Despotic Regimes Research Articles

“Phlegm defines the Russian national character …”

In current historiography, the German General Staff with its responsibility for war planning and military intelligence is usually playing a key role in the emergence of World War One. Surprisingly, no recent study focuses the military agency’s perceptions of Russia and the Russian people, although these notions build an important part of the bilateral relationship between the Russian and the German Empire. This study shows that the views of certain leading General Staff officers about Russia were based for the most part on long-standing Russophobe resentments felt by the German bourgeoisie. Most of the German General Staff members thought of their eastern neighbor as a vast and hostile country with a barbaric and despotic government, while the Russian people were seen as dumb and lazy, frugal and naive. In addition, German perceptions were characterized by a sort of flamboyant ambiguity, with contempt and disdain going hand in hand with fear of Russia’s irresistible demographic economic and military growth. Together with underestimation of the Russian national character, especially those fearful German perceptions were an important factor in the German military leadership’s decision to go to war in July 1914.

The Hausmann-Gorky Effect

For over a century, legal scholars have debated the question of what to do about the debts incurred by despotic governments; asking whether successor non-despotic governments should have to pay them. That debate has gone nowhere. This paper examines whether an Op Ed written by Harvard economist, Ricardo Hausmann, in May 2017, may have shown an alternative path to the goal of increasing the cost of borrowing for despotic governments. Hausmann, in his Op Ed, had sought to produce a pricing penalty on the entire Venezuelan debt stock by trying to shame JPMorgan into removing Venezuelan bonds from its emerging market index. JPMorgan did not comply, but there was a pricing penalty. Intriguingly, the penalty hit only one bond; an issue by Venezuela’s state-owned oil company that went on the market two days prior to the Hausmann’s piece. That bond then began to carry the name in the market of “Hunger Bond.” Using quantitative data and interviews with investors, we try to understand the causes of the Hunger Bond penalty and ask whether there are lessons for policy makers.

Ideational and interpersonal structure in a collection of poems by Farouk Jweideh based on the functional approach of Halliday: A case study of Ten Odes)

The intellectual poems of Farouk Jweideh are the reflection of objections and criticisms raised against unfavorable political and social situations. Given the importance of using a scientific theory for better understanding of literature, this descriptive-analytical study seeks to examine both cognitive and interpersonal poems of Farouk Jweidehon on the basis of Halliday's functional theory. In order to better analyze his combative ideas in poetry, the ‘Ten Odes’ was picked to investigate. The results show that Farouk has drawn upon interpersonal and cognitive roles very well. The abundant uses of news stanzas denote his certainty about the oppression and tyranny against Egyptians exerted by the despotic government. His works owes their artistic value not only to declarative sentences but also to subjunctive statements of high frequency. Also, the poems invariably inject the spirit of defiance into the audience, invites them to revolution. The poet’s confrontation with the outside world, is, however, often real and reactive, and of the six processes, the material process is considered the most frequent one followed by the mental and verbal processes, which are of relatively high frequency.

Oppression in the Homeland: Yussef El Guindi's Karima's City

Oppression is one of the major destructive problems across all cultures, particularly for women of Arab origin. The aim of this research paper is to depict both the gender and sociopolitical oppression of the Egyptian women in Egypt in the Arab American playwright Yussef El Guindi's play Karima's City (2005). The idea of this play is an adaptation from Salwa Bakr's novel Thirty-One Beautiful Green Trees (1992) in her collection of stories The Wiles of Men and Other Stories (1992). Yussef El Guindi was influenced by Bakr's effort in resisting the oppression that is exercised on the Egyptian women. In spite of the fact that Yussef El Guindi is an Arab-American playwright, his Egyptian spirit inspires him; therefore, he laments the oppression that faces the Egyptian woman, especially if she has a voice that she seeks to be heard. If Salwa Bakr's novel was a scream in the past time which was not heard, that is why El Guindi recalls the scream in the modern period for share the same goal of emancipating the Egyptian women. The paper illustrates the dilemma facing Egyptian women when gender oppression is interlocked with the disintegrated political conditions in the Egyptian society in the modern era. Since women are treated as inferior to men in most Arab communities, it would be critical and problematic for them to voice their disapproval against the prejudiced patriarchal ideology as well as the despotic regime. Arab women strive to emancipate themselves from all sorts of oppression, and seek freedom away from intolerances of any shape or form. In their quest for these hopes, they resist, cry, and write in an attempt to have higher levels of self-worth, and self-determination. Unfortunately, this is not an easy journey as they face more suffering by being rejected, outcast and condemned of madness. The guiding impetus for this paper is to examine how patriarchal practices as well as repressive political and economic conditions serve in oppressing Egyptian women. Resisting these oppressive structures is the running theme in Yussef El Guindi's play Karima's City. The play explores postcolonial feminists' resistance against their oppression in national discourses that imprison women in traditional stereotypes. Drawing attention to the dynamic factors surrounding these oppressive practices is the effort dedicated by the playwright Yussef El Guindi through his portrayal of the protagonist of Karima's City, Karima. Karima strives with her local Egyptian representations that work on repressing her personality. This study exhibits multi-faceted traumatic and psychological illness as the damaging responses to these oppressive structures on Egyptian women. Postcolonial feminism theory will be examined and applied to Yussef El Guindi's Karima's City, depending on postcolonial feminist concepts of marginalization, silencing and misrepresentation by postcolonial feminism theorists including Rosemary George (1961-2013) , Chandra Mohanty (1955- ), Gayatri Spivak (1942- ), Robert Young (1950- ), Uma Narayan (1958- ), and Judith Butler (1956- ).

La discreta y sorprendente vigencia del ideólogo del despotismo chino: Han Feizi

Han Feizi (3rd century B.C.) is the main representative of the Chinese Legalist school ( fajiā ). The tenets of this political theory have earned him the nickname “the Chinese Machiavelli”. His ideas were adopted by Qin Shihuang, the so-called First Emperor, who unified China and unleashed a despotic regime characterized by the crackdown of any political debate and the suppression of free speech. The connexion between rhetorical development and the political sphere in the context of Classical China’s last stage may set the scene for a wider discussion about that link. Comparative rhetoric will provide further ground for connexions between classical Chinese Legalist ideas and contemporary Neoliberal discourse.

The International Convention on the Prevention of Odious Agreements: A Human Rights-Based Mechanism to Avoid Odious Debts

AbstractThere is a lively discussion as to whether debts incurred by despotic regimes and used to the detriment of the population are legally valid. This article gives a brief introduction to the concept of so-called odious debts and argues that a legal solution is not only desirable, but feasible. Subsequently, international human rights are identified as the missing link between the behaviour of the debtor state and the assessment of individual debts. Consequently, a human rights-based mechanism for the prevention of odious agreements is developed, based on an international convention annexed to this article. The convention provides that a state is classified as odious debts-prone if it is responsible for serious and systematic violations of human rights or international humanitarian law, or if its public sector is governed by severe and systemic corruption. Agreements concluded with an odious debts-prone state are void, unless the agreement complies with principles of responsible contracting as developed in this article. Finally, the scope of application of the convention and possible state parties are specified.

Carnivalesque Homoeroticism in Medieval Decadent Cairo: Ibn Dāniyāl'sThe Love-Stricken One and the Lost One Who Inspires Passion

This study explores the theme of carnivalesque homoeroticism in medieval decadent Cairo as portrayed by oculist andlittérateurIbn Dāniyāl in his third shadow playThe Love-Stricken One and the Lost One Who Inspires Passion. The playwright's satirical response to Sultan Baybars's campaign against vice in Egypt in the thirteenth century falls within the irreverent burlesque tradition. The article analyses the playwright's carnivalesque and satirical shadow play in light of Bakhtin's theory of carnival. He related the carnivalesque – a burlesque dramatic genre aiming to secretively challenge and sabotage the social and political hierarchy of an autocratic regime through satirical obscenity and rhetoric – to the medieval carnivals and feasts of fools throughout Europe. Bawdy burlesque comedies were intended to provoke hilarious laughter by mockingly satirizing the despotic government's absurd subjugation of its citizens. The study shows how carnivalesque dialogic, long thought to be limited to medieval literature in Europe, found fertile soil in medieval Cairo. Ibn Dāniyāl's trilogyṬayf al-Khayāl, which consists ofThe Shadow Spirit,The Amazing Preacher and the Stranger, andThe Love-Stricken One and the Lost One Who Inspires Passion, can unquestionably be studied in the context of Bakhtin's plebeian popular culture of laughter and the carnivalesque tradition.

Politeia: a high-technology human system

Abstract Politeia’s emergence and evolution into a high-technology human system might be our civilization’s highest technological achievement. Sporadic incidents in Homer’s works mark its initial emergence, while this self-managing human system’s cultural, economic and socio-political aspects tread to the Fall of 322 BCE. Looking at both its magnificent performance, when its self-governance was fully functional, and its brutal murder by the despotic, pseudo-aristocratic or swanky regime, allows comparing politeia’s collegial, spherical decision-making structure to the ubiquitous but highly problematic, in our neo-postmodern temporality, pyramidal hierarchy of central authority and power. Doing so unveils a business proposition toward collegial, dynamic interventions, which entail focusing on civic, ethical and moral ideals, as the means to creating in business and industry the conditions necessary for the emergence of politeia’s collegially spherical decision-making structure, an innovative act of high-technology self management.

Social contract theory and the semiotics of guns in America

We present a semiotic model of gun possession in America based upon the social contract theories put forward by Locke, Rousseau, and Rawls. Our central focus is upon the rights of self-preservation and the protection of property. The model proposes that American political history has cycled between two sets of symbolic threats to the social contract: tyranny imposed by a despotic central government and chaos represented by outsiders designated as savages. We propose that the two central semiotic images presented in the origin myth of the USA – that of pioneers living on a savage frontier and citizens rebelling against tyrannical government – endorse the individual possession of firearms. The specific models of guns chosen by private citizens are found to be closely intertwined with military patterns of usage; thus, the US military seems to serve as a rhetorical vessel from which cultural ideals of appropriate weaponry are derived. Examples of American autobiographical writings, contemporary gun advertising, and popular culture fictional narratives are presented to ground the arguments. We conclude that individual access to the use of deadly force for self-defense and the defense of property is the semiological basis of the American social contract and that US government efforts to reduce civilian possession of firearms are unlikely to succeed.

Some modern ethical dilemmas regarding the use of the Hippocratic oath

History of the mankind knows different oaths, which in their original forms, or somewhat modernized, have survived strict church courts, absolutist monarchy, despotic regimes, but even survived the people themselves. Beside the Hippocratic Oath, which, it seems, is the most durable and most disputed, we also know for: oath of office ,the oath for citizenship, the oath which we take 'under the penalty of criminal, civil and moral laws.' However, the subject of our discussion will be only the first-mentioned Hippocratic oath, because of the numerous controversies caused for centuries in terms of its origin, authorship, authenticity on the one hand, and its importance while entering the medical profession, on the other hand.

Revolutionary Eruption in the Maghreb States of North Africa? A Discourse on Their Implications for United States – Africa Relations

Revolutionary uprisings which engulfed states of North Africa between December, 2010 to October, 2011 were interpreted by the West simply as resulting from “lack of economic opportunities” in the region and the “iron fist” policy of their rulers. These interpretations, as contended by this paper are too simplistic and grossly inadequate to deepen understanding of the issues which have their antecedents in the policies of the Superpowers during the Cold War years. The Cold War polarized the world into two blocs thereby creating client-states and shoring-up despotic regimes with deficient national aspirations at the expense of their working masses. The paper maintains that the Arab Spring is partly the result of a turning point in Western diplomatic encounters with the non-European World of Africa, and Asia on one hand, and the insensitivity of leadership in client-states on the other.

‘Public–private partnerships’: The Portuguese General Company of Pernambuco and Paraíba (1759)

This paper proposes that we can learn from past experience how specific contexts can explain specific public–private interfaces and the corporate governance rules ascribed to them, and so inform debate about modern ventures of this type. To this end, the paper explores the ‘public–private partnership’ of the Portuguese Companhia Geral de Comércio de Pernambuco e Paraíba (CGPP – General Company of Pernambuco and Paraíba) founded in 1759 by the Pombal government. Based on archival sources, and considering the social, economic and political context, the study helps to enhance understanding of how the Portuguese enlightened despotic regime developed and connected the empire through a corporatist interface with a private company.

Islamic Resurgence and Its Consequences in the Egyptian Experience

ABSTRACT Although Islamic fundamentalism has received increasing attention following the September 11 attacks, it had been in the making for well over half a century, especially in Egypt. The Islamist movement began in Egypt in the early part of the twentieth century, during the British occupation. But no sooner had the movement found its footing under the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood than it was suppressed by Nasser's despotic regime and his nationalist ideology. The Islamists made a comeback under Sadat's permissive policies and continued to make gains under Mubarak, whose recent ouster left a power vacuum that the Islamists eagerly filled.

Seoul'88 – Media, Politicians, Public: Confrontation, Cooperation and Democratic Consequences

A truism: the media is frequently an instrument of politicians and politics – and so is sport! To what extent was this true of the Seoul Olympics? To what extent did the media follow the politicians and use the Games as a means of raising up (in all senses) a depressed nation devastated by war? Was media support uniform in the period prior to the Games in its support for the despotic military regime so influential in ensuring the success of the Seoul bid? And after the Olympics? How did the media respond to the undoubted success of the Games and its military agents of success and the clearly elevated confidence of the South Korean people? Did it see the Games as a successful instrument of political purpose; the rebirth of the nation? Did it celebrate a nation reborn through sport? Did it fuse sport and politics together as a potent means of positive democratic national bonding, a source of a coalescent new national identity and a means of the projection of a new global status? In short, was the media itself a source of a new national self-belief? This essay considers these questions and offers answers.

The Problem of Representation

In Postmetaphysical Vision: Art Education's Challenge in an Age of Globalized Aesthetics (A Mondofesto) (2008) and Beyond Aesthetics: Returning Force and Truth to Art and Its Education (2009), jan jagodzinski argued for politics that go representation-a project that radically questions visual culture pedagogies that emphasize the dynamics of representation as the key for social change. Despite jagodzinski's willingness to dispute theoretical positions that are easily taken for granted, he has sustained a very specific understanding of visual culture in his theorization that neglects various forms of digital media. In this commentary, I critically examine the focus of his critique and expand it outside the realm of fine art and cinema by introducing new arenas of scrutiny, where art educators may tackle problems of designer capitalism.The underlying theme throughout jagodzinski's (2008) theorization was the tension between control and attempts to escape it. From Lacanian perspective, this followed the distinction between the non-discursive site of the unconscious (the Real) and the Symbolic-Imaginary axis that restrains the former, jagodzinski's theoretical shift from Lacan to the works of Deleuze and Guattari put his political emphasis on strategies that aim to break despotic forms of social control and free the flows of desire that are captured and commodified by the libidinal economy of neoliberal market economy. For jagodzinski (2008), the problem of representation was connected to the fluid non-identity (p. 148) of capitalism: arguing over better or more authentic and/or critical depictions of various subject positions (representing different genders, sexualities, social classes, races, abilities) does not only produce more representation but, implicitly, promotes new possibilities for capitalism to expand its markets into more refined target audiences.To seek for lines of flight from the neoliberal politics of representation, jagodzinski turned to Badiou (2005), whose writings on inaesthetics (contra aesthetics) attempt to establish a relation between art and philosophy that challenges every trait of didacticism that haunts artistic movements and artmaking. For Badiou, the ephemeral nature of an artistic event (contra object) did not offer subjects a stagnant point of identification that could be captured by despotic regimes of control. In this respect, jagodzinski (2008) called for relocation of subjectivity in art education as a necessary strategic move against capitalism because [capitalism] continues to target the conscious ego by enlarging and gratifying its narcissism through the demand of (p. 156).It is notable that jagodzinski seemed to locate the narcissist enjoyment primarily to the screen society (p. 149) and its increasingly popular production of visuality. This appears to fortify a dichotomy that stagnates various locations of visual culture ('high,low', 'commercial','emancipatory', etc.) into alwaysalready fixed relation to control. For example, he referred to digital technologies of communication as synopticon,coined from panopticon, where no longer do the few watch the many, but the many watch the few on the screens that pervade our lives (p. 149), which assumes that there is something inherently persuasive in these screens, something that determines their place in jagodzinski's signifying order. However, instead of labeling these technologies as merely forms of control, I believe that art educators need to theorize their potential as sites of visuality that can go beyond any predetermined formations and create new forms of subjective, societal, and cultural relations.In order to grasp subjects'affective investments in the despotic didactics of capitalism, jagodzinski (2009) introduced the term self-refleXivity, where the X refers to the void of the Real, the level of molecularization of forces (p. 346), which is a critical answer to discourses on cognition that do not recognize the level of non-symbolic affects (the Real) as part of subject's being. …

Sustainability and Sovereign Credit Ratings in Emerging Markets: Nigeria as a Case Study

In their recent provocative book Why Nations Fail, political scientist Daron Acemoglu and economist James A. Robinson contend that nations fail when they become “extractive” in their exercise of political power. According to the authors, the neoliberal system of market-centred competition that is a feature of modern democracies offers the best platform for innovation. Since economic growth flows from new technologies and processes, political arrangements which allow for profit seeking on the part of smart people tend to be associated with successful economic development at the national level. The bulk of the extraction that Acemoglu and Robinson chronicle takes the form of expropriated commodities and land, as well as exploited human labour. Whereas democratic governments encourage regulation so that economic activity will be sustained, despotic governments usually leave environmental and human wastelands in their wake. There is a considerable political science literature around the topic of state failure, and in recent years finance and economics researchers have begun to pay more attention to the financial markets and banking systems of so-called “frontier” economies such as Iraq, Pakistan and Egypt, all of which would be classified as having had extractive governments in the past. One area of interest is the raising of funds by frontier countries through the international issuance of sovereign bonds (“Eurobonds”). A central question surrounds the assigning of an interest rate to sovereign Eurobonds and whether that rate appropriately compensates investors for associated political and country-specific risks. There is, then, a link between political arrangements, credit ratings, and sustainability. Is that relationship being accurately reflected in the interest rates that are assigned to frontier market Eurobonds? To what degree do bond markets consider issues related to sustainability when pricing Eurobonds? What is the role of the global credit ratings agencies in this process? This paper will explore the link between sustainability, political risk and sovereign credit ratings. After an initial qualitative discussion of the issue at hand, Nigeria will be examined as a case study.

Historical Claims and International Criminal Trials

International criminal trials are historical events. At one level, by their simple existence such trials are historically significant in and of themselves. The Nuremburg and Tokyo tribunals marked the total Allied victory over the Axis powers. The creation of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda can be understood as signifying the decline of previous despotic regimes and the beginning of new, perhaps more optimistic, futures. The creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was also widely heralded as a development of historic proportions in ending impunity for the gravest crimes and therefore changing the very nature of international relations. At another level though, international criminal trials try to stand outside historical events in order to pass judgement on them. The events they seek to pass judgement on are not just ordinary run-of-the-mill crimes, but acts that have been singled out as historically significant in their own...

Trial by media

The first decade of this century was characterised by the emergence of social media, and the first few years of this decade have been characterised by its ubiquity, and dominance over traditional forms of information sharing. From the Arab Spring and the Occupy protest to the London riots, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the rest have been powerful forces for change, for better or worse. But it's not just despotic regimes that have seen their authority challenged and eroded. Patient groups were some of the earliest and most zealous adopters of social media—to share experiences, learn about their disease and treatment options, understand and manage side-effects, and support each other. And from this a question arises. Does the inexorable rise of social media pose an existential threat to one of medicine's own revered institutions: the blinded clinical trial?

La dominación española en "El triunfo de la libertad sobre el despotismo" (1817) del venezolano Juan Germán Roscio

La obra del venezolano, Juan German Roscio, apenas estudiada hasta el momento, recoge el pensamiento vigente en los comienzos de la emancipacion y analiza los problemas fundamentales que impedian la total libertad de los paises de America de la dominacion espanola. El triunfo de la libertad sobre el despotismo concentra su ideario en el estudio de las Escrituras para establecer la soberania del pueblo y rechazar del poder divino de los monarcas, asi como, en ultimo extremo, el apoyo del regicidio como derecho de los pueblos frente a gobiernos tiranicos y despoticos. Roscio registra las caracteristicas de la dominacion espanola, encarnada en el absolutismo del poder real que legitima la Iglesia con el monopolio y exclusivismo de la interpretacion de los textos sagrados.

The power of one and saving private Braillon

The power of one and saving private Braillon