Government Files Research Articles

Affair Caught between Two Worlds: A Transcultural Exploration of the “Asian Lover” in Western Literature and Film

Based on L'amant, this paper offers a critical discussion of the representations of the “Asian lover” in contemporary Western film and television works. By focusing on a transcultural exploration of the “Asian lover” that combines close-reading of literary and filmic texts with original archival research in contemporary news reports and government files, this paper examines the ongoing debates surrounding the underlying Western cultural stereotype with the East from a global standpoint.

Exploring the feasibility of using modular technology for construction projects in island areas

Scholars widely agree that modular technologies can significantly improve environmental sustainability compared to traditional building methods. There has been considerable debate about the viability of replacing traditional cast-in-place structures with modular construction projects. The primary purpose of this study is to determine the feasibility of using modular technology for construction projects in island areas. Thus, it is necessary to investigate the potential problems and suitable solutions associated with modular building project implementation. This study is accomplished through the use of qualitative and quantitative methods. It systematically examines desk research based on the wide academic literature and real case studies, collating secondary data from government files, news articles, professional blogs, and interviews. This research identifies several important barriers to the use of modular construction projects. Among the issues are the complexity of stakeholder engagement, limited practical skills and construction methodologies, and a scarcity of manufacturing capacity specialised for modular components. Fortunately, these unresolved challenges can be mitigated through fiscal incentives and governmental regulations, induction training programmes, efficient management strategies, and adaptive governance approaches. As a result, the findings support the feasibility of starting and advancing modular building initiatives in island areas. Project developers will likely be more willing to embrace and commit resources to initiate modular building projects. Additional studies can be undertaken to acquire the most recent first-hand data for detailed validation.

History and establishment of Two Peoples Bay Nature Reserve

Context This paper sets out the events leading to the establishment of Two Peoples Bay Nature Reserve. Methods This paper is based on research into literature relating to the Albany region, government files and oral accounts relating to the area. Key results Long known to the Noongar peoples, Two Peoples Bay was first mapped by Europeans in 1791 by Captain George Vancouver. The area was rapidly established as a base for the over-exploitation of natural resources. As the region became more developed and human population increased, recreational pressure on the area was such that the Western Australian Government surveyed Two Peoples Bay to establish a townsite. Just before the final surveys for the townsite were completed, the supposedly-extinct noisy scrub-bird (Atrichornis clamosus), was rediscovered there. National and international pressure on the WA Government from the conservation movement resulted in the reversal of the decision to develop a town in the area and led to the establishment of Two Peoples Bay Nature Reserve in 1967. Conclusions The establishment of Two Peoples Bay Nature Reserve in the face of pressure for the development of a town on the bay, provides an interesting example of the needs of nature conservation over-riding real estate development. Implications Although nature conservation values rarely stop real estate development, the Two Peoples Bay example demonstrates that nature conservation may prevail over real estate development, in this case involving the rediscovery of a species believed extinct.

CHALLENGES IN THE CURRICULUM OF THE HISTORY OF COLONIAL MALAYA 1863-1949. (CABARAN DALAM KURIKULUM SEJARAH TANAH MELAYU ERA KOLONIAL TAHUN 1863-1949.)

This article focuses on the main challenges faced in the pre-independence Malaysian history curriculum, which is an important aspect of understanding the historical development of the country. The objective of this article is to examine the extent of the main factors contributing to the challenges in the history curriculum during the colonial era of Malaya from 1863 to 1949. The scope of this article includes the background of the history curriculum to understand these challenges and identify issues affecting the history curriculum in Malaysia. The method used is a qualitative approach, involving the analysis of primary sources such as government files, newspapers, archival documents, and educational reports to understand the curriculum policy and colonial interventions. Secondary sources are also used to support this article. The results indicate that by appreciating past history, we can describe the development of the history curriculum before independence and enhance knowledge in this research. By exposing the challenges faced in the past, we can explore the relevant implications for the modern educational context and propose measures for future improvements. Thus, a deep understanding of the challenges of the preindependence history curriculum will enrich the country's educational and historical discourse, as well as provide important guidance for the development of the current history curriculum.

Coping with the unforeseen: bounded rationality and bureaucratic responses to the COVID-19 crisis

AbstractThe outbreak of COVID-19 unleashed a severe crisis in society. The suddenness and speed with which the disease spread into a global pandemic makes it an outstanding case for showing how bureaucracy acts in response to a crisis marked by uncertainty and urgency. This article focuses on the role played by the central government bureaucracy in preparing and enacting the Danish government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis. It is based on full access to internal government files related to crisis management during the winter and spring of 2020. These files include memos, e-mails, decision notes, and draft decisions from key civil servants. The article demonstrates the strength of the theory of bounded rationality when it comes to analyzing the interaction between top civil servants and political executives. Moreover, it shows how administrative and political executives can mold a governmental organization to overcome the inertia inherent in bureaucratic organization and procedures.

KAKITANGAN AWAM MELAYU JOHOR PADA ERA KOLONIAL BRITISH: SATU SOROTAN AWAL, 1914-1941

This research was about the initial survey of Malay Civil Servants in Johor during British colonial administration in year 1914 to year 1941. The role of Malay civil servants has started since the restructuring of the Johor state administration. This study article uses a qualitative method. This analysis was focus on documents and primary sources from files of colonial records such as the Annual Report of Johor files, Johor state government files related to salaries and pension laws. Findings show that the ability of Malay civil servants to help manage the administration of the state of Johor led to the formation of the Johor Civil Service by Sultan Ibrahim in 1895 by appointing young civil servants to work with older figures to enable the younger generation of civil servants to deepen knowledge and knowledge from staff. experienced in Johor state administrative management. Overall, this article will show the ability of the Malays to work in administrative management enabling them to continue to serve as civil servants in the administrative system after the British colonial rule in Johor.

(Dis)integrated care systems: lessons from the 1974 NHS reorganisation in Morecambe Bay

The Health and Care Act 2022 affirmed the ‘primacy of place’ in the National Health Service (NHS) through major structural reforms replacing General Practitioner (GP) led Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) with 42 Integrated Care Boards (ICBs). The intention behind the Act was to strengthen engagement between the NHS, local authorities, and other stakeholders in place-based systems providing collaborative, integrated health and social care services across organisational and financial boundaries. This reversed longstanding political commitment to competition. However, identical intentions – about facilitating consensus, cooperation and cost-effectiveness between health and social services – underpinned the first major reorganisation of the NHS in 1974. Drawing upon a unique central government file dedicated to the problems the reorganisation raised for South Westmorland, this paper explores the gap between neat structural reforms imagined by the centre and their messy realisation in the periphery, highlighting similar tensions in the present.

Much Ado about Little: The Whitlam Government and Australia’s Engagement with Southeast Asia

ABSTRACT Australian Prime Minister Edward Gough Whitlam has gone down in history as the man who ended two decades of Australian neglect of Asia. Having come to power with the ambitious goal of making a quantum leap in Australia’s regional engagement, Whitlam is widely credited with bringing his country closer to Asia. However, such a representation of Whitlam’s Asian diplomacy does not quite stand up to a careful examination of the historical record. Whitlam’s new course in foreign affairs not only failed to inject new momentum into Canberra’s policy of regional engagement, but it also perplexed – or even frustrated – more than one regional actor. It is no coincidence that he spent nearly half of his prime ministership seeking to dispel the perception that Australia was becoming isolationist. Focussing on Whitlam’s policy towards Southeast Asia, an area of crucial strategic importance for Australia, this analysis provides a corrective, based on recently declassified Australian, British and American government files, of Australia’s regional engagement in the early 1970s.

Computational ballistic analysis of the cranial shot to John F. Kennedy

Almost 60 years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, the majority of Americans are still reluctant to believe official reports presented by the commissions gathered in 1964 and again in 1976 that determined the direction of the shot resulting in the fatal head injury. Long-withheld, confidential government files released in 2017 reignited the controversy. The present investigation computationally simulated projectile-skull-impacts from the direction specified in official reports and from three other directions. Detailed geometric models of the human head and ammunition, as well as known parameters from the assassination site served as the supportive base for analysis. Constitutive mathematical models for the impact of projectile material with skull tissues at supersonic speed were employed to analyze bone and bullet fragmentation mechanics. Simulated fracture characteristics of bone and bullet were compared with photographic and X-ray evidence. The most likely origin of the fatal shot was determined based on the degree of corresponding deformation and fragmentation between simulation and documented evidence. Computational corroboration could be established as physically consistent with high-speed impact from the rear, as established by the official commissions. Simulations of three other speculative shot origins did not correspond with the documented evidence.

A Very South African Plot? The 1987 London Kidnap Plan

This essay considers a South African plot to kidnap and torture senior members of the African National Congress working in London in 1987 to extract information from them, and explores the response of the British state to this conspiracy. Using previously unexamined documents from the files of Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office revealed following a Freedom of Information request, supplemented by interviews in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Norway, we make the following arguments. First, that the extent of South African covert activity abroad during the apartheid period has been underestimated and remains insufficiently explored. Secondly, that the agents of the South African security services continued to pursue their activities after the end of apartheid. Thirdly, that considerable information about these activities has yet to be revealed as it is held in government files that remain closed.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh: An Archival Analysis of the Controversial Yet Candid Origin

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) appeared for the first time in the official records of British Government files on 18 January 1933. Since then, the Political Section and Director of Intelligence Bureau taken note and reported extensively about the activities of RSS through their separate notes.

Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck

Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck

Transgender Politics: The Civil Rights of Transgender Persons

In 2014, Time magazine featured Laverne Cox, an out transgender actress, in a seemingly provocative cover story, "The Transgender Tipping Point: America's next civil rights frontier." Cox's cover marked the first time an out transgender person was featured on the cover of a high-circulation print magazine in the United States. For the casual observer, Time's cover story foreshadowed the birth of the transgender rights movement in the United States. In the months that followed, we witnessed trans military personnel win the right to serve openly, the federal government file suit demanding full integration of restrooms in our schools and workplaces in North Carolina, a cascade of celebrities come out, a bespectacled high school student named Gavin Grimm ask the U.S. Supreme Court to order his high school to let him use the boy's restroom, and a quiet but determined English professor named Rachel Tudor file a federal suit challenging a discriminatory tenure denial at a rural public university in Oklahoma. But Cox's cover did not so much launch the transgender rights movement as it signaled wider consciousness of transgender demands for equal rights that have brewed for decades. In this chapter, we situate high-profile legal battles and cultural touchstones of the last few years into the complex, multifaceted, and every-evolving transgender civil rights movement in the United States.

‘The Film That’s Banned in Harrogate’: Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), Local Censorship, Comedy and Local Resistance

This article investigates the banning of Monty Python’s Life of Brian by 39 local councils in the United Kingdom in late 1979 and early 1980. Focusing on three of these local areas – Harrogate, Dudley and Swansea – it draws on discursive analysis of local newspaper debate generated by both editors and readers, and the various arguments and strategies they employed to question the right of the local council to remove Life of Brian from their communities, including arguments relating to consumer choice and freedom and local trade and cultural reputation. Through doing this, the article foregrounds an approach that has yet to be explored extensively within the emergent body of work on local film censorship in the UK, advocating for the fruitfulness of a community-based historical analysis of resistance to local film regulation as well as the more commonly employed council-based analysis of local government files and archives. The article also considers the Life of Brian case study as an example of local film controversy where the themes and features of the film itself were drawn on by local resisters of the ban in a range of creative and productive ways.

Historic 7th March Speech of Bangabandhu: Democracy and Civility in Leadership

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is the name that the Bengali nation remembers and cheers, who inspired millions with his leadership. His speech of 7th March 1971 electrified the nation and set the tone for the great war of liberation. His speech has manifested the belief in freedom and equality between people and his enthusiastic courtesy and warmth in guiding the people to their destined future. Democracy is a situation, system or organization in which everyone has equal rights and opportunities. It is the belief that everyone in the country has the right to express their opinion and can help in making decisions. And civility is defined as civilized conduct or the quality of being polite. The objective of this research is to highlight the fact that how the Father of the Bengali Nation, Bangabandhu had shown civility and put importance on democracy in his 7th March speech. These two most important things, emphasized in his speech are the reasons behind Bangabandhu being loved and adored by the people. His genuine devotion and affection for his people were clearly cognized through his speech of 7th March. This qualitative research includes data collected from historical sources. Newspapers, government files (archival sources), and interviews are the primary sources used in this research. And books and articles published in different journals are used as secondary sources.

Powering Apartheid: The Coalbrook Mine Disaster of 1960

ABSTRACT 1960 was a pivotal year in the history of apartheid and of South Africa. However, the first great crisis of that year – the Coalbrook Mine Disaster – has been largely forgotten. At least 435 miners died when a large section of the mine collapsed on 21 January 1960. The Coalbrook Disaster can be attributed in large measure to the rise of the racist, capitalist apartheid state in South Africa after 1948. As the first major crisis of 1960 in South Africa, it dramatised and foreshadowed many of the debates that ensued during that year about the nature of the apartheid state. Key causes of the disaster were the exponential increase in demand for coal following the opening of the Taaibos power station in 1954 on the one hand, and the cumulative effects of unsound mine labour practices based on race on the other. Using contemporary newspaper accounts, government files, and the official enquiry report, this paper seeks to highlight the human cost of the rise of the South African mining industry, and especially of the coal that powered the construction of the apartheid state.

Why does a central government file a suit against a local government with the constitutional court?:

Why does a central government file a suit against a local government with the constitutional court?:

Nazi Saboteurs: Hitler's Secret Attack on America by Samantha Seiple

Reviewed by: Nazi Saboteurs: Hitler's Secret Attack on America by Samantha Seiple Kiri Palm Seiple, Samantha Nazi Saboteurs: Hitler's Secret Attack on America. Scholastic Focus, 2019 [224p] illus. with photographs Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-338-25914-8 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-338-25924-7 $10.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 8-12 On June 13th, 1942, eight German nationals invaded American soil, tasked with sabotaging the war effort by planting explosives in factories, canals, various railways, and bridges. By June 27th, all of them were caught and facing a military tribunal, betrayed to the FBI by one of their own. If they were found guilty of their crimes, they faced execution, with the fates of their families on both sides of the Atlantic up in the air. It's a little-known story that promises excitement and intrigue, with a fast-paced prologue that yanks its readers into a world of disguise and danger. Unfortunately, this nonfiction narrative fails to deliver on its early promises; the personal lives of the eight dominate, while the acts of cunning and derring-do that would draw readers are shunted aside. Seiple chronicles the training process the titular saboteurs embark on, their petty internal disputes, and their general disinterest in supporting the Nazi cause in a thorough but unfortunately dry account. Black and white photographs of typical World War II topics (e.g. Adolf Hitler, concentration camps, propaganda posters) are sprinkled throughout the text with little connection to the actual content on the page. This jumbled throughline is nearly compensated for by Seiple's extensive research, evident in back matter that includes a lengthy list of declassified government files. Copyright © 2020 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Resistencias cotidianas a la privatización de recursos naturales en Portugal a inicios del siglo XX: el ejemplo de la caza furtiva en la región del Alentejo

El artículo analiza la caza furtiva como forma de resistencia mediante la cual las comunidades rurales sortearon la legislación que restringía el libre usufructo de los recursos cinegéticos del entorno natural. Para ello, tomamos como marco de estudio la región portuguesa del Alentejo entre los años 1910 y 1917. El texto se divide en tres partes: primero, se estudia la legislación sobre caza; segundo, se analiza la extensión de la caza ilegal en la región a través de la información recogida en periódicos regionales y documentación del gobierno civil; y, tercero, se profundiza en el análisis de la naturaleza de la caza furtiva por medio de documentación judicial de ámbito local. La principal conclusión es que, a pesar de la legislación restrictiva, la caza furtiva fue una práctica generalizada en la región utilizada principalmente por individuos de las clases populares para obtener unos recursos económicos complementarios en épocas de desempleo.

Stopped in our tracks: From ‘giving an account’ to an ethics of recognition in feminist praxis

When the Western Australian government announced in 2010 that Indigenous people would be compensated for unpaid wages, a Yindjibarndi woman named Bigali Hanlon submitted an application to access her government files so that she could lodge a claim. At the age of four, Bigali was taken from her home in Mulga Downs, Western Australia to live in a church‐run hostel for ‘fair‐skinned’ Indigenous children until she was sent into indentured domestic service as a teenager. Three large files document her history. These files, combined with in‐depth interviews, and a film about Bigali and other Indigenous Australian people, Walking Tracks Back Home, form the basis of this article. In reflecting on the issues raised by Bigali's story, we draw on feminist writing on the costs associated with being called to give an account of oneself, considering how listening might form the basis of an ethics of recognition in feminist praxis.