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Topic Review
Attacks on Humanitarian Workers
Humanitarian aid workers belonging to United Nations organisations, PVOs / NGOs or the Red Cross / Red Crescent have traditionally enjoyed both international legal protection, and de facto immunity from attack by belligerent parties. However, attacks on humanitarian workers have occasionally occurred, and became more frequent since the 1990s and 2000s. In 2017, the Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD) documented 139 humanitarian workers killed in intentional attacks out of the estimated global population of 569,700 workers. In every year since 2013, more than 100 humanitarian workers were killed. This is attributed to a number of factors, including the increasing number of humanitarian workers deployed, the increasingly unstable environments in which they work, and the erosion of the perception of neutrality and independence. In 2012 road travel was seen to be the most dangerous context, with kidnappings of aid workers quadrupling in the last decade, reaching more aid workers victims than any other form of attack. The foremost collector of data on attacks against humanitarian workers is the Aid Worker Security Database, which has strict parameters allowing for the data to be compared across the globe over time, producing useful analysis for the humanitarian, policy and academic community. Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) is another database that includes attacks on humanitarian workers in addition to other conflict related incidents. Insecurity Insight produces monthly Aid in Danger reports that highlight attacks during the month from news media, the AWSD and ACLED.
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Topic Review
Open Knowledge International
Open Knowledge International (OKI) (known as the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) until April 2014, then Open Knowledge until May 2016) is a global non-profit network that promotes and shares information at no charge, including both content and data. It was founded by Rufus Pollock on 24 May 2004 in Cambridge, UK.
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Topic Review
The Blood of Olympus
The Blood of Olympus is an American fantasy-adventure novel written by Rick Riordan, based on Greek and Roman mythology. It was released on October 7, 2014, is the fifth and final novel in The Heroes of Olympus series. It is followed by The Hidden Oracle of The Trials of Apollo. The seven demigods of the Prophecy of Seven—Percy Jackson, Annabeth Chase, Jason Grace, Leo Valdez, Piper McLean, Hazel Levesque, and Frank Zhang—go on their final adventure to defeat Gaea/Terra while Nico di Angelo, Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano, and Coach Gleeson Hedge attempt to bring the Athena Parthenos to Camp Half-Blood in order to prevent a war between the Roman and Greek demigods. The novel is narrated in third-person, alternating between the points of view of Jason, Piper, Leo, Reyna, and Nico, making it the first time in the series that someone other than one of the seven demigods of the prophecy is the viewpoint character.
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  • 24 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Sovereign Citizen Movement
The sovereign citizen movement is a loose grouping of primarily American litigants, commentators, tax protesters, and financial-scheme promoters, who claim to be answerable only to their particular interpretations of the common law and to not be subject to any government statutes or proceedings. In the United States, they do not recognize U.S. currency and maintain that they are "free of any legal constraints". They especially reject most forms of taxation as illegitimate. Participants in the movement argue this concept in opposition to the idea of "federal citizens", who, they say, have unknowingly forfeited their rights by accepting some aspect of federal law. The doctrines of the movement resemble those of the freemen on the land movement more commonly found in the British Commonwealth, such as Australia and Canada. Many members of the sovereign citizen movement claim that the United States government is illegitimate. The sovereign citizen movement has been described as consisting of individuals who assert that the county sheriff is the most powerful law-enforcement officer in the country, with authority superior to that of any federal agent, elected official, or local law-enforcement official. The movement can be traced back to white-extremist groups like Posse Comitatus and the constitutional militia movement. It also includes members of certain self-declared "Moorish" sects. While the movement was originally associated with White supremacism, it now includes varying racial ideologies as well as a variety of people, most commonly white and African American. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) classifies some sovereign citizens ("sovereign citizen extremists") as domestic terrorists. In 2010, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) estimated that approximately 100,000 Americans were "hard-core sovereign believers", with another 200,000 "just starting out by testing sovereign techniques for resisting everything from speeding tickets to drug charges". In surveys conducted in 2014 and 2015, representatives of U.S. law enforcement ranked the risk of terrorism from the sovereign citizen movement higher than the risk from any other group, including Islamic extremists, militias, racists, and neo-Nazis. The New South Wales Police Force in Australia has also identified sovereign citizens as a potential terrorist threat.
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  • 24 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Left-Libertarianism
Left-libertarianism (or left-wing libertarianism) names several related, but distinct approaches to political and social theory which stress both individual freedom and social equality. In its classical usage, left-libertarianism is a synonym for anti-authoritarian varieties of left-wing politics, e.g. libertarian socialism, which includes anarchism and libertarian Marxism among others. Left-libertarianism can also refer to political positions associated with academic philosophers Hillel Steiner, Philippe Van Parijs and Peter Vallentyne that combine self-ownership with an egalitarian approach to natural resources. While maintaining full respect for personal property, left-libertarians are skeptical of or fully against private ownership of natural resources, arguing that neither claiming nor mixing one's labor with natural resources is enough to generate full private property rights and maintain that natural resources (raw land, oil, gold, the electromagnetic spectrum, air-space, etc.) should be held in an egalitarian manner, either unowned or owned collectively. Those left-libertarians who support private property do so under the condition that recompense is offered to the local or even global community. On the other hand, left-wing market anarchism, which includes Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's mutualism and Samuel Edward Konkin III's agorism, appeals to left-wing concerns such as egalitarianism, gender and sexuality, class, immigration and environmentalism within the paradigm of a socialist free market. In the United States, the word "libertarian" has become associated with right-libertarianism after Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess reached out to the New Left in the 1960s. However, until then political usage of the word was associated exclusively with anti-capitalism and in most parts of the world such an association still predominates.
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Topic Review
Parasocial Relationships
A parasocial relationship (PSR) is a one-sided relationship that media users form as a result of exposure to media personas. In 1956, the term parasocial relationship was coined by Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl. They focused on the psychological attachment that was formed from viewing television personalities. Their work laid the foundation and popularized a wide range of research on parasocial phenomena. A parasocial interaction, an exposure that garners interest in a persona, becomes a parasocial relationship after repeated exposure to the media persona causes the media users to develop illusions of intimacy, friendship, and identification. Positive information learned about the media persona results in increased attraction and the relationship progresses. Parasocial relationships are enhanced due to trust and self-disclosure provided by the media persona. Media users are loyal and feel directly connected to the persona much like their close friends by observing and interpreting their appearance, gestures, voice, conversation, and conduct. Media personas have a significant amount of influence over media users, positive or negative, informing the way that they perceive certain topics or even their purchasing habits. Social media introduces additional opportunities for parasocial relationships to intensify because it provides more opportunities for intimate, reciprocal, and frequent interactions between the user and persona.
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  • 24 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Kellogg–Briand Pact
The Kellogg–Briand Pact or Pact of Paris – officially the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy – is a 1928 international agreement on peace in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve "disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them". The pact was signed by Germany, France, and the United States on 27 August 1928, and by most other states soon after. Sponsored by France and the U.S., the Pact is named after its authors, United States Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and French foreign minister Aristide Briand. The pact was concluded outside the League of Nations and remains in effect. A common criticism is that the Kellogg–Briand Pact did not live up to all of its aims, but it has arguably had some success. It was unable to prevent the Second World War, but it was the base for trial and execution of Nazi leaders in 1946. Furthermore declared wars became very rare after 1945. However, it has also been ridiculed for its moralism, legalism and lack of influence on foreign policy. The pact had no mechanism for enforcement, and many historians and political scientists see it as mostly irrelevant and ineffective. However, the pact did serve as the legal basis for the concept of a crime against peace, for which the Nuremberg Tribunal and Tokyo Tribunal tried and executed the top leaders responsible for starting World War II. With the signing of the Litvinov Protocol in Moscow on February 9, 1929, the Soviet Union and its western neighbors, including Romania, agreed to put the Kellogg–Briand Pact in effect without waiting for other western signatories to ratify. The Bessarabian Question had made agreement between Romania and the Soviet Union challenging and dispute between the nations over Bessarabia continued. Similar provisions to those in the Kellogg-Briand Pact were later incorporated into the Charter of the United Nations and other treaties, which gave rise to a more activist American foreign policy which began with the signing of the pact.
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Topic Review
Multiracial
Multiracial is defined as made up of or relating to people of many races. Many terms exist for people of various multiracial backgrounds. Preferred terms include multiracial, biracial, multiethnic, polyethnic, Métis, Creole, Coloured, Dougla, mestizo, Melungeon, quadroon, Chindian, zambo, Eurasian, hapa, hāfu, Garifuna and pardo. There are various other terms used that are sometimes considered insulting and offensive, such as "half," "half-and-half," mulatto, and "Biracial" Individuals of multiracial backgrounds make up a significant portion of the population in many parts of the world. In North America, studies have found that the multiracial population is continuing to grow. In many countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, people with multiracial backgrounds make up the majority of the population. Other countries where multiracial people make up a sizable portion of the population are Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, South Africa , Botswana, Namibia, the United States , New Zealand, Mauritius, the Philippines , Fiji , Vietnam and Thailand.
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Topic Review
Bible Belt
The Bible Belt is a region of the Southern United States in which socially conservative Protestant Christianity plays a strong role in society and politics, and church attendance across the denominations is generally higher than the nation's average. The region contrasts with the religiously diverse Midwest and Great Lakes, and the Mormon corridor in Utah and southern Idaho. Whereas the states with the highest percentage of residents identifying as non-religious are in the West and New England regions of the United States (with Vermont at 37%, ranking the highest), in the Bible Belt state of Alabama it is just 12%, and Tennessee has the highest proportion of evangelical Protestants, at 52%. The evangelical influence is strongest in northern Georgia, Tennessee , Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, southern and western Virginia, West Virginia, the Upstate region of South Carolina, and East Texas . The earliest known usage of the term "Bible Belt" was by American journalist and social commentator H. L. Mencken, who in 1924 wrote in the Chicago Daily Tribune: "The old game, I suspect, is beginning to play out in the Bible Belt." In 1927, Mencken claimed the term as his invention. The term is now also used in other countries for regions with higher religious doctrine adoption.
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Topic Review
Circassian Beauties
Circassian beauty or Adyghe beauty (Adyghe: Адыгэ пшъашъэ, romanized: Adıgə pş̂aş̂ə) is a stereotype and a belief used to refer to an idealized image of the women of the Circassian people of the Northwestern Caucasus. A fairly extensive literary history suggests that Circassian women were thought to be unusually beautiful, spirited, and elegant, and as such were desirable as concubines. This reputation dates back to the Late Middle Ages, when the Circassian coast was frequented by traders from Genoa, and the founder of the Medici dynasty, Cosimo de' Medici, had an illegitimate son from a Circassian slave. During the Ottoman Empire and Persian Safavid and Qajar dynasties, Circassian women living as slaves in the Sultan's Imperial Harem and Shah's harems started to build their reputation as extremely beautiful and genteel, which then became a common trope in Western Orientalism. As a result of this reputation, in Europe and America Circassians were often characterised as ideals of feminine beauty in poetry and art. Cosmetic products were advertised, from the 18th century on, using the word "Circassian" in the title, or claiming that the product was based on substances used by the women of Circassia. In consequence, most wives of several Ottoman Sultans were ethnic Circassians converted to Islam, e.g. Valide Sultans (Empress mothers), including Perestü Valide Sultan, Şevkefza Valide Sultan, Tirimüjgan Valide Sultan, Nükhetseza Başhanımefendi, other important Hatuns (Ladies) and Sultans like Şemsiruhsar Hatun and Saçbağlı Sultan, Haseki sultans (chief consorts) such as Hümaşah Haseki Sultan, Hatice Muazzez Haseki Sultan, and Ayşe Haseki Sultan besides numerous Başkadınefendis (most senior consorts), including Bedrifelek I, Bidar II, Kamures I, and Servetseza I as well as Kadınefendis (senior consorts) such as Bezmara VI, Düzdidil III, Hayranıdil II, Meyliservet IV, Mihrengiz II, Neşerek III, Nurefsun II, Reftaridil II, Şayan III, amongst many others, or İkbals (honoured lady consorts), most notable of them being Cevherriz II, Ceylanyar II, Dilfirib I, Nalanıdil III, and Nergis IV in addition to Gözdes (favourite lady consorts), including Dürdane I, Hüsnicenan III, Safderun IV, amongst others. The "golden age" of the Circassian beauty may be considered to be between the 1770s, when the Russian Empire seized the Crimean Khanate and cut off their slave trade, which increased the demand for Circassian women in Near Eastern harems; and the 1860s, when the Russians massacred thousands of Circassians and conquered Circassia. In the 1860s the showman P. T. Barnum exhibited women who he claimed were Circassian beauties. They wore a distinctive curly, big hair style, which had no precedent in earlier portrayals of Circassians, but which was soon copied by other female performers in the United States, who became known as "moss-haired girls". This hair style was a sort of exhibit's trademark and was achieved by washing the hair of women in beer, drying it and then teasing it. It is not clear why Barnum chose this hairstyle. It may have been a reference to the Circassian fur hat, rather than the hair. There were also several classical Turkish music pieces and poems that praise the beauty of the Circassian ethnic group like "Lepiska Saçlı Çerkes" (Straight, flaxen-haired Circassian; "lepiska" refers to long blonde hair which is straight, as if flatironed). As a foreign group, they were always praised in Turkey for what they labeled as distinct and pure European features.
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