Hostile Challenges Research Articles

Thalassokratie, ein Leitprinzip byzantinischer Machtpolitik (6.–11. Jahrhundert)

Abstract For centuries the Byzantine empire was confronted not only with terrestrial attacks, but had to defend its territories also against enemies advancing from the sea. A central fleet with the dromon as standard type was created, based at Constantinople with its strong defences and excellent harbours, supported later by smaller provincial units. The present study depicts the development during the half millenium, when Byzantium ruled the seas (thalassocracy) and/or tried to defend its supremacy, especially against the Arabs. Due to the lack of further hostile challenge the whole system crumbled during the eleventh century and the imperial navy later on never regained its maritime strength. Especially Venice, a former outpost of Byzantium, filled the gap, successfully combining economic interests with naval strength.

Impact of conflict on the elimination targets of lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminths in Cabo Delgado province, Mozambique.

Mozambique has one of the highest burdens of neglected tropical diseases in Africa. Lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminths are being targeted for elimination as part of integrated mass drug administration campaigns. The progress made towards interruption of transmission has been affected by recent conflict in Cabo Delgado province. The aim of this paper was to determine the potential impact of this crisis on the neglected tropical diseases programme and the challenges in reaching the elimination goals of 2030. A desk-based secondary data analysis was conducted on publicly available sources of neglected tropical diseases, conflict incidents, internally displaced persons and geographical access between 2020 and 2022. Data were summarised and mapped using GIS software. A combined risk stratified assessment at district level was developed with five classifications i) Very high-risk; ii) High-risk; iii) Medium to high-risk; iv) Medium risk; and v) Not at risk due to conflict absence but co-endemic. Lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminths were co-endemic in 115 out of 156 (74%) districts. Between 2020 and 2022 a total of 1,653 conflict-related incidents were reported, most of them in Cabo Delgado province (n = 1,397, 85%). A five-fold increase of internally displaced persons was recorded from April 2020 (n = 172,186) to November 2022 (n = 935,130). Geographical accessibility also deteriorated across the province with an increase from five (29%) in 2021 to seven (41%) districts in 2022 classified as hard-to-reach. The combined risk stratification identified that most districts in Cabo Delgado province had medium to high-risk (n = 7; 41%); very high-risk (n = 5, 29%); medium risk (n = 3, 18%); high-risk (n = 2, 12%). Most of the districts of Cabo Delgado were considered to be at risk of not meeting the neglected tropical diseases road map 2030 targets due to the humanitarian crisis ongoing. There is the need for practical strategies and funding to overcome these hostile challenges.

From Legislation to Everyday Practices in Guatemala's Violence against Women Courts

AbstractWe explore how formal mandates associated with Guatemala's 2008 ‘Law against Femicide and Other Forms of Violence against Women’ and with specialised violence against women (VAW) courts have encountered significant challenges due to state-imposed constraints. Drawing on courtroom observations, analyses of case files, and interviews, we find that while formal mandates incorporated feminist understandings of violence against women, which were often internalised among court officials, in daily practice specialised courts reproduced tendencies to depict violence as interpersonal, fragment people's experiences and enact narrow forms of justice that do not incorporate the full intent of the 2008 VAW Law and institutions intended to support it. This case study thus illuminates how and why legal solutions alone are not sufficient to reduce gender-based violence and feminicide, particularly in the face of uneven and openly hostile challenges posed by governments.

When reciprocal violence turns into mutual acceptance

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify practices aimed at “passing the test” in fieldwork contexts characterized by reciprocal forms of symbolic violence.Design/methodology/approachIt is based on an analysis of a fieldwork experience in an intentional community of activists inspired by anarchist ideas.FindingsThis study suggests that in a context of reciprocal violence, the researcher must qualify the specific threat that her presence poses and develop a set of behavioral practices aimed at neutralizing this threat in order to gain acceptance and gather valuable data. Three sets of practices – showing tenacity, disclosing oneself and adjusting while staying consistent – helped the researcher in crafting an acceptable status in the field.Originality/valueIdentifiable moments of hostile challenges should be addressed rather than avoided. They constitute indeed key gateways for understanding the culture and socializing processes of the observed group, and lead to relevant ethical questions regarding the ethnographer’s position.

The Spirit of Blasius: Sandridge as an Antidote to the Poison Put

The poison put is a contractual innovation that grants debtholders an option to redeem their debt upon the occurrence of a predefined trigger. While certain poison puts can be justified in light of Delaware corporate law’s deference to directors, one particular class of poison puts is more troubling from a corporate governance perspective: those triggered by a turnover in a majority of a company’s board. These “continuing director” poison puts become problematic if a corporation with substantial outstanding debt subsequently faces a hostile challenge. In such a scenario, if the incumbent board chooses not to approve the new directors, the threat of financial distress effectively coerces shareholders to retain incumbent directors. Delaware courts have grappled with such provisions on two recent occasions: first in 2009 in San Antonio Fire & Police Pension Fund v. Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and then again in 2013 in Kallick v. SandRidge Energy, Inc. Both cases were brought on narrow grounds, challenging a board’s failure to approve a dissident slate for the purposes of nullifying the poison put. As such, Delaware courts have yet to address whether directors breach fiduciary duties in the initial decision to agree to the inclusion of continuing director poison puts in debt agreements. This Note provides a background discussion of corporate law, before proceeding to an economic and legal analysis of continuing director poison puts. In concluding that such provisions have both the motive and effect of entrenching incumbent directors, this Note challenges Delaware courts’ adoption of the intermediate Unocal standard of review in the context of approving a dissident slate. This Note concludes by arguing that the strict Blasius standard of review should apply to a board’s initial decision to agree to the inclusion of continuing director poison puts in their debt agreements.

Responding to Hostility

Hostile challenges to planned organization change are common and challenging to deal with effectively. Little research has explained successful responses to such stakeholder hostility. To address this gap, we use the concept of readiness to characterize the content of hostile challenges. We also use rhetorical strategies based on speech act theory to describe options for responding to those challenges. Because change agents must choose among multiple strategies, we continue a line of research investigating relative preferences among them. Ultimately, our aim is to offer six lessons for change agents who face hostile challenges based on evidence from research.

Dadaism: Restrictivism as Militant Quietism

Can we quantify over everything: absolutely, positively, definitely, totally, every thing? Some philosophers have claimed that we must be able to do so, since the doctrine that we cannot is self-stultifying. But this treats restrictivism as a positive doctrine. Restrictivism is much better viewed as a kind of militant quietism, which I call dadaism. Dadaists advance a hostile challenge, with the aim of silencing everyone who holds a positive position about ‘absolute generality’.

Effective Communication Strategies for Noise-Limited Power-Line Channels

Ergodic chaotic parameter modulation (ECPM) has recently been proposed as a viable modulation technique for power-line communications (PLC) due to its robustness to multipath conditions and low complexity in receiver design. While performance of ECPM has been found to be satisfactory in limited noise conditions, performance issues for other hostile challenges in the power-line environment, such as narrowband and impulsive noise, have not been extensively studied for this technique. Numerous studies have been performed on direct-sequence spread-spectrum (DSSS) modulation used in a wireless channel. The technique has been found to be well suited for a mobile environment due to its resistance to multipath fading and inherent narrowband interference suppression capability. For this study, PLC performance is investigated for both the DSSS and ECPM receiver for PLC. A signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) analysis is presented which investigates the noise-limiting properties of the power-line channel. This work provides a detailed insight to communication system performance in a power-line environment that includes the presence of significant narrowband and impulsive noise. It is concluded that while DSSS significantly outperforms ECPM in terms of bit-error rate for a Gaussian white noise-limited channel, the performance of the two techniques is similar for low SNR communication dominated by narrowband or impulsive noise. While the implementation of DSSS is more complex, ECPM is found to be less robust to low-frequency interference

An Approach to Determine the Need for Expanding Small Airports: A Case Study

An Approach to Determine the Need for Expanding Small Airports: A Case Study

Public administration and the code of ethics: administrative reform or professional ideology?

The primary professional society of American public administration has developed a code of ethics that appears to be largely irrelevant to the realities of bureaucratic experience. An explanation of this paradox can be found in the sociological literature on the professions and code-writing. Professional codes are designed to reyulate the behavior of a profession's members, but this is generally seen as a secondary aspect of a more fundamental objective: the need to assure the public at large that the profession's power is being exercised responsibly. From this perspective, the public administration code can be interpreted first as part of an attempt to legitimate the profession in the face of hostile challenges to its authority, and second as an effort to engender ethical behavior. Such an interpretation helps to explain the profession's failure to confront the organizational and political barriers that impede effective implementation of the code. The paper concludes with an observation on the implicatio...

President Taft and the Puerto Rican Appropriation Crisis of 1909

William Howard Taft was a central participant at the birth of American imperialism. He won praises for his work with the Philippine Islands, first as head of the commission created to restore the Islands to a peaceful state, then as the first civil governor. He gave up this office to become Secretary of War under President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905. In his position in the Cabinet Taft had direct or indirect oversight over most of America's scattered empire.By March, 1909, when Taft succeeded Roosevelt in the Presidency, the constitution of the American empire had largely been formulated, even if strictly speaking, it had not been formalized. Civil governments had been set up in Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippine Islands. The “insular cases” of 1901 had defined the limits of claims of the dependent peoples upon the Constitution of the United States; the new possessions were neither foreign nor domestic, and thus even though the Constitution did not follow the flag, tariffs might. The only armed resistance to American control—in the Philippines—had long since ended. It was then to the surprise and dismay of President Taft that tiny Puerto Rico immediately presented a hostile challenge to his new administration, the constitutional rebellion known as the appropriation crisis of 1909.