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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2528090 | Christian values
Christian values historically refers to the values derived from the teachings of Jesus Christ and taught by Christians throughout the history of the religion. The term has various applications and meanings, and specific definitions can vary widely between denominations, geographical locations and different schools of thought. The terms Christian values and family values are often used as a euphemism for familialism by the Christian right. Christian values also relate to the Christian identity in identity politics.
The biblical teachings of Jesus include:
Explicit directions in the New Testament text include:
In the 21st century United States, Australia, United Kingdom and other countries, the phrases Christian values and family values are used by Christian right and conservative parties to describe some or all of the following political stances:
In the 21st century United States, Australia, United Kingdom and other countries, the phrases Christian values and family values are used by some liberal or social democratic political groups to describe some or all of the following political stances:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2533064 | Bid rigging
Bid rigging is a fraudulent scheme in procurement auctions resulting in non-competitive bids and can be performed by corrupt officials, by firms in an orchestrated act of collusion, or between officials and firms. This form of collusion is illegal in most countries. It is a form of price fixing and market allocation, often practiced where contracts are determined by a call for bids, for example in the case of government construction contracts. The typical objective of bid rigging is to enable the "winning" party to obtain contracts at uncompetitive prices (i.e., at higher prices if they are sellers, or lower prices if they are buyers). The other parties are compensated in various ways, for example, by cash payments, or by being designated to be the "winning" bidder on other contracts, or by an arrangement where some parts of the successful bidder's contract will be subcontracted to them. In this way, they "share the spoils" among themselves. Bid rigging almost always results in economic harm to the agency which is seeking the bids, and to the public, who ultimately bear the costs as taxpayers or consumers.
These forms of bid rigging are not mutually exclusive of one another, and two or more of these practices could occur at the same time. For example, if one member of the bidding ring is designated to win a particular contract, that bidder's conspirators could avoid winning either by not bidding ("bid suppression"), or by submitting a high bid ("cover bidding").
Many of the issues presented by bid rigging are the result of cartel involvement. Inefficient firms are not pushed out as they would in a competitive market, and firms experience more profit despite an inefficient allocation of resources. Cartels behave more like monopolies and as such their behaviors, such as bid rigging, create market inefficiencies as contracts are fulfilled at elevated values. Furthermore, bid prices increase with more repeated collusion. Ultimately this cost is typically borne by the taxpayer as government sponsored contracts are artificially above market value. Additionally, this can be thought of as raising prices for the taxpayer (or consumer) as firms rent seek. One study found that bid rigging significantly raised prices over market value in the seafood industry in Philadelphia in a bidding scheme involving Defense Personnel Support Center, a purchaser for the Department of Defense. The high price of entry and fewer entrants in many industries results in lessened incentives for firms to behave competitively.
Bid rigging is an illegal practice under the criminal or competition laws of most developed countries. Depending on the jurisdiction, it is punishable by fines, imprisonment or both.
At a very basic level there would likely be more competitive bidding if there were more firms present in a market, outside of a cartel, as evidence shows that bids lessen in value as the number of firms rises. Furthermore, collusion becomes less frequent with better market competitiveness, a result of reduced ability to compromise.
The OECD's suggestions for better tenders include:
Suggestions for ameliorating procurement auctions have also been put forth. Lengstein and Wolfstetter suggest that when a particular bidder is preferred, disregarding cost, possible reforms include a sealed Vickrey auction or if there is reason to believe that officials and bidders are in contact, an open auction is preferred to sidestep potential bribery. When officials are engaged in more competitive procurement processes with regard to price but are suspected of kickbacks, a potential solution would be the open auction preventing clandestine arrangements such as change order abuse. If a closed or sealed auction process is preferred, then the use of electronic bidding and investment in tamper-resistant systems is suggested.
Brazil's Operation Car Wash is an ongoing investigation into the Brazilian semi-public multinational Petrobras. Petrobras is suspected of having overcharged bids as much as 3% of the total cost on contracts with an alleged $2.1 billion being misappropriated in kickbacks. Operation Car Wash is part of a larger investigation into Brazil's government as well and has contributed to the conviction and imprisonment of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In early January 2018, Petrobras settled a United States class action case for $2.95 billion, though JP Morgan and BTG Pactual had expected a settlement between $5 and $10 billion.
The Petrobras scandal extends beyond bid rigging in the oil sector as the investigation has also implicated Brazilian construction firms as bid rigging was discovered to be rampant in the preparations for the 2016 Summer Olympics. This would not be the first instance of bid rigging by construction firms in recent Brazilian history as Andrade Gutierrez Engenharia SA, the nation's second largest construction firm, admitted to bid rigging during contract procurement for stadiums to host the 2014 FIFA World Cup. This revelation implicates an additional five domestic construction firms and was revealed by the "Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica(CADE)."
From 2002 until 2013, the Colombian government opened 121 investigations into bid rigging, which lead to sixty-nine entities paying fines amounting to nearly $23.5 million, with an additional nine entities receiving sanctions. Colombia was found to generally comply with the OECD's recommendations regarding competitive procurement.
In the United States, bid rigging is a federal felony criminal offense under Section 1 of the Sherman Act. Even so, bid rigging is still rampant in the construction industry, auto sale auctions, and foreclosed home auctions.
In Canada, {bid rigging} it is an indictable criminal offence under Section 47 of the Competition Act.
Bid rigging is illegal in the European Union (EU) under Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). The annual cost to the EU in economic waste as a direct result of bid rigging among cartels was estimated to be between €13 billion and €37 billion in 2008. Bid rigging seems to be on the rise across Europe, raising concerns particularly over excessive expenditures and single-bid tenders. These single-bid tenders represented 17% of tenders in 2006, but 30% nine years later. RAND estimated that the overall annual cost posed to the EU by bid cost increases was $5 billion.
Bid rigging is illegal in Slovakia under the Act on the Protection of Competition and by EU membership, also Article 101 of TFEU. The first charges to be brought to court in Slovakia in 2006 by the Antimonopoly Office involved six construction companies who submitted bids with suspiciously consistent unit quotes. The fines from this bid rigging scheme amounted to €45 million following an initial court decision, an over-ruling, and a reinstatement of the initial verdict. In 2007, a Slovakian government ministry participated in bidder exclusion by posting a request for proposals regarding consulting on a bulletin board in an official building, though not open to the public. This resulted in a consulting firm winning a €120 million contract. The word for receiving kickbacks after participating in bid rigging is known as "tunelovanie" in Slovak.
Bid rigging occurs frequently in the construction industry in Switzerland. In 2007, seventeen different firms were involved in a bid rigging scheme but there was no prosecution as the ring had disbanded before colluding. In 2009, a ring of seven electricity firms from Bern were charged with bid rigging and fined two million Swiss francs. In Aargau, in 2011, a bid rigging scheme was discovered wherein seventeen firms were fined eight million Swiss francs though the appeals are ongoing. Multiple other cases are still ongoing.
In the United Kingdom, individuals can be prosecuted criminally under the Enterprise Act 2002.
Although both a violation of Japanese criminal law and the Japan Anti-Monopoly Law, bid rigging is still a habitual practice of the Japanese construction industry. It has been shown by a number of academic studies both in Japan and in the US to be a system which considerably inflates the cost of construction projects, and in the Japanese public sector, considerably wasteful of annual tax money amounting to billions of Japanese yen.
"Dango" refers to collusion in Japanese, or more precisely, "conference", and is an extremely prevalent system in Japan. "Dango" can be understood as a mutually beneficial system of bureaucracy and government and the private construction industry wherein bid rigging is incredibly common, benefiting colluding firms and officials alike in the form of kickbacks. The system of "dango" is often supported though as allowing small firms to continue to compete, though detractors are quick to point to the economic inefficiencies presented by a non-competitive market. The US Government, specifically the United States Trade Representative Office and Department of Commerce, made fierce efforts in the late 1980s and early 1990s to urge the Japanese government to reform "dango" as a de facto non-tariff barrier to foreign firms in the Japanese construction market. Despite years of negotiations, including promises by the Japanese government in the Structural Impediment Initiative (SII) trade talks, the practice was never fully stamped out and continued to flourish.
In 2006, Tadahiro Ando, the then governor of Miyazaki Prefecture, resigned over a series of bid rigging allegations and was subsequently sentenced to over three years in jail.
As of 2008, thirteen lawsuits were still pending over 1990s' bid rigging for local government contracts to supply incinerator plants.
In a three and half year period from 1995 to 1998 there was an estimated $4.13 billion surcharge attributed to bid rigging in Korea's construction industry, representing 15.5% of the total spent. It was also found that firms already present in an area enjoyed a significant degree of incumbency, meaning that they were more likely to continue to win additional contracts in areas they were already developing. This was discovered to be a result of complementary bidding. Some legal action has been undertaken against these bid rigging schemes with nine contracting companies and several officials being charged and fined $5 billion in 1999.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2571345 | Julian Gumperz
Julian Gumperz (May 12, 1898 in New York City – February 1972 in Gaylordsville, Connecticut) was a United States-born German sociologist, communist activist, publicist, and translator.
Julian Gumperz studied political economy at Halle University. He left university as a committed Marxist and published an anti-war magazine called Der Gegner. One of its contributors was George Grosz.
Gumperz married Hede Massing. In her autobiography she described him as being refined, soft-spoken, and a sensitive young man, not hardened by politics although he too then belonged to the left circle."
Julian Gumperz was an assistant at the Institute for Social Research ("Institut für Sozialforschung") at Frankfurt am Main in Germany, one of the lesser known communist proponents of the Frankfurt School. His work there focused on economics. Gumperz married Hede Eisler (born Hedwig Thune, later Hede Massing) in 1927, but the marriage did not last.
In the summer of 1922, he attended the Institute's "Erste Marxistische Arbeitswoche" (First Marxist Week) in Ilmenau, Thuringia. Among the participants at the week-long session were Georg Lukács, Karl Korsch, Richard Sorge, Friedrich Pollock, Karl August Wittfogel, Bela Fogarasi, Karl Schmuckle, and Konstantin Zetkin, the younger of the two sons of socialist leader and feminist Clara Zetkin.
In 1933, due to political persecution in Germany, the institute sent Gumperz to the U.S. to explore the situation. Gumperz had been a student of Pollock’s since 1929 and a Communist Party member, but he gave it all up and became a stockbroker. He worked as a publicist and translator and later wrote an anti-communist book. Gumperz returned to Germany with a favorable report, assuring Max Horkheimer and the others that the Institute’s endowment, which still brought in about $30,000 a year, would be enough to guarantee survival in depression era America.
For a time, Gumperz was the editor of the Communist newspaper "Die Rote Fahne". In 1919 Gumperz and Karl Otten founded the Berlin monthly publication "Der Gegner" ("The Opponent"). It was published between April 1919 and 1922 by Gumperz with Wieland Herzfelde. One of a series of small German periodicals published in Berlin following World War I ("Jedermann sein eigner Fussball", "Die Pleite" and "Der Blutige Ernst"), which followed on the heels of the German review "Der Dada". Frequent banning orders compelled a constant change of title. With art by George Grosz, "Der Gegner" decried an art with no relevance to the working class and which ignored revolutionary action. The communist uprising in Berlin in 1918, crushed by the government, had given rise to these satirical, radical, and political reviews.
In 1947, he and Karl Volk co-authored a book, "Pattern for World Revolution", writing under the pseudonym "Ypsilon".
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2577361 | Kapparot
Kapparot (, Ashkenazi transliteration: , ) is a customary atonement ritual practiced by some Jews on the eve of Yom Kippur. This is a practice in which a chicken or money is waved over a person's head and the chicken is then slaughtered in accordance with halachic rules.
"Kapparah" (), the singular of "kapparot", means 'atonement' and comes from the Hebrew root k-p-r, which means 'to atone'.
On the afternoon before Yom Kippur, one prepares an item to be donated to the poor for consumption at the pre-Yom Kippur meal, recites the two biblical passages of and , and then swings the prepared charitable donation over one's head three times while reciting a short prayer three times.
In one variant of the practice of Kapparot, the item to be donated to charity is a rooster. In this case, the rooster would be swung overhead while still alive. After the Kapparot ritual is concluded, the rooster would be treated as a normal kosher poultry product, i.e., it would be slaughtered according to the laws of "shechita". It would then be given to charity for consumption at the pre-Yom Kippur meal. In modern times, this variant of the ritual is performed with a rooster for men and a hen for women.
In this case, the prayer recited translates as:
In a second variant of the practice of Kapparot, a bag of money is swung around the head and then given to charity.
In this case, the prayer recited translates as:
The practice of kapparot is mentioned for the first time by Amram Gaon of Sura Academy in Babylonia in 670 and later by Natronai ben Hilai, also of Sura Academy, in 853. Jewish scholars in the ninth century explained that since the Hebrew word means both "man" and "rooster", a rooster may substitute as a religious and spiritual vessel in place of a man.
Kapparot was strongly opposed by some rabbis, among them Nahmanides, Shlomo ben Aderet, and the Sephardi rabbi Joseph ben Ephraim Karo in the "Shulchan Aruch". According to the "Mishnah Berurah", his reasoning was based on the caution that it is similar to non-Jewish rites.
The Ashkenazi rabbi Moses Isserles disagreed with Karo and encouraged kapparot. In Ashkenazi communities especially, Rabbi Isserles' position came to be widely accepted, since Ashkenazi Jews will generally follow the halachic rulings of Rabbi Isserles where the Sephardic and Ashkenazic customs differ. It was also approved by Asher ben Jehiel (c. 1250–1327) and his son Jacob ben Asher (1269–1343) and other commentators. The ritual was also supported by Kabbalists, such as Isaiah Horowitz and Isaac Luria, who recommended the selection of a white rooster as a reference to and who found other mystic allusions in the prescribed formulas. Consequently, the practice became generally accepted among the Ashkenazi Jews and Hasidim of Eastern Europe. The "Mishnah Berurah" agrees with Rabbi Isserles, solidifying support for the practice among Lithuanian Jews as well. The Mishnah Berurah only supports the use of money (i.e., not a chicken) if there might be a problem with the slaughter due to haste or fatigue.
In the late 19th-century work "Kaf Hachaim", Yaakov Chaim Sofer approves of the custom for Sephardi Jews as well.
Some Jews also oppose the use of chickens for Kapparot on the grounds of tza'ar ba'alei chayim, the principle banning cruelty to animals.
On Yom Kippur eve 2005, a number of caged chickens were abandoned in rainy weather as part of a kapparot operation in Brooklyn, New York; some of these starving and dehydrated chickens were subsequently rescued by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Jacob Kalish, an Orthodox Jewish man from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was charged with animal cruelty for the drowning deaths of 35 of these kapparot chickens. In response to such reports of the mistreatment of chickens, Jewish animal rights organizations have begun to picket public observances of kapparot, particularly in Israel.
The Kapparot ritual would seem to be constitutionally protected as an exercise of freedom of religion in the United States, based upon a 1993 Supreme Court of the United States decision in the case of "Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah". In that case, the court upheld the right of Santería adherents to practice ritual animal sacrifice, with Justice Anthony Kennedy stating in the decision, "Religious beliefs need not be acceptable, logical, consistent or comprehensible to others in order to merit First Amendment protection" (quoted by Justice Kennedy from the opinion by Justice Warren E. Burger in "Thomas v. Review Board of the Indiana Employment Security Division", ). However, the Supreme Court's principal concern in its decision was that the City of Hialeah specifically targeted as religious ritual, curbing the religious rights of a specific community, which conflicts with the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.
In October, 2017, public health and animal rights activists in New York City launched a campaign to compel NYC's Health Commissioner, Dr. Mary Bassett, to enforce seven public health codes violated during Kapporot. From October 2017 to May 2018, the activists disrupted four of her public speaking engagements and staged four protests in the lobby of the NYC Department of Health (DOH). The activists alleged that Commissioner Bassett was turning a blind eye to the health code violations because the ultra-Orthodox Jews who practiced the ritual represented a powerful voting bloc. A toxicology report submitted to the court as part of an ongoing lawsuit against the DOH stated that the ritual posed a risk to public health in the neighborhoods where it took place. While Commissioner Bassett has not publicly acknowledged the toxicology report or the activists' claims about the health code violations, she has issued a public statement asserting that "there remains no evidence that the use of chickens for Kaporos poses a significant risk to human health."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2578822 | News council
A news council is an organization set up to look into complaints about journalism, such as inaccuracy and bias. The methods that are used vary substantially from one country to another.
Complaints against British newspapers and magazines are heard by the Press Complaints Commission, which is funded by a levy on all newspapers and magazines. It does not hear complaints about journalism in other media. (See main article.)
The idea of a news council has met considerable resistance from U.S. journalists, many of whom fear that it could lead to government regulation of the press. Advocates of news councils often pointed to the Minnesota News Council, which was started by the Minnesota Newspaper Association and inspired by a predecessor to Britain's Press Complaints Commission. The Minnesota News Council started hearing complaints since 1971, using a panel made up of half people from news organizations and half from the public. About half of the complaints were upheld. The organization shut down in 2011 because of reductions in funding and the number of people filing complaints.
The Minnesota News Council said it got about 40% of its money from non-news companies, 20% from news organizations, 30% from foundations and 10% from individuals. It seeks contributions from all sources except the government. It hears complaints about all news media, including broadcast and online news.
The Washington News Council, serving Washington state, was based on the Minnesota group. It held its first hearing in 1999 and operated for 15 years before closing in 2014.
In 2005, the Washington and Minnesota groups said they would award $75,000 to each of two nonprofit groups interested in starting new news councils in other states.
Bolivia's National Council of Journalist Ethics includes a National Tribunal of Journalistic Ethics, which monitors the behavior of journalists according to ethical criteria. The tribunal accepts and rules on individual complaints.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2589946 | Animal sanctuary
An animal sanctuary is a facility where animals are brought to live and to be protected for the rest of their lives. Unlike animal shelters, sanctuaries do not seek to place animals with individuals or groups, instead maintaining each animal until its natural death. However, they can offer rehoming services. In some cases, an establishment may have characteristics of both a sanctuary and a shelter; for instance, some animals may be in residence temporarily until a good home is found and others may be permanent residents. The mission of sanctuaries is generally to be safe havens, where the animals receive the best care that the sanctuaries can provide. Animals are not bought, sold, or traded, nor are they used for animal testing. Additionally, no parts of nor secretions from the animals are commodified, such as eggs, wool, or milk. The resident animals are given the opportunity to behave as natural as possible in a protective environment.
What distinguishes a sanctuary from other institutions is the philosophy that the residents come first. In a sanctuary, every action is scrutinized for any trace of human benefit at the expense of non-human residents. Sanctuaries act on behalf of the animals, and the caregivers work under the notion that all animals in the sanctuary, human and non-human, are of equal importance.
Most sanctuaries are not open to the public in the sense of a zoo; that is, allowing unescorted public access to the facility. A legitimate sanctuary avoids activity that would place the animals in an unduly stressful situation.
One of the most important missions of sanctuaries, beyond caring for the animals, is educating the public. The ultimate goal of many sanctuaries is to change the way that humans think of, and treat, non-human animals.
There are two primary organizations that provide accreditation and support for animal sanctuaries: the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries and the American Sanctuary Association. In the United States, sanctuaries must also be licensed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and regularly inspected by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) for compliance with the Animal Welfare Act.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2603115 | Wildlife management
Wildlife management attempts to balance the needs of wildlife with the needs of people using the best available science. Wildlife management can include gamekeeping, wildlife conservation and pest control. Wildlife management draws on disciplines such as mathematics, chemistry, biology, ecology, climatology and geography to gain the best results.
Wildlife conservation aims to halt the loss in the Earth's biodiversity, by taking into consideration ecological principles such as carrying capacity, disturbance and succession, and environmental conditions such as physical geography, pedology and hydrology. Most wildlife biologists are concerned with the preservation and improvement of habitats; although rewilding is increasingly being undertaken. Techniques can include reforestation, pest control, nitrification and denitrification, irrigation, coppicing and hedge laying.
Gamekeeping is the management or control of wildlife for the well-being of game and may include the killing of other animals which share the same niche or predators to maintain a high population of more profitable species, such as pheasants introduced into woodland. In his 1933 book "Game Management", Aldo Leopold, one of the pioneers of wildlife management as a science, defined it as "the art of making land produce sustained annual crops of wild game for recreational use".
Pest control is the control of real or perceived pests and can be used for the benefit of wildlife, farmers, gamekeepers or human safety. In the United States, wildlife management practices are often implemented by a governmental agency to uphold a law, such as the Endangered Species Act.
In the United Kingdom, wildlife management is undertaken by several organizations including government bodies such as the Forestry Commission, Charities such as the RSPB and The Wildlife Trusts and privately hired gamekeepers and contractors. Legislation has also been passed to protect wildlife such as the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. The UK government also give farmers subsidies through the Countryside Stewardship Scheme to improve the conservation value of their farms.
The history of wildlife management begins with the game laws, which regulated the right to kill certain kinds of fish and wild animal (game). In Britain game laws developed out of the forest laws, which in the time of the Norman kings were very oppressive. Under William the Conqueror, it was as great a crime to kill one of the king's deer as to kill one of his subjects. A certain rank and standing, or the possession of a certain amount of property, were for a long time qualifications indispensably necessary to confer upon any one the right of pursuing and killing game.
The Game Act of 1831 protected game birds by establishing close seasons when they could not be legally taken. The act made it lawful to take game only with the provision of a game licence and provided for the appointment of gamekeepers around the country. The purposes of the law was to balance the needs for preservation and harvest and to manage both environment and populations of fish and game.
Early game laws were also enacted in the US; in 1839 Rhode Island closed the hunting season for white-tailed deer from May to November. Other regulations during this time focused primarily on restricting hunting. At this time, lawmakers did not consider population sizes or the need for preservation or restoration of wildlife habitats.
The late 19th century saw the passage of the first pieces of wildlife conservation legislation and the establishment of the first nature conservation societies. The Sea Birds Preservation Act of 1869 was passed in Britain as the first nature protection law in the world after extensive lobbying from the Association for the Protection of Seabirds.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds was founded as the Plumage League in 1889 by Emily Williamson at her house in Manchester as a protest group campaigning against the use of great crested grebe and kittiwake skins and feathers in fur clothing. The group gained popularity and eventually amalgamated with the Fur and Feather League in Croydon to form the RSPB. The Society attracted growing support from the suburban middle-classes as well as support from many other influential figures, such as the ornithologist Professor Alfred Newton.
The National Trust formed in 1895 with the manifesto to "...promote the permanent preservation, for the benefit of the nation, of lands, ...to preserve (so far practicable) their natural aspect." On 1 May 1899, the Trust purchased two acres of Wicken Fen with a donation from the amateur naturalist Charles Rothschild, establishing the first nature reserve in Britain. Rothschild was a pioneer of wildlife conservation in Britain, and went on to establish many other nature reserves, such as one at Woodwalton Fen, near Huntingdon, in 1910. During his lifetime he built and managed his estate at Ashton Wold in Northamptonshire to maximise its suitability for wildlife, especially butterflies. Concerned about the loss of wildlife habitats, in 1912 he set up the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves, the forerunner of The Wildlife Trusts partnership.
During the society's early years, membership tended to be made up of specialist naturalists and its growth was comparatively slow. The first independent Trust was formed in Norfolk in 1926 as the Norfolk Naturalists Trust, followed in 1938 by the Pembrokeshire Bird Protection Society which after several subsequent changes of name is now the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales and it was not until the 1940s and 1950s that more Naturalists' Trusts were formed in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and Cambridgeshire. These early Trusts tended to focus on purchasing land to establish nature reserves in the geographical areas they served.
The profession of wildlife management was established in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s by Aldo Leopold and others who sought to transcend the purely restrictive policies of the previous generation of conservationists, such as anti-hunting activist William T. Hornaday. Leopold and his close associate Herbert Stoddard, who had both been trained in scientific forestry, argued that modern science and technology could be used to restore and improve wildlife habitat and thus produce abundant "crops" of ducks, deer, and other valued wild animals.
The institutional foundations of the profession of wildlife management were established in the 1930s, when Leopold was granted the first university professorship in wildlife management (1933, University of Wisconsin, Madison), when Leopold's textbook 'Game Management' was published (1933), when The Wildlife Society was founded, when the Journal of Wildlife Management began publishing, and when the first Cooperative Wildlife Research Units were established. Conservationists planned many projects throughout the 1940s. Some of which included the harvesting of female mammals such as deer to decrease rising populations. Others included waterfowl and wetland research. The Fish and Wildlife Management Act was put in place to urge farmers to plant food for wildlife and to provide cover for them.
In 1937, the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act (also known as the Pittman-Robertson Act) was passed in the U.S.. This law was an important advancement in the field of wildlife management. It placed a 10% tax on sales of guns and ammunition. The funds generated were then distributed to the states for use in wildlife management activities and research. This law is still in effect today.
Wildlife management grew after World War II with the help of the GI Bill and a postwar boom in recreational hunting. An important step in wildlife management in the United States national parks occurred after several years of public controversy regarding the forced reduction of the elk population in Yellowstone National Park. In 1963, United States Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall appointed an advisory board to collect scientific data to inform future wildlife management. In a paper known as the Leopold Report, the committee observed that culling programs at other national parks had been ineffective, and recommended active management of Yellowstone's elk population.
Elk overpopulation in Yellowstone is thought by many wildlife biologists, such as Douglas Smith, to have been primarily caused by the extirpation of wolves from the park and surrounding environs. After wolves were removed, elk herds increased in population, reaching new highs during the mid-1930s. The increased number of elk apparently resulted in overgrazing in parts of Yellowstone. Park officials decided that the elk herd should be managed. For approximately thirty years, the park elk herds were culled: Each year some were captured and shipped to other locations, a certain number were killed by park rangers, and hunters were allowed to take more elk that migrated outside the park. By the late 1960s the herd populations dropped to historic lows (less than 4,000 for the Northern Range herd). This caused outrage among both conservationists and hunters. The park service stopped culling elk in 1968. The elk population then rebounded. Twenty years later there were 19,000 elk in the Northern Range herd, a historic high.
Since the tumultuous 1970s, when animal rights activists and environmentalists began to challenge some aspects of wildlife management, the profession has been overshadowed by the rise of conservation biology. Although wildlife managers remain central to the implementation of the Endangered Species Act and other wildlife conservation policies, conservation biologists have shifted the focus of conservation away from wildlife management's concern with the protection and restoration of single species and toward the maintenance of ecosystems and biodiversity.
There are two general types of wildlife management:
The control of wildlife through killing and hunting has been criticized by animal rights and animal welfare activists. Critics object to the real or perceived cruelty involved in some forms of wildlife management. They also argue against the deliberate breeding of certain animals by environmental organisations—who hunters pay money to kill—in pursuit of profit. Additionally, they draw attention to the attitude that it is acceptable to kill animals in the name of ecosystem or biodiversity preservation, yet it is seen as unacceptable to kill humans for the same purpose; asserting that such attitudes are a form of discrimination based on species-membership i.e. speciesism.
Environmentalists have also opposed hunting where they believe it is unnecessary or will negatively affect biodiversity. Critics of game keeping note that habitat manipulation and predator control are often used to maintain artificially inflated populations of valuable game animals (including introduced exotics) without regard to the ecological integrity of the habitat.
Gamekeepers in the UK claim it to be necessary for wildlife conservation as the amount of countryside they look after exceeds by a factor of nine the amount in nature reserves and national parks.
Wildlife management studies, research and lobbying by interest groups help designate times of the year when certain wildlife species can be legally hunted, allowing for surplus animals to be removed. In the United States, hunting season and bag limits are determined by guidelines set by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service for migratory game such as waterfowl and other migratory gamebirds. The hunting season and bag limits for state regulated game species such as deer are usually determined by State game Commissions, which are made up of representatives from various interest groups, wildlife biologists, and researchers.
Open and closed season on deer in the UK is legislated for in the Deer Act 1991 and the Deer Act (Scotland) 1996.
Open season is when wildlife is allowed to be hunted by law and is usually not during the breeding season. Hunters may be restricted by sex, age or class of animal, for instance there may be an open season for any male deer with 4 points or better on at least one side.
Where the number of animals taken is to be tightly controlled, managers may have a type of lottery system called limited. Many apply, few are chosen. These hunts may still have age, sex or class restrictions.
Closed season is when wildlife is protected from hunting and is usually during its breeding season. Closed season is enforced by law, any hunting during closed season is punishable by law and termed as illegal hunting or poaching.
In wildlife management one of the conservation principles is that the weapon used for hunting should be the one that causes the least damage to the animal and is sufficiently effective so that it hits the target. Given State and Local laws, types of weapon can also vary depending on type, size, sex of game and also the geographical layout of that specific hunting area.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2604581 | Anniceris
Anniceris (; fl. 300 BC) was a Cyrenaic philosopher. He argued that pleasure is achieved through individual acts of gratification which are sought for the pleasure that they produce, but he also laid great emphasis on the love of family, country, friendship and gratitude, which provide pleasure even when they demand sacrifice.
Anniceris was a disciple of Parabates, and a fellow student of Hegesias. The Suda says he lived at the time of Alexander the Great (ruled 336–323 BC). The story that Anniceris ransomed Plato from Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse for twenty minas, must refer to an earlier Anniceris, possibly the celebrated charioteer mentioned by Aelian.
Anniceris denied that pleasure was merely the absence of pain, for if so death would be a pleasure; and furthermore he denied that pleasure is the "general" goal of human life. To each separate action, there is a "particular" end, namely the pleasure which actually results from it. He differed from Aristippus because he allowed that friendship, patriotism, and similar virtues, were good in themselves; saying that the wise person will derive pleasure from such qualities, even though they cause occasional trouble, and that a friend should be chosen not only for our own need, but for kindness and natural affection.
He also denied that reason () alone can secure us from error; the wise person is the person who has acquired a habit of wise action; human wisdom is liable to lapses at any moment.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2607325 | Project DReaM
Project DReaM was a Sun Microsystems project aimed at developing an open interoperable DRM architecture that implements standardized interfaces. Its primary goal was the creation of a royalty-free digital rights management industry standard. On 22 August 2005, Sun announced that it was opening up Project DReaM, which had started as an internal research project, as part of their Open Media Commons initiative. It was released under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL). Due to inactivity on the project, it was closed and archived in August 2008. DReaM is an acronym that stands for "DRM everywhere/available".
Project DReaM included of a Java Stream Assembly API to support digital video management and distribution, a hardware- and operating system-independent interoperable DRM standard called DRM-OPERA, and the Sun Streaming Server to stream video and audio over IP. The key characteristics of Project DReaM were as follows:
Project DReaM technology required the software code to be signed and run on trusted computing hardware, on which unauthorized or unsigned code cannot be run. This approach was criticized by journalist Cory Doctorow, who characterized Project DReaM as crippleware. Project DReaM was favorably mentioned by Mike Linksvayer in a 2008 article discussing its support for fair use and Creative Commons-licensed content.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2612156 | Stephen R. L. Clark
Stephen Richard Lyster Clark (born 30 October 1945) is an English philosopher and professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Liverpool. Clark specialises in the philosophy of religion and animal rights, writing from a philosophical position that might broadly be described as Christian Platonist. He is the author of 19 books, including "The Moral Status of Animals" (1977), "The Nature of the Beast" (1982), "Animals and Their Moral Standing" (1997), "G.K. Chesterton" (2006), "Philosophical Futures" (2011), and "Ancient Mediterranean Philosophy" (2012), as well as 77 scholarly articles, and chapters in another 109 books. He is a former editor-in-chief of the "Journal of Applied Philosophy" (1990–2001).
Clark was born on 30 October 1945 in Luton, Bedfordshire, though the family came originally from Shropshire/Staffordshire. His father, D. A. R. Clark, was an apprentice railway engineer who became a technology teacher, and was later appointed principal of Middlesbrough Technical College, now the University of Teesside, then principal of Nottingham Technical College, now Trent University. His mother, M. K. Clark, was a teacher and the daughter of Samuel Finney. Clark was raised in the Anglican tradition.
After attending Nottingham High School (1956–1964), he won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford (1964–1968), graduating with a first-class honours degree in greats (classics) in 1968, followed by a fellowship at All Souls (1968–1975). He was awarded his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1973. Brannon Hancock writes that the philosophers Arthur Prior and Sir Anthony Kenny had a great intellectual influence on Clark at Balliol, while Robin Zaehner was one of his greatest influences at All Souls.
After Oxford, he lectured in moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow for nine years, until he was appointed professor of philosophy at Liverpool in 1984. He retired from this post at the end of 2009. He has also been a visiting professor at Vanderbilt University and held an Alan Richardson Fellowship at Durham University. He is married to Gillian Clark, with whom he has three children, Samuel, Alexandra, and Verity.
Clark has delivered a number of prestigious lectures, including the 1981–1982 Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow, entitled "From Athens to Jerusalem", the Stanton Lectures in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge (1987–1989), and the Wilde Lectures at the University of Oxford (1990). He has also delivered the Scott Holland Lecture at the University of Liverpool (1992), the Aquinas Lecture at the University of Oxford (1994), the Read Tuckwell Lecture at Bristol University (1994), the Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture at the University of Durham (1995), and the Aquinas Lecture at the Catholic University of Leuven (2000).
Clark served on the British government's Animal Procedures Committee, a group that advises the Home Secretary on animal testing, from 1998 until 2006. He has also been involved with the Boyd Group, a think tank set up by researchers involved in animal testing, and others who oppose it.
Clark argues that the moral basis of humanism – that all human beings have equal moral status – is now so entrenched, in theory if not in practice, that we fail to consider what a radical idea it used to be. He writes that behind this idea is the notion that human beings are in some way uniquely gifted, perhaps with a share in the divine. This human/non-human divide was promoted to prevent human beings from being treated like animals on some utilitarian calculation, rather than as ends in themselves.
He writes that we now know non-human animals to be much closer to humans than was previously thought, and therefore similar considerations must be extended to them. He highlights the incongruity of modern thinkers being willing to ignore the idea that human beings were made in the image of God, yet unwilling to accept what he argues is the moral conclusion that stems from the rejection of that idea, namely that we ought not to treat non-humans with radically less consideration than we treat humans. He writes: "If species differences are only racial differences 'writ large,' and it is plainly wrong to make such racial differences a ground for radically different treatment ... we have to concede that if it is wrong to injure humans it must also be wrong to do identical or very similar injury to non-humans." He argues that "[t]his is often all that is meant by the claim that 'animals have rights.'"
What our forebears lacked was a full understanding of the extent to which our welfare depends upon the health of the global ecosystem and the extent to which our evolutionary cousins can be hurt, harmed and injured in ways analogous to ourselves. The question before us is not simply "how may we produce the greatest ratio of pleasure to pain" (a wholly vacuous program), nor yet "what rights do creatures have before the community formulates them," but how may we best order the communities (social and global) of which we are parts? The answer, I believe, must lie in our taking seriously what we already know, that more matters even to animals than their own plain or pleasure, and that our survival even as a species depends upon being able to maintain or create substantial and civil ecosystems at household, civil, national and global levels.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2616799 | Illegalism
Illegalism is a tendency of anarchism that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of individualist anarchism. Illegalists embrace criminality either openly or secretly as a lifestyle. Illegalism does not specify the type of crime, though it is associated with theft and shoplifting.
Illegalism is founded on egoist anarchism and the philosophy of Max Stirner as justification for criminal behaviour. However, not all illegalists are supporters of Stirner and his philosophy. Jules Bonnot and the Bonnot Gang are recognised as notable illegalists.
Illegalism first rose to prominence among a generation of Europeans inspired by the unrest of the 1890s, during which Ravachol, Émile Henry, Auguste Vaillant and Caserio committed daring crimes in the name of anarchism, in what is known as propaganda of the deed.
Influenced by theorist Max Stirner's egoism, the illegalists in France broke from anarchists like Clément Duval and Marius Jacob who justified theft with a theory of individual reclamation ("la reprise individuelle"). Instead, the illegalists argued that their actions required no moral basis and illegal acts were taken not in the name of a higher ideal, but in pursuit of one's own desires. In Paris, this milieu was centred on the weekly papers "L'Anarchie" and the "Causeries Populaires" (regular discussion groups meeting in several different locations in and around the capital each week), both of which were founded by Albert Libertad and his associates.
After Peter Kropotkin along with others decided to enter labor unions after their initial reservations, there remained the anti-syndicalist anarchist-communists, who in France were grouped around Sebastien Faure's "Le Libertaire". From 1905 onwards, the Russian counterparts of these anti-syndicalist anarchist-communists become partisans of economic terrorism and illegal expropriations. Illegalism as a practice emerged and within it "[t]he acts of the anarchist bombers and assassins ("propaganda by the deed") and the anarchist burglars ("individual reappropriation") expressed their desperation and their personal, violent rejection of an intolerable society. Moreover, they were clearly meant to be exemplary, invitations to revolt". In another less dramatic sense, "[at] that time this term was used to indicate all those practices prohibited by law that were useful for resolving the economic problems of comrades: robbery, theft, smuggling, counterfeiting money and so on".
Such acts of rebellion which could be individual were in the long run seen as acts of rebellion which could ignite a mass insurrection leading to revolution. Proponents and activists of this tactic among others included Johann Most, Luigi Galleani, Victor Serge and Severino Di Giovanni. In Argentina, these tendencies flourished at the end of the 1920s and during the 1930s, "years of acute repression and of flinching of the once powerful workers movement—this was a desperation, though heroic, of a decadent movement".
France's Bonnot Gang was the most famous group to embrace illegalism. The Bonnot Gang ("La Bande à Bonnot") was a French criminal anarchist group that operated in France and Belgium during the Belle Époque from 1911 to 1912. Composed of individuals who identified with the emerging illegalist milieu, the gang utilized cutting-edge technology (including automobiles and repeating rifles) not yet available to the French police.
Originally referred to by the press as simply "The Auto Bandits", the gang was dubbed "The Bonnot Gang" after Jules Bonnot gave an interview at the office of "Petit Parisien", a popular daily paper. Bonnot's perceived prominence within the group was later reinforced by his high-profile death during a shootout with French police in Nogent-sur-Marne.
Following his arrest for harbouring members of the Bonnot Gang, Victor Serge, once a forceful defender of illegalism, became a sharp critic. In "Memoirs of a Revolutionary", he describes illegalism as "a collective suicide". Similarly, Marius Jacob reflected in 1948: "I don't think that illegalism can free the individual in present-day society... Basically, illegalism, considered as an act of revolt, is more a matter of temperament than of doctrine".
Illegalism has been updated by currents such as insurrectionary anarchism and post-left anarchy. In Spain and Latin America, a campaign called Yomango has appeared, which advocates shoplifting and thus updates individual reclamation.
Horst Fantazzini was an Italian-German individualist anarchist who pursued an illegalist lifestyle and practice until his death in 2001. He gained media notoriety mainly due to his many bank robberies through Italy and other countries. In 1999, the film based on his life "Ormai è fatta!" was released.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2623876 | Public security
Public security is the function of governments which ensures the protection of citizens, persons in their territory, organizations, and institutions against threats to their well-being – and to the prosperity of their communities.
To meet the increasing challenges in the public security area, responsible public institutions and organisations can tap into their own intelligence to successfully address possible threats in advance. They optimise their internal structures, use synergies, and carefully balance costs and benefits of their measures.
Public safety organizations include law enforcement, fire and emergency medical services. The public safety issues that a municipality, county, state, or federal jurisdiction might grapple with include narcotic use, trespassing, burglary, harassment, juvenile delinquency, unauthorized living, noise, littering, inappropriate social behavior, inebriation, and other quality of life issues. Generally organizations are involved in the prevention of and protection from events that could endanger the safety of the general public from significant danger, injury, or property damage, such as crimes or disasters (natural or human-made).
Organised crime and international terrorism are hardly deterred by geographical, linguistic, or financial barriers. Competence and administrative hurdles play into their hands.
The latter has largely contributed to public security becoming an important political and economic issue, nationally as well as internationally. Politics, public organisations and businesses closely collaborate to guarantee public security and maintain a stable environment for economic prosperity.
Although public security significantly contributes to the attractiveness of a location, the productivity of its people, and hence the overall success of an economy, the sector frequently suffers from low budgets, limited resources, and inadequate information systems. Large events, pandemics, severe accidents, environmental disasters, and terrorism attacks pose additional threats to public security and order.
The police, federal police and border authorities nonetheless need to warrant the security of the country as a fundamental prerequisite for the domestic political ability to act. The quality and scope of potential threats have changed significantly, and the tasks and general framework for the police, federal police and border authorities have changed accordingly.
There are five sub-sectors within public security:
Police Services:
Emergency services include:
Judicial services include:
Interior services include:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2662575 | Sandy Mitchell
Sandy Mitchell was one of seven men incarcerated in Saudi Arabia between December 2000 and August 2003 for the bombing death of Christopher Rodway, a British National living in Riyadh. While in prison, he was tortured and forced to make a televised confession in which he detailed the methods and as to which he and his fellow prisoners committed the crime. He was later granted clemency and returned to the UK, as a result of intense negotiations by Charles, Prince of Wales and possibly a prisoner exchange in the U.S.
Mitchell says the bombings were perpetrated by "Islamic extremists" and that he and others charged were victims of a cover-up conspiracy by Saudi authorities. Along with Mark Hollingsworth, he wrote "Saudi Babylon: Torture, Corruption and Cover-Up Inside the House of Saud".
Others charged in connection with the death of Christopher Rodway include Les Walker, Ron Jones, Mike Sedlak, Raf Schyvens, and Bill Sampson.
Mitchell, Walker, Jones, and Sampson, with the backing of Amnesty International, The Redress Trust, and Interights, sought the right in the British court system to sue Saudi Arabia for their torture. They won a Court of Appeal ruling in 2004, but it was overturned by a 2006 Law Lords ruling based on the State Immunity Act 1978.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2673476 | John Philoponus
John Philoponus (; ; c. 490 – c. 570), also known as John the Grammarian or John of Alexandria, was a Byzantine Alexandrian philologist, Aristotelian commentator and Christian theologian, author of a considerable number of philosophical treatises and theological works. A rigorous, sometimes polemical writer and an original thinker who was controversial in his own time, John Philoponus broke from the Aristotelian–Neoplatonic tradition, questioning methodology and eventually leading to empiricism in the natural sciences. He was one of the first to propose a "theory of impetus" similar to the modern concept of inertia over Aristotelian dynamics.
Later in life Philoponus turned to Christian apologetics, arguing against the eternity of the world, a theory which formed the basis of pagan attacks on the Christian doctrine of Creation. He also wrote on Christology and was posthumously condemned as a heretic by the Imperial Church in 680–81 because of what was perceived as a tritheistic interpretation of the Trinity.
His by-name translates as "lover of toil", i.e. "diligent," referring to a miaphysite confraternity in Alexandria, the "philoponoi," who were active in debating pagan (i.e. Neoplatonic) philosophers.
His posthumous condemnation limited the spread of his writing, but copies of his work did circulate in Greek or Latin versions in medieval Europe, influencing Bonaventure and Buridan. His work was also received in Arabic scholarly tradition, where he is known as (i.e. "John the Grammarian"). His critique of Aristotle in the "Physics" commentary was a major influence on Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Galileo Galilei, who cited Philoponus substantially in his works.
Although Philoponus' originating from a Christian family is possible, nothing is known of his early life. Philoponus studied at the school of Alexandria and began publishing from about 510. He was a pupil and sometime amanuensis to the Neoplatonic philosopher Ammonius Hermiae, who had studied at Athens under Proclus.
Philoponus' early writings are based on lectures given by Ammonius, but gradually he established his own independent thinking in his commentaries and critiques of Aristotle's "On the Soul" and "Physics". In the latter work Philoponus became one of the earliest thinkers to reject Aristotle's dynamics and propose the "theory of impetus": i.e., an object moves and continues to move because of an energy imparted in it by the mover and ceases the movement when that energy is exhausted. This insightful theory was the first step towards the concept of inertia in modern physics, although Philoponus' theory was largely ignored at the time because he was too radical in his rejection of Aristotle.
Philoponus is the only writer of antiquity to have formally presented such a concept.
As the discovery of the principle of inertia is the hallmark achievement of modern science as it emerges in the 16th to 17th centuries, Pierre Duhem argues that its invention would put Philoponus among the "great geniuses of Antiquity" and the "principal precursors to modern science", although he holds it more likely that Philoponus may have received the idea from an earlier, otherwise unrecorded Alexandrian school of mechanics.
In 529 Philoponus wrote his critique "On the Eternity of the World Against Proclus" in which he systematically defeats every argument put forward for the eternity of the world, a theory which formed the basis of pagan attack of the Christian doctrine of Creation. The intellectual battle against eternalism became one of Philoponus' major preoccupations and dominated several of his publications (some now lost) over the following decade.
He introduced a new period of scientific thought based heavily on three premises: (1) The universe is a product of one single God, (2) the heavens and the earth have the same physical properties, (3) and the stars are not divine. With these principles Philoponus went after his rival, Simplicius of Cilicia, by questioning Aristotle's' view of dynamics and cosmology. He argued that motion can occur in a void and that the velocity of a falling object is not based on its weight. He also held that God created all matter with its physical properties and with natural laws that would allow matter to progress from a state of chaos to an organized state forming the present universe. What remains of his writings indicate that he used the same didactic methods of reasoning that modern science uses and that he performed genuine experiments.
The style of his commentaries and his conclusions made Philoponus unpopular with his colleagues and fellow philosophers, and he appears to have ceased his study of philosophy around 530, devoting himself to theology instead. Around 550 he wrote a theological work "On the Creation of the World" as a commentary on the Bible’s story of creation, using the insights of Greek philosophers and Basil the Great. In this work he transfers his theory of impetus to the motion of the planets, whereas Aristotle had proposed different explanations for the motion of heavenly bodies and for earthly projectiles. Thus Philoponus' theological work is recognized in the history of science as the first attempt at a unified theory of dynamics. Another of his major theological concerns was to argue that all material objects were brought into being by God ("Arbiter", 52A–B).
Around 553 Philoponus made some theological contributions to the Council of Constantinople concerning Christology. His doctrine on Christ's duality, according to which in Christ remain two united substances, united but divided, is analogous to the union of the soul and body in human beings and coincides with the miaphysite school of thought. He also produced writings on the Trinity around this time. "Arbiter", John Philoponus' Christological “opus magnum” stands in the line with St. Cyril of Alexandria and Severus of Antioch. Philoponus asserted the understanding of Christ as divine and human, in opposition to Chalcedonian authors who strove to reach a middle ground.
After his death, John Philoponus was declared to have held heretical views of the Trinity and was made anathema at the Third Council of Constantinople in 680-681. This limited the spread of his ideas in the following centuries, but in his own time and afterwards he was translated into Syriac and Arabic, and many of his works survived and were studied by the Arabs. Some of his works continued to circulate in Europe in Greek or Latin versions and influenced Bonaventure. The theory of impetus was taken up by Buridan in the 14th century.
Philoponus and his contemporaries, Simplicius of Cilicia and Strato developed the Aristotelian concept of space further, eventually influencing the Renaissance theory of perspective, particularly the one highlighted by Leon Battista Alberti, and other architectural masters.
John Philoponus wrote at least 40 works on a wide array of subjects including grammar, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and theology.
The commentaries of the late antiquity and early Middle Ages aimed to teach an audience. In that regard, the repetitive nature of Philoponus’ commentaries demonstrates his pedagogical awareness. Although abstract in manner, Philoponus is chiefly focused on the concept in question.
Most of Philoponus’ early philosophical works strive to define the distinction between matter, extension, place, and various kinds of change. For example, the commentary "On the Eternity of the World against Aristotle" represents a standardized description of Aristotelian natural philosophy. Both Aristotle and Philoponus argue that in kinds of change there are differences, in their form and matter.
In "Physics", Aristotle operates with the idea of places, but dismisses the existence of space. The idea that came from Plato and was developed by Aristotle has been evolved by Philoponus. Philoponus attempts to combine the idea of homogeneous space with the Aristotelian system. The argument made by Philoponus is that substances by themselves require some determinate quantity for their being. Similarly to Aristotle, who rejected the immaterial things, and in contrast to Plato who accepted immaterial substances in his metaphysics, Philoponus’ concept of substance refers to the material objects.
Concerning the discussion of space, Philoponus’ claim that from every point in space is possible to draw identical figures, made him be perceived as an innovative thinker who influenced later Renaissance scholars, for instance, Gianfranceso Pico della Mirandola and Galileo Galilei. Thus, Philoponus' idea of perspective signifies the concept of space as immaterial three-dimensional medium in which objects are located.
In the third book of "De Anima", entitled "De Intellectu", Philoponus analyzes the doctrine of the intellect. The author (Philoponus or pseudo-Philoponus?) sets the theory on the role and functioning of the active intellect. On one hand, there is the active intellect, and on the other, the idea of perception awareness or how we are aware that we are perceiving. In other words, in this reflective philosophy, there is a rationalist conclusion which emphasizes a relation between self and truth which leads to the discussion of the nature of knowledge.
According to this view, the knowledge is identical to its object, since the self-awareness of perception is divorced from the irrational soul.Therefore, the understanding arises through the identification of the intellect and its object. More specifically, perception deals only with material things.
Philoponus has raised the central question of the scientific and philosophical Aristotle’s work on chemistry. The work called "On Generation and Corruption" examines the question of how is the mixture (chemical combination) possible? Philoponus’ contribution to the topic is in his new definition of potential, the third of the seven elements criteria. There are various interpretations of the theory of mixture, but it seems that Philoponus is rather refining Aristotle’s approach than rejecting it. One of interpreters of Philophonus’ work on the theory of mixture, De Haas, implies that “no element can possess a quality essential to it except to a superlative extent”.
Philoponus’ major Christological work is "Arbiter". The work was written shortly before the Second Council of Constantinople of 553. It became famous in regard to its doctrine on resurrection. Similarly to ideas presented in "Physics", Philoponus in the work titled "Arbiter" states that our corrupted bodies (material things) will be eventually brought into being (matter and form) by God.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2677803 | Barbary Coast, San Francisco
The Barbary Coast was a red-light district during the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries in San Francisco which featured dance halls, concert saloons, bars, jazz clubs, variety shows, and brothels. Its nine block area was centered on a three block stretch of Pacific Street, now Pacific Avenue, between Montgomery and Stockton Streets. Pacific Street was the first street to cut through the hills of San Francisco, starting near Portsmouth Square and continuing east to the first shipping docks at Buena Vista Cove.
The Barbary Coast was born during the California Gold Rush of 1849, when the population of San Francisco was growing at an exponential rate due to the rapid influx of tens of thousands of miners trying to find gold. The early decades of the Barbary Coast would be marred by persistent lawlessness, gambling, administrative graft, vigilante justice, and prostitution; however with the passage of time the city's government would gain strength and competence, and the Barbary Coast's maturing entertainment scene of dance halls and jazz clubs would influence American culture. The Barbary Coast's century-long evolution would pass through many substantial incarnations due to the city's rapid cultural development during the transition to the 20th century. Its former location is now overlapped by Chinatown, North Beach, and Jackson Square.
San Francisco's Barbary Coast arose from the massive infusion of treasure hunters, called "49-ers", seeking their fortunes by panning for gold as they searched for a potential gold mine.
Before the Gold Rush of 1849 there were only a few hundred people living in tents and wooden shanties within San Francisco. However, after the gold rush the population of San Francisco would increase fifty-fold in just two years—from 492 in 1847 to over 25,000 in 1849. That extreme growth combined with a lack of strong government would create many opportunities for criminals, corrupt politicians, and brothel owners. For many decades murderers and robbers could commit their crimes without punishment, sometimes boldly in public view. As a result, the Barbary Coast became a wild area representative of the Old West, and had many problems with political corruption, gambling, crime, and violence.
Around 1848 a group of volunteers from the Mexican–American War were eventually discharged and settled in San Francisco. Many of them were from New York City gangs from the Five Points and Bowery districts. About sixty of them organized into a gang called the "Hounds", paraded around as if they were military, and even creating a headquarters named Tammany Hall within a tent on Kearney Street. In 1849, these thugs began to call themselves the "Regulators" as they harassed Mexicans and those of Spanish origin, and extorted money from local businesses for protection services. Anyone who would not pay was likely to lose a nose, ear, or suffer greater bodily injury. However, after a group of 230 men organized into a militia and confronted the Hounds with possible arrest, they quickly fled from San Francisco.
The Hounds was not the only group of criminals to set up business on San Francisco's Barbary Coast. By the end of 1849, several ships from Australia brought former members of Great Britain's penal colony – including ex-convicts, ticket-of-leave men, and criminals – to San Francisco, where they would become known as the "Sydney Ducks". These Australian immigrants had become so numerous that they dominated the neighborhood. They opened boarding houses and various types of groggeries which had prostitutes affiliated with their businesses. People who entered these groggeries and brothels were frequently later beaten and robbed.
A newspaper of the day, the San Francisco Herald, states of Sydney Town:
The upper part of Pacific Street, after dark, is crowded by thieves, gamblers, low women, drunken sailors, and similar characters... Unsuspecting sailors and miners are entrapped by the dexterous thieves and swindlers that are always on the lookout, into these dens, where they are filled with liquor – drugged if necessary, until insensibility coming upon them, they fall an easy victim to their tempters... When the habitues of this quarter have a reason to believe a man has money, they will follow him for days, and employ every device to get him into their clutches... These dance-groggeries are outrageous nuisances and nurseries of crime.
When looting San Francisco's neighborhoods, the Sydney Ducks even set fire to San Francisco six times between 1849 and 1851 in order to distract citizens from their pillaging and murdering. Whenever they planned to start a fire, they waited for south westerly winds so that Sydney Town would not also catch fire. The citizens of San Francisco became enraged and in 1851 they formed a first Vigilance Committee. Two of the Sydney Ducks, Samuel Whittaker and Robert McKenzie, were then arrested for arson, robbery, and burglary. The vigilantes then held a quick trial, and later hanged them. Vigilantes, unauthorized individuals who use trials and lynchings to punish criminals, were not uncommon in the Old West but San Francisco's Vigilance Committees were the largest and most organized of America's history. The hangings scared the remaining Sydney Ducks into fleeing the city. Within two weeks after the hangings, Sydney Town had but only a few dance halls, saloons, and brothels remaining. That relative peace would only last for two years before criminals started to once again return to the Barbary Coast.
In the latter half of the 19th century, San Francisco saw administrative graft, boss politics, and a persistent lawlessness. For a while after the hangings of Whittaker and McKenzie, San Francisco functioned as a law-abiding city. The hangings frightened corrupt judges and government officials, who then began to do their duties with a rare diligence, not seen so far in San Francisco. This new competency in government would not last long, and by 1852 corrupt government officials developed a system of high salaries and expensive projects with political kickbacks that would drain the city's treasury to near bankruptcy. This financial crisis at city hall would create a great strain on commerce and also affect individual businesses.
The looting of the city's treasury could not have happened without the help of the most powerful man in San Francisco, David Broderick, who was a state senator and held tight control over San Francisco from 1851 until his death in 1859. Broderick's corruption was such that no man could be elected to public office unless he made a deal with Broderick to share half the profits from his office. As a result of these backroom deals, Broderick accumulated a large amount of wealth which further strengthened his position as a powerful city boss. As news of the treasury's financial crisis became known, another even larger uprising of enraged citizenry would occur.
James King, a popular journalist and publisher, vehemently protested the administrative graft of Broderick which angered one of Broderick's biggest supporters, a supervisor named James Casey. While King was standing in front of his newspaper's building Casey shot King in the chest, causing a mortal wound which would ultimately launch the formation of a second Vigilance Committee in May 1856. Within two hours after Casey's shooting of King, a mob of 10,000 people surrounded the jail where Casey was being held. The vigilantes then demanded that the jail release James Casey into their custody, and the badly out-numbered jail guards acquiesced to their demands. King died six days after being shot, and subsequently Casey was put on trial by the Vigilance Committee. King's funeral attracted over 15,000 people, but by the time the funeral had ended Casey had already been convicted and hanged by the vigilantes. Now energized by wide public support, the Vigilance Committee set up shop in a large building near the wharf which included jail cells, court rooms, a surrounding wall to resist any military intervention, and was nicknamed Fort Gunnybags. During the two months that followed the hanging of Casey there was not a single murder in San Francisco, and less than a half dozen robberies. In August 1856 the vigilance committee decided to disband and give control back to the elected officials.
It was not until the 1860s when sailors gave the district its name, and began to refer to it as the "Barbary Coast". The term "Barbary Coast' is borrowed from the Barbary Coast of North Africa where local pirates and slave traders launched raids on nearby coastal towns and vessels. That African region was also notorious for the same kind of predatory dives which would target sailors, as had been done on San Francisco's Barbary Coast. Miners, sailors, and sojourners hungry for female companionship and bawdy entertainment continued to stream into San Francisco in the 1850s and 1860s, becoming the Barbary Coast's primary clientele. During its early days San Francisco had become a "wide" open city where police had little to no control in stopping the activities of gambling, drinking, drugs, drag, and prostitution. The fact that San Francisco functioned as a port city meant that it was able to sustain large transient populations that were less likely to conform to social rules and regulations.
During this time San Francisco went through much commercial growth and became an important shipping port, but matured to a level which would forbid any more uprisings by vigilantes. Without the threat of vigilante justice, corruption and crime begin to return along with predatory dives similar to those of Sydney Town. The Barbary Coast would continue to build on its notorious reputation as a lawless city. With only one hundred policemen as of 1871, San Francisco had a severe shortage of law enforcement. At that time Police Chief Crowley said in his annual report that there was only one officer for every 1,445 inhabitants, while New York City had one in 464 and London had one for every 303 residents.
Entertaining the miners, entrepreneurs, and sailors would be a huge business and resulted in varied, inventive, and occasionally bizarre forms of entertainment. Except for a couple of restaurants, that three block stretch of Pacific Street was almost wall to wall with drinking establishments. They included dance halls, concert saloons which had entertainment and dancing, melodeons, cheap groggeries, and "deadfalls" which were dismal beer and wine dens. Initially the melodeons had mechanical reed organs which played music, however they quickly transformed into a kind of cabaret which had theatrical entertainment but no dance floor. The only women allowed in the melodeons were the waitresses and performers. Their shows usually contained songs, bawdy skits, and often featured can-can dancers. The deadfalls were the lowest of the establishments and had hard benches, damp sawdust on the floors, the bar was rough boards laid atop of barrels, had no entertainment, and their wine was often raw alcohol with an added coloring.
The "Coast" as it was called, also invented its own kind of dance hall, called a Barbary Coast Dance Hall. It was different than most dance halls in that the only women there were the female employees who were paid to dance with the customers, and received commissions on the drinks that they could encourage their male customers to buy. Lawlessness was so bad in the Barbary Coast district that police did not patrol alone, but chose to walk their beats in pairs and sometimes in groups. There was usually a murder every night and scores of robberies. And even while inside drinking establishments, a customer's property and life were still never safe. Prostitution was so common on the Barbary Coast that it was referred to as "the Paris of America". Drug addicts of the district could even buy cocaine or morphine at an all night Grant Street drugstore for only two or three times the price of a beer. During the 1890s, San Francisco hit its peak alcohol consumption in having over 3000 licensed bars, and another 2000 unlicensed bars.
The waitresses were a major attraction for the saloons and were nicknamed the "pretty waiter girls", though they were not always attractive or young. They were scantily clothed in gaudy outfits while they sold drinks and danced with customers for money. The saloons hired women to exploit the men, instructed to pick customers' pockets and then give half that money back to the management. The pretty waiter girls earned about $20 per week plus a commission on any drinks and dances that they sold. Small grog houses and deadfalls hired only handful of pretty waiter girls, but the larger dance halls and concert saloons employed up to fifty women. However some of the concert saloons, like the Eureka and Bella Union, made an effort to have notable Barbary Coast performers appear in their shows and actually had attractive women for their pretty waiter girls.
It was not unusual for the pretty waiter girls to put drugs into the customers' drinks, so they could later be more easily robbed and sometimes clubbed unconscious. Sailors, who were frequently the targets of the pretty waiter girls, had cause to dread the area because the art of shanghaiing was perfected here. Many a sailor woke up after a night's leave to find himself unexpectedly on another ship bound for some faraway port. The verb to "shanghai" was first coined on the Barbary Coast.
Most of the buildings on that stretch of Pacific Street were destroyed by the earthquake and fire of 1906. However the city's financial boosters then saw an opportunity to clean up the tone of the Barbary Coast, and transform it into an entertainment area which would be acceptable for every-day San Franciscans. Possessing a new sense of civic pride, the boosters invested heavily in reconstruction and within three months over a dozen dance halls and a dozen bars were rebuilt and operating. This new incarnation of Pacific Street would be gentrified and tame compared to the lawless pre-earthquake version of the Barbary Coast. However prostitution still persisted in the district and it was not until 1917 that Mayor James Rudolf made a declaration that he would close every brothel in San Francisco. Same-sex Prostitution and entertainment which featured female impersonators briefly existed in a bar on the Barbary Coast as early as the spring of 1908 when "The Dash" opened on Pacific Street. The Dash employed some female impersonators, and patrons could purchase homosexual sex in its booths. The Dash closed near the end of that same year.
The thriving district also got a new nickname, "Terrific Street". The term "Terrific Street" was first used by musicians in describing the quality of music at the Pacific Street clubs, and indeed the first jazz clubs of San Francisco would occur on Terrific Street and attract national talents like Sophie Tucker, Sid LeProtti, and Jelly Roll Morton. It was at this time that the Barbary Coast gained a wider appeal and its large dance halls drew tremendous crowds.
The principal attraction of Terrific Street was dancing and many nationally known dance steps like the Texas Tommy and the Turkey Trot, would be invented on Terrific Street. At night, its brightly lit block could be seen from across the bay in Oakland despite the fact that neon lights had not yet been invented.
An extreme shift in political policy came about in 1911 when a new mayor, James "Sunny Jim" Rolph, was elected to the first of ten terms. Rolph, along with a new group of city supervisors and the business sector, was committed to reforming the Barbary Coast district. Just before election time in September 1913, William Randolph Hearst's newspaper the "Examiner", started a major crusade against the Barbary Coast and in a full page editorial suggested that it "should be wiped out."
Ten days later the Police Commission adopted resolutions that no dancing would be allowed in any establishment of the district which served alcohol, that no women – employees or patrons – would be permitted in any saloon of the district, and that even electric signs would be forbidden. As a result, some drinking establishments fired their female employees and became "straight saloons", while others closed their businesses. Some of the larger dance halls moved to other districts and managed to survive for several more years by masquerading as dance academies or "closed dance halls", but they never regained their previous popularity. In 1917 the brothels were eventually closed down due to the Red Light Abatement Act, but by that time all the excitement of Terrific Street had long since vanished. Following the Red Light Abatement Act, prostitution zones and prostitutes were forced to outskirt areas such as the Tenderloin and Union Square as shopping centers took over.
When Prohibition was adopted in 1920 and stopped the flow of alcohol to the bars, Terrific Street's block lost much excitement and its dance halls and concert saloons were gradually replaced by offices, hotels, and warehouses. However, after Prohibition was repealed in 1933 and liquor was again available, an attempt was made to revive its entertainment scene. The police commission quashed these efforts when, on February 27, 1934, it announced that no dance permits for the area would be issued. This action followed "the withdrawal by the California state board of equalization of state liquor permits for the district." Protests by women's groups and church organizations influenced these decisions. Still later, during World War II, in an attempt to revitalize the district, it was renamed International Settlement, and a pair of large promotional arched overhead signs, which read, "International Settlement", were constructed on either end of that Pacific Street block. In the same way that the post-Barbary Coast establishments of Terrific Street attempted to draw customers and tourists with a reference to the Coast's nefarious past before the earthquake, International Settlement also tried to also draw tourists with a reference to that lost era.
During the latter half of the 20th century, the entertainment scene and dancing would spread one block north to Broadway, which is parallel to Pacific Street. Jazz clubs were everywhere on Broadway during the 1950s and 1960s. Some of Broadway's more famous clubs of that era included Basin Street West, Ann's nightclub, Mr. D's, El Matador, Sugar Hill, Keystone Korner, the hungry i, and the Jazz Workshop.
Mr. D's club, so named because Sammy Davis Jr. was a partial owner, presented performances by Tony Bennett and James Brown. At Ann's nightclub legendary shock comedian Lenny Bruce received his start in standup comedy and created a sensation which drew the attention of journalist Herb Caen and Beat poets like Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Basin Street West started out as a jazz club but later hosted Otis Redding, Ike and Tina Turner, and Lenny Bruce. The hungry i club was a premier showcase of new talent and presented early performances of comedians Phyllis Diller and Woody Allen, as well as vocalist Barbra Streisand when she was 19 years old. The El Matador club became very popular by booking pricey acts like Oscar Peterson, and its audience occasionally included celebrities such as Clint Eastwood, Frank Sinatra, and Marilyn Monroe. The Jazz Workshop became the premier club to hear jazz during the 1950s and 1960s when musicians like Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, and John Coltrane would perform there. Comedian Lenny Bruce made headlines and would open a national discussion on the First Amendment's freedom of speech rights when he was arrested at the Jazz Workshop for using profanity in his comedy act. When strip clubs started to arrive on Broadway, some local jazz musicians working in the strip clubs would sit in and perform after hours at the jazz clubs. LGBT entertainments of female impersonators also appeared in North Beach at a nightclub called "Finocchio's", which opened in 1929. The bar was opened by Joseph Finocchio and was on Stockton Street.
International Settlement's club acts, with their can-can dancers and old-fashioned chorus girls, were unable to compete with the incredible talent and excitement of the emerging Broadway scene, and by the early 1960s their popularity had fallen below a critical level. But despite the brilliance and innovation of Broadway's entertainment scene of the 1950s and 1960s, its live entertainment clubs would also lose their popularity with time. As of the first decade in the 21st century, Broadway had lost its standup comedy clubs and its live music clubs, only to be replaced by cocktail lounges with recorded music. However, some live music clubs still operate in other areas of North Beach.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2692820 | Humanist Movement
The Humanist Movement is an international volunteer organisation that promotes nonviolence and non-discrimination. It is not an institution. It takes its inspiration from the current of thought referred to as New or Universal Humanism that has been developed since 1969 by its founder Mario Rodríguez Cobos, pen name: Silo.
New Humanism focuses on the overcoming of pain and suffering at a personal, interpersonal and social level. It defines violence as anything that causes pain and suffering to human beings. In this way violence is seen to have many different aspects, not just the well-known physical form but also; economic, religious, psychological, sexual, ethnic, etc.
The Humanist Movement's conception is based on the Siloist thought, the major points of which are the following:
Prior to thinking about his origin or destiny, the human being finds himself in a determined vital situation, one not of his own choosing. Thus, he is born submerged in a natural and also a social world plagued by physical and mental aggression that he experiences as pain and suffering. Consequently, he mobilizes himself trying to overcome pain and suffering.
In his acting against these painful factors, he produces objects and signs which are incorporated into society and are transmitted historically. And all that is produced is loaded with meaning, with an intention and this intention is ultimately to surpass pain and suffering.
The history of mankind, then – of its economy, of its politics, of its science, of its art – is the history of the struggle against pain and suffering. And this struggle is the motor of the progress. This struggle is not between mechanical forces. It is not a natural reflection. It is a struggle between human intentions. And, precisely this is what enables one to speak of oppressors and oppressed, of just and unjust ones, of heroes and cowards. This is the only thing that enables one to rescue the personal subjectivity and is the only thing that enables one to practice with meaning the social solidarity and the commitment with the liberation of those discriminated against, be these majorities or minorities.
At this point, a definition of "human being" is a must. It will not suffice to say "man is the social animal" or "man is the manufacturer of objects" or "man is the possessor of language", etc. In the Siloist doctrine "Man is the historical being whose mode of social action transforms his own nature."
In short, New Humanism is based on two basic points:
The project of the Humanist Movement is nothing less than to eradicate war, hunger, poverty and economic exploitation across the planet and develop a new system based on the value of human life as the central value, higher than money, power, prestige, etc. Siloists call this vision of the future the Universal Human Nation. The methodology used is to work in groups and undertake personal development activities as well as social projects. Once sufficiently experienced, new groups develop according to their interests.
New Humanists share the following humanist attitudes:
Near the end of the 1960s, Silo organized a group to study the personal and social crisis occurring in the world. The group intends to give a global intellectual response to a world in crises which takes place in the social and personal fields. The personal and social crisis of the '60s demands responses that are not in sight and that requires previous pausing anew (reformulations) in which the intellectual prejudice must be eliminated. Three sectors of research are organised.
1) that of daily and personal existence
2) that of the social activity
3) that of the methodology of the research
the group makes its own Kant's declaration: "criticism, to which everything should be submitted, is characteristic of our ephoch: in vain try to escape from it religion for being saint and legislation for being majestic, since they would then arise founded suspicions upson trying to impede their thorough examination, rationally carried out.
This group, and others like it, organized around his writings, grew and developed into what started life as The School and after many iterations later became known as the Humanist Movement.
The Humanist Movement is often said to have been started May 4, 1969, with the talk "The Healing of Suffering" by Silo at Punta de Vacas, Argentina. Because of the military dictatorship in place at that time, this talk was permitted on the condition that it would be held high in the Andes Mountains, far from the nearest town.
These initial groups faced repression and disinformation campaigns as they grew and spread throughout Latin America. This growth was reinforced when some of the members, freely or as political exiles, took up residence in various countries in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
In 1975 one hundred members from different countries met in Corfu, Greece, to agree on proposals, objectives and a rudimentary organisation that would be tested over the next four years.
By 1980 the Movement was functioning in forty two countries. In 1981 The Community for Human Development organised a lecture tour around Europe and Asia. The Look Within, The Internal Landscape, and the Book of the Community were published and translated into many languages.
In 1983 the Movement was articulated into Councils (see Organisation) and a way of working was defined in a material called the Norms. In 1984 the Humanist Party was founded, followed by The Greens.
After the launch of the Humanist International in 1989, the strategy turned once more to the development of the Humanist Movement in a more general form and its organisation structure. A stage of putting down roots in communities, with the opening of Centres of Communication and the publication of hundreds of neighbourhood newspapers around the world was started.
In 1993 the Document of the Humanist Movement was published. The first Humanist Forum was held in Moscow, Russia, and The World Center of Humanist Studies was founded.
By 1995 the direction of the Humanist Movement went towards a phase of massive growth with the opening up of 10s of new countries across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. This mostly was made possible through the launching of the Centre of Cultures. In addition, from Spain the action front called World without Wars was legalised that later went on to become an official organisation of the Humanist Movement.
By 2006, the first Parks of Study and Reflection was launched around the world.
In 2009, the organisational structure articulated in 1983 was dissolved by Silo leaving behind 5 official organisations to represent the Humanist Movement's interests in various fields of human endeavour.
On 2 October 2009, until 2 January 2010, the World March for Peace and Nonviolence went around the world from New Zealand to Argentina calling for the eradication of Nuclear Weapons, the withdrawal of invading troops from foreign territories, the signing of peace treaties between countries in dispute, progressive and proportional conventional weapons disarmament and the implementation of articles in national constitutions to renounce the use of war as a means to resolve conflicts, such as Article 9 of the Japanese constitution. The World March was the initiative of the Humanist organisation, World without Wars and without Violence and was promoted around the world by Humanist and other organisations.
The Humanist Movement- defined as "the organization that interprets the needs of the Human being and produces the means for advancing from the ground of determination to the ground of freedom" should be framed as a broad and developing movement which generates specific base teams with a human base aiming at the same objective.
The organizational form of the Humanist Movement is constantly changing. Currently the movement is in a process of transformation of its organizational form and the form that was applied until now, is no longer valid. At the moment the Humanist Movement consists simply of all those who adhere to the Document of the Humanist Movement (1993) and there are no formal positions in the organization - rather all participants are simply colleagues.
The Humanist Movement has launched official organisations, internally referred to as organisms, in political, social and cultural fields, according to the legal requirements in the country where the Humanist Movement is being developed. The strategy of the Humanist Movement is to launch the following five organisms in every country in the world where it is possible to do so.
The Community for Human Development, launched in 1981, is a social and cultural organisation that works for "nonviolence" through simultaneous social and personal transformation i.e. through the transformation of the structures of society and the way that individuals act in the world.
The Community has the following objectives:
The Community works in society in the areas of education, health, culture, and quality of life. In each of these areas it denounces all that which hinders the development of the human being and develops actions that favour it.
The key characteristics of the work of The Community are:
The official documents of the Community can be found in the Book of the Community.
The idea of the Humanist Party as a political party was launched on March 8, 1984, as a recommendation from the Department of Social Affairs of The Community for Human Development. Around the world many Humanist Parties started to emerge and on January 4, 1989, in Florence, Italy, the first congress of the Humanist International was held.
In this event, the foundational documents were adopted, including the Declaration of Principles, The Thesis, Foundations for political action and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In December 1990, in Chile, Laura Rodríguez became the first elected representative of any Humanist Party in the world after winning a seat as part of the "Concertación" coalition, after Augusto Pinochet handed over power.
In October 1993, the second congress of the Humanist International was held in Moscow, Russia, whereupon the Document of the Humanist Movement was also incorporated as a foundational document. This document had previously been circulating as chapter six of the Book Letters to my friends.
In 1999, regional coordination bodies of Humanist Parties were formed in South America and Europe. The regional bodies of Africa and Asia are expected to be formed in 2006.
In addition to the Humanist Party, the Community for Human Development later recommended also the formation of a party based on a New Humanist approach to Ecology. The subsequent formation of a party called The Greens, caused much confusion in Europe where both The Greens and Green Party were sometimes fighting elections against one another. This led to a great deal of bad feeling from the Green Party (see the section below on conflict with other organisations). Eventually, the Environmental policies of the Greens were incorporated within the Humanist Party which resulted in their merger.
The official documents of the Humanist Party can be found in the Book of the Humanist International.
In 2009, the word "International" was appended to the beginning of the Party's name.
The Centre of Cultures was started in 1995 from Milan, Barcelona and Marseille as a response to the increasingly difficult situation faced by newly arrived immigrants to Europe.
The objectives of the Centre of Cultures are:
By the year 2000 this organisation was recognised as the third official organism of the Humanist Movement and had opened new centres in New York City, Madrid, Bombay, Zurich, Paris, Brussels, Berlin, São Paulo, Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile.
The work of the Centre of Cultures brought the Humanist Movement into contact with people from countries in Africa and Asia where it had previously had little presence and this led to a massive explosion in its membership in those areas starting in the late 90s.
In 2009 the organisation underwent a rebranding exercise and changed its name to Convergence of Cultures.
Individual Humanist Movement groups carry out missionary work, as they call it, in various locations around the world.
Action fronts of many themes are developed by humanists around the world. They do not necessarily fall under the umbrella of any of the specific organisms. For more information consult the list of websites referred to at the bottom of this page.
A three-part work comprising The inner look, The internal landscape and The external landscape. Each part deals with a different aspect of human existence.
The first part details the authors search and subsequent discovery of meaning in life. It describes meditation exercises called the experience of peace and the experience of force and describes a strategy in life for avoiding pain and suffering called the Principles of Valid Action.
The second part deals more with psychological issues and the interpersonal issues that an individual faces during their life. Themes such as; faith, provisional meanings, giving and receiving, contradiction and unity are dealt with. In addition the theme of the Internal Guide, an inspirational image that an individual can configure and use, is introduced.
The final part deals more with the external conditions in society, covering such aspects as; law, the state, religion, education etc.
Self-liberation is a book that can best be categorised as "Personal development". It contains a number of different techniques that can be done in groups and in pairs. The different sections deal with; Relaxation and working with mental images, the scheme of the different centres of response (the intellectual, emotional, motor, vegetative and sexual centres) and exercises for the first three centres called "psycho-physical gymnastics" and two further sections called "Catharsis" and "Transference" which are together known as "operative".
The work of Catharsis and Transference takes the participants deep into an area of what can be referred to as Siloist Psychology and a concept known as the "Space of Representation", what has been referred to by others as the "mind's eye", or what one is able to intentionally imagine when one closes one's eyes, when one daydreams or when one dreams during sleep.
The exercises are designed to help the participants: reconcile with their past experiences, find strength in their current situation and develop a positive and joyful image of the future. According to the explanations one carries one's bad experiences around in the consciousness and from there they act in the present and affect the future. By seeking out the bad experiences and painful memories and working on them using the techniques of catharsis and transference, mental energy can be released and one can live one's life more intentionally and less restricted by one's past experiences. The whole body of the work is meant to be done in such a way that there are no roles of "therapist" or "patient", all parties take all the roles to establish an equitable relationship that can engender trust and a deep entering into the themes.
Letters to my Friends: On Social and Personal Crisis in Today's World is a book that outlines the scope of the crisis in which societies and individuals are immersed according to the point of view of the author. It is put together as a series of ten letters that were written between 1990 and 1994. The sixth letter, which is better known as either the Statement or Document of the Humanist Movement and has been taken as one of the Foundational documents of the Humanist International, contains a general point of view about; Global Capital, real vs formal Democracy, the emergence of a Humanist sensibility in the world, anti-humanist characteristics and Humanist Action Fronts.
Some of the other chapters deal with such themes as; personal coherence and solidarity; the nature of human beings; social revolution; the armed forces and Human Rights.
Silo Speaks is an anthology of opinions, commentaries and speeches given by Silo between 1969 and 1995.
The book starts with the first public explanation of New Humanism in a speech called The Healing of Suffering. It continues with a section that contains many explanations about themes such as: meaning in life, perception, voluntarism, the nature of human existence and religiosity.
The second part is a series of book presentations given during the publication of some of his previous works.
The third part is a series of talks given on such themes as: Humanism and the New World, Humanism and the Crisis of Civilization, What do we understand by Universal Humanism and the Theme of God.
Mario Rodríguez Cobos, also known as Silo, was born in 1938 and lived in Mendoza, Argentina. As the author of many books, he received an honorary doctorate from the National Academy of Sciences of Russia in October 1993.
In 2001, in the Annual Ordinary Meeting of the Assembly of General Coordinators, the highest level of interchange for those involved in the organisational structure, in Madrid, Spain, Silo announced his retirement from the affairs of the Humanist Movement, leaving all further development in the hands of this collegiate body that he himself had created.
Since that time, Silo has started a new project, known as Silo's Message. This project is a spiritual development based on some of the earliest forms of meditation exercises developed by Silo in the 1960s called the work with the force.
The history of the Humanist Movement has not been without its conflict with other organisations and individuals.
During the 1960s in Argentina, as the initial groups were forming with the name "Young Power", there was conflict with the Catholic Church. Humanist organisations, clearly opposed to the military regime in Argentina, came under attack from the government. People were arrested and jailed, two were killed and an attempt was made to shoot Silo.
A research by Professor Barr-Melej from Ohio University contains some information about the early conflicts.
Later on, with the advent of the Humanist variant of the Green party, humanists were exposed to a lot of opposition in Italy, Spain, the USA, the UK and Germany. Some people in the Green movement interpreted the Humanist Movement as being opposed to environmentalism, considering that humanity, not nature, should be the focus of attention. The response from the Humanist Movement was that environmental exploitation happens because society is following values (such as money, economic growth, etc.) that are contrary to the human being. The argument continued by pointing out that if we were to truly act on human values, there would be no need for a conflict with any living things.
The Humanist Movement is totally distinct from the International Humanist and Ethical Union, the worldwide federation of organisations promoting secular humanism that is recognised at the United Nations and includes organisations such as Humanists UK and the American Humanist Association.
Some disaffected former members have also complained that the Humanist Movement is a cult, though some ex-members object to this label, considering this merely an attempt to discredit the organization.
In the case of Morel v. Heinrich, the French Judge Jean-François Tritschler wrote the following about Silo's Humanist Movement:<nowiki>"</nowiki>The shadow of a South American philosopher: Mario Rodriguez COBOS i.e.
Silo hovers over the movement that gathers "those who believe in God and those who do not".
The hierarchy of movement members and financial transfers seem rather mysterious.
The totalitarian character of this philosophical movement, which uses the notion of humanism with more taste for power than for charity, is disturbing.<nowiki>"</nowiki>
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2719370 | Kiddush Hashem
Kiddush HaShem ( "sanctification of the Name") is a precept of Judaism. It includes sanctification of the name of God by being holy.
The phrase "sanctification of the Name" does not occur in the Hebrew Bible, but the instruction "to sanctify [God]" and the converse command "you shall not profane My holy name" is frequently expressed. Any action by a Jew that brings honor, respect, and glory to God is considered to be sanctification of his name. In contrast, any behavior or action that disgraces, harms or shames God's name and his Torah is regarded as a "chillul Hashem" (desecration of the Name).
Martyrdom during the Hadrianic persecution is called sanctification of the Name in Bavli Berachot 20a and Midrash Tehillim. The ultimate act of sanctification of the Name is a Jew who is prepared to sacrifice his life rather than transgress any of God’s three cardinal laws: banning serving idols ("Avodah Zarah", or foreign worship), committing certain sexual acts (such as incest or adultery) or committing murder. The commandment was introduced by the Exegetes
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2732315 | Jumo
Jumo was a social network service and website launched on November 30, 2010, to index charities so that people can find and evaluate them. Jumo was founded by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. On August 17, 2011 he announced Jumo was merging with the GOOD organization, providing a social engagement platform to complement their magazine content.
On August 17, 2011, Jumo announced that it had been acquired by the GOOD, a collaborative magazine and event media company headquartered in Los Angeles, USA. The company blog states the purpose to be "to create a powerful online content and social engagement platform". One of the reasons behind that acquisition is believed to be that Jumo's platform was not receiving the level of user traffic it has anticipated to grow itself.
Two months after being acquired by GOOD, Jumo announced the release of their entire code base into the public domain on October 5, 2011. With this release, the company said that "the community will have access to functionality that enables users to create and curate content and actions around more than 250 issue areas, from human trafficking to childhood obesity".
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2740513 | Incitement to ethnic or racial hatred
Incitement to racial or ethnic hatred is a crime under the laws of several countries.
In Australia, the Racial Hatred Act 1995 amends the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, inserting Part IIA - Offensive Behaviour Because of Race, Colour, National or Ethnic Origin. It does not, however, address the issue of incitement to racial hatred. The Australian state of Victoria has addressed the question, however, with its enactment of the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001.
In Finland, agitation against an ethnic group () is a crime according to the Criminal Code of Finland's (1889/39 and 2011/511) chapter 11, section 10:
Section 10 - Ethnic agitation (511/2011)"
“A person who makes available to the public or otherwise spreads among the public or keeps available for the public information, an expression of opinion or another message where a certain group is threatened, defamed or insulted on the basis of its race, skin colour, birth status, national or ethnic origin, religion or belief, sexual orientation or disability or a comparable basis, shall be sentenced for ethnic agitation to a fine or to imprisonment for at most two years.”
Section 10(a) – Aggravated ethnic agitation (511/2011)"
“If the ethnic agitation involves incitement or enticement (1) to genocide or the preparation of genocide, a crime against humanity, an aggravated crime against humanity, a war crime, an aggravated war crime, murder, or manslaughter committed for terrorist intent, or (2) to serious violence other than what is referred to in paragraph 1 so that the act clearly endangers public order and safety, and the ethnic agitation also when assessed as a whole is aggravated, the offender shall be sentenced for aggravated ethnic agitation to imprisonment for at least four months and at most four years.”
Section 24 of the Press Law of 1881 criminalizes incitement to racial discrimination, hatred, or violence on the basis of one's origin or membership in an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group. A criminal code provision deems it an offense to engage in similar conduct via private communication.
In 2002, four Muslim organizations filed a complaint against Michel Houellebecq for stating that Islam was "stupid" and "dangerous" in an interview. The court found that Houellebecq was not immune from the charge on the grounds of literary immunity or freedom of speech, but acquitted him on the grounds that he criticized Islam rather than individual Muslims. In 2005, politician Jean Marie Le Pen was convicted of inciting racial hatred, for comments made to Le Monde in 2003 about the consequences of Muslim immigration in France. Similar complaints were brought in 2015 after he compared Muslim street prayers to the Nazi occupation of France in 2010, but he was acquitted. In 2008, actress and animal-rights campaigner Brigitte Bardot was convicted on charges of inciting racial hatred for her criticism concerning the ritual slaughter of sheep during the feast of Eid al-Adha in a letter to then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. Bardot had been convicted of inciting racial hatred on four other occasions over the previous 11 years for criticizing Muslim immigration.
Under the law of the United Kingdom, "incitement to racial hatred" was established as an offence by the provisions of §§ 17-29 of the Public Order Act 1986. It was first established as a criminal offence in the Race Relations Act 1976. The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 made publication of material that incited racial hatred an arrestable offence.
This offence refers to:
Laws against incitement to hatred against religions were later established under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. However this legislation is not present in Scotland.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2755188 | André Gorz
André Gorz (né Gerhart Hirsch; born 9 February 1923 – 22 September 2007), more commonly known by his pen names Gérard Horst and Michel Bosquet, was an Austrian and French social philosopher and journalist.
He co-founded "Le Nouvel Observateur" weekly in 1964. A supporter of Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist version of Marxism after the Second World War, he became in the aftermath of the May '68 student riots more concerned with political ecology.
In the 1960s and 1970s he was a main theorist in the New Left movement. His central theme was wage labour issues such as liberation from work, the just distribution of work, social alienation, and a guaranteed basic income.
Born in Vienna as Gerhart Hirsch, he was the son of a Jewish wood-salesman and of a Catholic mother, who came from a cultivated background and worked as a secretary. Although his parents did not have any strong sense of national or religious identity, the spreading anti-Semitism of the time led his father to convert to Catholicism in 1930. At the outbreak of World War II (1939), his mother sent him to an institution in Switzerland to avoid his mobilization into the Wehrmacht. Thereafter, Hirsch was a stateless person until 12 April 1957, when he was naturalized French thanks to Pierre Mendès-France's support. He graduated from the University of Lausanne in chemical engineering in 1945.
Working at first as a translator of American short stories published by a Swiss editor, he published his first articles in a cooperative journal. In 1946 he met Jean-Paul Sartre, with whom he became close. He was then mainly influenced by existentialism and phenomenology. Gorz contributed to the journals "Les Temps modernes" (Paris), "New Left Review", "Technologie und Politik" (Reinbek). In June 1949 Gorz moved to Paris, where he worked first at the international secretariat of the "Mouvement des ", then as private secretary of a military attaché of the embassy of India. He then entered "Paris-Presse" as a journalist, taking the pseudonym of "Michel Bosquet". There, he met with Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, who in 1955 recruited him as an economist journalist for "L'Express".
Alongside his journalistic activities, Gorz worked closely with Sartre and adopted an existentialist approach to Marxism, leading him to emphasize the questions of alienation and of liberation in the framework of existential experience and an analysis of social systems from the viewpoint of individual experience. This intellectual framework formed the basis of his first books, "Le Traître" (Le Seuil, 1958, prefaced by Sartre), "La Morale de l'histoire" (Le Seuil, 1959) and the "Fondements pour une morale" (Galilée, 1977, published fifteen years later), which he signed for the first time as André Gorz, from the German name of the now Italian city "(Görz)" where the eyeglasses given to his father by the Austrian Army were made.
Gorz also was a main theorist in the New Left movement, inspired by the young Marx, discussions of humanism and alienation and the liberation of humanity. Gorz was also influenced by the Frankfurt School, being a friend of Herbert Marcuse. Other friends of his included Rossana Rossanda, founder of "Il Manifesto" newspaper, the photographer William Klein, younger intellectuals such as Marc Kravetz or Tiennot Grumbach, and Ronald Fraser of the "New Left Review".
He strongly criticized structuralism because of its criticisms of the subject and of subjectivity. He called himself a "revolutionary-reformist", a democratic socialist who wanted to see system-changing reforms. In 1961, he entered the editorial committee of "Les Temps Modernes", introducing to French thought the Italian Garavini, the neo-Keynesian and Communist Bruno Trentin, and the anarcho-syndicalist Vittorio Foa. Imposing himself as the "intellectual leader of the 'Italian' tendency of the New Left" (Michel Contat), he influenced activists of the UNEF students' union and of the CFDT (in particular Jean Auger, Michel Rolant and Fredo Krumnow) as a theorist of workers' self-management, recently embraced by the CFDT. His term "non-reformist reform" refers to proposed programs of change that base their demands on human needs rather than on the needs of the current economic system.
He directly addressed himself to trade-unions in "Stratégie ouvrière et néocapitalisme" (Le Seuil, 1964), where he criticized capitalist economic growth and expounded on the various strategies open to trade-unions. The same year, he quit "L'Express" along with Serge Lafaurie, Jacques-Laurent Bost, K.S. Karol and Jean Daniel to found "Le Nouvel Observateur" weekly (using the pseudonym of Michel Bosquet).
Deeply affected by May '68, Gorz saw in these events a confirmation of his existential-Marxist posture, which joined the students' criticisms towards institutional and state organization (State, School, Family, Firm, etc.). Thereafter, Ivan Illich's thesis on education, medicine or the abolition of wage labour became the focus of his attention. He published one of Illich's speeches in "Les Temps Modernes" in 1961, before meeting him in 1971 in "Le Nouvel Observateur" at the occasion of his publication of "Deschooling Society" ("Une Société sans école"). He later published a resume of Illich's "Tools for Conviviality" (1973) under the title "Libérer l'avenir" (Free Future). His links with Illich strengthened after a trip to California in 1974, where he wrote several articles for "Le Nouvel Observateur" discussing Illich's thesis.
Gorz's evolution and political and philosophical stances led to some tensions with his colleagues on "Les Temps Modernes", for which he had assumed the chief editorial responsibilities in 1969. In April 1970, his article "Destroy the University" ("Détruire l'Université") provoked the resignation of Jean-Bertrand Pontalis and Bernard Pingaud. Gorz also criticized a Maoist tendency present in the journal since 1971 (and supported by Sartre). Finally, in 1974 Gorz resigned as the editor of "Les Temps Modernes", following a disagreement concerning an article about the Italian autonomist group "Lotta Continua". At the same time, he found himself forced to the periphery of "Le Nouvel Observateur", being replaced by more classically oriented economists, while he followed at the same time a campaign against nuclear industry — to which EDF, the state electricity firm, replied by withdrawing advertisements from the weekly. Following the weekly's refusal to let him publish a special issue on the nuclear issue, he published it in the "Que Choisir?" consumers' magazine.
In the same period, Gorz was becoming a leading figure of political ecology, his ideas being spread in particular by the ecologist monthly "Le Sauvage", founded by Alain Hervé, the founder of the French section of the Friends of the Earth. In 1975 he published "Ecologie et politique" (Galilée, 1975), which included the essay "Ecologie et liberté", "one of the foundational texts of the ecologic problematic" (Françoise Gollain).
He was also influenced by Louis Dumont in considering Marxism and Liberalism to be two versions of economist thought. Gorz then opposed himself both to hedonist individualism and utilitarianism and to materialist and productivist collectivism, defending a humanist version of ecology similar to social ecology which is opposed to deep ecology. Gorz's ecologism, however, remained linked to a critique of capitalism, as he called for an "ecological, social and cultural revolution which would abolish the constraints of Capitalism".
A year before the election of the left's candidate, François Mitterrand, to the French presidency in 1981, Gorz published "Adieux au prolétariat" (Galilée, 1980 – Farewell to the Proletariat) where he criticized the cult of the proletarian class in Marxism, arguing that changes in science and technology now made it impossible for the working-class to be the sole, or even primary, revolutionary agent. Although the book was not well received among the French Left, it did receive attention from younger readers. Soon after Sartre's death in that same year Gorz left the editorial board of "Les Temps Modernes". In "Les Chemins du paradis" (Galilée, 1983) Gorz remained critical of the Marxist orthodoxy of the time, using Marx's own analysis in the "Grundrisse" to argue for the need of the political left to embrace the liberatory potential that the increasing automation of factories and services offered as a central part of the socialist project. In 1983 he had a falling out with the pacifist movements when he refused to oppose the deployment of Pershing II missiles by the United States in West Germany. The same year, he resigned from "Le Nouvel Observateur". In the 1990s and 2000s, the journals "Multitudes", "EcoRev'" which will publish the last article in French ""la fin du capitalisme a déjà commencé""
and "Entropia" published his articles.
Gorz was also critical of the post-structuralism and postmodernism of thinkers such as Antonio Negri. His point of view was rooted in early Marxist humanist thinking. Liberation from wage-slavery and social alienation remained one of his goals, even in his later works. He never became an abstract theorist; his reasoning usually concluded with proposals for how to act to make changes. In "Métamorphoses du travail" (Galilée, 1988 – Metamorphosis of Labour), Gorz argued that capitalism used personal investments from the worker which were not paid back. As such, he became an advocate of Guaranteed basic income, independent from "labour". He made such a proposal in his book, "Critique of Economic Reason", 1989, and argued:
"From the point where it takes only 1,000 hours per year or 20,000 to 30,000 hours per lifetime to create an amount of wealth equal to or greater than the amount we create at the present time in 1,600 hours per year or 40,000 to 50,000 hours in a working life, we must all be able to obtain a real income equal to or higher than our current salaries in exchange for a greatly reduced quantity of work. In practice, this means that in the future we must receive our full monthly income every month even if we work full-time only one month in every two or six months in a year or even two years out of four, so as to complete a personal, family or community project, or experiment with different lifestyles, just as we now receive our full salaries during paid holidays, training courses, possibly during periods of sabbatical leave, and so forth...".
He pointed out that in
"contrast to the guaranteed social minimum granted by the state to those unable to find regular paid work, our regular monthly income will be the normal remuneration we have earned by performing the normal amount of labour the economy requires each individual to supply. The fact that the amount of labour required is so low that work can become intermittent and constitute an activity amongst a number of others, should not be an obstacle to its being remunerated by a full monthly income throughout one's life. This income corresponds to the portion of socially produced wealth to which each individual is entitled by virtue to their participation in the social process of production. It is, however, no longer a true salary, since it is not dependent on the amount of labour supplied (in the month or year) and is not intended to remunerate individuals as workers".
Gorz and his wife, Dorine, committed suicide together in his home in Vosnon (Aube). His wife had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and they had already said that neither wanted to survive the other's death. Their bodies were found on 24 September 2007 by a friend, both having died after a lethal injection.
His book "Lettre à D. Histoire d'un amour" (Galilée, 2006) was dedicated to his wife, and was in fact a way for him to tell of the love he had for her.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2771227 | Foundation for Thought and Ethics
The Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE) was a Christian non-profit organization based in Richardson, Texas, which represented itself as a “Christian think tank”. It published textbooks and articles promoting pseudoscientific creation science and intelligent design, abstinence, and Christian nationalism. In addition, the foundation's officers and editors became some of the leading proponents of intelligent design. The FTE developed close associations with the Discovery Institute, hub of the intelligent design movement and other religious Christian groups. The FTE operated from 1981 to 2016. Foundation for Thought and Ethics Books is now listed as an imprint of Discovery Institute Press. From the outset its aim was to develop a "scientific critique" of evolution, which was published as "The Mystery of Life's Origin" in 1984, to be followed by "a two-model high school biology textbook".
The FTE is best known for publishing that textbook in 1989 as "Of Pandas and People", an attempt to relabel creationism and introduce it into public school science classrooms by raising questions about evolution while presenting intelligent design as an alternative. The book played a significant part in the court case "Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District", known as the 'Dover Trial,' the first direct challenge brought in United States federal courts against a public school district which tried to mandate the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution.
While FTE did not become a party, Jon A. Buell, the president of FTE testified on July 14, 2005 at the Dover pretrial hearings. Buell denied having known about actions of the Thomas More Law Center to which the Judge said it "strains credulity." In the case, the plaintiffs successfully argued that intelligent design was a form of creationism, and thus it was ruled unconstitutional.
FTE was founded in December 1980, and in 1981 its Internal Revenue Service filing included a document headed "What is the Foundation for Thought and Ethics?" describing its aims:
They outlined their first two projects:
The foundation described its mission on its website as:
A previous statement described the foundation's mission as "proclaiming, publishing, preaching [and] teaching…the Christian Gospel and understanding of the Bible and the light it sheds on the academic and social issues of the day."
In its publication The Foundation of Rationale, written in 1983 by Charles B. Thaxton and Jon A. Buell, the FTE argued not only that creationism should be taught, but also that teaching evolution undermined the moral values and the religious beliefs of young students:
Critics argue the foundations publications are vehicles to promote Christian faith through veiled wording.
The foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headed by Jon A. Buell, its founder and President. Former intelligent design proponent and Discovery Institute Senior Fellow William A. Dembski has served as the foundation's Academic Editor.
According to the foundation's 2004 federal tax filing, the majority of the foundation's income, $382,865, was in the form of donations, "direct public support," with sales of textbooks and video tapes providing $23,539 of net income.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2794874 | Charles W. Mills
Charles Wade Mills is a Jamaican philosopher, having been born there in 1951. He is known for his work in social and political philosophy, particularly in oppositional political theory as centered on class, gender, and race. Mills is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, in New York City.
Mills earned his B.Sc. at the University of the West Indies (Honors, Physics), and his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1985. His dissertation was titled "The Concept of Ideology in the Thought of Marx and Engels". Mills taught physics in Kingston, Jamaica, from 1971 to 1973 at the College of Arts, Science and Technology, and from 1976 to 1977 at Campion College; he previously taught philosophy at the University of Oklahoma (1987–90) and the University of Illinois at Chicago (1990–2007) where he was a UIC Distinguished Professor.
Mills was also John Evans Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy at Northwestern University, before moving in August 2016 to a senior post at the Graduate Center, CUNY.
Mills was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017.
Mills' main research interests are in political theory (radical and oppositional), particularly around issues of social class, gender, and race. He has published numerous articles on Marxism, critical race theory, and African-American philosophy. His book "The Racial Contract" (Cornell University Press, 1997) won a Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award for the study of bigotry and human rights in North America. The award states, "Charles Mills' treatment of the biases in western philosophy in The Racial Contract is a tour de force."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2806736 | Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is a global standard for the good governance of oil, gas and mineral resources. It seeks to address the key governance issues in the extractive sectors.
The EITI Standard requires information along the extractive industry value chain from the point of extraction, to how the revenue makes its way through the government and its contribution to the economy.
This includes how licenses and contracts are allocated and registered, who the beneficial owners of those operations are, what the fiscal and legal arrangements are, how much is produced, how much is paid, where the revenue is allocated, and its contributions to the economy, including employment.
The EITI Standard is implemented in 52 countries around the world. Each of these countries is required to publish an annual EITI Report to disclosing information on: contracts and licenses, production, revenue collection, revenue allocation, and social and economic spending.
Every country goes through a quality-assurance mechanism, called Validation, at least every three years. Validation serves to assess performance towards meeting the EITI Standard and promote dialogue and learning at the country level. It also safeguards the integrity of the EITI by holding all EITI implementing countries to the same global standard.
Each implementing country has its own national secretariat and multi-stakeholder group made up of representatives from the country’s government, extractive companies and civil society. The multi-stakeholder group takes decisions on how the EITI process is carried out in the country.
The EITI Standard is developed and overseen by an international multi-stakeholder Board, consisting of representatives from governments, extractives companies, civil society organisations, financial institutions and international organisations.
The current Chair of the EITI is Fredrik Reinfeldt, former Prime Minister of Sweden. The previous chairs have been Clare Short (2011-2016), former UK Secretary of State for International Development and Peter Eigen (2009-2011). The EITI International Secretariat is located in Oslo, Norway and is headed by Eddie Rich.
The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) was first launched in September 2002 by the then UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair during the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, following years of academic debate, as well as lobbying by civil societies and companies, on the management of government revenues from the extractive industries. In particular, the EITI was established to be an answer to public discussions on the “Resource Curse” or the “Paradox of Plenty”. NGOs such as Global Witness and “Publish What You Pay”, as well as companies such as BP pushed the UK government to working towards an international transparency norm.
The organisation was founded at a conference in London in 2003. The 140 delegates from government, companies and civil society agreed on twelve principles to increase transparency over payments and revenues in the extractive sector. A pilot phase of the EITI was launched in Nigeria, Azerbaijan, Ghana and the Kyrgyz Republic. The management of the Initiative continued to lay with the UK Department for International Development.
The second EITI Conference on 17 March 2005 in London established six criteria based on the principles. These set out the minimum requirements for transparency in the management of resources in the oil, gas and mining sectors, laying the foundation for a rule-based organisation. This conference also established an international advisory group (IAG) under the Chairmanship of Peter Eigen to further guide the work of how the EITI is to be set up and function. More countries, companies and civil-society organisations joined the initiative. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank endorsed the EITI.
The report issued in June 2006 by the international advisory group recommended the establishment of a multi-stakeholder board and an independent secretariat, and these were set in place at the third EITI conference held in Oslo, Norway on 11 October 2006. Oslo was chosen as the new location for the secretariat.
In the following years the body further fleshed out the criteria, turning them into a set of 23 requirements, known as the EITI Rules in 2011.
The EITI Standard replaced the EITI Rules on 24 May 2013. The Standard was revised in February 2016.
The EITI is organised as a non-profit association under Norwegian law. It has three institutional bodies: The Members’ Meeting, the EITI Board, and the International Secretariat. The Members’ Meeting governs the EITI and convenes alongside the EITI global conferences, which are held every two to three years.
The board develops the Standard and assesses the progress of the countries. It is supported by the international secretariat, located in Oslo, Norway.
The EITI Board meets between two and four times a year and is composed of three groups: countries, companies and civil society. The membership of the Board reflects the multi-stakeholder nature of the EITI. The EITI Board has eight committees (audit, finance, governance and oversight, implementation, nominations, outreach and candidature, rapid response and Validation) to develop recommendations to the full board.
The funding of the EITI is two-fold. At the country level, implementation is funded by the governments. At the international level, the EITI is funded by implementing countries, supporting governments and companies.
Any country with extractive industry sectors can adhere to the EITI Standard. Countries implementing the transparency standard include OECD states such as Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States as well as countries in Africa, Central and East Asia, Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
When a country intends to join the EITI Standard, it is required to undertake five sign-up steps before applying.
These steps relate to a clear commitment of the government, company and civil society engagement, the establishment of a multi-stakeholder group and agreement on a work plan, which sets out what the country wants to achieve within a certain time frame.
Once the application of the country has been accepted by the board, the country is called an “EITI candidate”. The candidate receives the deadlines for publishing information and undergoes “Validation” two and a half years later.
The result of Validation is a measure of how well the country is progressing to meet the requirements of the standard. It can make satisfactory, meaningful, inadequate or no progress. The EITI board will ask the country to improve aspects which Validation deemed insufficient to fulfil the standard. An overview of Validation results is available online.
When a candidate country passes EITI Validation, it is declared “EITI compliant” by the Board.
As of September 2019, 52 countries are implementing the EITI:
Other countries, such as Lebanon, France and Australia have shown interest in implementing the EITI.
The EITI has made significant contributions to improved governance of the extractive sector in several countries around the world. In countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the EITI has been central to many reforms of the sector. At the international level, debates on transparency in the sector are unrecognisable from ten years ago, and the EITI is seen as being at the forefront of many frontier debates including beneficial ownership, commodity trading, and artisanal and small-scale mining.
It is also clear that the EITI process is one of the only "functioning" global mechanisms to inform and channel debate in resource-rich countries in a way that includes all stakeholders. In Peru, EITI Reports have highlighted that, only about 15% of revenues from the mining and hydrocarbon sector has been used for developmental spending, such as infrastructure or economic diversification. The rest has been spent on current expenditures such as salaries and servicing debts. Local citizens are using this information to engage with their regional authorities on alternative ways to spend these resources.
EITI Reports make recommendations aimed at addressing weaknesses in government systems and improving extractive sector management. In Nigeria, President Buhari has initiated major reforms in the oil sector, starting with restructuring the national oil company, a review of oil contracts, an pause in the awarding of the notorious oil swap deals, and a review of subsidy arrangements. These were all recommendations from Nigeria EITI Reports.
Furthermore, the EITI can lead to higher attractiveness for investments. There is “mounting evidence that information release supports greater competition around government contracting and that being an EITI signatory leads to greater inflows of both aid and foreign direct investment”.
Around 80 companies involved in oil, gas, and mining support the EITI. Supporting companies publicly endorse the EITI and contribute to covering the cost of the international secretariat of the EITI.
Extractive companies are involved on the national level in countries implementing the transparency standard. They are part of the stakeholders and are required to hand over numbers on payments as part of the reporting process under the EITI standard. Company advocacy has resulted in several countries beginning EITI implementation.
Campaigning organisations have criticised the organisation for the lack of sanction possibilities. On the other hand, business representatives have commented that the EITI board is captured by civil society organisations. The EITI has been seen as insufficient to bring full transparency to payments in the extractive industries, since it does not cover countries active in commodity trading. This has since been addressed by new requirements of the EITI standard.
The body's credibility was questioned after it permitted an Ethiopian application for membership in 2014.
EITI has also been criticised for ignoring the violations of human rights in Azerbaijan, and for not reacting sufficiently strongly to the harassment of Azerbaijani civil society groups that are part of EITI's multi-stakeholder approach. On the other hand, the EITI has been criticised by an international lending institution for shifting its mandate beyond the promotion of transparency.
The EITI has been criticised in the EU debates on country by country reporting because governments (as opposed to corporations) need to publish the payments. These governments can erode the EITI rules because they can decide autonomously on the threshold size of payments and company operations that do not need to be published.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2810332 | Justice in the Quran
Justice is a central theme in the Qur’an, dictating the traditions of law and how they should be put into practice. There are two ways in which justice operates: in a legal sense and in a divine sense. Regarding justice in the legal sense, the Qur’an tells Muslims not only how to conduct themselves, but is also highly important regarding relationships with other people. It states what the various punishments for certain crimes should be along with the justification behind this reasoning. Furthermore, the Qur’an brings across the idea that anyone who propagates the message of justice and acts accordingly will be justly rewarded with their place in jannah. With regard to divine justice, there has been a discourse between many commentators debating how justice will be fulfilled for different people, although all agree that Allah shall not do any injustice. It is debated as to how justice regarding non-Muslims functions. Although Qur'an is not direct on justice for non-Muslims but on three occasions this book clearly enunciates that the good deeds of the humans belonging to other religious backgrounds are not to be wasted before Allah., and from these verses, it can be inferred directly that Creator i.e. Allah has nothing to do with religious background but the good deeds of the actor will always be rewarded both in this world and hereafter too, enshrining the justice for all by Allah.
Originally the Concept of Justice within the Qur’an was a broad term that applied to the individual. Over time, Islamic thinkers thought to unify political, legal and social justice which made Justice a major interpretive theme within the Qur'an. Justice can be seen as the exercise of reason and free will or the practice of judgment and responsibility. The practices and exercises were guided by two Islamic words: Huquq (rights) or obligations one owes and Hsan (generosity beyond obligation). These words created a guideline for Muslims to abide by.
“Central to the prophetic conception of justice are three features: relationships among men and toward God are reciprocal in nature, and justice exists where this reciprocity guides all interaction; justice is both a process and a result of equating otherwise dissimilar entities; and because relationships are highly contextual, justice is to be grasped through its multifarious enactments rather than as a single abstract principle.”
The Qur'an places great emphasis on knowledge, and the pursuit thereof, as valuable (49:9), but links the intellectual well-being of people to a profound awareness of God and justice, and emphasizes the compatibility of knowledge with faith (35:28, 05:89, 58:11).
Justice assumes such prominence in the Qur˒an that it is regarded as one of the reasons why God created the earth. The demands that the Quran makes upon individuals to uphold justice and oaths is extraordinary, transcending all bonds of family and society. While justice is something that one demands for oneself, more importantly, it is something to be fulfilled for others, regardless of the cost to oneself, one's relatives or one's own community.
'O ye who believe! Be ye staunch in justice, witnesses for Allah, even though it be against yourselves or (your) parents or (your) kindred, whether (the case be of) a rich man or a poor man, for Allah is nearer unto both (them ye are). So follow not passion lest ye lapse (from truth) and if ye lapse or fall away, then lo! Allah is ever Informed of what ye do. Surah An-Nisa (4:135)
God's justice determines ones afterlife:
One's condition in the afterlife, felicitous or painful, is determined by the degree to which one has affirmed the unity and justice of God and, because of that affirmation, has acted with justice and mercy toward one's fellows.
"The Qurʿān makes it clear that justice decrees that those who are in the fire will remain there eternally; later commentary has softened that reality by interpreting it to mean that they will remain only as long as the fire itself lasts, and that God in his mercy will at last bring all souls back into his presence in paradise".
"Munafiq" in Islam, or "nifaq" for hypocrite
Relevant Quotations in the Quran
In practice, Islamic law offers differing interpretations of Qur’anic justice, but this is done largely by ensuring there is a separation between legal and divine justice. This essentially means the notion of justice regarding non-Muslims is one of how non-Muslims will be punished or rewarded in the afterlife. In common Muslim understanding, it is certain that disbelievers, including atheists and polytheists, will go to jahannam. This is seen as just, as Allah does not accept polytheism or anyone to be associated with Him. However, there are disagreements regarding how justice will work for the People of the Book as they also follow strict monotheism but do not regard Muhammad as a prophet.
It has been proposed by some scholars that Christians, Jews and other monotheistic religions will be allowed to enter jannah. They consider this as justice as it draws upon one of the main pillars of Islam, namely that everyone is judged by their intentions and their deeds. These scholars have made use of varying verses in the Qur’an to support their point. These verses appear to state that as long as there is a belief in God, the Day of Judgment and that they remain righteous, justice shall be done and these people shall find their reward in jannah. As a further basis for their arguments, other verses are drawn upon, such as ‘let there be no compulsion in religion’. Another Qur’anic interpretation that supports this claim is seen when Glassé argues that “in theory, Islam accepts Christianity as a divinely revealed religion”. This is based on verses in the Qur’an which state that the Believers are not solely Muslims, and that these people will be justly rewarded for their prayers and way of life with a place in jannah.
Alternatively, the Qur’an also offers many verses which seem to demonstrate that the only form of justice for all non-Muslims is one where they are all condemned to jahannam due to their failure to follow Muhammad as a prophet of God. However, this interpretation is partially based on verses of the Qur’an which state that Islam is the one true religion. Other scholars and Qur’anic translations have taken Islam in its literal meaning: submission to God. This would be in conjunction with other interpretations of aforementioned Qur’anic verses that promulgate the view that divine justice regarding non-Muslims is based on their deeds and intentions if they still practice monotheism. Conversely, the Qur’an also contains verses in which it is stated that People of the Book are unworthy of Allah's mercy and they shall be justly condemned to hell. This is seen when the Qur’an states “those who conceal God’s revelations in the Book, and purchase for them a miserable profit - they swallow into themselves naught but Fire”. Christians and Jews are seen as having changed the Message that was originally sent to them by Muhammad, which some commentators have interpreted as hypocrisy and linking hands with polytheists and atheists. However, in the same verse, the Qur’an also proposes to “forgive them, and overlook their misdeeds: for God loveth those who are kind.”
The Qur’an contains a double message with regard to justice for non-Muslims; it appears to both proclaim that the divine justice in the afterlife for People of the Book will be their place in jannah (presuming they have lived righteously), whilst simultaneously stating that these very people deserve a place in jahannam for their beliefs, no matter how righteous they may liveThe Qur’an also contains verses that command Muslims to fight against non-Muslims, whilst concurrently declaring that people who practice monotheism and live righteously will have nothing to fear in the afterlife as divine justice shall reward them with a place in jannah.
There have been attempts to reconcile this by some commentators, who have explained that these contrasts are due to chronology and that verses which were later revealed to Muhammad supersede earlier verses. Alternatively, it is suggested that in Allah’s infinite justice and mercy, He will judge justly according to each individual's intentions and deeds. This line of reasoning follows the idea that we are incapable of fathoming what this decision will be as we are imperfect as humans and cannot attain Allah's perfection.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2819388 | Kaufmann Kohler
Kaufmann Kohler (May 10, 1843 – January 28, 1926) was a German-born American Bible scholar, Reform rabbi and theologian.
Kaufmann Kohler was born into a family of rabbis in Fürth, Bavaria. He received his rabbinical training at Hassfurt, Höchberg near Würzburg, Mainz, Altona, and at Frankfurt am Main (under Samson Raphael Hirsch), and his university training at Munich, Berlin, Leipzig, and Erlangen (Ph.D. 1868; his thesis, "Der Segen Jacob's" (Jacob's Blessing), was one of the earliest Jewish essays in the field of the higher Biblical criticism, and its radical character had the effect of closing to him the Jewish pulpit in Germany). Abraham Geiger, to whose "Zeitschrift" Kohler became a contributor at an early age, strongly influenced his career and directed his steps to America. In 1869 he accepted a call to the pulpit of the Beth-El congregation in Detroit; in 1871 he became rabbi of Chicago Sinai Congregation. In 1879 he succeeded his father-in-law, David Einhorn, as rabbi of Temple Beth-El, New York City; his brother-in-law, Emil Hirsch, becoming his successor in Chicago. Feb. 26, 1903, he was elected to the presidency of Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati.
From the time of his arrival in America, Kohler actively espoused the cause of Reform Judaism; he was one of the youngest members of the Philadelphia Jewish Rabbinical Conference of 1869, and in 1885 he convened the Pittsburgh Rabbinical Conference, which adopted the so-called "Pittsburgh Platform", on which Reform Judaism in America stands. While in Chicago he introduced Sunday lectures as supplementary to the regular Sabbath service. Kohler served for many years as president of the New York Board of Ministers, and was honorary president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. He was editor-in-chief of the "Sabbath Visito", a Jewish weekly for youth, from 1881 to 1882 and, with I. S. Moses, and Emil G. Hirsch, "The Jewish Reformer," a weekly, devoted to the interests of Reform Judaism, in 1886. He was deeply interested in the "Jewish Chautauqua" movement. He was a keynote speaker at the 1893 World Parliament of Religions where he spoke about "Human Brotherhood as Taught by the Religions Based on the Bible". Shortly before his departure from New York in 1903 he delivered a series of six lectures at the Jewish Theological Seminary on "Apocryphal Literature".
He expressed doubts about the Pittsburgh Platform, stating in 1892:
We ought not be blind to the fact that Reform, with no other principle but that of progress and enlightenment has created a tendency to treat the past with irreverence and to trifle with the time-honored institutions and venerable sources of Judaism.
He went on to renounce Sunday services, which he had introduced, as "a patricide" undermining the holiness of the Sabbath.
Kohler was always an active and prolific contributor to the Jewish and Semitic scientific press, European and American; among the periodicals to which he most frequently contributed scientific articles were Geiger's "Zeitschrift", the journal of the German Oriental Society, "Hebraica", the "Jewish Quarterly Review", the "Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums", the "Jewish Times," the "American Hebrew," "Menorah Monthly," "Zeitgeist," and "Unity".
Among his published studies and lectures are:
He also edited the German collected writings of David Einhorn (1880). He also wrote important studies of Jesus and Paul,
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2819973 | Michael Bratman
Michael E. Bratman (born July 25, 1945) is an American philosopher who is Durfee Professor in the School of Humanities & Sciences and Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University.
Bratman graduated from Haverford College in 1967 and earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at Rockefeller University in 1974, where he worked with Donald Davidson. He joined the faculty at Stanford University in 1974, where he has taught ever since.
He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012. In 2014, Oxford University Press published a collection of essays on Bratman's work by colleagues and former students, "Rational and Social Agency: The Philosophy of Michael Bratman." A review in "Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews" remarked that, "Our very understanding of what it is to form a plan or shared intention is owed in no small part to Michael Bratman's massively influential body of work."
Bratman works in philosophy of action and moral philosophy and is best known for his development of the idea that "intention is a distinctive practical attitude marked by its pivotal role in planning for the future." His work in those areas led him to the Belief-Desire-Intention model that is used in many areas, including artificial intelligence, today. Bratman's theory of intentions as plans has also led to a distinctive and widely discussed account of "collective intentionality."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2841370 | Shen Dzu
Shen Dzu or God Pig, sometimes known as Holy pig (Traditional Chinese: 神豬, Simplified Chinese: 神猪; Mandarin Pinyin: shénzhū, Wade–Giles: shen-chu, Hokkien POJ: sîn-tu), are pigs that have been chronically fattened for use in Hakka religious and cultural ceremonies, for example, the Lunar New Year celebration in Sanxia, northern Taiwan. Pigs are fattened in a process similar to (and as controversial as) gavage to make them as large as possible in preparation for contests and awards at the festival. The heaviest pig is declared the winner and the owner may receive a prize. The winning pig and other pigs entered into the contest are ritually killed as a sacrifice to a city god or a local deity, ironically a popular one being the deified Buddhist monk Qingshui Zushi.
After being sacrificed, the hair of the winning pig is removed or the bristles shaved into patterns, and the skin is stretched across a metal frame. Further decorations are added such as placing a pineapple in the pig's mouth. The stretched skin, along with the carcasses or stretched skins of the other fattened pigs, are then paraded on a float. Many Holy pigs end up weighing over 800 kg whereas a normal pig would weigh only 120 kg.
In urban areas with no access to farms housing such large animals, or places where objections based on cruelty to the pigs has been raised, the contests instead have become art projects for children to create decorated pig statues.
The practice of feeding the pigs to become so heavy has been criticised as inhumane and cruel, partly because the great weights limit the pig's movements and strains their internal organs.
It has been claimed that some growers cheat by force-feeding the pigs lead or sand before they are weighed.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2847218 | Fred Dretske
Frederick Irwin "Fred" Dretske (; December 9, 1932 – July 24, 2013) was an American philosopher noted for his contributions to epistemology and the philosophy of mind.
Born to Frederick and Hattie Dretske, Dretske first planned to be an engineer, attending Purdue University. He changed his mind after taking the university's only philosophy course, deciding philosophy was the only thing he wanted to do in his life.
After graduating in 1954 with a degree in electrical engineering and serving in the Army, he enrolled in graduate school in philosophy at the University of Minnesota, where he received his PhD in 1960. His dissertation, supervised by May Brodbeck, was on the philosophy of time.
Dretske's first academic appointment was to the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1960, where he rose to the rank of full Professor. In 1988 he was recruited to Stanford University, where he was the Bella and Eloise Mabury Knapp Professor of Philosophy. He remained at Stanford until his retirement in 1998, after which he was Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at Stanford and Senior Research Scholar in Philosophy at Duke University until his death.
Dretske held externalist views about the mind, and thus he tried in various writings to show that by means of mere introspection one actually learns about his or her own mind less than might be expected. His later work centered on conscious experience and self-knowledge, and he was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize in 1994.
He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2003.
Upon his death, he was survived by his second wife Judith Fortson, by his children Kathleen Dretske and Ray Dretske, and by a stepson, Ryan Fortson.
Dretske's first book, "Seeing and Knowing", deals with the question of what is required to know that something is the case on the basis of what is seen. According to the theory presented in Seeing and Knowing, for a subject S to be able to see that an object b has property P is:
(i) for b to be P
(ii) for S to see b
(iii) for the conditions under which S sees b to be such that b would not look the way it now looks to S unless it were P
and (iv) for S, believing that conditions are as described in (iii), to take b to be P.
For instance, for me to see that the soup is boiling – to know, by seeing, that it is boiling – is for the soup to be boiling, for me to see the soup, for the conditions under which I see the soup to be such that it would not look the way it does were it not boiling, and for me to believe that the soup is boiling on that basis.
Dretske's next book returned to the topic of knowledge gained via perception but substantially changes the theory. Dretske had become convinced that information theory was required to make sense of knowledge (and also belief). He signaled this change at the beginning of the new book, opening the Preface with the lines "In the beginning there was information. The word came later." Information, understood in Dretske's sense, is something that exists as an objective and mind-independent feature of the natural world and can be quantified. Dretske offers the following theory of information:
A signal r carries the information that s is F = The conditional probability of s's being F, given r (and k), is 1 (but, given k alone, less than 1).
Thus, for a red light (r) to carry the information that a goal (s) has been scored (is F) is for the probability that a goal has been scored, given that the light is red (and given my background knowledge of the world, k), to be 1 (but less than 1 given just my background knowledge).
With this theory of information, Dretske then argued that for a knower, K, to know that s is F = K's belief that s is F is caused (or causally sustained) by the information that s is F.
His theory of knowledge thus replaced conscious appearances with the idea that the visual state of the observer carries information, thereby minimizing appeal to the mysteries of consciousness in explaining knowledge.
Dretske's work on belief begins in the last third of Knowledge and the Flow of Information, but the theory changed again in the book that followed, Explaining Behavior (1988). There Dretske claims that actions are the causing of movements by mental states, rather than the movements themselves. Action is thus a partly mental process itself, not a mere product of a mental process. For the meaning – the content – of a belief to explain an action, on this view, is for the content of the belief to explain why it is that the mental state is part of a process that leads to the movement it does.
According to "Explaining Behavior", a belief that s is F is a brain state that has been recruited (through operant conditioning) to be part of movement-causing processes because of the fact that it did, when recruited, carry the information that s is F. Being recruited because of carrying information gives a thing (such as a brain state) the function of carrying that information, on Dretske's view, and having the function of carrying information makes that thing a representation.
Beliefs are thus mental representations that contribute to movement production because of their contents (saying P is why the brain state is recruited to cause movement), and so form components of the process known as acting for a reason.
An important feature of Dretske's account of belief is that, although brain states are recruited to control action because they carry information, there is no guarantee that they will continue to do so. Yet, once they have been recruited for carrying information, they have the function of carrying information, and continue to have that function even if they no longer carry information. This is how misrepresentation enters the world.
Dretske's last monograph was on consciousness. Between the representational theory of belief, desire, and action in Explaining Behavior and the representational theory of consciousness found in Naturalizing the Mind, Dretske aimed to give full support to what he calls the "Representational Thesis". This is the claim that:
(1) All mental facts are representational facts, and
(2) All representational facts are facts about informational functions.
In "Naturalizing the Mind" Dretske argues that when a brain state acquires, through natural selection, the function of carrying information, then it is a mental representation suited (with certain provisos) to being a state of consciousness. Representations that get their functions through being recruited by operant conditioning, on the other hand, are beliefs, just as he held in "Explaining Behavior".
In addition to the subjects tackled in Dretske's book-length projects, he was also known as a leading proponent, along with David Armstrong and Michael Tooley, of the view that laws of nature are relations among universals.
In his 1970 article "Epistemic Operators", Fred Dretske discusses epistemic closure and its relationship to philosophical skepticism. The principle of epistemic closure holds the following to be valid:
For example,
Epistemic closure, however, is vulnerable to exploitation by the skeptic. Eating oatmeal entails not eating scrambled eggs. It also entails not eating scrambled eggs while being deceived by an evil demon into believing one is eating oatmeal. Because John does not have evidence to suggest that he is not being deceived by an evil demon, the skeptic argues that John does not know he is eating oatmeal. To combat this attack by the skeptic, Dretske develops relevant alternatives theory (RAT).
RAT holds that an agent need only be able to rule out all "relevant" alternatives in order to possess knowledge. According to RAT, every knowledge claim is made against a spectrum of relevant alternatives entailed by the original knowledge claim. Also entailed by a knowledge claim are irrelevant alternatives. The skeptic's alternatives fall into this irrelevant category. The following applies RAT to Johns oatmeal:
Although it provides a defense from the skeptic, RAT requires a denial of the principle of epistemic closure. Epistemic closure does not hold if one does not know all of the known entailments of a knowledge claim. The denial of epistemic closure is rejected by many philosophers who regard the principle as intuitive.
Another issue with RAT is how one defines "relevant alternatives." "A relevant alternative," Dretske writes, "is an alternative that might have been realized in the existing circumstances if the actual state of affairs had not materialized."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2855778 | Laura Rodríguez
Laura Fiora Rodríguez Riccomini (1957–1992) was a Chilean political activist from the Humanist Party. In 1989 she became the world's first Humanist to win a seat in parliament, after claiming victory as part of the "Concertación" coalition.
Rodríguez was born in Santiago, Chile. She married Darío Ergas in 1978. She was active in and eventually became president of the Community for Human Development. She graduated as engineer from the University of Chile in 1983.
Rodríguez was co-founder of the Humanist Party in 1984 and was president of the party in 1990. She was elected to the Chilean parliament in 1989 for the La Reina-Peñalolén electoral district.
Rodríguez died of cancer in 1992.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2858505 | Environmental vegetarianism
Environmental vegetarianism is the practice of vegetarianism when motivated by the desire to create a sustainable diet that avoids the negative environmental impact of meat production. Livestock as a whole is estimated to be responsible for around 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, significant reduction in meat consumption has been advocated by, among others, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in their 2019 special report and as part of the 2017 World Scientists' Warning to Humanity.
Other than climate change, environmental concerns about the production of animal products may also relate to pollution, deforestation, unsustainability and the use of water and land.
Four-fifths of agricultural emissions arise from the livestock sector.
According to the 2006 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) report "Livestock's Long Shadow", animal agriculture contributes on a "massive scale" to global warming, air pollution, land degradation, energy use, deforestation, and biodiversity decline. The FAO report estimates that the livestock (including poultry) sector (which provides draft animal power, leather, wool, milk, eggs, fertilizer, pharmaceuticals, etc., in addition to meat) contributes about 18 percent of global GHG emissions expressed as 100-year CO equivalents. This estimate was based on life-cycle analysis, including feed production, land use changes, etc., and used GWP (global warming potential) of 23 for methane and 296 for nitrous oxide, to convert emissions of these gases to 100-year CO equivalents. The FAO report concluded that "the livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global".
A 2009 study by the Worldwatch Institute argued that the FAO's report had underestimated impacts related to methane, land use and respiration, placing livestock at 51% of total global emissions.
According to a 2002 paper:
The industrial agriculture system consumes fossil fuel, water, and topsoil at unsustainable rates. It contributes to numerous forms of environmental degradation, including air and water pollution, soil depletion, diminishing biodiversity, and fish die-offs. Meat production contributes disproportionately to these problems, in part because feeding grain to livestock to produce meat—instead of feeding it directly to humans—involves a large energy loss, making animal agriculture more resource intensive than other forms of food production. ... One personal act that can have a profound impact on these issues is reducing meat consumption. To produce 1 pound of feedlot beef requires about 2,400 gallons of water and 7 pounds of grain (42). Considering that the average American consumes 97 pounds of beef (and 273 pounds of meat in all) each year, even modest reductions in meat consumption in such a culture would substantially reduce the burden on our natural resources.
The environmental impacts of animal production vary with the method of production, although "[overall] impacts of the lowest-impact animal products typically exceed those of vegetable substitutes".
A 2017 study published in the journal "Carbon Balance and Management" found animal agriculture's global methane emissions are 11% higher than previous estimates, based on data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
A 2003 paper published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, after calculating effects on energy, land, and water use, concluded that meat-based diets require more resources and are less sustainable than lacto-ovo vegetarian diets. "The water required for a meat-eating diet is twice as much needed for a 2,000-litre-a-day vegetarian diet".
According to Cornell University scientists: "The heavy dependence on fossil energy suggests that the US food system, whether meat-based or plant-based, is not sustainable". However, they also write: "The meat-based food system requires more energy, land, and water resources than the lactoovovegetarian diet. In this limited sense, the lactoovovegetarian diet is more sustainable than the average American meat-based diet." One of these Cornell scientists has advised that the US could feed 800 million people with grain that livestock eat. He "depicted grain-fed livestock farming as a costly and nonsustainable way to produce animal protein", but "distinguished grain-fed meat production from pasture-raised livestock, calling cattle-grazing a more reasonable use of marginal land".
Another agricultural effect is on land degradation. Cattle are a known cause for soil erosion through trampling of the ground and overgrazing. Much of the world's crops are used to feed animals. With 30 percent of the earth's land devoted to raising livestock, a major cutback is needed to keep up with growing population. Demand for meat is expected to double by 2050; in China, for example, where vegetable-based diets were once the norm, demand for meat will continue to be great in absolute terms, even though demand growth will slow. As countries are developing, incomes are increasing, and consumption of animal products is associated with prosperity. This growing demand is unsustainable.
A grazing-based production can limit soil erosion and also allow farmers to control pests with less pesticides by rotating crops with grass. However, in arid areas, this may catalyze a desertification process. The ability of soil to absorb water by infiltration is important for minimizing runoff and soil erosion. Researchers in Iowa reported that a soil under perennial pasture grasses grazed by livestock was able to absorb far more water than the same kind of soil under two annual crops: corn and soybeans.
The 2019 IPBES "Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services" found that the primary driver of biodiversity loss is human land use, which deprives other species of land needed for their survival, with the meat industry playing a significant role in this process. Around 25% of earth's ice-free land is used for cattle rearing. Other studies have also warned that meat consumption is accelerating mass extinctions globally. A 2017 study by the World Wildlife Fund attributed 60% of biodiversity loss to the land needed to rear tens of billions of farm animals.
A May 2018 study stated that while wildlife has been decimated since the dawn of human civilization, with wild mammals plummeting by 83%, livestock populations reared by humans for consumption have increased. Livestock make up 60% of the biomass of all mammals on earth, followed by humans (36%) and wild mammals (4%). As for birds, 70% are domesticated, such as poultry, whereas only 30% are wild.
Animal production has a large impact on water pollution and usage. According to the Water Education Foundation, it takes 2,464 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef in California, whereas it takes only 25 gallons of water to produce one pound of wheat. Raising a large amount of livestock creatives a massive amount of manure and urine, which can pollute natural resources by changing the pH of water, contaminates the air, and emits a major amount of gas that directly affects global warming. As most livestock are raised in small confined spaces to cut down on cost, this increases the problem of concentrated waste. Livestock in the United States produces 2.7 trillion pounds of manure each year, which is ten times more than what is produced by the entire U.S. population. There are issues with how animal waste is disposed, as some is used as fertilizer while some farmers create manure lagoons which store millions of gallons of animal waste which is extremely unsafe and detrimental to the environment.
Although motivations frequently overlap, environmental vegetarians and vegans can be contrasted with those who are primarily motivated by concerns about animal welfare (one kind of ethical vegetarianism), health, or who avoid meat to save money or out of necessity (economic vegetarianism). Some also believe vegetarianism will improve global food security, or curb starvation.
A study in "Climate Change" concluded "if ... average diets among UK adults conformed to WHO recommendations, their associated GHG emissions would be reduced by 17%. Further GHG emission reductions of around 40% could be achieved by making realistic modifications to diets so that they contain fewer animal products and processed snacks and more fruit, vegetables and cereals." A study in "The Lancet" estimated that the "30% reduction in livestock production" by 2030 required to meet the UK Committee on Climate Change's agricultural would also result in a roughly 15% decrease in ischaemic heart disease.
Environmental vegetarians call for a reduction of first world consumption of meat, especially in the US. According to the United Nations Population Fund, "Each U.S. citizen consumes an average of 260 lbs. of meat per year, the world's highest rate. That is about 1.5 times the industrial world average, three times the East Asian average, and 40 times the average in Bangladesh." In addition, "the ecological footprint of an average person in a high-income country is about six times bigger than that of someone in a low-income country, and many more times bigger than in the least-developed countries".
A 2018 report published in "PNAS" asserted that farmers in the United States could sustain more than twice as many people than they do currently if they abandoned rearing farm animals for human consumption and instead focused on growing plants.
The World Health Organization calls malnutrition "the silent emergency", and says that it is a factor in at least half of the 10.4 million child deaths which occur every year.
Some argue that the adoption of an ovo-lacto vegetarian or entirely plant-based vegan diet is best, but may not be totally necessary, because even modest reductions in meat consumption in industrialized societies would substantially reduce the burden on natural resources. For developed countries, a CAST report estimates an average of 2.6 pounds of grain feed per pound of beef carcass meat produced. For developing countries, the estimate is 0.3 pounds per pound. (Some very dissimilar figures are sometimes seen; the CAST report discusses common sources of error and discrepancies among such figures.) In 2007, US per capita beef consumption was 62.2 pounds per year, and US per capita meat (red meat plus fish plus poultry) consumption totaled 200.7 pounds (boneless trimmed weight basis).
Globalization and modernization has resulted in Western consumer cultures spreading to countries like China and India, including meat-intensive diets which are supplanting traditional plant-based diets. More than 200 billion animals are consumed by a global population of over 7 billion annually, which philosopher and animal rights activist Steven Best argues is "completely unsustainable". A 2018 study published in "Science" states that meat consumption is set to increase by some 76% by 2050 as the result of human population growth and rising affluence, which will increase greenhouse gas emissions and further reduce biodiversity.
A 2018 report in "Nature" found that a significant reduction in meat consumption is necessary to mitigate climate change, especially as the population rises to a projected 10 billion in the coming decades. According to a 2019 report in "The Lancet", global meat consumption needs to be reduced by 50 percent to mitigate for climate change.
In November 2017, 15,364 world scientists signed a Warning to Humanity calling for, among other things, drastically diminishing our per capita consumption of meat.
A 2010 report from the United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) International Panel of Sustainable Resource Management stated:
Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth and increasing consumption of animal products. Unlike fossil fuels, it is difficult to look for alternatives: people have to eat. A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products.
The aforementioned "Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services" also suggested that a reduction in meat consumption would be required to help preserve biodiversity.
In November 2019, a warning on the "climate emergency" from over 11,000 scientists from over 100 countries said that "eating mostly plant-based foods while reducing the global consumption of animal products, especially ruminant livestock, can improve human health and significantly lower GHG emissions (including methane in the “Short-lived pollutants” step)." The warning also says it this will "free up croplands for growing much-needed human plant food instead of livestock feed, while releasing some grazing land to support natural climate solutions."
Bill Mollison has argued in his Permaculture Design Course that vegetarianism exacerbates soil erosion. This is because removing a plant from a field removes all the nutrients it obtained from the soil, while removing an animal leaves the field intact. On US farmland, much less soil erosion is associated with pastureland used for livestock grazing than with land used for production of crops. Robert Hart has also developed forest gardening, which has since been adopted as a common permaculture design element, as a sustainable plant-based food production system.
Some environmental activists claim that adopting a vegetarian diet may be a way of focusing on personal actions and righteous gestures rather than systemic change. Environmentalist Dave Riley states that "being meatless and guiltless seems seductively simple while environmental destruction rages around us", and notes that Mollison "insists that vegetarianism drives animals from the edible landscape so that their contribution to the food chain is lost".
According to a study published in PNAS, U.S. GHG emissions would only be decreased by 2.6% (or 28% of agricultural GHG emissions) if animals were completely removed from U.S. agriculture and diets. This study's underlying assumptions however were heavily criticized.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2871898 | Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University promotes research and dialogue in ten major ethics focus areas: Bioethics, Business Ethics, Campus Ethics, Character Education, Government Ethics, Internet Ethics, Journalism and Media Ethics, Leadership Ethics, Social Sector Ethics, and Technology Ethics. The Center develops many practical tools, including a framework for ethical decision making, materials for practice-oriented ethics training programs in the tech industry called Ethics in Technology Practice, and several MOOCs on ethics. The Center also offers public talks, workshops, and training, in addition to sponsoring activities on the SCU campus for students, faculty, and staff. The Center was created by an endowment from Apple Inc. co-founder Mike Markkula and his wife Linda Markkula.
Through partnerships with area hospitals and hospices, the Center works in the area of clinical ethics, especially in developing policies on issues such as organ donation after cardiac death and artificial nutrition and hydration. The hospitals also provide the sites for a Health Care Ethics Internship for undergraduates. The Center's bioethics research has focused on "Medical Decision Making for Unbefriended and Unrepresented Patients," "Culturally Competent Care," and "Pandemic Ethics." Bioethics Director Margaret R. McLean was a consultant to the Santa Clara County Department of Public Health on pandemic ethics. She served as an advisor to the California Senate Select Committee on Genetics and is currently a consultant to the California Department of Public Health.
The Center's Business and Organizational Ethics Partnership brings together business executives and business ethics scholars from Santa Clara University and other Bay Area institutions. The partnership is a forum to learn how to create an ethical organizational culture. It has sponsored research on issues such as "Encouraging Internal Whistleblowing" and "Corporate Moral Responsibility and the Ethics of Product Usage." The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics also offers programs for boards on directors on assessing the ethical culture of their organizations. The Center's former executive director, Kirk O. Hanson, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Aspen Institute's Center for Business Education.
More than 70 members of the Santa Clara University faculty are scholars of the Ethics Center with expertise in a variety of fields from literature to engineering. The Center offers both faculty and student Hackworth Grants for research on applied ethics and Hackworth Fellowships for students interested in creating programming on ethics for their peers. The Campus Ethics Program also organizes presentations on ethics in many applied fields, including technology, diversity, immigration, law, and other topics.
The Center's Character-Based Literacy Program, which weaves ethics into the curriculum, is used by the offices of education in the majority of California's 50 counties, in addition to many individual schools and districts throughout the country. The program provides detailed lesson plans, literature recommendations, and concrete activities that address ethical questions within the parameters of the Common Core for middle and high school language arts, high school US History, World History, Biology, and Earth Science. The Center provides a similar program in the language arts for Catholic schools.
The Center's main focuses in government ethics includes conflicts of interest, gifts and bribes, cronyism, lobbying, transparency, and the personal lives of public officials. The Center's Ethics Roundtable for locally elected officials convenes mayors, councilpeople, county supervisors, and members of special districts quarterly to discuss how these issues play out in their work. Director of Government Ethics Hana Callaghan is a former corporate litigator, congressional aide, and associate executive director of the Santa Clara County Bar Association.
With a special focus on privacy, the Ethics Center offers presentations and teaching modules on such topics as data, social media, the "right to be forgotten," cybersecurity, ethics in video games, search engines, and privacy by design. Internet Ethics Program Director Irina Raicu is an attorney and a Certified Information Privacy Professional (U.S.).
The Journalism & Media Ethics program area focuses on addressing the ethical implications of how journalistic "gatekeeping" has changed in a digital era. In close collaboration with journalists, editors, and technologists, Journalism & Media Ethics helps members of the public engage with journalists, helps journalists equip themselves with in-depth knowledge on complex issues they cover, and helps stakeholders across the digital ecosystem defuse the rapid spread of misinformation and disinformation that frequently disguises itself as news.
The Center works with businesses, nonprofits, governments, and other organizations to analyze real-world issues in leadership ethics and to develop programs and tools to address them. Leadership Ethics Director Ann Skeet was CEO of American Leadership Forum Silicon Valley, and vice president of marketing for The Mercury News.
The Technology Ethics program area examines issues in the ethics of emerging technologies, providing teaching resources for universities and corporations, and working with organizations such as the Partnership on AI. Some particular areas of focus include AI ethics, space ethics, ethics of human enhancement and transhumanism, and global catastrophic and existential risk.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2886200 | Hate week
Hate Week is a fictional event in George Orwell's 1949 dystopian novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four". Hate week is a psychological operation designed to increase the hatred of the population for the current enemy of the totalitarian Party, as much as possible, whichever of the two opposing superstates that may be.
During one particular Hate Week, Oceania switched allies while a public speaker is in the middle of a sentence, although the disruption was minimal: the posters against the previous enemy were deemed to be "sabotage" of Hate Week conducted by Emmanuel Goldstein and his supporters, summarily torn down by the crowd, and quickly replaced with propaganda against the new enemy, thus demonstrating the ease with which the Party directs the hatred of its members. This ease of direction could also be partially attributed to the similarity in the terms "Eastasia" and "Eurasia" because they are more easily confused. All citizens of Oceania are expected to show appropriate enthusiasm during Hate Week, as well as the daily Two Minutes Hate. While participation in this event is not legally required, avoiding or refusing to do so is said to make one appear suspicious to the Thought Police, generally resulting in the vaporisation of the perpetrator. This ensures that they are against the opposing party and still allied with Big Brother.
Hate Week is celebrated in late summer. The events during that time include waxwork displays, military parades, speeches and lectures. New slogans are also coined and new songs are written. The theme of the Hate Week is called the Hate Song. It is mentioned that a unit from the Fiction Department was assigned to make atrocity pamphlets (falsified reports of atrocities committed by Oceania's enemies against her) designed to stimulate Oceania's populace further into enraged frenzy against all enemies. The aggregate effect of Hate Week thus is to excite the populace to such a point that they "would unquestionably have torn [captured enemy soldiers] to pieces" if given the opportunity.
Hate Week is introduced to the reader for the first time in the second paragraph of the first page of "Nineteen Eighty-Four"; however, at this point in time, readers have no idea what Hate Week is. "It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week."
"Hate week" has been adopted by theorists and pundits as a comparator for real life efforts to demonise an enemy of the state. Soviet Literary theorist John Rodden notes that "Hate Week" depicted by George Orwell's 1984 novel anticipates some of the anti-American events in the Soviet Union that followed. Scott Boulding argues similarities between the dystopian hate week and Stalinist efforts to supplant religion with devotional services to the state.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2889584 | Jonathan Glover
Jonathan Glover (; born 1941) is a British philosopher known for his books and studies on ethics. He currently teaches ethics at King's College London. Glover is a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution in the United States, and is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.
Glover was educated at Tonbridge School, later going on to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was a fellow and tutor in philosophy at New College, Oxford, and is now a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.
Glover's book "Causing Death and Saving Lives", first published in 1977, addresses practical moral questions about life and death decisions in the areas of abortion, infanticide, suicide, euthanasia, choices between people, capital punishment, and issues of war and peace. His approach is broadly consequentialist (utilitarian), though he gives significant weight to questions of individual autonomy, the Kantian notion that we ought to treat other people as ends in themselves rather than merely as means. He criticises the idea that time periods of mere consciousness or life itself are intrinsically valuable: these states matter, he argues, because they are pre-requisites for other things that are valuable and make for a life worth living. There is, then, no absolute sanctity of human life. He criticises the principle of double effect, as well as the acts and omissions doctrine, specifically the notion that there is a huge moral difference between killing someone and intentionally letting them die. He also draws on insights from history and literature, not just strictly from philosophy. On the topic of 20th century war and moral distance, he writes, "There is the feeling that because killing at a distance is easier, one would not have to be such a monster to do it." Throughout, the emphasis is on the consequences of moral choices for those affected, rather than on abstract principles applied impersonally.
In "Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century", published in 1999, Glover considers the psychological factors that predispose us to commit barbaric acts, and suggests how man-made moral traditions and the cultivation of moral imagination can work to restrain us from a ruthlessly selfish treatment of others. Gaining greater understanding of the monsters within us, he argues, is part of the process of caging and containing them. He examines the various types of atrocity that were perpetrated in the 20th century, including Nazi genocide, communist mass killings under Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, and more recent slaughter in Bosnia and Rwanda, and examines what sort of bulwarks there could be against them. He allows that religion has provided bulwarks, which are getting eroded. He identifies three types of bulwark. The two more dependable are sympathy and respect for human dignity. The less dependable third is Moral Identity: "I belong to a kind of person who would not do that sort of thing". This third is less dependable because notions of moral identity can themselves be warped, as was done by the Nazis.
In "", Sam Harris quotes Glover as saying: "Our entanglements with people close to us erode simple self-interest. Husbands, wives, lovers, parents, children and friends all blur the boundaries of selfish concern. Francis Bacon rightly said that people with children have given hostages to fortune. Inescapably, other forms of friendship and love hold us hostage too...Narrow self-interest is destabilized."
In 1989, the European Commission hired Glover to head a panel on embryo research and assisted reproduction.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2894539 | Frugality
Frugality is the quality of being frugal, sparing, thrifty, prudent or economical in the consumption of consumable resources such as food, time or money, and avoiding waste, lavishness or extravagance.
In behavioral science, frugality has been defined as the tendency to acquire goods and services in a restrained manner, and resourceful use of already owned economic goods and services, to achieve a longer term goal.
Common strategies of frugality include the reduction of waste, curbing costly habits, suppressing instant gratification by means of fiscal self-restraint, seeking efficiency, avoiding traps, defying expensive social norms, detecting and avoiding manipulative advertising, embracing cost-free options, using barter, and staying well-informed about local circumstances and both market and product/service realities. Frugality may contribute to health by leading people to avoid products that are both expensive and unhealthy when used to excess. Frugal living is mainly practiced by those who aim to cut expenses, have more money, and get the most they possibly can from their money.
In the context of some belief systems, frugality is a "philosophy" in which one does not trust (or is deeply wary of) "expert" knowledge from commercial markets or corporate cultures, claiming to know what is in the best economic, material, or spiritual interests of the individual.
Different spiritual communities consider frugality to be a virtue or a spiritual discipline. The Religious Society of Friends and the Puritans are examples of such groups. The basic philosophy behind this is the idea that people ought to save money in order to allocate it to more charitable purposes, such as helping others in need.
There are also environmentalists who consider frugality to be a virtue through which humans can make use of their ancestral skills as hunter-gatherers, carrying little and needing little, and finding meaning in nature instead of man-made conventions or religion. Henry David Thoreau expressed a similar philosophy in "Walden", with his zest for self-reliance and minimal possessions while living simply in the woods.
Frugality has been adopted as a strategic imperative by large enterprises as a means of cost reduction through engenderment of a philosophy of careful spending amongst the workforce. Cost reduction is often perceived negatively, be it within a corporate organisation or in society, so inviting each employee to embrace frugality transfers the burden of cost reduction from management to the employee. In doing so, corporations introduce a moral obligation to cost cutting, proposing the notion that careful management of costs is in the company, shareholder and employee's best interests.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2902209 | Securities fraud
Securities fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud, is a deceptive practice in the stock or commodities markets that induces investors to make purchase or sale decisions on the basis of false information, frequently resulting in losses, in violation of securities laws.
Securities fraud can also include outright theft from investors (embezzlement by stockbrokers), stock manipulation, misstatements on a public company's financial reports, and lying to corporate auditors. The term encompasses a wide range of other actions, including insider trading, front running and other illegal acts on the trading floor of a stock or commodity exchange.
Fraud by high level corporate officials became a subject of wide national attention during the early 2000s, as exemplified by corporate officer misconduct at Enron. It became a problem of such scope that the Bush Administration announced what it described as an "aggressive agenda" against corporate fraud. Less widely publicized manifestations continue, such as the securities fraud conviction of Charles E. Johnson Jr., founder of PurchasePro in May 2008. Then-FBI Director Robert Mueller predicted in April 2008 that corporate fraud cases will increase because of the subprime mortgage crisis.
Dummy corporations may be created by fraudsters to create the illusion of being an existing corporation with a similar name. Fraudsters then sell securities in the dummy corporation by misleading the investor into thinking that they are buying shares in the real corporation.
According to enforcement officials of the Securities and Exchange Commission, criminals engage in pump-and-dump schemes, in which false and/or fraudulent information is disseminated in chat rooms, forums, internet boards and via email (spamming), with the purpose of causing a dramatic price increase in thinly traded stocks or stocks of shell companies (the "pump"). In other instances, fraudsters disseminate materially false information about a company in hopes of urging investors to sell their shares so that the stock price plummets.
When the price reaches a certain level, criminals immediately sell off their holdings of those stocks (the "dump"), realizing substantial profits before the stock price falls back to its usual low level. Any buyers of the stock who are unaware of the fraud become victims once the price falls.
The SEC says that Internet fraud resides in several forms:
There are two types of "insider trading". The first is the trading of a corporation's stock or other security by corporate insiders such as officers, key employees, directors, or holders of more than ten percent of the firm's shares. This is generally legal, but there are certain reporting requirements.
The other type of insider trading is the purchase or sale of a security based on material non-public information. This type of trading is illegal in most instances. In illegal insider trading, an insider or a related party trades based on material non-public information obtained during the performance of the insider's duties at the corporation, or otherwise misappropriated.
In microcap fraud, stocks of small companies of under $250 million market capitalization are deceptively promoted, then sold to an unwary public. This type of fraud has been estimated to cost investors $1–3 billion annually. Microcap fraud includes pump and dump schemes involving boiler rooms and scams on the Internet. Many, but not all, microcap stocks involved in frauds are penny stocks, which trade for less than $5 a share.
Many penny stocks, particularly those that sell for fractions of a cent, are thinly traded. They can become the target of stock promoters and manipulators. These manipulators first purchase large quantities of stock, then artificially inflate the share price through false and misleading positive statements. This is referred to as a pump and dump scheme. The pump and dump is a form of microcap stock fraud. In more sophisticated versions of the fraud, individuals or organizations buy millions of shares, then use newsletter websites, chat rooms, stock message boards, press releases, or e-mail blasts to drive up interest in the stock. Very often, the perpetrator will claim to have "inside" information about impending news to persuade the unwitting investor to quickly buy the shares. When buying pressure pushes the share price up, the rise in price entices more people to believe the hype and to buy shares as well. Eventually the manipulators doing the "pumping" end up "dumping" when they sell their holdings. The expanding use of the Internet and personal communication devices has made penny stock scams easier to perpetrate. But it has also drawn high-profile public personalities into the sphere of regulatory oversight. Though not a scam per se, one notable example is rapper 50 Cent's use of Twitter to cause the price of a penny stock (HNHI) to increase dramatically. 50 Cent had previously invested in 30 million shares of the company, and as a result made $8.7 million in profit.
Another example of an activity that skirts the borderline between legitimate promotion and hype is the case of LEXG. Described (but perhaps overstated) as "the biggest stock promotion of all time", Lithium Exploration Group's market capitalization soared to over $350 million, after an extensive direct mail campaign. The promotion drew upon the legitimate growth in production and use of lithium, while touting Lithium Exploration Groups position within that sector. According to the company's December 31, 2010, form 10-Q (filed within months of the direct mail promotion), LEXG was a lithium company without assets. Its revenues and assets at that time were zero. Subsequently, the company did acquire lithium production/exploration properties, and addressed concerns raised in the press.
Penny stock companies often have low liquidity. Investors may encounter difficulty selling their positions after the buying pressure has abated, and the manipulators have fled.
In 2002, a wave of separate but often related accounting scandals became known to the public in the U.S. All of the leading public accounting firms—Arthur Andersen, Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers— and others have admitted to or have been charged with negligence to identify and prevent the publication of falsified financial reports by their corporate clients which had the effect of giving a misleading impression of their client companies' financial status. In several cases, the monetary amounts of the fraud involved are in the billions of USD.
Boiler rooms or boiler houses are stock brokerages that put undue pressure on clients to trade using telesales, usually in pursuit of microcap fraud schemes. Some boiler rooms offer clients transactions fraudulently, such as those with an undisclosed profitable relationship to the brokerage. Some 'boiler rooms' are not licensed but may be 'tied agents' of a brokerage house which itself is licensed or not. Securities sold in boiler rooms include commodities and private placements as well as microcap stocks, non-existent, or distressed stock and stock supplied by an intermediary at an undisclosed markup.
A number of major brokerages and mutual fund firms were accused of various deceptive acts that disadvantaged customers. Among them were late trading and market timing. Various SEC rules were enacted to curtail this practice. Bank of America Capital Management was accused by the SEC of having undisclosed arrangements with customers to allow short term trading.
Abusive short selling, including certain types of naked short selling, are also considered securities fraud because they can drive down stock prices. In abusive naked short selling, stock is sold without being borrowed and without any intent to borrow. The practice of spreading false information about stocks, to drive down their prices, is called "short and distort". During the takeover of Bear Stearns by J.P. Morgan Chase in March 2008, reports swirled that shorts were spreading rumors to drive down Bear Stearns' share price. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said this was more than rumors and said, "This is about collusion."
A Ponzi scheme is an investment fund where withdrawals are financed by subsequent investors, rather than profit obtained through investment activities. The largest instance of securities fraud committed by an individual ever is a Ponzi scheme operated by former NASDAQ chairman Bernard Madoff, which caused up to an estimated $64.8 billion in losses depending on which method is used to calculate the losses prior to its collapse.
The Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) reports that the Federal Trade Commission, FBI, and state securities regulators estimate that investment fraud in the United States ranges from $10–$40 billion annually. Of that number, SIPC estimates that $1–3 Billion is directly attributable to microcap stock fraud. Fraudulent schemes perpetrated in the securities and commodities markets can ultimately have a devastating impact on the viability and operation of these markets.
Class action securities fraud lawsuits rose 43 percent between 2006 and 2007, according to the Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse. During 2006 and 2007, securities fraud class actions were driven by market wide events, such as the 2006 backdating scandal and the 2007 subprime crisis. Securities fraud lawsuits remained below historical averages.
Some manifestations of this white collar crime have become more frequent as the Internet gives criminals greater access to prey. The trading volume in the United States securities and commodities markets, having grown dramatically in the 1990s, has led to an increase in fraud and misconduct by investors, executives, shareholders, and other market participants.
Securities fraud is becoming more complex as the industry develops more complicated investment vehicles. In addition, white collar criminals are expanding the scope of their fraud and are looking outside the United States for new markets, new investors, and banking secrecy havens to hide unjust enrichment.
A study conducted by the New York Stock Exchange in the mid-1990s reveals approximately 51.4 million individuals owned some type of traded stock, while 200 million individuals owned securities indirectly. These same financial markets provide the opportunity for wealth to be obtained and the opportunity for white collar criminals to take advantage of unwary investors.
Recovery of assets from the proceeds of securities fraud is a resource intensive and expensive undertaking because of the cleverness of fraudsters in concealment of assets and money laundering, as well as the tendency of many criminals to be profligate spenders. A victim of securities fraud is usually fortunate to recover any money from the defrauder.
Sometimes the losses caused by securities fraud are difficult to quantify. For example, insider trading is believed to raise the cost of capital for securities issuers, thus decreasing overall economic growth.
Any investor can become a victim, but persons aged fifty years or older are most often victimized, whether as direct purchasers in securities or indirect purchasers through pension funds. Not only do investors lose but so can creditors, taxing authorities, and employees.
Potential perpetrators of securities fraud within a publicly traded firm include any dishonest official within the company who has access to the payroll or financial reports that can be manipulated to:
Enron Corporation exemplifies all five tendencies, and its failure demonstrates the extreme dangers of a culture of corruption within a publicly traded corporation. The rarity of such spectacular failures of a corporation from securities fraud attests to the general reliability of most executives and boards of large corporations. Most spectacular failures of publicly traded companies result from such innocent causes as marketing blunders (Schlitz), an obsolete model of business (Penn Central, Woolworth's), inadequate market share (Studebaker), non-criminal incompetence (Braniff).
Even if the effect of securities fraud is not enough to cause bankruptcy, a lesser level can wipe out holders of common stock because of the leverage of value of shares upon the difference between assets and liabilities. Such fraud has been known as watered stock, analogous to the practice of force-feeding livestock great amounts of water to inflate their weight before sale to dealers.
The regulation and prosecution of securities fraud violations is undertaken on a broad front, involving numerous government agencies and self-regulatory organizations. One method of regulating and restricting a specific type of fraud perpetrated by pump and dump manipulators, is to target the category of stocks most often associated with this scheme. To that end, penny stocks have been the target of heightened enforcement efforts. In the United States, regulators have defined a penny stock as a security that must meet a number of specific standards. The criteria include price, market capitalization, and minimum shareholder equity. Securities traded on a national stock exchange, regardless of price, are exempt from regulatory designation as a penny stock, since it is thought that exchange traded securities are less vulnerable to manipulation. Therefore, CitiGroup (NYSE:C) and other NYSE listed securities which traded below $1.00 during the market downturn of 2008–2009, while properly regarded as "low priced" securities, were not technically "penny stocks". Although penny stock trading in the United States is now primarily controlled through rules and regulations enforced by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the genesis of this control is found in State securities law. The State of Georgia was the first state to codify a comprehensive penny stock securities law. Secretary of State Max Cleland, whose office enforced State securities laws was a principal proponent of the legislation. Representative Chesley V. Morton, the only stockbroker in the Georgia General Assembly at the time, was principal sponsor of the bill in the House of Representatives. Georgia's penny stock law was subsequently challenged in court. However, the law was eventually upheld in U.S. District Court, and the statute became the template for laws enacted in other states. Shortly thereafter, both FINRA and the SEC enacted comprehensive revisions of their penny stock regulations. These regulations proved effective in either closing or greatly restricting broker/dealers, such as Blinder, Robinson & Company, which specialized in the penny stocks sector. Meyer Blinder was jailed for securities fraud in 1992, after the collapse of his firm. However, sanctions under these specific regulations lack an effective means to address pump and dump schemes perpetrated by unregistered groups and individuals.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2903033 | Green brands
Green brands are those brands that consumers associate with environmental conservation and sustainable business practices.
Such brands appeal to consumers who are becoming more aware of the need to protect the environment. A green brand can add a unique selling point to a product and can boost corporate image. However, if a company is found or perceived to overstate its green practices its green brand may be criticised as greenwash.
GreenBrands is also an ecolabel, developed by GreenBrands and SERI(Sustainable Europe Research Institute in Vienna).
Ethical consumerism has led to an increase in green brands. In the food and drinks industry only 5 green brand products were launched in 2002, increasing to 328 in 2007 (Mintel global database).
In the case of consumer brands packaging can be a key element in communicating a green brand. This is because packaging communicates information to the consumer at the point-of-sale, and because of the environmental impact of the packaging itself.
Companies may claim sustainable packaging, recycled and/or recyclable material, or reduce excess packaging. Packaging is of especially high brand importance when the packaging is part of the aesthetic appeal of the product and brand, as in the case of the cosmetics and toiletries sector. Packaging material may have to not only reinforce environmental credentials, but also communicate the high-quality and luxury image of the brand.
In Europe concerns have been raised that consumers might be confused or mislead as a result of a recent increase in green brands. Because green brands can add a unique selling point there is little consistency from brand to brand. In the food and drinks industry it has been observed that companies are reluctant to use existing and widely recognised green logos, such as the mobius loop, because using their own makes the brand more easily distinguishable for the consumer.
In Britain, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) warned consumers in mid-2007, that some "green" claims might not be authentic. The ASA stated that green claims have become noticeably more prevalent in advertisement, and has investigated and upheld several complaints regarding "unsubstantiated environmental claims". The ASA Director General has stated that "the ASA needs to see robust evidence to back up any eco-friendly claims".
The ASA in Britain has also raised concerns that as awareness about climate change increase among consumers, the cases of unsubstantiated carbon claims (e.g. carbon emissions and carbon neutral claims) rises. The ASA has upheld a number of complaints against energy companies, including Scottish and Southern Energy car manufacturers, including Toyota, Lexus and Volkswagen, and airlines, including EasyJet, for misleading claims regarding carbon emissions and carbon neutrality.
Recent cases before the British ASA involved environmental claims such as "local". In December 2006 for example the ASA upheld a complaint against Tesco, where the company advertised British products as "local", which the ASA ruled to be misleading because in this particular case the consumers were likely to interpret “local” as referring to their immediate surrounding region.
In August 2008 the British ASA ruled that Shell had misled the public in an advertisement which claimed that a $10bn oil sands project in Alberta, northern Canada, was a "sustainable energy source". The ASA upheld a complaint by the World Wide Fund for Nature about Shell's advert in the Financial Times. Explaining the ruling the ASA stated that "We considered that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) best practice guidance on environmental claims stated that green claims should not 'be vague or ambiguous, for instance by simply trying to give a good impression about general concern for the environment. Claims should always avoid the vague use of terms such as 'sustainable', 'green', 'non-polluting' and so on." Furthermore the ASA ruling stated "Defra had made that recommendation because, although 'sustainable' was a widely used term, the lack of a universally agreed definition meant that it was likely to be ambiguous and unclear to consumers. Because we had not seen data that showed how Shell was effectively managing carbon emissions from its oil sands projects in order to limit climate change, we concluded that the ad was misleading"
In the United States the Federal Trade Commission issues the "Green Guides" (last updated 2012) - environmental marketing guidelines. The guidelines give advice on the types of substantiation needed to support environmental claims, and give examples of claims that are to be avoided. The Federal Trade Commission has recognised that these guidelines need updating, as for example they currently contain no guidance on carbon neutrality, or the terms sustainable or renewable. The Green Guides do contain guidance on the term recyclable, recycled and biodegradable.
The marketing and brand building experiences of many American green brands was documented in the book "The Gort Cloud" by Richard Seireeni, 2009. The gort cloud refers to the green community that provides support and a market to green brands.
In recent decades, there has been increasing interest in protecting the environment and sustainability when it comes to the world's markets. Due to global warming and the immense amount of environmental pollution attributed to factory manufacturing, the world has observed the rise in environmental issues (Chen, 2011). In response to society’s concerns, this has seen an increasing number of companies adopting green brands to front environmental responsibility. In turn, products and services of green brands have recently been seen to have a perfectly inelastic demand because people are prepared to support and pay a higher price for a sustainable image (Chen, 2011).
Through a consumer study taken in 1999, it was discovered that environmental issues are ranked above human rights, animal rights and welfare issues (Wheale & Hinton, 2007). This information shows growing consumer demand of companies providing goods and services that preserve the environment and adopt a “green” approach to business. In a similar study, according to Iannuzzi (2011), a compelling global demand for “greener products” was demonstrated by over 60% of all countries studied, further demonstrating the desire of environmentally friendly green brands. In the study, environmental awareness was placed among the most vital product traits that consumers valued when purchasing, along with minimising toxic and hazardous substances, water preservation and recycling (Iannuzzi, 2011). Green brands are ultimately more attractive to a lot of consumers nowadays, and committing to such sustainability is now essential to stay competitive.
Because concern for the environment is now a pivotal element in consumer decision-making, studies have found that the demand for green brands is higher than ever before (Ahmad & Thyagaraj, n.d.). A number of studies have also suggested that such a demand for greener products is due to consumers’ self-expressive benefits. When supporting green brands, customers believe this determines their role in society and as stated by Ahmad and Thyagaraj (n.d.), this gives consumers satisfaction that they are perceived as having an eco-friendly attitude. Various components have been stipulated as effects on conscious consumer behavior such as changing perspectives, awareness of environmental issues and greener products, and people’s perceived environmental contribution in society. Such factors help green brands to segment, define and target their market (Baker, 2003).
An example of companies tackling environmental sustainability is the world’s largest retailer, Walmart. Walmart has undertaken a sustainability strategy that called on their suppliers to supply greener products because they were adamant their customers demanded “more efficient, longer lasting and better performing products” (Iannuzzi, 2011). Being a world-leading retailer, Walmart’s green approach to business has put pressure on other companies to adopt similar practices that consumers are demanding.
The shift towards green brands is a result of numerous factors such as organic products being more accessible, fuel-efficient and eco-friendly automobiles becoming increasingly prevalent, and countless consumers looking to support the environment and portraying a green image (Richards, 2013). The development of the greener approach to living has transferred into marketing and advertising and consumer markets, where enterprises are adopting this movement to attract customers and increase profits (Richards, 2013).
When it comes to marketing strategies of green brands, company officials want to understand the effects of being green has on their company and customers alike. Being a green brand alone differentiates a brand from the outset and opens new market opportunities. The Body Shop is an example of a competitive green brand that succeeds through understanding and providing the consumer demand for eco-friendly products and their sound environmental performance (Baker, 2003). Green brands have also been profitable in niche markets where they can charge exclusive prices because conscious consumers are prepared to pay.
To combine environmental concern into marketing strategy is called ‘green marketing’ where companies use a range of undertakings to satisfy the consumer demand for environmentally friendly products such as revamping advertising, product adjustment, altering production operations, sustainable packaging and of course recycling (Baker, 2003). By doing this, a green brand is creating further value, which is conveyed through their communication strategy (Danciu, 2015).
Green brands looking to secure their sustainable image within consumers minds must establish a philosophy that describes their use of renewable resources, minimising waste, supplying safe goods and services and "giving back to the environment" (Saxena & Khandelwal, 2010). Environmental concerns should also be included in marketing plans. After segmenting the market, green brands can make contact with their target market through implementing strong integrated marketing communications (IMC), which conveys their value proposition to consumers (Saxena & Khandelwal, 2010).
Where a clean and green image is communicated, brands should be associated with environmental claims that are truthful in how their business practices impact on the surrounding environment (Danciu, 2015). Such claims can be relayed through green labeling colour schemes, packaging, and “nature” images through advertisements as well as on the Internet. Consumers need to be wary of greenwashing through marketing strategies that does not reflect any green qualities in the product itself.
Another area of marketing a green brand is making use of functional and emotional strategies to position a brand in consumers’ minds. The functional characteristic approach delivers information on how a brand's products and services are environmentally friendly, which creates brand connections for buyers and powerful cognitive perception of the company (Danciu, 2015). Such information should include a company’s sustainable production process and ecological footprint in relation to its superiority to other competitors. The emotional approach for positioning focuses on emotions and alludes to a brand relationship with nature and the environment (Wang, 2016). It has been found that emotional strategies build brand loyalty very effectively because consumers feel they are helping preserve the environment through supporting sustainably made products (Danciu, 2015). Wang (2016) states that overall, a mixed strategy of using both emotional and functional approaches to market a green brand generates favorable brand relationships and commitment from consumers. It is noteworthy to mention that the most prosperous green brands are affiliated with either “alternative technology or a green corporate philosophy” (Wang, 2016).
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2907123 | Matthew 5:39
Matthew 5:39 is the thirty-ninth verse of the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament and is part of the Sermon on the Mount. This is the second verse of the antithesis on the command: "eye for an eye". In one of the most famous verses in the New Testament, Jesus here rejects revenge and retaliation, instead telling his followers to turn the other cheek.
In the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible the text reads:
<poem>But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil:
but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right
cheek, turn to him the other also.</poem>
The World English Bible (WEB) translates the passage as:
<poem>But I tell you, don't resist him who is evil;
but whoever strikes you on your right
cheek, turn to him the other also.</poem>
This verse opens with the standard "but I say unto you" phrase that heralds a reinterpretation of Mosaic Law. While the Old Testament quote in the previous verse was a reference to retributive punishment, here Jesus uses the word "", which has been seen as far broader. This verse is often presented as advocating radical pacifism.
R. T. France rejects this view. He notes that the word translated as "resist", "anthistemi", has a far more restricted meaning in the original Greek. The word translates more accurately as "do not resist by legal means". Schweizer notes that this is how the word is used in and . To France, and many other scholars, this verse is just one part of a discussion of legal principles, similar to the previous and subsequent verses. The interpretation as a general rule of non-violent resistance is a misunderstanding of the original. For a full discussion of the debate and history of the phrase, see turn the other cheek.
Striking on the right cheek refers to a back-handed slap to the face. In Jesus' time, and still today in the Middle East, such a gesture is one of the highest forms of contempt. According to France, the gesture is a grave insult, not a physical attack, further distancing this verse from one espousing non-violence. Schweizer notes that this might be a reference to , and that this verse might thus be referencing the cheek slap specifically as something used on blasphemers. Jesus' followers might have been subject to these affronts by those who saw them as heretics.
This verse, as with , is vague on evil. It could be interpreted as a reference to the Evil One, i.e. Satan, the general evil of the world, as translated by the KJV, or the evil of specific individuals, as is translated by the WEB. The third interpretation is the one held by most modern scholars.
This verse is partially paralleled in .
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2908344 | Biblical courtship
Biblical courtship, also known as Christian courtship is a conservative Christian alternative to dating. It is a response to secular dating culture within various American Christian communities, c. 1985 to present. Motivated by concern for the need of Christian values in contrast to secular dating practices, conservative Christians identified what they saw as key Biblical principles for courtship and romance, and began to disseminate them in the 1980s.
The movement gained widespread exposure following the best-selling response to "I Kissed Dating Goodbye", a popular contemporary treatment of Christian courtship by homeschool student Joshua Harris. Keynote speaker and author Dr. S.M. Davis has developed a unique stand on this philosophy, and his materials have been popular with the homeschool culture since the early 1990s. Proponents of the courtship movement say that it is identified by Biblical principles, rather than particular methods or behavioral practices. These principles have been summarized in by Christina Rogers within the acronym CARE:
A more detailed list of courting ideals include:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2916020 | Coronach
A coronach (also written coranich, corrinoch, coranach, cronach, etc.) is the Scottish Gaelic equivalent of the Goll, being the third part of a round of keening, the traditional improvised singing at a death, wake or funeral in the Highlands of Scotland and in Ireland. Though observers have reported hearing such songs in Ireland or in the Scottish Highlands, and melodies have been noted down and printed since the 18th century, audio recordings are rare; not only was the practice dying out or being suppressed through the 19th century, but it was also considered by its practitioners to have been a very personal and spiritual practice, not suitable for performance or recording.
The Scottish border ballad "The Bonny Earl of Murray" is supposedly composed in the tradition of the coronach.
Schubert's Opus 52 No 4 (D 836) set words from Sir Walter Scott's "Lady of the Lake" under the title "Coronach", for female choir with piano accompaniment.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2922819 | David Braine (philosopher)
David Braine (1940 – 17 February 2017) was a British analytic philosopher with interests in analytic Philosophy of religion and Metaphysics, who sought to marry the techniques and insights of analytical philosophy and Phenomenology to the Metaphysics of classical Thomism. His "The Reality of Time and the Existence of God" set out to prove the existence of God from the fact that the world enjoys continuity in time. He argued that nothing in the world could be the cause of this continuity, whence God came into the picture.
His book "The Human Person: Animal and Spirit" attempts to provide a philosophical analysis of human beings which makes life after death possible.
Due to a car accident in 1977, he became paralysed from the chest down. Braine was opposed to the legalisation of euthanasia, and based some of that opposition on his own personal experience of living with a disability.
Braine was an important, if insufficiently well-known, contributor to the renaissance of analytical Philosophy of religion.
______________ (1994) University of Notre Dame Press, paperback edition.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2924982 | Consent (BDSM)
Consent within BDSM is when a participant gives their permission for certain acts or types of relationships. It bears much in common with the concept of informed consent and is simultaneously a personal, ethical and social issue. It is an issue that attracts much attention within BDSM, resulting in competing models of consent such as Safe, sane and consensual and Risk-aware consensual kink. Observers from outside the BDSM community have also commented on the issue of consent in BDSM, sometimes referring to legal consent which is a separate and largely unrelated matter. However, the presence of explicit consent within BDSM can often have implications for BDSM and the law and, depending on the country the participants are in, may make the differences between being prosecuted or not.
Where an act has been previously consented to, the consent can be terminated at any point, and by any participant, through using a safeword. Within the BDSM community, it is generally considered a high risk activity to engage in BDSM without a safeword. Acts undertaken with a lack of explicit consent may be considered abusive and those who ignore the use of a safeword may be shunned within the BDSM subculture. One study has shown that BDSM negotiations to establish consent consist of four parts covering style of play, body parts, limits and safewords.
Consent is an explicit agreement to acts, terms and conditions. It can be confirmed verbally and/or in writing.
The underlying principle is a classical liberal idea that a person's freedom can be measured by lack of interference with their personal choices. As in classical liberalism, the harm principle comes into play. Consent, within BDSM and some academic schools of thought, is what separates legally actionable harm from legitimate personal freedom.
Informed consent is the idea that consent is offered with sufficient information and understanding of what is being agreed upon. As in larger society, an impairment of mental state or decision making abilities is considered a state in which informed, rational consent cannot be offered. Consent given under coercion and pressure may also not be accepted.
Another concept is contemporaneous consent, which is focused on when consent is offered and how it can be revoked. Legally, if someone says "no", "stop", or any other related things, you are obligated to stop. That is contemporaneous consent. This can conflict with concepts like total power exchange and consensual nonconsent. This is an area of significant conflict within BDSM communities.
Consent is a vital element in all psychological play, and consent can be granted in many ways. Some employ a written form known as a "Dungeon negotiation form"; for others a simple verbal commitment is sufficient. Consent can be limited both in duration and content.
It is not unusual to grant consent only for an hour or for an evening. When a scene lasts for more than a few hours, some might decide to draft a "scene contract" that defines what will happen and who is responsible for what. Some "contracts" can become quite detailed and run for many pages, especially if a scene is to last a weekend or more.
For long term consent, a "Slave Contract" is sometimes used. BDSM "contracts" are "only" agreements between consenting adults and are not legally binding; in fact, the possession of one may be considered illegal in some areas. Slave contracts are simply a way of defining the nature and limits of the relationship. Other couples know each other's likes and dislikes and play accordingly. Such arrangements typically use a safeword, a signal by one or more of the participants that the action in question should either stop or that the session should end completely.
Consensual non-consent, also called meta-consent and blanket consent, is a mutual agreement to be able to act as if consent has been waived. It is an agreement where comprehensive consent is given in advance, with the intent of it being irrevocable under most circumstances. This often occurs without foreknowledge of the exact actions planned.
Consensual non-consent is considered a show of extreme trust and understanding. It is controversial within BDSM circles, even often frowned upon due to concerns about abuse and safety. It is mainly limited to those in Owner/property and 24/7 Master/slave relationships.
In recent years the term has also been used for the practice in play sessions. In the past, the term consensual non-consent was reserved to committed relationships, while the play practice used the umbrella term of edge play. This expanded scope is contentious and the subject of acrimonious debates.
In limited parts of the online BDSM community, "consensual non-consent" is instead used to refer to rape play that includes the use of safe words. This use of the term is commonly frowned upon, especially among total power exchange lifestyle participants. Experienced practitioners of BDSM generally discourage others from using "consensual non-consent" to indicate rape play. This attitude arises from the belief that it is a miscommunication potentially leading to serious and irreparable psychological harm.
Negotiation is a discussion about what is acceptable and what is off limits between partners. It is a crucial element for consent within the BDSM subculture. Negotiation can be formal with a complete checklist of acceptable and unacceptable acts. It can also be informal, or ad-hoc, as part of the regular flow of a relationship. The culture of BDSM encourages a more formalized and explicit process. Clear negotiation for consent is the norm.
Informal negotiation is the process of discovering limits and interests along the way. Things are up for discussion and consent is granted on a case by case basis. However, over time the consent granted typically becomes broader before hitting a plateau. Negotiation in this sense resembles regular vanilla relationship discussions and debates.
Formal negotiation goes through a comprehensive list of questions and disclosures. This can be a broad process, setting out the boundaries for a long-term relationship. It can also be a narrow process that only addresses one or two specific actions, like negotiating for hypnotic trance or a thuddy flogging (that involving broad implements). This is fairly popular with play partner arrangements and "pick up" play in BDSM clubs, as it helps set very clear boundaries.
BDSM communities share a common language of consent. Various models are expressed as acronyms representing differing approaches towards a philosophy of consent.
SSC stands for Safe, Sane, Consensual. It is far and away the most recognizable and popular model of consent in BDSM circles, though not without criticism.
RACK stands for Risk-Aware Consensual Kink. It is the second most popular consent model. It was created to overcome perceived shortcomings of SSC.
PRICK stands for Personal Responsibility In Consensual Kink. It is an alternative to RACK that emphasizes personal responsibility for choices and consequences. It originally was said in 2002 at BDSM Overdrive. It has evolved into Personal Responsibility Informed Consensual Kink.
Other less well known models of consent in BDSM include CCC which stands for Committed, Compassionate, Consensual and the 4 C’s - Caring, Communication, Consent, Caution.
Some activities in BDSM play may be considered to fall under legal definitions of rape, assault or similar crimes or torts, and potentially open participants to prosecution. However, many legal systems include a general defense that activities performed with the victim's consent shall not be considered a crime or a tort. This raises some legal and ethical issues, such as:
These concerns apply not only to BDSM but to every kind of interaction between persons. See Consent (criminal) for the general discussion.
The issue of consent in BDSM has caused a controversy among the BDSM community in some countries, since certain activities, especially those considered to be edgeplay, remain unlawful even when consent has been freely given. In such countries, these activities will always be viewed by law enforcement as unlawful when discovered, even though the activities have been entirely private. The Spanner case in England demonstrates the point, where participants in a consensual mutual BDSM play party were arrested. At all stages of appeal the national and European Court ruled against them on the basis that a person under English law may not give consent to anything more than minor injury.
The March 5th 2007 conviction of Glenn Marcus on counts of sex trafficking and forced labor in renewed much debate on the issue of consent in BDSM, both within and outside the community. In a similar case of an accusation made by a participant that the activities had not been consensual, in April 2007 two UK men were convicted of false imprisonment in a case where a third party who had been treated like a dog asserted the matter had not been consensual.
Interested people may think that private mutual activities should not be the subject of law as a matter of public policy, a view which has some legal backing in the United States from the case of "Lawrence v. Texas" where it was effectively ruled that the state lacked the power to declare an activity illegal purely on the basis of moral opinion. As of February 2019, the law in the UK has been changed to allow for consent to acts that inflict injury.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=42626 | Serial killer
A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more people, usually in service of abnormal psychological gratification, with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three murders, others extend it to four or lessen it to two.
Although psychological gratification is the usual motive for serial killing, and most serial killings involve sexual contact with the victim, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) states that the motives of serial killers can include anger, thrill-seeking, financial gain, and attention seeking. The murders may be attempted or completed in a similar fashion. The victims may have something in common, for example, demographic profile, appearance, gender or race. A serial killer is neither a mass murderer, nor a spree killer, although there may be conceptual overlaps between serial killers and spree killers.
The English term and concept of "serial killer" are commonly attributed to former FBI Special agent Robert Ressler who used the term "serial homicide" in 1974 in a lecture at Police Staff Academy in Bramshill, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom. Author Ann Rule postulates in her book Kiss Me, Kill Me (2004), that the English-language credit for coining the term goes to LAPD detective Pierce Brooks, who created the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) system in 1985. There is ample evidence the term was used in Europe and the United States earlier.
The German term and concept were coined by criminologist Ernst Gennat, who described Peter Kürten as a ' ('serial-murderer') in his article "" (1930). The earliest usage attested of the specific term "serial killer" listed in the "Oxford English Dictionary" was from a 1960s German film article written by Siegfried Kracauer, about the German expressionist film "M" (1931), portraying a pedophilic '.
In his book, "" (2004), criminal justice historian Peter Vronsky notes that while Ressler might have coined the English term "serial homicide" within the law in 1974, the terms "serial murder" and "serial murderer" appear in John Brophy's book "The Meaning of Murder" (1966). The Washington DC newspaper "Evening Star", in a 1967 review of the book: This use of ""serial" killer" to paraphrase Brophy's "serial murderer" does not appear to have been influential at the time.
In his more recent study, Vronsky states that the term "serial killing" first entered into broader American popular usage when published in "The New York Times" in the spring of 1981, to describe Atlanta serial killer Wayne Williams. Subsequently, throughout the 1980s, the term was used again in the pages of "The New York Times", one of the major national news publication of the United States, on 233 occasions. By the end of the 1990s, the use of the term had increased to 2,514 instances in the paper.
When defining serial killers, researchers generally use "three or more murders" as the baseline, considering it sufficient to provide a pattern without being overly restrictive. Independent of the number of murders, they need to have been committed at different times, and are usually committed in different places. The lack of a cooling-off period (a significant break between the murders) marks the difference between a spree killer and a serial killer. The category has, however, been found to be of no real value to law enforcement, because of definitional problems relating to the concept of a "cooling-off period". Cases of extended bouts of sequential killings over periods of weeks or months with no apparent "cooling off period" or "return to normality" have caused some experts to suggest a hybrid category of "spree-serial killer".
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines serial killing as "a series of two or more murders, committed as separate events, usually, but not always, by one offender acting alone". In 2005, the FBI hosted a multi-disciplinary symposium in San Antonio, Texas, which brought together 135 experts on serial murder from a variety of fields and specialties with the goal of identifying the commonalities of knowledge regarding serial murder. The group also settled on a definition of serial murder which FBI investigators widely accept as their standard: "The unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s) in separate events". The definition does not consider the motivation for killing nor define a cooling-off period.
Historical criminologists have suggested that there may have been serial murders throughout history, but specific cases were not adequately recorded. Some sources suggest that legends such as werewolves and vampires were inspired by medieval serial killers. In Africa, there have been periodic outbreaks of murder by "Lion" and "Leopard men".
Liu Pengli of China, nephew of the Han Emperor Jing, was made Prince of Jidong in the sixth year of the middle period of Jing's reign (144 BC). According to the Chinese historian Sima Qian, he would "go out on marauding expeditions with 20 or 30 slaves or with young men who were in hiding from the law, murdering people and seizing their belongings for sheer sport". Although many of his subjects knew about these murders, it was not until the 29th year of his reign that the son of one of his victims finally sent a report to the Emperor. Eventually, it was discovered that he had murdered at least 100 people. The officials of the court requested that Liu Pengli be executed; however, the emperor could not bear to have his own nephew killed, so Liu Pengli was made a commoner and banished.
In the 15th century, one of the wealthiest men in Europe and a former companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc, Gilles de Rais, sexually assaulted and killed peasant children, mainly boys, whom he had abducted from the surrounding villages and had taken to his castle. It is estimated that his victims numbered between 140 and 800. The Hungarian aristocrat Elizabeth Báthory, born into one of the wealthiest families in Transylvania, allegedly tortured and killed as many as 650 girls and young women before her arrest in 1610.
Members of the Thuggee cult in India may have murdered a million people between 1740 and 1840. Thug Behram, a member of the cult, may have murdered as many as 931 victims.
In his 1886 book, "Psychopathia Sexualis", psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing noted a case of a serial murderer in the 1870s, a Frenchman named Eusebius Pieydagnelle who had a sexual obsession with blood and confessed to murdering six people.
The unidentified killer Jack the Ripper, who has been called the first modern serial killer, killed at least five women, and possibly more, in London in 1888. He was the subject of a massive manhunt and investigation by the Metropolitan Police, during which many modern criminal investigation techniques were pioneered. A large team of policemen conducted house-to-house inquiries, forensic material was collected and suspects were identified and traced. Police surgeon Thomas Bond assembled one of the earliest character profiles of the offender.
The Ripper murders also marked an important watershed in the treatment of crime by journalists. While not the first serial killer in history, Jack the Ripper's case was the first to create a worldwide media frenzy. The dramatic murders of financially destitute women in the midst of the wealth of London focused the media's attention on the plight of the urban poor and gained coverage worldwide. Jack the Ripper has also been called the most infamous serial killer of all time, and his legend has spawned hundreds of theories on his real identity and many works of fiction.
H. H. Holmes was one of the first documented modern serial killers in the United States, responsible for the death of at least nine victims in the early 1890s. The case gained notoriety and wide publicity through possibly sensationalized accounts in William Randolph Hearst's newspapers. At the same time in France, Joseph Vacher became known as "The French Ripper" after killing and mutilating 11 women and children. He was executed in 1898 after confessing to his crimes.
76% of all known serial killers in the 20th century were from the United States.
Some commonly found characteristics of serial killers include the following:
There are exceptions to these criteria, however. For example, Harold Shipman was a successful professional (a General Practitioner working for the NHS). He was considered a pillar of the local community; he even won a professional award for a children's asthma clinic and was interviewed by Granada Television's "World in Action" on ITV. Dennis Nilsen was an ex-soldier turned civil servant and trade unionist who had no previous criminal record when arrested. Neither was known to have exhibited many of the tell-tale signs. Vlado Taneski, a crime reporter, was a career journalist who was caught after a series of articles he wrote gave clues that he had murdered people. Russell Williams was a successful and respected career Royal Canadian Air Force Colonel who was convicted of murdering two women, along with fetish burglaries and rapes.
Many serial killers have faced similar problems in their childhood development. Hickey's Trauma Control Model explains how early childhood trauma can set the child up for deviant behavior in adulthood; the child's environment (either their parents or society) is the dominant factor determining whether or not the child's behavior escalates into homicidal activity.
Family, or lack thereof, is the most prominent part of a child's development because it is what the child can identify with on a regular basis. "The serial killer is no different from any other individual who is instigated to seek approval from parents, sexual partners, or others." This need for approval is what influences children to attempt to develop social relationships with their family and peers. "The quality of their attachments to parents and other members of the family is critical to how these children relate to and value other members of society."
Wilson and Seaman (1990) conducted a study on incarcerated serial killers, and what they concluded was the most influential factor that contributed to their homicidal activity. Almost all of the serial killers in the study had experienced some sort of environmental problems during their childhood, such as a broken home caused by divorce, or a lack of a parental figure to discipline the child. Nearly half of the serial killers had experienced some type of physical or sexual abuse, and more of them had experienced emotional neglect.
When a parent has a drug or alcohol problem, the attention in the household is on the parents rather than the child. This neglect of the child leads to the lowering of their self-esteem and helps develop a fantasy world in which they are in control. Hickey's Trauma Control Model supports how the neglect from parents can facilitate deviant behavior, especially if the child sees substance abuse in action. This then leads to disposition (the inability to attach), which can further lead to homicidal behavior, unless the child finds a way to develop substantial relationships and fight the label they receive. If a child receives no support from anyone, then he or she is unlikely to recover from the traumatic event in a positive way. As stated by E. E. Maccoby, "the family has continued to be seen as a major—perhaps "the" major—arena for socialization".
There have been recent studies looking into the possibility that an abnormality with one's chromosomes could be the trigger for serial killers. Two serial killers, Bobby Joe Long and Richard Speck, came to attention for reported chromosomal abnormalities. Long had an extra X chromosome. Speck was erroneously reported to have an extra Y chromosome; in fact, his karyotype was performed twice and was normal each time. Hellen Morrison, an American forensic psychiatrist, said in an interview that while researchers have not identified a specific causal gene, the fact that the majority of serial killers are male leads researchers to believe there is "a change associated with the male chromosome make up".
Children who do not have the power to control the mistreatment they suffer sometimes create a new reality to which they can escape. This new reality becomes their fantasy that they have total control of and becomes part of their daily existence. In this fantasy world, their emotional development is guided and maintained. According to Garrison (1996), "the child becomes sociopathic because the normal development of the concepts of right and wrong and empathy towards others is retarded because the child's emotional and social development occurs within his self-centered fantasies. A person can do no wrong in his own world and the pain of others is of no consequence when the purpose of the fantasy world is to satisfy the needs of one person" (Garrison, 1996). Boundaries between fantasy and reality are lost and fantasies turn to dominance, control, sexual conquest, and violence, eventually leading to murder. Fantasy can lead to the first step in the process of a dissociative state, which, in the words of Stephen Giannangelo, "allows the serial killer to leave the stream of consciousness for what is, to him, a better place".
Criminologist Jose Sanchez reports, "the young criminal you see today is more detached from his victim, more ready to hurt or kill ... The lack of empathy for their victims among young criminals is just one symptom of a problem that afflicts the whole society." Lorenzo Carcaterra, author of "Gangster" (2001), explains how potential criminals are labeled by society, which can then lead to their offspring also developing in the same way through the cycle of violence. The ability for serial killers to appreciate the mental life of others is severely compromised, presumably leading to their dehumanization of others.
This process may be considered an expression of the intersubjectivity associated with a cognitive deficit regarding the capability to make sharp distinctions between other people and inanimate objects. For these individuals, objects can appear to possess animistic or humanistic power while people are perceived as objects. Before he was executed, serial killer Ted Bundy stated media violence and pornography had stimulated and increased his need to commit homicide, although this statement was made during last-ditch efforts to appeal his death sentence. However, correlation is not causation (a disturbed physiological disposition, psychosis, lack of socialization, or aggressiveness may contribute to both fantasy creation and serial killing without fantasy creation generally contributing to serial killing for instance). There are exceptions to the typical fantasy patterns of serial killers, as in the case of Dennis Rader, who was a loving family man and the leader of his church.
The FBI's "Crime Classification Manual" places serial killers into three categories: "organized", "disorganized", and "mixed" (i.e., offenders who exhibit organized and disorganized characteristics). Some killers descend from being organized into disorganized as their killings continue, as in the case of psychological decompensation or overconfidence due to having evaded capture, or vice versa, as when a previously disorganized killer identifies one or more specific aspects of the act of killing as his/her source of gratification and develops a "modus operandi" structured around those.
Organized serial killers often plan their crimes methodically, usually abducting victims, killing them in one place and disposing of them in another. They often lure the victims with ploys appealing to their sense of sympathy. Others specifically target prostitutes, who are likely to go voluntarily with a stranger. These killers maintain a high degree of control over the crime scene and usually have a solid knowledge of forensic science that enables them to cover their tracks, such as burying the body or weighing it down and sinking it in a river. They follow their crimes in the news media carefully and often take pride in their actions as if it were all a grand project.
Often, organized killers have social and other interpersonal skills sufficient to enable them to develop both personal and romantic relationships, friends and lovers and sometimes even attract and maintain a spouse and sustain a family including children. Among serial killers, those of this type are in the event of their capture most likely to be described by acquaintances as kind and unlikely to hurt anyone. Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy are examples of organized serial killers. In general, the IQs of organized serial killers tend to be near normal range, with a mean of 94.7. Organized nonsocial offenders tend to be on the higher end of the average, with a mean IQ of 99.2.
Disorganized serial killers are usually far more impulsive, often committing their murders with a random weapon available at the time, and usually do not attempt to hide the body. They are likely to be unemployed, a loner, or both, with very few friends. They often turn out to have a history of mental illness, and their modus operandi (M.O.) or lack thereof is often marked by excessive violence and sometimes necrophilia or sexual violence. Disorganized serial killers have been found to have a slightly lower mean IQ than organized serial killers, at 92.8.
Some people with a pathological interest in the power of life and death tend to be attracted to medical professions or acquiring such a job. These kinds of killers are sometimes referred to as "angels of death" or angels of mercy. Medical professionals will kill their patients for money, for a sense of sadistic pleasure, for a belief that they are "easing" the patient's pain, or simply "because they can". Perhaps the most prolific of these was the British doctor Harold Shipman. Another such killer was nurse Jane Toppan, who admitted during her murder trial that she was sexually aroused by death. She would administer a drug mixture to patients she chose as her victims, lie in bed with them and hold them close to her body as they died.
Another medical professional serial killer is Genene Jones. It is believed she killed 11 to 46 infants and children while working at Bexar County Medical Center Hospital in San Antonio, Texas. She is currently serving a 99-year sentence for the murder of Chelsea McClellan and the attempted murder of Rolando Santos, and became eligible for parole in 2017 due to a law in Texas at the time of her sentencing to reduce prison overcrowding. A similar case occurred in Britain in 1991, where nurse Beverley Allitt killed four children at the hospital where she worked, attempted to kill three more, and injured a further six over the course of two months.
A 21st-century example is Canadian nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer who murdered elderly patients in the nursing homes where she worked.
Female serial killers are rare compared to their male counterparts. Sources suggest that female serial killers represented less than one in every six known serial murderers in the United States between 1800 and 2004 (64 females from a total of 416 known offenders), or that around 15% of U.S. serial killers have been women, with a collective number of victims between 427 and 612. The authors of "Lethal Ladies", Amanda L. Farrell, Robert D. Keppel, and Victoria B. Titterington, state that "the Justice Department indicated 36 female serial killers have been active over the course of the last century." According to "The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology", there is evidence that 16% of all serial killers are women.
Kelleher and Kelleher (1998) created several categories to describe female serial killers. They used the classifications of "", "angel of death", "sexual predator", "revenge", "profit or crime", "team killer", "question of sanity", "unexplained", and "unsolved". In using these categories, they observed that most women fell into the categories of the black widow or team killer. Although motivations for female serial killers can include attention seeking, addiction, or the result of psychopathological behavioral factors, female serial killers are commonly categorized as murdering men for material gain, usually being emotionally close to their victims, and generally needing to have a relationship with the victim, hence the traditional cultural image of the "black widow". In describing murderer Stacey Castor, forensic psychiatrist James Knoll offered a psychological perspective on what defines a "black widow" type. In simple terms, he described it as a woman who kills two or more husbands or lovers for material gain. Although Castor was not officially defined as a serial killer, it is likely that she would have killed again.
The methods that female serial killers use for murder are frequently covert or low-profile, such as murder by poison (the preferred choice for killing). Other methods used by female serial killers include shootings (used by 20%), suffocation (16%), stabbing (11%), and drowning (5%). They commit killings in specific places, such as their home or a health-care facility, or at different locations within the same city or state. A notable exception to the typical characteristics of female serial killers is Aileen Wuornos, who killed outdoors instead of at home, used a gun instead of poison, killed strangers instead of friends or family, and killed for personal gratification. One "analysis of 86 female serial killers from the United States found that the victims tended to be spouses, children or the elderly". Other studies indicate that since 1975, increasingly strangers are marginally the most preferred victim of female serial killers, or that only 26% of female serial killers kill for material gain only. Sources state that each killer will have her own proclivities, needs and triggers. A review of the published literature on female serial murder stated that "sexual or sadistic motives are believed to be extremely rare in female serial murderers, and psychopathic traits and histories of childhood abuse have been consistently reported in these women."
A study by Eric W. Hickey (2010) of 64 female serial killers in the United States indicated that sexual activity was one of several motives in 10% of the cases, enjoyment in 11% and control in 14% and that 51% of all U.S. female serial killers murdered at least one woman and 31% murdered at least one child. In other cases, women have been involved as an accomplice with a male serial killer as a part of a serial killing team. A 2015 study published in "The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology" found that the most common motive for female serial killers was for financial gain and almost 40% of them had experienced some sort of mental illness.
Peter Vronsky in "Female Serial Killers" (2007) maintains that female serial killers today often kill for the same reason males do: as a means of expressing rage and control. He suggests that sometimes the theft of the victims' property by the female "black widow" type serial killer appears to be for material gain, but really is akin to a male serial killer's collecting of totems (souvenirs) from the victim as a way of exerting continued control over the victim and reliving it. By contrast, Hickey states that although popular perception sees "black widow" female serial killers as something of the Victorian past, in his statistical study of female serial killer cases reported in the United States since 1826, approximately 75% occurred since 1950.
The most prolific female serial killer in all of history is allegedly Elizabeth Báthory. Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed (Báthory Erzsébet in Hungarian, August 7, 1560 – August 21, 1614) was a countess from the renowned Báthory family. Before her husband's death, Elizabeth took great pleasure in torturing the staff, by jamming pins under the servant's fingernails or stripping servants and throwing them into the snow. After her husband's death, she and four collaborators were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls and young women, with one witness attributing to them over 600 victims, though the number for which they were convicted was 80. Elizabeth herself was neither tried nor convicted. In 1610, however, she was imprisoned in the Csejte Castle, where she remained bricked in a set of rooms until her death four years later.
A 2010 article by Perri and Lichtenwald addressed some of the misperceptions concerning female criminality. In the article, Perri and Lichtenwald analyze the current research regarding female psychopathy, including case studies of female psychopathic killers featuring Münchausen syndrome by proxy, cesarean section homicide, fraud detection homicide, female kill teams, and a female serial killer.
Juvenile serial killers are rare. There are three main categories that juvenile serial killers can fit into: primary, maturing, and secondary killers. There have been studies done to compare and contrast these three groups and to discover similarities and differences between them. Although these types of serial killers are less common, oftentimes adult serial killers may make their debut at an early age and it can be an opportunity for researchers to study what factors brought about the behavior. Though it is rare, the youngest felon on death row is in fact, a juvenile serial killer named Harvey Miguel Robinson.
The racial demographics regarding serial killers are often subject to debate. In the United States, the majority of reported and investigated serial killers are white males, from a lower-to-middle-class background, usually in their late 20s to early 30s. However, there are African American, Asian, and Hispanic (of any race) serial killers as well, and, according to the FBI, based on percentages of the U.S. population, whites are not more likely than other races to be serial killers. Criminal profiler Pat Brown says serial killers are usually reported as white because serial killers usually target victims of their own race, and argues the media typically focuses on "All-American" white and pretty female victims who were the targets of white male offenders; that crimes among minority offenders in urban communities, where crime rates are higher, are under-investigated; and that minority serial killers likely exist at the same ratios as white serial killers for the population. She believes that the myth that serial killers are always white might have become "truth" in some research fields due to the over-reporting of white serial killers in the media.
According to some sources, the percentage of serial killers who are African American is estimated to be between 13% and 22%. Another study has shown that 16% of serial killers are African American, what author Maurice Godwin describes as a "sizeable portion". A 2014 Radford/FGCU Serial Killer Database annual statistics report indicated that for the decades 1900–2010, the percentage of white serial killers was 52.1% while the percentage of African American serial killers was 40.3%.
In a 2005 article Anthony Walsh, professor of criminal justice at Boise State University, argued a review of post-WWII serial killings in America finds that the prevalence of minority serial killers has typically been drastically underestimated in both professional research literature and the mass media. As a paradigmatic case of this media double standard, Walsh cites news reporting on white killer Gary Heidnik and African-American killer Harrison Graham. Both men were residents of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; both imprisoned, tortured, and killed several women; and both were arrested only months apart in 1987. "Heidnik received widespread national attention, became the subject of books and television shows, and served as a model for the fictitious Buffalo Bill in "Silence of the Lambs"", writes Walsh, while "Graham received virtually no media attention outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, despite having been convicted of four more murders than Heidnik".
There is not much research about serial homicide in non-Western countries, or outside the U.S.
In one study of serial homicide in South Africa, many patterns were similar to established patterns in the U.S., with some exceptions: no offenders were female, offenders were lower educated than in the U.S., and both victims and offenders were predominantly black.
Beverley Allitt of London England, a nurse showing symptoms of Munchausen syndrome claimed 4 young lives and attempted to kill 9 others.
The motives of serial killers are generally placed into four categories: "visionary", "mission-oriented", "hedonistic", and "power or control"; however, the motives of any given killer may display considerable overlap among these categories.
Visionary serial killers suffer from psychotic breaks with reality, sometimes believing they are another person or are compelled to murder by entities such as the Devil or God. The two most common subgroups are "demon mandated" and "God mandated".
Herbert Mullin believed the American casualties in the Vietnam War were preventing California from experiencing the Big One. As the war wound down, Mullin claimed his father instructed him via telepathy to raise the number of "human sacrifices to nature" to delay a catastrophic earthquake that would plunge California into the ocean. David Berkowitz ("Son of Sam") may also be an example of a visionary serial killer, having claimed a demon transmitted orders through his neighbor's dog and instructed him to commit murder. Berkowitz later described those claims as a hoax, as originally concluded by psychiatrist David Abrahamsen.
Mission-oriented killers typically justify their acts as "ridding the world" of certain types of people perceived as undesirable, such as the homeless, ex-cons, homosexuals, drug users, prostitutes, or people of different ethnicity or religion; however, they are generally not psychotic. Some see themselves as attempting to change society, often to cure a societal ill.
This type of serial killer seeks thrills and derives pleasure from killing, seeing people as expendable means to this goal. Forensic psychologists have identified three subtypes of the hedonistic killer: "lust", "thrill", and "comfort".
Sex is the primary motive of lust killers, whether or not the victims are dead, and fantasy plays a large role in their killings. Their sexual gratification depends on the amount of torture and mutilation they perform on their victims. The sexual serial murderer has a psychological need to have absolute control, dominance, and power over their victims, and the infliction of torture, pain, and ultimately death is used in an attempt to fulfill their need. They usually use weapons that require close contact with the victims, such as knives or hands. As lust killers continue with their murders, the time between killings decreases or the required level of stimulation increases, sometimes both.
Kenneth Bianchi, one of the "Hillside Stranglers", murdered women and girls of different ages, races, and appearance because his sexual urges required different types of stimulation and increasing intensity. Jeffrey Dahmer searched for his perfect fantasy lover—beautiful, submissive and eternal. As his desire increased, he experimented with drugs, alcohol, and exotic sex. His increasing need for stimulation was demonstrated by the dismemberment of victims, whose heads and genitals he preserved, and by his attempts to create a "living zombie" under his control (by pouring acid into a hole drilled into the victim's skull).
Dahmer once said, "Lust played a big part of it. Control and lust. Once it happened the first time, it just seemed like it had control of my life from there on in. The killing was just a means to an end. That was the least satisfactory part. I didn't enjoy doing that. That's why I tried to create living zombies with … acid and the drill." He further elaborated on this, also saying, "I wanted to see if it was possible to make—again, it sounds really gross—uh, zombies, people that would not have a will of their own, but would follow my instructions without resistance. So after that, I started using the drilling technique." He experimented with cannibalism to "ensure his victims would always be a part of him".
The primary motive of a thrill killer is to induce pain or terror in their victims, which provides stimulation and excitement for the killer. They seek the adrenaline rush provided by hunting and killing victims. Thrill killers murder only for the kill; usually, the attack is not prolonged, and there is no sexual aspect. Usually, the victims are strangers, although the killer may have followed them for a period of time. Thrill killers can abstain from killing for long periods of time and become more successful at killing as they refine their murder methods. Many attempt to commit the perfect crime and believe they will not be caught.
Robert Hansen took his victims to a secluded area, where he would let them loose and then hunt and kill them. In one of his letters to San Francisco Bay Area newspapers in San Francisco, California, the Zodiac Killer wrote "[killing] gives me the most thrilling experience it is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl". Carl Watts was described by a surviving victim as "excited and hyper and clappin' and just making noises like he was excited, that this was gonna be fun" during the 1982 attack. Slashing, stabbing, hanging, drowning, asphyxiating, and strangling were among the ways Watts killed.
Material gain and a comfortable lifestyle are the primary motives of comfort killers. Usually, the victims are family members and close acquaintances. After a murder, a comfort killer will usually wait for a period of time before killing again to allow any suspicions by family or authorities to subside. They often use poison, most notably arsenic, to kill their victims. Female serial killers are often comfort killers, although not all comfort killers are female.
Dorothea Puente killed her tenants for their Social Security checks and buried them in the backyard of her home. H. H. Holmes killed for insurance and business profits. Professional killers ("hitmen") may also be considered comfort serial killers. Richard Kuklinski charged tens of thousands of dollars for a "hit", earning enough money to support his family in a middle-class lifestyle (Bruno, 1993).
Some, like Puente and Holmes, may be involved in or have previous convictions for theft, fraud, non-payment of debts, embezzlement and other crimes of a similar nature. Dorothea Puente was finally arrested on a parole violation, having been on parole for a previous fraud conviction.
In 2016, the oldest prosecution and conviction of a suspected serial killer (Felix Vail) took place in Louisiana. He was convicted of murder 54 years after his wife's death in 1962, which had originally been ruled an accidental drowning, and which occurred only months after Vail took out two life insurance policies on her. He is a suspect in the disappearances of two other women – his girlfriend in 1973 and his second wife in 1984. The prosecutors were allowed to present evidence of the two disappearances under the Doctrine of chances.
The main objective for this type of serial killer is to gain and exert power over their victim. Such killers are sometimes abused as children, leaving them with feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy as adults. Many power- or control-motivated killers sexually abuse their victims, but they differ from hedonistic killers in that rape is not motivated by lust (as it would be with a lust murder) but as simply another form of dominating the victim. Ted Bundy is an example of a power/control-oriented serial killer. He traveled around the United States seeking women to control.
Many serial killers claim that a violent culture influenced them to commit murders. During his final interview, Ted Bundy stated that hardcore pornography was responsible for his actions. Others idolise figures for their deeds or perceived vigilante justice, such as Peter Kürten, who idolized Jack the Ripper, or John Wayne Gacy and Ed Kemper, who both idolized the actor John Wayne.
Killers who have a strong desire for fame or to be renowned for their actions desire media attention as a way of validating and spreading their crimes; fear is also a component here, as some serial killers enjoy causing fear. An example is Dennis Rader, who sought attention from the press during his murder spree.
Many movies, books, and documentaries have been created, detailing serial killers' lives and crimes. For example, the biographical film "Ted Bundy" (2002) focuses on serial killer Ted Bundy's personal life in college, leading up to his execution, and "Dahmer" (2002) tells the story of Jeffrey Dahmer.
Serial killers are also portrayed in fictional media, oftentimes as having substantial intelligence and looking for difficult targets, despite the contradiction with the psychological profile of serial killers.
Theories for why certain people commit serial murder have been advanced. Some theorists believe the reasons are biological, suggesting serial killers are born, not made, and that their violent behavior is a result of abnormal brain activity. Holmes and Holmes believe that "until a reliable sample can be obtained and tested, there is no scientific statement that can be made concerning the exact role of biology as a determining factor of a serial killer personality."
The "Fractured Identity Syndrome" (FIS) is a merging of Charles Cooley's "looking glass self" and Erving Goffman's "virtual" and "actual social identity" theories. The FIS suggests a social event, or series of events, during one's childhood or adolescence results in a fracturing of the personality of the serial killer. The term "fracture" is defined as a small breakage of the personality which is often not visible to the outside world and is only felt by the killer.
"Social Process Theory" has also been suggested as an explanation for serial murder. Social process theory states that offenders may turn to crime due to peer pressure, family and friends. Criminal behavior is a process of interaction with social institutions, in which everyone has the potential for criminal behavior. A lack of family structure and identity could also be a cause leading to serial murder traits. A child used as a scapegoat will be deprived of their capacity to feel guilt. Displaced anger could result in animal torture, as identified in the Macdonald triad, and a further lack of basic identity.
The "military theory" has been proposed as an explanation for why serial murderers kill, as some serial murderers have served in the military or related fields. According to Castle and Hensley, 7% of the serial killers studied had military experience. This figure may be a proportional under-representation when compared to the number of military veterans in a nation's total population. For example, according to the United States census for the year 2000, military veterans comprised 12.7% of the U.S. population; in England, it was estimated in 2007 that military veterans comprised 9.1% of the population. Though by contrast, about 2.5% of the population of Canada in 2006 consisted of military veterans.
There are two theories that can be used to study the correlation between serial killing and military training: "Applied learning theory" states that serial killing can be learned. The military is training for higher kill rates from servicemen while training the soldiers to be desensitized to taking a human life. "Social learning theory" can be used when soldiers get praised and accommodated for killing. They learn or believe that they learn, that it is acceptable to kill because they were praised for it in the military. Serial killers want accreditation for the work that they have done.
In both military and serial killing, the offender or the soldier may become desensitized to killing as well as compartmentalized; the soldiers do not see enemy personnel as "human" and neither do serial killers see their victims as humans. The theories do not imply that military institutions make a deliberate effort to produce serial killers; to the contrary, all military personnel are trained to recognize when, where, and against whom it is appropriate to use deadly force, which starts with the basic "Law of Land Warfare", taught during the initial training phase, and may include more stringent policies for military personnel in law enforcement or security. They are also taught ethics in basic training.
In 2008, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) published a handbook titled "Serial Murder" which was the product of a symposium held in 2005 to bring together the many issues surrounding serial murder, including its investigation.
According to the FBI, identifying one, or multiple, murders as being the work of a serial killer is the first challenge an investigation faces, especially if the victim(s) come from a marginalized or high-risk population and is normally linked through forensic or behavioral evidence (FBI 2008). Should the cases cross multiple jurisdictions, the law enforcement system in the United States is fragmented and thus not configured to detect multiple similar murders across a large geographic area (Egger 1998). The FBI suggests utilizing databases and increasing interdepartmental communication. Keppel (1989) suggests holding multi-jurisdictional conferences regularly to compare cases giving departments a greater chance to detect linked cases and overcome linkage blindness.
One such collaboration, the "Radford/FGCU Serial Killer Database Project" was proposed at the 2012 FDIAI Annual Conference. Utilizing Radford's Serial Killer Database as a starting point, the new collaboration, hosted by FGCU Justice Studies, has invited and is working in conjunction with other universities to maintain and expand the scope of the database to also include spree and mass murders. Utilizing over 170 data points, multiple-murderer methodology and victimology; researchers and Law Enforcement Agencies can build case studies and statistical profiles to further research the "Who, What, Why and How" of these types of crimes.
Leadership, or administration, should play a small or virtually non-existent role in the actual investigation past assigning knowledgeable or experienced homicide investigators to lead positions. The administration's role is not to run the investigation but to establish and reaffirm the primary goal of catching the serial killer, as well as provide support for the investigators. The FBI (2008) suggests completing Memorandums of Understanding to facilitate support and commitment of resources from different jurisdictions to an investigation. Egger (1998) takes this one step further and suggests completing mutual aid pacts, which are written agreements to provide support to each other in a time of need, with surrounding jurisdictions. Doing this in advance would save time and resources that could be used on the investigation.
Organization of the structure of an investigation is key to its success, as demonstrated by the investigation of Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer. Once a serial murder case was established, a task force was created to track down and arrest the offender. Over the course of the investigation, for various reasons, the task force's organization was radically changed and reorganized multiple times – at one point including more than 50 full-time personnel, and at another, only a single investigator. Eventually, what led to the end of the investigation was a conference of 25 detectives organized to share ideas to solve the case.
The FBI handbook provides a description of how a task force should be organized but offers no additional options on how to structure the investigation. While it appears advantageous to have a full-time staff assigned to a serial murder investigation, it can become prohibitively expensive. For example, the Green River Task Force cost upwards of $2 million per year, and as was witnessed with the Green River Killer investigation, other strategies can prevail where a task force fails.
A common strategy, already employed by many departments for other reasons, is the conference, in which departments get together and focus on a specific set of topics. With serial murders, the focus is typically on unsolved cases, with evidence thought to be related to the case at hand.
Similar to a conference is an information clearing-house in which a jurisdiction with a suspected serial murder case collects all of its evidence and actively seeks data which may be related from other jurisdictions. By collecting all of the related information into one place, they provide a central point in which it can be organized and easily accessed by other jurisdictions working toward the goal of arresting an offender and ending the murders.
Already mentioned was the task force, FBI 2008, Keppel 1989 which provides for a flexible, organized, framework for jurisdictions depending on the needs of the investigation. Unfortunately due to the need to commit resources (manpower, money, equipment, etc.) for long periods of time it can be an unsustainable option.
In the case of the investigation of Aileen Wournos, the Marion County Sheriff coordinated multiple agencies without any written or formal agreement. While not a specific strategy for a serial murder investigation, this is certainly a best practice in so far as the agencies were able to work easily together toward a common goal.
Finally, once a serial murder investigation has been identified, the use of an FBI Rapid Response Team can assist both experienced and inexperienced jurisdictions in setting up a task force. This is completed by organizing and delegating jobs, by compiling and analyzing clues, and by establishing communication between the parties involved.
During the course of a serial murder investigation, it may become necessary to call in additional resources; the FBI defines this as Resource Augmentation. Within the structure of a task force, the addition of a resource should be thought of as either long term or short term. If the task force's framework is expanded to include the new resource, then it should be permanent and not removed. For short term needs, such as setting up roadblocks or canvassing a neighborhood, additional resources should be called in on a short-term basis. The decision of whether resources are needed short or long term should be left to the lead investigator and facilitated by the administration (FBI 2008).
The confusion and counter productiveness created by changing the structure of a task force mid investigation is illustrated by the way the Green River Task Force's staffing and structure was changed multiple times throughout the investigation. This made an already complicated situation more difficult, resulting in the delay or loss of information, which allowed Ridgeway to continue killing (Guillen 2007). The FBI model does not take into account that permanently expanding a task force, or investigative structure, may not be possible due to cost or personnel availability. Egger (1998) offers several alternative strategies including; using investigative consultants, or experienced staff to augment an investigative team. Not all departments have investigators experienced in serial murder and by temporarily bringing in consultants, they can educate a department to a level of competence then step out. This would reduce the initially established framework of the investigation team and save the department the cost of retaining the consultants until the conclusion of the investigation.
The FBI handbook (2008) and Keppel (1989) both stress communication as paramount. The difference is that the FBI handbook (2008) concentrates primarily on communication within a task force while Keppel (1989) makes getting information out to and allowing information to be passed back from patrol officers a priority. The FBI handbook (2008) suggests having daily e-mail or in-person briefings for all staff involved in the investigation and providing periodic summary briefings to patrol officer and managers. Looking back on a majority of serial murderer arrests, most are exercised by patrol officers in the course of their everyday duties and unrelated to the ongoing serial murder investigation (Egger 1998, Keppel 1989).
Keppel (1989) provides examples of Larry Eyler, who was arrested during a traffic stop for a parking violation, and Ted Bundy, who was arrested during a traffic stop for operating a stolen vehicle. In each case, it was uniformed officers, not directly involved in the investigation, who knew what to look for and took the direct action that stopped the killer. By providing up to date (as opposed to periodic) briefings and information to officers on the street the chances of catching a serial killer, or finding solid leads, are increased.
A serial murder investigation generates staggering amounts of data, all of which needs to be reviewed and analyzed. A standardized method of documenting and distributing information must be established and investigators must be allowed time to complete reports while investigating leads and at the end of a shift (FBI 2008). When the mechanism for data management is insufficient, leads are not only lost or buried but the investigation can be hindered and new information can become difficult to obtain or become corrupted.
During the Green River Killer investigation, reporters would often find and interview possible victims or witnesses ahead of investigators. The understaffed investigation was unable to keep up the information flow, which prevented them from promptly responding to leads. To make matters worse, investigators believed that the journalists, untrained in interviewing victims or witnesses of crimes, would corrupt the information and result in unreliable leads (Guillen 2007).
Notorious and infamous serial killers number in the hundreds and a subculture revolves around their legacies. That subculture includes the collection, sale, and display of serial killer memorabilia, dubbed "murderabilia" by one of the best-known opponents of collectors of serial killer remnants, Andrew Kahan. He is the director of the Mayor's Crime Victims Office in Houston and is backed by the families of murder victims and "Son of Sam laws" existing in some states that prevent murderers from profiting from the publicity generated by their crimes.
Such memorabilia includes the paintings, writings, and poems of these killers. Recently, marketing has capitalized even more upon interest in serial killers with the rise of various merchandise such as trading cards, action figures, and books such as "The Serial Killer Files: The Who, What, Where, How, and Why of the World's Most Terrifying Murderers" by Harold Schechter, and "The A-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers" by Schecter and David Everitt. Some serial killers attain celebrity status in the way they acquire fans and may have previous personal possessions auctioned off on websites like eBay. A few examples of this are Ed Gein's 150-pound stolen gravestone and Bobby Joe Long's sunglasses.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=44282 | Turning the other cheek
Turning the other cheek is a phrase in Christian doctrine from the Sermon on the Mount that refers to responding to injury without revenge and allowing more injury. This passage is variously interpreted as commanding nonresistance, Christian pacifism, or nonviolence on the part of the victim. It has also been interpreted as a way to embarrass a bully.
The phrase originates from the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament. In the Gospel of Matthew chapter 5, an alternative for "an eye for an eye" is given by Jesus:
In the Sermon on the Plain in the Gospel of Luke chapter 6, as part of his command to "love your enemies", Jesus says:
This phrase, as with much of the Sermon on the Mount, has been subject to both literal and figurative interpretations.
According to this interpretation the passages call for total nonresistance to the point of "facilitating" aggression against oneself, and since human governments defend themselves by military force, some have advocated Christian anarchism, including Leo Tolstoy who elucidated his reasoning in "The Kingdom of God Is Within You".
The scholar Walter Wink, in his book "Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination", interprets the passage as ways to subvert the power structures of the time.
At the time of Jesus, says Wink, striking backhand a person deemed to be of lower socioeconomic class was a means of asserting authority and dominance. If the persecuted person "turned the other cheek," the discipliner was faced with a dilemma: The left hand was used for unclean purposes, so a back-hand strike on the opposite cheek would not be performed. An alternative would be a slap with the open hand as a challenge or to punch the person, but this was seen as a statement of equality. Thus, by turning the other cheek, the persecuted was demanding equality.
Wink continues with an interpretation of handing over one's cloak in addition to one's tunic. The debtor has given the shirt off his back, a situation forbidden by Hebrew law as stated in Deuteronomy (24:10–13). By giving the lender the cloak as well, the debtor was reduced to nakedness. Wink notes that public nudity was viewed as bringing shame on the viewer, and not just the naked, as seen in Noah's case (Genesis 9:20–23).
Wink interprets the succeeding verse from the Sermon on the Mount as a method for making the oppressor break the law. The commonly invoked Roman law of Angaria allowed the Roman authorities to demand that inhabitants of occupied territories carry messages and equipment the distance of one mile post, but prohibited forcing an individual to go further than a single mile, at the risk of suffering disciplinary actions. In this example, the nonviolent interpretation sees Jesus as placing criticism on an unjust and hated Roman law, as well as clarifying the teaching to extend beyond Jewish law.
Another interpretation is that Jesus was not changing the meaning of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth", but restoring it to the original context. Jesus starts his statement with "you have heard it said," which could mean that he was clarifying a misconception, as opposed to "it is written", which could be a reference to scripture. The common misconception seems to be that people were using Exodus 21:24–25 (the guidelines for a magistrate to punish convicted offenders) as a justification for personal vengeance. However, the command to "turn the other cheek" would be not a command to allow someone to beat or rob a person but a command not to take vengeance.
In the New Thought community popular in the late 19th and early 20th century, many spiritual teachers such as Emmet Fox viewed Jesus Christ as the greatest teacher of metaphysics that ever lived; that in his teachings he was attempting to explain to the individuals of the day how to improve their lot in life through practical teachings. The Sermon on the Mount records the details of one such seminar. Despite losing much in translation, as well as using ancient metaphors which are easily misinterpreted in the modern age, the tenets of Jesus's teachings, phrases such as 'resist evil' and 'turn the other cheek' are pure Godly instructions.
Rather than taking 'an eye for an eye', Jesus encourages us to resist evil, because giving our attention to evil just invites more evil into our lives. Likewise, if someone should strike us, rather than retaliating and therefore becoming embroiled in a battle, Jesus encourages us to 'turn the other cheek'. This is not (as some may have interpreted) so that the assailant may strike the other, but indicates that turning and walking away from the potential altercation is the only way to get a positive and Christ-like outcome. Violence begets more violence.
If we focus on any selfish, sinful thought, word or deed, it only increases its power and presence in our lives. By asking us to turn the other cheek, Jesus is suggesting we focus on forgiveness and loving others, rather than just the things we want.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45067 | Transnational Radical Party
The Transnational Radical Party (TRP), whose official name is Nonviolent Radical Party, Transnational and Transparty (NRPTT), is a political association of citizens, members of parliament and members of government of various national and political backgrounds who intend to adopt nonviolent means to create an effective body of international law with respect for individuals, human, civil and political rights, as well as the affirmation of democracy and political freedom in the world.
The TRP does not participate in elections, and despite being named "party", is a non-governmental organization (NGO), adept in building synergies among political forces aimed at achieving the goals of its congressional motions.
The TRP is the direct evolution of the Italian Radical Party (1955–1989) and is separate from the once-connected Italian Radicals party (founded in 2001), has been an NGO at the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations (UN) since 1995, listed in the general consultative status' category.
The TRP often advocates the international use of Esperanto in its literature.
The TRP's forerunner, the Radical Party (PR), was established in 1955 by a left-wing splinter group from the centre-right Italian Liberal Party (PLI). In 1989 the PR was transformed into the TRP. In 1992 a majority of the Radicals formed, at the national-level in Italian politics, the Pannella List, as its most senior figure was Marco Pannella. Since 1999 the List ran in elections under the banner of Bonino List, named after Emma Bonino. In 2001 the Radicals in Italy formed the Italian Radicals (RI).
In the first European Parliament election in 1979 the PR obtained its best result ever countrywide (3.7% of the vote, resulting in the election of three MEPs, including Pannella). Following the election, the PR was involved with the Coordination of European Green and Radical Parties (CEGRP) and its unsuccessful efforts to create a single pan-European platform for green and radical politics. More importantly, since then, the party projected itself into international politics.
In 1988, after a decade during which transnational issues and values were emphasised, the PR's congress decided that the party would be transformed during 1989 into the TRP and that the latter would not present itself in elections (in order to avoid competition with the other parties and stimulate cooperation instead), while permitting "dual membership" with other parties. The new symbol featuring the stylised face of Mahatma Gandhi was the point of no return in the transformation of the PR into an instrument of political fight completely at disposal of issue-oriented campaigns.
All this provoked great controversy among Radicals. Some long-time members left in order to continue their own activity in other parties or retire from public life. However, also most TRP Radicals continued to be actively engaged in politics, sometimes supported by the TRP itself, sometimes seeking hospitality in traditional parties or creating entirely new electoral lists. In the 1989 European Parliament election Pannella stood as a successful candidate of the joint list between the PLI (his former party) and the Italian Republican Party, some Radicals formed the "Anti-prohibition List on Drugs" (1 MEP), while others joined the Rainbow Greens (2 MEPs). In the run-up of the 1992 general election the Pannella List was formed.
Sergio Stanzani and Emma Bonino were the first secretary and president of the party, respectively. In 1993 Bonino, who would be appointed to the European Commission in 1995, replaced Stanzani, and Pannella became president.
The TRP was soon involved in comparing the conditions of the rule of law among different democracies throughout the world. While its members and economic resources continued to come primarily from Italy, the party strengthened its activities worldwide, especially in the countries of post-communist Eastern Europe. In this respect, the TRP launched the Multilingual Telematics System, one of the first bulletin board systems in Italy to allow multiple connections at the same time with the many countries where the party had influence and membership.
In 1995, after an intense institutional work, the TRP became a non-governmental organization for the promotion of human rights' legislation and the affirmation of democracy and freedom worldwide. As such, it was granted the general consultative status at the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations (UN).
Also in 1995 Olivier Dupuis, a long-time Radical from Belgium and founding member of the TRP who had moved to Budapest, Hungary in 1988 and from there had coordinated TRP's activities in Eastern Europe, was elected secretary of the party, while Jean-François Hory, a French MEP of the Radical Party of the Left within the TRP-sponsored European Radical Alliance group, was president. In 1996 Dupuis took Pannella's seat in the European Parliament.
Within the UN, the party has carried out high-profile battles on several issues: the moratorium on the death penalty and the proposal of his complete abolition, anti-prohibition against global mafias, fair justice, freedom of scientific research and the ban on female genital mutilation. Additionally, the TRP has allowed access to UN meetings to some stateless people, including Tibetans, Uyghurs and Montagnards., and led active monitoring of the conflicts against despotic regimes, such as the case of Ukraine versus Russia, or gave voice to dissidents opposed to authoritarian regimes like Cuba and Turkey. For its proposal of a peace plan in the Chechen–Russian conflict, the party has collided with Russia and its members risked expulsion from the country.
Despite its successes worldwide, the TRP and its initiaves mostly failed to find space on the local press in Italy, which has often focused merely on the internal conflicts within the Radical world. The inadequate information on Radical initiatives by the Italian media has been meticulously verified by the TRP-sponsored "Centro d'Ascolto dell'Informazione Radiotelevisiva" and produced several sentences featuring compensations to be paid by RAI, the Italian public broadcaster, and commercial TV as well. Some confusion came from the fact that since the 2000s, rather than highlighting its expansion abroad, the TRP has preferred to focus on the "Case Italy", emblematic of the decadence of a constitutional political system into a "real democracy", that is to say a formal democracy in which its very institutions substantially act in contrast with the constitution. According to the TRP, Italy has become a "partycratic regime" and, as such, has started to spread the "plague" of "real democracy" around the democratic world. That was denounced by Radicals within international organisations and though the publication of a "yellow book" on the "Italian plague".
However, the TRP effectively suffered internal problems too. In 2003 Dupuis resigned from secretary because of serious political differences with Pannella. In 2011–14 Demba Traoré, a politician from Mali, served briefly as secretary: he left the party without officially resigning, after being returned to the government of his own country. The TRP was later provisionally run by a committee, known as the "Senate" ("Senato"), led by Pannella and composed of the party's leading members.
After the death of Pannella in May 2016, an extraordinary congress was convened in September to overcome the long inactivity due to the absence of the secretary, as well as the economic problems undermining the party's viability. The congress adopted with 178 votes in favour, 79 against and 13 abstentions on the final resolution:
The minority faction, led by Bonino and Marco Cappato, in turn, controlled the RI, as confirmed in their November 2016 congress. In February 2017 the TRP severed its ties with the RI (accused of boycotting the TRP, using its assets without paying for them and pursuing an Italian-only electoral agenda), and the latter could no longer use the Radical headquarters. However, the RI's congress invited its members to adhere to the TRP. The 3,000-member target for 2017 was achieved by the TRP in December, while the RI had launched a pro-Europeanist electoral list named More Europe for the 2018 Italian general election.
The 2016 congress elected a collective Presidency, composed of the following members: Matteo Angioli, Angiolo Bandinelli, Marco Beltrandi, Rita Bernardini (coordinator), Maurizio Bolognetti, Antonella Casu (coordinator), Antonio Cerrone, Deborah Cianfanelli, Maria Antonietta Coscioni, Sergio D'Elia (coordinator), Mariano Giustino, Giuseppe Rippa, Giuseppe Rossodivita, Irene Testa, Maurizio Turco (coordinator and legal representative), Valter Vecellio, and Elisabetta Zamparutti.
Current prominent members (as of December 2017):
Former prominent members:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45441 | Conservation movement
The conservation movement, also known as nature conservation, is a political, environmental, and social movement that seeks to protect natural resources, including animal and plant species as well as their habitat for the future. Evidence-based conservation seeks to use high quality scientific evidence to make conservation efforts more effective.
The early conservation movement included fisheries and wildlife management, water, soil conservation, and sustainable forestry. The contemporary conservation movement has broadened from the early movement's emphasis on use of sustainable yield of natural resources and preservation of wilderness areas to include preservation of biodiversity. Some say the conservation movement is part of the broader and more far-reaching environmental movement, while others argue that they differ both in ideology and practice. Chiefly in the United States, conservation is seen as differing from environmentalism in that it aims to preserve natural resources expressly for their continued sustainable use by humans. Outside the U.S. the term conservation more broadly includes environmentalism.
The conservation movement can be traced back to John Evelyn's work "Sylva", presented as a paper to the Royal Society in 1662. Published as a book two years later, it was one of the most highly influential texts on forestry ever published. Timbre resources in England were becoming dangerously depleted at the time, and Evelyn advocated the importance of conserving the forests by managing the rate of depletion and ensuring that the cut down trees get replenished.
The field developed during the 18th century, especially in Prussia and France where scientific forestry methods were developed. These methods were first applied rigorously in British India from the early-19th century. The government was interested in the use of forest produce and began managing the forests with measures to reduce the risk of wildfire in order to protect the "household" of nature, as it was then termed. This early ecological idea was in order to preserve the growth of delicate teak trees, which was an important resource for the Royal Navy. Concerns over teak depletion were raised as early as 1799 and 1805 when the Navy was undergoing a massive expansion during the Napoleonic Wars; this pressure led to the first formal conservation Act, which prohibited the felling of small teak trees. The first forestry officer was appointed in 1806 to regulate and preserve the trees necessary for shipbuilding. This promising start received a setback in the 1820s and 30s, when laissez-faire economics and complaints from private landowners brought these early conservation attempts to an end.
Conservation was revived in the mid-19th century, with the first practical application of scientific conservation principles to the forests of India. The conservation ethic that began to evolve included three core principles: that human activity damaged the environment, that there was a civic duty to maintain the environment for future generations, and that scientific, empirically based methods should be applied to ensure this duty was carried out. Sir James Ranald Martin was prominent in promoting this ideology, publishing many medico-topographical reports that demonstrated the scale of damage wrought through large-scale deforestation and desiccation, and lobbying extensively for the institutionalization of forest conservation activities in British India through the establishment of Forest Departments. Edward Percy Stebbing warned of desertification of India. The Madras Board of Revenue started local conservation efforts in 1842, headed by Alexander Gibson, a professional botanist who systematically adopted a forest conservation program based on scientific principles. This was the first case of state management of forests in the world.
These local attempts gradually received more attention by the British government as the unregulated felling of trees continued unabated. In 1850, the British Association in Edinburgh formed a committee to study forest destruction at the behest of Dr. Hugh Cleghorn a pioneer in the nascent conservation movement.
He had become interested in forest conservation in Mysore in 1847 and gave several lectures at the Association on the failure of agriculture in India. These lectures influenced the government under Governor-General Lord Dalhousie to introduce the first permanent and large-scale forest conservation program in the world in 1855, a model that soon spread to other colonies, as well the United States. In the same year, Cleghorn organised the Madras Forest Department and in 1860 the Department banned the use shifting cultivation. Cleghorn's 1861 manual, "The forests and gardens of South India", became the definitive work on the subject and was widely used by forest assistants in the subcontinent. In 1861, the Forest Department extended its remit into the Punjab.
Sir Dietrich Brandis, a German forester, joined the British service in 1856 as superintendent of the teak forests of Pegu division in eastern Burma. During that time Burma's teak forests were controlled by militant Karen tribals. He introduced the "taungya" system, in which Karen villagers provided labor for clearing, planting and weeding teak plantations. After seven years in Burma, Brandis was appointed Inspector General of Forests in India, a position he served in for 20 years. He formulated new forest legislation and helped establish research and training institutions. The Imperial Forest School at Dehradun was founded by him.
Germans were prominent in the forestry administration of British India. As well as Brandis, Berthold Ribbentrop and Sir William P.D. Schlich brought new methods to Indian conservation, the latter becoming the Inspector-General in 1883 after Brandis stepped down. Schlich helped to establish the journal "Indian Forester" in 1874, and became the founding director of the first forestry school in England at Cooper's Hill in 1885. He authored the five-volume "Manual of Forestry" (1889–96) on silviculture, forest management, forest protection, and forest utilization, which became the standard and enduring textbook for forestry students.
The American movement received its inspiration from 19th century works that exalted the inherent value of nature, quite apart from human usage. Author Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) made key philosophical contributions that exalted nature. Thoreau was interested in peoples' relationship with nature and studied this by living close to nature in a simple life. He published his experiences in the book "Walden," which argued that people should become intimately close with nature. The ideas of Sir Brandis, Sir William P.D. Schlich and Carl A. Schenck were also very influential - Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the USDA Forest Service, relied heavily upon Brandis' advice for introducing professional forest management in the U.S. and on how to structure the Forest Service.
Both conservationists and preservationists appeared in political debates during the Progressive Era (the 1890s—early 1920s). There were three main positions. The laissez-faire position held that owners of private property—including lumber and mining companies, should be allowed to do anything they wished on their properties.
The conservationists, led by future President Theodore Roosevelt and his close ally George Bird Grinnell, were motivated by the wanton waste that was taking place at the hand of market forces, including logging and hunting. This practice resulted in placing a large number of North American game species on the edge of extinction. Roosevelt recognized that the laissez-faire approach of the U.S. Government was too wasteful and inefficient. In any case, they noted, most of the natural resources in the western states were already owned by the federal government. The best course of action, they argued, was a long-term plan devised by national experts to maximize the long-term economic benefits of natural resources. To accomplish the mission, Roosevelt and Grinnell formed the Boone and Crockett Club, whose members were some of the best minds and influential men of the day. Its contingency of conservationists, scientists, politicians, and intellectuals became Roosevelt's closest advisers during his march to preserve wildlife and habitat across North America. Preservationists, led by John Muir (1838–1914), argued that the conservation policies were not strong enough to protect the interest of the natural world because they continued to focus on the natural world as a source of economic production.
The debate between conservation and preservation reached its peak in the public debates over the construction of California's Hetch Hetchy dam in Yosemite National Park which supplies the water supply of San Francisco. Muir, leading the Sierra Club, declared that the valley must be preserved for the sake of its beauty: "No holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man."
President Roosevelt put conservationist issue high on the national agenda. He worked with all the major figures of the movement, especially his chief advisor on the matter, Gifford Pinchot and was deeply committed to conserving natural resources. He encouraged the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902 to promote federal construction of dams to irrigate small farms and placed 230 million acres (360,000 mi or 930,000 km) under federal protection. Roosevelt set aside more federal land for national parks and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined.
Roosevelt established the United States Forest Service, signed into law the creation of five national parks, and signed the year 1906 Antiquities Act, under which he proclaimed 18 new national monuments. He also established the first 51 bird reserves, four game preserves, and 150 national forests, including Shoshone National Forest, the nation's first. The area of the United States that he placed under public protection totals approximately .
Gifford Pinchot had been appointed by McKinley as chief of Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture. In 1905, his department gained control of the national forest reserves. Pinchot promoted private use (for a fee) under federal supervision. In 1907, Roosevelt designated 16 million acres (65,000 km) of new national forests just minutes before a deadline.
In May 1908, Roosevelt sponsored the Conference of Governors held in the White House, with a focus on natural resources and their most efficient use. Roosevelt delivered the opening address: "Conservation as a National Duty".
In 1903 Roosevelt toured the Yosemite Valley with John Muir, who had a very different view of conservation, and tried to minimize commercial use of water resources and forests. Working through the Sierra Club he founded, Muir succeeded in 1905 in having Congress transfer the Mariposa Grove and Yosemite Valley to the federal government. While Muir wanted nature preserved for its own sake, Roosevelt subscribed to Pinchot's formulation, "to make the forest produce the largest amount of whatever crop or service will be most useful, and keep on producing it for generation after generation of men and trees."
Theodore Roosevelt's view on conservationism remained dominant for decades; - Franklin D. Roosevelt authorised the building of many large-scale dams and water projects, as well as the expansion of the National Forest System to buy out sub-marginal farms. In 1937, the Pittman–Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act was signed into law, providing funding for state agencies to carry out their conservation efforts.
Environmental reemerged on the national agenda in 1970, with Republican Richard Nixon playing a major role, especially with his creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. The debates over the public lands and environmental politics played a supporting role in the decline of liberalism and the rise of modern environmentalism. Although Americans consistently rank environmental issues as "important", polling data indicates that in the voting booth voters rank the environmental issues low relative to other political concerns.
The growth of the Republican party's political power in the inland West (apart from the Pacific coast) was facilitated by the rise of popular opposition to public lands reform. Successful Democrats in the inland West and Alaska typically take more conservative positions on environmental issues than Democrats from the Coastal states. Conservatives drew on new organizational networks of think tanks, industry groups, and citizen-oriented organizations, and they began to deploy new strategies that affirmed the rights of individuals to their property, protection of extraction rights, to hunt and recreate, and to pursue happiness unencumbered by the federal government at the expense of resource conservation.
Although the conservation movement developed in Europe in the 18th century, Costa Rica as a country has been heralded its champion in the current times. Costa Rica hosts an astonishing number of species, given its size, having more animal and plant species than the US and Canada combined while being only 250 miles long and 150 miles wide. A widely accepted theory for the origin of this unusual density of species is the free mixing of species from both North and South America occurring on this "inter-oceanic" and "inter-continental" landscape. Preserving the natural environment of this fragile landscape, therefore, has drawn the attention of many international scholars.
Costa Rica has made conservation a national priority, and has been at the forefront of preserving its natural environment with over a quarter of its land designated as protected in some form, which is under the administrative control of SINAC (National System of Conservation Areas) a division of MINAE (Ministry of Environment, Energy and Telecommunications). SINAC has subdivided the country into various zones depending on the ecological diversity of that region - these zones are depicted in figure 1.
The country has used this ecological diversity to its economic advantage in the form of a thriving ecotourism industry, putting its commitment to nature, on display to visitors from across the globe. It is estimated that a record 2.6 million foreigners visited the country in 2015, almost half the population of Costa Rica itself. This tourism is facilitated by the fact that Costa Rica has a stable democracy and has a human development index of 0.776, the highest for any country in Latin America.
It is also the only country in the world that generates more than 99% of its electricity from renewable sources, relying on hydropower (78%), wind (10%), geothermal energy (10%), biomass and solar (1%). Critics have pointed out however, that in achieving this milestone, the country has built several dams (providing the bulk of its electricity) some of which have negatively impacted indigenous communities as well as the local flora and fauna.
"The Green Republic: A Conservation History of Costa Rica" by Sterling Evans is a renowned book that traces the development of the conservation movement in Costa Rica from the mid 1700s to present day. Evans mentions that when the Spaniards first arrived in the Americas, the landscape of Costa Rica did not appear particularly hospitable to them, compared to Guatemala or Mexico which seemed more reminiscent of the Spanish climate. Therefore, up until the 18th century, there was very little agricultural development in the region. It also lacked gold and other minerals that Christopher Columbus had hoped to find in these areas (hence the name, Rich Coast). As a result, the forest cover of Costa Rica was left more or less intact by the European settlement in the Americas.
By the mid-19th century, it was observed that the Costa Rican soil was particularly conducive to the growth of coffee. The global demand for coffee was growing rapidly, fueled by the demand from the working class in the industrializing west. The agricultural model adopted by coffee growers in Costa Rica was of small family owned farms known as "cafeteras," and they strove to be responsible stewards of the land. This approach was in stark contrast to the coffee monoculture that would've developed by adopting a purely capitalistic ideology. As a result, even though the coffee production increased substantially from 1850 to 1950, there wasn't large scale deforestation in Costa Rica until the 1950s, contrary to popular belief.
Some of the key points often overlooked in Costa Rica's conservation history between 1850 and 2000 according to Evans, are as follows:
1. President Bernardo Soto's government in 1888 began the process of attracting scholars from all over the world, particularly Switzerland and Germany in an effort to educate the locals about agricultural practices harmonious with the environment such that by 1914, Costa Rica became a leading scientific research center in tropical America
2. The establishment of the University of Costa Rica (UCR) in the 1940s was a landmark event, since the university acted as a springboard for research into tropical studies in Central America. At the helm of UCR were many influential academics such as Rafael Lucas Rodríguez and Alexander Skutch whose forward thinking publications served as a foundation for the future policy decisions. Skutch noted,
3. By 1950, Costa Rica became heavily reliant on coffee exports to Europe and the US. Around the same time, it was battling the dilemma between increasing agricultural output on one hand and protecting natural resources for future use on the other. In 1958, however, the world coffee prices plummeted, and Costa Rica's main source of income was shown to be very vulnerable to unpredictable forces. The government responded by promoting internal manufacturing and encouraging other industries. One such industry that emerged as a result, was the meat industry.
The Central American valley has been described as "perfect for cattle" by Carl Hoffman. Until 1970, the cattle raised in Costa Rica were primarily used for domestic consumption. Around 1970, the demand for beef from the US started showing an exponential growth due to the rise of the fast-food industry. This robust demand, coupled with the falling coffee prices gave the cattle industry a boost and forests started getting replaced with pastures. At its worst, Costa Rica was losing 4% of its forested area per year.
An alternative analysis by Julia Flagg within the framework of "process-tracing" reveals that after gaining independence in 1821 the isolation of Costa Rica from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua was critical in shaping its future and served as a divergence point in the evolution of the Central American nations. According to Mahoney “ . . . while all of the other provinces quickly became engulfed in warfare and political chaos, Costa Rica escaped such devastation and made tentative economic strides forward”. She also argues that the lack of a land-owning elite class in Costa Rica was instrumental in the development of good governance and maintaining a stable democracy in the country. The abolishing of the military in 1948 helped free up valuable resources that the government chose to invest into education and resource protection. The country entered into a positive reinforcement cycle thereafter, where new laws enacted drew international praise which helped solidify Costa Rica's position as global leader in resource protection .
To counter reducing forest area coverage in the 1980s, the Costa Rican government pioneered a scheme in 1997 known as "PES", which rewarded private land owners for keeping forests intact on their lands in lieu of the services provided by these forests to the environment and the economy as a whole. The World Bank, which provided the loan initially from 2000 to 2006 to support the payments incentivizing afforestation, viewed the program as a success overall despite some of its shortcomings.
It is estimated that the percentage of Costa Rican land covered by forests has gone up from around 20% in the 1980s to over 50% of the total area in 2013 - a growth of 250%. The program has also reduced the national carbon emissions by 11 million tons over a period of 6 years from 1999 to 2005. Indigenous communities and women in particular, have benefited due to this program. Buoyed by this success, the World Bank extended its support to the Costa Rican government's initiative by funding a new program titled "Mainstreaming Market-Based Instruments for Environmental Management". Over the years, many international agencies have pushed the national government to make the process of obtaining the payments easier so as to include more underdeveloped communities and cast a wider net for the program.
The green sea turtle is a globally endangered species and one of the most important nesting grounds for it is in Tortuguero, Costa Rica - the word Totuguero is derived from old Spanish maps meaning "place of turtles". After a steady global decline in its population due to overhunting for its meat and eggs, the Tortuguero National Park was established in 1975 in an effort to protect and save the turtle's breeding zone. A highly cited study by Tröeng and Rankin, investigated in 2004, the effects that this protective measure has had on the nesting trend. Although the population of turtles shows a large inter-annual variation thus making the task of determining the exact number very difficult, on an average, the trend has been positive over a long time scale of almost 35 years. The study illustrated that the enactment of three laws by the Costa Rican government was vital in stabilizing and increasing the population of these green sea turtles.
1. A ban on turtle and egg collection in 1963
2. A ban on the export of calipee (a part of the turtle's head that is considered a delicacy) in 1970 and finally,
3. The creation of the Tortuguero National Park in 1975 by the legislative assembly.
The lasting impact created by such forward thinking political decisions exhibits the necessity of meaningful governmental intervention.
Although they contribute only 0.15% to the world's greenhouse gas emissions, the governments of New Zealand and Costa Rica have independently expressed their intents to become carbon neutral in the next decade, with Costa Rica aiming to achieve an ambitious target of becoming carbon neutral by 2021. In doing so, it would become the world's first carbon neutral country, with the expectation of influencing policy decisions in other major countries. The proposal hopes to ignite the interest of private companies to engage in practices that reduce their emissions, for example, using more fuel efficient routes in transportation, relying more on digital documents than printed ones, adopting LED lighting in offices and using more efficient air conditioning systems.
The government's approach to attain zero net emissions has yielded positive results overall, but has been described as insufficient and lacking by experts because it neglects vehicular emissions which account for nearly 20% of the country's total emissions. The 2021 target has also been called "arbitrary" and "overambitious", since the efforts to reduce the country's reliance on imported oil will take much longer to take effect.
In 2006, a study by Sierra and Russman analyzed the additional conservation obtained through PES, over and above the baseline conservation rate. The study concluded that the PES program definitely affected land use decisions because land owners used the payments for other productive activities thus keeping the forest cover intact. However, they also concluded that this was not the most effective use of funds because the majority of these forests would have remained intact even without the payments. The study suggested that it would a better strategy to engage in the protection of more critical habitats instead.
The jaguar is an endangered species and its habitat came under threat due to construction of the Reventazón Dam in the Reventazón valley. The Reventazón dam is the largest dam in Central America with an installed capacity of 305.5 MW. The two financiers of the project, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, financed it on the condition that the construction of the dam by the state-run Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) would "restore and maintain connectivity within the Barbilla-Destierro Corridor" which is critical to the survival of the jaguar.
Protestors of this project claim that the construction has failed to meet the expectations on the following issues:
1) The constructors did not completely clear vegetation from the areas that would be flooded due to this project. As a result, the uncleared vegetation in the flooded areas began to stagnate, creating the perfect conditions for the growth of the Water Hyacinth (an invasive species). The Water Hyacinth acted as a source for a large amount of carbon dioxide and methane emitted into the atmosphere.
2) Reforestation around the reservoir lake to assist in the migration of the jaguars has not been completed making their movement more difficult.
3) Due to the removal of a lot of material to facilitate construction, the neighboring Lancaster wetlands (home to more than 250 species of birds and 80 species of mammals, reptiles and amphibians) have been left in a state more susceptible to landslides.
What appears to be common in these criticisms is that the initiatives have moved things in the right direction overall, but the implementation hasn't been as good as promised.
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1961, working in the field of the wilderness preservation, and the reduction of human impact on the environment. It was formerly named the "World Wildlife Fund", which remains its official name in Canada and the United States.
WWF is the world's largest conservation organization with over five million supporters worldwide, working in more than 100 countries, supporting around 1,300 conservation and environmental projects. They have invested over $1 billion in more than 12,000 conservation initiatives since 1995. WWF is a foundation with 55% of funding from individuals and bequests, 19% from government sources (such as the World Bank, DFID, USAID) and 8% from corporations in 2014.
WWF aims to "stop the degradation of the planet's natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature." The Living Planet Report is published every two years by WWF since 1998; it is based on a Living Planet Index and ecological footprint calculation. In addition, WWF has launched several notable worldwide campaigns including Earth Hour and Debt-for-Nature Swap, and its current work is organized around these six areas: food, climate, freshwater, wildlife, forests, and oceans.
Evidence-based conservation is the application of evidence in conservation management actions and policy making. It is defined as systematically assessing scientific information from published, peer-reviewed publications and texts, practitioners' experiences, independent expert assessment, and local and indigenous knowledge on a specific conservation topic. This includes assessing the current effectiveness of different management interventions, threats and emerging problems and economic factors.
Evidence-based conservation was organized based on the observations that decision making in conservation was based on intuition and/ or practitioner experience often disregarding other forms of evidence of successes and failures (e.g. scientific information). This has led to costly and poor outcomes. Evidence-based conservation provides access to information that will support decision making through an evidence-based framework of “what works” in conservation
The evidence-based approach to conservation is based on evidence-based practice which started in medicine and later spread to nursing, education, psychology and other fields. It is part of the larger movement towards evidence-based practices.
Deforestation and overpopulation are issues affecting all regions of the world. The consequent destruction of wildlife habitat has prompted the creation of conservation groups in other countries, some founded by local hunters who have witnessed declining wildlife populations first hand. Also, it was highly important for the conservation movement to solve problems of living conditions in the cities and the overpopulation of such places.
The idea of incentive conservation is a modern one but its practice has clearly defended some of the sub Arctic wildernesses and the wildlife in those regions for thousands of years, especially by indigenous peoples such as the Evenk, Yakut, Sami, Inuit and Cree. The fur trade and hunting by these peoples have preserved these regions for thousands of years. Ironically, the pressure now upon them comes from non-renewable resources such as oil, sometimes to make synthetic clothing which is advocated as a humane substitute for fur. (See Raccoon dog for case study of the conservation of an animal through fur trade.) Similarly, in the case of the beaver, hunting and fur trade were thought to bring about the animal's demise, when in fact they were an integral part of its conservation. For many years children's books stated and still do, that the decline in the beaver population was due to the fur trade. In reality however, the decline in beaver numbers was because of habitat destruction and deforestation, as well as its continued persecution as a pest (it causes flooding). In Cree lands however, where the population valued the animal for meat and fur, it continued to thrive. The Inuit defend their relationship with the seal in response to outside critics.
The Izoceño-Guaraní of Santa Cruz Department, Bolivia is a tribe of hunters who were influential in establishing the Capitania del Alto y Bajo Isoso (CABI). CABI promotes economic growth and survival of the Izoceno people while discouraging the rapid destruction of habitat within Bolivia's Gran Chaco. They are responsible for the creation of the 34,000 square kilometre Kaa-Iya del Gran Chaco National Park and Integrated Management Area (KINP). The KINP protects the most biodiverse portion of the Gran Chaco, an ecoregion shared with Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. In 1996, the Wildlife Conservation Society joined forces with CABI to institute wildlife and hunting monitoring programs in 23 Izoceño communities. The partnership combines traditional beliefs and local knowledge with the political and administrative tools needed to effectively manage habitats. The programs rely solely on voluntary participation by local hunters who perform self-monitoring techniques and keep records of their hunts. The information obtained by the hunters participating in the program has provided CABI with important data required to make educated decisions about the use of the land. Hunters have been willing participants in this program because of pride in their traditional activities, encouragement by their communities and expectations of benefits to the area.
In order to discourage illegal South African hunting parties and ensure future local use and sustainability, indigenous hunters in Botswana began lobbying for and implementing conservation practices in the 1960s. The Fauna Preservation Society of Ngamiland (FPS) was formed in 1962 by the husband and wife team: Robert Kay and June Kay, environmentalists working in conjunction with the Batawana tribes to preserve wildlife habitat.
The FPS promotes habitat conservation and provides local education for preservation of wildlife. Conservation initiatives were met with strong opposition from the Botswana government because of the monies tied to big-game hunting. In 1963, BaTawanga Chiefs and tribal hunter/adventurers in conjunction with the FPS founded Moremi National Park and Wildlife Refuge, the first area to be set aside by tribal people rather than governmental forces. Moremi National Park is home to a variety of wildlife, including lions, giraffes, elephants, buffalo, zebra, cheetahs and antelope, and covers an area of 3,000 square kilometers. Most of the groups involved with establishing this protected land were involved with hunting and were motivated by their personal observations of declining wildlife and habitat.
Usa be lit sometimes
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45506 | World peace
World peace, or peace on Earth, is the concept of an ideal state of happiness, freedom and peace within and among all people and nations on Planet Earth. This idea of world nonviolence is one motivation for people and nations to willingly cooperate, either voluntarily or by virtue of a system of governance that has this objective. Different cultures, religions, philosophies, and organizations have varying concepts on how such a state would come about.
Various religious and secular organizations have the stated aim of achieving world peace through addressing human rights, technology, education, engineering, medicine or diplomacy used as an end to all forms of fighting. Since 1945, the United Nations and the five permanent members of its Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) have operated under the aim to resolve conflicts without war or declarations of war. Nonetheless, nations have entered numerous military conflicts since then.
Many theories as to how world peace could be achieved have been proposed. Several of these are listed below.
The term is traced back to the Roman Emperor Hadrian (reigned AD 117 – 138) but the concept is as old as recorded history. In 1943, at the peak of World War II, the founder of the Paneuropean Union, Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, argued that after the war the United States is bound to take "command of the skies" to ensure the lasting world peace:
In fact, near the entrance to the headquarters of the SAC at Offutt Air Force Base stands a large sign with a SAC emblem and its motto: "Peace is our profession." The motto "was a staggering paradox that was also completely accurate". One SAC Bomber—Convair B-36—is called "Peacemaker" and one inter-continental missile-LGM-118-"Peacekeeper".
In 2016, former US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter envisaged that the rebalance to the Asia-Pacific will make the region "peaceful" through "strength":
Introduction to US National Security and Defense Strategies of 2018 states: The US force posture combined with the allies will "preserve peace through strength". The document proceeds to detail what "achieving peace through strength requires".
Associated with "peace through strength" are concepts of "preponderance of power" (as opposed to balance of power), hegemonic stability theory, "unipolar stability", and imperial peace (such as Pax Romana, Pax Britannica, or Pax Americana).
According to the dialectic materialist theory of Karl Marx, humanity under capitalism is divided in just two classes: the proletariat - who do not possess the means of production, and the bourgeoisie - who do possesses the means of production. Once the communist revolution occurs and consequently abolishes the private propriety of the means of production, humanity will not be divided and the tension created between these two classes will cease. Through a period called socialism, the rule of the proletariat will dissolve the last vestiges of capitalism, and will help to make the revolution worldwide. Once private propriety has been abolished worldwide, the state will no longer be needed to act as a monopoly of violence and will therefore disappear. Organizations of workers will take its place and manage the production of things, but no organization will have any military power, a police force, nor prisons.
The main principle of Marx's theory is that material conditions limit spiritual conditions. Should their material conditions allow it, people around the world will not be violent but respectful, peaceful and altruistic. In a state of communism, they will no longer need to live for survival, but for their own spiritual fulfillment.
Leon Trotsky argued that a proletariat world revolution would lead to world peace.
Proponents of the democratic peace theory claim that strong empirical evidence exists that democracies never or rarely wage war against each other.
There are, however, several wars between democracies that have taken place, historically.
In her essay "The Roots of War", Ayn Rand held that the major wars of history were started by the more controlled economies of the time against the freer ones and that capitalism gave mankind the longest period of peace in history—a period during which there were no wars involving the entire civilized world—from the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, with the exceptions of the Franco-Prussian War (1870), the Spanish–American War (1898), and the American Civil War (1861–1865), which notably occurred in perhaps the most liberal economy in the world at the beginning of the industrial revolution.
Proponents of Cobdenism claim that by removing tariffs and creating international free trade wars would become impossible, because free trade prevents a nation from becoming self-sufficient, which is a requirement for long wars.
However, free trade does not prevent a nation from establishing some sort of emergency plan to become temporarily self-sufficient in case of war or that a nation could simply acquire what it needs from a different nation. A good example of this is World War I, during which both Britain and Germany became partially self-sufficient. This is particularly important because Germany had no plan for creating a war economy.
More generally, free trade—while not making wars impossible—can make wars, and restrictions on trade caused by wars, very costly for international companies with production, research, and sales in many different nations. Thus, a powerful lobby—unless there are only national companies—will argue against wars.
Mutual assured destruction is a doctrine of military strategy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two opposing sides would effectively result in the destruction of both belligerents. Proponents of the policy of mutual assured destruction during the Cold War attributed this to the increase in the lethality of war to the point where it no longer offers the possibility of a net gain for either side, thereby making wars pointless.
After World War II, the United Nations was established by the United Nations Charter to "save successive generations from the scourge of war which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind" (Preamble). The Preamble to the United Nations Charter also aims to further the adoption of fundamental human rights, to respect obligations to sources of international law as well as to unite the strength of independent countries in order to maintain international peace and security. All treaties on international human rights law make reference to or consider "the principles proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations, recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and "peace in the world".
Gordon B. Hinckley saw a trend in national politics by which city-states and nation-states have unified and suggests that the international arena will eventually follow suit. Many countries such as China, Italy, the United States, Australia, Germany, India and Britain have unified into single nation-states with others like the European Union following suit, suggesting that further globalization will bring about a world state.
World peace has been depicted as a consequence of local, self-determined behaviors that inhibit the institutionalization of power and ensuing violence. The solution is not so much based on an agreed agenda, or an investment in higher authority whether divine or political, but rather a self-organized network of mutually supportive mechanisms, resulting in a viable politico-economic social fabric. The principal technique for inducing convergence is thought experiment, namely backcasting, enabling anyone to participate no matter what cultural background, religious doctrine, political affiliation or age demographic. Similar collaborative mechanisms are emerging from the Internet around open-source projects, including Wikipedia, and the evolution of other social media.
Economic norms theory links economic conditions with institutions of governance and conflict, distinguishing personal clientelist economies from impersonal market-oriented ones, identifying the latter with permanent peace within and between nations.
Through most of human history, societies have been based on personal relations: individuals in groups know each other and exchange favors. Today in most lower-income societies hierarchies of groups distribute wealth based on personal relationships among group leaders, a process often linked with clientelism and corruption. Michael Mousseau argues that in this kind of socio-economy conflict is always present, latent or overt, because individuals depend on their groups for physical and economic security and are thus loyal to their groups rather than their states, and because groups are in a constant state of conflict over access to state coffers. Through processes of bounded rationality, people are conditioned towards strong in-group identities and are easily swayed to fear outsiders, psychological predispositions that make possible sectarian violence, genocide, and terrorism.
Market-oriented socio-economies are integrated not with personal ties but the impersonal force of the market where most individuals are economically dependent on trusting strangers in contracts enforced by the state. This creates loyalty to a state that enforces the rule of law and contracts impartially and reliably and provides equal protection in the freedom to contract – that is, liberal democracy. Wars cannot happen within or between nations with market-integrated economies because war requires the harming of others, and in these kinds of economies everyone is always economically better off when others in the market are also better off, not worse off. Rather than fight, citizens in market-oriented socio-economies care deeply about everyone's rights and welfare, so they demand economic growth at home and economic cooperation and human rights abroad. In fact, nations with market-oriented socio-economies tend to agree on global issues and not a single fatality has occurred in any dispute between them.
Economic norms theory should not be confused with classical liberal theory. The latter assumes that markets are natural and that freer markets promote wealth. In contrast, Economic norms theory shows how market-contracting is a learned norm, and state spending, regulation, and redistribution are necessary to ensure that almost everyone can participate in the "social market" economy, which is in everyone's interests. One proposed mechanism for world peace involves consumer purchasing of renewable and equitable local food and power sources involving artificial photosynthesis ushering in a period of social and ecological harmony known as the Sustainocene.
Nonkilling, popularized in the 2002 book "Nonkilling Global Political Science" by Glenn D. Paige, builds on nonviolence theory and encompasses the concepts of peace (absence of war and conditions conducive to war), nonviolence (psychological, physical, and structural), and ahimsa (noninjury in thought, word and deed). Nonkilling provides a distinct approach characterized by the measurability of its goals and the open-ended nature of its realization. it can be quantified and related to specific causes, for example by following a public health perspective (prevention, intervention and post-traumatic transformation toward the progressive eradication of killing).
The International Day of Peace, sometimes called World Peace Day, is observed annually on 21 September. It is dedicated to peace, and specifically the absence of war and violence, and can be celebrated by a temporary ceasefire in a combat zone. The International Day of Peace was established in 1981 by the United Nations General Assembly. Two decades later, in 2001, the General Assembly unanimously voted to designate the day as a day of preventing violence and a cease-fire. The celebration of this day is recognized by many nations and people. In 2013, for the first time, the day has been dedicated to peace education, i.e. by the key preventive means to reduce war sustainably.
Many religions and religious leaders have expressed a desire for an end to violence.
The central aim of the Bahá'í Faith is the establishment of the unity of the peoples of the world. Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, stated in no uncertain terms, "the fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race ..." In his writings, Bahá'u'lláh described two distinct stages of world peace – a lesser peace and a most great peace.
The lesser peace is essentially a collective security agreement between the nations of the world. In this arrangement, nations agree to protect one another by rising up against an aggressor nation, should it seek the usurpation of territory or the destruction of its neighbors. The lesser peace is limited in scope and is concerned with the establishment of basic order and the universal recognition of national borders and the sovereignty of nations. Bahá'ís believe that the lesser peace is taking place largely through the operation of the Divine Will, and that Bahá'í influence on the process is relatively minor.
The most great peace is the eventual end goal of the lesser peace and is envisioned as a time of spiritual and social unity – a time when the peoples of the world genuinely identify with and care for one another, rather than simply tolerating one other's existence. The Bahá'ís view this process as taking place largely as a result of the spread of Bahá'í teachings, principles and practices throughout the world. The larger world peace process and its foundational elements are addressed in the document "The Promise of World Peace", written by the Universal House of Justice.
Many Buddhists believe that world peace can only be achieved if we first establish peace within our minds. The idea is that anger and other negative states of mind are the cause of wars and fighting. Buddhists believe people can live in peace and harmony only if we abandon negative emotions such as anger in our minds and cultivate positive emotions such as love and compassion. As with all Dharmic religions (Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism), ahimsa (avoidance of violence) is a central concept.
Peace pagodas are monuments that are built to symbolize and inspire world peace and have been central to the peace movement throughout the years. These are typically of Buddhist origin, being built by the Japanese Buddhist organisation Nipponzan Myohoji. They exist around the world in cities such as London, Vienna, New Delhi, Tokyo and Lumbini.
The basic Christian ideal specifies that peace can only come by the Word and love of God, which is perfectly demonstrated in the life of Christ:
As christologically interpreted from , whereupon the "Word of the Lord" is established on the earth, the material human-political result will be 'nation not taking up sword against nation; nor will they train for war anymore'. Christian world peace necessitates the living of a proactive life replete with all good works in direct light of the Word of God. The details of such a life can be observed in the Gospels, especially the historically renowned Sermon on the Mount, where forgiving those who do wrong things against oneself is advocated among other pious precepts.
However, not all Christians expect a lasting world peace on this earth:
Many Christians believe that world peace is expected to be manifest upon the "new earth" that is promised in Christian scripture such as .
The Roman Catholic religious conception of "Consecration of Russia", related to the Church's high-priority Fátima Marian apparitions, promises a temporary "world peace" as a result of this process being fulfilled, though before the coming of the Antichrist. This period of temporary peace is called "the triumph of the Immaculate Heart".
Traditionally, Hinduism has adopted an ancient Sanskrit phrase "Vasudhaiva kutumbakam", which translates as "The world is one family". The essence of this concept is the observation that only base minds see dichotomies and divisions. The more we seek wisdom, the more we become inclusive and free our internal spirit from worldly illusions or "Maya". World peace is hence only achieved through internal means—by liberating ourselves from artificial boundaries that separate us all. As with all Dharmic religions (Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism), ahimsa (avoidance of violence) is a central concept.
According to Islamic eschatology, the whole world will be united under the leadership of prophet Isa in his second coming. At that time love, justice and peace will be so abundant that the world will be in likeness of paradise.
The concept of "Tikkun olam" (Repairing the World) is central to modern Rabbinic Judaism. "Tikkun olam" is accomplished through various means, such as ritualistically performing God's commandments, charity and social justice, as well as through example persuading the rest of the world to behave morally. According to some views, "Tikkun olam" would result in the beginning of the Messianic Age. It has been said that in every generation, a person is born with the potential to be the spiritual Messiah. If the time is right for the Messianic Age within that person's lifetime, then that person will be the mashiach. But if that person dies before he completes the mission of the Messiah, then that person is not the Messiah (Mashiach).
Specifically, in Jewish messianism it is considered that at some future time a "Messiah" (literally "a King appointed by God") will rise up to bring all Jews back to the Land of Israel, followed by everlasting global peace and prosperity. This idea originates from passages in the Old Testament and the Talmud.
Compassion for all life, human and non-human, is central to Jainism. They have adopted the wordings of Lord Mahvira Jiyo aur Jeeno Do. Human life is valued as a unique, rare opportunity to reach enlightenment; to kill any person, no matter what crime he may have committed, is considered unimaginably abhorrent. It is a religion that requires monks and laity, from all its sects and traditions, to be vegetarian. Some Indian regions, such as Gujarat, have been strongly influenced by Jains and often the majority of the local Hindus of every denomination have also become vegetarian. Famous quote on world peace as per Jainism by a 19th-century Indian legend, Virchand Gandhi: "May peace rule the universe; may peace rule in kingdoms and empires; may peace rule in states and in the lands of the potentates; may peace rule in the house of friends and may peace also rule in the house of enemies." As with all Dharmic religions (Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism), ahimsa (avoidance of violence) is a central concept.
Peace comes from God. Meditation, the means of communicating with God, is unfruitful without the noble character of a devotee, there can be no worship without performing good deeds. Guru Nanak stressed now "kirat karō": that a Sikh should balance work, worship, and charity, and should defend the rights of all creatures, and in particular, fellow human beings. They are encouraged to have a "chaṛdī kalā", or "optimistic" – "resilience", view of life. Sikh teachings also stress the concept of sharing—"vaṇḍ chakkō"—through the distribution of free food at Sikh gurdwaras ("laṅgar"), giving charitable donations, and working for the good of the community and others ("sēvā"). Sikhs believe that no matter what race, sex, or religion one is, all are equal in God's eyes. Men and women are equal and share the same rights, and women can lead in prayers. As with all Dharmic religions (Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism), ahimsa (avoidance of violence) is a central concept.
A report in June 2015 on the Global Peace Index highlighted that the impact of violence on the global economy reached US$14.3 trillion. The report also found that the economic cost of violence is 13.4% of world GDP, equal to the total economic output of Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and the UK combined.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46029 | Wisdom
Wisdom, sapience, or sagacity is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight. Wisdom is associated with attributes such as unbiased judgment, compassion, experiential self-knowledge, self-transcendence and non-attachment, and virtues such as ethics and benevolence.
Wisdom has been defined in many different ways, including several distinct approaches to assess the characteristics attributed to wisdom.
The "Oxford English Dictionary" defines wisdom as "Capacity of judging rightly in matters relating to life and conduct; soundness of judgement in the choice of means and ends; sometimes, less strictly, sound sense, esp. in practical affairs: opp. to folly;" also "Knowledge (esp. of a high or abstruse kind); enlightenment, learning, erudition." Charles Haddon Spurgeon defined wisdom as "the right use of knowledge". Robert I. Sutton and Andrew Hargadon defined the "attitude of wisdom" as "acting with knowledge while doubting what one knows". In social and psychological sciences, several distinct approaches to wisdom exist, with major advances made in the last two decades with respect to operationalization and measurement of wisdom as a psychological construct.
The ancient Greeks considered wisdom to be an important virtue, personified as the goddesses Metis and Athena. Metis was the first wife of Zeus, who, according to Hesiod's Theogony, had devoured her pregnant; Zeus earned the title of Mêtieta ("The Wise Counselor") after that, as Metis was the embodiment of wisdom, and he gave birth to Athena, who is said to have sprung from his head. Athena was portrayed as strong, fair, merciful, and chaste. Apollo was also considered a god of wisdom, designated as the conductor of the Muses ("Musagetes"), who were personifications of the sciences and of the inspired and poetic arts; According to Plato in his Cratylus, the name of Apollo could also mean ""Ballon"" (archer) and ""Omopoulon"" (unifier of poles [divine and earthly]), since this god was responsible for divine and true inspirations, thus considered an archer who was always right in healing and oracles: “he is an ever-darting archer”. Apollo was considered the god who prophesied through the priestesses (Pythia) in the Temple of Apollo (Delphi), where the aphorism “know thyself" ("gnōthi seauton") was inscribed (part of the wisdom of the Delphic maxims). He was contrasted with Hermes, who was related to the sciences and technical wisdom, and, in the first centuries after Christ, was associated with Thoth in an Egyptian syncretism, under the name Hermes Trimegistus. Greek tradition recorded the earliest introducers of wisdom in the Seven Sages of Greece.
To Socrates and Plato, philosophy was literally the love of wisdom (philo-sophia). This permeates Plato's dialogues; in "The Republic" the leaders of his proposed utopia are philosopher kings who understand the Form of the Good and possess the courage to act accordingly. Aristotle, in "Metaphysics", defined wisdom as understanding why things are a certain way (causality), which is deeper than merely knowing things are a certain way. He was the first to make the distinction between "phronesis" and "sophia".
According to Plato and Xenophon, the Pythia of the Delphic Oracle answered the question "who is the wisest man in Greece?" by stating Socrates was the wisest. According to Plato's "Apology", Socrates decided to investigate the people who might be considered wiser than him, concluding they lacked true knowledge:
Thus it became popularly immortalized in the phrase "I know that I know nothing" that it is wise to recognize one's own ignorance and to value epistemic humility.
The ancient Romans also valued wisdom which was personified in Minerva, or Pallas. She also represents skillful knowledge and the virtues, especially chastity. Her symbol was the owl which is still a popular representation of wisdom, because it can see in darkness. She was said to be born from Jupiter's forehead.
Wisdom is also important within Christianity. Jesus emphasized it. Paul the Apostle, in his first epistle to the Corinthians, argued that there is both secular and divine wisdom, urging Christians to pursue the latter. Prudence, which is intimately related to wisdom, became one of the four cardinal virtues of Catholicism. The Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas considered wisdom to be the "father" (i.e. the cause, measure, and form) of all virtues.
In Buddhist traditions, developing wisdom plays a central role where comprehensive guidance on how to develop wisdom is provided. In the Inuit tradition, developing wisdom was one of the aims of teaching. An Inuit Elder said that a person became wise when they could see what needed to be done and did it successfully without being told what to do.
In many cultures, the name for third molars, which are the last teeth to grow, is etymologically linked with wisdom, e.g., as in the English "wisdom tooth." It has its nickname originated from the classical tradition, which in the Hippocratic writings has already been called "sóphronistér" (in Greek, related to the meaning of moderation or teaching a lesson), and in Latin "dens sapientiae" (wisdom tooth), since they appear at the age of maturity in late adolescence and early adulthood.
Public schools in the US have an approach to character education. Eighteenth century thinkers such as Benjamin Franklin, referred to this as training wisdom and virtue. Traditionally, schools share the responsibility to build character and wisdom along with parents and the community.
Nicholas Maxwell, a contemporary philosopher in the United Kingdom, advocates that academia ought to alter its focus from the acquisition of knowledge to seeking and promoting wisdom. This he defines as the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others. He teaches that new knowledge and technological know-how increase our power to act. Without wisdom though, Maxwell claims this new knowledge may cause human harm as well as human good.
Psychologists have begun to gather data on commonly held beliefs or folk theories about wisdom. Initial analyses indicate that although "there is an overlap of the implicit theory of wisdom with intelligence, perceptiveness, spirituality and shrewdness, it is evident that wisdom is an expertise in dealing with difficult questions of life and adaptation to the complex requirements."
Such implicit theories stand in contrast to the explicit theories and empirical research on resulting psychological processes underlying wisdom.
Baltes and colleagues in "Wisdom: its structure and function in regulating lifespan successful development" defined wisdom as "the ability to deal with the contradictions of a specific situation and to assess the consequences of an action for themselves and for others. It is achieved when in a concrete situation, a balance between intrapersonal, inter- personal and institutional interests can be prepared". Balance itself appears to be a critical criterion of wisdom. Empirical research started to provide support to this idea, showing that wisdom-related reasoning is associated with achieving balance between intrapersonal and interpersonal interests when facing personal life challenges, and when setting goals for managing interpersonal conflicts.
Researchers in the field of positive psychology have defined wisdom as the coordination of "knowledge and experience" and "its deliberate use to improve well being." Under this definition, wisdom is further defined as a multidimensional construct with the following facets:
This theoretical model has not been tested empirically, with an exception of a broad link between wisdom-related reasoning and well-being.
Grossmann and colleagues have synthesized prior psychological literature, indicating that in the face of ill-defined life situations wisdom involves certain cognitive processes affording unbiased, sound judgment: (i) intellectual humility or recognition of limits of own knowledge; (ii) appreciation of perspectives broader than the issue at hand; (iii) sensitivity to the possibility of change in social relations; and (iv) compromise or integration of different perspectives. Importantly, Grossmann highlights the fundamental role of contextual factors, including the role of culture, experiences, and social situations for understanding, development, and propensity of showing wisdom, with implications for training and educational practice. This situated account of wisdom ushered a novel phase of wisdom scholarship, using rigorous evidence-based methods to understand contextual factors affording sound judgment. For instance, Grossmann and Kross have identified a phenomenon they called "the Solomon's paradox" - wiser reflections on other people's problems as compared to one's own. It is named after King Solomon, the third leader of the Jewish Kingdom, who has shown a great deal of wisdom when making judgments about other people's dilemmas but lacked insight when it came to important decisions in his own life.
Empirical scientists have also begun to focus on the role of emotions in wisdom. Most researchers would agree that emotions and emotion regulation would be key to effectively managing the kinds of complex and arousing situations that would most call for wisdom. However, much empirical research has focused on the cognitive or meta-cognitive aspects of wisdom, assuming that an ability to reason through difficult situations would be paramount. Thus, although emotions would likely play a role in determining how wisdom plays out in real events and on reflecting on past events, only recently has empirical evidence started to provide robust evidence on how and when different emotions improve or harm a person’s ability to deal wisely with complex events. One notable finding concerns the positive relationship between diversity of emotional experience and wise reasoning, irrespective of emotional intensity.
Measurement of wisdom often depends on researcher’s theoretical position about the nature of wisdom. A major distinction here concerning either viewing wisdom as a stable personality trait or rather as a context-bound process The former approach often capitalizes on single-shot questionnaires. However, recent studies indicated that such single-shot questionnaires produce biased responses., which is antithetical to the wisdom construct, and neglects the notion that wisdom is best understood in the contexts when it is most relevant, namely in complex life challenges. In contrast, the latter approach advocates for measuring wisdom-related features of cognition, motivation, and emotion on the level of a specific situation. Use of such state-level measures provides less biased responses as well as greater power in explaining meaningful psychological processes. Furthermore, a focus on the level of the situation has allowed wisdom researchers to develop a fuller understanding of the role of context itself for producing wisdom. Specifically, studies showed evidence of cross-cultural and within-cultural variability and systematic variability in reasoning wisely across contexts and in daily life.
Many, but not all, studies find that adults' self-ratings of perspective/wisdom do not depend on age. This belief stands in contrast to the popular notion that wisdom increases with age. The answer to the question of age-wisdom association depends on how one defines wisdom, and the methodological framework used to evaluate theoretical claims. Most recent work suggests that the answer to this question also depends on the degree of experience in a specific domain, with some contexts favoring older adults, others favoring younger adults, and some not differentiating age groups. Notably, rigorous longitudinal work is necessary to fully unpack the question of age-wisdom relationship and such work is still outstanding, with most studies relying on cross-sectional observations.
Sapience is closely related to the term ""sophia"" often defined as "transcendent wisdom", "ultimate reality", or the ultimate truth of things. Sapiential perspective of wisdom is said to lie in the heart of every religion, where it is often acquired through intuitive knowing. This type of wisdom is described as going beyond mere practical wisdom and includes self-knowledge, interconnectedness, conditioned origination of mind-states and other deeper understandings of subjective experience. This type of wisdom can also lead to the ability of an individual to act with appropriate judgement, a broad understanding of situations and greater appreciation/compassion towards other living beings.
The word "sapience" is derived from the Latin "sapientia", meaning "wisdom".
The corresponding verb "sapere" has the original meaning of "to taste", hence "to perceive, to discern" and "to know"; its present participle "sapiens" was chosen by Carl Linnaeus for the Latin binomial for the human species, "Homo sapiens".
In Mesopotamian religion and mythology, Enki, also known as Ea, was the God of wisdom and intelligence. Divine Wisdom allowed the provident designation of functions and the ordering of the cosmos, and it was achieved by humans in following me-s (in Sumerian, order, rite, righteousness), restoring the balance. In addition to hymns to Enki or Ea dating from the third millennium BC., there is amongst the clay tablets of Abu Salabikh from 2600 BC, considered as being the oldest dated texts, an "Hymn to Shamash", in which it is recorded written:
The concept of Logos or manifest word of the divine thought, a concept also present in the philosophy and hymns of Egypt and Ancient Greece (being central to the thinker Heraclitus), and substantial in the Abrahamic traditions, seems to have been derived from Mesopotamian culture.
Sia represents the personification of perception and thoughtfulness in the traditional mythology adhered to in Ancient Egypt. Thoth, married to Maat (in ancient Egyptian, meaning order, righteousness, truth), was also important and regarded as a national introducer of wisdom.
In the Avesta hymns traditionally attributed to Zoroaster, the Gathas, Ahura Mazda means "Lord" (Ahura) and "Wisdom" (Mazda), and it is the central deity who embodies goodness, being also called "Good Thought" (Vohu Manah). In Zoroastrianism in general, the order of the universe and morals is called Asha (in Avestan, truth, righteousness), which is determined by the designations of this omniscient Thought and also considered a deity emanating from Ahura (Amesha Spenta); it is related to another ahura deity, Spenta Mainyu (active Mentality). It says in Yazna 31:
The word wisdom (חכם) is mentioned 222 times in the Hebrew Bible. It was regarded as one of the highest virtues among the Israelites along with kindness (חסד) and justice (צדק). Both the books of Proverbs and Psalms urge readers to obtain and to increase in wisdom.
In the Hebrew Bible, wisdom is represented by Solomon, who asks God for wisdom in . Much of the Book of Proverbs, which is filled with wise sayings, is attributed to Solomon. In , the fear of the Lord is called the beginning of wisdom. In , there is also reference to wisdom personified in female form, "Wisdom calls aloud in the streets, she raises her voice in the marketplaces." In , this personified wisdom is described as being present with God before creation began and even taking part in creation itself.
The Talmud teaches that a wise person is a person who can foresee the future. "Nolad" is a Hebrew word for "future," but also the Hebrew word for "birth", so one rabbinic interpretation of the teaching is that a wise person is one who can foresee the consequences of his/her choices (i.e. can "see the future" that he/she "gives birth" to).
In Christian theology, "wisdom" (From Hebrew: "חכמה" transliteration: chokmâh pronounced: khok-maw', Greek: "Sophia", Latin: "Sapientia") describes an aspect of God, or the theological concept regarding the wisdom of God.
There is an oppositional element in Christian thought between secular wisdom and Godly wisdom. Paul the Apostle states that worldly wisdom thinks the claims of Christ to be foolishness. However, to those who are "on the path to salvation" Christ represents the wisdom of God. () Wisdom is considered one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit according to Anglican, Catholic, and Lutheran belief. gives an alternate list of nine virtues, among which wisdom is one.
The book of Proverbs in the Old Testament of the Bible primarily focuses on wisdom, and was primarily written by one of the wisest kings according to Jewish history, King Solomon. Proverbs is found in the Old Testament section of the Bible and gives direction on how to handle various aspects of life; one's relationship with God, marriage, dealing with finances, work, friendships and persevering in difficult situations faced in life.
Apart from Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and James, other main books of wisdom in the Bible are Job, Psalms, and 1 and 2 Corinthians, which give lessons on gaining and using wisdom through difficult situations.
In the Indian traditions, wisdom can be called prajña or vijñana.
Developing wisdom is of central importance in Buddhist traditions, where the ultimate aim is often presented as “seeing things as they are” or as gaining a “penetrative understanding of all phenomena,” which in turn is described as ultimately leading to the “complete freedom from suffering.” In Buddhism, developing wisdom is accomplished through an understanding of what are known as the Four Noble Truths and by following the Noble Eightfold Path. This path lists mindfulness as one of eight required components for cultivating wisdom.
Buddhist scriptures teach that a wise person is usually endowed with good and maybe bodily conduct, and sometimes good verbal conduct, and good mental conduct.("AN 3:2") A wise person does actions that are unpleasant to do but give good results, and doesn’t do actions that are pleasant to do but give bad results ("AN 4:115"). Wisdom is the antidote to the self-chosen poison of ignorance. The Buddha has much to say on the subject of wisdom including:
To recover the original supreme wisdom of self-nature (Buddha-nature or Tathagata) covered by the self-imposed three dusty poisons (the kleshas: greed, anger, ignorance) Buddha taught to his students the threefold training by turning greed into generosity and discipline, anger into kindness and meditation, ignorance into wisdom. As the Sixth Patriarch of Chán Buddhism, Huineng, said in his Platform Sutra,"Mind without dispute is self-nature discipline, mind without disturbance is self-nature meditation, mind without ignorance is self-nature wisdom." In Mahayana and esoteric buddhist lineages, Mañjuśrī is considered as an embodiment of Buddha wisdom.
In Hinduism, wisdom is considered a state of mind and soul where a person achieves liberation.
The god of wisdom is Ganesha and the goddess of knowledge is Saraswati.
The Sanskrit verse to attain knowledge is:
Wisdom in Hinduism is knowing oneself as the truth, basis for the entire Creation, i.e., of "Shristi". In other words, wisdom simply means a person with Self-awareness as the one who witnesses the entire creation in all its facets and forms. Further it means realization that an individual through right conduct and right living over an unspecified period comes to realize their true relationship with the creation and the "Paramatma" who rules it.
The Arabic term corresponding to Hebrew "Chokmah" is "ḥikma".
The term occurs a number of times in the Quran, notably in Sura 2:269:
"He gives wisdom to whom He wills, and whoever has been given wisdom has certainly been given much good. And none will remember except those of understanding." ().
and Sura 22:46: "Have they not travelled in the land, and have they hearts wherewith to feel and ears wherewith to hear? For indeed it is not the eyes that grow blind, but it is the hearts, which are within the bosoms, that grow blind."
Sura 6: 151: "Say: "Come, I will rehearse what Allah (God) hath (really) prohibited you from": Join not anything as equal with Him; be good to your parents; kill not your children on a plea of want;― We provide sustenance for you and for them;― come not nigh to shameful deeds, whether open or secret; take not life, which Allah hath made sacred, except by way of justice and law: thus doth He command you, that ye may learn wisdom" ().
The sufi philosopher Ibn Arabi considers "al-Hakim" ("The Wise") as one of the names of the Creator. Wisdom and truth, considered divine attributes, were concepts related and valued in the Islamic sciences and philosophy since their beginnings, and the first Arab philosopher, Al-Kindi says at the beginning of his book:
The Buddhist term "Prajñā" was translated into Chinese as
According to the "Doctrine of the Mean", Confucius said:
"Love of learning is akin to wisdom. To practice with vigor is akin to humanity. To know to be shameful is akin to courage (zhi, ren, yong.. three of Mengzi's sprouts of virtue)."
Compare this with the Confucian classic "Great Learning", which begins with: "The Way of learning to be great consists in manifesting the clear character, loving the people, and abiding in the highest good." One can clearly see the correlation with the Roman virtue prudence, especially if one interprets "clear character" as "clear conscience". (From Chan's Sources of Chinese Philosophy).
In Taoism, wisdom is construed as adherence to the Three Treasures (Taoism): charity, simplicity, and humility.
"He who knows other men is discerning [智]; he who knows himself is intelligent [明]." (Tao Te Ching 33)
In Norse mythology, the god Odin is especially known for his wisdom, often acquired through various hardships and ordeals involving pain and self-sacrifice. In one instance he plucked out an eye and offered it to Mímir, guardian of the well of knowledge and wisdom, in return for a drink from the well.
In another famous account, Odin hanged himself for nine nights from Yggdrasil, the World Tree that unites all the realms of existence, suffering from hunger and thirst and finally wounding himself with a spear until he gained the knowledge of runes for use in casting powerful magic. He was also able to acquire the mead of poetry from the giants, a drink of which could grant the power of a scholar or poet, for the benefit of gods and mortals alike.
In Bahá'í scripture,
"The essence of wisdom is the fear of God, the dread of His scourge and punishment, and the apprehension of His justice and decree." Wisdom is seen as a light, that casts away darkness, and "its dictates must be observed under all circumstances". One may obtain knowledge and wisdom through God, his Word, and his Divine Manifestation and the source of all learning is the knowledge of God.
In the Star Wars universe, wisdom is valued in the narrative of the films, in which George Lucas figured issues of spirituality and morals, recurrent in mythological and philosophical themes; one of his inspirations was Joseph Campbell's The Hero of a Thousand Faces. Master Yoda is generally considered a popular figure of wisdom, evoking the image of an "Oriental Monk", and he is frequently quoted, analogously to Chinese thinkers or Eastern sages in general. Psychologist D. W. Kreger's book ""The Tao of Yoda"" adapts the wisdom of the Tao Te Ching in relation to Yoda's thinking. Knowledge is canonically considered one of the pillars of the Jedi, which is also cited in the non-canon book "The Jedi Path", and wisdom can serve as a tenet for Jediism. The Jedi Code also states: "Ignorance, yet knowledge." In a psychology populational study published by Grossmann and team in 2019, master Yoda is considered wiser than Spock, another fictional character (from the Star Trek series), due to his emodiversity trait, which was positively associated to wise reasoning in people: "Yoda embraces his emotions and aims to achieve a balance between them. Yoda is known to be emotionally expressive, to share a good joke with others, but also to recognize sorrow and his past mistakes".
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7159985 | Nel Noddings
Nel Noddings (; born January 19, 1929) is an American feminist, educationalist, and philosopher best known for her work in philosophy of education, educational theory, and ethics of care.
Noddings received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physical science from Montclair State College in New Jersey, a master's degree in mathematics from Rutgers University, and a Ph.D. in education from the Stanford Graduate School of Education.
Nel Noddings worked in many areas of the education system. She spent seventeen years as an elementary and high school mathematics teacher and school administrator, before earning her PhD and beginning work as an academic in the fields of philosophy of education, theory of education and ethics, specifically moral education and ethics of care. She became a member of the Stanford faculty in 1977, and was the Jacks Professor of Child Education from 1992 until 1998. While at Stanford University she received awards for teaching excellence in 1981, 1982 and 1997, and was the associate dean or acting dean of the School of Education for four years. After leaving Stanford University, she held positions at Columbia University and Colgate University. She is past president of the Philosophy of Education Society and the John Dewey Society. In 2002-2003 she held the John W. Porter Chair in Urban Education at Eastern Michigan University. She has been Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University since she retired in 1998.
Nel Noddings has 10 children, 39 grandchildren, and over 20 great- grandchildren, many of whom are highly educated and educators themselves. In 2012 she lost her husband of over 60 years to cancer.
She has described her early educational experiences and her close relationships as key in her development of her philosophical position.
Noddings' first sole-authored book "Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education" (1984) followed close on the 1982 publication of Carol Gilligan’s ground-breaking work in the ethics of care "In a Different Voice". While her work on ethics continued, with the publication of "Women and Evil" (1989), and later works on moral education, most of her later publications have been on the philosophy of education and educational theory. Her most significant works in these areas have been "Educating for Intelligent Belief or Unbelief" (1993) and "Philosophy of Education" (1995).
Besides contributing to philosophy, Noddings also works in the field of social psychology. Noddings is currently on the Editorial Board of "Greater Good Magazine", published by the Greater Good Science Center of the University of California, Berkeley. Noddings' contributions include the interpretation of scientific research into the roots of compassion, altruism, and peaceful human relationships.
Nel Noddings' approach to ethics of care has been described as "relational ethics" because it prioritizes concern for relationships. Like Carol Gilligan, Noddings accepts that justice based approaches, which are supposed to be more masculine, are genuine alternatives to ethics of care. However, unlike Gilligan, Noddings' believes that caring, 'rooted in receptivity, relatedness, and responsiveness' is a more basic and preferable approach to ethics ("Caring" 1984, 2).
The key to understanding Noddings' ethics of care is to understand her notion of caring and ethical caring in particular.
Noddings believes that it would be a mistake to try to provide a systematic examination of the requirements for caring; nevertheless, she does suggest three requirements for caring ("Caring" 1984, 11-12). She argues that the carer ("one-caring") must exhibit engrossment and motivational displacement, and the person who is cared for ("cared-for") must respond in some way to the caring (1984, 69). Noddings' term "engrossment" refers to thinking about someone in order to gain a greater understanding of him or her. Engrossment is necessary for caring because an individual's personal and physical situation must be understood before the one-caring can determine the appropriateness of any action. 'Engrossment' need not entail, as the term seems to suggest, a deep fixation on the other. It requires only the attention needed to come to understand the position of the other. Engrossment could not on its own constitute caring; someone could have a deep understanding of another person, yet act against that person's interests. Motivational displacement prevents this from occurring. Motivational displacement occurs when the one-caring's behaviour is largely determined by the needs of the person for whom she is caring. On its own, motivational displacement would also be insufficient for ethical caring. For example, someone who acted primarily from a desire to accomplish something for another person, but failed to think carefully enough about that other person's needs (failed to be correctly engrossed in the other), would fail to care. Finally, Noddings believes that caring requires some form of recognition from the cared-for that the one-caring is, in fact, caring. When there is a recognition of and response to the caring by the person cared for, Noddings describes the caring as "completed in the other" (1984, 4).
Nel Noddings draws an important distinction between natural caring and ethical caring (1984, 81-83). Noddings distinguishes between acting because "I want" and acting because "I must". When I care for someone because "I want" to care, say I hug a friend who needs hugging in an act of love, Noddings claims that I am engaged in natural caring. When I care for someone because "I must" care, say I hug an acquaintance who needs hugging in spite of my desire to escape that person's pain, according to Noddings, I am engaged in ethical caring. Ethical caring occurs when a person acts caringly out of a belief that caring is the appropriate way of relating to people. When someone acts in a caring way because that person naturally cares for another, the caring is not ethical caring (1984, 79-80). Noddings' claims that ethical caring is based on, and so dependent on, natural caring (1984, 83, 206 fn 4). It is through experiencing others caring for them and naturally caring for others that people build what is called an "ethical ideal", an image of the kind of person they want to be.
Noddings describes wrong actions in terms of "a diminishment of the ethical ideal" and "evil". A person's ethical ideal is diminished when she either chooses or is forced to act in a way that rejects her internal call to care. In effect, her image of the best person it is possible for her to be is altered in a way that lowers her ideal. According to Noddings, people and organizations can deliberately or carelessly contribute to the diminishment of other's ethical ideals. They may do this by teaching people not to care, or by placing them in conditions that prevent them from being able to care (1984, 116-119). A person is evil if, in spite of her ability to do otherwise, she either fails to personally care for someone, or prevents others from caring. Noddings writes, "[when] one intentionally rejects the impulse to care and deliberately turns her back on the ethical, she is evil, and this evil cannot be redeemed" (1984, 115).
This is referred to as "obligation". "There are moments for all of us when we care quite naturally. We just do care; no ethical effort is required. 'Want' and 'ought' are indistinguishable in such cases." I have the ability to "abstain from action if I [so] believe that anything I might do would tend to work against the best interests of the cared-for." According to Noddings we are obligated to pursue the "musts".
Nel Noddings' ethics of care has been criticised by both feminists and those who favour more traditional, and allegedly masculine, approaches to ethics. In brief, feminists object that the one caring is, in effect, carrying out the traditional female role in life of giving while receiving little in return. Those who accept more traditional approaches to ethics argue that the partiality shown to those closest to us in Noddings' theory is inappropriate.
Noddings tends to use unequal relationships as a model for understanding caring. Philosopher and feminist Sarah Lucia Hoagland argues that the relationships in question, such as parenting and teaching, are ideally relationships where caring is a transitory thing designed to foster the independence of the cared-for, and so end the unequal caring relationship. Unequal relationships, she writes, are ethically problematic, and so a poor model for an ethical theory. Hoagland argues that on Noddings' account of ethical caring, the one-caring is placed in the role of the "giver" and the cared-for in the role of the "taker". The one-caring is dominant, choosing what is good for the cared-for, but gives without receiving caring in return. The cared-for is put in the position of being a dependent, with insufficient control over the nature of the caring. Hoagland believes that such unequal relationships cannot be morally good.
In education, the ethic of care speaks of obligation to do something right and a sense that we must do something right when others address us. The "I must" response is induced in direct encounter in preparation for response. We respond because we want to; either we love and respect those that address us or we have significant regard for them. As a result, the recipients of care must respond in a way that demonstrates their caring has been received.
In regards, to education, caring refers to the relationship between student and teacher, not just the person who cares. As educators respond to the needs of students, teachers may see the need to design a differentiated curriculum because as teachers work closely with students, we will be moved by their different needs and interests. The claim to care must not be based on a one time virtuous decision but an ongoing interest in the student’s welfare.
In “Identifying Needs in Education" Noddings (2003) provides criteria for deciding whether a want should be recognized or treated as a need. This criteria is as follows:
The overt or explicit curriculum in education is designed to meet the inferred needs of students, as they are those identified by teachers or individuals to improve the classroom learning environment. In the ethics of care philosophy, inferred needs are referred to as those that come from those not directly expressing the need. Most needs identified by educators for learners are inferred needs because they are not being identified by the learners themselves. Students’ inferred needs can often be identified interactively, through working with them one on one or observing their behaviour in a classroom environment.
Expressed needs are difficult to assess and address in the classroom environment, as they are needs directly expressed by learners through behaviour or words. Although expressed needs are difficult to address, educators need to treat them positively in order to maintain a caring relationship with learners. If expressed needs are not treated carefully, the individual might not feel cared for. Educators should make a consistent effort to respond to a student’s expressed needs through prior planning and discussions of moral and social issues surrounding the needs
Basic needs are defined as the most basic needs required to survive such as food, water and shelter. Basic needs and needs associated with self-actualization (overwhelming needs) co-exist when basic needs are being compromised over extended periods of time.
Overwhelming needs cannot be met by the usual processes of schooling and include extreme instances such as abuse, neglect and illness. As well, a student’s socioeconomic status (SES) or dysfunctional family environment can cause them to come to school with needs that cannot be expressed nor met by educators. To help meet those overwhelming needs of students, particularly those in poor neighborhood, the ethic of care philosophy dictates that schools should be full-service institutions. Medical and dental care, social services, childcare and parenting advice should be available on campus. In turn, students in these situations are often forced into academic courses and fight an uphill battle, where they have to engage in activities that are difficult to focus on, based on their circumstances.
People who are poor, perhaps homeless, without dependable transportation cannot afford to run all over town seeking such services, and often they don’t know where to begin. Despite being aware of the overwhelming needs many students face, we force all children—regardless of interest or aptitude—into academic courses and then fight an uphill battle to motivate them to do things they do not want to do.
Emotion has been aggravated by the rise of professions with their insistence on detachment, distance, cool appraisal and systematic procedures. Concern for rational and professional functioning keeps emotion out of education, as it is supposed that real professionals do not allow themselves to feel controlled by their emotions and are forced to face problems with dispassionate rationality Noddings (1996) states that in the teaching profession, the concern takes several forms:
The use of stories in teacher education could be powerful in dispelling these beliefs, as they illustrate how deeply experienced teachers feel about the inevitable difficulties that occur in the classroom
In the ethic of care model, the aim of education is centered around happiness. Incorporating this component into education involves not only helping our students understand the components of happiness by allowing teachers and students to interact as a whole community In regard to the education of the whole child, Noddings (2005) stated that, “We will not find the solution to problems of violence, alienation, ignorance, and unhappiness in increasing our security, imposing more tests, punishing schools for their failure to produce 100 percent proficiency, or demanding that teachers be knowledgeable in the subjects they teach. Instead, we must allow teachers and students to interact as whole persons, and we must develop policies that treat the school as a whole community.”
One criticism of Noddings' ethic of care, in regards to education, is that it advocates little importance to caring for oneself, except as a means to provide further care for others. In regards to education, the teacher-student relationship could be jeopardized because the educator might not engage in self care and instead, devote all their energy into meeting their students' needs. Hoaglard (1991, p. 255) states that the caregiver would be defined as a “martyr, servant or slave” by the philosophy in the ethic of care.
Another criticism of Noddings' argument is that ethic of care may result not only in the exploitation of the caregiver, but also in a smothering paternalism. Goodin (1996, p. 507) writes that, “the trouble with subsuming individuals into relationships of ‘we’ness is precisely that we then risk losing track of the separateness of people”. As well, Goodin (1996, p. 116-120) states that Noddings' criteria for implicit and explicit needs assumes that needs are transparent to the caregiver and that the caregiver’s perceptions are privileged in the process of interpreting needs. Lastly, Grimshaw (1986) explains that it is important to consider that good care always entails an element of distance between individuals. She states, (1986, p. 183) “Care and understanding require the sort of distance that is needed in order not to see the other as a projection of the self, or self as a continuation of other”. Thus, a clear distance between the self and the individual that is being cared for needs to exist in order to keep the personal care of both individuals in mind.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7277939 | Diotima of Mantinea
Diotima of Mantinea (; ; ) was an ancient Greek prophetess and philosopher thought to have lived circa 440 B.C.E., who plays an important role in Plato's "Symposium". In the dialogue, her ideas are the origin of the concept of Platonic love.
The name Diotima means one who honors or is honored by Zeus, and her Mantinean origin is reminiscent of the root "mantis", which would suggest an association with prophecy. The Greek form also includes the sound nike: Diotima Mantinike as a pun in Greek would thus sound like "Diotima from Prophet-victory".
In the "Symposium", she is implied to be a priestess or prophetess and is said to be from the Peloponnesian city of Mantinea, which was allied against Athens at the time of the dialogue - though one version of the manuscript preferred in old readings called her a mantic woman, or seeress, rather than a woman from Mantinea.
Since the only contemporaneous source concerning her is Plato, doubts have been raised about whether she was a real historical personage or merely a fictional creation; however, nearly all of the characters named in Plato's dialogues have been found to correspond to real people living in ancient Athens.
Plato was thought by most 19th and early 20th century scholars to have based Diotima on Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, so impressed was he by her intelligence and wit. However, Aspasia appears under her own name in Plato's dialogue "Menexenus", and some scholars have convincingly argued that Plato did not use false names; therefore, Diotima could be a historical figure. In the "Symposium", Diotima puts forth ideas that are different from both Socrates's and Plato's, thereby representing a different philosophical position. Socrates also claims to have learned from her. Both of these instances in Plato's dialogue have been used to argue for her existence.
A first century bronze relief found in Pompeii depicts Socrates and an unnamed female figure, along with a winged Eros; although some have supposed the seated woman in the image to be Diotima, others have argued her appearance (notably a necklace) would suggest she is in fact more likely to be Aphrodite or Aspasia. Writings from the second through the fifth centuries A.D. refer to Diotima as a real person, although Plato is probably their only basis for this. The suggestion that she was a fictional creation was not introduced until the 15th century (notably by Marsilio Ficino), probably based on the fact that she was a woman; however, this plausible hypothesis (with numerous parallels in the study of Platonic dialogues, for instance Callicles in the "Gorgias") was in fact put forward because Diotima is not mentioned by contemporary or near-contemporary sources and because her very name and origin could be understood as symbolic.
In Plato's "Symposium" the members of a party discuss the meaning of love. Socrates says that in his youth he was taught "the philosophy of love" by Diotima, who was a seer or priestess. Socrates also claims that Diotima successfully postponed the Plague of Athens. In a dialogue that Socrates recounts at the symposium, Diotima says that Socrates has confused the idea of love with the idea of the beloved. Love, she says, is neither fully beautiful nor good, as the earlier speakers in the dialogue had argued. Diotima gives Socrates a genealogy of Love (Eros), stating that he is the son of "resource ("poros)" and poverty ("penia)"". In her view, love drives the individual to seek beauty, first earthly beauty, or beautiful bodies. Then as a lover grows in wisdom, the beauty that is sought is spiritual, or beautiful souls. For Diotima, the most correct use of love of other human beings is to direct one's mind to love of wisdom, or philosophy. The beautiful beloved inspires the mind and the soul and directs one's attention to spiritual things. One proceeds from recognition of another's beauty, to appreciation of Beauty apart from any individual, to consideration of Divinity, the source of Beauty, to love of Divinity.. . . and directing his gaze from now, on towards beauty as a whole, he should turn to the great ocean of beauty, and in contemplation of it give birth to many beautiful and magnificent speeches and thoughts in the abundance of philosophy. (Diotima to Socrates in Plato's Symposium.)
Beginning in the 1980s, the dehistoricization of Diotima became a subject of interest for several scholars, including Mary Ellen Waithe. In 2005, Margaret Urban Walker summarized Waithe's research, stating that "the evidence for Diotima's reality is substantial, even if not conclusive, and that her imaginary status appears to be a fifteenth-century fiction that stuck."
In 2019 the Oxford classical scholar Armand D'Angour published "Socrates in Love: The Making of a Philosopher", presenting for the first time a wholly new case for identifying Diotima with Aspasia. His historical arguments are based on 1) the likelihood of Aspasia's involvement in the warding off of plague that Athenians will have expected to be brought on by Pericles' irreligious actions (e.g. failure to bury the dead) after his campaign against Samos in 440-39 2) the fact that 'Diotima' means 'honored by/honoring Zeus'; Pericles was called 'Zeus' in comedy and popular parlance, and he was notorious for the unusual honor that he bestowed on Aspasia.
"Diotima" has often been used as a title for philosophical or artistic projects, journals, essays, etc.:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7332678 | Friendship bench
The Friendship Bench is a tool for positive mental and emotional health used in various settings. It is used as a psychological intervention to address depression usually by trained lay health workers.
In Zimbabwe, the Friendship Bench approach to therapy uses listening and "problem-solving therapy" (PST) by trained lay-counselor grandmothers. When seeking mental health care is stigmatized or resources are not available—Zimbabwe has just 12 psychiatrists for 14 million people—the Friendship Bench offers what so far seems to be an effective and simple option. Depression is referred to as "kufungisisa," “thinking too much," in the Shona language. A strategy in this peer-to-peer support model include co-production practices and skill building such as the way participants make bags out of recycled plastics during therapeutic sessions.
The Project Bench is also often used as psychological intervention in places with high prevalence of people with HIV. The psychotherapy sessions, which focus on problem-solving therapy, is delivered the Friendship Bench framework.
In a school setting a friendship bench may also be known as a buddy bench, and is a special place in a school playground where a child can go when they want someone to talk to. Friendship benches may be distinctively different from other seating in the school and may be specially designed by an artist or with the help of the children themselves. They are rainbow-colored and were originally created by C.R Plastics, a Canadian company that creates recycled plastic outdoor furniture. Such benches are situated in open and well-traveled areas of the school so that any child using the bench will be noticed quickly.
When a child feels the need for a friend to talk to, he or she can show this by using the friendship bench. Other children and staff will recognize this as a sign that some help, support or comfort is needed and will come to talk with the child.
The friendship bench is a means by which a child can seek support without the need to rationalize their feelings or to seek out a particular member of staff or special friend. Because the bench is in the day-to-day environment of the school it can be used at any time and for any reason—from seemingly trivial matters to more serious concerns—and encourages children to ask for help when they are troubled.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7405764 | History of the cooperative movement
The history of the cooperative movement concerns the origins and history of cooperatives across the world. Although cooperative arrangements, such as mutual insurance, and principles of cooperation existed long before, the cooperative movement began with the application of cooperative principles to business organization.
The cooperative movement began in Europe in the 19th century, primarily in Britain and France. The Shore Porters Society claims to be one of the world's first cooperatives, being established in Aberdeen in 1498 (although it has since demutualized to become a private partnership). The industrial revolution and the increasing mechanism of the economy transformed society and threatened the livelihoods of many workers. The concurrent labour and social movements and the issues they attempted to address describe the climate at the time.
The first documented consumer cooperative was founded in 1769, in a barely furnished cottage in Fenwick, East Ayrshire, when local weavers manhandled a sack of oatmeal into John Walker's whitewashed front room and began selling the contents at a discount, forming the Fenwick Weavers' Society.
In the decades that followed, several cooperatives or cooperative societies formed including Lennoxtown Friendly Victualling Society, founded in 1812.
By 1830, there were several hundred co-operatives.
Some were initially successful, but most cooperatives founded in the early 19th century had failed by 1840.
However, Lockhurst Lane Industrial Co-operative Society (founded in 1832 and now Heart of England Co-operative Society), and Galashiels and Hawick Co-operative Societies (1839 or earlier, merged with The Co-operative Group) still trade today.
It was not until 1844 when the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers established the "Rochdale Principles" on which they ran their cooperative, that the basis for development and growth of the modern cooperative movement was established.
Financially, cooperative banks, called credit unions in the US, were invented in Germany in the mid-19th century, first by Franz Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch (1852, urban), then by Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen (1864, rural). While Schulze-Delitzsch is chronologically earlier, Raiffeisen has proven more influential over time – see history of credit unions. In Britain, the friendly society, building society, and mutual savings bank were earlier forms of similar institutions.
Robert Owen (1771–1858) is considered as the father of the cooperative movement. A Welshman who made his fortune in the cotton trade, Owen believed in putting his workers in a good environment with access to education for themselves and their children. These ideas were put into effect successfully in the cotton mills of New Lanark, Scotland. It was here that the first co-operative store was opened. Spurred on by the success of this, he had the idea of forming "villages of co-operation" where workers would drag themselves out of poverty by growing their own food, making their own clothes and ultimately becoming self-governing. He tried to form such communities in Orbiston in Scotland and in New Harmony, Indiana in the United States of America, but both communities failed.
Although Owen inspired the co-operative movement, others – such as Dr. William King (1786–1865) – took his ideas and made them more workable and practical. King believed in starting small, and realized that the working classes would need to set up co-operatives for themselves, so he saw his role as one of instruction. He founded a monthly periodical called "The Co-operator", the first edition of which appeared on 1 May 1828. This gave a mixture of co-operative philosophy and practical advice about running a shop using cooperative principles. King advised people not to cut themselves off from society, but rather to form a society within a society, and to start with a shop because, "We must go to a shop every day to buy food and necessaries – why then should we not go to our own shop?" He proposed sensible rules, such as having a weekly account audit, having 3 trustees, and not having meetings in pubs (to avoid the temptation of drinking profits).
The Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers was a group of 10 weavers and 20 others in Rochdale, England, that was formed in 1844. As the mechanization of the Industrial Revolution was forcing more and more skilled workers into poverty, these tradesmen decided to band together to open their own store selling food items they could not otherwise afford. With lessons from prior failed attempts at co-operation in mind, they designed the now famous Rochdale Principles, and over a period of four months they struggled to pool one pound sterling per person for a total of 28 pounds of capital. On December 21, 1844, they opened their store with a very meagre selection of butter, sugar, flour, oatmeal and a few candles. Within three months, they expanded their selection to include tea and tobacco, and they were soon known for providing high quality, unadulterated goods.
The Co-operative Group formed gradually over 140 years from the merger of many independent retail societies, and their wholesale societies and federations. In 1863, twenty years after the Rochdale Pioneers opened their co-operative, the North of England Co-operative Society was launched by 300 individual co-ops across Yorkshire and Lancashire. By 1872, it had become known as the Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS). Through the 20th century, smaller societies merged with CWS, such as the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society (1973) and the South Suburban Co-operative Society (1984).
By the 1990s, CWS's share of the market had declined considerably and many came to doubt the viability of co-operative model. CWS sold its factories to Andrew Regan in 1994. Regan returned in 1997 with a £1.2 billion bid for CWS. There were allegations of "carpet-bagging" – new members who joined simply to make money from the sale – and more seriously fraud and commercial leaks. After a lengthy battle, Regan's bid was seen off and two senior CWS executives were dismissed and imprisoned for fraud. Regan was cleared of charges. The episode recharged CWS and its membership base. Tony Blair's Co-operative Commission, chaired by John Monks, made major recommendations for the co-operative movement, including the organisation and marketing of the retail societies. It was in this climate that, in 2000, CWS merged with the UK's second largest society, Co-operative Retail Services.
Its headquarters complex is situated on the north side of Manchester city centre adjacent to the Manchester Victoria railway station. The complex is made up of many different buildings with two notable tower blocks of New Century House and the solar panel-clad CIS tower.
Other independent societies are part owners of the Group. Representatives of the societies that part own the Group are elected to the Group's national board. The Group manages The Co-operative brand and the Co-operative Retail Trading Group (CRTG), which sources and promotes goods for food stores. There is a similar purchasing group (CTTG) for co-operative travel agents.
The United States first known Co-op was the mutual fire insurance company founded in 1752 by Benjamin Franklin. The first dairy co-op was founded in 1810 with small locals found nationwide by 1866. The first known consumer co-op in 1845 was Boston's Workingman's Protective Union. The country's first organization to promote cooperative values and the Rochedale Principles was the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry, known as the Grange that started after the Civil War. The co-operative movement grew during the 1890s in response to the expansion of large corporate monopolies. The country's first credit unions were in Massachusetts while The Cooperative League of the United States of America, known today as the National Cooperative Business Association was organized in 1916 to promote cooperatives . In the late 1960s the Co-op movement entered a new phase with Food cooperatives and Food Conspiracies as an alternative to corporate agriculture that linked organic farmers to urban consumers.
The co-operative model has a long history in the U.S., including a factory in the 1790s, the Knights of Labor, and the Grange. In Colorado, USA the Meadowlark cooperative administers the only private free land program in the United States, providing many services to its members who buy and sell together. In New York City, several food co-operatives were founded around 2010, adding to others, some existing since the 1970s. The U.S. has some diverse worker co-operatives, such as a home care agency, an organic bread factory co-op and an engineering firm. Some have already incorporated environmental and/or Fair Trade criteria into their products, such as the aforementioned bread-maker, Organic Valley, and Equal Exchange.
Credit unions were established in the U.S. by 1908. Their member-owned, co-operative structure created stable governance structure, so that they were only slightly affected by the 2008 mortgage securities crisis.
Electrical co-operatives became an important economic strategy for U.S. rural areas beginning in the 1930s, and continue to operate successfully through events such as Hurricane Sandy in 2012. However, the majority in the U.S. demonstrate that co-operative values do not necessarily lead to a progressive social and environmental consciousness, as many remain focuses on fossil fuel and nuclear fuels. Nevertheless, new generation renewable power co-operatives have begun to be organized.
Agricultural co-operatives in the U.S. have had some mainstream success, including Welch's, Ocean Spray, and Land O'Lakes.
In the United States, a co-operative association was founded by 1920. Currently there are over 29,000 co-operatives employing 2 million people with over $652 billion in annual revenue. To address the need for an organization oriented to newer and smaller co-ops, the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives was founded after 2000.
An alternative method of employee-ownership, the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), was developed in the U.S. by Louis Kelso and advocated by Senator Russell Long to be incentivized in the ERISA law of 1974. For example, a large Southeastern US supermarket chain a California manufacturer, and a furniture-maker with earnings of more than $2 billion, are employee-owned. Employee-owned trusts have also been developed more or less independently, for example at an established iron pipe company
Alice Acland, the editor of the "Women's Corner" in the "Co-operative News" publication, and Mary Lawrenson, a teacher, recognized the need for a separate women's organization within the Cooperative Movement and began organizing a "Woman's League for the Spread of Co-operation" in 1883. This League formally met for the first time during the 1883 Co-operative Congress in Edinburgh in a group of 50 women and established Acland as its organizing secretary. By 1884 it had six different branches with 195 members, and the League was renamed the Women's Cooperative Guild.
The Guild organized around working women's issues and expanding the Cooperative Movement. It continued to publish articles advocating for women's involvement in the Cooperative Movement in the "Women's Corner," and later through its own publications such as "The importance of women for the cooperative movement." The Guild also opened the Sunderland cooperative store in 1902, which catered to poor working-class women. It engaged in many political campaigns concerning women's health, women's suffrage and pacifism. Until recently the organisation participated in social justice activism, but has now closed.
In Russia the village co-operative ("obshchina" or "mir"), operated from pre-serfdom times until the 20th century.
Raiffeisen and Schultz-Delitsch developed an independently formulated co-operative model in Germany, the credit union. The model also moved abroad, reaching the United States by the 1880s and the Knights of Labour's projects. Leland Stanford, the railroad magnate and Robber Baron, became a Senator and advocated for co-operatives. By 1920 a national association had formed in the U.S. This organization began to develop international programs, and by the 1970s, a World Council formed.
Co-operatives in the U.S. have a long history, including an early factory in the 1790s. By the 1860s Brigham Young had started applying co-operative ideas in Utah, and by the 1880s, the Knights of Labor and the Grange both promoted member-owned organizations. Energy co-operatives were founded in the U.S. during the Depression and the New Deal.
Diverse kinds of co-operatives were founded and have continued to perform successfully in different areas: in agriculture, wholesale purchasing, telephones, and in consumer-food buying.
James Warbasse, an American doctor, became the first president of the U.S. National Co-operative Business Association. He wrote extensively on co-operative history and philosophy. Benjamin Ward began an important effort in co-operative economic theory in the 1950s, with Jaroslav Vanek developing a general theory. David Ellerman began a line of theoretical thinking beginning with legal principles, developing especially the labor theory of property, and later reaching a treatment which evaluates the role of capital in labor managed firms using the conventional economic production formula Q = f(K, L). At one point in the 1990s he worked at the World Bank with Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
Co-operative enterprises were formed successfully following Rochdale, and an international association was formed in 1895. Co-operative enterprises are now widespread, with one of the largest and most successful examples being the industrial Mondragón Cooperative Corporation in the Basque country of Spain. Mondragon Co-op was founded under the oppressive conditions of Fascist Franco Spain after community-based democracy-building activities of a priest, Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta. They have become an extremely diverse network of co-operative enterprises, a huge enterprise in Spain, and a multinational concern. Co-operatives were also successful in Yugoslavia under Tito where Workers' Councils gained a significant role in management.
In many European countries, cooperative institutions have a predominant market share in the retail banking and insurance businesses. There are also concrete proposals for the cooperative management of the common goods, such as the one by Initiative 136 in Greece.
In the UK, co-operatives formed the Co-operative Party in the early 20th century to represent members of co-ops in Parliament. The Co-operative Party now has a permanent electoral pact with the Labour Party, and some Labour MPs are Co-operative Party members. UK co-operatives retain a significant market share in food retail, insurance, banking, funeral services, and the travel industry in many parts of the country.
Denmark has had a strong cooperative movement.
In Germany, the rebuilding of the country after World War II created a legislative opportunity in which politician Hans Boeckler significantly lobbied for the Co-Determination ("Mitbestimmung") policies which were established, requiring large companies to include a Workers' Council in the Board of Directors. These policies have had some influence on European Union policies.
Emilia Romagna, Italy had two separate and strong co-operative traditions that resisted Cold War interference by US agencies and have worked effectively in conjunction with each other.
Co-operative banks have become very successful throughout Europe, and were able to respond more effectively than most corporate banks during the 2008 mortgage-securities crisis.
Renewable Energy co-operatives in Europe became important in the early development of windpower in Denmark beginning in the 1970s. Germany followed in the early 1990s, first on a larger scale with wind co-ops, then with a citizen's movement which challenged the reliance on nuclear power, organized, challenged the energy monopolists there, and successfully created a successful co-op social enterprise by 1999. A citizen's group began operating wind turbines and involving broad community ownership in the U.K. by 1995. Deregulation of the electricity markets allowed energy co-operative social entrepreneurs to begin to create alternatives to the monopolies in various countries. In France, where an enormous percentage of the power is generated by nuclear sources, this occurred after 2000. In Spain, wind power was developed by corporate-led efforts, and it took longer for a renewable energy-focused social enterprise to get established. Similar renewable energy co-ops around Europe have organized in a network.
Asian societies have adapted the co-operative model, including some of the most successful in the world. Nevertheless, the crises generated by traditional inequalities and the shareholder model continues to require civil society and entrepreneurial responses, such as the Citizens Coalition for Economic Justice in South Korea, the Seikatsu Club Consumer Co-operative in Japan, and the Self-Employed Women's Association in India. Other noteworthy efforts include Sophon Suphapong's efforts as governor in Thailand with agricultural co-ops and Antonio Yapsutco Fortich's contributions in the Philippines helping formulate a co-operative strategy with sugar workers.
The International Labor Organization, originally established in 1919, has a Co-operative Division.
Co-operatives were brought to Latin America and developed there by 1902. Substantially independent efforts to develop employee-owned enterprises or co-operatives have occurred as responses to crises, such as the systemic IMF-based default in Argentina in 2001 In Brazil, the World Social Forum process lead to the articulation of Solidarity Economics, a modern, activist formulation of co-operativism, with the MST landless worker's movement demonstrating enormous courage and social entrepreneurship. In Venezuela, the late Hugo Chávez's administration began to incentivize co-operatives, resulting in their rapid and extensive development there.
The Fair Trade certification movement established first in the Netherlands in 1988 with an international headquarters in Bonn nine years later requires member farmers to have established a co-operative.
In 2016, UNESCO inscribed "Idea and practice of organizing shared interests in cooperatives" on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7414016 | Richard Brandt
Richard Booker Brandt (17 October 1910 – 10 September 1997) was an American philosopher working in the utilitarian tradition in moral philosophy.
Brandt was originally educated at Denison University, a Baptist institution he was shepherded to by his minister father, and graduated in 1930 with majors in philosophy and classical studies. In 1933 he earned another B.A., this time in the philosophy of religion, from Cambridge University. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University in 1936. He taught at Swarthmore College before becoming Chair of the Department of Philosophy the University of Michigan in 1964, where he taught with Charles Stevenson and William K. Frankena (1908–1994) and spent the remainder of his career. The expressivist moral philosopher Allan Gibbard has mentioned his great intellectual debt to Brandt.
Brandt gave the John Locke Lectures at Oxford University in 1974-75, material that later appeared in "A Theory of the Good and the Right" (1979).
Brandt wrote "Ethical Theory" (1959), an influential textbook in the field. He defended a version of rule utilitarianism in "Toward a credible form of utilitarianism" (1963) and performed cultural-anthropological studies in "Hopi Ethics" (1954). In "A Theory of the Good and the Right", Brandt proposed a "reforming definition" of rationality, that one is rational if one's preferences are such that they survive cognitive psychotherapy in terms of all relevant information and logical criticism. He argued also that the morality such rational persons would accept would be a form of utilitarianism.
Brandt believed that moral rules should be considered in sets which he called moral codes. A moral code is justified when it is the optimal code that, if adopted and followed, would maximise the public good more than any alternative code would. The codes may be society-wide standards or special codes for a profession like engineering.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7439311 | Sadayoshi Fukuda
Fukuda was the pseudonym of , born on 6 April 1917. He studied philosophy at Hosei University (Tokyo), graduating in 1940. In 1944 he was sent to Halmahera; he returned to Japan in 1946. Two years later he started teaching philosophy at his old university, where he would stay until 1970. Thereafter he supported himself by his writing.
Fukuda — the name he used as a teacher as well as a writer — was a prolific author: a "hyōronka" (critic or pundit) and popularizer of philosophy. He died on 11 December 2002.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7451085 | Islam and masturbation
There are varying scholarly opinions regarding the permissibility of masturbation () in Islam. Islamic scripture does not specifically mention masturbation. There are a few "hadiths" mentioning it, but they are classified as unreliable. Unless one refers to the Hadith in question
The opinions of some of the companions of Muhammad reproduced below from Ibn Hazm's Al-Muhalla (vol.11 pg. 393-394) indicate that they did not forbid it:
Abd Allah ibn Abbas said:
Abdullah ibn Umar said:
Jābir ibn Zayd said:
Hasan of Basra (Hasan al-Basri) said:
The Sunni schools of jurisprudence (known as "madhaahib" - the "Hanafi", "Shafi'i", "Maliki", "Hanbali, and Zahiri" schools of "Fiqh") have differing stances on the issue. Some see it forbidden in certain cases (i.e. if it leads a man/woman to ignore their spouse sexually) but recommended it when they see it as a lesser evil to illicit sex. It is generally prohibited according to the "Hanafi" and "Hanbali" "madhaahib", unless one fears adultery or fornication, or is under the desire pressure, in which case, it is permissible to seek a relief through masturbation. It is prohibited all the time according to the "Maliki" and "Shafi"`i "madhaahib". Zahiri Imam Ibn Hazm regards masturbation as permissible. Scholars have also stated that masturbation would not be necessary if one realizes the flexible approach Islam takes to marriage. For example, according to Sheikh Shomeh Yerkity, 'against the clear teachings of Islam, marriage has been rendered another difficult process today due to warped customs and conventions and undue expectations. When we approach marriage from the point of view of pristine Islam, we shall find less and fewer people being forced to exercise the above type of exceptional rulings'. Yet if one's desire is so overwhelming one might perform masturbation but in that case it will be like eating the flesh of a pig to survive from major hunger or starvation when no other food is available.
Masturbation, like any form of sex in which seminal or vaginal fluids have been released, breaks one's fast if performed during the daylight hours and requires a major ablution if any seminal or vaginal fluids were released. According to Sheikh Hamed Al-Ali: "Masturbation during the daytime of Ramadan breaks the fast, based on the Hadith that a fasting Muslim gives up eating, drinking, and sexual desire for the sake of Allah. Since masturbation is a kind of sexual desire, a fasting Muslim must avoid it. Therefore, masturbation invalidates the fast as does food and as it is one of the sins that if someone does it he or she would be violating the sanctity of this month."
It is considered permissible for spouses to masturbate each other, with the only sexual acts forbidden in Islam being anal intercourse and vaginal sex during menstruation.'Hasan bin 'Ali (May Allah be pleased with them) said:
I remember (these words) from Messenger of Allah (ﷺ): "Give up what is doubtful to you for that which is not doubtful; for truth is peace of mind and falsehood is doubt".'
It is generally prohibited according to the Hanafi "madhhab", unless one fears fornication, or is under the desire pressure, in which case, it is permissible to seek a relief through
masturbation.
It is considered as haram according to the Sunni Imam Malik ibn Anas.
It is prohibited all the time according to the Maliki madhhab.
At the same, there is a minority opinion within the Maliki school that allows masturbation if done in private and without the use of illicit materials such as pornography and drugs.
It is prohibited all the time according to the Shafi`i madhhab. Imam Al-Shafi’i stated that masturbation is forbidden based on the following verses from the Qur'an (interpretation of the meaning):
"And those who guard their chastity (i.e. private parts, from illegal sexual acts). Except from their wives or that their right hands possess, - for them, they are free from blame. But whoever seeks beyond that, then those are the transgressors."
According to his interpretation, the verses are clear in forbidding all illegal sexual acts (including masturbation) except for the wives or that their right hand possess, and whoever seeks beyond that is the transgressor..
It is generally prohibited according to the Hanbali madhhab, unless one fears adultery or fornication, or is under the desire pressure, in which case, it is permissible to seek a relief through masturbation. According to Ahmad ibn Hanbal, it is permissible for prisoners, travellers and for men and women who have difficulty in finding a lawful spouse.
Zahiri Imam Ibn Hazm regards masturbation as permissible.
Any sexual engagement outside of marriage including masturbation is a major sin altogether in the Shi'a Islam. Extra-marital sexual engagement causes the doer to be punished in this life and in the afterlife ("qiyama"). The Qur'an says, "The believers are those who protect their sexual organs except from their spouses... Therefore, whosoever seeks more beyond that (in sexual gratification), then they are the transgressors." (23:5-6) and it is not allowed in any situation.
The majority of scholars among Muslims forbid masturbation stating that it is an immoral act and argue using the verse in the Quran, “And those who guard their private parts save from their wives which their right-hands own – so there is no blame upon them. Then whoever seeks beyond that (which is lawful), they are the transgressors.” (23: 5-6) but a new group of young Muslims have started to question and argue this fatwa. In the conservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a group of Saudi Arabians launched a twitter campaign titled "masturbation is halal" and it went viral . Some Saudi psychologists even went further by stating that masturbation was a human need just like defecating or to eat or drink.t
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7464459 | Amani Trust
The Amani Trust was a Zimbabwean non-profit non-governmental organization dedicated to preventing organized violence and torture, to advocacy for the rights of victims and to rehabilitation of victims through community-based care. It was established in 1993 and had its headquarters in Harare. The organisation has now closed.
In 2002, Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa declared various NGO's illegal, including the Amani Trust; the Trust was also accused of working with the British government to unseat President Robert Mugabe and destabilize the nation.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7476080 | Institute on Biotechnology and the Human Future
The Institute on Biotechnology and the Human Future (IBHF) is an affiliate of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and is housed at IIT’s Chicago-Kent College of Law. The IBHF was founded in 2004 by Lori Andrews, J.D., and Nigel M. de S. Cameron, Ph.D., to discuss and analyze the ethical, legal, and social implications of biotechnologies.
The Institute on Biotechnology and the Human Future offers assessments of the scientific benefits and risks of new developments in biotechnology in light of their cultural and ethical significance. IBHF couples continuing academic and policy research with the ability to provide analysis to industry and policymakers.
The Institute on Biotechnology and the Human Future was established early in 2004 at Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology. Working at the intersection of a variety of disciplines, the IBHF has become as a leader in the study of biotechnology and its implications for the human future. The IBHF has regularly been called to Washington D.C. to present information to the United States Congress on matters related to biotechnology and public policy. In addition, the IBHF host numerous forums, symposia, and other conferences around the world aimed at furthering public discourse and understanding of important issues in biotechnology. Lori B. Andrews, J.D., distinguished professor of law at Chicago-Kent and a leading commentator on the legal and social issues raised by biotechnology, co-founded the Institute, and continues to serve as an advisor. Nigel M. de S. Cameron, Ph.D., a bioethics scholar whose special focus is the relations of human values and public policy, joined the law school as university research professor of bioethics with responsibility for the development of the Institute.
The IBHF conducts research on existing and emerging biotechnologies and their effect on law, intellectual property regimes, public health, medicine, genetics, public policy and the environment. IBHF focuses its efforts on six core areas:
Genetic Discrimination
While the rapid advances in genetic technologies offer great promise for the diagnosis and treatment of inheritable diseases, they also raise serious concerns about the potential for the use of this genetic information to discriminate against certain individuals. The IBHF analyzes state and federal law, public opinion, and industry information to make policy recommendations.
Germline Intervention
Germline Genetic Intervention makes possible changes that will spread to every subsequent generation; this form of genetic engineering can also be called inheritable genetic modification and has the potential to change the human species along eugenic lines. The IBHF analyzes scientific research related to germline intervention and its implications to law and bioethics.
Gene Patents
Patents for human genetic material grant exclusivity over naturally occurring sequences of human genes and their effect on research and diagnosis. The IBHF reviews and analyzes the effects of gene patents on research, healthcare, business, and individual rights.
Nanotechnology
The IBHF reviews the development of nanotechnology policy in the United States and Europe, with special focus on the emerging nanotechnology ethical, legal, and social issues (NELSI).
Human Cloning
“Somatic cell nuclear transfer” technology can be used to bring about the birth of replica offspring, and to create embryos for experimentation. The IBHF reviews and analyzes scientific information and policy debates to make recommendations and presentations around the world, including the United Nations and in U.S. federal and state bodies.
Reproductive Technology
The IBHF analyzes developments in reproductive technology, and focuses research on its related ethical, legal, social, and political considerations.
IBHF themes represent diverse perspectives from which to analyze issues in biotechnology. These themes are designed to encourage academics, scientists, policy makers, and the general public to discuss complicated biotech issues in relation to their everyday lives. IBHF themes include: Arts; Bio 101; Business; Eugenics; Human Enhancement; International
The IBHF facilitates numerous conferences, symposia, and other events aimed at building a broad public discussion for issues in biotechnology, law, and society. Past events include:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7502686 | Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief
The Code of Conduct for International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief was drawn up in 1992 by the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response (SCHR) to set ethical standards for organizations involved in humanitarian work. In 1994, the SCHR adopted the code and made the signing of it a condition for membership in the alliance.
Although the initiative began with a call by the French Red Cross to the IFRC to draw up a code of conduct relating to humanitarian aid in response to natural disasters, many of the sponsoring agencies had been involved in complex emergencies such as Biafra and Rwanda and were also looking for guidance for operating in the midst of violent conflicts. more than 600 organizations have signed the code.
In 1995, at the 26th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, which included delegates from governments, the Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies, the IFRC, and the ICRC, a resolution was passed which “took note of” and “welcomed” the code giving it wide international recognition.
Principle Commitments of the Code
The 10 articles of the code fall into two types: Articles 1 through 4 are core humanitarian principles required for humanitarian response. The remaining articles are more aspirational and are important to improving the quality of both humanitarian and developmental work.
The humanitarian imperative, based on the principle of humanity, together with other core principles, impartiality, and independence, stress that humanitarian response must be based on need alone. They are derived, from the Fundamental Principles of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement Red Cross movement. However the principle of neutrality, which is directly related to the special international role of the Red Cross is not included in the code of conduct. Organizations such as military forces and for-profit companies may deliver assistance to communities affected by disaster, but they are not considered by the humanitarian sector as humanitarian agencies as they do not meet all of the core principles.
Articles, 5 through 10, are derived particularly from experience in development work. Most of the original sponsors have had decades of experience working in the development sector and the articles reflect their experience and commitment. Some development agencies are deeply committed to such an approach while being unable to subscribe to the core principles.
The code of conduct is a voluntary code which is self-enforced by each of the signatory organizations.
The code includes two annexes, Annex I, Recommendations to governments of disaster affected countries, and Annex II, Recommendations to donor governments.
The code of conduct is widely used to guide conduct within humanitarian agencies. When the code was drawn up a new term was coined: Non governmental humanitarian agencies (NGHAs), to include the NGOs and the components of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement which are not NGOs.
The Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) which is based in the UK has used the code for evaluating humanitarian action, beginning with an evaluation of the Gujarat earthquake of 2001 and covering many subsequent evaluations. The evaluators have used the code as a framework, presenting their findings of agencies' performances in relation to each principle in the Code.
Evaluators differ about the usefulness of the code. In the DEC evaluation of the Gujarat earthquake of 2001, the evaluators concluded
However, because of the lack of indicators of compliance with code they were forced to rate overall performance based on the aggregation of their impressions and judgement rather than on an objective measurement. The evaluators of the DEC Tsunami Crisis Response were unable to do this because of different perceptions of different team members. However, the opening paragraph of the executive summary of the Tsunami evaluation states
This is at odds with the conclusions of Hillhorst's review of the code which states:
Hillhorst's paper draws on a survey of code signatories and a conference to review the code, as well as detailed analysis of the code itself.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7543506 | Mylan Engel
Mylan Engel Jr. (born 1960) is a full professor of philosophy at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.
Born in Alabama and educated at Vanderbilt University and the University of Arizona, he was hired by Northern Illinois University in 1988. Engel has also served as Guest Professor at the University of Innsbruck, Austria (1999) and University of Maribor, Slovenia (1999–2002).
Engel's specialties are epistemology, philosophy of religion, Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid, animal ethics, and environmental ethics.
Engel is a "moral vegetarian" (vegan)—the belief that we are morally obligated to refrain from eating meat—and has argued that virtually all humans hold beliefs that, if consistently applied, would make them moral vegetarians as well. Engel has contributed to the study of animal rights and edited the volume "The Moral Rights of Animals" with Gary Lynn Comstock in 2016.
In his spare time, Engel practices karate. He also offered a beginners course for students at Northern Illinois University.
Professor Engel has been Executive Secretary of The Society for the Study of Ethics and Animals since September, 2002.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7559364 | Season for Nonviolence
Season for Nonviolence was established in 1998 by Arun Gandhi, Mohandas Gandhi's grandson, as a yearly event celebrating the philosophies and lives of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Today, he co-chairs the Season along with Rev. Michael Bernard Beckwith of the Agape International Spiritual Center. It is convened by the Association for Global New Thought.
The "season" begins with the anniversary of Mohandas Gandhi's assassination on January 30 and ends with the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination on April 4. It is anchored by a mission, statement of principles, and commitments by participants towards living in a nonviolent way.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7571029 | De spectaculis
De Spectaculis, also known as On the Spectacles or The Shows, is a surviving moral and ascetic treatise by Tertullian. Written somewhere between 197-202, the work looks at the moral legitimacy and consequences of Christians attending the circus, theatre, or amphitheatre.
Tertullian argues that human enjoyment can be an offence to God. His view of these public entertainments is that they are a misuse of God's creation and a perversion of the gifts God has given to man. He supports his claim by reminding the reader that these shows and spectacles derived from pagan ritual rites (the Liberalia, the Consualia, the Equiria, the Bacchanalia, etc.). This means that the events derive from idolatry. Of key concern was that the "show always leads to spiritual agitation". By attending and partaking in the event, man is subject to strong excitements, which are aroused due to natural lapses, which create passionate desire. Additionally, Tertullian writes that that which is not permissible to say or do should not be permissible to see or hear.
Friedrich Nietzsche, in "On the Genealogy of Morality" (Essay 1, Section 15), uses Tertullian's words to highlight the resemblance of Christian worship to circus-going: "In place of athletes, we have our martyrs; if we crave blood, we have the blood of Christ..." To those addicted to the pleasure of pagan spectacles Tertullian tried to show that Christianity offers far superior spectacles. For this reason he spoke of the Second Coming, the resurrection of the saints, New Jerusalem, and of “what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived” (), but the spectacle on which he enlarged most was the Last Judgement and the ensuing punishment of the enemies of Christ:
Such an expression of joy over the ruin of the damned finds no match in the other works of early Christians. However, it must be taken into account that in an earlier chapter of the treatise Tertullian wrote that “the innocent can find no pleasure in another’s sufferings: he rather mourns that a brother has sinned so heinously as to need a punishment so dreadful.” This passage is hard--if not impossible--to reconcile with the one quoted before and it is therefore debatable what Tertullian's real sentiments regarding the damned were.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7580142 | Peter Glassen
Peter Glassen (1920–1986) was a professor of philosophy at the University of Manitoba from 1949 until his death in 1986. He was an analytic moral philosopher, publishing several articles in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He was also known for his arguments against metaphysical materialism, and spent a year (1948–49) in the psychology department at the University of Saskatchewan.
Born in Szeged, Hungary (then the Austro-Hungarian Empire) on October 19, 1920, Glassen emigrated with his parents to Toronto, Canada in 1929, residing on Gladstone Avenue in the city's west end. He graduated from Bloor Collegiate Institute in 1940. Among other academic awards, Glassen received the R.W. Leonard Entrance Scholarship for General Proficiency from the University of Toronto, valued at what was then the very substantial sum of $900. He graduated from the university with a B.A. in 1944 and an M.A. in 1945.
In 1945, Glassen entered Harvard University, having been awarded the Philip H. Sears scholarship. There he studied with Ralph Barton Perry, C. I. Lewis, Henry D. Aiken, W. T. Stace, Henry Austryn Wolfson and others. In October 1947 he qualified for the A.M. degree and, under Aiken's supervision, continued to work on his doctoral dissertation ("The Ethics of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson", later changed to "The Criterion of Rightness in Action") for several years, but never completed his Ph.D. due to his commitments as an assistant professor.
Glassen's first set of publications consisted in eight papers published in major philosophical journals in 1957, 1958 and 1959. These reflected his core interests: analytic moral theory (where he was a cognitivist and champion of ordinary language analysis), value theory (particularly the classification of, and distinctions among, moral and non-moral varieties of normative judgment), and epistemology (notably the question of the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge). There followed a period of reduced activity, with two papers on cognitivism in 1962 and 1963, several reviews for "Dialogue" from 1963 to 1970, and finally a series of papers on another subject of enduring interest—the refutation of arguments against dualism—between 1976 and 1984. Glassen also authored a number of conference papers, including two that were published in the proceedings of the 12th and 13th meetings of the International Congress of Philosophy, in 1958 and 1963 respectively. Several other papers were unpublished and—with one or two exceptions—are likely lost.
In 1961, Glassen travelled to England on a Canada Council grant, meeting with many leading moral philosophers of the time, including Sir David Ross, H. B. Acton and others.
Glassen's early promise was not entirely realized. This was at least partly due to the lasting effects of a personal tragedy. While returning from Toronto to Winnipeg for the beginning of the 1965-66 school year, Glassen was involved in a car accident that took the life of the other driver. Though not ultimately found at fault, Glassen never fully recovered from the shock. His scholarly output declined and he turned down an opportunity to move to the more prominent department at the University of Toronto in 1967. His career might have faded into complete obscurity had it not been for the development of eliminative materialism by fellow University of Manitoba philosophers Paul Churchland and Patricia Churchland in the 1970s. This aroused his vehement opposition and revived his interest in writing and publishing. After several years of good health, a series of illnesses in 1985-86 brought on a recurrence of depression and alcoholism, leading to his death by suicide on or about March 24, 1986 in Winnipeg.
"Some Questions about Relations" (1957) is an analysis of the ontology of relations. Glassen argues that a relation has both properties (e.g. reflexivity (R), symmetry (S), transitivity (T)) and content. There must be content because many relations share the same set of properties while not being the same relation (e.g. "to the left of" and "before" are both [-R, -S, T]). Thus a relation "r" may be defined in terms of content and properties, e.g. as {r =df con, p1, p2, p3}. Glassen proceeds to point out several troubling questions that arise when we try to understand whether the relationship between content and properties is necessary or accidental. He admits in his conclusion that, "given the Bradleyan flavour of the problems to which it gives rise", there may be something wrong—and perhaps quite importantly wrong—with the initial distinction between content and properties. This paper was reviewed by Alonzo Church in "The Journal of Symbolic Logic" 32:3 (Sept. 1968), p. 408.
"A Fallacy in Aristotle's Argument about the Good" (1957) is a close analysis of a crucial paragraph in Book I, chapter 7 of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Glassen argues that Aristotle fails to show (or even to attempt to argue) that it follows from the fact that the function of a good man is activity of the soul in accordance with virtue that the good of man—his final goal—is precisely that function. This reflects Glassen's attention to the distinction between morality and the broader theory of value. Glassen's argument has been referred to in a number of subsequent papers. Aurel Kolnai, referring to the same problem although not specifically to Glassen's paper, called this the "Aristotelian Equivocation".
"Are There Unresolvable Moral Disputes?" (1962) was influential in the field of ethical objectivism in its introduction of subjective bases of approval on top of the objective bases for approval outlined in emotivist theory - an introduction which made possible the resolution of moral disputes theoretically unresolvable under the emotivist theory. In a way, his work can be seen as straddling the line between emotivism and ethical objectivism.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7614405 | Stephanus of Alexandria
Stephanus of Alexandria (Stephanus Alexandrinus, Stephanos of Alexandria; ) was a 7th-century Byzantine philosopher, astronomer and teacher. He was a public lecturer in the court of Heraclius (610-641 AD). In the manuscripts he is called the Universal Philosopher.
He taught on Plato and Aristotle, and on Geometry, Arithmetic, Alchemy, Astronomy and Music.
1. A commentary on Aristotle. Editions:
2. A commentary on the Isagogue of Porphyry. Editions:
3. Astronomical and chronological works. Editions:
4. Alchemical works. Scholars are divided as to whether or not these are authentic works of the same Stephen of Alexandria due to the style of writing. The translator, F. Sherwood Taylor accepts them as his. A compendium of alchemical texts including the poem "De Chrysopoeia" (On how to make gold) is extant in two manuscripts, Venice Cod. Marcianus 299 and Paris BNF 2327.
Editions:
5. Astrological works. These also are apocryphal.
6. Other apocrypha include a 'Weissagungsbuch', a prophecy of Mohammed and the rise of Islam, and probably date from around 775 AD.
Texts:
Dictionaries:
Articles and studies:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7624133 | Julia Annas
Julia Elizabeth Annas (born 1946) is a British philosopher who has taught in the United States for the last quarter-century. She is Regents Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona.
Annas graduated from Oxford University in 1968 with a B.A., and from Harvard University with an A.M. (1970) and a PhD (1972). She was a Fellow and Tutor at St Hugh's College, Oxford for fifteen years, before joining the faculty at Arizona in 1986, where she has taught since, apart for one year as a professor at Columbia University. She concentrates on the study of ancient Greek philosophy, including Ethics, Psychology and Epistemology.
Her current research interests are in Platonic ethics. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992, and a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society in 2013. She is the founder and former editor of the annual journal, "Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy". She is married to the Hume scholar, David Owen, also a professor of philosophy at the University of Arizona.
Julia Annas has advocated ethics based on character, building on ideas attributed to Greek philosopher, Aristotle and making them relevant for contemporary moral discourse. She has argued that being virtuous involves "practical reasoning" which can be compared to the "exercising of a practical skill". Hence, she argues, rather than relating virtues to rules, principles, or an end goal, Annas says, first, people should ask how they can improve their moral "skills".
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7641341 | New Times (politics)
New Times was an intellectual movement among leftists in Great Britain in the late 1980s. It was centred on the Eurocommunist faction of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), and most of the intellectual groundwork for the movement was laid out in the latter party's official theoretical journal, "Marxism Today".
After the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956, and especially Czechoslovakia in 1968, many western Communists began to question their allegiance to the Soviet Union. Some disillusioned communists swung to the left and joined Trotskyist parties. Others, led by Enrico Berlinguer's Italian Communist Party (PCI), stayed within the Communist Parties and developed their own critique. This would essentially lead to an expanded version of the "popular front" policies of the 1930s, with a number of CPs attempting to ingratiate themselves to the existing political establishment. The movement came to be known as Eurocommunism.
Whereas Eurocommunist factions in the French and Italian communist parties fairly successfully managed to impose their agenda on the party platforms, things were not so simple in other countries. In Britain, particularly, there were bitter struggles from the 1970s on. The party became divided into 'Euros' and 'tankies' (so called for their support of Soviet interventions in Eastern Bloc countries).
A major coup for the Euros was obtaining control over "Marxism Today". Martin Jacques became editor in 1977, and began to publish articles mostly by prominent Eurocommunists. More recently, he cites Eric Hobsbawm's 1978 article "Forward March Of Labour Halted?" as a turning point. In the early 80s, the New Times idea began to emerge. Alongside Jacques, Stuart Hall was highly influential. Articles were published in "MT" questioning the Left's opposition to consumerism, focus on material production and the industrial working class, and approach to Margaret Thatcher. The term "Thatcherism" is largely attributable to Hall's work in "MT", where he argued that she was not 'just another' Tory.
In 1988, New Times was belatedly named in MT's October issue. A special edition proclaimed that ""Mass production, the mass consumer, the big city, big-brother state, the sprawling housing estate, and the nation-state are in decline: flexibility, diversity, differentiation, mobility, communication, decentralisation and internationalisation are in the ascendant. In the process our own identities, our sense of self, our own subjectivities are being transformed. We are in transition to a new era."" The movement had now reached its peak, with a huge influence on Neil Kinnock and later Tony Blair's reorientation of the Labour Party.
The principal basis of New Times is, as the name suggests, the idea that the 1980s and 90s represent a significant break with previous history. The transition from Fordism to Post-fordism is a key factor, as workers in western nations are no longer concentrated in large workplaces, but employed widely in the service and public sectors; blue collar jobs are replaced by white collar ones; and consumption is democratised to a far greater extent than previously.
Other things are seen as radically new. Thatcherism, for example, is seen not as a simple development of previous Tory policy, but as a radical departure. Jacques, in the introduction to the MT special, writes that "at the heart of Thatcherism, has been its sense of New Times, of living in a new era... the Right has glimpsed the future and run with it." The new times require new politics, and Thatcher is the first one to realise it.
In terms of concrete political positions, the NT milieu did not significantly differ from the wider Eurocommunist scene. NT did not see their role as informing Communist cadre so much as influencing the wider left, in particular the Labourites and Liberals. They advocated broad coalitions of oppressed groups, and ushered in an era of 'identity politics'. (Indeed, much of Hall's subsequent work was concerned with questions of identity.) NT repudiated the project of abolishing capitalism, ascribing the failure of Bolshevism to 'voluntarism.' NT held instead to a decidedly reformist project: the left should adapt to the world, rather than seeking to change it.
During the "Marxism Today" discussion, A Sivinandan published a critique in "Race & Class" in which he argued that class struggle was still central to capitalism. It begins:
"New Times is a fraud, a counterfeit, a humbug. It palms off Thatcherite values as socialist, shores up the Thatcherite market with the pretended politics of choice, fits out the Thatcherite individual with progressive consumerism, makes consumption itself the stuff of politics."
Many New Times intellectuals were instrumental in reorganising the Labour Party. Hobsbawm was an advisor to Neil Kinnock, as Martin Kettle later was to Tony Blair. Many of Blair's inner circle were former Communists of the Euro/NT school. While those intellectuals who still identify with the New Times school are often very critical of Blair's alleged over-identification with Thatcherite policy.
The Democratic Left movement set up by "MT" alumni in the 1990s published a magazine also called "New Times". This ceased publication in 2000.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7642917 | Whitewashing (censorship)
To whitewash is a metaphor meaning "to gloss over or cover up vices, crimes or scandals or to exonerate by means of a perfunctory investigation or through biased presentation of data".
The first known use of the term is from 1591 in England. Whitewash is a cheap white paint or coating of chalked lime that was used to quickly give a uniform clean appearance to a wide variety of surfaces, for instance, the entire interior of a barn.
In 1800, in the United States, the word was used in a political context, when a Philadelphia "Aurora" editorial said that "if you do not whitewash President Adams speedily, the Democrats, like swarms of flies, will bespatter him all over, and make you both as speckled as a dirty wall, and as black as the devil."
In the 20th century, many dictatorships and authoritarian states, as well as democratic countries, have used the method of whitewash in order to glorify the results of war.
For instance, during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia following the Prague Spring of 1968, the Press Group of Soviet Journalists released a collection of "facts, documents, press reports and eye-witness accounts." Western journalists promptly nicknamed it as "The White Book", both for its white cover and its attempts to whitewash the invasion by creating the impression that the Warsaw Pact countries had the right and duty to invade.
In the early 21st century, North Korean radio broadcasts have claimed the nation has an abundance in food supplies, yet the government receives food aid from foreign states.
In the study of reputation systems by means of algorithmic game theory, whitewashing is used to refer to an agent abandoning a tarnished identity and re-creating a new blank one, in what is more widely known in Internet slang as sockpuppeting.
The text of Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow" has been identified as being whitewashed due to the bias of its conceptual framework. It omits pertinent African American people and history, as well as politically radical ideas in favor of a more conventional and mainstream perspective. Critics maintain that the text has been whitewashed for white middle-class consumption.
Novels by George Orwell have dealt with the subject of whitewash as well. In "Animal Farm", the pig Napoleon tries to whitewash history by deleting a few characters from the minds of the other animals. This was perceived as a direct reference to the USSR under Stalin. The protagonist of his novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four", set in a totalitarian dictatorship, is employed as a routine falsifier of the historical record to ensure that it is always in keeping with the party line.
Czech writer Milan Kundera, in his novel "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting", described histories being revised with both text and photos being changed to take out unpopular dissidents or people on the wrong side of the government.
Since the late 20th century in the United States, new terms have been coined to relate to similar efforts to associate with desirable social goals or get on a bandwagon.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7670972 | Obsessive love
Obsessive love or Obsessive love disorder (OLD) is a condition in which one person feels an overwhelming obsessive desire to possess and protect another person, with an inability to accept failure or rejection. Symptoms include an inability to tolerate any time spent without that person, obsessive fantasies surrounding the person, and spending inordinate amounts of time seeking out, making, or looking at images of that person. Although it is not categorized under any specific mental diagnosis by the DSM-5, some people argue that obsessive love is a mental illness similar to attachment disorder, borderline personality disorder, and erotomania. Depending on the intensity of their attraction, obsessive lovers may feel entirely unable to restrain themselves from extreme behaviors such as acts of violence toward themselves or others. Obsessive love can have its roots in childhood trauma and may begin at first sight; it may persist indefinitely, sometimes requiring psychotherapy. In November 2019 marriage.com reported that although it could be “a slight exaggeration” Netflix show You had got people talking about obsessive love disorder.
Author Liz Hodgkinson, herself a sufferer from Obsessive Love Disorder, in one instance lasting for fifty years and only being relieved by psychotherapy states "I believe that with obsessive love, time is no healer at all. The experience of obsessive love can be likened to dropping a stitch in knitting, and never picking it up. The knitting never quite looks right from then on, unless we unpick it and start again from the mistake."
You, a 2014 thriller novel by Caroline Kepnes portrays obsessive love disorder. The novel was translated into 19 languages and has been adapted into a television serial of the same name.
In 2018 the psychological thriller novel written by Caroline Kepnes was developed into the September 2018 Lifetime television series You. It attracted a limited audience before becoming more popular and a critical success on Netflix from December 2018. Over 43 million viewers streamed the first season after its debut on the streaming service. Based on Kepnes' follow-up novel "Hidden Bodies", the second season was released exclusively on Netflix on December 26, 2019. On January 14, 2020, the series was renewed by Netflix for a third season, set to be released sometime in 2021.
The term "yandere" is used by the anime and manga fandom as an over-dramatization of OLD. Usually, "yandere" characters are extremely brutal and do not hesitate to hurt and/or kill others in order to be with their beloved. The best known yandere characters include Yuno Gasai from the Future Diary anime and manga series and Ayano Aishi from "Yandere Simulator" stealth action video game.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7673913 | Bradley Shavit Artson
Bradley Shavit "Brad" Artson (born 1959) is an American rabbi, author, speaker, and the occupant of the Abner and Roslyn Goldstine Dean's Chair of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, California, where he is Vice-President. He supervises the Louis and Judith Miller Introduction to Judaism Program and provides educational and religious oversight for Camp Ramah of California in Ojai and Camp Ramah of Northern California in the Monterey Bay area. He is Dean of the Zacharias Frankel College at the University of Potsdam in Germany, ordaining Conservative/Masorti rabbis for Europe.
Born and raised in San Francisco, Artson holds the A.B. Degree from Harvard College, cum laude, in 1981. As an undergraduate, he served as the LBJ Intern for United States Representative Burton and was an intern for United States Senator Alan Cranston. Following graduation, Artson was a Legislative Assistant to the Speaker of the California Assembly for two years and was ordained with honors by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1988. He wrote his first book, "Love Peace and Pursue Peace: A Jewish Response to War and Nuclear Annihilation" while in rabbinical school. During his last year at rabbinical school, he served as the part-time rabbinic intern at Bolton Street Synagogue in Baltimore.
For 10 years, Artson served as the rabbi of Congregation Eilat in Mission Viejo, which grew under his tenure from about 200 families to over 600. During that period, his Introduction to Judaism course helped over 200 people convert to Judaism, and 10 of his congregants have entered the rabbinate in turn.
From 1998–1999, Artson was a member of the Senior Management of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and served as the Executive Vice President of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California. In 1999, he began his work at the University of Judaism (now the American Jewish University). In addition to his work as Rabbinical School Dean and University Vice-President, Rabbi Artson received his D.H.L. at the Hebrew Union College's Jewish Institute of Religion in Contemporary Jewish Theology, under the supervision of Rabbi Dr. David Ellenson.
His scholarly fields are Jewish philosophy and theology, particularly a process approach integrating contemporary scientific insights from cosmology, quantum physics, evolutionary theory and neuroscience to a dynamic view of God, Torah, Mitzvot and ethics. He is a charter member of the Society for the Study of Judaism and Science.
A prominent leader of Conservative Judaism, Artson serves on the Leadership Council of Conservative Judaism. He supervises the Miller Introduction to Judaism Program and the Center for Jewish Outreach at American Jewish University and he mentors Camp Ramah in California. Rabbi Artson writes a weekly Torah commentary that has over 13,000 internet subscribers. He is the author of 11 books, most recently "Renewing the Process of Creation: A Jewish Integration of Science and Spirit" and "God of Becoming & Relationship: The Dynamic Nature of Process Theology" both published by Jewish Lights. He is a regular contributor to Huffington Post, the Times of Israel, and he has written over 300 articles in several journals and magazines.
He is also Dean of the Zacharias Frankel College at the University of Potsdam, Germany, ordaining Conservative/Masorti rabbis for Europe under the religious supervision of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies.
In 2008, Artson ordained Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, the leader of the Abayudaya Tribe and participated a rabbinic delegation to Uganda to install him as the first African rabbi in Sub-Saharan Africa. While in Africa he joined a Beit Din in converting 250 Africans from Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, and Uganda. A regional chief bestowed upon him the African name Walusansa Salongo.
Artson launched the "Walking With …" series, an annual series of books distributed free of charge and available on the web as complimentary PDF files . In 2007 he produced "Walking With God", in 2008, "Walking With Justice," in 2009, "Walking With Life," and in 2010, "Walking With the Jewish Calendar." For the past few years he has also produced an annual Selichot DVD, "Choose Life," a series of conversations with Rabbi Artson, Rabbi David Wolpe, Rabbi Naomi Levy, Rabbi Edward Feinstein, and Rabbi Sharon Brous. It can be viewed at . Under his direction, the Ziegler School sponsored a podcast page that presents the monthly discussions of Rabbi Artson, a Rebbe's Tish of Reb Mimi Feigelson, lessons on the Siddur and prayer by Rabbi Elliot Dorff, and a Halakhah Yomi by Rabbi Aaron Alexander.
Artson has served on the faculty of the Wexner Heritage Foundation and as a speaker for UJC/Federation communities.
Artson is married to Elana Shavit Artson, and they are the parents of twins, Shira and Jacob.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7676441 | Australian Aboriginal avoidance practices
Aboriginal avoidance practices refers to those relationships in traditional Aboriginal society where certain people are required to avoid others in their family or clan. These customs are still active in many parts of Australia, to a greater or lesser extent.
Avoidance relationships are a mark of respect. There are also strong protocols around avoiding, or averting, eye contact, as well as around speaking the name of the dead.
In general, across most language groups, the two most common avoidance relationships are:
In what is the strongest kinship avoidance rule, some Australian Aboriginal customs ban a person from talking directly to their mother-in-law or even seeing her. A mother-in-law also eats apart from her son-in-law or daughter-in-law and their spouse. If the two are present at the same ceremony, they will sit with their backs to each other but they can still communicate via the wife/husband, who remains the main conduit for communication in this relationship. Often there are language customs surrounding these relationships.
This relationship extends to avoiding all women of the same skin group as the mother-in-law, and, for the mother-in-law, men of the same skin group as the son-in-law. The age of marriage is very different for men and women with girls usually marrying at puberty while a man may not marry until his late 20s or even later. As mothers-in-law and sons-in-law are likely to be of approximately the same age the avoidance practice possibly serves to circumvent potential illicit relationships. It has also been suggested that the custom developed to overcome a common cause of friction in families.
This usually takes place after initiation. Prior to this, brothers and sisters play together freely.
Both these avoidance relationships have their grounding in the Australian Aboriginal kinship system, and so are ways of avoiding incest in small bands of closely related people.
There are many other avoidance relationships, including same-sex relationships, but these are the main two.
Once children are older, they are viewed as potential marital partners and their sexual behavior becomes one of strict avoidance until married. Permanent relationships are prescribed by traditional law and often arranged before birth.
Same-sex relationships are viewed in the same light as incest or "wrong" marriages (i.e., to a partner of their own choice or wrong skin group) which carry the same penalties as a domestic crime against the community. However, intimate bodily contact between women regardless of marital status is not considered sexually suggestive but affirmation of friendship and a "right to touch". Touch is particularly important when women tell jokes or discuss matters of a sexual nature. In these circumstances behavior such as "nipple tweaking" and "groin grabbing" are seen as signs of friendship.
Traditionally, this meant avoiding referring to a deceased individual by name directly after their death as a mark of respect—and also because it is considered too painful for the grieving family. Today the practice continues in many communities, but has also come to encompass avoiding the publication or dissemination of photography or film footage of the deceased as well. Most forms of media include a disclaimer warning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders that the program may contain images and voices of such people who have died. (as recommended by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
The avoidance period may last anywhere from 12 months to several years. The person can still be referred to in a roundabout way, such as, "that old lady", or by their generic skin name, but not by first name. In some Central Australian communities, if for example, an individual named Alice dies, that name must be avoided in all contexts. This can even include the township Alice Springs being referred to in conversation in a roundabout way. Those of the same name as the deceased are referred to by a substitute name during the avoidance period such as "Kuminjay", used in the Pintubi-Luritja dialect, or "Galyardu", which appears in a mid-western Australia Wajarri dictionary for this purpose.
This presents some challenges to indigenous people. In traditional society, people lived together in small bands of extended family, and name duplication was less common. Today, as people have moved into larger communities (with upwards of 300 to 600 people), the logistics of name avoidance have become increasingly difficult. Exotic and rare names have therefore become more common, particularly in Central Australia and desert communities, to deal with this new challenge.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7707870 | Wesley J. Smith
Wesley J. Smith (born 1949) is an American lawyer and author, a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism, a politically conservative non-profit think tank. He is also a consultant for the Patients Rights Council. Smith is known for his criticism of assisted suicide and utilitarian bioethics.
Smith has authored or co-authored fourteen books. He formerly collaborated with consumer advocate Ralph Nader, and has been published in regional and national outlets such as "The New York Times", "Newsweek", "The Wall Street Journal", "USA Today", the "San Francisco Chronicle", "The Seattle Times", the "New York Post", and others. He is also well known for his blog, "Human Exceptionalism", hosted by "National Review", which advances his theory of "human exceptionalism" and defends intrinsic human dignity. He is a critic of those he labels "mainstream" bioethicists such as Peter Singer, Julian Savulescu, Jacob M. Appel, and R. Alta Charo. He has also been highly critical of science writer Matt Ridley.
Smith practiced law in the San Fernando Valley from 1976–1985, at which time he left law practice to pursue other interests, particularly as a public policy advocate. His first book in 1987 was "The Lawyer Book: A Nuts and Bolts Guide to Client Survival", introduced by consumer advocate Ralph Nader beginning a collaboration between the two men. Smith is a prolific author and a frequent contributor to "National Review" and "The Weekly Standard". He closely followed the Terri Schiavo case in 2005, and wrote frequently on the topic.
He opposes policies allowing for assisted suicide, euthanasia, human cloning, and granting human style "rights" to animals," making a clear distinction between animal rights and animal welfare. He is also a noted critic of mainstream views in bioethics, human cloning research, radical environmentalism and of what he calls the radical animal liberation movement, which he worries exhibits "anti-humanism". His book "Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America" was named Best Health Book of the Year at the 2001 Independent Publishers Book Awards.
Smith is one of the world's foremost apologists of "human exceptionalism," which he defends from a secular perspective.
Smith is a frequent guest on radio and television talk shows, having appeared on national programs such as "Good Morning America" and "Nightline", as well as internationally on BBC Radio 4. He has testified as an expert witness in front of federal and state legislative committees, and is an international public speaker, appearing throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and many countries in Europe.
Smith is married to the syndicated "Las Vegas Review Journal" White House correspondent Debra J. Saunders.
In a 2001 essay, physician Matthew K. Wynia and attorney Arthur Derse accused Smith of selectively using evidence to create a false impression that bioethics is a monolithic field. They argued that Smith was "prepared to bend the truth to make a point, turn a stomach, and potentially radicalize a reader." Smith rebutted these criticisms, stating in part, "Wynia and Derse assert that I claim bioethics is a monolith. That is not what I write. What I do believe is that bioethics has, generally, crystallized into an orthodoxy, perhaps even an ideology. I acknowledge that disagreements certainly exist within the field. But I view them, with some exceptions, as the arguing of people who agree on fundamentals but disagree on details -- sort of like Catholics bickering with Baptists."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7709402 | Johanne Agerskov
Johanne Elisabeth Agerskov (1873–1946) was a Danish medium. Together with her husband, Michael Agerskov, she was responsible for the ethico-religious, philosophical, and pseudo-scientific book, "Toward the Light" (in Danish, "Vandrer mod Lyset!"), first published by Michael Agerskov in Copenhagen in 1920.
She was a daughter of a Danish inventor, minister and principal of the Royal Institute for Deaf-Mutes in Copenhagen Rasmus Malling-Hansen ( 1835 - 1890 ).
In her younger days Johanne Agerskov worked as a teacher, and she married Michael Agerskov in 1899. Their only daughter, Inger Agerskov, was born in 1900, and Johanne became a housewife.
During the first decade of the twentieth century, Michael became interested in spiritual phenomena, and persuaded his wife to participate in séances, even though she was skeptical in the beginning. Soon Johanne came to believe that the spirits of the transcendental world had called upon her, and had given her the message that she was a medium, and that before her birth she had promised to be instrumental in bringing eternal truths to mankind.
Convinced that she had a special mission, Agerskov and her husband formed a circle with two more couples, and for many years held weekly séances, in which they believed messages from the spirits of the light were given to Agerskov through intuitive thought-inspiration. She claimed a unique ability to close off her own thoughts, so that all she could "hear" in her mind, according to her, was the thoughts of the spirit with whom she was supposed to be in contact. That was very demanding, and in that period she gave up all the pleasures of social life, in order to be focused and prepared for the séances. The members of the circle would submit questions for her to ask the spirits, and shortly she would give them answers, supposedly from the spirits, which the other participants would write down.
That resulted in the publication of the book, "Toward the Light", which Agerskov called "a message to mankind from the transcendental world", and which she and her husband sent out to all the bishops and sixty ministers of the Danish national church. Their hope was that these would participate in a reformation of the Danish church, based upon the new knowledge given in "Toward the Light". The Agerskovs made great efforts to that end, through correspondence and by opening their home to anybody who wanted to see them about "Toward the Light"; but there was little public interest in the book, and the expected reformation did not take place.
Johanne Agerskov was also deeply engaged in the work of her father. In 1924 a Danish professor asserted that Malling-Hansen was not the inventor of the Hansen Writing Ball, and Agerskov undertook a thorough investigation of the facts, together with her sister, Engelke Wiberg. They wrote several articles on the subject, and Agerskov also wrote a book, called "Hvem var Skrivekuglens Opfinder?" ("Who was the Inventor of the Writing Ball?"), published in Copenhagen in 1925.
In 1926 a Society for the Advancement of "Toward the Light" was formed , which offered religious services for its members, based on "Toward the Light". Agerskov was skeptical, however, because "Toward the Light" calls on believers to remain in the established church and to work for reformation from within.
Even though the Agerskovs in the beginning had participated in spiritualist séances, they soon asked their followers to end that activity, because, as they asserted in "Toward the Light", calling on the spirits of deceased ancestors would bring problems to those who could not resist the call to appear. The spirits, they said, needed to rest and to prepare for their next incarnation, and were not allowed to visit the earth.
Michael Agerskov died in 1933, but Johanne continued to answer letters and to publish up until 1938, in collaboration with their daughter. During the last years of her life, Johanne Agerskov suffered from illness, and was not able to leave her home.
There has been controversy among Agerskov's followers over whether or not to publish photos of her, as she said to destroy all her own pictures of herself before she died. Some of the followers of "Toward the Light!" contend that her will in this matter should be respected, and oppose the publication of such pictures.
Others see nothing wrong with publishing photos of her, considering that photos of her are available in public collections in both Denmark and Norway, and on the World-Wide Web. This article contains photos of both Agerskov and her husband, supplied by their descendants, who have no objection to their publication.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7720374 | Compliance and ethics program
Since about 1970, several major business and government excesses were seen in the United States to generate subsequent legal, public and political reaction. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is perhaps the legislation with the most significant influence in the development of ethics and compliance programs; similar ideas are encoded in the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations, and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) marked the early beginnings of compliance programs in the United States. In the mid-1970s, United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigations discovered that a significant number of American companies participated in bribery overseas. “Over 400 U.S. Companies admitted to making questionable or illegal payments to foreign government officials, politicians and political parties.” (United States Department of Justice 2006) One of the most infamous cases of its time was the admission by a Lockheed executive, to the Multinational Corporations Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that Lockheed had paid bribes in the amount of $22 million to Japanese government officials in the course of trying to sell its aircraft. This revelation came on the heels of the U.S. Government providing Lockheed with a $250 million emergency loan guarantee (Hishikawa 2003).
In an effort to restore faith in American business, in December 1977 the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was signed into law. This anti-bribery provision makes it “unlawful for a U.S. person, and certain foreign issuers of securities, to make a corrupt payment to a foreign official for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business for or with, or directing business to, any person.” (United States Department of Justice 2006) The law also requires publicly traded companies “to maintain records that accurately and fairly represent the company’s transactions. Additionally, it requires these companies to have an adequate systems of internal accounting controls.” (United States Department of Justice 2006)
Following the passage of the FCPA, in 1988, the Congress became concerned that American companies were operating at a disadvantage because their foreign counterparts were, as a matter of practice, paying bribes to foreign officials and deducting those bribes as business expenses on their taxes. (United States Department of Justice 2006) Subsequently, the Executive Branch began negotiations with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a 34-member nation coalition consisting of the United States and 33 other countries, to enact legislation similar to FCPA. In 1997, the OCED signed the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions. (http://www.oecd.org/document/21/0,2340,en_2649_34859_2017813_1_1_1_1,00.html)
This regulation requires member nations to designate the payment of bribes to foreign offices as a crime and to follow the rules and regulations that govern bribery in international transactions. The U.S. ratified this convention and enacted implementing legislation in 1998. At this time, the FCPA was amended to include territorial jurisdiction over foreign companies and nationals. A foreign company or person is now subject to the FCPA, if the company or person either directly or indirectly through agents, engages in acts which further the facilitation of corrupt payments taking place within the territory of the United States.
In response to the FCPA and its requirement to implement internal control programs, in 1985 a private-sector initiative was formed called the National Committee on Fraudulent Financial Reporting (commonly known as the Treadway Commission). This Commission recommended that its organizational sponsors work together to develop guidance on internal controls. Subsequently, the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) was formed, and in conjunction with the CPA firm Coopers & Lybrand, COSO authored and published in 1992 the “Internal Control-Integrated Framework". This framework has become the de facto standard in the accounting industry for auditing, evaluating and monitoring internal control systems.
The COSO Internal Control-Integrated Framework is now widely used by most organizations as the basis for “establishing and maintaining an adequate internal control structure and procedures for financial reporting” ( 15 USC § 7262) and for the assessment of control effectiveness under section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley.
In 1984 Congress passed the Sentencing Reform Act, which created a set of mandatory federal sentencing guidelines (Campbell & Bemporad 2006). As part of the Act, the United States Sentencing Commission was formed and delegated the responsibility “to provide “certainty” and “fairness” in sentencing, avoiding “unwarranted sentencing disparities” while “maintaining sufficient flexibility to permit individualized sentencing when warranted by mitigating or aggravating factors (Campbell & Bemporad 2006).”
On May 1, 1991, as an extension of the Sentencing Reform Act, the United States Sentencing Commission submitted to Congress the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations] (FSGO), a set of standards that govern the sentences federal judges impose on organizations convicted of federal crimes. Enacted on November 1, 1991, core to the guidelines was the Commission's intent to “prevent and deter organizational wrongdoing” through its design of the organizational sentencing guidelines. These guidelines describe the elements of an organization's compliance and ethics program that are required to be considered for eligibility for a reduced sentence if convicted. In general, the FSGO require an organization to establish standards to guide its employees and agents. These standards must reflect government regulations and industry standards and apply to almost all types of organizations including corporations, partnerships, unions, non-profit organizations and trusts.
In 2004, the United States Sentencing Commission voted to amend its existing organization guidelines to make the criteria for an effective compliance and ethics program more stringent. Two major standards were identified in the amended guidelines. The amended guidelines stated the need for directors and executives to take an active role in the management of its compliance and ethics program and the importance of promoting an organizational culture that is compliant with the law and demonstrates ethical culture. The amended guidelines outline minimum requirements for an effective compliance and ethics program and the amended FSGO has become synonymous with an effective compliance program.
The FCPA, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines represent just a fraction of the standards and requirements organizations need to consider today when developing and implementing their compliance programs. “Since the passage of SOX, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), NASDAQ, and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), have all proposed and implemented new rules relating to compliance programs (Martin 2004).” Organizations today are increasingly accountable to mandated laws, regulations and standards on a number of dimensions, which include geographical/regional considerations, as well as industry and functional discipline concerns. These regulations and standards apply to a variety of financial and non-financial areas. Adding to this complexity are the “voluntary” boundaries, which organizations have individually established such as organizational commitments, values, and contractual obligations. As a result of these dynamics, organizations at the very core of their business strategy need to establish the capacity and the capability to effectively address the conditions mandated by these external requirements and internally generated operating principles while still meeting their business objectives.
History set the tone for increasing regulations and rising standards. Over time, organizations will need to be more proactive in anticipating and addressing these considerations while simultaneously protecting and building the enterprise. More and more organizations will need to translate, integrate and simplify these various standards and requirements into a cohesive approach.
Designing an effective compliance and ethics program requires implementing a detailed plan that will make sure the business achieves their ethics objectives. The organization must have ways of managing, evaluating, and controlling business ethics and compliance programs. There are five items which can affect the success of the compliance and ethics program: (1) the content of the company's code of ethics, (2) the frequency of communication regarding the ethical code and program, (3) the quality of communication, (4) senior management's ability to successfully incorporate ethics into the organization, (5) and local management's ability to do the same.
Compliance and ethics program with regulatory requirements and the organization's own policies are a critical component of effective risk management. An organizations program is recommended to include monitoring and auditing systems that allow detection of criminal and other improper context to be found easily. Maintaining the compliance and ethics program is one of the most important ways for an organization to maintain its ethical health, support its long-term prosperity, and preserve and promote its values.
A compliance and ethics program supports the organization's business objectives, identifies the boundaries of legal and ethical behavior, and establishes a system to alert management when the organization is getting close to (or crossing) a boundary or approaching an obstacle that prevents the achievement of a business objective.
Management should continuously improve its compliance and ethics program. This will enable it to better prevent, detect, and respond to similar misfeasance and/or malfeasance in the future.
The compliance and ethics program should strive to deliver tangible benefits and outcomes to the organization. Every organization is unique and has its own objectives. As such, several objectives of the compliance and ethics program will be unique as well. There are a few universal program outcomes/objectives that a compliance and ethics capability should deliver. These include an enhanced culture of trust, accountability and integrity; prevention of noncompliance, preparation for when (not “if”) noncompliance occurs, protection (to the extent possible) from negative consequences, detection of noncompliance, response to noncompliance and improvement of the program to better prevent, protect, prepare, detect and respond to noncompliance.
An important aspect of a high-performing program, and one that cannot be overstated, is enhancing an ethical culture. A strong ethical culture that provides important benefits would including a “safety net” for when formal controls are weak or absent, and an open environment of trust, ingredients that help drive overall workforce productivity.
A well-designed compliance and ethics program is only half the picture. Critical to its success and its ability to meet the challenges of constant change, increasing complexity, rapidly evolving threats, the need for continuous improvement requires organizations to have the commitment of both senior management and the board, adequate authorization and funding, the appropriate tools to facilitate measurement and rolling-up information, comprehensive training on the measurement process and an early socialization of approach.
Implementation is often the most difficult aspect of any program. This is the juncture where most failure occurs. However, if executed well, it can represent the biggest opportunity for positive influence on the organization's performance and culture.
The engaged involvement of key stakeholders is critical to a successful implementation or major enhancement of a compliance and ethics program, i.e. the dialogue and agreement up front, by all the major parties, regarding the objectives, goals, and overall purpose of the program will be critical to the project's eventual impact. By working together, compliance and ethics officers, executive management, and the board can help ensure a compliance and ethics program not only contributes to the improvement of the organization's governance practices but the success of its company's strategy as well.
One of most important conditions for an ethics program to be effectively implemented is the existence of a feeling of trust from the employees toward the organization. Organizations that present high levels of misconduct will experience lack of trust from its employees, which possible will cause high turnover among its workforce.
Integrate compliance and ethics - Address the “letter of the law” while promoting the “spirit of the law”. For some companies this means making a breach of company policy as serious as breaching laws, resulting in “internal” standards being as important as ‘mandatory’ standards.
Embed compliance and ethics risk management processes into the business - Organizations must systematically assess and prioritize present and emerging compliance and ethics risks. Such analysis should take into account the organization's culture, compliance and ethics history, as well as industry issues. Business processes should incorporate compliance and ethics program needs. Boards should routinely discuss these risks, and how they are addressed, with management.
Demonstrate leadership - The board should ensure senior management consistently communicates and models the organization's values and behavioral expectations identified in the compliance and ethics program.
Require accountability and ownership - In order to have the compliance and ethics program “make a difference”, it should foster a corporate culture that places responsibility on individuals for their actions and motivates everyone. The board and management should ensure employees have appropriate training and information and should participate in such training themselves.
Provide an open culture - Issues and problems should be, and in some cases are, required by law to be investigated and proactively managed to resolution. Unethical or illegal behavior should be addressed promptly. Employees must be required to raise and resolve violations of compliance or ethics standards. To do so, they must feel confident that they can take action without fear of retaliation. Such fears have been reduced, but not eliminated, with the introduction of the “whistleblower” protections of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Canadian equivalents. The board should inquire of management the steps they are taking to create this open culture.
Measure performance and results - Compliance and ethics processes and results should be monitored and measured. Objective data should support evaluations that are more subjective. Evaluation results should provide the basis for continually improving the program.
By using accurate, timely data on the organization's performance, managers know whether they are moving the entity closer to its objectives. Measuring compliance and ethics program performance help organizations gauge their improvement and learn whether the company's tactics are contributing to the success of the company's strategy. Keeping the board informed is a critical activity and robust performance reporting facilitates that important effort too. An organization's compliance and ethics program should be measured like any other critical capability.
There are numerous benefits and challenges to measuring the performance of a program. A well-known maxim is "what gets measured gets done.” The compliance and ethics program and capability is no different.
The Open Compliance and Ethics Group, OCEG, a non-profit organization that provides a performance framework for integrating governance, compliance, risk management and culture, has developed a Measurement and Metrics Guide (MMG) for assisting in measuring and reporting on the performance of compliance and ethics programs. This measurement platform advocates that program objectives be aligned with and contribute to the enterprise objectives in a tangible way. In order to achieve desired program outcomes, an organization should design processes and practices that effectively measure program dimensions on three key dimensions: effectiveness, efficiency and responsiveness.
A solid measurement system and approach should be implemented that embodies these principles:
Key metrics and indicators should be specific/simple, measurable, actionable, relevant and timely.
Performance measurement system should be reviewed and improved on an ongoing basis. It is only by gaining experience measuring performance that the organization can really refine and improve the system.
Compliance risk is the current and prospective risk to earnings or capital arising from violations of, or nonconformance with, laws, rules, regulations, prescribed practices, internal policies, and procedures, or ethical standards. Compliance risk also arises in situations where the laws or rules governing certain bank products or activities of the Bank's clients may be ambiguous or untested. This risk exposes the institution to fines, civil money penalties, payment of damages, and the voiding of contracts. Compliance risk can lead to diminished reputation, reduced franchise value, limited business opportunities, reduced expansion potential, and an inability to enforce contracts.
Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance (GRC) management capability is the solution to addressing increasing stakeholder expectations. Solid financial results are no longer sufficient. Stakeholders are demanding more. They want to know about non-financial results and the intangibles that will ensure financial growth. They want increased reporting and transparency and insight into an organization's strategy, risks, and operations along with an understanding of the manner in which business is conducted. As with the quality movement of the mid-1980s to early 1990s, these stakeholder demands are becoming baseline expectations.
Compliance and ethics practices can no longer be viewed in isolation of the rest of the organization, as some function off to the side to keep an organization out of jail. It must become part of the overall business strategy and operations, pervasive throughout the entire organization. Ultimately, taking this integrated approach will lead to better overall performance and compliance will become less of a burden on the business.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7732687 | Sullivan principles
The Sullivan principles are the names of two corporate codes of conduct, developed by the African-American preacher Rev. Leon Sullivan, promoting corporate social responsibility:
In 1977, Rev. Leon Sullivan, an African-American minister, was a member of the board of General Motors. At the time, General Motors was one of the largest corporations in the United States. General Motors also happened to be the largest employer of blacks in South Africa, a country which was pursuing a harsh program of state-sanctioned racial segregation and discrimination targeted primarily at the country's black population.
Sullivan, looking back on his anti-Apartheid efforts, recalled:
Starting with the work place, I tightened the screws step by step and raised the bar step by step. Eventually I got to the point where I said that companies must practice corporate civil disobedience against the laws and I threatened South Africa and said in two years Mandela must be freed, apartheid must end, and blacks must vote or else I'll bring every American company I can out of South Africa.
The Sullivan principles, introduced in 1977 with one addition in 1984, consisted of seven requirements a corporation was to demand for its employees as a condition for doing business. In general, the principles demanded the equal treatment of employees regardless of their race both within and outside of the workplace, demands which directly conflicted with the official South African policies of racial segregation and unequal rights.
The principles read:
The Sullivan principles were celebrated when introduced and gained wide use in the United States, particularly during the disinvestment campaign of the 1980s. Before the end of South Africa's apartheid era, the principles were formally adopted by more than 125 US corporations that had operations in South Africa. Of those companies that formally adopted the principles, at least 100 completely withdrew their existing operations from South Africa.
However, as South Africa's system of apartheid persisted relatively unchanged from the 1970s into the late 1980s, Sullivan "abandoned [his principles] as not going far enough" complaining that the principles by themselves were not enough to pressure a South African government steadfast in its refusal to yield to change.
In 1999, more than 20 years after the adoption of the original Sullivan Principles and six years after the end of apartheid, the Rev. Leon Sullivan and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan together unveiled the new "Global Sullivan Principles".
The overarching objective of these principles, according to Leon Sullivan, is "to support economic, social and political justice by companies where they do business," including respect for human rights and equal work opportunities for all peoples.
In general, the expanded corporate code of conduct requires adopting multinational companies to be a full participant in the advancement of human rights and social justice internationally.
The new principles read:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7780610 | Sissela Bok
Sissela Bok (née Myrdal; 2 December 1934) is a Swedish-born American philosopher and ethicist, the daughter of two Nobel Prize winners: Gunnar Myrdal who won the Economics prize with Friedrich Hayek in 1974, and Alva Myrdal who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982.
Bok received her B.A. and M.A. in psychology from George Washington University in 1957 and 1958, and her Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1970. Formerly a Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University, she is currently a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard School of Public Health.
Bok is married to Derek Bok, former president (1971–1991, interim 2006–2007) of Harvard. Her daughter, Hilary Bok, is also a philosopher. Her brother, Jan Myrdal, is a political writer and journalist.
Bok was awarded the Orwell Award in 1978 for "".
Bok was awarded the Courage of Conscience award on 24 April 1991 "for her contributions to peacemaking strategies in the tradition of her mother."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7806603 | Poor relief
In English and British history, poor relief refers to government and ecclesiastical action to relieve poverty. Over the centuries, various authorities have needed to decide whose poverty deserves relief and also who should bear the cost of helping the poor. Alongside ever-changing attitudes towards poverty, many methods have been attempted to answer these questions. Since the early 16th century legislation on poverty enacted by the English Parliament, poor relief has developed from being little more than a systematic means of punishment into a complex system of government-funded support and protection, especially following the creation in the 1940s of the welfare state.
In the late 15th century, parliament took action on the growing problem of poverty, focusing on punishing people for being "vagabonds" and for begging. In 1495, during the reign of King Henry VII, Parliament enacted the Vagabond Act. This provided for officers of the law to arrest and hold "all such vagabonds, idle and suspect persons living suspiciously and them so taken to set in stocks, there to remain three nights and to have none other sustenance but bread and water; and after the said three days and three nights, to be had out and set at large and to be commanded to avoid the town." As historian Mark Rathbone has discussed in his article "Vagabond!", this Act of Parliament relied on a very loose definition of a vagabond and did not make any distinction between those who were simply unemployed and looking for employment and those who chose to live the life of a vagabond. In addition, the Act failed to recognise the impotent poor, those who could not provide for themselves. These included the sick, the elderly, and the disabled. This lack of a precise definition of a vagabond would hinder the effectiveness of the Vagabond Act for years to come.
The problem of poverty in England was exacerbated during the early 16th century by a dramatic increase in the population. This rose "…from little more than 2 million in 1485,…(to) about 2.8 million by the end of Henry VII's reign (1509)". The population was growing faster than the economy's ability to provide employment opportunities. The problem was made worse because during the English Reformation, Henry VIII severed the ecclesiastical governance of his kingdoms of England and Ireland and made himself the "Supreme Governor" of the Church of England. This involved the Dissolution of the Monasteries in England and Wales: the assets of hundreds of rich religious institutions, including their great estates, were taken by the Crown. This had a devastating impact on poor relief. According to the historian Paul Slack, prior to the Dissolution "it has been estimated that monasteries alone provided 6,500 pounds a year in alms before 1537 (); and that sum was not made good by private benefactions until after 1580." In addition to the closing of the monasteries, most hospitals (which in the 16th century were generally almshouses rather than medical institutions) were also closed, as they "had come to be seen as special types of religious houses". This left many of the elderly and sick without accommodation or care. In 1531, the Vagabonds and Beggars Act was revised, and a new Act was passed by parliament which did make some provision for the different classes of the poor. The sick, the elderly, and the disabled were to be issued with licences to beg. But those who were out of work and in search of employment were still not spared punishment. Throughout the 16th century, a fear of social unrest was the primary motive for much legislation that was passed by parliament.
This fear of social unrest carried into the reign of Edward VI. A new level of punishment was introduced in the Duke of Somerset's Vagrancy Act of 1547. "Two years' servitude and branding with a 'V' was the penalty for the first offense, and attempts to run away were to be punished by lifelong slavery and, there for a second time, execution." However, "there is no evidence that the Act was enforced." In 1550 these punishments were revised in a new act that was passed. The act of 1550 makes a reference to the limited enforcement of the punishments established by the Act of 1547 by stating "the extremity of some [of the laws] have been occasion that they have not been put into use."
Following the revision of the Duke of Somerset’s Act of 1547, parliament passed the poor Act in 1552. This focused on using the parishes as a source of funds to combat the increasing poverty epidemic. This statute appointed two "overseers" from each parish to collect money to be distributed to the poor who were considered to belong to the parish. These overseers were to 'gently ask' for donations for poor relief; refusal would ultimately result in a meeting with the local bishop, who would 'induce and persuade' the recalcitrant parishioners. However, at times even such a meeting with the bishop would often fail to achieve its object.
Sensing that voluntary donation was ineffective, parliament passed new legislation in 1563, and once this Act took effect parishioners could be brought by the bishop before the Justices, and continued refusal could lead to imprisonment until contribution was made. However, even this Act still suffered from shortcomings, because individuals could decide for themselves how much money to give in order to gain their freedom.
A more structured system of donations was established by the Vagabonds Act 1572. After determining the amount of funds needed to provide for the poor of each parish, Justices of the Peace were granted the authority to determine the amount of the donation from each parish's more wealthy property-owners. This Act finally turned these donations into what was effectively a local tax.
In addition to creating these new imposed taxes, the Act of 1572 created a new set of punishments to inflict upon the population of vagabonds. These included being "bored through the ear" for a first offense and hanging for "persistent beggars". Unlike the previous brutal punishments established by the Act of 1547, these extreme measures were enforced with great frequency.
However, despite its introduction of such violent actions to deter vagabonding, the Act of 1572 was the first time that parliament had passed legislation which began to distinguish between different categories of vagabonds. "Peddlers, tinkers, workmen on strike, fortune tellers, and minstrels" were not spared these gruesome acts of deterrence. This law punished all able bodied men "without land or master" who would neither accept employment nor explain the source of their livelihood. In this newly established definition of what constituted a vagabond, men who had been discharged from the military, released servants, and servants whose masters had died were specifically exempted from the Act's punishments. This legislation did not establish any means to support these individuals.
A system to support individuals who were willing to work, but who were having difficulty in finding employment, was established by the Act of 1576. As provided for in this, Justices of the Peace were authorized to provide any town which needed it with a stock of flax, hemp, or other materials on which paupers could be employed and to erect a "house of correction" in every county for the punishment of those who refused work. This was the first time Parliament had attempted to provide labour to individuals as a means to combat the increasing numbers of "vagabonds".
Two years after the Act of 1576 was passed into law, yet more dramatic changes were made to the methods to fight vagabondage and to provide relief to the poor. The Act of 1578 transferred power from the Justices of the Peace to church officials in the area of collecting the new taxes for the relief of poverty established in the Act of 1572. In addition, this Act of 1578 also extended the power of the church by stating that "…vagrants were to be summarily whipped and returned to their place of settlement by parish constables." By eliminating the need for the involvement of the Justices, law enforcement was streamlined.
Starting as early as 1590, public authorities began to take a more selective approach to supporting the poor. Those who were considered to be legitimately needy, sometimes called the "deserving poor", were allowed assistance, while those who were idle were not. People incapable of providing for themselves, such as young orphans, the elderly, and the mentally and physically handicapped, were seen to be deserving, whereas those who were physically able but were too lazy to work were considered as "idle" and were seen as of bad moral character, and thus undeserving of help.
Most poor relief in the 17th century came from voluntary charity which mostly was in the form of food and clothing. Parishes distributed land and animals. Institutionalized charities offered loans to help craftsmen to alms houses and hospitals.
Act for the Relief of the Poor 1597 provided the first complete code of poor relief, established Overseers of the Poor and was later amended by the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601, which was one of the longest-lasting achievements of her reign, left unaltered until 1834. This law made each parish responsible for supporting the legitimately needy in their community. It taxed wealthier citizens of the country to provide basic shelter, food and clothing, though they were not obligated to provide for those outside of their community.
Parishes responsible for their own community caused problems because some were more generous than others. This caused the poor to migrate to other parishes that were not their own. In order to counteract this problem, the Poor Relief Act 1662, also known as the Settlement Act, was implemented. This created many sojourners, people who resided in different settlements that were not their legal one. The Settlement Act allowed such people to be forcefully removed, and garnered a negative reaction from the population. In order to fix the flaws of the 1662 act, the act of 1691 came into effect such that it presented methods by which people could gain settlement in new locations. Such methods included "owning or renting property above a certain value or paying parish rates, but also by completing a legal apprenticeship or a one-year service while unmarried, or by serving a public office" for that identical length of time.
The main points of this system were the following:
During the 16th & 17th centuries, the population of England nearly doubled. Capitalism in the agricultural and manufacturing arenas started to emerge, and trade abroad significantly increased. Despite this flourishing of expansion, sufficient employment rates had yet to be attained by the late 1600s. The population increased at alarming rates, outpacing the increase in productivity, which resulted inevitably in inflation. Concurrently, wages decreased, declining to a point roughly half that of average wages of a century before.
"The boom-and-bust nature of European trade in woolen cloth, England's major manufacture and export" caused a larger fraction of the population of England to fall under poverty. With this increase in poverty, all charities operated by the Catholic Church were abolished due to the impact of protestant reformation.
A law passed by the British government by Sir Edward Knatchbull in 1723 introduced a "workhouse test", which meant that a person who wanted to receive poor relief had to enter a workhouse and undertake a set amount of work. The test was intended to prevent irresponsible claims on a parish's poor rate.
By the mid to late 18th century most of the British Isles was involved in the process of industrialization in terms of production of goods, manner of markets and concepts of economic class. In some cases, factory owners "employed" children without paying them, thus exacerbating poverty levels. Furthermore, the Poor Laws of this era encouraged children to work through an apprenticeship, but by the end of the 18th century the situation changed as masters became less willing to apprentice children, and factory owners then set about employing them to keep wages down. This meant that there were not many jobs for adult labourers. For those who could not find work there was the workhouse as a means of sustenance.
The 1782 poor relief law proposed by Thomas Gilbert aimed to organise poor relief on a county basis, counties being organised into parishes which could set up workhouses between them. However, these workhouses were intended to help only the elderly, sick and orphaned, not the able-bodied poor. The sick, elderly and infirm were cared for in poorhouses whereas the able-bodied poor were provided with poor relief in their own homes.
The "Speenhamland system" was a form of outdoor relief intended to mitigate rural poverty at the end of the 18th century and during the early 19th century. The system was named after a 1795 meeting at the Pelican Inn in Speenhamland, Berkshire, where a number of local magistrates devised the system as a means to alleviate the distress caused by high grain prices. The increase in the price of grain most probably occurred as a result of a poor harvest in the years 1795–96, though at the time this was subject to great debate. Many blamed middlemen and hoarders as the ultimate architects of the shortage.
The authorities at Speenhamland approved a means-tested sliding-scale of wage supplements in order to mitigate the worst effects of rural poverty. Families were paid extra to top up wages to a set level according to a table. This level varied according to the number of children and the price of bread.
Following the onset of the Industrial Revolution, in 1834 the Parliament of the United Kingdom revised the Elizabethan Poor Law (1601) after studying the conditions found in 1832. Over the next decade they began phasing out outdoor relief and pushing the paupers towards indoor relief. The differences between the two was that outdoor relief was a monetary contribution to the needy, whereas indoor relief meant the individual was sent to one of the workhouses.
Following the reformation of the Poor Laws in 1834, Ireland experienced a severe potato blight that lasted from 1845–1849 and killed an estimated 1.5 million people. The effects of the famine lasted until 1851. During this period the people of Ireland lost much land and many jobs, and appealed to the Westminster Parliament for aid. This aid generally came in the form of establishing more workhouses as indoor relief. Some people argue that as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was in its prime as an empire, it could have given more aid in the form of money, food or rent subsidies.
In other parts of the United Kingdom, amendments to and adoptions of poor laws came in and around the same time. In Scotland, for example, the 1845 Scottish Poor Law Act revised the Poor Laws that were implemented under the 1601 Acts.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7816144 | Kevin Wildes
Reverend Kevin William Wildes, S.J., Ph.D., (born September 27, 1954) is the former president of Loyola University New Orleans. He was formally installed as the school's 16th president on July 1, 2004.
During his second year in the position, he was charged with seeing the school through Hurricane Katrina. On April 10, 2006, President Wildes unveiled "Pathways - Toward Our Second Century", Loyola's strategic plan in response to the university's 15 million dollar budget deficit following Hurricane Katrina. The proposal restructured the academic colleges of Loyola and included program and personnel cuts. The Pathways plan encountered opposition from the university community. The Board of Trustees however unanimously approved and passed the plan in a meeting on May 19, 2006. On 26 September 2006, the faculty of the College of Humanities and Natural Sciences, the largest college, voted "no confidence" in President Wildes with 76% of voting faculty supporting the measure.
Prior to joining the Jesuits, Wildes was a boxer, a sport he continues as an amateur and a teacher. Wildes entered the Society of Jesus in 1976, and was ordained a priest in 1986, completing his vows in March 2004. He holds advanced degrees in theology from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in philosophy from Fordham University and Rice University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1993. Before taking his current position, he worked at Georgetown University where he was a chaplain in residence, beginning his tradition of living in the student residences, and an important advocate for fund raising for the school. His weekly informal masses in his residence attracted a loyal following among students.
As an author, he has published numerous works on ethics and morality, especially in the field of bioethics which he has lectured widely on. He has been called upon to give analysis on bioethics issues on nightly talk shows in Washington, and on July 22, 1997 to testify before the House Committee on Sciences on the topic of human cloning. He is Associate Director and a Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and frequent contributor to its journal. He served as an editor of four compendiums of bioethics essays, such as "Choosing Life: A Dialogue on Evangelium Vitae". In 2000, he published "Moral Acquaintances: Methodology in Bioethics", his most successful work to date.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7820125 | Asha
Asha (; also arta ; Avestan:"𐬀𐬴𐬀" "aṣ̌a/arta") is a Zoroastrian concept with a complex and highly nuanced range of meaning. It is commonly summarized in accord with its contextual implications of 'truth' and 'right(eousness)', 'order' and 'right working'. For other connotations, see meaning below. It is of cardinal importance to Zoroastrian theology and doctrine. In the moral sphere, "aṣ̌a/arta" represents what has been called "the decisive confessional concept of Zoroastrianism". The opposite of Avestan "aṣ̌a" is "𐬛𐬭𐬎𐬘 druj", "deceit, falsehood".
Its Old Persian equivalent is "arta-". In Middle Iranian languages the term appears as "ard-".
The word is also the proper name of the divinity Asha, the Amesha Spenta that is the hypostasis or "genius" of "Truth" or "Righteousness". In the Younger Avesta, this figure is more commonly referred to as Asha Vahishta ("Aṣ̌a Vahišta", "Arta Vahišta"), "Best Truth". The Middle Persian descendant is "Ashawahist" or "Ardwahisht"; New Persian "Ardibehesht" or "Ordibehesht". In the Gathas, the oldest texts of Zoroastrianism and thought to have been composed by Zoroaster, it is seldom possible to distinguish between moral principle and the divinity. Later texts consistently use the 'Best' epithet when speaking of the Amesha Spenta, only once in the Gathas is 'best' an adjective of "aṣ̌a/arta".
Avestan "" and its Vedic equivalent "" both derive from Proto-Indo-Iranian "*ṛtá-" "truth", which in turn continues Proto-Indo-European "*" "properly joined, right, true", from the root "*".
The word is attested in Old Persian as "".
It is unclear whether the Avestan variation between "aṣ̌a" and "arta" is merely orthographical. Benveniste suggested "š" was only a convenient way of writing "rt" and should not be considered phonetically relevant. According to Gray, "ṣ̌" is a misreading, representing – not /ʃ/ - but /rr/, of uncertain phonetic value but "probably" representing a voiceless "r". Miller suggested that "rt" was restored when a scribe was aware of the morpheme boundary between the /r/ and /t/ (that is, whether the writer maintained the "–ta" suffix).
Avestan "druj", like its Vedic Sanskrit cousin "druh", appears to derive from the PIE root "*", also continued in Persian دروغ / "d[o]rūġ" "lie", German "Trug" "fraud, deception". Old Norse "draugr" and Middle Irish "airddrach" mean "spectre, spook". The Sanskrit cognate "druh" means "affliction, afflicting demon".
In Avestan, " druj-" has a secondary derivation, the adjective "drəguuaṇt-" (Young Avestan " druuaṇt-"), "partisan of deception, deceiver" for which the superlative "draojišta-" and perhaps the comparative "draoj(ii)ah-" are attested (Kellens, 2010, pp. 69 ff.).
"Aṣ̌a" "cannot be precisely rendered by some single word in another tongue" but may be summarized as follows:
It is, first of all, 'true statement'. This 'true statement', because it is true, corresponds to an objective, material reality that embraces all of existence. Recognized in it is a great cosmic principle since all things happen according to it.
"This cosmic [...] force is imbued also with morality, as verbal Truth, 'la parole conforme', and Righteousness, action conforming with the moral order."
The correspondence between 'truth', reality and an all-encompassing cosmic principle is not far removed from Heraclitus' conception of Logos.
Both Avestan "aṣ̌a/arta" and Vedic "ŗtá-" are commonly translated as "truth" as this best reflects both the original meaning of the term as well as the opposition to their respective antonyms. The opposite of Avestan "aṣ̌a/arta" is "druj-", "lie." Similarly, the opposites of Vedic ' are ' and "druh", likewise "lie".
That "truth" is also what was commonly understood by the term as attested in Greek myth of: "Isis and Osiris" 47, Plutarch calls the divinity Αλήθεια "Aletheia", "Truth."
The adjective corresponding to the noun "aṣ̌a/arta", "truth", is Avestan "haithya-" ("haiθiia-"), "true", the opposite of which is also "druj-". Avestan "haithya-" derives from Indo-Iranian "*sātya" that in turn derives from Indo-European "*sat-" "being, existing". The Sanskrit cognate "sátya-" means "true" in the sense of "really existing." This meaning is also preserved in Avestan, for instance in the expression "haiθīm var"ə"z", "to make true" as in "to bring to realization."
Another meaning of "reality" may be inferred from the component parts of the "aṣ̌a/arta": from (root) "ŗ" with a substantivizing "-ta" suffix. The root "ŗ" corresponds to Old Avestan "ar"ə"ta-" and Younger Avestan ə"r"ə"ta-" "established", hence "aṣ̌a/arta" "that which is established."
The synonymy of "aṣ̌a" and "existence" overlaps with the stock identification of Ahura Mazda as the creator (of existence itself). Truth is existence (creation) inasmuch as falsehood is non-existence (uncreated, anti-created). Also, because "aṣ̌a" is everything that "druj-" is not (or vice versa), since "aṣ̌a" is, "druj-" is not.
This notion is already expressed in the Avesta itself, such as in the first "Yasht", dedicated to Ahura Mazda, in which the "fifth name is the whole good existence of Mazda, the seed of Asha" ( "Yasht" 1.7). Similarly, in the mythology of "Gandar"ə"βa", the 'yellow-heeled' dragon of the "druj-" that emerges from the deep to destroy the "living world (creation) of Aṣ̌a" ("Yasht" 19.41)
In the ethical goals of Zoroastrianism ("good thoughts, good words, good deeds"), Vohu Manah is active in good thoughts, Sraosha in good words and Aṣ̌a in good deeds. ("Denkard" 3.13-14). Aṣ̌a is thus "represented as active and effective."
Subject to context, "aṣ̌a/arta-" is also frequently translated as "right working" or "[that which is] right". The word then ("cf." Bartholomae's and Geldner's translations as German language ""Recht"") has the same range of meaning of "right" as in the English language: truth, righteousness, rightfulness, lawfullness, conformity, accord, order (cosmic order, social order, moral order).
These various meanings of "right" are frequently combined, such as "the inexorable law of righteousness," or as "the eternal fitness of things that are in accord with the divine order."
As (the hypostasis of) regularity and "right working", "aṣ̌a/arta-" is present when Ahura Mazda fixed the course of the sun, the moon and the stars ("Yasna" 44.3), and it is through "aṣ̌a" that plants grow ("Yasna" 48.6).
"Right working" also overlaps with both Indo-European "*ár-" "to (properly) join together" and with the notion of existence and realization (to make real). The word for "established", "ar"ə"ta-", also means "proper". The antonymic "anar"ə"ta-" (or "anar"ə"θa-") means "improper" In Zoroastrian tradition, prayers must be enunciated with care for them to be effective. The Indo-Iranian formula "*sātyas mantras" ("Yasna" 31.6: "haiθīm mathrem") "does not simply mean 'true Word' but formulated thought which is in conformity with the reality' or 'poetic (religious) formula with inherent fulfillment (realization)'".
It perhaps has also suggestions of harmoniousness or cooperativeness
The kinship between Old Iranian "aṣ̌a-/arta-" and Vedic "ŗtá-" is evident in numerous formulaic phrases and expressions that appear in both the Avesta and in the RigVeda. For instance, the "*ŗtásya path-", "path of truth", is attested multiple times in both sources: Y 51.13, 72.11; RV 3.12.7, 7.66.3. Similarly "source of truth," Avestan "aṣ̌a khá" and Vedic "" (Y 10.4; RV 2.28.5)
The adjective corresponding to Avestan "aṣ̌a/arta-" is "haiθiia-" "true". Similarly, the adjective corresponding to Vedic "ŗtá-" "truth" is "sátya-" "true". The opposite of both "aṣ̌a/arta-" and "haithya-" is "druj-" "lie" or "false". In contrast, in the Vedas the opposite of both "ŗtá-" and "sátya-" is "druj-" and "ánŗta-", also "lie" or "false".
However, while the Indo-Iranian concept of truth is attested throughout Zoroastrian tradition, "ŗtá-" disappears in post-Vedic literature and is not preserved in post-Vedic texts. On the other hand, "sátya-" and "ánrta-" both survive in classical Sanskrit.
The main theme of the Rig Veda, "the truth and the gods", is not evident in the Gathas. Thematic parallels between "aṣ̌a/arta" and "ŗtá-", however, exist such aa in "Yasht" 10, the Avestan hymn to Mithra. There, Mithra, who is the hypostasis and the preserver of covenant, is the protector of "aṣ̌a/arta". RigVedic Mitra is likewise preserver of "ŗtá-".
Asha Vahishta is closely associated with fire. Fire is "grandly conceived as a force informing all the "other" Amesha Spentas, giving them warmth and the spark of life."
In "Yasht" 17.20, Angra Mainyu clamours that Zoroaster burns him with Asha Vahishta. In "Vendidad" 4.54-55, speaking against the truth and violating the sanctity of promise is detected by the consumption of "water, blazing, of golden color, having the power to detect guilt."
This analogy of truth that burns and detecting truth through fire is already attested in the very earliest texts, that is, in the Gathas and in the "Yasna Haptanghaiti". In "Yasna" 43-44, Ahura Mazda dispenses justice through radiance of His fire and the strength of aṣ̌a. Fire "detects" sinners "by hand-grasping" ("Yasna" 34.4). An individual who has passed the fiery test ("garmo-varah", ordeal by heat), has attained physical and spiritual strength, wisdom, truth and love with serenity ("Yasna" 30.7). Altogether, "there are said to have been some 30 kinds of fiery tests in all." According to the post-Sassanid "Dadestan i denig" (I.31.10), at the final judgement a river of molten metal will cover the earth. The righteous, as they wade through this river, will perceive the molten metal as a bath of warm milk. The wicked will be scorched. For details on aṣ̌a's role in personal and final judgement, see "aṣ̌a" in eschatology, below.
Fire is moreover the "auxiliary of the truth," "and not only, as in the ordeal, of justice and of truth at the same time." In "Yasna" 31.19, "the man who thinks of "aṣ̌a", [...] who uses his tongue in order to speak correctly, [does so] with the aid of brilliant fire". In "Yasna" 34-44 devotees "ardently desire [Mazda's] mighty fire, through aṣ̌a." In "Yasna" 43-44, Ahura Mazda "shall come to [Zoroaster] through the splendour of [Mazda's] fire, possessing the strength of (through) aṣ̌a and good mind (=Vohu Manah)." That fire "possesses strength through "aṣ̌a"" is repeated again in "Yasna" 43.4. In "Yasna" 43.9, Zoroaster, wishing to serve fire, gives his attention to "aṣ̌a". In "Yasna" 37.1, in a list of what are otherwise all physical creations, "aṣ̌a" takes the place of fire.
Asha Vahishta's association with "atar" is carried forward in the post-Gathic texts, and they are often mentioned together. In Zoroastrian cosmogony, each of the Amesha Spentas represents one aspect of creation and one of seven primordial elements that in Zoroastrian tradition are the basis of that creation. In this matrix, "aṣ̌a/arta" is the origin of fire, Avestan "atar", which permeates through all Creation. The correspondence then is that "aṣ̌a/arta" "penetrates all ethical life, as fire penetrates all physical being."
In the liturgy Asha Vahishta is frequently invoked together with fire. ("Yasna" l.4, 2.4, 3.6, 4.9, 6.3, 7.6, 17.3, 22.6, 59.3, 62.3 etc.). In one passage, fire is a protector of "aṣ̌a": "when the Evil Spirit assailed the creation of Good Truth, Good Thought and Fire intervened" ("Yasht" 13.77)
In later Zoroastrian tradition, Asha Vahishta is still at times identified with the fire of the household hearth.
In addition to the role of fire as the agent of Truth, fire, among its various other manifestations, is also "the fire of judicial ordeal, prototype of the fiery torrent of judgement day, when all will receive their just deserts 'by fire and by Aṣ̌a' ("Y" 31.3)."
In the Avesta, the "radiant quarters" of "aṣ̌a" is "the best existence", i.e. Paradise (cf. "Vendidad" 19.36), entry to which is restricted to those who are recognized as "possessing truth" ("aṣ̌avan"). The key to this doctrine is "Yasna" 16.7: "We worship the radiant quarters of "Aṣ̌a" in which dwell the souls of the dead, the Fravašis of the "aṣ̌avan"s; the best existence (=Paradise) of the "aṣ̌avan"s we worship, (which is) light and according all comforts."
'Aṣ̌a' derives from the same Proto-Indo-European root as 'Airyaman', the divinity of healing who is closely associated with Asha Vahishta. At the last judgement, the common noun "airyaman" is an epithet of the "saoshyans", the saviours that bring about the final renovation of the world. The standing epithet of these saviour figures is <nowiki>'</nowiki>"astvat"ә"r"ә"ta"<nowiki>'</nowiki>, which likewise has "arta" as an element of the name. These saviours are those who follow Ahura Mazda's teaching "with acts inspired by aṣ̌a" ("Yasna" 48.12). Both Airyaman and Asha Vahishta (as also Atar) are closely associated with Sraosha "[Voice of] Conscience" and guardian of the Chinvat bridge across which souls must pass.
According to a lost Avestan passage that is only preserved in a later (9th century) Pahlavi text, towards the end of time and the final renovation, Aṣ̌a and Airyaman will together come upon the earth to do battle with the Az, the daeva of greed ("Zatspram" 34.38-39).
The third "Yasht", which is nominally addressed to Asha Vahishta, is in fact mostly devoted to the praise of the "airyaman ishya" ("airy"ә"mā īšyo", "Longed-for "airyaman""), the fourth of the four great Gathic prayers. In present-day Zoroastrianism it is considered to invoke Airyaman just as the "Ashem Vohu", is the second of the four great Gathic prayers, is dedicated to Aṣ̌a. All four prayers (the first is the Ahuna Vairya, the third is the Yenghe Hatam) have judgement and/or salvation as a theme, and all four call on the Truth.
It is Airyaman that – together with fire – will "melt the metal in the hills and mountains, and it will be upon the earth like a river" ("Bundahishn" 34.18). In Zoroastrian tradition, metal is the domain of Xshathra [Vairya], the Amesha Spenta of "[Desirable] Dominion", with whom Aṣ̌a is again frequently identified. Dominion is moreover "a form of truth and results from truth."
In "Denkard" 8.37.13, Asha Vahishta actually takes over Airyaman's healer role as the healer of all spiritual ills and Airyaman then only retains the role of healer of corporeal ills. Although Airyaman has no dedication in the Siroza, the invocations to the divinities of the Zoroastrian calendar, Airyaman is twice invoked together with Aṣ̌a. ("Siroza" 1.3 and 2.3)
"Aogemadaecha" 41-47 prototypes death as a journey that has to be properly prepared for: As mortals acquires material goods as they go through life, so also should they furnish themselves with spiritual stores of righteousness. They will then be well provisioned when they embark on the journey from which they will not return.
Aṣ̌a's role is not limited to judgement: In "Bundahishn" 26.35, Aṣ̌a prevents daevas from exacting too great a punishment to souls consigned to the House of Lies. Here, Aṣ̌a occupies the position that other texts assign to Mithra, who is traditionally identified with fairness.
For the relationship between Aṣ̌a, eschatology and Nowruz, see in the Zoroastrian calendar, below.
Although there are numerous eschatological parallels between Aṣ̌a and Aši "recompense, reward" (most notably their respective associations with Sraosha and Vohu Manah), and are on occasion even mentioned together ("Yasna" 51.10), the two are not etymologically related. The feminine abstract noun "aši/arti" derives from "ar-", "to allot, to grant." Aši also has no Vedic equivalent.
In Zoroastrian cosmogony and , which—though alluded to in the Gathas—is only systematically described in Zoroastrian tradition (e.g. "Bundahishn" 3.12), "aṣ̌a" is the second (cf. "Yasna" 47.1) of the six primeval creations realized ("created by His thought") by Ahura Mazda. It is through these six, the Amesha Spentas that all subsequent creation was accomplished.
In addition to Asha Vahishta's role as an Amesha Spenta and hence one of the primordial creations through which all other creation was realized, Truth is one of the "organs, aspects or emanations" of Ahura Mazda through which the Creator acts and is immanent in the world.
Although Vohu Manah regularly stands first in the list of the Amesha Spenta (and of Ahura Mazda's creations), in the Gathas Asha Vahishta is the most evident of the six, and also the most commonly associated with Wisdom (Mazda). In the 238 verses of these hymns, Aṣ̌a appears 157 times. Of the other concepts, only "Vohu Manah" "Good Purpose" appears nearly as often (136 occurrences). In comparison, the remaining four of the great sextet appear only 121 times altogether.
Although a formal hierarchy is not evident in the Gathas, the group of six "divides naturally into three dyads." In this arrangement, Aṣ̌a is paired with Vohu Manah. This reflects the frequency in which the two appear (together) in the Gathas and is in turn reflected in Zoroastrian tradition. In "Bundahishn" 26.8, Vohu Manah stands at the left hand of God, while Aṣ̌a stands at the right.
Yasht 1, the hymn dedicated to Ahura Mazda, provides a list of 74 "names" by which the Creator is invoked. In the numbered list of "Yasht" 1.7, 'Asha Vahishta' "Best Truth" is the fourth name. A later verse, "Yasht" 1.12, includes 'Aṣ̌avan' "Possessing Truth" and 'Aṣ̌avastəma' "Most Righteous". In "Yasna" 40.3, Ahura Mazda is "aṣ̌aŋāč" "having "aṣ̌a" following".
One of Haoma's stock epithets is "aṣ̌avazah-" "furthering "aṣ̌a"" ("Yasht" 20.3; "Yasna" 8.9, 10.1.14, 11.10 et al.). Atar "possesses strength through "aṣ̌a"" ("aṣ̌a-ahojah", Yasna 43.4).
In the Zoroastrian calendar, the third day of the month and the second month of the year are dedicated to and named after "aṣ̌a" and Asha Vahishta (calledارديبهشت "Ordibehesht" in Modern Persian both in Iranian Calendar and Yazdgerdi calendar).
A special service to "aṣ̌a" and Aṣ̌a, known as the '"Jashan" of Ardavisht', is held on the day on which month-name and day-name dedications intersect. In the "Fasli" and "Bastani" variants of the Zoroastrian calendar, this falls on April 22.
Rapithwin, one of the five "gah"s (watches) of the day, under the protection of Aṣ̌a. ("Bundahishn" 3.22) This implies that all prayers recited between noon and three invoke Aṣ̌a. Noon is considered to be the "perfect" time, at which instant the world was created and at which instant time will stop on the day of the final renovation of the world.
In the winter months, the "daev"ic time of year, Rapithwin is known as the "Second Havan" (the first Havan being from dawn to noon), and with the first day of spring, March 21, Rapithwin symbolically returns. This day, March 21, is Nowruz
Nowruz, the holiest of all Zoroastrian festivals is dedicated to Aṣ̌a. It follows immediately after Pateti, the day of introspection and the Zoroastrian equivalent of All-Souls Day. Nowruz, Zoroastrianism's New Year's Day, is celebrated on the first day of spring, traditionally understood to be the day of rebirth, and literally translated means "New Day". The first month of the year of the Zoroastrian calendar is Farvadin, which is dedicated to and named after the Fravašis, the ancestral higher spirits.
"The underlying idea of the dedication" of the second month of the year to Asha Vahishta "may be revivification of the earth after the death of winter."
On Kushan coins, Asha Vahishta "appears as Aṣ̌aeixšo, with a diadem and nimbus, like Mithra in the same series."
""Arta-" (Mid. Iranian "ard-"), representing either the Av. divinity Aṣ̌a or the principle "aṣ̌a", occurs frequently as an element in Iranian personal names."
Hellenized/Latinized names include:
Other names include:
Middle Iranian "ard-" is also suggested to be the root of names of the current day Iranian cities of Ardabil, Ardekan, Ardehal and Ardestan.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7862242 | Gun violence
Gun-related violence is violence committed with the use of a gun (firearm or small arm). Gun-related violence may or may not be considered criminal. Criminal violence includes homicide (except when and where ruled justifiable), assault with a deadly weapon, and suicide, or attempted suicide, depending on jurisdiction. Non-criminal violence includes accidental or unintentional injury and death (except perhaps in cases of criminal negligence). Also generally included in gun violence statistics are military or para-military activities.
According to GunPolicy.org, 75 percent of the world's 875 million guns are civilian controlled. Roughly half of these guns (48 percent) are in the United States, which has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world. Globally, millions are wounded or killed by the use of guns. Assault by firearm resulted in 180,000 deaths in 2013 up from 128,000 deaths in 1990. There were additionally 47,000 unintentional firearm-related deaths in 2013.
Levels of gun-related violence vary greatly among geographical regions, countries, and even subnationally. Rates of violent deaths by firearm range from as low as 0.03 and 0.04 per 100,000 population in Singapore and Japan, to 59 and 67 per 100,000 in Honduras and Venezuela. The highest rates of violent deaths by firearm in the world occur in low-income South and Central American countries such as Honduras, Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala and Jamaica.
The United States has the 11th highest rate of gun violence in the world, and by far the largest of any large or highly developed nation, having a gun homicide rate which is 25 times higher, an unintentional gun death rate which is 6 times higher, a firearm suicide rate which is 8 times higher, and an overall firearm death rate which is 10 times higher than the average respective rates of other high income nations. Compared to similarly wealthy nations with strict gun control laws, such as Japan, the United Kingdom, or South Korea, the United States has an overall rate of firearms death per capita, which is 50–100 times greater than many of its peers. The high rates of gun violence in the United States, which has the highest rate of gun-related deaths per capita among developed countries, despite having the highest number of police officers, is sometimes thought to be attributable to its extreme rate of gun ownership, as it is the only nation in which guns exceed people. Nearly all studies have found a positive association between gun ownership and gun-related homicide and suicide rates.
According to the United Nations, deaths from small firearms exceed that of all other weapons combined, and more die each year from gun-related violence than did in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The global death toll from use of guns may number as high as 1,000 dead each day.
A number of ideas have been proposed on how to lessen the incidence of gun-related violence.
Some propose keeping a gun at home to keep one safer. Studies show that guns in the home is associated with an increased risk of violent death in the home. According to the FBI, gun-related violence is linked to gun ownership and is not a function or byproduct of crime. Their study indicates that more than 90% of gun-related deaths were not part of a commission of a crime, rather they were directly related to gun ownership. "Mother Jones" reports that "[a] Philadelphia study found that the odds of an assault victim being shot were 4.5 times greater if he carried a gun" and that "[h]is odds of being killed were 4.2 times greater" when armed. Others propose arming civilians to counter mass shootings. FBI research shows that between 2000 and 2013, "In 5 incidents (3.1%), the shooting ended after armed individuals who were not law enforcement personnel exchanged gunfire with the shooters." Another proposal is to expand self defense laws for cases where a person is being aggressed upon, although "those policies have been linked to a 7 to 10% increase in homicides" (that is, shootings where self-defense cannot be claimed).
There is a strong relationship between guns in the home, as well as access to guns more generally, and suicide risk, the evidence for which is strongest in the United States. In 2017, almost half of the nation's 47,173 suicides involved a firearm. A 1992 case-control study conducted in Tennessee and Washington found that individuals in a firearm owning home are close to five times more likely to commit suicide than those individuals who do not own firearms. A 2002 study found that access to guns in the home was associated with an increased risk of suicide among middle-aged and older adults, even after controlling for psychiatric illness. As of 2008, there were 12 case-control studies that had been conducted in the U.S., all of which had found that guns in the home were associated with an increased risk of suicide. However, a 1996 New Zealand study found no significant relationship between household guns and suicide. Assessing data from 14 developed countries where gun ownership levels were known, the Harvard Injury Control Research Center found statistically significant correlations between those levels and suicide rates. However, the parallels were lost when data from additional nations was included. A 2006 study found a significant effect of changes in gun ownership rates on gun suicide rates in multiple Western countries. During the 1980s and 1990s, the rate of adolescent suicides with guns caught up with adult rates, and the 75-and-older rate rose above all others. A 2002 study found that 90% of suicide attempts with firearms were successful.
The use of firearms in suicides ranges from less than 10 percent in Australia to 50 percent in the United States, where it is the most common method and where suicides outnumber homicides 2-to-1. Those who purchased a firearm where found to be high risk for suicide within a week of the purchase The United States has both the highest number of Suicides and Gun ownerships for a developed country and firearms are the most popular method to commit suicide. In the United States when Gun ownerships rise so too does suicide by firearm. Suicide can be an impulsive act, 40% of those who survived a suicide attempt said that they only considered suicide up to five minutes before attempting the act. This impulsivity can lead to the use of a firearm as it is seen as a quick and lethal method.
According to U.S. criminologist Gary Kleck, studies that try to link gun ownership to victimology often fail to account for the presence of guns owned by other people. Research by economists John Lott of the U.S. and John Whitley of Australia indicates that safe-storage laws do not appear to affect juvenile accidental gun-related deaths or suicides. In contrast, a 2004 study led by Daniel Webster found that such laws were associated with slight reductions in suicide rates among children. The same study criticized Lott and Whitley's study on the subject for inappropriately using a Tobit model. A committee of the U.S. National Research Council said ecological studies on violence and firearms ownership provide contradictory evidence. The committee wrote: "[Existing] research studies and data include a wealth of descriptive information on homicide, suicide, and firearms, but, because of the limitations of existing data and methods, do not credibly demonstrate a causal relationship between the ownership of firearms and the causes or prevention of criminal violence or suicide."
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) defines intentional homicide as "acts in which the perpetrator intended to cause death or serious injury by his or her actions." This excludes deaths: related to conflicts (war); caused by recklessness or negligence; or justifiable, such as in self-defense or by law enforcement in the line of duty. A 2009 report by the Geneva Declaration using UNODC data showed that worldwide firearms were used in an average of 60 percent of all homicides. In the U.S. in 2011, 67 percent of homicide victims were killed by a firearm: 66 percent of single-victim homicides and 79 percent of multiple-victim homicides. In 2009, the United States' homicide rate was reported to be 5.0 per 100,000. A 2016 Harvard study claims that in 2010 the homicide rate was about 7 times higher than that of other high-income countries, and that the US gun homicide rate was 25.2 times higher. Another Harvard study found that higher gun availability was strongly correlated with higher homicide rates across 26 high-income countries. Access to guns is associated with an increased risk of being the victim of homicide. Access to firearms is not the sole contributor to increased homicide rates, however, as one study by the Southern Criminal Justice Association in 2011 found. Equally important seems to be the particular societal conditions in a given area, socio-culturally. These conditions include, but are not limited to societal age structure, economic inequality, cultural symbolism associated with firearms and the cultural value of individual life. A 2001 study examing gun ownership amongst 21 high-income countries found that gun ownership by country was correlated with female firearm homicide rates, but not male firearm and overall homicide rates.
Some gun control advocates say that the strongest evidence linking availability of guns to death and injury is found in domestic violence studies, often referring to those by public health policy analyst Arthur Kellermann. In response to suggestions by some that homeowners would be wise to acquire firearms for protection from home invasions, Kellermann investigated in-home homicides in three cities over five years. He found that the risk of a homicide was in fact slightly higher in homes where a handgun was present. The data showed that the risk of a crime of passion or other domestic dispute ending in a fatal injury was higher when a gun was readily available (essentially loaded and unlocked) compared to when no gun was readily available. Kellerman said this increase in mortality overshadowed any protection a gun might have deterring or defending against burglaries or invasions. He also concluded that further research of domestic violence causes and prevention are needed.
Critics of Kellermann's study say that it is more directly a study of domestic violence than of gun ownership. Gary Kleck and others dispute the work. Kleck says that few of the homicides that Kellermann studied were committed with guns belonging to the victim or members of his or her household, and that it was implausible that victim household gun ownership contributed to their homicide. Instead, according to Kleck, the association that Kellermann found between gun ownership and victimization reflected that people who live in more dangerous circumstances are more likely to be murdered, but also were more likely to have acquired guns for self-protection.
In studies of nonfatal gun use, it was found that guns can contribute to coercive control, which can then escalate into chronic and more severe violence. Guns can have a negative impact on victims even without being discharged. Threats of gun use or showing a weapon can create damaging and long-lasting fear and emotional stress in victims because they are aware of the danger of having an abuser who has access to a gun.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime defines robbery as the theft of property by force or threat of force. Assault is defined as a physical attack against the body of another person resulting in serious bodily injury. In the case of gun-related violence, the definitions become more specific and include only robbery and assault committed with the use of a firearm. Firearms are used in this threatening capacity four to six times more than firearms used as a means of protection in fighting crime. Hemenway's figures are disputed by other academics, who assert there are many more defensive uses of firearms than criminal uses. See John Lott's "More Guns, Less Crime".
In terms of occurrence, developed countries have similar rates of assaults and robberies with firearms, whereas the rates of homicides by firearms vary greatly by country.
From 1979 to 1997, almost 30,000 people in the United States alone died from accidental firearm injuries. A disproportionately high number of these deaths occurred in parts of the United States where firearms are more prevalent. Following the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting, accidental firearm deaths increased by about five hundred percent until April 2013.
Violence committed with guns leads to significant public health, psychological, and economic costs.
The economic cost of gun-related violence in the United States is $229 billion a year, meaning a single murder has average direct costs of almost $450,000, from the police and ambulance at the scene, to the hospital, courts, and prison for the murderer. A 2014 study found that from 2006 to 2010, gun-related injuries in the United States cost $88 billion.
Assault by firearm resulted in 180,000 deaths worldwide in 2013, up from 128,000 deaths worldwide in 1990. There were 47,000 unintentional firearm deaths worldwide in 2013.
Emergency medical care is a major contributor to the monetary costs of such violence. It was determined in a study that for every firearm death in the United States for the year beginning 1 June 1992, an average of three firearm-related injuries were treated in hospital emergency departments.
Children exposed to gun-related violence, whether they are victims, perpetrators, or witnesses, can experience negative psychological effects over the short and long terms. Psychological trauma also is common among children who are exposed to high levels of violence in their communities or through the media. Psychologist James Garbarino, who studies children in the U.S. and internationally, found that individuals who experience violence are prone to mental and other health problems, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and sleep deprivation. These problems increase for those who experience violence as children. It is conceivable that over a longer period, physical and emotional sequelae of mass shootings may lead to an array of symptoms and disability among affected individuals and communities who will likely experience lifelong consequences by carrying long-term memories of devastation, violence, injuries, and deaths.
The Port Arthur massacre of 1996 horrified the Australian public. The gunman opened fire on shop owners and tourists, killing 35 people and wounding 23. This massacre, kick started Australia's laws against guns. The Prime Minister at that time, John Howard, proposed a gun law that prevented the public from having all semi-automatic rifles, all semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns, in addition to a tightly restrictive system of licensing and ownership controls.
The government also bought back guns from people. In 1996–2003 it was estimated they bought back and destroyed nearly 1 million firearms. By the end of 1996, whilst Australia was still reeling from the Port Arthur massacre, the gun law was fully in place. Since then, the number of deaths related to gun-related violence dwindled almost every year. In 1979 six hundred and eighty-five people died due to gun violence, and in 1996 it was five hundred and sixteen. The numbers continue to drop, however they were declining also before the gun law was in place.
On the Australia's most mediated gun violence-related incident since Port Arthur, was the 2014 Sydney Hostage Crisis. On 15–16 December 2014, a lone gunman, Man Haron Monis, held hostage 17 customers and employees of a Lindt chocolate café. The perpetrator was on bail at the time, and had previously been convicted of a range of offences.
The following year in August, the New South Wales Government tightened the laws of bail and illegal firearms, creating a new offence for the possession of a stolen firearm, with a maximum of 14 years imprisonment.
Sweden witnessed a steep increase in gun violence in males aged 15 to 29 in the two decades prior to 2018, in addition to a rising trend in gun violence there was also a high rate of gun violence in Sweden compared to other countries in Western Europe. According to a report published by academic researchers in 2017, shooting incidents with fatal outcomes are about 4 to 5 times as common in Sweden compared to neighbouring countries such as Germany and Norway when taking population size into account. The city with the highest prevalence of shootings was Malmö. The grave violence in the studied period also changed character, from criminal motorcycle gangs to city suburbs.
According to researcher Amir Rostami at Stockholm University, police statistics for January–November 2018 showed that the number of shootings was at a continued high rate at 274, where up until the end of November 42 people had been shot and killed and 129 wounded compared to 43 in 2017. Rostami also said there had been 100 hand grenade attacks and 1500 shootings in Sweden since 2011, about 40 people are killed annually and 500 had been wounded. Rostami also said that if this violence had been attributed to some form of extremists, this would have considered a form of civil war. Almost half (46%) of all shootings in 2018 happened in public spaces in vulnerable areas. Both victims and perpetrators are becoming younger.
According to police in 2018, at least nine people who were innocent bystanders had been killed in cross-fire incidents in the last few years and the risk to the law-abiding public was therefore rising.
The shootings at the pub Vår Krog & Bar in Gothenburg happened on 18 March 2015. Two unidentified gunmen entered a pub in Gothenburg, Sweden and began firing indiscriminately at people inside the restaurant. This shooting marked the first time an innocent bystander had been killed by criminal gang violence in Sweden. The shooters were part of a gang from North Biskopsgården out for revenge.
Gun violence in the United States results in tens of thousands of deaths and injuries annually. In 2013, there were 73,505 nonfatal firearm injuries (23.2 injuries per 100,000 U.S. citizens), and 33,636 deaths due to "injury by firearms" (10.6 deaths per 100,000 U.S. citizens). These deaths consisted of 11,208 homicides, 21,175 suicides, 505 deaths due to accidental or negligent discharge of a firearm, and 281 deaths due to firearms use with "undetermined intent". Of the 2,596,993 total deaths in the US in 2013, 1.3% were related to firearms. The ownership and control of guns are among the most widely debated issues in the country.
In 2010, 67% of all homicides in the U.S. were committed using a firearm. In 2012, there were 8,855 total firearm-related homicides in the US, with 6,371 of those attributed to handguns. In 2012, 64% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides. In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicides, and 11,078 firearm-related homicides in the U.S. In 2010, 358 murders were reported involving a rifle while 6,009 were reported involving a handgun; another 1,939 were reported with an unspecified type of firearm.
Firearms were used to kill 13,286 people in the U.S. in 2015, excluding suicide. Approximately 1.4 million people have been killed using firearms in the U.S. between 1968 and 2011, equivalent to a top 10th largest U.S. city in 2016, falling between the populations of San Antonio and Dallas, Texas.
Compared to 22 other high-income nations, the U.S. gun-related murder rate is 25 times higher. Although it has half the population of the other 22 nations combined, the U.S. had 82 percent of all gun deaths, 90 percent of all women killed with guns, 91 percent of children under 14 and 92 percent of young people between ages 15 and 24 killed with guns. In 2010, gun violence cost U.S. taxpayers approximately $516 million in direct hospital costs.
Gun violence is most common in poor urban areas and frequently associated with gang violence, often involving male juveniles or young adult males. Although mass shootings have been covered extensively in the media, mass shootings in the US account for a small fraction of gun-related deaths and the frequency of these events steadily declined between 1994 and 2007, rising between 2007 and 2013.
Legislation at the federal, state, and local levels has attempted to address gun violence through a variety of methods, including restricting firearms purchases by youths and other "at-risk" populations, setting waiting periods for firearm purchases, establishing gun buyback programs, law enforcement and policing strategies, stiff sentencing of gun law violators, education programs for parents and children, and community-outreach programs. Despite widespread concern about the impacts of gun violence on public health, Congress has prohibited the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) from conducting research that advocates in favor of gun control. The CDC has interpreted this ban to extend to all research on gun violence prevention, and so has not funded any research on this subject since 1996. However the 'Dickey' amendment only restricts the CDC advocating for gun control with government funds. It does not restrict research into gun violence and the causal links between the gun and the violence, however funding has not yet been yet been granted for that purpose, i.e. epidemiology, the CDC requires congressional approval to proceed.
On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother at her home and then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting where he killed 20 children and six adult staff. Adam committed suicide as police arrived at the school. Lanza suffered from severe mental health issues which were not adequately treated. The event reignited a debate regarding access to firearms by people with mental illness and gun laws in the United States.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7895736 | Laments (Kochanowski)
The Laments (also "Lamentations" or "Threnodies"; ) are a series of nineteen threnodies (elegies) by Jan Kochanowski. Written in Polish and published in 1580, they are a highlight of Polish Renaissance literature, and one of Kochanowski's signature achievements.
Jan Kochanowski was a prominent Polish poet. Kochanowski wrote the "Laments" on the occasion of the 1579 death of his daughter Urszula (in English, "Ursula").
Little is known of Urszula (or "Urszulka"—"little Ursula"), except that at her death she was two and a half years old. Her tender age has caused some critics to question Kochanowski's truthfulness, when he describes her as a budding poetess — a "Slavic Sappho." There is, however, no doubt as to the unaffected sentiments expressed in the nineteen Roman-numbered "Laments", of varying length, which still speak to readers across the four and a quarter centuries since they were composed.
The poems express Kochanowski's boundless grief; and, standing in sharp contrast to his previous works, which had advocated such values as stoicism, can be seen as the poet's own critique of his earlier work. In a wider sense, they show a thinking man of the Renaissance at a moment of crisis when he is forced, through suffering and the stark confrontation of his ideals with reality, to re-evaluate his former humanistic philosophy of life.
The "Laments" belong to a Renaissance poetic genre of grief (threnody, or elegy), and the entire work comprises parts characteristic of epicedia: the first poems introduce the tragedy and feature a eulogy of the decedent; then come verses of lamentation, demonstrating the magnitude of the poet's loss and grief; followed at last by verses of consolation and instruction.
Kochanowski, while drawing on the achievements of classical poets such as Homer, Cicero, Plutarch, Seneca and Statius, as well as on later works by Petrarch and his own Renaissance contemporaries such as Pierre de Ronsard, stepped outside the borders of known genres, and his "Laments" constitute a mixed form ranging from epigram to elegy to epitaph, not to mention psalmodic song.
When the "Treny" were published (1580), Kochanowski was criticized for having taken as the subject of his "Laments" the death of a young child, against the prevailing literary convention that this form should be reserved for "great men" and "great events."
The "Laments" are numbered among the greatest attainments of Polish poetry. Their exquisite conceits and artistry made them a model to "literati" of the 16th and especially the 17th century. The "Laments" have also inspired musicians , and painters such as Jan Matejko.
All Heraclitus' tears, all threnodies<br>
And plaintive dirges of Simonides,<br>
All keens and slow airs in the world, all griefs,<br>
Wrung hands, wet eyes, laments and epitaphs,<br>
All, all assemble, come from every quarter,<br>
Help me to mourn my small girl, my dear daughter,<br>
Whom cruel Death tore up with such wild force<br>
Out of my life, it left me no recourse.<br>
So the snake, when he finds a hidden nest<br>
Of fledgling nightingales, rears and strikes fast<br>
Repeatedly, while the poor mother bird<br>
Tries to distract him with a fierce, absurd<br>
Fluttering — but in vain! the venomous tongue<br>
Darts, and she must retreat on ruffled wing.<br>
"You weep in vain," my friends will say. But then,<br>
What is not in vain, by God, in lives of men?<br>
All is in vain! We play at blindman's buff<br>
Until hard edges break into our path.<br>
Man's life is error. Where, then, is relief?<br>
In shedding tears or wrestling down my grief?
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7921939 | Naphtali Hirz Wessely
Naphtali(-)Herz (Hartwig) Wessely, a.k.a. Naphtali(-)Hirz Wessely, also Wesel ( "Vezel"; born 1725, Hamburg – died February 28, 1805, Hamburg), was an 18th-century German Jewish Hebraist and educationist.
One of Wessely's ancestors, Joseph Reis, fled from Podolia in 1648 on account of the Chmielnicki persecutions, during which his whole family had perished. After a brief sojourn in Cracow, Reis settled in Amsterdam, where he acquired great wealth, and where he, in 1671, was one of the signers of a petition to the Dutch government requesting permission to erect a synagogue. Together with his younger son, Moses (Moses Reis(-)Wessely), Reis later settled in Wesel on the Rhine, whence the family name ""Wessely"" originated. In the synagogue at Wesel are still (as of 1906) preserved some ritual paraphernalia presented to it by Moses Reis Wessely, who, upon the advice of the Prince of Holstein, whose purveyor he was, removed to Glückstadt, then the capital of Sleswick. He established there a factory of arms. King Frederick VI of Denmark later sent Moses to Hamburg as his agent, and while there he transacted important business for Peter the Great also.
Moses' son, Issachar Ber Wessely, was the father of Naphtali Hirz.
Naphtali Herz Wessely passed his childhood at Copenhagen, where his father was purveyor to the king. In addition to rabbinical studies under Jonathan Eybeschütz, he studied modern languages. As the representative of the banker Feitel, he later visited Amsterdam, where he published (1765–66) his "Lebanon", or "Gan Na'ul", a philological investigation of Hebrew roots and synonyms. Although prolix in style, and lacking scientific method, this work established his reputation. After his marriage at Copenhagen, he represented Feitel at Berlin, and there became associated with Mendelssohn. Wessely encouraged the latter in his labors by publishing "Alim li-Terufah", a work advocating the "bi'ur" and the translation of the Bible into German. To this work Wessely himself contributed a commentary on Leviticus (Berlin, 1782), having published, two years previously, a Hebrew edition of the Book of Wisdom (?), together with a commentary. He died in Hamburg on February 28, 1805.
Wessely was an advocate of the educational and social reforms outlined in Emperor Joseph II's "Toleranzedict" (Patent of toleration). He even risked his reputation for piety by publishing a manifesto in eight chapters, entitled "Divrei Shalom ve-Emet" (Words of Peace and Truth), in which he emphasized the necessity for secular instruction, as well as for other reforms, even from the points of view of the Mosaic law and the Talmud. This work has been translated into French as "Instructions Salutaires Addressées aux Communautés Juives de l'Empire de Joseph II." (Paris, 1792), into Italian by (Goerz, 1793), and into German by David Friedländer under the title "Worte der Wahrheit und des Friedens" (Berlin, 1798). By thus espousing the cause of reform, as well as by his support of M. Mendelssohn, Wessely incurred the displeasure of the rabbinical authorities of Germany and Poland, who threatened him with excommunication.
His enemies, however, were finally pacified through the energetic intervention of the Italian rabbis, as well as by Wessely's pamphlets "Meḳor Ḥen", in which he gave evidence of his sincere piety. In 1788 Wessely published in Berlin his ethical treatise "Sefer ha-Middot" (The Book of Virtues), a work of Musar literature. He also published several odes; elegies, and other poems; but his masterwork is his "Shire Tif'eret" (5 vols.; i.-iv., Berlin, 1782–1802; v., Prague, 1829), describing in rhetorical style the exodus from Egypt. This work, through which he earned the admiration of his contemporaries, was translated into German (by G. F. Hufnagel and Spalding; 1789–1805), and partly into French (by Michel Berr; Paris, 1815). His commentaries on the Bible were published by the society Meḳiẓe Nirdamim (Lyck, 1868–75) under the title "Imre Shefer."
Wessely influenced his contemporaries in various directions. As a scholar he contributed, by his profound philological researches, to the reconstruction of the language of the Bible, though his work is marred by prolixity and by his refusal to admit shades of meaning in synonyms. As a poet he possessed perfection of style, but lacked feeling and artistic imagination. No one exerted a greater influence than he on the dissemination of modern Hebrew, and no one, on the other hand, did more to retard the development of pure art and of poetic intuition. Because of his energetic commitment to the cause of Jewish emancipation, Wessely may be regarded as a leader of the Maskilim.
Wessely also wrote a commentary on Pirkei Avot entitled "Yein Levanon," which was highly regarded in Musar Yeshivas.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7931369 | Supreme Council for the Confucian Religion in Indonesia
The Supreme Council for the Confucian Religion in Indonesia (, MATAKIN; Chinese: 印尼孔教總會; pinyin: yìnní kǒngiào zǒnghuì) is a Confucian church established in 1955 in Indonesia, comprising the communities of practitioners of Confucianism mostly among Chinese Indonesians. Together with the Hong Kong Confucian Academy it is one of the two branches that formed after the dissolution of mainland China's Confucian Church founded by Kang Youwei in the early 20th century.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7939943 | Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
The Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs is a New York City-based a 501(c)3 public charity serving international affairs professionals, teachers and students, and the attentive public. Founded in 1914, and originally named "Church Peace Union", Carnegie Council is an independent and nonpartisan institution, aiming to be the foremost voice of ethics in international affairs. The Council focuses on, "Ethics, War and Peace", "Global Social Justice", and "Religion in Politics" as its three main themes. It is separate and independent from all other Carnegie philanthropies.
Carnegie Council publishes "Ethics & International Affairs", a quarterly academic journal that examines the intersection of moral issues and the international sphere.
Among Carnegie Council's programs is Global Policy Innovations, which publishes "Policy Innovations," an online magazine.
The Council convenes agenda-setting forums and creates educational opportunities and information resources for a worldwide audience of teachers and students, journalists, international affairs professionals, and concerned citizens. The Council's flagship publication is a quarterly scholarly journal, Ethics & International Affairs, which was launched in 1987. As an operating, rather than a grant-making foundation, the Council supports programs that it initiates and also works with partner organizations.
The Carnegie Council was founded in 1914 by Andrew Carnegie in New York City. Carnegie gathered together numerous religious leaders, scientists and politicians, and appointed them trustees of a new organization, the "Church Peace Union" (CPU). Carnegie hoped to create, with the religious and secular leaders, a new moral leadership to prevent armed conflict. The CPU was established shortly before the outbreak of World War I. The planned international inaugural meeting, on Lake Constance, could not take place due to the outbreak of war. First President of the CPU was William P. Merrill. The first activities of the organization were educational programs, calls for reductions in military spending and an end to military education in public schools.
After the declaration of war by the US President Woodrow Wilson in April 1917, which led to internal disputes within the CPU, the leadership of the organization concluded in December 1917, to stand behind Wilson and the USA’s involvement in the war. R
Henry A. Atkinson was General Secretary of the CPU from 1918 to 1955.
Between the World Wars, the CPU worked towards strengthening the League of Nations and promoted the American influence to resolve international conflicts. At the same time, in the 1920s, they tried to prevent an international naval arms race, and fought against discrimination of Japanese Americans. During the Great Depression, the CPU called for stronger government interventions in the economy.
During World War II, the CPU supported the American government in its efforts to establish the United Nations.
After World War II, the CPU helped with the establishment of the United Nations and fought for the prevention of nuclear proliferation.
From 1950 to 1985, the organization published the monthly magazine "Worldview".
In 1961, the CPU was renamed the “Council on Religion and International Affairs” (CRIA) and appointed William A. Loos as president in 1963, Loos had been executive director since 1955.
CRIA focused its work on the study of moral dimensions of a wide range of issues, especially dangers of a crusading moralism in US foreign policy. In the 1960s and 1970s, CRIA was a strong supporter of the Civil Rights Movement and led open debates on the Vietnam War.
In 1977, the Council put forth the “CRIA Distinguished Lectures on Ethics and Foreign Policy,” which was later renamed the “Morgenthau Memorial Lecture.”
Robert Myers became the new president of CRIA in 1980, which the defeat of Apartheid in South Africa began in the 1980s and 1990s. Throughout this time, the council also lead programs on environmental policy and bioethics.
CRIA changed its name in 1986, to the “Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs” (CCEIA). Since 1987, the council published its quarterly scholarly journal, Ethics & International Affairs. Successor of Robert J. Myers as president in 1995 was Joel H. Rosenthal.
In the 2000s, after the attacks of 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the CCEIA fought against cruel treatment and torture.
The current name, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, was given to the organization in 2005.
The Carnegie Council is mainly funded through an endowment from Andrew Carnegie. Other sources of funding come from grants, donations, and membership dues. The Carnegie Council is a 501(c)(3) public charity.
Resources include transcripts, streaming audio and video, journals, book reviews, articles, papers, reports, and special reports.
Carnegie Council's programs (Christian Barry was the program officer):
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7986129 | Concept Foundation
The Concept Foundation is a non-profit foundation which was established by the UNDP/UNFPA/WHO/WB Special program in Reproductive Health (WHO/HRP), PATH, the World Bank in 1989 in Bangkok, Thailand, "as a mechanism through which WHO’s rights associated with an injectable contraceptive, Cyclofem, could be licensed to potential producers in developing countries". Estradiol cypionate/medroxyprogesterone acetate (brand names Cyclofem, Lunelle; code name Cyclo-Provera), is a once-a-month combined injectable contraceptive which contains 25 mg of medroxyprogesterone acetate—the same ingredient in Depo Provera—and 5 mg of estradiol cypionate.
Since its inception in 1989, more than 120 million doses of Cyclofem have been manufactured and sold worldwide. Concept Foundation products have been manufactured in 8 different countries and are made available in more than 30 developing countries.
Medabon is another product developed by the Concept Foundation which induces medical abortion. Medabon combines mifepristone and misoprostol, two abortifacients which health organizations had already deemed safe and effective. Implementation and initial research of the Medabon regimen was done by PATH and Ipas.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8051695 | Henry Pachter
Henry Pachter was a Marxist intellectual and a libertarian socialist activist. Perhaps best known as an essayist, who dealt with both historical and political matters, he also authored a number of books on a variety of subjects. An exile from the Nazi regime, deeply concerned with the lessons offered by the Weimar Republic, he taught at the New School for Social Research and then at the City College of the City University of New York until his death in 1980.
Born in 1907 in Berlin, Pachter joined the German Youth Movement as a teenager and, following a split in its ranks, the German Communist Party (KPD) in 1926. He enrolled in the history department at the University of Berlin and, by 1928, found himself expelled from the KPD. He then joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD), where he worked under Rudolf Hilferding at the legendary journal, Society, and finished his dissertation in 1932 on “The Proletariat Before 1848.” He would remain a libertarian socialist for the rest of his life. By the end of 1933, Pachter had been forced to flee to Paris where he took odd jobs, taught at the Universite Populaire, agitated for creating a “popular front” of all antifascist forces, and ultimately served as a publicist for the POUM, a mixed group of Trotskyist and socialists that served the loyalist cause during the Spanish Civil War. Briefly a member of the anti-Nazi underground in which he helped edit probably the first resistance journal, Proletarian Action, he wound up in the Gurs prison camp, before coming to the United States in 1940. Soon enough he was working for the Office of Strategic Services, and part-time for the Institute for Social Research at Columbia University, before becoming a founding member of "Dissent" and entering the academy.
Henry Pachter understood Marxism as a critical method capable of questioning its political employment from a historical and materialist standpoint that emphasized the ability of the working class (rather than a party) to control its destiny. He never viewed it as a “science” or a form of economics guaranteeing the inevitable victory of the proletariat. In this respect, his intellectual lineage derived from Karl Korsch and the libertarian socialism associated with Rosa Luxemburg. His writings were primarily inspired by his political commitments: a work on the Weimar Republic and the Spanish Civil War; a study of economic policy under Mussolini and another dealing with the fascist use of language; the character of authoritarian political parties; foreign policy; the role of reform, and the meaning of socialism. In Pachter’s view, socialism exhibited a fundamental tension between its need to engage the world even as it projects a vision of society as it should be. That tension prevented Pachter from identifying socialism with any movement or party. Indeed, as he once put the matter: “One cannot have socialism; one is a socialist.”
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8094825 | Fear of commitment
In self-help literature, fear of commitment is the avoidance of long-term partnership or marriage. The concept is often much more pervasive, affecting school, work, and home life as well.
The term "commitmentphobia" was coined in the popular self-help book "Men Who Can't Love" in 1987. Following criticism of the perceived sexist idea that only men were commitmentphobic, the authors provided a more gender balanced model of commitmentphobia in a later work, " He's Scared, She's Scared" (1995). When aversion to marriage involves fear it's called gamophobia. A hatred of marriage is called "misogamy".
Besides the common criticisms of self-help, Harvard psychologist Deborah DePaulo has written books such as "Singleism" on the stigmatization of single people.
The use of the term "fear" or "phobia" imparts an inherent linguistic bias. It recasts specific lifestyle decisions (such as bachelorhood vs. marriage, or a conscious decision to remain childfree by choice) implicitly as generalised, irrational phobias while failing to identify, describe or address an individual's specific motives. For instance, the men's rights movement, citing high divorce rates and expensive alimony and legal costs, would speak not in terms of "fear of commitment" but of "marriage strike" to reflect their position that non-marriage is an entirely valid, logical position based on rational consideration of the economic factors involved.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8147179 | PKP Open Archives Harvester
The PKP Open Archives Harvester is software used to accumulate and index freely available metadata, providing a searchable, web-based interface. It is open source, released under the GNU General Public License. It was created and is maintained by the Public Knowledge Project, in Vancouver, Canada.
Originally developed to harvest the metadata from Open Journal Systems articles and Open Conference Systems proceedings, the Harvester can by used with any OAI-PMH-compliant resource.
It can harvest metadata in a variety of schemas (including unqualified Dublin Core, the PKP Dublin Core extension, the Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS), and MARCXML). Additional schema are supported via plugins.
The PKP OA Harvester allows any institution to create their own metadata harvester, which can be focused specifically on gathering information from or for their research community.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8198900 | Humanist celebrant
A humanist celebrant or humanist officiant is a person who performs humanist celebrancy services, such as non-religious weddings, funerals, child namings, coming of age ceremonies and other rituals. Some humanist celebrants are accredited by humanist organisations, such as Humanists UK, Humanist Society Scotland (HSS), and the Humanist Association of Canada (HAC).
Humanist ceremonies are conducted in every part of the world by humanist organisations, although the legal status of non-religious ceremonies of different kinds varies from place to place. In general, funeral ceremonies are not typically regulated by states, but many countries with a religious history have stricter guidelines on who can perform legal marriages. Naming ceremonies, similarly, can be held anywhere without legal implications. In countries where legal marriages can only be performed by religious institutions or the state (such as England), humanist weddings are often performed before or after a civil legal proceeding, but presented as the more meaningful or significant of the two events.
As of 2018, humanist celebrants can conduct legally binding marriage ceremonies in Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Jersey, Norway, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and the United States.
The charity Humanists UK (formerly the British Humanist Association) pioneered the practice of offering humanist ceremonies, and today organises a network of celebrants or officiants across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. A similar network exists in Scotland, where, following a June 2005 ruling by the Registrar General, celebrants belonging to the Humanist Society Scotland have been permitted to conduct legal wedding ceremonies. Humanists UK celebrants in Northern Ireland were given the same rights in 2017 following a court case supported by Humanists UK.
In England and Wales the current legal position is that a humanist wedding or partnership ceremony must be supplemented by obtaining a civil marriage or partnership certificate through a Register Office. In December 2014 it was reported that the Prime Minister's Office was blocking the implementation of a change to give legal force to humanist weddings in England and Wales. That same year in Scotland, when same-sex marriage was legalised, the First Minister of Scotland attended the legal humanist marriage of a same-sex couple. In 2015, humanist weddings became more popular in Scotland than Church of Scotland weddings, or those of any religious denomination. The Humanist Society Scotland's status as a one of a number of trusted providers of humanist marriages in Scotland was written into Scots law in February 2017.
Non-religious funerals are legal within the UK. Humanist celebrants are familiar with the procedures of cremation and burial, and are trained and experienced in devising and conducting suitable ceremonies. The British Humanist Association has in the past described officiants as follows:Officiants are generally at least 35 years old, have experience of public speaking, and have probably had paid or voluntary experience in a caring/supporting profession – such as nursing, teaching, police or social work, for example. They must be able to cope with the emotional burden of regularly meeting and working with bereaved people - often in relation to particularly difficult or unexpected deaths, such as the death of a child in a road accident. Funeral directors are able to make arrangements with trained officiants in their local area.
Humanist funerals have reportedly been held in recent years for Claire Rayner, Keith Floyd, Linda Smith, Ronnie Barker, Lynsey de Paul, and Terry Jones, Victoria Wood, Doris Lessing, John Noakes, David Nobbs, Cynthia Payne, Dale Winton, and Bob Monkhouse, among others. The humanist funeral for former First Minister of Wales Rhodri Morgan in 2017 was the first national funeral in the United Kingdom to be led by a humanist celebrant, former AM Lorraine Barrett, as well as the first national funeral held in Wales.
Celebrants also undertake humanist baby namings as a non-religious alternative to ceremonies such as christenings. The purpose is to recognise and celebrate the arrival of a child, and welcome him or her in the family and circle of friends.
In Ireland, the Humanist Association of Ireland manages its own network of humanist ceremonies. Since 2012, these have been legally recognised, as in Scotland. In 2015, humanist marriages accounted for 6% of all marriages in Ireland, making them six times more popular than the Church of Ireland's weddings.
Laws in each state of the United States vary about who has the right to perform wedding services, but humanist celebrants are usually categorized as "clergy" and have the same rights and responsibilities as ordained clergy. Humanist celebrants will perform both opposite-sex and same-sex marriage ceremonies. The Humanist Society, an adjunct of the American Humanist Association, maintains a list of humanist celebrants.
Humanists conduct wedding ceremonies across Canada. These typically happen under the auspices of the national Humanist Canada group or through one of the province-level groups such as the British Columbia Humanist Association.
Humanist weddings, funerals, and naming ceremonies are popular throughout Scandinavia, where humanist groups tend to be well-established. Humanist coming of age ceremonies are also popular in these countries, and in particular Norway, where humanists also conduct legally binding weddings. In Norway, coming of age ceremonies are a cultural norm dating back to when it was a legal requirement for young people to have a church-led confirmation ceremony. In an increasingly secular population, many Norwegians turn to the Norwegian Humanist Association (NHA) instead for a 'confirmation' that reflects their values. In 2017, 11,000 Norwegian young people registered for their ceremony with the NHA, representing nearly one in five young Norwegians.
Humanist groups providing ceremonies as part of Humanistischer Verband Deutschlands are well-established across Germany and are particularly prominent in many of Germany's cities, where majorities of residents are non-religious. As in Scandinavia, humanist coming-of-age ceremonies are very popular, due to secularisation and a pre-existing tradition of religious confirmation. "Jugendweihe" ceremonies have been on offer since at least 1852, although these days they are more likely to be referred to as "Jugendfeier" (youth celebration, as opposed to youth ordination). 8,500 young Germans took part in these ceremonies in 2015.
Humanist weddings are not legally recognized in Italy but, by law, civil weddings can be officiated by the mayor, or anyone delegated by the mayor, as long as they have active and passive suffrage. With the mayor’s permission, then, the couple can choose an independent celebrant who can marry them legally within a humanist ceremony.
Even though they are not legally recognized in their own right, humanist or symbolic weddings have been celebrated in Italy for years, usually as an add-on to the registrar marriage. The first was celebrated in 2002 at Burio Castle in Asti, by Vera Pegna, deputy secretary of the Italian organization UAAR (Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics). This organization was also the first to promote training courses for humanist celebrants in Italy, and has recently increased the number of courses it offers and fully subsidizes. Other bodies and individuals are now beginning to charge trainee celebrants for their courses.
As far as funerals are concerned, there is no official civil ceremonies in Italy, which means that humanist or independent celebrants can be called upon to officiate a funeral with no legal impediments. The main problem is that only some larger towns and cities provide an appropriate, officially recognized, well-equipped venue where a secular funeral can be held. Where this is lacking, non-religious ceremonies must be held outdoors, at the burial or scattering site, or in cramped, unbefitting environments.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8216055 | Source protection
Source protection, sometimes also referred to as source confidentiality or in the U.S. as the reporter's privilege, is a right accorded to journalists under the laws of many countries, as well as under international law. It prohibits authorities, including the courts, from compelling a journalist to reveal the identity of an anonymous source for a story. The right is based on a recognition that without a strong guarantee of anonymity, many would be deterred from coming forward and sharing information of public interests with journalists.
Regardless of whether the right to source confidentiality is protected by law, the process of communicating between journalists and sources can jeopardize the privacy and safety of sources, as third parties can hack electronic communications or otherwise spy on interactions between journalists and sources. News media and their sources have expressed concern over government covertly accessing their private communications. To mitigate these risks, journalists and sources often rely on encrypted messaging.
Due to the centrality of communication between journalists and sources to the daily business of journalism, the question of whether or not sources can expect to have their identity protected has significant effects on the ability of media to operate and investigate cases. If a potential source can expect to face legal retaliation or other personal harm as a result of talking to a journalist, they may be less willing to talk to the media.
In Africa, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights has adopted a "Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa" which includes a right to protection of sources under Principle XV.
In Europe, the European Court of Human Rights stated in the 1996 case of "Goodwin v. United Kingdom" that "[p]rotection of journalistic sources is one of the basic conditions for press freedom ... Without such protection, sources may be deterred from assisting the press in informing the public on matters of public interest. As a result the vital public-watchdog role of the press may be undermined and the ability of the press to provide accurate and reliable information may be adversely affected." The Court concluded that absent "an overriding requirement in the public interest", an order to disclose sources would violate the guarantee of free expression in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In the wake of "Goodwin", the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers issued a Recommendation to its member states on how to implement the protection of sources in their domestic legislation. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has also called on states to respect the right.
In Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania unauthorized access to information by government entities were identified in several cases. In those political regions, policies such as mandatory registration of pre-paid SIM mobile phone cards and government access to CCTV make hacking tools and surveillance a lot easier.
In the Netherlands, a 2006 case ruled that in cases of minimal national security interest do not supersede source confidentiality. Bart Mos and Joost de Haas, of the Dutch daily "De Telegraaf". In an article in January 2006, the two journalists alleged the existence of a leak in the Dutch secret services and quoted from what they claimed was an official dossier on Mink Kok, a notorious criminal. They further alleged that the dossier in question had fallen into the hands of Kok himself. A subsequent police investigation led to the prosecution of Paul H., an agent accused of selling the file in question. Upon motions by the prosecution and the defence, the investigative judge in the case ordered the disclosure of the source for the news story, on the grounds that it was necessary to safeguard national security and ensure a fair trial for H. The two journalists were subsequently detained for refusing to comply with the disclosure order, but were released on appeal after three days, on November 30. The Hague district court considered that the national security interest served by the order was minor and should not prevail over the protection of sources.
In the Americas, protection of sources has been recognized in the "Inter-American Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression", which states in Principle 8 that "every social communicator has the right to keep his/her source of information, notes, personal and professional archives confidential."
In the United States, unlike doctor-patient or lawyer-client confidentiality, reporters are not afforded a similar legal shield. Communications between reporters and sources have been used by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies as an avenue to information about specific individuals or groups related to pending criminal investigations.
In the 1971 case of "Branzburg v. Hayes" the court ruled that reporter's privilege was not guaranteed by the First Amendment, but the publicity surrounding the case helped introduce the concept of reporter's privilege into public discussion. As a result of the case, Branzburg"," a Kentucky reporter, was forced to testify about his sources and story to a grand jury.
A University of Montana student, Linda Tracy, was issued a subpoena for video she took of a violent encounter between police officers and a group of residents. The case, which was ultimately dismissed, involved attaining unedited footage of the encounter which part of was used in a documentary Linda Tracy made as for an undergraduate journalism class. Although she won the case, her status as a real journalist was called into question. Even with the victory, the court did not specifically address if protections and privacy extended to student journalists, but because of the nature of her intent and the project she could not be coerced to releasing the footage. The case helped help further battles in student journalism and press freedoms at an educational level.
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act passed in 1986 and protects bank transactions, telephone digits, and other information. The act also encompasses what organizations must provide to law enforcement with a subpoena, such as name, address, durations of services used, type of device used, and source of payment. This is known as “required disclosure” policies. It later included provisions to prohibit access to stored electronic devices.
Former CIA employee Edward Snowden further impacted the relationship between journalism, sources, and privacy. Snowden's actions as a whistleblower at the National Security Agency drew attention to the extent of US government surveillance operations. Surveillance by network administrators may include being able to view how many times a journalist or source visits a website per day, the information they are reading or viewing, and online applications they utilize.
In Mexico, it is reported that the government there has spent $300 million during one year to surveil and gather information from the population with specific interest in journalists to get access to their texts, phone calls, and emails.
Newsrooms rely on end-to-end encryption technologies to protect the confidentiality of their communications. However, even these methods are not completely effective.
More schools of journalism are also beginning to include data and source protection and privacy into their curriculum.
Technologies used to protect source privacy include SecureDrop , GlobaLeaks , Off-the-Record Messaging, the Tails operating system, and Tor.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8216996 | Homophobic propaganda
Homophobic propaganda (or anti-gay propaganda) is propaganda based on homonegativity and homophobia towards homosexual and sometimes other non-heterosexual people. Such propaganda supports anti-gay prejudices and stereotypes, and promotes social stigmatization or discrimination. The term "homophobic propaganda" was used by the historian Stefan Micheler in his work "Homophobic Propaganda and the Denunciation of Same-Sex-Desiring Men under National Socialism", as well as other works treating the topic.
In some countries, some forms of homophobic propaganda are considered hate speech and are prohibited by law.
Political attitudes towards homosexuals in Nazi Germany were based on the assumption that homosexuals were destroying the German nation as "sexual degenerates". Historian Erwin J. Haeberle dates the first appearance of this political attitude to 14 May 1928.
Categorized as a ‘biocracy’ by Maastricht University professor Harry Oosterheis, the Nazi regime was primarily concerned with the fact that homosexual men could not bear offspring—and therefore could not ultimately contribute to the spread of the Aryan race. Though homosexuals in Nazi Germany were not persecuted systematically, researchers estimate that around 50,000 homosexual men were convicted for ‘unnatural vice’, and between 10 and 30% of this proportion were ultimately sent to concentration camps.
In Russia, it is illegal to commit crimes against someone based on their social group, and LGBT people are considered a separate social group by law. Responsibility for it is established item 136 and item 282 of the criminal code of the Russian Federation.
However, on June 30, 2013, President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill banning the "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations" among minors, and prohibits the equation of same-sex and straight marital relationships. "Vice News" claims that many LGBT rights groups have been transformed "from being a stigmatized fringe group to full-blown enemies of the state" in Russia following the introduction of this law, and that openly homophobic and neo-Nazi groups such as Occupy Paedophilia have been described by Russian authorities as "civil movements fighting the sins of society".
In 1981, Norway became the first country to establish a criminal penalty (a fine or imprisonment for up to two years) for public threats, defamations, expressions of hate, or agitation for discrimination towards the LGBT community.
On July 1, 1987 in the Netherlands joined the Dutch Penal code, which established punishment for public defamations on the basis of sexual orientation as fees or imprisonment for up to two years.
In 1989 in Ireland a resolution against anti-gay hate speech came into effect. It establishes penalty in the form of fees or imprisonment for up to two years for publication or distribution of materials which contain defamations, threats, hate speech or offenses for LGBT people. The law is occasionally taken into effect.
On 2 March 1993 in New South Wales, Australia, an amendment to the antidiscrimination law came into effect which prohibits public hate speech, despisement or ridiculing of homosexuals. A legal exclusion is any information which is distributed for educational, religious, scientific or social purposes.
On 10 December 1999 an analogous amendment was accepted by Tasmanian parliament, which permits no exclusion.
In February 2000 the South African Parliament enacted the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act, which prohibits hate speech based on any of the constitutionally prohibited grounds, including sexual orientation. The definition of hate speech includes speech which is intended to "promote or propagate hatred".
Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 added section 2A to the Local Government Act 1986, which forbade local authorities from being allowed to "promote homosexuality", or "promote the teaching in any maintained school the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship".
It was repealed on 21 June 2000 in Scotland as one of the first pieces of legislation enacted by the new Scottish Parliament, and on 18 November 2003 in the rest of the United Kingdom by section 122 of the Local Government Act 2003.
Spain's antidiscrimination laws ban hate speech in regards to sexual orientation and gender identity since 1995. Discrimination, hate, or violence on the premise of either of the aforementioned factors is punishable by up to three years in prison.
Other countries which ban anti-LGBT discrimination include Albania, Andora, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Kosovo, Malta, Northern Cyprus, Portugal, Serbia, Belgium, France, Guernsey, Ireland, Isle of Man, Jersey, Luxembourg, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Norfolk Island, New Zealand, Fiji, New Caledonia, Micronesia, Easter Island, French Polynesia, Pitcairn Islands, and Wallis and Futuna.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8234546 | Gloria Origgi
Gloria Origgi (born 1967) is an Italian philosopher at the CNRS in Paris (Institut Jean Nicod) who works on the theory of mind, epistemology and social sciences applied to new technology. She is the founder (in 2002) and director of the innovative project, a portal where many international virtual conferences in the social and cognitive sciences are being organized.
She is the author of the book 'Reputation', published by Princeton University Press in 2017.
Gloria Origgi has previously published a book on the American philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine, "Introduzione a Quine", Laterza, 2000. She has edited the collection of essays "Text-e. Text in the age of the Internet", Palgrave, 2006, based on a web conference that she co-organized with Noga Arikha and the research team of the library of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (contributors include Umberto Eco, Jason Epstein, Dan Sperber and Theodore Zeldin). She has published numerous articles on social epistemology and cultural issues in English, French and Italian. Among her books: "Qu'est-ce que la confiance?" VRIN, 2008; "La réputation", PUF 2015 (translated into Italian and into English)
Her first work in Italian, "La Figlia della Gallina Nera" was published in Italy by "Nottetempo" (2008). She also writes for various newspapers and cultural magazines such as Il Fatto Quotidiano, MicroMega, Il Sole 24 Ore.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8240687 | Erazim Kohák
Erazim Kohák (21 May 1933 – 8 February 2020) was Czech philosopher and writer. His early education was in Prague. After communists took over Czechoslovakia in 1948, his family escaped to the United States. He died in February 2020 at the age of 86.
Kohák was born in Prague in May 1933. He studied at Colgate University, earning a B.A. in 1954, and then studied philosophy, theology and religious studies at Yale University (M.A. in 1957, PhD in 1958). He also worked at Gustavus Adolphus College and Boston University (Professor in 1977). After the Velvet revolution in 1989, he returned to Czechoslovakia to become a professor at Charles University in Prague. Since 2006, he has been a senior research fellow in the Centre of Global Studies in the Institute of Philosophy at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague.
He supported several non-governmental ecological organizations and was a member of the honorary board of Děti Země (Children of the Earth) and Společnost pro trvale udržitelný život (Society for Sustainable Living).
Kohak has said in 2007 for BBC: "We have nothing to fear from a Russia in the ascendant."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8241075 | Al-Isra, 26
Quran 17:26 (also notated Al-Isra, 26) is the twenty-sixth verse of "Al-Isra", the seventeenth chapter of the Quran, which relates to the controversies of the land of Fadak in modern-day Saudi Arabia.
The verse is also known as the Verse of Dhul Qurba.
writes:
This hadith is also included by:
writes regarding this verse:
Refer to the commentary of "Anfal": 41 and "Nahl": 90.
Ibn Jarir reports that once Imam Ali bin Husayn al Zayn al Abidin said to a Syrian:
"We are the near of kin referred to in this verse."
Abd ibn Salih, a courtier, had reported that Mamun al Rashid wrote a letter to Abdullah ibn Musa to know his opinion about the issue of Fadak. Ibn Musa quoted the above noted tradition. Then Mamun returned the land of Fadak to the children of Fatimah. The land the Jews left without an heir was distributed by the Muhammad, as commanded by God (see Anfal: 1), with the consent of the "ansar" , among the "muhajirin" ( who had abandoned their properties in Mecca. Many gardens and tracts of land, Fatimah inherited from her mother, Khadijah, were in and around Mecca. Through this verse God directed Muhammad to give Fatimah her due rights. So he gave her the garden of Fadak in fulfilment of her share as a "muhajir" and also included his own share in it. During the lifetime of Muhammad, the land of Fadak was in the active possession of Fatimah, but after Muhammad's death, the first caliph, Abu Bakr, seized the land. The evidence of Ali, his sons Hasan and Husayn and Fatimah was rejected, notwithstanding their truthfulness according to the Quran (Al Imran Verse 61), (Al-Aḥzāb Verse 33). Her claim as the inheritor of Muhammad was also rejected. Sahih Muslim and Sahih Bukhari inform us that the caliph Umar used to point out Ali and Abbas as those who branded him and his predecessor as usurpers and liars in connection with the property of Fadak, and neither Ali nor Abbas ever denied it. Fatimah, after this incident, never spoke to Abu Bakr and Umar, and asked Ali not to allow them to attend her funeral prayers and burial. The confiscated property of Fadak was never used for the well-being of the people nor for the maintenance of the Muslim army.
Every Umayyid ruler treated the garden of Fadak as his personal property, except Umar II, who, after making a thorough examination of the case, returned it to the "ahl al-bayt" (, i.e. Muhammad's family). The Abbasid rulers again took it away from the "ahl al-bayt" and used it as their property, till Mamun al Rashid again conducted a thorough inquiry by a special court of jurists before which a follower of the "ahl al-bayt" advocated their case and the state attorney opposed his arguments. At the end Mamun wrote the judgement in the form of a royal edict, awarding the land to the "ahl al-bayt", a summary of which has been recorded by al-Baladhuri in his book, "Fath al-Buldan". Ibn Abi al-Hadid has also given a brief account of the arguments, for and against, in his commentary of the art of eloquence. Fatimah herself gave the strongest arguments in her favour in her address to the then-ruling party.
"Biography of Bibi Fatimah Zahra", published by Peermahomed Ebrahim Trust.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8243661 | Ezekiel Emanuel
Ezekiel Jonathan "Zeke" Emanuel (born September 6, 1957) is an American oncologist and bioethicist and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He is the current Vice Provost for Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy. Previously, Emanuel served as the Diane and Robert Levy University Professor at Penn. He holds a joint appointment at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Wharton School and was formerly an associate professor at the Harvard Medical School until 1998 when he joined the National Institutes of Health.
Emanuel is the son of Benjamin M. Emanuel and Marsha (Smulevitz) Emanuel. His father, Benjamin M. Emanuel, is a Jerusalem-born pediatrician who was once a member of the Irgun, a Jewish paramilitary organization that operated in Mandate Palestine. He provided free care to poor immigrants and led efforts to get rid of lead paint due to its negative consequences for children and as of 2010 lived in a suburb of Chicago. Emanuel’s mother, Marsha, a nurse and psychiatric social worker who was raised in the North Lawndale community on Chicago's West Side, was active in civil rights, including the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). She attended marches and demonstrations with her children. In a 2009 interview Emanuel recalled that in his childhood "worrying about ethical questions was very much part and parcel of our daily routine."
His two younger brothers are former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and Hollywood-based talent agent Ari Emanuel. He has an adopted sister, Shoshana Emanuel, who has cerebral palsy. His father’s brother, Emanuel, was killed in the 1936 Arab Riots in the British Mandate of Palestine, after which the family changed its name from Auerbach to Emanuel in his honor.
As children, the three Emanuel brothers shared a bedroom and spent summers together in Israel. All three brothers took ballet lessons in their childhood, which Emanuel says "hardened us and taught us that if you do something unusual, people will take potshots at you." Emanuel and his brother Rahm frequently argue about healthcare policy. Emanuel mimics his brother's end of the conversation: "You want to change the whole healthcare system, and I can’t even get SCHIP [State Children’s Health Insurance Program] passed with dedicated funding? What kind of idiot are you?"
Emanuel graduated from Amherst College in 1979 and subsequently received his M.Sc. from Exeter College, Oxford in Biochemistry. He simultaneously studied for an M.D. and a Ph.D. in Political Philosophy from Harvard University, receiving the degrees in 1988 and 1989, respectively. He was a member of the first cohort of Faculty Fellows at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard from 1987–88. Emanuel completed an internship and residency at Beth Israel Hospital in internal medicine. Subsequently, he undertook fellowships in medicine and medical oncology at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, and is a breast oncologist. Emanuel received dozens of honors and awards, including the Toppan Dissertation Prize, the Harvard award for best political science dissertation of 1988 and the Dan David Prize for his contribution to the field of bioethics in 2018.
Emanuel is a divorced father of three daughters. His daughter Gabrielle, a 2010 graduate of Dartmouth College, won a Rhodes scholarship in November 2010. His daughter Rebekah, a graduate of Yale University won a George J. Mitchell Scholarship in 2008. Another daughter Natalia, a 2013 graduate of Yale University, won a Marshall scholarship in November 2013, and is currently a Ph.D. student at Harvard University.
After completing his post-doctoral training, Emanuel pursued a career in academic medicine, rising to the level of associate professor at Harvard Medical School in 1997. He soon moved into the public sector, and held the position of Chief of the Department of Bioethics at the Clinical Center of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Emanuel served as Special Advisor for Health Policy to Peter Orszag, the former Director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Obama administration. Emanuel entered the administration with different views from President Barack Obama on how to reform health care, but was said by colleagues to be working for the White House goals. Since September 2011, Emanuel has headed the Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also serves as a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor, under the official title Diane S. Levy and Robert M. Levy University Professor.
In articles and in his book "Healthcare, Guaranteed", Emanuel said that universal health care could be guaranteed by replacing employer paid health care insurance, Medicaid and Medicare with health care vouchers funded by a value-added tax. His plan
would allow patients to keep the same doctor even if they change jobs or insurance plans. He would reduce co-payments for preventive care and tax or ban junk food from schools. He criticized the idea of requiring individuals to buy health insurance. However, he supports Obama's plans for health care reform, even though they differ from his own.
In the article "Why Tie Health Insurance to a Job?", Emanuel said that employer based health insurance should be replaced by state or regional insurance exchanges that pool individuals and small groups to pay the same lower prices charged to larger employers. Emanuel said that this would allow portable health insurance even to people that lose their jobs or change jobs, while at the same time preserving the security of employer based health benefits by giving consumers the bargaining power of a large group of patients. According to Emanuel, this would end discrimination by health insurance companies in the form of denial of health insurance based on age or preexisting conditions. In "Solved!", Emanuel said that Universal Healthcare Vouchers would solve the problem of rapidly increasing health care costs, which, rising at three times the rate of inflation, would result in higher copayments, fewer benefits, stagnant wages and fewer employers willing to pay for health care benefits.
In an article co-written by Ezekiel Emanuel and Victor Fuchs, Emanuel co-wrote that employer-based health insurance has "inefficiencies and inequities", that Medicaid is "second-class" and that insuring more people without replacing those systems would be to build on a "broken system". He said, "in the short run they require ever more money to cover the uninsured, and in the long run the unabated rise in health costs will quickly revive the problem of the uninsured." He suggested that a federal agency be created to test the effectiveness of new health care technology.
As Emanuel co-wrote,
At $2 trillion per year, the U.S. health-care system suffers much more from inefficiency than lack of funds. The system wastes money on administration, unnecessary tests and marginal medicines that cost a lot for little health benefit. It also provides strong financial incentives to preserve such inefficiency.
By building on the existing health-care system, these reform proposals entrench the perverse incentives.
Moreover, even plans that reduce the number of uninsured today may find that those gains will disappear in a few years if costs continue to grow much faster than gross domestic product. As costs rise, many companies will drop insurance and pay the modest taxes or fees that have been proposed. States will find that costs exceed revenue and that cuts will have to be made.
Emanuel said that replacing employer-based health insurance and programs like Medicaid would "improve efficiency and provide cost control for the health-care system."
Emanuel and Fuchs reject a single-payer system, because it goes against American values of individualism. "The biggest problem with single-payer is its failure to cohere with core American values. Single-payer puts everyone into the same system with the same coverage and makes it virtually impossible to add amenities and services through the private market."
In his book "The Ends of Human Life" Emanuel used the AIDS patient "Andrew" as an example of moral medical dilemmas. Andrew talked to a local support group and signed a living will asking that life sustaining procedures be withdrawn if there is no reasonable expectation of recovery. The will was not given to anyone but kept in his wallet, and no one was given power of attorney. There were questions about his competence since he had AIDS dementia when he signed the will. Still, Andrew's lover said that he had talked about such situations, and asked that Andrew be allowed to die. Andrew's family strongly disagreed that Andrew wanted to die. Dr. Wolf previously saved Andrew's life, but promised to help him avoid a "miserable death". The ICU wanted guidance from Dr. Wolf as to how aggressively they should try to keep Andrew alive, as his chances of surviving a cardiac arrest were about zero. Two other critical patients were recently refused admission because of a bed shortage. There was a question as to whether Andrew's lover was representing Andrew's wishes or his own. There was also a question as to whether Andrew’s parents knew Andrew better than others, or whether they were motivated by guilt from rejecting Andrew's identification as a gay male. The cost of aggressive treatment was $2,000 per day.
This dilemma illustrates the ethical challenges faced by even the most conscientious physicians, in addition to patient confidentiality, the meaning of informed consent, and the ethics of experimental treatments, transplanting genes or brain tissue. Also, while many agree that every citizen should be given adequate health care, few agree on how to define what adequate health care is. Many of these issues have become almost insoluble moral dilemmas. Babies that would be born with serious birth defects pose a serious moral dilemma, and medical technology makes it sometimes difficult to define what death is in the case of permanently brain damaged patients on respirators. There are also ethical questions on how to allocate scarce resources. However, the Hippocratic Oath is proof that medical technology is not the cause of medical questions about ethics.
Emanuel said the Hippocratic Oath and the codes of modern medical societies require doctors to maintain client patient confidentiality, refrain from lying to a patient, keep patients informed and obtain their consent, in order to protect the patient from manipulation and discrimination. Emanuel said that a doctor’s oath would never allow him to administer a lethal injection for capital punishment as a doctor, although the issue would be different if he were asked to serve on a firing squad not as a doctor but rather as a citizen. He said that in the case of mercy killing there are rare cases where the medical obligation to relieve suffering would be in tension with the obligation to save a life, and that a different argument (an argument that intentional killing "should not be used to achieve the legitimate ends of medicine") would be required instead.
Emanuel believes that "liberal communitarianism" could be the answer. Citizens, according to this view, should be given rights needed to participate in democratic deliberations based on a "common conception of the good life". For example, vouchers could be granted through thousands of Community Health Programs (CHPs), each of which would agree on its own definition of the public good. Each CHP would decide which services would be covered as basic, and which services would not be covered.
Emanuel said that legalizing euthanasia, as was done in the Netherlands, might be counterproductive, in that it would decrease support for pain management and mental health care. However, Emanuel does support the use of Medical Directives to allow patients to express their wishes when they can no longer communicate. Ezekiel, and his former wife Linda Emanuel, an M.D. Ph.D. bioethicist and geriatrician, created the Medical Directive, which is described as more specific and extensive than previous living wills and is a third generation Advance Directive. He claims the Hippocratic Oath debunks the theory that opposition to euthanasia is modern. Emanuel said that for the vast majority of dying patients, "legalizing euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide would be of no benefit. To the contrary, it would be a way of avoiding the complex and arduous efforts required of doctors and other health-care providers to ensure that dying patients receive humane, dignified care." Emanuel said that a historical review of opinions on euthanasia from ancient Greece to now "suggests an association between interest in legalizing euthanasia and moments when Social Darwinism and raw individualism, free markets and wealth accumulation, and limited government are celebrated."
Emanuel said that it is a myth that most patients who want to die choose euthanasia because they are in extreme pain. He said that in his own experience, "those with pain are more likely than others to oppose physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia." He said that patients were more likely to want euthanasia because of "depression and general psychological distress ... a loss of control or of dignity, of being a burden, and of being dependent." He also said that the kind of legalized euthanasia practiced in the Netherlands would lead to an ethical "slippery slope" which would make it easier for doctors to rationalize euthanasia when it would save them the trouble of cleaning bedpans and otherwise caring for patients who want to live. He said that legalized euthanasia in the Netherlands did not adhere to all the legal guidelines, and that some newborns were euthanised even though they could not possibly have given the legally required consent. As Emanuel said, "The Netherlands studies fail to demonstrate that permitting physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia will not lead to the nonvoluntary euthanasia of children, the demented, the mentally ill, the old, and others. Indeed, the persistence of abuse and the violation of safeguards, despite publicity and condemnation, suggest that the feared consequences of legalization are exactly its inherent consequences." Emanuel also expressed the concern that budgetary pressures might be used to justify euthanasia if it were legal. As Emanuel said,
Emanuel said that claims of cost saving from assisted suicide are a distortion, and that such
costs are relatively small, including only 0.1 percent of total medical spending.
In 2016, Emanuel wrote in the article "Attitudes and Practices of Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide in the United States"", Canada, and Europe" that existing data on physician-assisted suicide does not indicate widespread abuse. This article also noted that physician-assisted suicide has been increasingly legalized while remaining relatively rare and largely confined to oncology patients.
The controversy surrounding Emanuel is due to claims by Betsy McCaughey and Sarah Palin accusing Emanuel of supporting euthanasia. Emanuel has opposed euthanasia. These claims have been used by Republicans opposing health care reform.
Betsy McCaughey described Ezekiel Emanuel as a "Deadly Doctor" in a "New York Post" opinion article. The article, which accused Emanuel of advocating healthcare rationing by age and disability, was quoted from on the floor of the House of Representatives by Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. Sarah Palin cited the Bachmann speech and said that Emanuel's philosophy was "Orwellian" and "downright evil", and tied it to a health care reform end of life counseling provision she claimed would create a "death panel". Emanuel said that Palin's death panel statement was "Orwellian".
Palin later said that her death panel remark had been "vindicated" and that the policies of Emanuel are "particularly disturbing" and "shocking". On former Senator Fred Thompson's radio program, McCaughey warned that "the healthcare reform bill would make it mandatory—absolutely require—that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner." She said those sessions would help the elderly learn how to "decline nutrition, how to decline being hydrated, how to go in to hospice care ... all to do what's in society's best interest or in your family's best interest and cut your life short." As "The New York Times" mentioned, conservative pundits were comparing Nazi Germany's T4 euthanasia program to Obama’s policies as far back as November 2008, calling them "America's T4 program—trivialization of abortion, acceptance of euthanasia, and the normalization of physician assisted suicide."
PolitiFact described McCaughey's claim as a "ridiculous falsehood." FactCheck.org said, "We agree that Emanuel’s meaning is being twisted. In one article, he was talking about a philosophical trend, and in another, he was writing about how to make the most ethical choices when forced to choose which patients get organ transplants or vaccines when supplies are limited." An article on Time.com said that Emanuel "was only addressing extreme cases like organ donation, where there is an absolute scarcity of resources ... 'My quotes were just being taken out of context.'" A decade ago, when many doctors wanted to legalize euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide, Emanuel opposed it. Emanuel said the "death panel" idea is "an outright lie, a complete fabrication. And the paradox, the hypocrisy, the contradiction is that many of the people who are attacking me now supported living wills and consultations with doctors about end-of-life care, before they became against it for political reasons." "I worked pretty hard and against the odds to improve end-of-life care. And so to have that record and that work completely perverted—it's pretty shocking."
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who sponsored the end-of-life provision in , said the measure would block funds for counseling that presents suicide or assisted suicide as an option, and called references to death panels or euthanasia "mind-numbing". Blumenauer said that as recently as April 2008 then-governor Palin supported end-of-life counseling as part of Health Care Decisions Day. Palin's office called this comparison "hysterically funny" and "desperate". Republican Senator Johnny Isakson, who co-sponsored a 2007 end-of-life counseling provision, called the euthanasia claim "nuts". Analysts who examined the end-of-life provision Palin cited agreed that it merely authorized Medicare reimbursement for physicians who provide voluntary counseling for advance health care directives (including living wills).
According to Emanuel, the most important life-saving cancer drugs are rationed not by "death panels" but by The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, signed by President George W. Bush. The act limits Medicare payments for generic cancer drugs, which cuts profits from producing them and results in shortages.
Emanuel's previous statements on rationing were about the "allocation of very scarce medical interventions such as organs and vaccines" such as who should get a "liver for transplantation". Ezekiel said that McCaughey's euthanasia claims were a "willful distortion of my record". Jim Rutennberg said that Emanuel's critics oversimplified complex issues, such as who should get a kidney. Such rationing was said to be unavoidable because of scarcity, and because a scarce resource such as a liver is "indivisible". Emanuel said that McCaughey took words out of context, omitting qualifiers such as "Without overstating it (and without fully defending it) ... Clearly, more needs to be done ..." Emanuel once compared the word "rationing" to George Carlin’s seven words you can't say on television. In 1994 Emanuel said in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, "Just because we are spending a lot of money on patients who die does not mean that we can save a lot of money on end of life care."
Emanuel wrote "Where Civic Republicanism and Deliberative Democracy Meet" (1996) for the Hastings Center Report. In this article Emanuel questioned whether a defect in our medical ethics causes the failure of the US to enact universal health care coverage. The macro level of the issue is the proportion of total gross national product allotted to health care, the micro level is which individual patient will receive specific forms of health care, e.g., "whether Mrs. White should receive this available liver for transplantation." In between are the basic or essential health care services that should be provided to each citizen. The end-stage renal disease program is an example of a service that increases the total cost of health care, and reduces the amount that can be spent on basic or essential health care.
Emanuel distinguished between basic services that should be guaranteed to everybody from discretionary medical services that are not guaranteed. The result would be a two tiered system, where those with more money could afford more discretionary services. He saw a failure to define basic services as the reason attempts at universal health care coverage have failed. As a result, the belief that universal health care would require unlimited costs makes any attempt at providing universal health care seem likely to end in national bankruptcy. Instead of universal coverage of basic health care, those who are well insured have coverage for many discretionary forms of health care and no coverage for some basic forms of health care. Emanuel said that while drawing a line separating basic and universal health care from discretionary health care is difficult, the attempt should be made. Emaniel mentioned the philosophies of Amy Gutmann, Norman Daniels and Daniel Callahan when arguing that there is an overlap between liberalism and communitarianism where civic republicanism and deliberative democracy meet. According to The Atlantic, Emanuel is describing the philosophy of John Rawls in arguing that society is choosing one value (equality) over another (a healthy society), and this substitution may be responsible for limited choices in health care. PolitiFact says that Emanuel was describing the fact that doctors often have to make difficult choices, such as who should get a liver transplant. PolitiFact also said, "Academics often write theoretically about ideas that are being kicked around. And they repeat and explore those ideas, without necessarily endorsing them."
When asked if those who are not "participating citizens" should be denied health care, Emanuel said "No" and "The rest of the text around that quote made it made it pretty clear I was trying to analyze it and understand it, not endorse it."
In 2009, Govind Persad, Alan Wertheimer and Ezekiel Emanuel co-wrote another article on a similar topic in the journal The Lancet. Ezekiel was one of three authors who co-wrote "Principles for allocation of scarce medical interventions", which examines eight theoretical approaches for dealing with "allocation of very scarce medical interventions such as organs and vaccines." All eight approaches were judged to be less than perfect, and the Complete Lives system combines most of them.
Treating people equally could be accomplished by lottery or first come first served. A lottery system is simple and difficult to corrupt, but blind in that it would treat saving forty years of life the same as saving four months. A first come first served system seems fair at first, but favors the well off, those who are informed, can travel easily and who push to the front of a line.
Favoring the worst off could be accomplished by favoring the sickest first or by favoring the youngest first. Favoring the sickest appeals to the rule of rescue, but organ transplants don’t always work well with the sickest patients. Also, a different patient could become equally sick in the future. Favoring the youngest saves the most years of life, but a twenty-year-old has a more developed personality than an infant.
Maximizing total benefits or utilitarianism can be accomplished by saving the most lives or by prognosis (life years). While saving the most lives is best if all else is equal, all else is seldom equal. Going by prognosis alone might unfairly favor improving the health of a person who is healthy to begin with.
Promoting and rewarding social usefulness can be accomplished through instrumental value or by reciprocity. Social usefulness is difficult to define, in that going by conventional values or favoring church goers might be unfair. Instrumental value, such as giving priority to workers producing a vaccine,
cannot be separated from other values, like saving the most lives. Reciprocity (favoring previous organ donors or veterans) might seem like justice, but is backward looking and could lead to demeaning and intrusive inquiries into lifestyle.
When resources (organs, vaccines and so forth) are scarce, the Complete Lives systems blends five different approaches (excluding first come first served, sickest first and reciprocity) but is weighted in favor of saving the most years of life. However, it also emphasizes the importance of saving the large investment of nurture and education spent on an adolescent. It would not favor the young when the prognosis is poor and the number of years of life saved would not be great, when dealing with scarcity.
Emanuel said the Complete Lives system was not meant to apply to health care in general, but only to a situation where "we don’t have enough organs for everybody who needs a transplant. You have one liver, you have three people who need the liver - who gets it? The solution isn’t ‘We get more livers.’ You can’t. It’s a tragic choice."
Of the 1996 Hastings Center Report, Emanuel said, "I was examining two different, abstract philosophical positions to see what they might offer in the context of redoing the health-care system and trying to reduce resource consumption in health care. It's as abstractly philosophical as you can get on a practical question. I qualified it in 27 different ways, saying it wasn't my view." He also said, "As far as rationing goes, it's nothing I've ever advocated for the health system as a whole, and I've talked about rationing only in the context of situations where you have limited items, like limited livers or limited vaccine, and not for overall health care."
Emanuel said that his words were selectively quoted, and misrepresent his views. He said, "I find it a little dispiriting, after a whole career's worth of work dedicated to improving care for people at the end of life, that now I'm 'advocating euthanasia panels.'" Emanuel spent his career opposing euthanasia and received multiple awards for his efforts to improve end of life care. Emanuel said, "It is incredible how much one's reputation can be besmirched and taken out of context" and "No one who has read what I have done for 25 years would come to the conclusions that have been put out there."
Although Emanuel opposes legalized euthanasia, he believes that after age 75 life is not worth living, and the pursuit of longevity, not a worthwhile goal for U.S. health care policy. This is refuted by neurosurgeon and medical ethicist Miguel Faria, who in two articles in "Surgical Neurology International" claims that healthy lifestyles and brain plasticity can lead to the postponement of senescence and lead to happiness even as we age.
In the 2008 "Journal of the American Medical Association" article "The Perfect Storm of Overutilization" Emanuel said, "Overall, US health care expenditures are 2.4 times the average of those of all developed countries ($2759 per person), yet health outcomes for US patients, whether measured by life expectancy, disease-specific mortality rates, or other variables, are unimpressive." He said that expensive drugs and treatments that provide only marginal benefits are the largest problems. Fee-for-service payments, physician directed pharmaceutical marketing, and medical malpractice laws and the resultant defensive medicine encourage overutilization. Direct-to-consumer marketing by pharmaceutical companies also drives up costs.
According to "Time", Betsy McCaughey said that Emanuel "has criticized medical culture for trying to do everything for a patient, 'regardless of the cost or effects on others,' without making clear that he was not speaking of lifesaving care but of treatments with little demonstrated value."
Emanuel made a related comment during a "Washington Post" interview, when he said that improving the quality and efficiency of healthcare to avoid unnecessary and even harmful care would be a way to avoid the need for rationing.
One reason the high cost of health care yields disappointing results is because only 0.05 percent of health care dollars are spent on assessing how well new health care technology works. This is largely because health care lobbyists oppose such research. For example, when the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research found that there was little evidence to support common back operations, orthopedic and neurosurgeons lobbied to cut funding for such research.
Emanuel said that fee-for-service reimbursements encourage spending on ineffective health care. However, more should be spent on fraud detection, coordinating health services for patients with multiple doctors, and evaluating the effectiveness of new medical technologies such as genetic fingerprints for cancer and better ways of managing intravenous lines.
In a "Washington Post" article Emanuel co-wrote with Shannon Brownlee, they described the health care system as "truly dysfunctional, often chaotic", "spectacularly wasteful" and "expensive".
In a 2007 slideshow "Conflicts of Interest", Emanuel said that there were conflicts of interest between a physician's primary responsibilities (providing optimal care for patients, promoting patient safety and public health) and a physician's secondary interests (publishing, educating, obtaining research funding, obtaining a good income and political activism). Emanuel said that while it is difficult to know when conflicts of interest exist, the fact that they do is "the truth". When there is no doubt of a conflict, the issue is not a mere conflict of interest, but fraud.
In a 2007 article "Conflict of Interest in Industry-sponsored Drug Development" Emanuel said that there is a conflict between the primary interests of drug researchers (conducting and publishing good test results and protecting the patient) and secondary concerns (obligations to family and medical societies and money from industries). However, industry sponsored tests are more likely to use double-blind protocols and randomization, and more likely to preset study endpoints and mention adverse effects. Also, there is no evidence that patients are harmed by such studies. However, there is evidence that money influences how test results are interpreted. Emanuel mentioned the Selfox study on the use of calcium channel blockers in treating hypertension, in which authors with a financial interest in the results reported much better results than the rest. Worse yet, test results sponsored by industry are likely to be widely published only if the results are positive. For example, in a Whittington study for data on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, negative results were much less likely to be published than positive results. However, in "The Obligation to Participate in Biomedical Research" the authors Schaefer, Emanuel and Wertheimer said that people should be encouraged to view participation in biomedical research as a civic obligation, because of the public good that could result.
In a 2017 article "Conflict of Interest for Patient-Advocacy Organizations" Emanuel found that financial support of patient-advocacy organizations from drug, device, and biotechnology organizations was widespread (83% of reviewed organizations). Later that year, he argued in another article "Why There are No "Potential" Conflicts of Interest" that conflicts of interest exist whether or not bias or harm has actually occurred.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8247041 | William Wallace (philosopher)
William Wallace (11 May 184418 February 1897) was a Scottish philosopher and academic who became fellow of Merton College and White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford University. He was best known for his studies of German philosophers, most notably Hegel, some of whose works he translated into highly regarded English editions. While reputedly forbidding in manner, he was known as an able and effective teacher and writer who succeeded in greatly improving the understanding of German philosophy in the English-speaking world. He died at the age of 52 after a bicycle accident near Oxford.
Wallace was born at Railway Place in Cupar, Fife, the son of master-builder James Wallace and Jane Kelloch. He was the elder of two brothers and was educated at Madras Academy (now Bell Baxter High School) in Cupar before going on to St Andrews University to study arts. He developed a strong interest in the natural world, which led him to spend much time on walks in the countryside, cycling, botany and mountaineering.
Although his parents had encouraged him to take up the study of theology as a precursor to a career in the clergy, Wallace realised that this would not best suit him and chose instead to study the Classics. He was awarded an exhibition at Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied from 1864. In 1867 he became a fellow of Merton College. He gained his Bachelor of Arts the following year, gaining a first class in Moderations and in Literae Humaniores. He was also awarded the Gaisford Prize in 1867 for his work on Greek prose, becoming a tutor at Merton in the same year, and was elected as a Craven Scholar in 1869. His Master of Arts followed in 1871 and he was appointed as Merton's librarian.
Wallace married Janet Barclay, a childhood friend from Cupar, on 4 April 1872. The couple had three children, a daughter and two sons. His younger brother Edwin Wallace studied at Oxford's Lincoln College and later served as vice-provost of Worcester College between 1881 and his death in 1884. In 1882, Wallace became the successor to Thomas Hill Green as White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, a position which he held along with the Merton tutorship until his death fifteen years later.
His "brusque and sarcastic" manner earned him the nickname "the Dorian", a nickname he acquired at Balliol, though this was said to conceal a "generous and affectionate" nature. He was described as a man of "much genuine nobleness and a staunch uprightness of thought and speech" whose "acquaintances were numerous and friendly, but his intimates few and attached."
Wallace's work focused primarily on the study and diffusion of the ideas of the German philosophers Kant, Fichte, Herder, and Hegel, of whom it was said that his knowledge was exceptional. He was highly regarded as a teacher and lecturer, usually speaking without notes in a style described as "humorous, elegant, and yet earnest" that "produced a unique impression of insight and sincerity upon his students." He sought to encourage his students to think critically and aimed to explain the sometimes arcane and technical nature of philosophical constructs in a way that was both readily understandable and expressed imaginatively, for instance commenting in one of his works that "the Absolute Idea [of Hegel] may be compared to the old man who utters the same creed as a child, but for whom it is pregnant with the significance of a lifetime".
His writings included "The Logic and Prolegomena of Hegel" (1873), a translation of Hegel's "Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences". It was still regarded as "the most masterly and influential of all English translations of Hegel" when it was republished in 1975. The translation was accomplished in a free and creative style accompanied by extensive explanatory notes on the text, drawing parallels between the philosophy of Hegel and classical figures such as Plato and Aristotle. He published "Epicurean Philosophy" in 1880, tracing the origins of Epicureanism and highlighting the links between the life of Epicurus and the philosophy that he espoused.
Wallace's "Kant" (1882), part of Blackwood's Philosophical Classics series, portrayed the German philosopher as engaged in a dialogue with John Locke and David Hume, two of the most influential British Empiricists. He published "The Life of Arthur Schopenhauer" in 1890 in which his biographical account was accompanied by a critique of the philosopher's rejection of empiricism and materialism. He attacked Schopenhauer's "unconquerable vanity" but praised his insight into the power of art and his belief that "the best life is one predicated on the underlying unity of all experience". He travelled extensively to research both works, touring Germany to learn about the cultural and geographical environment in which the German philosophers had lived and worked.
A second edition of "The Logic of Hegel" followed in 1892 and a third edition was published in 1893 with a lengthy analytical introduction. Wallace's work on Hegel focused on the themes that most resonated with a British audience, such as unity and community, while giving relatively less attention to more alien ideas such as the dialectic. In 1894 he published a translation of the last part of Hegel's "Encyclopaedia" under the title of "The Philosophy of Mind", accompanied by five essays commenting on questions such as the method of psychology and how it related to ethics and theology. His final work, published posthumously by Edward Caird, was his "Lectures and Essays on Natural Theology and Ethics" which he had delivered in 1892 at the University of Glasgow as part of the Gifford Lectures on the history of natural theology.
Wallace died on 19 February 1897 as a result of a bicycle accident. While descending a steep hill at Enslow Bridge at Bletchington near Oxford, he lost control of his bicycle and hit a parapet wall, fracturing his skull. He was found unconscious under his bicycle and was carried on a hurdle to The Rock of Gibraltar Inn, where he died early the next day without regaining consciousness. He is buried in Holywell Cemetery, Oxford, with his wife and one of his sons.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8259064 | Taboo on rulers
Taboos regarding rulers includes both taboos on people coming into contact with a ruler and the taboos regarding the ruler themselves.
Freud attributes the existence of such taboos to an unconscious current of hostility toward the king/ruler. In the following example the hostility toward the ruler is more obviously shown:
But even in such glaring instances, however, the hostility is not admitted as such, but masquerades as a ceremonial.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8262468 | ReliefWeb
ReliefWeb is the largest humanitarian information portal in the world. Founded in 1996, the portal now hosts more than 720,000 humanitarian situation reports, press releases, evaluations, guidelines, assessments, maps and infographics. The portal is an independent vehicle of information, designed specifically to assist the international humanitarian community in effective delivery of emergency assistance. It provides information as humanitarian crises unfold, while emphasizing the coverage of "forgotten emergencies" at the same time. Its vision and strategy aim to make ReliefWeb a “one-stop shop for the global humanitarian community."
ReliefWeb was launched in October 1996 and is administered by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The project began as the brainchild of the US Department of State, Bureau of International Organization Affairs, which had noticed during the Rwanda crisis how poorly critical operational information was shared between NGOs, UN Agencies and Governments. In 1995, the Department's Senior Policy Adviser on Disaster Management led a series of discussions at UN HQ in Geneva and New York City, as well as a conference on the project at the US Department of State in which both ReliefWeb as a product and the internet in general were touted as fresh tools for the humanitarian community. Its official launch was also the launch of the UN's first disaster website. Recognizing how critical the availability of reliable and timely information in time of humanitarian emergencies is, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the creation of ReliefWeb and encouraged humanitarian information exchange through ReliefWeb by all governments, relief agencies and non-governmental organizations in Resolution 51/194 on 10 February 1997. The General Assembly reiterated the importance of information sharing in emergencies and of taking advantage of OCHA's emergency information services such as ReliefWeb in Resolution 57/153 on 3 March 2003.
ReliefWeb maintains offices in three different time zones to update the website around the clock: Bangkok (Thailand), Nairobi (Kenya) and New York City (United States). Prior to 2011, the three offices were located in Geneva (Switzerland), Kobe (Japan), and New York (USA). The closing of the Geneva and Kobe offices were due to the higher costs associated with these locations.
ReliefWeb has seen steady growth in usage. In 2017, 6,8 million people visited ReliefWeb. In the same year, the website published more than 57,000 reports and maps, 39,500 jobs in the humanitarian sector, and 2,600 training opportunities.
A first major re-design effort was started in 2002 and completed in 2005, which focused on implementing a more user-centric information architecture.
In April 2011, ReliefWeb launched a new web platform based on open-source technology to offer a powerful search/filter engine and delivery system.
In 2012, ReliefWeb began to expand its focus to become the one-stop shop for critical information on global crises and disasters. In November 2012, ReliefWeb revamped the home page, the "About Us" section and the Blog and introduced "Labs", a place to explore new and emerging opportunities and tools to improve information delivery to humanitarian workers.
ReliefWeb disseminates humanitarian information by updating its website around the clock. In addition, ReliefWeb reaches more than 168,500 subscribers through its e-mail subscription services, allowing those who have low bandwidth Internet connections to receive information reliably.
ReliefWeb posts maps and documents daily from over 5,000 sources from the UN system, Governments, Inter-governmental organizations, NGOs, academia and the media.
In addition, a team of cartographers creates original maps focusing on humanitarian emergencies.
All documents posted on the site are classified and archived, allowing advanced searching of documents from past emergency responses. The database contains more than 720,000 maps and documents dating back to 1981.
ReliefWeb is also a major repository of humanitarian job postings and training announcements. In 2017, 1,605 organizations posted 39,336 job announcements on ReliefWeb. The job and training sources include Academic and Research Institutions, NGOs, International Organizations, Governments, Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement and the Media.
ReliefWeb also provides apps and tools for humanitarians, which enable more targeted personalised information search, with the aim to speed up the delivery of important information. The apps include functions to search ReliefWeb content, curate and access humanitarian data, and manage humanitarian personnel.
ReliefWeb has won the following awards:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8266721 | James Rest
James Rest was an American psychologist specializing in moral psychology and development. Together with his Minnesota Group of colleagues, including Darcia Narvaez, Muriel Bebeau, and Stephen Thoma, Rest extended Kohlberg's approach to researching moral reasoning.
James Rest was a professor at the University of Minnesota from 1970 until his formal retirement in 1994 and was a 1993 recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award at the University. Rest continued mentoring, researching, and writing until his death in 1999.
Rest's and the Neo-Kohlbergians' work included the Defining Issues Test (DIT), which attempts to provide an objective measure of moral development, and the Four Component Model of moral development, which attempts to provide a theoretical perspective on the subject. Rest and the Minnesota Group were unusually open to other approaches, new research, criticisms, and integrating their Neo-Kohlbergian approach with others.
There have been extensive criticisms of Rest's work in general and the DIT in particular. Testing by independent sources has tended to uphold the strength and validity of the test.
The 4 component model of James Rest involves 4 psychological processes:
1.Moral sensitivity - the individual must be able to interpret a particular situation in terms of possible courses of action, determine who could be affected by the action, and understand how the affected party would regard the effect
2.Moral judgement - the individual must be able to judge which action is right and ought to decide what to do in a particular situation.
3.Moral motivation - the individual must be able to choose moral values over personal values
4.Moral character - the individual must have sufficient ego, strength and implementation skills to follow his or her intentions.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8274026 | Taboo on the dead
The taboo on the dead includes the taboo against touching of the dead, those surrounding them and anything associated with the dead.
A taboo against naming the dead is a kind of word taboo whereby the name of a recently deceased person, and any other words similar to it in sound, may not be uttered. It is observed by peoples from all over the world, including Australia, Siberia, Southern India, the Sahara, and the Americas.
After a Yolngu man named Bitjingu died, the word "bithiwul" "no; nothing" was avoided. In its place, a synonym or a loanword from another language would be used for a certain period, after which the original word could be used again; but in some cases the replacement word would continue to be used.
In some Australian Aboriginal cultural practices, the dead are not referred to by their name directly as a mark of respect. In Pitjantjatjara, for instance, it is common to refer to a recently deceased person as 'kunmanara', which means "what's his name". Often, the person's last name can still be used. The avoidance period may last anywhere from 12 months to several years, depending on how important or famous the person was. The person can still be referred to in a roundabout way, such as "that old lady" or by generic skin type but not by first name. Other reasons may include not making mockery of that person and keeping respect with regard to them. For this reason, the names of many notable Aboriginal people were only recorded by Westerners and may have been incorrectly transliterated.
R. M. W. Dixon has suggested, in reference to Australian Aboriginal languages, that the substitution of loanwords for tabooed words results in significant vocabulary replacement, hindering the application of the comparative method. Other linguists find the effects of the taboo on vocabulary replacement to be insignificant.
Goddard (1979) also suggests upon finding evidence of name-taboos of the deceased in Tonkawa similar to Australian languages, the languages of the North American Southeast may have resisted classification into language families so far due in part to vocabulary replacement (in addition to their already sparse documentation).
Sigmund Freud explains that the fundamental reason for the existence of such taboos is the fear of the presence or of the return of the dead person's ghost. It is exactly this fear that leads to a great number of ceremonies aimed at keeping the ghost at a distance or driving him off. In many cases the taboo remains intact until the body of the dead has completely decayed,
Psychologist Wilhelm Wundt associates the taboo to a fear that the dead man's soul has become a demon. Moreover, many cases show a hostility toward the dead and their representation as malevolent figures. Edward Westermarck notes that "Death is commonly regarded as the gravest of all misfortunes; hence the dead are believed to be exceedingly dissatisfied with their fate [...] such a death naturally tends to make the soul revengeful and ill-tempered. It is envious of the living and is longing for the company of its old friend."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8294130 | Freedom and Culture
Freedom and Culture is a book by John Dewey. Published in 1939, the book is an analytical defense of democracy written in a time when democratic regimes had recently been replaced by non-democratic ones, and at a time when Marxism was considered a powerful political force.
According to Dewey, human nature is the result of many forces, many of which are culturally determined. Attempts have been made to explain human behavior as being primarily motivated by love of freedom, or by pursuit of self-interest, or by the pursuit of power, or being primarily determined by economic conditions. All of these are products of their times and their inevitable falsification results in a backlash, de-emphasizing the formerly over-emphasized factor.
According to Dewey, freedom had been associated with individuality by some people and with rationality, or law, by others. It has also been associated with the farming class by some people and with capitalists by others. Individualism (or liberty) and social control (or law) have been proposed as two extremes between which freedom has to navigate. In reality, the individual and the social forces interact in various ways, rather than being two distinct extremes.
Therefore, for individuals to be free, appropriate social conditions must exist. Democratic conditions do not automatically maintain themselves and they cannot be mechanically prescribed in a constitution. Dictatorships exist not only through coercion but also by appealing to certain idealistic elements in people, such as solidarity or the appeal of sharing in the creation of a new system.
Public education and press free from government control can be as much a tool for totalitarianism as they are a tool for democracy. They surround the citizens, who in a modern state do not have direct contact with the events that affect them, with "ready made intellectual goods", making them susceptible to propaganda.
According to Dewey, the leaders of the American rebellion against the British were motivated by restrictions placed on industry and trade and by high taxation. This was rationalized into the idea that all government not self-imposed is foreign to human nature and human rights. This simple theory of democracy was a product of the simple conditions under which it was formulated: There is a widespread desire in human nature for personal freedom - release from dominion over personal beliefs and conduct. The main threat to freedom is the tendency of government officials to extend their power. Therefore, guarantees against abuse of government power are enough to guarantee freedom. This idea is very influential in the U.S.
A view that economic development is having an anti-democratic effect and should be controlled by government is more modern and its existence is an indication that conditions have changed dramatically. Conditions have become more complex, and impersonal forces have been set in motion on unprecedented scale, resulting in loss of personal control over the personal situation. Modern conditions have rendered the assumed harmony between liberty and equality invalid. Also, the tendency toward organization by both labor and capital, that is inherent in economic development, was seen in the original democratic theory as an anti-democratic force.
The loss of control motivates both the working class and the capitalists to embrace totalitarian means in the hope of improving security, and distrust of organized labor and capital pushes the public to give more power, as a counterbalance, to a would-be dictator. Can existing institutions be used to cope with modern problems? Socialists who favor non-revolutionary means suggest regulation of industry or ownership of industry by government. Theory and practice, however, do not show that the resulting situation is essentially different from that of capitalism, leaving the question of how to reconcile modern conditions with democracy open.
This chapter is a critique of monistic Marxist theory in vogue at the time the book was written. Marxism asserts that social activities and relations are determined solely by economic conditions, rejecting other factors, associated with human behavior, as having any influence. Original Marxist qualification to this position, allowing that existing social structures can have influence on subsequent events, is removed.
Beyond economic determinism, Marxism states that all social change is the result of class warfare, which moves the workers toward liberation from past subjugation, and finally creates a classless society. This law is an economic paraphrase of the Hegelian dialectic idealism, in which conflict between ideas results in synthesis and harmony.
Marxist theory was a creature of its time, a time when intellectual thought was dealing with social development (or "evolution"), causal necessity, Hegelian philosophy, economically based ideologies and the search for social theories. Marxism is dated by its search for unifying causality, since while the idea of unifying causality was typical of mid 19th century science, it was abandoned in later scientific thought, to be replaced by the idea of invariance, which describes how different phenomena relate to each other, rather than ascribe a single cause for all phenomena.
"The inherent theoretical weakness of Marxism is that it supposed a generalization that was made at a particular date and place (and made even then only by bringing observed facts under a premise drawn from a metaphysical source) can for continued resort to observation, and to continual revision of generalizations in their office of working hypotheses."
Acceptance of Marxism was supported by its discussion of contemporary social phenomena - the struggle between capitalists and factory workers, and economic cycles and concentration. In both its structure and in its attraction based on addressing pressing social issues, Marxism is similar to a religious ideology.
In the USSR, monistic Marxist theory has been accompanied by the anti-scientific devices of one party control of all communications and persecution of dissenters. Power has been given to a small group to apply the theory in specific cases, giving that group absolute coercive power derived from the absolute principle.
This occurrence demonstrates that popular representation, multiple parties and constant criticism of government encourage freedom. Despite the influence of economic factors in politics, these formal devices allow interplay of various tendencies whose result is greatly better than that of a monistic idea.
"We cannot continue the idea that human nature when left to itself, when freed from external arbitrary restrictions, will tend to the production of democratic institutions that work successfully... We have to see that democracy means the belief that humanistic culture "should" prevail; we should be frank and open in our recognition that the proposition is a moral one- like any idea that concerns what "should" be."
"Science through its physical and technological consequences is now determining the relations between human beings. If it is incapable of developing moral techniques which will also determine these relations, the split in modern culture goes so deep that not only democracy but all civilized values are doomed. A culture that permits science to destroy traditional values but which distrusts its power to create new ones is a culture which is destroying itself."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8408785 | Kavod HaBriyot
Kevod HaBeriyot (; literally in Hebrew: "honor [of/due to] the [God's] creations (human beings)" also variously translated as "individual dignity", "individual honor", or "human dignity" (in a specifically Talmudic sense which may or may not be the same as the secular concept of human dignity)) is a concept of Halakha (Jewish law) originating in the Talmud which permits exceptions to Rabbinic decrees under certain circumstances. This concept has been used in a number of contemporary Jewish religious-law decisions in Orthodox and Conservative Judaism.
The nature and scope of the concept is a matter of contemporary dispute.
Kevod HaBeriyot is mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud in Berakhot 19b; Shabbat 81b, 94b; Eruvin 41b; and Megillah 3b. The term "Kevodo" (his dignity) is used in Beitzah 36b.
The Tannaim (rabbis of the Mishnah) and the Amoraim (rabbis of the Talmud) applied the concept of "Kevod HaBriyot" in their interpretations of and rulings on halakhah (Jewish law). The Mishnah explains the importance of the concept as follows:
The Rabbis of the Talmud, when they enacted rabbinic decrees, sometimes limited the scope of those decrees to avoid situations when complying with them might lead to a situation they considered undigified and referred to the concept of "kevod habriyot" as the basis for doing so. For example, carrying across a private property line is prohibited by a rabbinic prohibition (See eruv), but the Talmud records that the Rabbis created an exception for carrying up to three small stones if needed for wiping oneself in a latrine on the basis of "kevod habriyot" (Shabbat 81b, 94b). Similarly, the rabbis enacted a prohibition on a Kohen from approaching a coffin or graveyard to ensure that the Biblical prohibition on contact with the dead would not be inadvertently violated, but permitted a Kohen to violate this rabbinic prohibition in order to greet a king, again appealing to the principle of "kevod habriyot" as the basis of this exception (Berachot 19b). Tractate Beitzah records that the rabbis created an exception of the rabbinic prohibition on creating even temporary structures on Shabbat or major Jewish holidays (to safeguard the Biblical prohibition against building permanent structures) to permit a person alone in a field to align stones to create a temporary latrine, because of "kevodo" ("his dignity) (Beitzah 36b).
Although the Rabbis of the Talmud created limited exceptions to their own enactments to prevent indignities, they held that they do not have authority to create exceptions to Divine law recorded in the written Tanakh or received as Oral law in the form of Halakha LeMoshe MiSinai. Berachot 19b records a discussion in which a tradition that rabbis have such authority was explicitly considered but rejected.
The Shulkhan Arukh, a seminal code of Jewish law, used a dramatic example to illustrate its holding that "kevod habriyot" does not override Biblical prohibitions. It held that an observant Jew who becomes aware of Biblically prohibited clothing should remove it immediately even if it leaves a colleague naked in a public place, illustrating that biblical prohibitions trump even strong considerations of modesty and even great public embarrassment.
The Halakha in the Shulkhan Arukh goes according to Rav:
Shulkhan Arukh, Yoreh De'ah 303:1 "[That it is] Permissible to remove "kilayim" from [his] friend even in [the] marketplace:
Mishpat Ivri expert Menachem Elon, in his Encyclopaedia Judaica article on "Takkanot" emphasized the importance of Kevod HaBriyot:
In the Encyclopaedia Judaica article on "Honor" Rabbi Louis Isaac Rabinowitz wrote that "So great was 'the honor of God's creatures' regarded that 'God has regard to the dignity of His creatures' (Sif. Deut. 192) and honor annuls even a negative commandment of the Bible (Ber. 19b), especially the honor of the community (TJ, Ber. 3:1, 6a)."
Most classical poskim, however, maintained in accordance with the opinion in the Talmud that "Kevod HaBriyot" can only justify overriding rabbinic restrictions. The reference to "annulling a negative commandment of the Bible" refers only to the commandment "lo tasur", in other words the command to observe rabbinic restrictions, so the Talmud is in fact saying the same thing but in a deliberately paradoxical way.
Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits held that because the principle of "kevod habriyot" reflects a perspective on values requiring a respect for life, Jewish law prohibits euthanasia.
Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg held that wearing a hearing aid on Shabbat represents a modern analogy to classically permitted activities such as carrying stones and hence the principle of "kevod habriyot" overrides the rabbinic prohibitions involved and renders it permitted.
Modern Orthodox rabbi Daniel Sperber held that the principle of "kevod habriyot" permits women to be called to a Torah reading in a synagogue service (See support for partnership minyanim). R. Sperber's responsum addressed the traditional view that "halachah" in principle permits a woman to be called but the "honour of the congregation" forbids it. In R. Rabbi Sperber's view, "kevod habriyot", the "honour of the individual", can override the honor of the congregation in much the same way that it had been interpreted to override other rabbinic prohibitions. R. Sperber's view has been a controversial one within Orthodox Judaism and has not gained widespread acceptance.
Rabbi Aryeh A. Frimer, author of a number of scholarly works on the status of women in Orthodox halakha including "Women and Minyan", wrote a critique of Rabbi Sperber's arguments which he entitled ""Lo Zu haDerekh:" A Review of Rabbi Prof. Daniel Sperber's "Darka shel Halakha". In Rabbi Frimer's view, the concept of "kevod habriyot" can override rabbinic prohibitions under relatively narrow circumstances caused by external factors such as excrement or nakedness, but cannot override a rabbinic prohibition in its entirety. He argued that a rabbinic decree cannot itself be regarded shameful or embarrassing, and that to permit a rabbinic decree to be characterized as an embarrassment would give anyone carte blanche to abrogate any Rabbinic prohibition simply by saying "This offends me." He said "in those cases where acting according to "halakha"...creates the embarrassment, then kevod ha-beriyyot cannot set aside the Rabbinic prohibition. One should be proud to be fulfilling the "halakha".".
A more complete and extensively documented presentation of Rabbi Frimer's position has appeared.
In December 2006, Conservative Judaism's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards discussed the Conservative understanding of the concept of "kevod habriyot" as applied to the CJLS's decisionmaking in a series of decisions on the Conservative understanding of Jewish law on the subject of homosexuality. A majority of the Committee voted to adopt two very different responsa under its philosophy of pluralism. The two responsa based their different conclusions in part on different understandings of the concept of "kevod habriyot"
Rabbis Dorff, Nevins, and Reisner wrote a responsum which supported liberalizing Conservative Judaism's view of homosexual behavior. They held that rabbinic prohibitions against homosexual behavior are inconsistent with human dignity as society now understands it. They argued that the Conservative understanding of the principle of "Kevod habriyot" includes general society's evolving understanding of human dignity and that the rabbinic prohibitions involved were inconsistent with human dignity thus understood. Citing R. Daniel Sperber's view that rabbinic prohibitions can be negated by the "kevod habriyot" principle, the responsum declared all rabbinic prohibitions restricting homosexual activity lifted. Finding that the principle of "kevod habriyot" could only override rabbinic and not Biblically mandated restrictions, the responsum left in place what it found to be the only Biblically mandated restriction involved, a prohibition on male-male anal sex.
Rabbi Joel Roth wrote a responsum which supported maintaining traditional restrictions on homosexual behavior, which was also adopted by a majority of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards. The responsum analyzed the principle of "kevod habriyot" and held that the rule only permits overriding rabbinic injunctions out of honor or respect for someone else, but not out of one's own honor. Rabbi Roth argued that the idea that a person's own honor (as distinct from giving honor to someone else) could justify overriding a rabbinic injunction was not only inconsistent with a fair reading of the history of the concept, but theologically unjustifiable. The responsum argued that the principle behind "kevod habriyot" is the idea that a person can honor God by honoring others, and that this principle does not apply in cases where one's own honor, as distinct from others' honor, is at stake. It held that overriding a rabbinic prohibition because of one's own sense of personal dignity or self-honor would be tantamount to considering one's own honor as more important than God's in matters between oneself and God. The responsum also found the Biblically mandated restrictions involved to be more extensive in scope.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8413804 | History of fair trade
The fair trade movement has undergone several important changes since its early days following World War II. Fair trade, first seen as a form of charity advocated by religious organizations, has radically changed in structure, philosophy and approach. The past fifty years have witnessed massive changes in the diversity of fair trade proponents, the products traded and their distribution networks.
Fair trade principles have deep roots in European societies long before the first structured alternative trading organizations (ATOs) emerged following World War II. Many of the fundamental concepts behind fair trade actually show a great resemblance with pre-capitalist ideas about the organization of the economy and society.
The notion of the ‘old moral economy’ is a fitting example of such conceptions. E. P. Thompson, in his work on 18th century England, described a society where "notions of common well being, often supported by paternalistic traditional authorities, imposed some limits on the free operations of the market". Farmers were then not allowed to manipulate prices by withholding their products to wait for price increases. The actions of the middlemen were always considered legally suspect, were severely restricted and the poor were provided opportunities to buy staple foods in small parcels. Fair trade was already seen as a way to address market failures; although the concept mainly revolved around consumer, rather than producer, rights.
In 1827 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a moral and economic boycott of slave-derived goods began with the formation of the "Free Produce Society", founded by Thomas M'Clintock and other abolitionist members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). In the Free produce movement, they sought to fight against slavery with a new tactic, one that emphasized the value of the honest labor of free men and women, and to try to determine the unseen added costs to goods such as cotton and sugar which came from the toil of slaves. In 1830, African Americans formed the "Colored Free Produce Society", and women formed their own branch in 1831. In 1838, supporters from a number of states came together in the American Free Produce Association, which promoted their cause by seeking non-slave alternates to products from slaveholders, forming non-slave distribution channels, and publishing a number of pamphlets, tracts, and the journal "Non-Slaveholder". The movement did not grow large enough to gain the benefit of the economies of scale, and the cost of "free produce" was always higher than competing goods. The national association disbanded in 1847, but Quakers in Philadelphia continued until 1856.
There have been a few instances in which fair trade in the 'old moral economy' was focused on producer rights: as early as 1859, Dutch author Multatuli (the pen name of Eduard Douwes Dekker) questioned the injustice of the colonial and capitalist system towards commodity producers in his novel "Max Havelaar". The fictional tale recounts the story of Max Havelaar, a Nederlandse Trade Company employee, who leaves everything to work in solidarity with local Indonesian workers. This account draws a direct correlation between the wealth and the prosperity of Europe and the poverty of the suffering of other parts of the world.
In 1897 The Salvation Army launched the Hamodava Tea Company. Hamodava pioneered a fair trade model which sought to pay fair prices to the tea farmers, whilst also offering a scheme by which they could purchase plantation land on a co-operative giving them financial independence.
The fair trade movement was shaped in the years following World War II. Early attempts to commercialize in Northern markets goods produced by marginalised producers were initiated by religious groups and various politically oriented non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
The Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and SERRV International were the first, in 1946 and 1949 respectively, to develop fair trade supply chains in developing countries. The products, almost exclusively handicrafts ranging from jute goods to cross-stitch work, were mostly sold by volunteers in 'charity stores' or 'ethnic shops'. The goods themselves had often no other function than to indicate that a donation had been made.
The modern fair trade movement was shaped in Europe in the 1960s. Fair trade during that period was often seen as a political gesture against neo-imperialism: radical student movements began targeting multinational corporations and concerns that traditional business models were fundamentally flawed started to emerge. The global free market economic model came under attack during that period and fair trade ideals, built on a Post Keynesian economics approach to economies where price is directly linked to the actual production costs and where all producers are given fair and equal access to the markets, gained in popularity. The slogan at the time, "Trade not Aid", gained international recognition in 1968 when it was adopted by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) to put the emphasis on the establishment of fair trade relations with the developing world.
In 1965 the first ATO was created: British NGO Oxfam launched "Helping-by-Selling", a program which later developed into Bridge. The scheme sold imported handicrafts in Oxfam stores in the United Kingdom and from mail-order catalogues with a circulation of almost 100,000 copies. The program was created to support the work of cooperatives and community enterprises in the developing world. The program was highly successful: it remained one of the largest and most influential in the sector and then changed in 2002 as more mainstream retailers were persuaded to carry fair trade products. Globally Oxfam still works in many countries on fair trade programs and runs hundreds of shops across Europe and Australia selling and promoting fair trade goods.
In 1969, the first Worldshop opened its doors in the Netherlands. The initiative aimed at bringing the principles of fair trade to the retail sector by selling almost exclusively goods such as handcrafts produced under fair trade terms in "underdeveloped regions". The first shop was run by volunteers and was so successful that dozens of similar shops soon went into business in the Benelux countries, Germany and in other Western European countries.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, important segments of the fair trade movement worked to find markets for products from countries that were excluded from the mainstream trading channels for political reasons. Thousands of volunteers sold coffee from Angola and Nicaragua in Worldshops, in the back of churches, from their homes and from stands in public places, using the products as a vehicle to deliver their message: give disadvantaged producers in developing countries a fair chance on the world's market, and you support their self-determined sustainable development. The alternative trade movement blossomed, if not in sales, then at least in terms of dozens of ATOs being established on both sides of the Atlantic, of scores of Worldshops being set up, and of well-organized actions and campaigns attacking exploitation and foreign domination, and promoting the ideals of Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyerere and the Nicaraguan Sandinistas: the right to independence and self-determination, to equitable access to the world's markets and consumers.
In the early 1980s, Alternative Trading Organizations faced a major challenge: the novelty of some fair trade products started wearing off, demand reached a plateau and some handicrafts began to look "tired and old fashioned" in the marketplace. The decline of segments of the handicrafts market forced fair trade supporters to rethink their business model and their goals. Moreover, fair trade supporters during this period became increasingly worried by the impact of the fall of agricultural commodity prices on poor producers. Many then believed it was the movement's responsibility to address the issue and to find innovative remedies to address the ongoing crisis in the industry.
In the subsequent years, fair trade agricultural commodities played an important role in the growth of many ATOs: successful on the market, they offered a renewable source of income for producers and provided Alternative Trading Organizations the perfect substitute to the stagnating handicrafts market. The collapse of the International Coffee Agreement in 1989 fueled the extraordinary growth of the fair trade coffee market, providing a powerful narrative for a new breed of fair trade brand that engaged producers directly in consumer operations. Cafédirect is a good example of this new thinking and was the first fair trade brand to be found in UK supermarkets. Dedicated to the mainstream, Cafédirect created focused on consumer engagement and language and built a reputation for quality, justifying its premium positioning with the tag-line "We pay more, so you get the pick of the crop".
The first fair trade agricultural products were coffee and tea, quickly followed by dried fruits, cocoa, sugar, fruit juices, rice, spices and nuts. Coffee quickly became the main growth engine behind fair trade: between 25 and 50% of the total alternative trading organization turnover in 2005 came from coffee sales.
While a sales value ratio of 80% handcrafts to 20% agricultural goods was the norm in 1992, in 2002 handcrafts accounted for 25.4% of sales while commodity food lines were up at 69.4%. The transition to agricultural commodities was further highlighted in 2002, when Oxfam decided to abandon its loss-making handcrafts trading program after 27 years of existence. Oxfam's move had significant consequences on the entire fair trade movement. Some ATOs saw this as an opportunity to restructure and partner up with mainstream businesses in an effort to find economic efficiencies and broaden their appeal, while others (such as Alternativ Handel in Norway), unable to adjust to the market and plagued by financial difficulties, were forced to close.
Today, many ATOs still exclusively sell handcrafts - which they judge culturally and economically preferable to agricultural commodities. While these are still considered fair trade flagship products, academics have described them as a niche market that now only appeals to relatively small segments of the population, mostly fair trade core supporters who buy products on the basis of the story behind the product.
"Note: Customary spelling of Fairtrade is one word when referring to product labelling"
Sales of fair trade products however only really took off with the arrival of the first Fairtrade labelling initiatives. Although buoyed by ever growing sales, fair trade had been generally contained to relatively small Worldshops scattered across Europe and to a lesser extent, North America. Some felt that these shops were too disconnected from the rhythm and the lifestyle of contemporary developed societies. The inconvenience of going to them to buy only a product or two was too high even for the most dedicated customers. The only way to increase sale opportunities was to start offering fair trade products where consumers normally shop, in large distribution channels. The problem was to find a way to expand distribution without compromising consumer trust in fair trade products and in their origins.
A solution was found in 1988, when the first Fairtrade label, Max Havelaar, was launched under the initiative of Nico Roozen, Frans van der Hoff and Dutch ecumenical development agency Solidaridad. The independent certification allowed the goods to be sold outside the worldshops and into the mainstream, reaching a larger consumer segment and boosting fair trade sales significantly. The labeling initiative also allowed customers and distributors alike to track the origin of the goods to confirm that the products were really benefiting the producers at the end of the supply chain.
On the producer end, the Max Havelaar initiative offered disadvantaged producers following various social and environmental standards a fair price, significantly above the market price, for their crop. The coffee, originating from the UCIRI cooperative in Mexico, was imported by Dutch company Van Weely, roasted by Neuteboom, sold directly to world shops and, for the first time, to mainstream retailers across the Netherlands.
The initiative was groundbreaking as for the first time Fairtrade coffee was sold in supermarkets and mass-retailers, therefore reaching a larger consumer segment. Fairtrade labelling also allowed consumers and distributors alike to track the origin of the goods to confirm that the products were really benefiting the farmers at the end of the supply chain.
The initiative was a great success and was replicated in several other markets: in the ensuing years, similar non-profit Fairtrade labelling organizations were set up in other European countries and North America, called "Max Havelaar" (in Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway and France), "Transfair" (in Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, Italy, the United States, Canada and Japan), or carrying a national name: "Fairtrade Mark" in the UK and Ireland, "Rättvisemärkt" in Sweden, and "Reilu Kauppa" in Finland.
Initially, the Max Havelaars and the Transfairs each had their own Fairtrade standards, product committees and monitoring systems. In 1994, a process of convergence among the labelling organizations – or "LIs" (for "Labelling Initiatives") – started with the establishment of a TransMax working group, culminating in 1997 in the creation of Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO). FLO is an umbrella organization whose mission is to set the Fairtrade standards, support, inspect and certify disadvantaged producers and harmonize the Fairtrade message across the movement.
In 2002, FLO launched a new International Fairtrade Certification Mark. The goals of the launch were to improve the visibility of the mark on supermarket shelves, facilitate cross border trade and simplify export procedures for both producers and exporters.
The Fairtrade Certification Mark harmonization process is still under way – today, all but two labelling initiatives (Transfair USA & TransFair Canada) have adopted the new International Fairtrade Certification Mark. Full transition to the new Fairtrade Mark should become reality as it gradually replaces the old certification marks at various speeds in various countries.
In January 2004, FLO was divided into two independent organizations: FLO International, which sets Fairtrade standards and provides producer business support, and FLO-CERT, which inspects and certifies producer organizations. The aim of the split was to ensure the impartiality, the independence of the certification process and compliance with ISO 65 standards for product certification bodies.
At present, over 20 Labelling Initiatives are members of FLO International. There are now Fairtrade Certification Marks on dozens of different products, based on FLO's certification for coffee, tea, rice, bananas, mangoes, cocoa, cotton, sugar, honey, fruit juices, nuts, fresh fruit, quinoa, herbs and spices, wine and footballs etc.
In an effort to complement the Fairtrade certification system and allow for example handcraft producers to also sell their products outside worldshops, the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO), formerly the International Fair Trade Association (founded 1989), launched a new Mark to identify fair trade organizations in 2004 (as opposed to products in the case of Fairtrade). Called the FTO Mark, it allows consumers to recognize registered Fair Trade Organizations worldwide and guarantees that standards are being implemented regarding working conditions, wages, child labour and the environment.
The FTO Mark gave for the first time Fair Trade Organizations (including handcrafts producers) definable recognition amongst consumers, existing and new business partners, governments and donors.
Global fair trade sales have soared over the past decade. The increase has been particularly spectacular among Fairtrade labelled goods: In 2007, Fair trade certified sales amounted to approximately €2.3 billion (US$3.62 billion) worldwide, a 47% year-to-year increase. As per December 2006, 569 producer organizations in 58 developing countries were FLO-CERT Fairtrade certified and over 150 were WFTO registered.
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