Universal Opposition Research Articles

Settlements in U.S. Policy

From the start of Israel's occupation of Arab lands in 1967, the United States opposed the establishment of Jewish settlements in the territories. This pillar of U.S. policy was based on the legal bedrock provided by the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Fourth Geneva Convention), adopted in 1949 and signed by Israel in 1951. Paragraph 6 of the convention's Article 49 states: The occupying power shall deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. It was this clear and forthright international accord that provided the basis for the universal opposition that greeted Israel when it began, in the immediate aftermath of the war, to colonize the territories it had occupied, a process that has continued without pause despite U.S. and world condemnation. In the years since the occupation began, the United Nations, both the Security Council and the General Assembly, has repeatedly condemned Israel's settlement activity, declaring it a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. At best, the United States has an inconsistent record toward these resolutions. Nonetheless, Washington consistently maintained to the Arabs and within the international community that its position against settlements was based on the Fourth Geneva Convention, the implication-at times made explicit-being that they were illegal. This continued to be the case up to 1981, when the newly elected Ronald Reagan declared they were not ille-

What's so special about methadone maintenance?

Despite the proven effectiveness of methadone maintenance treatment in the management of opiate dependence, methadone maintenance programmes have met with almost universal opposition and controversy in countries all over the world. The unique aspects of methadone treatment are examined, including the stringent restrictions imposed on methadone programmes and the convention of sub-optimal dosing adhered to in many programmes. Finally, some reasons for the under-utilization of this treatment mode are proposed, and the implications of current attitudes towards methadone maintenance programmes are examined.

A Survey of Parental Opinions on Corporal Punishment in Schools

Forty-three states permit corporal punishment in schools. This practice continues despite the universal opposition of professional organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics. This study determines parental attitudes concerning the use of physical punishment in schools. The surveyed sample is drawn from parents of military dependents who brought their children to this clinic for routine physical examinations. One hundred and twenty-nine of 132 questionnaires were returned for a 98% response rate. Fifty-one percent of the parents supported the use of corporal punishment in schools, 37% disagreed (77% of these strongly), 11% had no opinion, and 1% did not respond to the question. Analysis of the responses displayed a relationship between parental attitudes on the use of corporal punishment and opinion of the positive effects of physical punishment on children's behavior (p less than 0.0001). No relationship was found between position on corporal punishment and the respondent (mother, father, or both), the age of parents, the military rank of the sponsor (the individual whose military service makes the child eligible for military medical care, i.e., father, mother, guardian, etc.), the sex of the children, the marital status of the parents, or the schools attended by the children (public or private). Thirty-four percent of parents believed corporal punishment would improve behavior, and 20% of parents felt that physical punishment would improve their child's academic performance.

Discours et pratiques de l'État vis-à-vis de la paysannerie à travers la presse officielle en Roumanie

Romania : the State's attitudes and actions vis-à-vis the peasants, as reflected in the official press. Since 1945, the countryside has been the scene of radical, far-reaching and irreversible changes. These have been political, ideological and economic in nature, and their aim has been the fundamental transformation of the peasantry, who are traditionally mistrusted as a class by the Communists. With the coming of collectivization, itself the result of a political rather than an economic choice, the priority given to heavy industry, and the growing importance of state and party organs in the countryside, the peasants found themselves mobilized in a programme of nationwide modernization. In the course of the industrialization and urbanization of the countryside, the rural way of life was transformed. However, the theoretical model, drawn from the Russian experience and applied in Romania as in other East-European countries, met with more or less universal opposition from the peasants. In addition, the persistent failures of the Party's agricultural policy necessitated numerous modifications. The official Romanian press and various specialist journals provide a particularly fruitful and illuminating source of information on the Romanian government's policy with regard to the peasants, on its contradictions and its limitations, and also on the communist State's attempt to seek the basis of its national legitimacy in a reformulated version of its « peasant heritage ».

C.B. Macpherson's“Hobbes”: A Critique

AbstractThis article is a critique of C. B. Macpherson's interpretation of Hobbes's Leviathan. In reading possessive individualism into Hobbes's work, Macpherson assumes two basic theses: a logical claim, that a specific model of society is required to derive a universal opposition among men's powers; and a textual claim, that this universal opposition is implied by Hobbes as an unstated postulate in chapters 10–11 of Leviathan. These basic claims are both unfounded. Logically, the postulated universal opposition of powers does not require Macpherson's model of society for its derivation. Indeed, on premisses preferred by Macpherson, the two are logically inconsistent. Textually, the postulated universal opposition of powers does not occur in Leviathan: a careful sifting of the text indicates that there is no direct evidence at all for this postulate. Notwithstanding the brilliance of possessive individualism as a contribution to modern political understanding, this theory cannot properly be ascribed to Hobbes.

Respice Finem: The Literary Criticism of Giovanni Gentile

If the primary purpose of literary criticism is to convey a sense of the unique individuality of a poet and his poems, as most Italian critics since Francesco De Sanctis have believed, then Giovanni Gentile is a much finer critic than has yet been recognized. Although Gentile's main interests, from the turn of the century until his death in 1944, were in philosophy and educational reform, he also wrote a series of critical essays in which he struggles, with increasing insight, to understand the nature of poetic individuality and to articulate his sense of the individuality of the poetry of Dante and Leopardi. Although Petrarch, Alfieri, and Manzoni also came under his scrutiny, only Dante and Leopardi sustained his interest and elicited efforts of understanding. Only his essays on them are complex enough to serve as counterparts to the advances in his philosophy. If his response to poetry seriously affected the nature of his philosophy, as I think it did, it is mainly the poetry of )ante and Leopardi that had this effect. The significance of Gentile's criticism must be maintained in the face of almost universal opposition by Italian philosophers and critics. Croce felt that Gentile was utterly anaesthetic in his reading of any and all poems and that his actualistic philosophy, as logocentric, was fundamentally at odds with poetry. Guido Calogero has said that the aesthetics of a man as insensitive to art as Gentile could not be taken

The Development of Work Study in Building and Civil Engineering … 1

OF ALL the management techniques which have been introduced or developed in British industry in the present century none has met with more universal opposition than the technique of work study. Resistance has come from sceptical management and organised labour alike.