There is no society known where a more or less developed criminality is not found under different forms. No people exists whose morality is not daily infringed upon. We must therefore call crime necessary and declare that it cannot be non-existent, that the fundamental conditions of social organization, as they are understood, logically imply it.
2017. The new President of France just took office. He knows his country needs radical reforms. The question is how to make his mark from the word go and how to make a clean break from his predecessors’ policies. He has an idea: instead of going to Berlin on his first official foreign visit – as is customary – why not go to Beijing? What better example is there of a country where radical reforms have met with success? In order to get a better idea of how things are changing in China, he asks someone who lives and works there and has daily contact with Chinese people to come with him.
Nabeel Khoury has written a remarkably cogent memoir. He not only details life in the Foreign Service in a highly entertaining and engaging style, but also provides provocative and telling insights into many of the crises in the Middle East…From Egypt, to ‘The Magic Kingdom’ to Iraq, Morocco and Yemen — Dr. Khoury undertook his duties with a flair that was both bold and unique. I only wish that American policy makers would read his chapters on Morocco and Yemen in particular, and benefit from his general policy recommendations – It might induce some humility and second thoughts on some important “lessons learned.”
When conflicts arise in health policy, the insights of policy scholars can contribute to crafting solutions to seemingly intractable problems. Beyond their mere technical attributes, health and medical policy issues require political acumen and policy knowledge to diagnose problems, inform debate, and devise policy interventions. The cases in this volume cover a range of health issues and illustrate how political theory and philosophy are critical to efforts aimed at treating public health challenges.
Alain Bauer argues that we need, with considerable immediacy, to press the formal study of crime in the academy, and that more resources need to be channeled towards that purpose. The approach in universities, if they do deign to study the subject, is often relegated to adjuncts and regarded by the more established departments with disdain. Given the prejudices of conventional scholars towards the subject, it is no wonder that the response to crime has been inept, and grows increasingly inadequate, considering the highly adaptive nature of crime and its implications in a globalized world in the XXIst Century.
Born from the wave of activism that followed the inauguration of President Trump, Demand the Impossible asks scholars what they can do to help solve present-day crises. The twelve essays in this volume draw inspiration from present-day activists. They examine the role of history in shaping ongoing debates over monuments, racism, clean energy, health care, poverty, and the Democratic Party. Together they show the ways that the issues of today are historical expressions of power that continue to shape the present. Adequately addressing them means understanding their origins.
In a single lifespan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, America passed through an extraordinary economic and social transformation. Industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and westward expansion into the vast interior of the continent yielded the structural framework of the modern America we still recognize more than a century later. The roles played by financial capital, labor, and technology in this story have been widely examined. Less well understand, however, is the remaining puzzle: how did America generate the human capital necessary for this transformation? How did a largely agrarian nation with relatively weak and largely decentralized government institutions manage to produce the professional class – the doctors, lawyers, managers, and, most importantly, engineers – essential for the emergence of a modern, industrialized, yet still liberal and democratic America?
Civilization in the twenty-first century is characterized by its technological capacity, which is substantially realized through space technologies. A desire for increased security and rapid development is driving nation-states to engage in an intensifying competition for speed and superiority to better utilize the unique assets of space. This competition, however, is rigorously challenged by the unforgiving physical properties of the space environment such as extreme temperatures and intense fluxes of radiation, as well as by an escalation in nuclear proliferation that could end all life known to human existence. Despite these challenges, humanity is taking eager steps into space—and is taking its various geopolitical rivalries and imperatives along. Does space development further or undermine global security? Can an obsession with security pose an ironically existential threat to humanity in this most fragile yet unforgiving environment it is stepping into? This book analyses the Chinese-American space discourse from the lenses of international relations theory, history and political psychology to explore these questions.
No single factor—but a system of intertwined causes — explains why America’s health is poorer than the health of other wealthy countries and why health inequities persist despite our efforts. Teasing apart the relationships between these many causes to find solutions has proven extraordinarily difficult. But now, in this book, researchers report on groundbreaking insights using computer-based systems science tools to simulate how these determinants come together to produce levels of population health and disparities and test new solutions.
The present study is aimed at explaining the realities of a country which is only presented in the media for the sensational statements of some of its leaders or its deep involvement in the Middle East affairs. The image has been mostly negative for years, especially since the takeover of the American embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, although the Iranian clerics’ antagonism towards the United-States dates from the 1950s.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) has had a profound impact on our way of life. Among other things, he was a philosopher, a poet, and a scholar. Unfortunately, he suffered from poor health, which caused him to resign from his position as the Chair of Classical Philology, which he held at the age of 24. At 44, he was so ill that his mother, and then his sister, had to care for him until his death at the age of 55. Nietzsche wrote on numerous subjects, but is commonly associated with nihilism, critiques of Christian morality, and his strong opposition to anti-Semitism and nationalism. There was a brief time when his sister reworked his manuscripts to favor Nazi ideology, but the correct manuscripts were uncovered. Many scholars have written about Nietzsche. Daniel Halévy was a French historian born in December 1872. One of his most well regarded works was Essay on the Acceleration of History. However, in the 1930s Halévy found himself to be a “man of the extreme right” and his questionable politics led to his work falling to the wayside. This is a reprinted work, with minor text defects as a result of age.
This book brings together edited papers contributed to this volume by presenters at the most recent Middle East Dialogue (MED Conference held annually in Washington, DC, and sponsored by the Policy Studies Organization (PSO), the Digest of Middle East Studies (DOMES), and supporting universities and organizations such as the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the American Public University System, the Next Century Foundation, Capital Communications Group, among others. Additional papers were invited from scholars and experts in Middle East and North African studies. Collectively, these contributions aim to enrich the literature and dialogue on issues affecting policy, diplomacy, and socioeconomic studies dealing with this volatile region of the world. Collectively, the authors of the book’s 21 chapters bring to the reader a wealth of expertise and contributions to the broader scholarship on the Middle East, and the much hoped-for understanding and solutions to the region’s conflicts.
The world is getting more complex causing policy problems to seemingly get bigger and become more intractable. Traditional approaches and conventional methodologies alone are no longer adequate to solve policy problems in our interconnected global environment. Promising new scholars in the field of policy and complexity are breaking boundaries and laying the groundwork for innovative perspectives on how to better define policy problems, impacts, attitudes, and solutions. Whether in the field of economics, education, energy, health, human security, or transportation, the selected essays and research in this book demonstrate how essential new thinking and approaches are needed. These scholars have demonstrated vision, imagination, diligence, passion, and courage for solving problems. Don’t miss HOW some of the top promising new scholars address problems and add to creating viable solutions to some of the biggest policy issues of our day.
The world is getting more complex causing policy problems to seemingly get bigger and become more intractable. Traditional approaches and conventional methodologies alone are no longer adequate to solve policy problems in our interconnected global environment. Promising new scholars in the field of policy and complexity are breaking boundaries and laying the groundwork for innovative perspectives on how to better define policy problems, impacts, attitudes, and solutions. Whether in the field of economics, education, energy, health, human security, or transportation, the selected essays and research in this book demonstrate how essential new thinking and approaches are needed.
The world is getting more complex causing policy problems to seemingly get bigger and become more intractable. Traditional approaches and conventional methodologies alone are no longer adequate to solve policy problems in our interconnected global environment. Promising new scholars in the field of policy and complexity are breaking boundaries and laying the groundwork for innovative perspectives on how to better define policy problems, impacts, attitudes, and solutions. Whether in the field of economics, education, energy, health, human security, or transportation, the selected essays and research in this book demonstrate how essential new thinking and approaches are needed.
The book brings together reviews of books published between 2012 and 2015 about the Middle East and North Africa. The subject coverage spans the humanities, arts, and social sciences but excludes books on science and technology. Reviews are written by experts in the respective subject area and offer detailed, informative and critical information designed to assist scholars, as well as librarians. These published reviews are supplemented by regularly published reviews that appear on the Middle East Media & Book
Poverty in America too often goes unnoticed, and disregarded. This perhaps results from America’s general level of prosperity along with a fairly widespread notion that conditions inevitably are better in the USA than elsewhere. Political rhetoric frequently enforces such an erroneous notion: “the poor live better in America than the middle class elsewhere,” “America has the best health care in the world,” “income inequality is a sign of ‘freedom’,” and the like. With American poverty increasing, social mobility decreasing, and income inequality growing it has become urgent that our society direct its attention to poverty as one of the country’s most troublesome issues. Poverty and Public Policy helps to focus that attention worldwide; this book, Poverty in America will help to emphasize the issue in this country.
Ukraine vs. Russia offers indispensable background knowledge and analysis on one of the most important issues of the day—Vladimir Putin’s war against democratic Ukraine. Alexander J. Motyl’s articles and blogs offer in-depth analysis as well as a running commentary on current events and historical controversies in both Russia and Ukraine—from the rise of Ukrainian dictator Viktor Yanukovych to the impending fall of Russian dictator Putin. Motyl discusses politics, society, culture, economics, history, language, and memory and shows how they relate to the Russo-Ukrainian War and to Western understanding—and misunderstanding—of Ukraine and Russia.
This book discusses most recent developments in the area of US ballistic missile defense with an eye on its battlefield capacities since the Kuwait war, analyzed from the perspective of deterrence postures encompassing the key post-Cold War security challenges (Middle East, Far East, Eastern Europe). The analyzed cases of missile defense engagements included (after the Desert Storm), Operation Iraqi Freedom, Israeli operations against Hamas and Yemen war. The theoretical base of the book relied on the waves of deterrence theory since the early years of the nuclear age through the deployment of thermonuclear warheads, nuclear plenty and the late Cold War revisions of deterrence paradigms.
Plato, Aristotle, Baron Montesquieu, and Jean Jacques Rousseau argued that you could never have a democracy bigger than the geographic size, intimate oral habits, and embodied rituals of face-to-face communication, and walking distance of a Greek city-state, French town, or small Swiss city. However, in the years surrounding the 1776 American War of Independence and accelerating into the 1800s in the American northeast and mid-Atlantic, there was a significant cultural transformation in the transition from oral/aural cultures to an increasingly literate citizenry. A consequence of this transition was an expanded geographical range of democratic engagement. In this book, John Slifko argues that freemasonry was representative and played an important role in this transformation and helped articulate the moral imagination of an informed democratic citizenry via fast emerging worlds of print.
Few people have the advantages that Alain Bauer possesses in providing an overview of the current world security crisis. He is the ultimate example of “been there, done that”. Welcome in the inner circles of a half dozen countries, his opinions are eagerly sought as the efforts to cope with terrorism at times seem like chasing an escalating train that is all too rapidly pulling away from the station. With a wry humor he has avoided the temptation to say that he told us so, considerably in advance of the current pandemonium. But he did tell us so, and this nuanced consideration of how the current and progressively worsening situation should be viewed at least gives us a start on rethinking the solutions.Those who know him also know that he is an ecumenical and tolerant thinker who balances the demands of protection with the tradition of civil rights. He is not an alarmist but a realist. This essay then provides a trusted overview of a dilemma, how to react to one of the most serious threats to Western democracy in living memory. The French experience has much we can appreciate. It’s examination could not come at a more needed time, and deserves the widest possible circulation and a permanent place is the literature of the unhappy challenges we now face.
The most puzzling aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that after 69 years of mutual violence, enmity and suffering, it remains unresolved even when coexistence is inevitable and a two-state solution remains the only viable option. Although there are many contentious issues that must be specifically addressed, it is the psychological dimension of the conflict which directly impacts every conflicting issue and makes it increasingly intractable. To mitigate the conflict, we must first look into the elements that inform the psychological dimension and how to alleviate them as prerequisites to finding a solution.
Isabel Anderson was born Isabel Weld Perkins (1876-1948). Though a wealthy socialite, she wrote numerous books including On the Move, The Spell of the Hawaiian Islands and the Philippines, Circling Africa and The Spell of Japan. Her favored genres included children’s literature, accounts of travel and family memoirs such as Under the Black Horse Flag, and The Letters and Journals of General Nicholas Longworth Anderson, a collection of papers from her father-in-law.