Rage Against System It is not a revolution... it is perhaps first great insurrection against global systems, form of revolt that is most modern and most insane, French philosopher Michel Foucault described 1979 Iranian Revolution, which toppled one of most modern and rapidly growing economies in Orient. The downfall of Mohammad Reza Shah Palilavi, strongman of Persia who held title of 'king of kings' (Shahanshah), represented one of greatest political shocks of 20th century. After all, back then Middle Eastern nation was led by a staunch US ally who controlled one of world's largest reserves of oil and gas, spearheaded rapid industrialization and urbanization in a previously backward agricultural nation, aggressively modernized educational and cultural institutions, and oversaw a massive internal security apparatus, namely Organization for Intelligence and National Security, better known by its Farsi acronym SAVAK, which muzzled any kind of political opposition, whether secular or religious, with ferocious intensity and vigilance. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] What happened in Iran--namely, unlikely revolt at heart of a seemingly successful modernization project--is what Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek aptly described as trouble in paradise. As Zizek explains, we might see [Ayatollah] Khomeini revolution of 1979 as original 'trouble in paradise', given that it happened in a country that was on fast-track of pro-Western modernization, and West's staunchest ally in region. Beneath facade of harmonious modernization under supposed benign rule of a enlightened despot, however, Iran was teeming with public dissatisfaction vis-a-vis rising inequality, culture wars (as imported Western values clashed with traditionalism), gross human rights violations (as regime cracked down on dissent), and what many saw as unmistakable national humiliation (as Shah welcomed presence of foreign militaries) amid growing strategic subservience to Western powers, particularly United States. In this sense, as Foucault correctly observed, Iranian revolution was a popular uprising--led by a melange of communists, liberal technocrats, and radical Islamists, who later came to dominate post-revolutionary landscape under leadership of Khomeini and his disciples--against globalization project at heart of ancient Persia. But confidence in teleological certainty and moral superiority of globalization--the spread of Western consumer values, free market principles, and liberal democratic institutions--was restored with a vengeance almost a decade after Iranian revolution, when world witnessed phantasmatic collapse of USSR. The seemingly inexorable terminus of decades-old Cold War was swiftly supplanted by what US political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously termed as the end of history--the resolution of millennium-old ideological struggles in favor of Western synthesis of capitalism and democracy. In fact, Fukuyama triumphantly asserted, something very fundamental has happened in world history, namely the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism. At first, sense of optimism proved potently verified by encouraging developments on ground. What Fukuyama had in mind was essentially process--and triumph--of Western-led globalization, which pertains to spread of Western liberal values, diffusion of advanced technology, and integration of markets via rapid movement of capital and commodities across borders. Globalization, particularly its economic dimension, was more by design than by some mystical, Hegelian march of history. Soon after USSR's collapse, globalization entered a turbo-charged phase. While George H.W. Bush declared a world order, it was Bill Clinton administration that advocated, with significant success, for a new era of global economic integration, overseeing negotiation and implementation of regional trade agreements such as North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), establishment of World Trade Organization (WTO), upgrade of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) into a high-profile platform for trade and investment negotiations in Pacific Rim, and full entry of China into global economic order. …
As its former chief, can you tell us more about what the Ministry of Unification does? Is South Korea the only country to have such a department? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] To my knowledge, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs in East and West Germany served the functions of Korea's Ministry of Unification. However, the Ministry [of Unification] is one of a kind. The Constitution of the Republic of Korea has a clause that stipulates the government shall seek unification and ... carry out a policy of peaceful The Ministry of Unification is a department that was established to uphold this spirit of the Constitution and to execute the gargantuan amount of work needed for unification. To give you some specific examples, the responsibilities of the Ministry include improving North-South Korean relations and thus paving the road for a peaceful unification. It also includes educating the South Korean public, so that the public recognizes the importance of unification. The Ministry is also entrusted with the task of adjusting South Korean institutions and the economy in ways that are conducive to unification. An example would be ensuring that laws and regulations are in place to protect North Korean defectors. Furthermore, the Ministry works with the international community to convey the message that unification is a prerequisite to peace and stability in East Asia. It also highlights human rights violation issues in North Korea. To carry out these missions, the Ministry collaborates with other government offices, such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Education, and Ministry of Health and Welfare. What prompted you to be interested in Korean unification and eventually rise up to the position of a minister? I majored in comparative politics, and many Ph.D. theses in this discipline use case studies. My research topic was state formation and its case study was North Korea. Studying North Korea as a state, I naturally became more interested in Korean reunification. In South Korea, it is inevitable that academic research on North Korea gravitates towards unification issues, one way or the other. I researched in the 1980s, when North Korean studies was becoming a hot issue in South Korean academia. It was a time marked by a fierce controversy over how South Korean academics should approach and study North Korea. Then, in the mid-1990s, a severe economic crisis struck North Korea, causing a famine that killed an estimated three million people. In 1997, my research assistant and I drove along the China-North Korea border from the Chinese side, near the Tumen River. Seeing starving North Korean civilians in tears across the river with my own eyes, I could not help but wonder why they had to undertake such unspeakable sufferings. North Koreans who had relatives in China would secretly hand over letters addressed to their relatives to Chinese merchants and plead that they deliver these letters when they return to China. I remember going through heaps of those letters, reading harrowing tales of unfathomable hardships. This is when I realized what unification was really about. It dawned on me that my approach--conducting theoretical research behind a desk as an academic--would never let me understand the reality of this problem. Of course, I was aware that the Koreas would not unite anytime soon, but the experience prompted me to break away from pure academics and to devote my time thinking more on policy-oriented, practical issues. I began talking to politicians about unification and served as an advisor to government offices. I am not sure if this is what helped me to become a minister, but I genuinely became more interested in practical strategies of unification and what I could do hands-on. Later on, I found myself writing more policy proposal papers for government agencies than research theses. How would you describe the two years you served as minister? …
The article discusses the role of propaganda and censorship in North Korean government. Topics discussed include propaganda and censorship in the state-run media organizations of China and Russia, variation in the mechanisms and effectiveness of propaganda and censorship, and conflation between entertainment and political propaganda in the People's Republic from 1949 to 1976 as per Harvard University Associate Professor Jie Li.
The article focuses on completion of the New York University (NYU) in Abu Dhabi campus (NYUAD) in United Arab Emirates which was called as transformation by NYU's president John Sexton. Topics discussed include the establishment of the semi-governmental development institution Qatar Foundation in 1995, globalization of higher education, and NYUAD and NYU's agreement on several values with significance, including academic freedom, free speech, and respect for human dignity
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] US-Russia relations today are more strained and more confrontational than at any time since the end of the Cold War. For the first time since the end of World War II, a European country has annexed territory of a neighbor. Emboldened by the relative ease of Crimea's annexation, Vladimir Putin then went a step further and intervened in eastern Ukraine in an attempt to wrestle more territory away from Kiev's control. Inside Russia, Putin has increased his autocratic grip, in part by blaming the United States for fomenting revolution against his regime. Once again, like the darkest days of the Cold War, Russian stated-controlled media outlets portray the United States as Russia's number one enemy intent on weakening, if not even dismembering, Russia. According to the Kremlin's media, we are also responsible for many of the evils in other countries including the tragic civil wars in Syria and Libya and the Nazis who came to power in Kiev. The Obama administration's response to Russia's actions, in partnership with American allies in Europe, has been qualitatively different than any other period in the post-Cold War era. Dozens of Russian officials and companies are now sanctioned. Even during the most difficult periods of the Cold War, the chief of staff in the Kremlin was not on a sanctions list. In parallel, after decades of focus on other missions, NATO is now retrained on deterring a threat from Russia. Two years ago, in his address to the United Nations General Assembly, President Obama argued that the three greatest threats to the world were Ebola, IS militants, and Russia. In parallel to these actions and reactions between our two governments, the majority of Russians and Americans now view each other again as enemies. This is a tragedy. For last three decades, American presidents--Democrats and Republicans alike--sought to integrate Russia into the West and encourage democracy inside Russia in parallel. Both of those projects are now over. How did we get to this point and must be now to pursue American national interests in our relations with Russia? Diagnosis: Domestic Sources of Russian Foreign Policy Too often, we in the United States jump to the discussion of what must be done before properly diagnosing the problem. In the case of US-Russia relations, the United States will only develop successful policy prescriptions if we accurately understand the causes of our current conflict with Russia. A poor diagnosis can lead to bad policy prescriptions. One popular explanation of the current confrontation in Moscow and in some circles in Europe and the United States is that the United States and its allies in Europe have been pressing on Russia too hard for too many decades and Putin just had to push back. The West lectured the Russians about markets and democracy, then expanded NATO, bombed Serbia, invaded Iraq, allegedly supported color revolutions and the Arab Spring, and Putin finally felt compelled to strike back by annexing Crimea and intervening in eastern Ukraine, or so the argument goes. This explanation is wrong. Although Presidents Yeltsin and Putin both at one point in their careers suggested that Russia should consider joining NATO, this idea was never popular in Moscow. Nor did most Russian officials support the NATO campaign against Milosevic, the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, or so-called color revolutions in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine. Yet, these older policy differences cannot explain the current confrontation. In the intervening period, we have had an intense and successful period of cooperation with Russia, known in the Obama administration as the reset. During the era of the reset, from 2009-2012, President Obama and Russian President Medvedev worked together on several projects, which improved the security and prosperity of both countries. In this period, the two countries signed and then ratified the New START Treaty, passed in the spring of 2010 United Nations Security Council Resolution 1929, the most comprehensive set of sanctions against Iran. …
The article discusses the economic condition of the sugar-sweetened beverages industry in Mexico. It mentions the increase in number of overweight or obese in Mexico due to a combination of reduced physical activity and diet changes. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) that the leading cause of death in Mexico is cardiovascular disease
In this article, the author focuses on the United Nations (U.N.) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agenda. Topics discussed include an approach for increasing sustainable development with the non-governmental organization WomenStrong International, several goals of MDG such as maternal mortality reduction and several structural reason for the MDG agenda failure such as urban sustainability and gender equality.
The article focuses on the 70th anniversary of the United Nations (UN) which marks the end of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the preparation of the UN to launch Sustainable Development Goals. Topics discussed include the end of the second term of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the offices of the U.N. which acts as a mediator in international disputes, and the process of nomination and campaigning for UN officers
It was a scene straight out of an espionage film. French secret service agents, posing under assumed names, had been monitoring the ship for months. On July 10, 1985, they finally acted--agents donned scuba gear and dove into the harbor, planting two limpet mines beneath the ship. The charges were detonated just before midnight. Within four minutes of the second explosion, the boat was beneath the waves and an innocent man was dead. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In an era of spies and Cold War tensions, this operation seems almost par for the course. But the French agents were not targeting a Soviet adversary, or indeed any participant in the rivalry between East and West. The ship in question was the Rainbow Warrior, a Greenpeace trawler peacefully campaigning against French nuclear testing in the Pacific. And the location of the bombing was the port of Auckland, New Zealand, hardly hostile territory for the French. But France and New Zealand were in a conflict of sorts. Beginning in the 1940s, France, Britain, and the United States conducted hundreds of nuclear tests in the Pacific, without the consultation or consent of Pacific Islanders. By the 1980s, the countries and people of the Pacific were fighting back via peaceful protests and legal action. France responded with violence. As details of the attack surfaced, France faced an international scandal. It eventually agreed to pay New Zealand NZ$13 million (approximately US$6.5 million) in damages. But only two of the French agents were ever captured, and due to French diplomatic efforts (the threat of a trade embargo), they served less than two years for their crimes. Additionally, despite admitting responsibility, France never apologized for the death of Portuguese photographer Fernando Pereira in the bombing. Thirty years later, the crew of the Rainbow Warrior is still waiting. But the three-decade anniversary brought a historic apology from another source. In September, Jean-Luc Kister, one of the "frogmen" responsible for planting the bombs, finally spoke out. In an interview with New Zealand's TVNZ, he apologized to Greenpeace and the New Zealand people, admitting to having "the blood of an innocent man on [his] conscience." The apology was widely accepted, but the Rainbow Warrior's former captain, Peter Willcox, has stressed that it does not absolve Kister or the French government of "cold-blooded murder." Nor does it begin to address the bigger issue underlying the bombing--what motivated the French president to personally sponsor a terrorist attack on a national ally. For 50 years, France, Britain, and the United States exploited the South Pacific in pursuit of their nuclear ambitions, destroying lives and ecosystems and bullying any actors who posed opposition. The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior was just one violent episode in a half-century of abuse. France never faced serious consequences for the attack because fellow world powers, the United States and the United Kingdom, stood behind it. All three countries have been accused of providing insufficient compensation and showing a lack of remorse for former transgressions. This past February, the Fijian government promised financial assistance to 24 soldiers subjected to radiation poisoning during British testing on Kiribati after repeated failure to draw compensation from the United Kingdom. Prime Minister Bainimarama announced the payouts in February with the resigned explanation, "Fiji is not prepared to wait for Britain to do the right thing." The Pacific Ocean is often depicted in maps and popular imagination as an empty space, a mass of blue between the coasts of Asia, Australia, and the Americas. This sense of the South and Central Pacific as "empty" is what drew colonial powers to the region for nuclear testing--they could do things in the open ocean that would not have been acceptable in their own backyards. But the Pacific is not empty, and despite their small numbers, its inhabitants have never been willing to sit idly by in the face of environmental destruction. …
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Had Charles Darwin been blessed with precognition while conjecturing about finch beak differentiation over millions of years, he would have envied us. We in the early twenty-first century--within a single lifetime--can observe homo sapiens evolving a transformative new trait with unprecedented strength through the international justice system. Contrary to common perceptions of his work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Darwin's view of evolution was not confined to physiology alone. In his later book, Descent of Man, he entertained a broader view that included the ways in which more fortunate humans treat the less fortunate, contending, aid we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts ... It's a safe bet, therefore, that Darwin would have taken great interest in the emergence of the International Food Security Treaty (IFST), an initiative of international law that could equip humanity to eradicate hunger, the world's most widespread and severe form of suffering. While the principles of the IFST are summarized below, those unfamiliar with it are strongly encouraged to read the definitive case for it laid out in Armless Hand: The Call for Anti-Hunger Law and the International Food Security Treaty, in the Yale Journal of International Affairs. The objective here is to report on the Treaty's progress, problems, and prospects, which offer valuable insights on the natural growth patterns of international law as it evolves in the age of globalization. Hunger Paradigm Shifting In the modern era, evolutionary change in human behavior often be gins in a crisis that triggers a mutation of mindset in the general public (and eventually its official leaders), ultimately becoming fixed in new legal structures--in other words, as Abraham Lincoln called upon his fellow citizens to do in facing a great crisis in the nineteenth century, we anew and act anew. But in facing the even deadlier crisis of world hunger today, fresh thinking about hunger has been stifled by the paradigm we grow up with that hunger is just part of the human condition. We cannot act or even think anew while fabricating a perception of a disability for ourselves where none exists. It is inconsistent with the lessons of history to define our potential by our past limitations or failures. As infants we are not so deluded--even though we've spent our entire lives to date unable to take a single step, in time we sense that we can stand up and walk, and get on with it. Nonetheless, some fifteen to eighteen years later, most of us develop some mental paralysis from an infectious hunger paradigm. This mind-induced incapacity was painfully depicted in an essay by George Packer in the New York Times Sunday Magazine on April 21, 2002, in which he proclaimed, You've been exposed to one corner of human misery, but you've done nothing about it. Nor will you. You feel--perhaps without being conscious of it--an impotent guilt, and your helplessness makes you irritated and resentful, almost as if it's the fault of those thousand Nigerians for becoming your burden. We carry around the mental residue of millions of suffering human beings for whom we've done nothing. Packer's reference to the psychological millstone borne by humanity while allowing mass starvation to continue is spot-on. It's a self-imposed curse, impairing our ability to see how hunger really affects the starving--and the well-fed--and how to end it. But his claim that we will do nothing about it is dead wrong. The paradigm of hopelessness before hunger is at odds with the facts and is psychologically debilitating, as it mires society's humanitarian impulses in a guilt-ridden succession of too little-too late fractional measures resulting in millions of hunger-related deaths annually and nearly a billion people trying desperately to survive undernourishment. …
The author discusses the impact of military conflict on students whose schools have been used for military base. The author mentions the challenges faced by students and teachers of Tankuppa High School in India after paramilitary troops have moved their base at the school affecting students' education and social life. He featured the approach of the United Nations and various countries to protect education during armed conflict through unveiling the Safe Schools Declaration
The article discusses the changes on the Russian foreign policy which is based on the assumption that the new world is dangerously unpredictable. It mentions that the policy is resurrected Russian Imperial and Soviet traditions married to specific assessments of new and unprecedented developments on the international scene. It notes that the rise of Aisa provides an alternative source of capital and technology to develop Russia's eastern regions using their new competitive advantages
The article offers the author's view regarding the ideology of celebrity humanitarianism. She refers to the different generations of people such as the generations Y and Z and millennials who become informed about the world are different from those of earlier generations. It outlines the article Taking Celebrity Diplomacy Seriously in International Relations by Andrew Cooper that present a public views that separate celebrities and international issues and criticize such partnerships
The article discusses the assessment on the progress of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), an intitiative conducted by the independent states organization United Nations (UN) which focused on international attention. Information on the socioeconomic barriers and goals in the MSGs development is provided. Among the barriers are exclusion of women and ethnic minorities, discrimination against poor population, and gender discrimination in education.
The article focuses on strategies for achieving international diplomacy. Topics discussed include use of pop culture, soft diplomacy and nation branding, opposition to the threat of military power due to use of pop culture as a diplomatic strategy, and engagement of younger generation along with building of nation's brand.
The article presents an analysis regarding the causes of racial tensions in France. It mentions that racial tensions have long been the cause of much political debate in France citing the Charlie Hebdo attack in 2015. It refers to the term anticommunautarisme which has gained immense support and noted that anticommunautarisme has been used frequently in French political discourse since 1990s
The article discusses the outbreak of measles in Katanga province of the Republic of Congo. It mentions that the outbreak is emblematic of how a combination of inadequate surveillance systems, politically motivated decisions, poor healthcare for local communities and little response capacity from health systems. It notes that the outbreak was complicated by malnutrition and malaria wherein most of the children in the intensive care unit struggled to survive.
The article reports on impact of slowdown of China's economy on Latin America and other countries. Topics discussed include role of China in the international financial system, consumption of commodity products such as copper, lead and petroleum by China, and achievements made by Latin America in the education sector and in improving poverty
