Ideological Opinions Research Articles

THE ETHICS OF WAR: CLASSIC AND CONTEMPORARY READINGS/EDITED BY GREGORY M. REICHBERG, HENDRIK SYSE AND ENDRE BEGBY

In no uncertain way have the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent attacks in Madrid and London, the War on Terror depicted by Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the subsequent insurgency in Iraq, and the 2006 war in the Middle East moved matters of ethics and justice in war back to centre stage. How justifiable are the actions by the USA, Israel, Hezbollah and al Qaeda to go to war? If justified, how ethical are their actions in the execution of their version of warfare against their opponents? Subjective and nationalistic or ideological opinions even further complicate matters. In addition, the interstate profile of war collapsed into an intrastate phenomenon with a humanitarian crisis profile where the suffering of innocent victims, rather than soldiers, personifies the violence and destruction. If ever the boundaries of war needed to be reinstated and the conduct of war redirected by justice and ethics, the early 21st century presents a case in point. The Ethics of War: Classic and Contemporary Readings brings to the fore an extensive array of fundamental Western thoughts and scripts on two primary domains of war: firstly, the righteousness of going to war against an opponent and secondly, the morality or justification of the ways and means employed during war. To these ends this publication by Reichberg, Syse and Begby (eds.) on the ethics of war follows a chronological-thematic line that depicts important contributors and sections of the original (translated) scripts from the Western debate.

Cloning and stem cells

Cloning, the generation of genetically identical individuals, frequently occurs in plants and in several animal groups. Nowadays cloning is technically reproducible thanks to both embryo splitting and somatic cell nuclear transfer thus playing an important role in zootechnical applications (i.e., to increase transgenic animals for drug production) and in biomedicine (i.e, to produce embryonic stem cells in animal models, cybrids, etc.). The relevant historical advancements of these techniques and the related ethical issues are discussed. A brief review of the formation of a new individual as "a process" clearly leads to the impossibility for the biologist to unambiguously determine at which stage a new individual is first formed. However, the application of the scientific method to this issue produces a communal statement independent from ideological or religious opinion: ontogenetically, the material-energetic process originating and identifying a new individual is coincident with the moment in which the first genetically active copy of his genome is formed. Even the critical production of patient-specific stem cells (therapeutic cloning) it is most likely to be superseded and devoided of any ethical concerns thanks to the technical advancements developed by Shinia Yamanaka on the genetic reprogramming of terminally differentiated nuclei. The production of specific cell types might address the therapy of nearly all the pathologies. Noteworthy, starting April 2009 but actually beginning August 2010, the FDA gave green light to the first trial based on the administration of neuronal cells derived from human embryonic stem cells to 11 patients with severe spinal cord injury. Bio-political topics are briefly frameworked within the elaboration of ethical principles and laws that respect multiple values, which are necessary in multi-ethnic cultures.

Vorstelijke genade in de praktijk. Remissiebrief voor Matthieu Cricke en diens mede-acteurs voor vermeende vrouwenroof in oktober 1476, slechts geïnterineerd na kritische verificatie door de raadsheren van het Parlement van Mechelen

In October 1475, Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, pardoned the actor Mathieu Cricke and his co-actors, who had been imprisoned following the complaint of Jan van Musene, a burgher from Malines, for the abduction of his mistress, the actress and former prostitute Maria van der Hoeven. Cricke and his companions submitted their letter of remission to the court of the Parliament of Malines, with the intention of obtaining its ratification. However, Van Musene and his co-plaintiffs submitted an official protest. In order to check the veracity of the presumed offence and the legitimacy of the protest, the counsellors of the Parliament began an investigation, on apar with the procedure. No less than eighteen eyewitnesses of the events were traced and cross-examined in Diest, Gempe and Louvain. The court's final verdict ordered ratification and a pardon. Cricke and the co-accused were acquitted of the charge of abduction, but were convicted for the minor complaints of physical and verbal abuse against Van Musene and his co-plaintiffs. Settlement of the fine that was part of the verdict dragged on for years, since no bailiff had the courage to collect the arrears from the members of Cricke's group, considered to be socially dangerous. The presence, in this case, of four different types of texts (a letter of remission, a request for ratification, investigation and payment of the fine) has the methodological advantage of demonstrating in concrete terms that a pardon is always carried out in phases, and should be put into perspective. Granting pardon was indeed the exclusive privilege of the prince, acting freely and without limitation. However, the juridical and political suitability of its execution depended on the verification of the facts by one of the ducal high courts. The many contradictions regarding these facts between the statements of the concerned parties and the numerous witnesses questioned, and the contradictory viewpoints of the judges and the ducal officers, present a unique opportunity for a deeper insight into the ideological opinions, social patterns of behaviour, and the impact of networks in the 15th century.

“Cautela, seguir mudo”. Madrid’s Diplomatic Response to the Emergence of the Irish Free State 1918-1931

Political background and pubic opinion to the Irish question 1918-1922 Ireland and the issue of Irish independence post Easter 1916 was one that did not sit comfortably with the main currents of political and ideological opinion in the Spain of the Restoration. Whilst being an obvious embarrassment to the British, which gained it certain support among

Tribune-Review Revives Competition in Pittsburgh

The conservative Tribune-Review's move into Pittsburgh fostered local editorial competition with the Post Gazette, a more liberal voice. Not only did they differ in frequency of editorials, they also offered readers differing ideological opinions.

Models of political cycles: the czech experience

This paper studies whether the dynamic behaviour of real GDP, unemployment and inflation is systematically affected by the timing of elections and by changes of government in the Czech Republic. Two basic models of political cycles are tested - political business cycle models and partisan theories. Political business cycle models emphasize the opportunistic behaviour of incumbents who strive to get re-elected regardless of party affiliation. On the other hand, partisan politicians are faithful to their ideological opinions and therefore attract a specific constituency. The tests partly support the opportunistic motives for the behaviour of Czech politicians. On the contrary, suppositions of partisan motives were not proved.

The Blind Man and His Dog: The Public and Its Historians

Abstract This article suggests that the gap between professional historians and the public has grown during the past twenty-five years and that both the public and the profession have suffered as a result. It suggests further that historians in academic and nonacademic settings need to overcome institutional barriers that prevent them from providing better service to the public. Just as seeing-eye dogs guide sightless people to their destinations, professionally trained historians should be leading the public to a more promising future, thanks to their ability to separate objectively determined historical facts from self-serving, often ideological opinions and fantasies.

Making Sense of a Model: A Response to J. Samuel Valenzuela

am very pleased to start a dialogue with Samuel Valenzuela, although, because he reveals that he was one of the anonymous reviewers of my article, I have to point out that he was the only one out of five who disagreed with the editor's decision to publish it. I hope that the dialogue might extend to other interested readers who can find my approach more helpful and challenging from the beginning. Valenzuela declares himself to be for what I call explicitly comparative, theory-driven analysis, which is more characteristic of the social sciences but I am not sure that he understands some basic features of this approach. Rather typically for outsiders, he finds that a formal model is simplistic and has abstract flatness, and then, instead of trying to exploit the insights from the model for further discussion and applications, he refers to a number of unrelated empirical details and specifications. There is an unavoidable trade-off: the more general the model is-and it must be general in order to permit comparative analysis-the simpler and flatter it has to be. But generality implies a focus on the core variables of the problem, which, once well identified, should help the observer make sense of all the details and their relative importance or irrelevance. I do not think that any of the empirical details specified by Valenzuela help him deny the validity of my model at all. First, about the model. It is valid not only for social classes, as Valenzuela interprets; this can be one of the applications, but I am referring to groups of voters with different political preferences, which, of course, may include ethnic, territorial, religious, or other defined groups. Actually, I explicitly say in the article that distances in the model may reflect social structures, values, or ideological opinions. I also refer to of voters in a way rather usual in political science and sociology literature, while, of course, more formal political coalitions are formed by parties and leaders. Regarding the threatening character of a group of voters, it will certainly depend on the status quo. Thus, for example, the introduction of women's voting rights, which has traditionally not been considered strongly threatening for a rather moderate or conservative status quo, as I comment in my article, can be more destabilizing if the status quo is a government held by anticlerical forces, as Valenzuela argues. But again, these are different possible

À propos de l’école et des apprentissages entre 5 et 8 ans : quelle clinique pour demain ?

Sociologists, psychologists and psychoanalysts agree today to think that children are living from 5 to 8 year old, a fundamental period both of their life and psychological development. However, the complexity and importance of this time of full and rich growth has not been easily recognized by the scientific community. For schools and family, the stakes of knowledge and learning demands often hide the difficulty to recognize children’s needs as well as their abilities. Schools, teachers and parents have the same ideological opinion: the difficulties met by the children at school, increased by scholastic achievement necessity, are due to some minimal brain dysfunctions, without any analytic causes or psychopathological approach. The detailed and multiform psychological examination is a possible answer in order to imagine a clinical and diagnostical approach with an open view where each clinic and theoretical model finds its right place.

Man in the middle voice: name and narration in the Odyssey

Beginning with a diagnosis of the current state of American classical philology, John Peradotto proceeds to concentrate on textual practices of naming and narrating in the Odyssey from a perspective that blends traditional philological with semiotic and narratological techniques. What emerges from this reading is a view of the poem as a tense opposition between myth and folktale, recognized as vehicles for contrasting ideological opinions on the world. With terms drawn from Bakhtin's concept of dialogism, the Odyssey's two voices are characterized as centripetal and centrifugal--the one associated with dominant political power, with the conventional, the official, and the heroic; the other, with the personal, the disempowered, and the popular, with the antics of the Autolycan trickster and outlaw. As he examines the more audible, centrifugal voice, Peradotto shows how the poet's sense of power over his material, represented in Odysseus' ability to narrate a fictitious world, creates a character of infinite varietyone whose self-chosen anonymity becomes a paradigm for a subtler ideology of the self than that embodied in the Iliadic Achilles.

Toward a Materialist Concept of Literature

The ideal nature of the aesthetic phenomenon confronts any attempt at materialist analysis with an apparently unbearable dilemma: either one must stick to the materialist ontological commitment, and evolve into vulgar reductionism; or one must do justice to the object, and slip into idealism. Thus from the moment we speak about literature as an art, we are in the midst of a political battle in the Althusserian sense that philosophy is a representation of the class struggle within the field of theory. In the present essay, my goal is to provide some solid foundation for a theoretical conceptualization (as opposed to the production of ideological opinions) of the contemporary notion of literature. The first part of my job will consist in an attempt at theoretical archaeology: first, I will propose a materialist reading of Ingarden's well-established and basically idealist phenomenological theory of the literary work of art; second, I will reactivate Bakhtin's criticism of classical linguistic structuralism. In both cases, I will try to formulate in Althusserian and Lacanian terms the implicit answers Ingarden and Bakhtin respectively give to a question they do not explicitly pose: the question of the subject. I will then proceed to develop the Althusserian theory of ideology by reformulating some of the most relevant contributions of contemporary analytical philosophy of language. The final part of this essay will propose a materialist topology of the aesthetic effect, using Lacan's conceptualization of the subject as an effect of the signifier.

Ideology and Public Policy in Canada

This article examines the political ideology of Canadian elites on the basis of a sample survey conducted in 1977. The six hundred respondents include business executives, politicians, government bureaucrats, labour leaders, lawyers, media executives, and academics. Our purposes are, first, to make comparisons among and examine variation within these sectoral groups; second, to relate ideological cleavages to differences in support for the federal political parties; and, third, to examine the correspondence between more general ideological principles and elite opinions on a variety of specific public policy issues.

Ideological Distance between Candidates: An Empirical Examination

In An Economic Theory of Democracy, Anthony Downs posits his theory of ideological choice. This theory states that political parties, in a rational effort to maximize votes and win elections, will generally attempt to match candidate ideological opinion with the distribution of ideological opinion in the electorate. To test some implications of this theory, we use the 435 congressional districts and the 32 states holding elections in 1966 as the units of analysis. The dependent variable, ideological distance between party candidates, is operationalized using a scale which distinguishes the liberalism-conservatism of the candidates. The independent variable, ideological opinion distribution in the districts and states, is operationalized by using a computer simulation. Results are analyzed with analysis of variance techniques. We find that candidate ideological divergence and convergence has a pattern contrary to Downs's analysis. Furthermore, these results are the same for both the state and congressional district levels. Downs's theory is then reformulated, and some confirmation is offered for

Los comunales en el Pirineo Central. Idealizando el pasado y reelaborando el presente

El debate en torno a los comunales ha estado a menudo protagonizado por posiciones ideológicas acerca de sus implicaciones sociales, económicas, ambientales y políticas. Las comarcas del Alto Pirineo en Cataluña, donde la propiedad comunal ha tenido una gran representación territorial y una larga continuidad en el tiempo, ofrecen numerosos argumentos para situar esta discusión en unos parámetros más realistas. En el contexto de los cambios registrados en los últimos dos siglos, donde el territorio de la montaña ha pasado de proveer los recursos necesarios en una economía agropecuaria a devenir un espacio destinado al turismo y la conservación, los bienes comunales son interpretados como una dimensión central de las relaciones ambientales a la vez que como un rasgo de un gran potencial político.

Books in Lenin's Life

Books are one of the greatest achievements of human civilization, and a most important and inexhaustible source of knowledge. Through them the vast and varied knowledge accumulated by mankind during its centuries-old history becomes the property of the broad popular masses. Books are a powerful factor in shaping man's world outlook, as well as his political and ideological opinions. In the hands of the ruling exploiting classes, books serve as an important means for ideological conditioning of the toiling masses to blind, servile obedience to the exploiters, as well as for distracting these masses from struggle for their rights and for liberation from political and economic oppression.