Menking, Shaun Murray, Anthony Morey, Neil Spiller, Natalija (Nada) Subotincic, Mark West, Michael Young and Riet Eeckhout. Participants expanded on their bodies of work, tools and the nature of the drawing practice. For 'Drawing architecture' Session 2 in London, we sharpened the conversation between the participants by: (1) establishing an angle from which we talk through the artefact(s) (drawing or drawing practice-related artefact), each participant from the standpoint of their practice. Angle: Talking through the drawing or drawing practice-related artefact, can you expand on the agency of the drawing (practice) within the discipline of architecture? Questions that might be helpful: (a) How does the drawing work as a tool of investigation (technique of leveraging knowledge). (b) Where and what is the architecture within the resulting drawing/artefact? When is the architecture in the process? Is there architecture within the drawing? (2) By placing the drawing or artefact central during the symposium talk and organize a group conversation around it. It might be that you bring one or more current drawings/artefacts enabling you to expand on the specific drawing practice investigation. The artefact might be resolved or unresolved, finished, ongoing or just starting and in the thick of things. The presence of the drawing allows the group to come closer to and understand the agency of the artefact itself, supported by talking us through and unpacking the artefact.

Hello listeners! This is a rebroadcast of Episode 2 of Transmissions, a new podcast I've been involved with lately. Transmissions is the official podcast of the Class Unity Caucus of the DSA, and I want to thank them for their permission to use this episode.



Our guest for this episode is George Hoare, co-host of the Bungacast (neé Aufebunga Bunga) podcast, and co-author along with Alex Hochuli and Philip Cunliffe, of The End of the End of History (Zero Books, 2021).



In this episode, we begin with a discussion of Francis Fukuyama's concept of the end of history, and how many intellectuals misread it as a 'triumphalist' celebration of American victory in the Cold War. The better argument, according to Hoare et al., is that Fukuyama was talking not just about the birth of a new era of liberal freedom, but of the dawning of an epoch of gloom - one which would bring disappointments to many of its more enthusiastic advocates.



We also discuss the war in Ukraine. So far, in western media at least, accounts of the causes of this war seem to rest upon simplistic caricatures of Putin's flawed personality. Yet these accounts are contested, and a well-reasoned minority opinion suggests the deeper issue is NATO expansionism. Given that the West is typically used to getting its own way, to what extent is the Russian invasion of Ukraine a kind of reality check for neoliberal technocracy? While the invasion of Ukraine is illegal and monstrous, can it be understood as marking the return of politics?



As the interview progresses, we touch on numerous core concepts from the book, including the anti-political turn - also known as the "return of dissensus." This turn was perhaps nowhere more clearly on display that in the 2016 election of Donald Trump. For Hoare et al, this moment occasioned the breakout across the United States of what they term 'Neoliberal Order Breakdown Syndrome' (NOBS). However, argue the Bunga crew, it was not without its historic antecedents. And, in some ways, we can see the effects of NOBS already at play in the politics surrounding Silvio Berlusconi's rise to power in Italy, in the 1990s.



We also push back a little on Hoare in the interview, challenging some of the book's characterizations of the limits of left-populism. While it is undoubtedly true, as Hoare et al. contend, that left-populism is anti-political in the sense that it has no theory of adequate "authority," and that left-populist leaders like AOC and Bernie have failed thus far "to key into the agency of their own citizens," we put it to him that this may be more of a bug than a feature. After all, as Thomas Frank and others have argued in recent times, there is a long and venerable history of left populist success, in the United States.



Other topics addressed include the applicability of the book's arguments to the recent Canadian trucker rally against covid vaccination requirements, and contemporary debates around "techno-populism."



We hope you'll enjoy this discussion. If you want to find out more about Class Unity, here are some useful links:



Website: https://classunity.orgTwitter: https://twitter.com/ClassUnityDSAFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassUnity/



Your hosts for this episode are Nicholas Kiersey, Steph K, and Dave F.

One of the consequences of the industrial revolution is the dematerialization of traditional objects of Civil Law (money, securities, precious metals), that is, they lose their usual material form and turn them into a number on the account. In addition, technological progress has led to the emergence in the economic circulation of new objects of Civil Law, which, in principle, cannot have a material form, being intangible property (digital currencies, digital assets, digital financial assets, crypto assets, etc.). Meanwhile, legislation and civil science were unable to adapt the theory of Civil Law and legislation to the new economic realities. So, the subject of the loan agreement in accordance with Art. 807 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation must be transferred by the lender to the ownership of the borrower. Meanwhile, judicial practice has recognized for a long time that it is possible to lend non-cash funds and non-documentary securities, although they are not things. Digital assets are quite often qualified by Russian civil lawyers as rights of obligations (claims). However, in some cases it is rather difficult to find such an entity to which it would be possible to make any claims (for example, bitcoin and ethereum).
The solution to these problems, according to the author, is to clarify the types of legal relations that arise in connection with the considered intangible property. For example, with regard to non-cash funds, there are two types of civil legal relations. Firstly, the legal relationship of the client with the bank under a bank account agreement, which is a relative legal relationship (civil obligation), respectively, non-cash funds - the rights (claims) of the client to the bank to make transfers and to issue cash. Secondly, we are talking about the legal relationship of the account holder with all third parties, in which all third parties are obliged to refrain from violating the right of the account holder to the funds belonging to him, and the account holder has the right to require them to fulfill this obligation, and can also protect right through absolute claims. With regard to new objects of Civil Law (digital property), such as digital assets, digital financial assets, digital currency, crypto assets, etc., several types of legal relations also arise in economic circulation. Firstly, in relation to digital property, legal obligations arising from a contract of sale, exchange, etc. may arise. Secondly, this digital property may be the object of an absolute legal relationship between the owner of such property and all third parties, in which the owner of digital property can own, use and dispose of digital property in the most absolute way, and all third parties must refrain from violating this absolute right. This absolute right is not a property right, since digital property is not a thing. This is a new absolute right, which should be regulated by Civil Law, just as the exclusive right to the results of intellectual activity was regulated in its time.
Arguing in this way, it is permissible to recognize that the subject of a loan agreement can be any property, both having a material form and res incorporales, which can be transferred to the lender either in ownership as a thing, or with the simultaneous transfer of another absolute right to him if the object is intangible.

Purpose
Students play an unequivocal role in sustainable universities as they are theorized to embody the mission of a sustainable university through a sustainable lifestyle and spread sustainability practices during their professional careers. Despite this, it is not well known how or why students come to embody a sustainable lifestyle. This study aims to better understand the relationship between happiness, academic achievement and sustainability behaviors among the student population in a Mexican higher education institution.


Design/methodology/approach
In a questionnaire study, engineering and psychology university students at a large public university in northwestern Mexico answered questions regarding their environmental sustainability behaviors, happiness and academic performance. A stratified random sampling technique was used to obtain the sample population that best represents the entire population. After chi-square tests, it was confirmed that the three variables were independent of one another. Therefore, a series of correspondence analyses were conducted to examine clusters or patterns that could indicate relationships among the three variables.


Findings
The main finding from this work was that the happiest and most academically astute participants were only slightly environmentally sustainable or not sustainable at all. The lack of environmental sustainability in students from one of the most top-rank sustainable universities in Mexico does not align with previous sustainability reports. External factors to the university, such as cultural values and extreme weather conditions, may have influenced students' sustainability behaviors.


Research limitations/implications
As with any other questionnaire study, the provided data is subject to interpretation, judgment and bias. In addition, the environmental and happiness index used in this study are not free of criticizing, and some author had disputed its efficacy. Finally, this study's findings did not determine any causality or directionality between any of the latent variables. However, causality and directionally between environmental sustainability-happiness and happiness-academic performance have to be found in both directions.


Practical implications
Despite the unsustainability of students in this study, this study has several contributions. First, it provides an evaluation of a sustainable university from the perspectives and behaviors of students. The views of students as they relate to the complexities and visions of a sustainable university have remained relatively underexamined. Second, these analyses point to specific sustainability-oriented challenges and inadvertent barriers (e.g. extreme weather patterns) toward the embodiment of a sustainable lifestyle. These challenges and barriers suggest that sustainable universities need to address the dynamic changes inherent in sustainable development. Finally, this study indicates that the link between happiness, academic performance and sustainability may be more complicated and driven by cultural and structural barriers. The issue of barriers, as they relate to sustainability behaviors, is highly relevant and presents important opportunities and questions for future research.


Originality/value
This study provides an evaluation of a sustainable university from the perspectives and behaviors of students. Students' views as they relate to the complexities and visions of a sustainable university have remained relatively underexamined. Second, these analyses point to specific sustainability-oriented challenges and barriers as they relate to the embodiment of a sustainable lifestyle. These challenges and barriers suggest that sustainable universities need to address the dynamic changes inherent in sustainable development. Finally, this study indicates that the link between happiness, academic performance and sustainability may be more complicated and driven by cultural and structural barriers.

The episode features a roundtable on Philip Cunliffe's latest book, The New Twenty Years' Crisis (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2020). And, in a bit of a break with tradition, this episode also sees me jump out of the host's seat, and invite Shahar Hameiri (University of Queensland) to take over the reins.



Joining me in the panel to discuss the book is the author, Philip Cunliffe (making his third appearance on the show), and Patrick Porter (University of Birmingham). Tara McCormack (University of Leicester) was also scheduled to join us but had to withdraw at the last minute, due to illness.



It was great to have Phil back on the show, to discuss this important book. The last time he was on, we talked about his previous book, Cosmopolitan Dystopia, which was a survey of human rights discourse on global politics since the end of the Cold War. The new book takes the theme of liberal war-making from that book, and attempts to read it through the lens of E. H. Carr's classic 1939 text, The Twenty Years' Crisis.



On the eve of World War Two, Carr described the politics of his time as a kind of interregnum, or a time of passage between two regimes of world order. For Carr, the great tragedy of his time was that the normative commitments of the intellectuals of interbellum period — namely, to the power of public opinion, to sovereign self-determination, and to international law and institutions — were incongruent with the kinds of mass-mobilized politics that were rapidly sweeping away their world order, and undermining the very conditions of possibility for securing those commitments.



For Cunliffe, however, the lessons of Carr's study of the 1919-1939 period must today be applied in a kind of inverted manner. For where it was mass politics that ultimately frustrated and undid the political project of the utopian idealists, we do not today live in such a massified moment. To the contrary, as scholars like Peter Mair have described, we live in a demassified moment, where the agendas of college-educated neoliberal Brahmins dominate, unchecked. Worse, as Cunliffe explores, these new elites are kind of anti-utopians. They detest the values of the interbellum period, deriding public opinion and breaching sovereign self-determination in the name of so-called responsibility.



Cunliffe explores this argument through a number of fascinating case studies, taking us from the salons of International Relations conventions, which have been overtaken by 'critical' theorists (a group of scholars whose methods are singularly symptomatic of the "imaginary" of our unipolar moment), to the hallways of Brussels, capital of that grandest of examples of "de-massified," neoliberal democracy, the European Union. The overarching theme that emerges is one of a shocking lack of self-awareness on the part of our political and intellectual elites.



As you'll hear, the panelists are on the whole friendly to Phil's diagnosis, but they do push back on some of his normative suggestions. Despite these disagreements, however, I will say that I think this is one of the more important episodes we've done on this show. Diagnostically, Phil is one of the sharpest commentators around, on the contradictions of our postmodern moment. I want to thank Phil, Patrick, and Shahar for their time and effort in helping to make this conversation happen.

This paper examines the origin and the relationship between Islamist and non-Islamist political trends in Libya, highlighting the development of the contestation between the two before and after the fall of Gaddafi's rule. The relationship appears to be that of a contestation between Islamists and liberals but this may be misleading. Islamists are not united but they share an adherence to the establishment of a Muslim society and some form of a khilafa. However, non-Islamists may not easily be identified as "on current." Indeed, the "current" includes an array of political factions of various dispensations with some not necessarily subscribing to liberal models of democracy. Some belong to pre-Gaddafi-era political parties or were political and human rights' activists during Gaddafi's reign. They range from leftist, nationalist, and liberal orientations to populist Arab nationalist forces (including the Ba'th, Pan-Arabists, and others with socialist or communist orientations). When the uprising took place in 2011, the positions each trend took differed before some tactical unity was deemed necessary. When the regime fell, however, differences remerged and became more evident once the transitional structures were put in place. Just before and during the first elections in 2012, Islamists broke ranks with their struggle comrades and fired their cannons at the leaders of the liberal, nationalist, and other elements within the non-Islamist orientations. Islam then became crucial in political expression and rhetoric, especially for Islamist actors. Focusing on the development of this contestation, this paper analyzes the reaction of both Islamist and non-Islamist trends to the policies and tactics adopted by each side in the aftermath of the 2011 uprising and the post-Gaddafi phase. It suggests that although ideology, specifically references to Islam, became crucial in the political contention between Islamists and non-Islamists, the cleavage was not entirely ideological, as both trends considered the Islamic identity of Libya central to their political programs. The interviews with leading representatives of both trends that the author conducted for the purpose of writing this article confirm such a view on the role of ideology in the contestation. As the following discussion indicates, ideology is evidently part and parcel of each sides' tools, ready to be employed against the other. However, when it does not suit all their purposes, they claim ideology has no role, offering insights into the instrumental and tactical approach to the ongoing contestation of both sides. The article therefore examines the struggle between the two factions as a political competition for the control of resources and positions of power, yet it also argues that ideology and ideas have a role to play, as they constitute the instruments deployed in this struggle, which has, with foreign involvement and backing of different sides, reduced Libya to a "failed state." In fact although ideological contraposition figures in the contestation, political factionalism and contention in post-2011 were actually fuelled by political factors related to the struggle over access to power and resources, which are instrumental in enabling each side to shape the future state and its political order according to their plans. The struggle between Islamists and non-Islamists may have been the most visible, but it is certainly not the most significant factor in explaining the political dynamics and contention in the country since the fall of Gaddafi.

Purpose
Health care is a complex system, mandating adoption of unrelenting updates of guidelines and best practices. Securing a balanced system of current practice and matching documentation has always been a challenge due to impaired connection between traditional forms of documentation (e.g. policies, procedures, and guidelines) and users. Departmental manuals always find their way back to shelves away from the workplace, and continuous interaction with customers and complexity of business processes hinder timely update and consequently sustainable improvement. The paper aims to discuss this issue.


Design/methodology/approach
In late 2014, the corresponding author visited Japan as part of Kaizen benchmark tour that introduced the concepts and applications of "Kaizen," the Japanese word for continuous improvement, in Toyota factory and health care institutes in Fukuoka, Nagoya, and Tokyo. Soon thereafter, the authors adopted Kaizen to be the organizational theme for improvement. QPS team launched several initiatives throughout 2015 to improve the quality of documentation. Documents submitted had one thing in common, all participants used flowcharts, diagrams, and even drawings to simplify hard-to-understand processes. This challenge highlighted the utilization of diagrams, well-organized forms, infographics, and other methods to simplify processes and to vitalize documents.


Findings
Since the hospital utilizes the paper-form prescribing system, prescription errors lead to delays in dispensing time, affecting patient satisfaction in emergency room's pharmacy. Pharmacy team launched a project using document vitalization as an improvement strategy. Aggregate results showed 16.7 percent reduction in average time per prescription in inpatient pharmacy and 20.0 percent reduction in emergency room pharmacy. Although measurements did not continue over a longer period or were statistically analyzed, they provide a crude indication of possible improvement using document vitalization.


Research limitations/implications
Lack of a sound measurement system with proper statistical analysis prevented the provision of reliable evidence of improvement. Moreover, lack of previous case studies has been an obstacle. It is the authors' plan to provide measurable evidence of improvement for multiple projects through measurement of process time, customer and employee satisfaction, the number of process errors, etc. Nevertheless, feedback from users provides a rough indication of possible improvement using document vitalization. It is the authors' aim to incorporate "document vitalization" into the fabric of documentation process and SFHPM culture.


Practical implications
Empowerment creates an energy-filled work environment where staff members feel they are the real change factors and are actively contributing to the advancement and success of their organizations (Taylor 2013). This does not mean allowing chaos and unplanned changes to disrupt process flow but rather to leave room for trial and error in a controlled environment and pilot-testing significant changes before generalization.


Originality/value
The term vitalization itself is a brand new one used in this field, and the authors introduce it for the first time to be a solution that comes from frontliners and can bridge the gap between document and practice. If all document vitalization successes were a tribute to one factor, it would be "empowerment." Once leaders have the courage to listen to frontline staff voice and allow them to do things differently, the staff members will surprise their organizations with the marvels of their creations.

The maritime and land trade of the City of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and its surroundings has always been "the corner stone" on which the grandeur of Dubrovnik, its political and economical power and culture were built. As early as 1441, the Dubrovnik trade was considered to consist of 3/4 of the maritime and only 1/4 of the land based trade. In 1181, the comunitas ragusina - the Commune of Ragusa was mentioned for the first time; as the time went by, it became the City-state. It was named The Ragusan Republic in 1430. The treaty concluded with Turkey in 1442 was in force up to the twilight of the Dubrovnik Republic (1806). It was convenient for Ragusans to have a sole ruler and a single state in their neighbourhood, not to mention how stubborn and quite often wanton ones. In his work "Mari, Gol , Isole,..." (1688.), Vincenzo Coronelli, the mapmaker, said about the Ragusans: "...They are the most ardent defenders of their freedom, putting in a great deal of effort to secure it, and at the same time, hating any kind of slavery...". The Ragusan vessels were attacked by the pirates from Rhodes from 1507-1509 and later on. The main reason for flourishing of Ragusan shipping and trade was based upon focussing on their public life within these domains. The Ragusan Republic depended upon its investments into maritime affairs and assistance offered through stimulations, interaction of processes and consequential strengthening of its own prosperity (its enriched citizens). The Ragusan Maritime Insurance Law (Ordo super assecuratoribus) of March 5th, 1568 is the oldest enacted law in the world, and in this way it was more than a century older than legal regulations on the maritime insurance - Ordonnance de la marine of 1681. Apart from the main shipyard in the old City port (in portu interiori Ragusii, in portu Ragusii), up to the construction of the new shipyard in Gruž (1526) there were shipyards in Ston and in the nearby islands of Lopud, Šipan (in Suđurađ) and Koločep (Kalamota) already in the 14th century. Palladius Fuscus (1450-1520), in his work De situ orae Illyrici (published posthumously in 1540) cited that "there was no such a secluded part of Europe or one so inaccessible to the newcomers, where you would not encounter Ragusans practicing their merchant activity". According to some researchers, Ragusa was the third strongest force in the Mediterranean (after Genoa and Venice) in the 14th century. The Ragusan Republic was the first in the Mediterranean in the 16th century and, in terms of their trading ocean-going sailing vessels under Ragusan and foreign flags, it was the third in the world (after Spain and the Netherlands). In his work Nautica Mediterranea (Rome, 1602, pp. 4-5), Bartolomeo Crescentio said: "...among experts and master craftsmen for galleons are the most numerous, and the most capable in this (the Mediterranean Sea, observation of the author) are Ragusans", and Pantero Pantera in his work L'Armata Navale (Rome, 1614, p. 66) wrote down: "...while for navas and galleons building, masters of Dubrovnik, Portugal and England were highly esteemed"."Argosy", in fact, means "a Ragusan ship". Many endeavours and achievements in the art of shipbuilding raise the East Adriatic coast above the West one, since it had most frequently been a successful way in which ships and men reached di erent parts of the world.

This short article offers a simple but profound alternative to the economic dogma of continually seeking to maximize profit and growth—seek instead to maximize personal happiness. Drawing on the work of Donella Meadows and others whose updated study, produced 30 years after the original Limits to Growth thesis that found existing economic policies and practices to be already unsustainable, the author cites Aristotle and thinkers from other cultures who proposed centuries ago that it was happiness not wealth or reputation that human beings truly desired. Recent international surveys of what makes people happy, and research into the theoretical consequences of expanding prosperity without material growth by reducing time devoted to work, are offered as examples of how educators and policy makers can act to raise general awareness that happiness is not linked to excessive wealth and that a sustainable environment combined with the optimum development of each individuals" mental, physical, and moral potential can in fact be achieved. There might be more professional economists in our society than people in any other profession. Yet, most of them appear to still accept without question the idea that growth is always beneficial. Conventional wisdom says that growth is essential to control unemployment and promote stability. As our current recession shows, when growth stops, demand falls, and business revenues drop, all leading to a reduction in levels of investment and the laying off of workers. In fact, as a nation's economy becomes more efficient, it actually generates more unemployment. At the same time, since most nations run their economies in deficit, there are strong arguments to support the idea that growth is needed to pay off our high levels of personal and national debt. These arguments are hard to refute. But the other side of the coin is: more growth necessarily brings leads to greater depletion of resources, and destruction of the environment, all contributing to global climate change and potential ecological collapse. The consequences of not limiting our growth—the "business as usual" route that our world is on—are so dire that it is high time we explore what might be done to limit economic and social growth while maintaining a functioning capitalist free market system. Though we have long recognized that there would be a limit to growth eventually, few macro-economic models have seriously examined just where that limit might lie. In 1972, commissioned by The Club of Rome, Meadows, Randers and Meadows of MIT compiled a study entitled: "Limits to Growth." 1 Using system dynamic theory and computer modeling, they produced a model called "World3." With this model they produced 12 different scenarios for Earth's future. World3 showed how the interaction of population growth and natural resource use necessarily imposed finite limits to industrial growth. The idea of such a limit was novel and somewhat controversial at the time and many, as expected, dismissed it as an alarmist doomsday prophecy. At that point in time, the world's economy with a global population at about 3.8 billion 2 was still comfortably within the planet's carrying capacity. Thus it seemed to many that the Earth still had plenty of room to grow.

In Romania there are only a few parental education programs being carried out, but most of them are not properly/scientifically measured in terms of efficiency. For this reason, the purpose of the research was the implementation and scientific validation of a training program for developing the parental competence. The parental competence was defined as a system of knowledge, skills, capabilities, abilities and habits that would allow the parent to successfully fulfill the parental responsibilities and also prevent/deal with crisis situations in a manner that would contribute to the child's development (Glăveanu, 2009). The above-mentioned term became widely spread in Romania after 2010, when the Integrated National Strategy for Creating and Developing Parental Competence was published. The Strategy is supported by the Ministry of Education, Research, Youth and Sports and its deadline is in the summer of 2012.
The 298 parents who participated in the research were selected based on the criteria of average and low parental competence and their children had educational and social adaptation difficulties. The methods used during the research were the formative experiment and the questionnaire-based investigation. The participants were evaluated before and after the training with the Parental Competence Questionnaire (PCQ, developed by the author of the study). The PCQ had five dimensions comprised of a total of 81 items: knowing the specificities of the child between 6 and 11 years of age (alpha=0.69), affective support and stress management (alpha=0.74), disciplining (alpha=0.82), time management (alpha=0.77) and crisis management (alpha=0.77). Each of the PCQ dimensions (which were built in accordance to the conceptualized structure of the parental competence) had a training module dedicated to it.
PCQ was validated with the Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ, built by Buri in 1991); significant correlations for the two questionnaires occurred (between 0.5 and 0.9).
The statistical results obtained by using PCQ six months after the training (Independent-Samples T Test=61.43; df=298; p<0.001) showed significant differences between the experimental group (M=315.81) and the control group (M=243.22); the PCQ results of the experimental group were also compared (Paired-Samples T Test=58.39; df=141; p<0.001) and showed statistically significant differences between the pre-training results (time 1=just before training, M=221.31) and the post-training ones (time 2=graduating training+6 months, M=315.81). Similarly, the scores of the control group at the two chosen moments (time 1: M=221.57 and time 2: M=243.22) indicated a timed evolution, but statistically insignificant of the parental competence (Paired-Samples T Test=34.19; df=155, p=0.07). These results proved the certain and significant influence that the training had over the development of the parental competence, in comparison to the case of the spontaneous growth – thus being confirmed the hypothesis of the study.
As a conclusion, the results proved the internal validation of the training program (according to Vaughn's criteria, 2005). It is yet to be proven the external validation regarding the impact of the training program on the child's overall development (Kirkpatrick, 2006; Vaughn, 2005) and this will be done by applying the training program on an expanded/national level.
Key words: adult education, child development, parental competence, parental training, training validation.