Crisis Of May Research Articles

Bulgaria: Political Developments and Data in 2022

AbstractThe data entry reviews the major political developments in Bulgaria in 2022, including the governmental crisis of May–June 2022, the early elections in October 2022, the failure to form a new Cabinet in the last months of 2022, and the continuing de facto rule of President Radev. It also discusses the main issues in Bulgarian politics, including the position of GERB (i.e., Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria) in the political process, the Bulgarian ambivalent position on the Russian‐Ukrainian war, and the impact of the war on energy prices and general economic development in the country.

Michel de Certeau's keys of political discernment in May 1968: The theological‐spiritual assumptions that informed his tools of analysis

This article seeks to identify the theoretical tools that supported Michel de Certeau's political discernment during the crisis of May 1968 in France. De Certeau's ability to elucidate the novelty and complexity of this event is linked to the intertwining of his experiences as a historian, traveller (voyageur), and Christian (specifically a Jesuit). De Certeau's articulation of a 'theology of difference' allowed him to construct the intellectual and spiritual tools that enabled a lucid discernment of May 1968. Through this theology, derived from negative theology, de Certeau made the experience of faith operative at a moment of cultural crisis. The article also analyses possibilities involved in the ‘rupture’, that is, the fracture that is implied in modernity; in the notion of an event that highlights the deficiency of language, its incapacity to establish ‘a truthful communication’ in society; and the recognition of the poetic dimension of speech, which is capable of interweaving speech and action. The May 1968 event invites these elements mutually to redefine themselves.

3D Engineering Geological Modeling to Investigate a Liquefaction Site: An Example in Alluvial Holocene Sediments in the Po Plain, Italy

Liquefaction-induced surface manifestations are the result of a complex geological–geotechnical phenomenon, driven by several controlling factors. We propose a multidisciplinary methodological approach, involving engineering geologists, geomorphologists, sedimentologists, and geotechnical engineers, to build a 3D engineering geological model for liquefaction assessment studies. The study area is Cavezzo (Po Plain, Italy), which is a municipality hit by superficial liquefaction manifestations during the Emilia seismic crisis of May–June 2012. The site is characterized by a Holocene alluvial sequence of the floodplain, fluvial channel, and crevasse splay deposits prone to liquefaction. The integration of different geotechnical investigations, such as boreholes, CPTm, CPTu, and laboratory tests, allowed us to recognize potentially liquefiable lithological units, crucial for hazard assessment studies. The resulting 3D engineering geological model reveals a strict correlation of co-seismic surface manifestations with buried silty sands and sandy silts within the shallow 10 m in fluvial channel setting, which is capped and laterally confined by clayey and silty deposits.

La mística como síntoma de la modernidad. Una lectura del proyecto epistemológico de Michel de Certeau

This article presents an enquiry into one aspect of Michel de Certeau’s intellectual project: to make Christianity intelligible in our epistemological situation. I seek to demonstrate how this epistemological and theological question shapes many of his historical and anthropological works, which seek to elucidate the re-composition of the human sciences and Christianity from a particular reading of modernity. The matrix of his thought is configured by the irruption of mystical experience in otherness and strangeness and the questions this poses to the claimed uniqueness modern reason, heir to the Aufklärung. We will inquire about the fundamental theoretical tools that support the political discernment made by Michel de Certeau in the cultural crisis of May 68. Then we analyse the place of the nominalist rupture in the process of desontologization of language and the passage from the religious system to the ethics of Enlightenment as a way through the notion of “the formality of practices”. Both are preludes to his particular reading of secularization.

The “Greater Number” participates in the city 50 years later?

This discussion paper deals with the participation in the exhibition entitled The “Greater Number”. This exhibition was the ghost stage of the Milan Triennale XIV in 1968. A scenario that could be perceived as an inverted “amarcord” today. The exhibition was organized with the Italian architect Giancarlo De Carlo in a leading role. The “Greater Number” defined the construction details, invited prestigious speakers, attracted international participants, designed the physical space, and called on the media. However, it did not take place. It was absent and occupied, a priori, by a citizen’s movement, by a generalized and crystalline discontent on an international scale. In the face of the tangible crisis of May 1968, we now find the “intangible” one of May 2020. This is when the debate on The “Greater Number” and “participation” in the city arose again 50 years later.

Seismic Noise-Based Strategies for Emphasizing Recent Tectonic Activity and Local Site Effects: The Ferrara Arc, Northern Italy, Case Study

During the seismic crisis of May–June 2012, that strongly affected the central sector of the Ferrara Arc, relevant coseismic effects were observed, such as ground deformations and amplification phenomena due to low quality mechanical characteristics of the shallow subsurface (i.e. few hundreds of meters). This portion of the subsurface is not investigated by neither hydrocarbon explorations (too deep) nor geotechnical surveys (too shallow). Furthermore, direct analysis is not cost effective to carry out over such a wide area. To overcome these limitations, we exploited seismic noise-based strategies, which are not invasive and do not require expensive equipment. We carried out several single-station and array measurements (i.e. ESAC, Re-Mi, and HVSR), across some of the major tectonic structures of the eastern Po Plain, belonging to the most advanced buried sector of the Northern Apennines. Such investigations were performed along two profiles, about 27 km-long and oriented SSW–NNE, i.e. almost perpendicular to the regional trend of the Ferrara Arc structures. Our results clearly document lateral shear wave velocity variations and the occurrence of resonance phenomena between 0.52 and 0.85 Hz. Additionally, based on inversion procedures, we were able to infer the depth of the resonant interface(s) and we associated such interface(s) to the major known stratigraphic discontinuities, thus emphasizing the recent tectonic activity of the blind thrusts affecting this sector of the Ferrara Arc.

Full Speed Ahead? The Trente Glorieuses in a Rear View Mirror

It is a historiographical commonplace to portray France during the so-called Trente Glorieuses of economic expansion after the Liberation, especially during the last of those three decades ending in the 1973 oil crisis, as engaged heart and soul in a project of full-throttle modernisation. The Fifth Republic under Charles De Gaulle and Georges Pompidou rolled up its sleeves and set to work tackling the country's multifarious examples of historical backwardness. France ceased to be a nation of peasants, small-minded small business owners and bolshie workers, and instead dreamed of becoming one of confident technocrats, technicians and world-beating industrialists. Only after the end of the Trente Glorieuses, it is often assumed, did that dream of technologically based progress give way to greater scepticism, pessimism and environmental concern, for modernisation swept all before it until its assumptions were rudely challenged by the end of growth in October 1973 - or at least until they were by the political crisis of May 1968. While more critical perspectives on post-war modernisation are evident in recent historiography, notably on issues around planning in general and housing and the grands ensembles in particular, transport policy and the set of social experiences which it sought to shape have been relatively more marginal to our understanding. This review article seeks to explore how issues around transport, and their broader implications about the very nature of modern growth-oriented capitalist society, are leading the debate onto new terrain. The underlying purpose of several of the books under review is to cast doubt on the accepted narrative of the Trente Glorieuses. They do so, however, in two defiantly opposite directions: some defending the distinctly pro-car orientation of the post-war elites and others offering a more radical critique of this perspective.

Vietnam’s Strategy of ‘Cooperating and Struggling’ with China over Maritime Disputes in the South China Sea

Since the normalization of relations in 1991, bilateral relations between Vietnam and China have developed into one of normal or mature asymmetry. This is a relationship in which China seeks acknowledgement of its primacy and Vietnam seeks recognition of its autonomy. Maritime disputes in the South China Sea have emerged as the major irritant in bilateral relations because of salience of conflicting claims to sovereignty. This article presents an analysis of Vietnam’s strategy to maintain its autonomy in relations with China with respect to maritime disputes in the South China Sea. Vietnam pursues a strategy of ‘cooperation and struggle’ with China over maritime disputes in the South China Sea. Vietnam’s leaders have attempted to prevent maritime boundary disputes from spilling over and impacting negatively on Vietnam’s comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership with China. At the same time, Vietnam has attempted to manage its maritime disputes with China through government-to-government negotiations and in times of crisis through party-to-party channels. During the oil rig crisis of May–July 2014, Vietnam defended its autonomy by standing up to Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea.

Sedimentology and composition of sands injected during the seismic crisis of May 2012 (Emilia, Italy): clues for source layer identification and liquefaction regime

In May 2012 widespread sand blows formed along buried channels in the eastern sector of the Po Plain (Northern Italy) as a consequence of a series of seismic events with main shocks of Mw 6.1 and 5.9. At San Carlo (Ferrara) a trench dug a few week after the earthquakes exposed sand dikes cutting through an old Reno River channel–levee system that was diverted in the 18th century and was deposited starting from the 14th century (unit A). This sequence overlies a Holocene muddy floodplain deposits and contains scattered sandy channel deposits (unit B) and a Pleistocene channel sand unit (unit C). Sands with inverse and normal grading, concave layering and vertical lamination coexisting along the dikes suggest multiple rhythmic opening and closing of the fractures that were injected and filled by a slurry of sand during the compression pulses, and emptied during the extension phase. The pulse mechanism may have lasted for several minutes and formed well stratified sand volcanoes structures that formed at the top of the fractures. Sands from dikes and from the various units show well defined compositional fields from lithoarenitic to quartz-feldspar-rich compositions. Sands from the old Reno levee and channel fill (unit A) have abundant lithic fragments derived from the erosion of Apennine sedimentary carbonate and terrigenous successions. Composition of the sand filling the dikes show clear affinities with sand layers of the old Reno River channel (Unit A) and clearly differ from any sand from deeper Holocene and Pleistocene layers (Unit B and C), which are richer in quartz and feldspar and poorer in sedimentary lithic fragments. Sorting related to sediment flux variations did not apparently affect the sand composition across the sedimentary structures. Textural and compositional data indicate that the liquefaction processes originated from a relatively shallow source consisting of channel sands located within Unit A at 6.8.to 7.5m depth.

Honor as Foreign Policy: The Case of Israel, Turkey, and theMavi Marmara

While the role of honor as a war-generating factor has been widely discussed in International Relations (IR) scholarship, there is insufficient theoretical and empirical research that identifies and conceptualizes the influence of honor on foreign policy decision making. It is the argument of this article that honor plays a dramatic role not only in causing conflicts but also in negotiations to resolve them. To illustrate this point, the article examines the way Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's conception of honor shaped Israel's foreign policy toward Turkey following the Mavi Marmara flotilla crisis of May 2010. Mine honor is my life; both grow in one; Take honor from me, and my life is done.∼William Shakespeare, Richard II

Systemic Credit Risk: What Is the Market Telling Us?

The ongoing subprime crisis raises many concerns about the possibility of even more widespread credit shocks. We describe a simple linear version of a sophisticated model that can be used to extract information about macroeconomic credit risk from the prices of tranches of liquid credit indices. The market appears to price three types of credit risk: idiosyncratic risk at the level of individual companies, sectorwide risk at the level of companies within an industry, and economywide or systemic risk. We applied the model to the recent behavior of tranches in the U.S. and European credit derivatives markets and show that the current crisis has more than twice the systemic risk of the automotive-downgrade credit crisis of May 2005.

Systemic Credit Risk: What Is the Market Telling Us?

The ongoing subprime crisis raises many concerns about the possibility of even more widespread credit shocks. We describe a simple linear version of a sophisticated model that can be used to extract information about macroeconomic credit risk from the prices of tranches of liquid credit indices. The market appears to price three types of credit risk: idiosyncratic risk at the level of individual companies, sectorwide risk at the level of companies within an industry, and economywide or systemic risk. We applied the model to the recent behavior of tranches in the U.S. and European credit derivatives markets and show that the current crisis has more than twice the systemic risk of the automotive-downgrade credit crisis of May 2005.

El control de la prensa extranjera en España y Alemania durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial

This article analyzes the organs responsible for the supervision and control of the propaganda and foreign press during the years of the Second World War. In the Nazi Germany this task was responsability of Reichminister fur Volksaufklarung und Propaganda, headed by Goebbels. Likewise, in Spain there had been constituted, after the crisis of May, 1941, the Vicesecretaria de Educacion Popular, the hispanic equivalent to the Department German of Propaganda. In both rate, the conception of the press, both native and foreigner, was coming out purely informative area, since it was understood as an instrument of popular education.

The Ottoman Crisis of May 1915 at Gallipoli

The article first considers the difficulties and potential of researching the Gallipoli/Canakkale campaign in the General Staff archives in Ankara, Turkey. Attention is paid to the Ottoman (Turkish) crises in early May 1915. Normally, historians use English-language sources to focus on Allied problems, but Ottoman, Turkish and one German source in particular allow an investigation of two Ottoman crises. One relates to the extreme disorganization of the two Ottoman attacks in early May, and the other to the disagreement over tactics between Liman von Sanders (commanding Ottoman forces in Gallipoli/Canakkale), and the Ottoman supreme commander, Enver Pasa. Ultimately, the two crisis are resolved. It is argued that historians generally undervalue the difficulties faced by the Ottomans (Turks) in early May 1915.

The Persistence of Moderate Inflation in the Czech Republic

The Co-Editor of Post-Soviet Geography and Economics, an authority on the transition economies of Eastern Europe, joins a Federal Reserve Bank economist in a study of inflation in the Czech Republic, providing data from 1991 through the second quarter of 1998. After explaining the relationship between Czech inflation, exchange-rate and macro-economic policies, and the koruna crisis of May 1997, the authors examine and discuss some explanations for the persistence of moderate inflation at a level of 10 percent. They conclude by examining policy implications of their findings in the context of the Czech National Bank's new policy of inflation targeting. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: E31, E47, E58, O52. 3 figures, 8 tables, 22 references.

The persistence of moderate inflation in the czech republic and the czk crisis of may 1997

The paper deals with the exchange rate policy being implemented in combination with the mix of monetary and fiscal measures prior to the speculative attack on the CZK in 1997. The fixed nominal exchange rate may have been retained for too long and the monetary and fiscal policies were inappropriate. It explains the relation between Czech inflation, exchange rate and macroeconomic policies until the crisis of May 1997. <P>While the Czech Republic weathered its currency crisis much better than did most other emerging economies, with the worst damage being a USD 2 billion loss of foreign reserves, the crisis failed to resolve all of the fundamental problems. It gives also some explanations for the persistence of inflation at a level around 10 % until mid-1998.

Economic models of speculative attacks and the drachma crisis of May 1994

Speculative attacks on fixed or ‘fixed but adjustable’ exchange rate regimes seem to have become a standard feature of the landscape of foreign exchange markets. The supposed excesses of seemingly untethered financial markets have been documented for some time, but only recently have the concerted attacks by speculators on exchange-rate regimes begun to occupy the popular imagination.Economic models of this phenomenon, however, have been around for some time, and are useful in characterizing the real-world speculative attacks that have occurred in the last 10–15 years in a number of countries. In this paper, we provide a brief overview of one such model. We also sketch some implications of that model for the speculative attack on the Greek drachma in May 1994.

State and Society in Thailand: How Fragile the Democracy?

The full consequences and implications of the crisis of May 1992-widely labeled in Thailand as Black May-may still be unfolding. The political challenge posed by popular demonstrations against General Suchinda Kraprayoon's premiership was met with military force, resulting in the worst case of civil strife in the history of the capital city. The period since those bloody events, however, may be sufficient to permit a more or less sober examination of the crisis in the context of Thailand's past and present democratic experiences, as well as a reasoned prognosis of what the future holds for the kingdom's political development. One can argue that one of the processes, if not the process, central to contemporary Thai political development is the evolution of relations between state and society, and that the crisis of May 1992 and its aftermath is a crucial turning point in the evolution of the relations between state and society, and hence also a crucial turning point in the development of Thai democracy.

Political Succession in Thailand

The study of leadership succession in modem Thai politics is vexing because there are no clear patterns to explain the myriad changes of government since the 1932 revolt that overthrew the absolute monarchy. In the sixty years since then, political succession has at times been by peaceful and constitutionally sanctioned transfers of power, such as elections, but more often by nonauthoritative coups d'etat, usually led by dissident members of the military. These governmental changes do not appear to correspond to patterns of economic downturn or improvement, nor to foreign or internal threats to Thai security. Instead, political succession in Thailand, unguided by consistent norms, is best viewed as an unpatterned, ad hoc event dependent on changing allegiances and power advantages held by various elite groups, such as politicians, bureaucrats, capitalist business leaders, and military officers. Although it is too early to evaluate precisely the succession crisis of May 1992, the uprising of Thais against their military rulers suggests a continuation of ad hoc changes in government leadership. In modern Thai politics, the military has played the dominant role in determining succession changes. However, military coups have occurred in nonpatterned ways, as a function of varying perceptions of self-interest, and have resulted in diverse outcomes. Although the military has had the most to do with determining the success or failure of governmental change, the random nature of the succession changes has made it impossible to predict when coups will take place and with what results. Indeed, not only did Thai and Western scholars fail to predict the military coup of February 23, 1991, but they had asserted the conventional wisdom that coups were an anachronistic part of the nation's past, no longer pertinent to the new democratic kingdom. This article seeks to show that Thailand has not institutionalized a systematic succession process but that succession nevertheless has been

Prologue to Containment: The Truman Administration's Response to the Trieste Crisis of May 1945

Prologue to Containment: The Truman Administration's Response to the Trieste Crisis of May 1945