In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Patrician Tribune: P. Clodius PulcherNathan RosensteinW. Jeffrey Tatum. The Patrician Tribune: P. Clodius Pulcher. Studies in the History of Greece and Rome. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. xii + 365 pp. Cloth, $49.95.Ancient historians rarely tackle political narrative anymore; institutions and culture and structures social, economic, and political are the staples of academic endeavor these days. Thus the biography of a major political figure (...) of the late Republic comes as a refreshing change and evokes a certain nostalgia, for this reviewer at least. One encounters many of the old topics that so preoccupied scholars a generation ago--the Bona Dea scandal, the exile and recall of Cicero, the conference at Luca--and, to judge by the paucity of recent works on them and their like in Tatum's bibliography, excite little interest now. A pity, really, for Tatum shows how much is still to be learned from their study, even if solutions to puzzles like the Vettius affair seem as elusive as ever. The outlines of the story Tatum has to tell will be familiar to its readers; as one would expect, the interest lies in the changes of emphasis and tone and the new insights he brings to these events.Tatum admits that Clodius' personality is largely beyond recovery but [End Page 592] suggests that "One will probably not err by much in picturing Clodius as a handsome, urbane, and proud (at times, indeed, obnoxious) noble, of violent temper and of somewhat dubious moral fiber--possessed of a fascination with adventure yet capable nonetheless of very traditional pretensions" (43). Tatum describes an early career that was largely conventional: like other young nobles Clodius sought military experience abroad and political involvement at home, prosecuting Catiline (Tatum dismisses contemporary claims of collusion with the defense), and serving as Murena's go-between to the divisores in the consular elections for 62 b.c.e. (something neither "novel or in any way indicative of the direction of his later mastery of the plebs urbana" [58]). With regard to the events of late 63, Tatum accepts Plutarch's statement that Clodius supported Cicero against Catiline, despite Cicero's later claims to the contrary. The sole anomaly here is Clodius' instigation of a mutiny among Lucullus' troops at Nisibis in the winter of 68-67 because the latter failed to accord Clodius the honor he thought his due. Tatum downplays the importance of this episode, however, arguing that it did not compromise Lucullus' position, which had already collapsed at Rome, nor did it reveal an incipient demagogic bent, only arrogance.However, the "dangerous combination of arrogance and immaturity" (86), coupled with curiosity and perhaps the hope of an affair with Caesar's wife led Clodius to profane the rites of the Bona Dea. Tatum has no doubt of Clodius' guilt or that the prosecution for incestum was trumped up by Clodius' enemies, since the patres traditionally left the punishment of religious delicts to the gods themselves. But more than factional politics was involved. The most attractive feature of Tatum's study is that it draws on recent studies of aristocratic culture to explore dimensions of the events he describes that prior treatments overlooked. Linderski, North, and other students of Republican religion have made it impossible any longer to doubt that senators and plebs alike took the civic cult seriously. Hence for Tatum, genuine religious outrage enabled the factio out to get Clodius to press home its attack. Likewise, Tatum follows Brunt and others in recognizing the importance of ideas as well as personal alignments in shaping the political struggles of the era; guided by Millar, he sees sovereignty of the people as no mere slogan and stresses that a principled popularis stance was well within the bounds of aristocratic ideology. Tatum therefore argues that, by attacking the senate's proposal that the praetor should hand-pick the jurors who would hear the case against Clodius, his supporters cast the struggle as one over the limits of senatorial auctoritas in the face of libertas and the iurapopuli. The claim revived the central conflict in Cicero's suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy and once again roused the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:January 25, 2012 (9:31 am) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3102\russell 31,2 064 red.wpd 1 See Russell’s exposure of this derogatory contraction of “Viet Nam Cong San” (“Vietnamese Communists”) in his War Crimes in Vietnam (London: Allen and Unwin, 1967), p. 45n. On the importance of language, cf. the legendary remark of Russell’s correspondent, Mohammad Ali: “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.… No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.” Russell attempted (...) to enlist Ali on behalf of the iwct (see the ra for their letters of 8 April, 18, 31 May, 11 Sept., 17 Oct., 15 Nov. and 16 Dec. 1967). russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 31 (winter 2011–12): 167–87 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036-01631; online 1913-8032 ibliographies, rchival nventories, ndexes A SECONDARY BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL: LONDON, STOCKHOLM AND ROSKILDE Stefan Andersson [email protected] i.wintroduction T he International War Crimes Tribunal (iwct) on the United States’ warfare in Vietnam was founded in 1966 through the moral outrage of the British philosopher and political activist Bertrand Russell, his private secretary Ralph Schoenman, Ken Coates, Chris Farley and other people connected to the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. They wanted to inform the world about the us government’s attempts to convince the Vietnamese population (who were mainly peasants) that capitalism is a better political-economical system than communism, by killing as many “Vietcong”1 and unarmed seniors, women and children as possible with regular carpet bombing, cluster and phosphorus bombs, napalm, Agent Orange and other illegal weaponry, and oTering the survivors pleasant lodgingsinwired-inhamlets far away from their homes and the graves of their ancestors. This charm oTensive went on for more than ten years, and although three times as many bombs fell on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia as were dropped during the whole Second World War, surprisingly enough the Vietnamese were not to be converted. In the 1960s this macabre spectacle could be watched on television all over the world, but very few protested against it. Until 1968 the majority of American January 25, 2012 (9:31 am) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3102\russell 31,2 064 red.wpd 168 stefan andersson 2 See Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History (New York, New American Library, 1968). He met up with Noam Chomsky, “a slim sharp-featured man with an ascetic expression, and an air of gentle but absolute moral integrity” (p. 180). Both were arrested and spent a night in prison together. 3 See Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS (New York: Random House, 1973), p. 348. See also Natalie Atkin, “From Margin to Mainstream: American Peace Movements, 1950s– 1970s”, in issue “Peace Movements in Western Europe, Japan and the usa since 1945”, Mitteilungsblatt des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen, no. 32 (2004): 175–92. 4 See May 1970: Birth of the Antiwar University (New York: PathWnder P., 1971). 5 The so-called “Chicago conspiracy trials” or “Chicago 7 trials” that followed, when sevendefendants—AbbieHoTman,JerryRubin,DavidDellinger,TomHayden,Rennie Davis, John Froines and Lee Weiner—were charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot, showed that the us government was not going to tolerate such “unpatriotic” and “criminal ” behaviour. See James Tracy, Direct Action: Radical PaciWsm from the Union Eight to the Chicago Seven (Chicago: U. of Chicago P., 1996), pp. 145–51. 6 See Mark Kurlansky, 1968: the Year That Rocked the World (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004), and David Caute, 1968: the Year of the Barricades (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988), pp. 3, 7–8, 12z–13. 7 Fredrik Logevall, “De Gaulle, Neutralization, and American Involvement in Vietnam, 1963–1964”, PaciWc Historical Review 61 (1992): 69–102. citizens were for the war, although some earlier, well-attended rallies against it, like the 1967 march on the Pentagon in late October,2 might have made some think diTerently. sds (Students for a Democratic Society)3 and other antiwar organizations never became the united force that could challenge the government ’s reliance on what Nixon called the “silent majority”. It was not until the us attacked Cambodia... (shrink)

This article examines certain aspects of current English doctrine in the light of applied property theory. Two of the problems of home-sharing which the law must address are: When should a claim be sustainable against the party who has legal title? Should such claims be exigible against successors of the title-holder? When statue is silent, three doctrinal streams of case-law are invoked. They concern money-down resulting trust interests, proprietary estoppel claims, and common intention constructive trust interests. The 'just outcome' (...) is prayed in aid, intermittently and interstitially, when the doctrinal solution is unclear or when doctrine itself is developed. This article reverses the usual approach. It asks what sound 'property-specific justice reasons' are relevant to the home-sharing problems. They are canvassed before an imaginary Justice Tribunal: (i) no going back on a gift; (ii) perfecting a contract; (iii) fruits of money; (iv) induced expectations; (v) labour desert; (vi) home need; (vii) windfall wealth. Current doctrine is assessed in their light. (shrink)

This note analyses a recent case of the English Court of Appeal in which the applicant, R.G., a gay, H.I.V. positive Colombian claimed asylum on grounds of persecution due to his sexuality. Both the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and the Court of Appeal rejected R.G.’s claim for asylum. The Court of Appeal’s first and most significant reason was that the alleged persecution was not sufficiently serious or life threatening, since R.G. had not suffered actual physical violence throughout the 13 years (...) that he had lived as a closeted gay man in Colombia. Secondly, the court considered the real reason for R.G.’s seeking asylum was his desire to access free health care in order to manage his H.I.V. His allegations of persecution on the grounds of sexuality were viewed as a sham. This note is critical of the approach taken by the Court, which, it is argued, displays an insensitivity to the complexity of sexual identity and its performance and has the effect of perpetuating and legitimating discrimination against lesbians and gay men. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Journal of Ancient History Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 1 Seiten: 26-65.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:_Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2602\REVIEWS.262 : 2007-01-24 01:12 Reviews 185 A NORWEGIAN ANTHOLOGY OF RUSSELL ON WAR, PEACE AND PACIFISM Stefan Andersson Theology and Religious Studies / U. of Lund s223 62 Lund, Sweden [email protected] Øystein Hide, ed. Bertrand Russell om krig, fred og pasifisme [Bertrand Russell on war, peace and pacifism]. Oslo: Humanist Forlag, 2006. Pp. 261. isbn 8292622101. 268 Kroner. Paperbound. his is a selected anthology (...) of Russell’s writings and interviews on war, Tpeace and pacifism edited by the Norwegian Øystein Hide, who was born in 1975 and has the equivalent of a ma in philosophy from a Norwegian university. He did graduate work at the University of Southampton in 2001–04. He has worked at the Wittgenstein Archives in Bergen and at the University of Bergen. He has done research at the Bertrand Russell Archives1 and is a member of the Mind Association. He has translated Wittgenstein’s Zettel and Über Gewissheit into Norwegian and has done other philosophically relevant work in both Norwegian and English. Øystein Hide has supplied his anthology with an introduction that contains a number of minor factual mistakes that are a bit disturbing, but they do not overshadow his main message that Russell’s writings on war, peace and pacifism are still worth reading. He starts out by distinguishing between “the two Bertrand Russells”: the philosopher and what he calls “the political humanist”. Although Hide does not spend much energy on explaining exactly what he means by it, I find this a thought-provoking expression that to me suggests a secular humanist who is prepared to act on his convictions. He compares Russell to the Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss, who also was a political activist and acted according to his deepest beliefs. Hide says about Russell: “For many people Russell has become the great philosopher who also actively contributed to the general political debate and who, in the capacity of being a philosopher, gave the lovers of peace a philosophical and intellectual alibi with which they could decorate their struggles” (p. 11). 1 Notably resulting in his article, “Wittgenstein’s Books at the Bertrand Russell Archives and the Influence of Scientific Literature on Wittgenstein’s Early Philosophy”, Philosophical Investigations, 27 (Jan. 2004): 68–91. _Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2602\REVIEWS.262 : 2007-01-24 01:12 186 Reviews Russell’s position as a philosopher and political activist in Norway is more or less the same as in the other Nordic countries, and although Hide’s book is Norwegian a lot of Swedes, Danes, Finns and Icelanders will be able to benefit from the collection. There is no mention, however, of Russell’s only trip to Norway (in 1948), which had a political purpose. Hide has divided his collection into two parts. The first part contains ten texts written between 1916 and 1920, and the second part contains five between 1950 and 1960. He does not say a lot about why he has included these texts and excluded others. These are the selections he offers: Part 1: “War as an Institution”, Chapter 3 from Principles of Social Reconstruction (1916) “Why the War Continues”, The UDC, 2 (10 Feb. 1917); in Papers 14 “National Service”, The Tribunal, 47 (15 Feb. 1917); Papers 14 “War and Individual Liberty”, The Tribunal, 50 (8 March 1917); Papers 14 “Pacifism and Revolution”, The Tribunal, 67 (19 July 1917); Papers 14 “The International Outlook”, The Pioneer, 347 (10 Nov. 1917); Papers 14 “Draft of Defence” (for Russell’s 1918 trial); Papers 14 “Government and Law”, Chapter 5 from Roads to Freedom (1918) “The World as It Could be Made”, Chapter 8 from Roads to Freedom (1918) “Bolshevik Criticism of Democracy”, Chapter 3 of Part 2 of The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920) Part 2: “Politically Important Desires”, Chapter 2 of Part 2 of Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954); Nobel Prize speech, 1950 How Near Is War? (London: Fleet Street Forum, 1952); interview “Man’s Peril”, The Listener, 52 (30 Dec. 1954); Papers 28 “The Road to Peace”, The Bomb: Challenge and Answer (London: Batsford, 1955); Papers 28 “War and Pacifism”, Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind (1960... (shrink)

This is a follow up to my article on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) in the May issue . That went to press a few weeks before the April 27 target date for signing of the MAI by the OECD countries. At the time, it was fairly clear that agreement would not be reached, and it was not—an important event, worth considering carefully. In part the failure resulted from internal disputes—for example, European objections to the U.S. federal system and (...) the extraterritorial reach of U.S. laws, concerns about maintaining some degree of cultural autonomy, and so on. But a much more significant problem was looming. It was becoming increasingly difficult to ensure that the rules of global order would continue to be “written by the lawyers and businessmen who plan to benefit” and “by governments taking advice and guidance from these lawyers and businessmen,” while “invariably, the thing missing is the public voice”—the Chicago Tribune’ s accurate description of the negotiations for the MAI, as well as ongoing efforts to “craft rules” for “global activity” in other domains without public interference. It was, in short, becoming more difficult to restrict awareness and engagement to sectors identified by the Clinton administration, with unusual and unintended clarity, as its “domestic constituencies”: the U.S. Council for International Business, which “advances the global interests of American business both at home and abroad,” and concentrations of private power generally—but crucially not Congress (which had not been informed, in violation of Constitutional requirements) and the general public, its voice stilled by a “veil of secrecy” that was maintained with impressive discipline during three years of intensive negotiations. (shrink)

In this extraordinary tribute to the importance of the ordinary places in our lives, fifty-two Minnesotans write about the special, sometimes secret, places that give their lives meaning. For some it is their home or cabin or lake. For others, it's a family farm or neighbourhood park, a backyard garden or north woods trail: all places where we find a personal and spiritual connection to the land. VOICES FOR THE LAND explores this complex relationship by linking these personal essays (...) with striking images captured by award-winning photographer Brian Peterson. This marriage of words, images, and landscape provides a powerful reminder of our deep and abiding connection to the land. The writers share the experience of these favourite places through their senses, from the aching tingle of a cold winter night and the sound of ice 'singing' to the buzz of mosquitoes and the acrid smell of burning peat. The Voices for the Land project, organised by the non-profit group 1000 Friends of Minnesota, encouraged Minnesotans to write about the land they love and to fight for its preservation. The Minneapolis Star Tribune published a selection of these essays, paired with Brian Peterson's photos, in an award-winning series. VOICES FOR THE LAND brings these essays and photos together in book form for the first time. (shrink)

The CISG is now being applied extensively both by international arbitral tribunals and by domestic courts of its more than 70 contracting states. But do they also apply it in the same manner? Although Article 7 of the CISG underscores "the need to promote uniformity in its application", it gives little guidance as to how to achieve this goal. Each judge and arbitrator is influenced by the legal methodology of his home jurisdiction. Therefore it is somewhat of a (...) paradox that whilst the number of contracting states is constantly increasing so too is the threat of variation in application. In this book the most important issues of the CISG's methodology are analysed by leading experts from five continents. Whereas some authors provide a thorough analysis of the central topics of interpretation, others enter almost uncharted territories. (shrink)

What for Sartre happens when bad faith goes so deep that one is no longer master of it? In The Condemned of Altona, Franz Gerlach, after an initial show of resistance, joins the Nazi cause and tortures prisoners of war in his charge. Fleeing home from Russia at the war’s end, he sequesters himself in the attic of the family mansion and attempts to absorb the guilt of the twentieth century by frantically arguing his case before a tribunal of (...) scuttling crabs.What does Sartre’s portrayal of hallucination tell us about the human condition and is it the result of insanity? As a harbinger for the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre’s ontology has shifted away from an emphasis on human isolation and absolute freedom to a concern with how behaviour, even of an irrational kind, is a profound reflection of one’s place in a social hierarchy. Also a reflection of a CDR-type approach, Sartre’s views change regarding the status of truth and interpersonal relations. For while someone like Nausea’s Roquentin exhibits a redemptive value through introspection, fantasy and private experience, Franz’s behaviour points to a repeated failure to deal with social reality and the associated attempt to redeem his own existence by acting authentically towards others. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 121.4 (2000) 549-557 [Access article in PDF] Cato Orationes 66 and the Case Against M.' Acilius Glabrio In 189 B.C.E. J. Bradford Churchill THE RACE FOR THE CENSORSHIP of 189 became the setting for one of the most dramatic domestic political disputes of the early second century. 1 M. Porcius Cato (cos. 195) was seeking the censorship, and among his competitors was another homo novus, (...) M.' Acilius Glabrio (cos. 191). Now, Cato had served as tribunus militum under the consul Glabrio during the campaign of 191 against Antiochus III in Greece. Cato had led a flanking expedition to decide the battle at Thermopylae, at the conclusion of which the king's camp was invaded and plundered. 2 Cato said that after the battle, Glabrio had embraced him and cried out that neither he nor the Roman people could repay his good services. 3 Glabrio sent Cato home with news of the victory. 4Now, in the race for the censorship of 189, public opinion was inclining in favor of Glabrio because he had conducted a lavish distribution of congiaria--vessels, perhaps precious, filled with wine or oil. The nobles among the competitors took umbrage at his being preferred to them, and two tribunes, P. Sempronius Gracchus and C. Sempronius Rutilus, brought Glabrio to trial on the charge "that there was some amount of the royal money and booty taken in the camp of Antiochus which he had neither carried in the triumph nor deposited in the treasury." 5 Legates and military tribunes were called to testify, and most visible among them was Cato, who had a reputation for integrity, but [End Page 549] because he was testifying against an opponent in a political race, his influence was diminished. The substance of Cato's testimony, as Livy summarized it, was that he had seen some gold and silver vessels among the royal booty at the sack of the camp, and had not seen them in the triumph.Glabrio withdrew from the race after a fine had been proposed and twice argued, and the case lapsed. He vilified Cato as a perjurious hypocrite for attacking a fellow homo novus for something the nobles usually passed over in silence. 6We have a fragment of a speech Cato gave against Glabrio, and his trial is the only appropriate occasion which is known to us. The fragment itself is clearly designed to set up a contrast between Cato and Glabrio, but the text is corrupt. The codex Farnesianus of Festus has the following entry (Fest. p. 268L): Penatores: qui penus gestant. Cato adversus M.' Acilium quarta: "postquam nativitas ex navibus eduxi, non ex militibus atque nautis piscatores penatores fici, sed arum dedi." First there are several problems which are relatively minor and no longer yield much controversy. The word quarta indicates there were at least four speeches "against Acilius." More often than not, this is dismissed as a simple error. 7 The word nativitas is clearly foreign to the context, and was long ago emended to navitas, as a poetic and archaic variant on nautas. 8 The transmitted fici is regularly and reasonably emended to feci. 9 [End Page 550]The more difficult question centers on the phrase sed arum dedi. André Dacier, in an early modern edition of Festus (Amsterdam 1700), emended arum to aurum. 10 Much later, Theodor Mommsen offered the conjecture arma. 11 This is now the prevailing reading, accepted most significantly by Enrica Malcovati (1953, 39) in the authoritative edition of the Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta. 12 Maria Teresa Sblendorio Cugusi (1982, 77), following Lindsay (1913, 268), printed and obelized arum, but in her commentary (1982, 215) considered Mommsen's emendation preferable to Dacier's because the latter "appears inconsistent with the context." I intend to show that this is rather the opposite of the case, and we ought to accept Dacier's emendation. 13With Mommsen's conjecture, the passage reads: "When I brought sailors off the ships, I didn't make fishers and provisioners out of soldiers... (shrink)

Writing deliberately in a nontechnical style so as to make his book accessible to readers who are not professional philosophers, Michael Gelven here offers an extended meditative essay on the nature and meaning of truth. He approaches this subject directly, rather than through a critique of what others have said about it, and takes off from the realization that truth has a wider meaning than that which can be found in the analysis of true sentences, which is the focus of (...) traditional epistemology. Pursuing philosophical inquiry as a voyage of discovery, the book begins with ordinary questions about the worth and meaning of truth. A fundamental distinction is drawn between the "true" and "truth" as essence, that which we confront as the ultimate terminus of our questioning—for example, between the true definition of mother as a female parent and truth as what we understand being a mother to mean, as one who sacrifices her own interests and safety for her child. The analysis then proceeds to examine the four ways in which we confront truth—through affirmation, acceptance, acknowledgment, and submission—and the existential modes of experience in which these confrontations are embodied: pleasure, fate, guilt, and beauty. Each of these four confrontations has consequences for how we understand the world in which we dwell. Thus the book concludes with interpretation of the world as our home, our history, our tribunal, and ultimately that which lures or beckons us to confront ourselves. Plato, Kant, and Heidegger are the primary sources of philosophical inspiration for Gelven, but he eschews textual exegesis and academic debate in favor of engaging the reader as co-explorer in the discovery of what it means for each of us to be in truth. (shrink)

Asylum seekers who claim asylum in the United Kingdom flee from a diverse range of threats of persecution, particularly in the MENA (Middle East & North African) region. These threats may comprise of war, tribal violence and trafficking to honour-killings, female genital mutilation and witchcraft. Some of these threats may be alien to Western immigration tribunals as they either do not occur in their respective countries or are not understood, particularly because of the intricate religious and cultural nature of (...) the threat in question. For example, a single woman who has had sexual relations outside of marriage would be regarded as having insulted tribal and familial honour in some regions of MENA countries. Here, the word ‘tribe’, which in Arabic is _‘qabilah’_, has a distinct historical, cultural and lexical meaning that lawyers, judges and policy-makers may not be aware of; the same may be said of _‘nikah’_ (marriage) or _‘Voodoo’_ (a type of witchcraft) and many other terminologies. These terminologies are intimately linked to the experiences of immigration applicants and asylum seekers who desire to express their fear of persecution to lawyers, judges and policymakers. Using two real-life case studies involving a Yemeni immigration applicant and Nigerian asylum seeker respectively and my practitioner experience as a country expert having written 140 reports, I will critically explore the value of a primary, semiotic understanding of key religious, cultural and linguistic dimensions in asylum claims (as opposed to secondary source evidence). I argue that the UK’s immigration tribunal system should place more value on how language is embodied within the MENA regions. I do not wish to just highlight this issue but semiotically analyse immigration and asylum procedure, the arguments of the Home Office and tribunals in accepting or rejecting claims and suggest substantive reform by broadening the nature of evidence. Using Peirce’s framework of semiotics, a sign (representamen) is the fundamental entry point to comprehend an object—an object being the referent of a sign. Once we understand a sign and its object, we arrive at the interpretant which is the sense or meaning derived from the object. This triad relationship of sign, object and interpretant constitutes semiois. Here, I argue that analysing the nature of a sign and what it purports to represent can provide us with a theoretical basis by which to reformulate the mechanisms which judges and lawyers use to understand religious, cultural and linguistic evidence in asylum claims. It is through signs that we can arrive at a deeper meaning and the larger picture of the intricate components of an asylum seeker’s claim thereby accessing their semiotic code. (shrink)

Many lesbians and gay men apply for asylum in the U.K. each year on the basis that they fear persecution in their home country because of their sexual orientation. The legal basis for claiming asylum on the ground of sexual identity is now well established. Nevertheless, making these claims remains very difficult for applicants. Western cultural expectations around sexual identity often mix with homophobic assumptions about sexual behaviour to present applicants as “not sufficiently gay”. Furthermore, applicants may not initially (...) disclose their sexual identity to legal advisors, leading to assumptions that they are not “telling the truth” to the Immigration Tribunal. In this article, Barry O’Leary, a solicitor and legal activist on behalf of lesbian and gay refugees, discusses these problems and how U.K.-based asylum lawyers have attempted to work round them. (shrink)

Discussions on the nature of reality between Albert Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore, Bengali poet, philosopher and Nobel laureate, have provoked interest among both physicists and philosophers since their first publication in 1930/31. This article points out their relevance to past and present debates about the meaning of quantum mechanics.

Physics first became established in Australia and Japan at the same period, during the final quarter of the nineteenth and the first years of the twentieth century. A comparison of the processes by which this happened in these two developing countries on the Pacific rim shows that, despite the great cultural differences that existed, and that might have been expected to have been a source of major differences in national receptiveness to the new science, there were in fact many parallels (...) between the patterns of development in the two cases. Identifying these enables us to draw attention to a number of significant features of the physics discipline more generally at this period. Such differences as emerge in the early history of physics in the two countries seem to have arisen more from the different political situations that prevailed than from anything else; in particular they reflect the fact that Australia was a part of the British Empire while Japan was an independent political power. (shrink)

In 1914, the physics discipline had reached a very similar stage of development in Australia and Japan. A generation later the paths of development had considerably diverged. A systematic comparison of the evolution of physics in the two countries during these years identifies factors—political, economic and cultural—that led to this divergence, but it also uncovers a number of underlying parallels.

Henry Home (1696-1782) has been called "perhaps the most complete 'Enlightenment man' among the eighteenth-century Scottish thinkers." Kinsman and friend of David Hume, mentor and patron of Adam Smith, John Millar, and Thomas Reid, he was a key figure in that circle of luminaries. He read law, was called to the bar in 1723, was raised to the Bench of the Court of Session in 1752, with the title Lord Kames (the name of his family estate), and joined the (...) High Court of the Justiciary in 1763. Publishing broadly in law, history, philosophy, and criticism, Kames made significant contributions to the Enlightenment's science of human nature. The Essays is commonly considered Kames's most important philosophical work. In the first part, he sets forth the principles and foundations of morality and justice, attacking Hume's moral skepticism and addressing the controversial issue of the freedom of human will. In the second part, Kames focuses on questions of metaphysics and epistemology to offer a natural theology in which the authority of the external senses is an important basis for belief in the Deity. The text of this volume is based on the third edition of 1779, while the appendix presents substantial variant readings in the first and second editions. (shrink)

In this article we attempt to bring out some significant general aspects of what we call collapse-induced quantum nonlocal effects resulting from the use of the hypothesis of wave function collapse.

We tend to think that a person who is both reasonable and moral can have a good life. What constitutes a life that is not only good but superlative, or even “marvellous” or “holy”? Those who have such lives are called sages, heroes or saints, and their lives can display great integrity as well as integration with a transformative “Spiritual Presence.” Does it follow that saints are perfect people? Is there a common vision that impels them to seek holiness? In (...) a controversial interpretation of mysticism Horne suggests that there is no single formula for the meaning of life and no one story that displays it to us. Mysticism, rather than being just a visionary perception, then becomes a problem-solving process that brings about a creative transformation of the personality at a critical stage in life. He suggests also that saints may be imperfect morally and describes true saints as double-minded: they are serious in a playful way. Mysticism and Vocation illuminates our understanding of saintly lives by explicating their mystical characteristics and extending discussions of mysticism to explain its role in active lives. In discussing important decisions that go beyond conventional morality, it adds to recent philosophical arguments by Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, Iris Murdoch, Bernard Williams and others to the effect that morality should be defined more broadly to deal with the human condition. This book will be of interest to students of philosophy and religious studies, in both graduate and undergraduate programs. (shrink)

Mysticism is condemned as often as it is praised. Much of the condemnation comes from mysticism’s apparent disregard of morality and ethics. For mystics, the experience of “union” transcends all moral concern. In this careful examination of the works of such practitioners or examiners of mysticism as Paul Tillich, Thomas Merton, Evelyn Underhill, and Martin Buber, the author posits a spectrum of uneasy relationships between mysticism and morality. Horne explores the polarities of apophatic (imageless) and imaginative mysticism, the contemplative and (...) the active life, and morality and amorality. He stresses the importance of the distinction between “proper-name” (entirely personal) morality and “social” morality, for the history of Christian mysticism is a mix of minimal moral concern, proper-name morality, and social morality. The volume will be of interest to students of religious experience, ethics, and the recent history of mysticism. Carefully reasoned and documented, the argument is couched in clear prose, easily accessible to lay readers as well as to scholars. (shrink)

SummaryLeonhard Euler was the leading eighteenth-century critic of Isaac Newton's projectile theory of light. Euler's main criticisms of Newton's views are surveyed, and also his alternative account according to which light is a wave motion propagated through the aether. Important changes are identified as having occurred between 1744 and 1746 in Euler's thinking about the way in which a wave such as he supposed light to be is propagated through a medium. Paradoxically, in view of Euler's overtly anti-Newtonian stand, these (...) amount to Euler abandoning his early, Malebranchian notions about the physical basis of wave propagation, in favour of the ideas set out by Newton in Book II of his Principia. (shrink)

It may be seen, then, that if one was prepared to accept the existence of insulating sheaths on the nerves, all the arguments raised against the proposed identification of the nervous and electrical fluids, except one, could be answered satisfactorily. The single exception involved the question of how an electrical disturbance in the brain could be confined to a single nerve, and, as was indicated earlier, it was scarcely fair to hold this sort of objection against the electrical theory alone. (...) In that case, there remained no convincing argument to show why one should not accept the identification of the two fluids. On the other hand, of course, it remained an open question as to whether there was any convincing argument to show why one should accept the identification either. Galvani thought that his experiments provided just such an argument. (shrink)

Richard Bett presents a ground-breaking study of Pyrrho of Elis, who lived in the late fourth and early third centuries BC and is the supposed originator of Greek scepticism. In the absence of surviving works by Pyrrho, scholars have tended to treat his thought as essentially the same as the long subsequent sceptical tradition which styled itself 'Pyrrhonism'. Bett argues, on the contrary, that Pyrrho's philosophy was significantly different from this later tradition, and offers the first detailed account of that (...) philosophy in this light. Bett considers why Pyrrho was adopted as the figurehead for that tradition: his answer suggests that we should distinguish two phases within Pyrrhonism, of which the initial phase is much closer to Pyrrho's own thought than is the better-known later phase. Bett also investigates the origins and antecedents of Pyrrho's ideas; in particular, Plato is singled out as an important inspiration. The result is the first comprehensive picture of this key figure in the development of philosophy. The new claims that Bett puts forward have major implications for the history and interpretation of ancient Greek thought. (shrink)

p166 In February 1965, the United States escalated the war against South Vietnam radically, and also, on the side, began regular bombing of the North at a much lower level. That was a big public issue in the United States: Should we bomb North Vietnam? The bombing of the South was ignored. The same shows up in the internal planning, for which we now have an extremely rich record, not only from the Pentagon Papers, but from tons of declassified documents (...) that have been released in the last couple of years. It turns out again, one of the very few interesting revelations of the Pentagon Papers that there was no planning for the escalated bombing of the South. There was very meticulous planning about the bombing of the North carefully calibrated, when should we do it, and a lot of agonizing about it. The bombing of the South at triple the scale of the North is barely discussed. There are a few casual decisions here and there. The same shows up in McNamara's recent memoirs. He discusses at great length the bombing of the North. The bombing of the South he literally doesn't mention. He mentions what he did on January 21, 1965, a really important day: there was a big discussion about whether to bomb North Vietnam. He doesn't mention what we know from other documents, that on that same day, he authorized for the first time the use of jet planes to escalate the bombing of South Vietnam over and above the massive bombing that had been going on for years that's not even mentioned. (shrink)

This volume offers a comprehensive survey of the main periods, schools, and individual proponents of scepticism in the ancient Greek and Roman world. The contributors examine the major developments chronologically and historically, ranging from the early antecedents of scepticism to the Pyrrhonist tradition. They address the central philosophical and interpretive problems surrounding the sceptics' ideas on subjects including belief, action, and ethics. Finally, they explore the effects which these forms of scepticism had beyond the ancient period, and the ways in (...) which ancient scepticism differs from scepticism as it has been understood since Descartes. The volume will serve as an accessible and wide-ranging introduction to the subject for non-specialists, while also offering considerable depth and detail for more advanced readers. (shrink)

We argue that the inference of CP violation in experiments involving the K0-K0 system in weak interactions of particle physics is facilitated by the assumption of particle trajectories for the decaying particles and the decay products. A consistent explanation in terms of such trajectories is naturally incorporated within the Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics.