THE PROTECTION OF IRAQI CULTURAL PROPERTY

2004 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 985-998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Phuong

Images of widespread looting were the first to come from Baghdad following the entry of US forces into the Iraqi capital city in April 2003. In particular, it is hard to forget the powerful images of smashed display cases, empty vaults, and desperate staff in the Iraqi National Museum. Worse still, the National Library was burnt down. The looting of the Iraqi National Museum took place between 8 April, when the security situation prompted staff to leave the museum, and 12 April when some of them managed to return. Despite early pleadings with US forces to move a tank to guard the museum gates, US tanks did not arrive until 16 April.1 Cynics would say that the protection of the Oil Ministry appeared to take priority at the time.2 Early reports estimated that around 170,000 items went missing from the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad.3 This figure was completely exaggerated and the Bogdanos enquiry established that over 13,000 items had been stolen and about 3,000 recovered by September 2003.4 This article seeks to determine to what extent the US can be held legally responsible for the looting, and then to examine the international legal framework in place to facilitate the recovery and return of the items stolen from the Iraqi National Museum and other Iraqi cultural institutions

Author(s):  
Jonathan Hopkin

Recent elections in the advanced Western democracies have undermined the basic foundations of political systems that had previously beaten back all challenges—from both the Left and the Right. The election of Donald Trump to the US presidency, only months after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, signaled a dramatic shift in the politics of the rich democracies. This book traces the evolution of this shift and argues that it is a long-term result of abandoning the postwar model of egalitarian capitalism in the 1970s. That shift entailed weakening the democratic process in favor of an opaque, technocratic form of governance that allows voters little opportunity to influence policy. With the financial crisis of the late 2000s, these arrangements became unsustainable, as incumbent politicians were unable to provide solutions to economic hardship. Electorates demanded change, and it had to come from outside the system. Using a comparative approach, the text explains why different kinds of anti-system politics emerge in different countries and how political and economic factors impact the degree of electoral instability that emerges. Finally, it discusses the implications of these changes, arguing that the only way for mainstream political forces to survive is for them to embrace a more activist role for government in protecting societies from economic turbulence.


2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 989-1007
Author(s):  
DANIELE AMOROSO

AbstractAccording to the agency paradigm enshrined by the 2001 ILC Articles on State Responsibility, private conducts are attributed to a state when they are carried out on the state's behalf or under its tight control. On closer look, this legal framework proves to be unable to deal with state involvement in human-rights violations perpetrated by powerful non-state actors, such as terrorist groups or transnational corporations. These wrongs, indeed, are often put in place with the fundamental contribution of – but not on behalf of (or under the control of) – a state, with the consequence that, under the traditional paradigm, they could not be attributed to the latter. Against this backdrop, the present paper argues that a new secondary norm has been developing that provides that private wrongs are to be imputed to a state if the latter knowingly facilitated (or otherwise co-operated in) their commission. Although international practice will be duly taken into account, the analysis will be focused mainly on US case law concerning corporate liability for international human-rights violations.


1998 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-51
Author(s):  
Carule Fabricant

I would like to begin by juxtaposing two very different pictures of global travel taken from recent articles in the popular media and considering their implications both for contemporary postcolonial theory and for our readings of “third world” fictional texts. In one article from the summer of 1997 (Newton 6-7), the Los Angeles New Times displayed on its cover a slender man in his thirties staring hopelessly out from behind a barred window. The caption read: “No Way Out: Romanian Gavrila Moldovan Risked His Life to Come to America. The INS Promptly Locked Him Up on Terminal Island. Three and a Half Years Later, He’s Still in Jail.” The accompanying story described Moldovan’s desperate flight out of Romania after being declared a “noncitizen” for writing an anti-government news article, which rendered him vulnerable to immediate arrest, and after his parents died in a suspicious car “accident.” Having slipped aboard a container ship bound for the United States together with some fellow countrymen (three of whom died en route), he was discovered and unceremoniously dumped ashore in Panama, only to stow away shortly thereafter on another container ship headed for the Port of Los Angeles. After finally reaching his destination, a “euphoric” Moldovan explained to the US authorities awaiting him at the port: “I come here to be in freedom.... ’” His “welcome” consisted of being arrested and locked up in the INS Processing Center on Terminal Island, in which, though never charged with any crime, he remained for several years before being transferred to Kern County Jail in Bakersfield, where he is currently languishing amongst a population of men awaiting trial for serious crimes (6-7)—one of thousands of refugees and immigrants who have been, and continue to be, incarcerated in prisons that have contracts with the INS, for lack of proper documents, for minor infringements of the law, or because they are denied political asylum despite compelling evidence of their vulnerability to government reprisal at home.


2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-25
Author(s):  
Damaji Ratmono

Preservation of library materials or library collections is an effort made so that library materials can be used by future generations. This paper describes the "Malaysian" binding method used by the Sub Division of Technical Binding Materials of the National Library of Indonesia in preserving the collection of periodicals such as tabloids and newspapers. Apart from that, this paper also describes some of the advantages and disadvantages seen in the use of the "Malaysian" method as well as the early history of using this method in preserving the collection of periodicals in the National Library of Indonesia. This writing aims to make readers, especially library managers, know and gain insight into the "Malaysian" binding method. This writing method is through descriptive research with a qualitative approach. Methods of data collection are carried out through the field research, interviews, and literature study. The results show that the National Library of Indonesia uses this method after studying it from Malaysia in May 1990. From observations it is also known that this method has several advantages, namely the binding result is stronger, the collection is more preserved, the binding can be assembled and has an aesthetic side. Meanwhile, the disadvantages of this binding method are that the process tends to be longer, more expensive, cannot be put on too many shelves because the collection will shift backwards, the pages tend to come off easily if the stitches are not strong enough, and can only be used in binding periodical collections.


2011 ◽  

The US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq led to more than a million people being killed, displaced five million from their homes and shattered countless more lives. It was a colossal, premeditated war crime. Leaders of governments in the countries responsible for this enormity seek to minimise and forget about it: to ‘move on’. We must not let them, because they want to retain the option of making the same political decisions, condemning more innocent people to death, somewhere else in the future. Contributors to this book are united in saying: never again. They examine how and why this unmitigated disaster for humanity was allowed to happen, and how we can prevent it being repeated. And they imagine more peaceful ways to engage with conflicts and crises in times to come. It raises a question: what will you do to help end war and build peace?


2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-560
Author(s):  
ERIC PULLIN

Secrecy has unintended consequences. The release on 9 December 2014 of the US Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the torture of terrorism detainees focused public attention on the secret activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Regrettably, lost amidst debate over justifying or condemning state-sponsored torture is a more basic concern, the issue of state secrecy, which underlies the discussion of how governments promote national ends. Only two days after the issuance of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report, the US House of Representatives adjourned without taking action on the Freedom of Information Act reform bill – despite receiving unanimous approval in both houses. This bill would not have required complete openness, but it would have eliminated many of the arbitrary mechanisms that enable the CIA and other governmental agencies to suppress requests for information. Although the House Republican leadership failed to put the act on the legislative calendar, the Obama administration's Department of Justice also deserves opprobrium for surreptitiously opposing the act behind the scenes. The US government's disregard for establishing reasonable rules of transparency virtually guarantees that the CIA will continue to suppress its records, and thus public scrutiny of its unchecked activities, for a very long time to come.


Author(s):  
Andrew M Fielding ◽  
Anne Powell

Medline is the US National Library of Medicine database that is used for searching the medical biochemistry literature. The database is structured using medical subject subheadings (MeSH terms) to classify the content of references; indexing is done manually using MeSH terms as key words. Searching the database effectively means finding the maximum number of relevant references together with the minimum number of irrelevant ones. This article is aimed at explaining the limitations of Medline and suggesting some solutions to key problems. The goal is that users can improve their literature search technique by employing a structured approach. As usual, asking relevant questions before starting a search is essential.


2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 456-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sang-hoon Jang

The exhibition Masterpieces of Korean Art, which toured 8 cities in the US from December 1957 to June 1959, was the first large-scale overseas exhibition of Korean cultural objects that the South Korean government organized. This overseas exhibition in the US was designed to secure a cultural identity for South Korea on the world stage by explaining to US citizens that Korean culture has peculiar characteristics and independence from Chinese or Japanese culture. It was in the same context that the South Korean government was trying to secure a place within the world order controlled by the US. This touring exhibition shows that, through this exhibition, the National Museum of Korea was engaged in a dual mission to both gain cultural citizenship on the world stage and, reflexively, to internalize this for internal consumption so as to consolidate a sense of Korean cultural identity at home.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-56
Author(s):  
Lila Muliani

Food and tourism can not be separated. Travellers will always need food to fill his stomach. However, trend of culinary tourism which begun to be popular in the beginning of the year 2000 has come to the definition that food is not only something to satisfy someones’ hunger. Traditional food of one destination could become an attraction to motivate tourists to come.Jakarta as the capital city that never stop welcoming tourists – domestic and abroad - to come, has many potential culinary attractions. Unfortunately,until today, traditinal food of Betawi - Jakarta people – that is known by people are very limited in number. The delightfull of Betawi cuisine is not yet being tourist attractions.This study was conducted to analyze Bubur Ase, one of Betawi cuisine, to become a culinary attractions for tourist to come. This special dish is very unique since it is a mixture of porridge, beef stew in sweet soy sauce, and vegetable pickles. The taste is different from another porridge that is already famous. This qualitative research uses primary data from observations, FGD, and in depth interview with Betawi culinary experts. SWOT analysis is used to get a whole picture of internal and external factors that is affected Bubur Ase.The resulf of the study shows that Bubur Ase is potential to become an attractiom for culinaru tourism in Jakarta. The uniqueness and harmonization of taste, historical stories, cultural values and philosophies in a bowl of Bubur Ase are the strenghts that can be developed and promoted. Some weaknesses and threats could be overcome if this dish is already popular.


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