Peace Process

2021 ◽  
pp. 235-265
Author(s):  
Niall Ó Dochartaigh

In February 1993, the British Government received, via the back-channel, a message purported to be from the IRA. It read: ‘The conflict is over but we need your advice on how to bring it to a close.’ This chapter elaborates the sequence of contacts that led to a secret face-to-face meeting between a British government representative and republican leaders for the first time since 1976 and that culminated in a secret IRA ceasefire offer in May 1993. It examines too the influence of the back-channel on the joint declaration by the British and Irish governments in December 1993, that helped to pave the way for an IRA ceasefire in August 1994.

1996 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 82-104
Keyword(s):  

In the remaining pages I shall offer some more detailed comments on a number of passages from both epics. Besides allowing slightly more attention to stylistic matters than was possible in the earlier chapters, this procedure also gives an opportunity to comment on some specific problems, and on a number of other approaches which have not been discussed so far.And Aphrodite, smiling goddess, herself took up a chair for Helen, and brought it and placed it in front of Alexandros [Paris]. There Helen, daughter of Zeus who wields the aegis, took her seat, turning her eyes aside, and spoke slightingly to her husband: ‘You came back from the fighting, then. I wish you had died there, brought down by a man of strength, who was once my husband. Oh, before now you used to boast that you were superior to the warrior Menelaus in strength and power of hand and spear. Well, go now, challenge the warrior Menelaus to fight you again face to face. But no, I would advise you to stop now, and not pit yourself against fair-haired Menelaus in warfare or combat without thinking - you might well be brought down by his spear.’Paris then answered her: ‘Wife, do not deride my courage with these hard taunts. This time Menelaus has beaten me with Athena’s aid, but another time I shall beat him: there are gods on our side too. No, come, let us enjoy the bed of love. Never before has desire so enveloped my heart, not even on that first time when I stole you away from lovely Lacedaimon and sailed off with you in my seafaring ships, and lay with you in love’s union in the island of Kranae - even that was less than the love and sweet desire for you that comes over me now.’So he spoke, and led the way to their bed: and his wife followed. (Tr. M. Hammond)


2021 ◽  
pp. 117-149
Author(s):  
Niall Ó Dochartaigh

Back-channel contacts led in early 1975 to an IRA ceasefire that lasted for much of that year. IRA representatives and British government officials now embarked for the first time since the outbreak of the Troubles on a series of regular face-to-face meetings aimed at negotiating an end to the conflict. The venue was the house of intermediary Brendan Duddy in Derry. Chapter Five offers a new explanation for the failure of a serious and sustained effort to bring a negotiated end to the conflict during the IRA ceasefire of 1975. It outlines the mutual understanding and goodwill that developed in the course of these secret talks. It shows the extent of the intra-party divisions that hindered compromise and explains how they contributed to the collapse of the ceasefire and the breakdown of talks. It argues that, in many important respects, this process was a precursor to the peace settlement of the 1990s and shared many of its key features, including a willingness by the IRA to compromise on its core ideological positions and to contemplate alternatives to Irish reunification.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 81-84
Author(s):  
Karen Chan

For me, rhythm means having consistency. The piece highlights my own experience with the disruption of my daily rhythm due to COVID-19. The first half shows my routine and interactions prior to COVID-19 while the second half shows my experiences in the present day. Prior to the virus, I had a day to day routine that was filled with noise. Everyday moved quickly and I established a daily rhythm. However, when COVID-19 spread, it changed everything. I felt like I didn’t have a routine anymore because I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere. Time was moving much slower and worst of all, xenophobia was growing at a significant rate. As a Chinese Canadian, this was the first time I truly felt the weight of the color of my skin. COVID-19 changed the way that I consistently assumed that the color of my skin wasn’t something that strangers would significantly care about. However, as I got on a bus, I unintentionally scared a woman simply because of my skin color. From that point, I knew that xenophobia would affect the way people perceived me everyday. The woman was scared of the virus— which in turn was scared of me—and I was scared that she would thwart her anger towards me because I am Chinese. If looks could kill, then the woman and I ironically both feared each other. Now, due to COVID-19, I am adapting to a new routine. A routine where the color of skin rings louder than any other sound.


2021 ◽  
pp. 203195252199115
Author(s):  
Matthijs van Schadewijk

The growth in multilateral working relationships (e.g. agency work, chains of sub-contracting and corporate groups) is causing Member States to increasingly scrutinise their traditional, contractual approach to the notion of ‘employer’. So far, little attention has been paid to the boundaries and limits that EU law sets when defining the employer. The lack of attention may have come to an end with the recent AFMB judgment, in which the Court ruled, for the first time, that the concept of employer in a provision of EU law had to be given an autonomous and uniform interpretation throughout the EU. Starting from the AFMB judgment, the author analyses the concept of employer in EU law. The author finds that the concept of employer in EU law can be described as ‘uniform in its functionality’: in EU law, the national concept of the employer is never absolute, but the circumstances and the way in which the national concept must be set aside depend on the context and the objective of the European legislation in question. Through this functional approach, EU law partly harmonises the various national approaches to the concept of the employer. Nevertheless, a lack of specific reasoning on the part of the Court may grant the Member States considerable leeway to uphold their own views on the concept.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Rosalinda Cassibba ◽  
Daniela Ferrarello ◽  
Maria Flavia Mammana ◽  
Pasquale Musso ◽  
Mario Pennisi ◽  
...  

The focus of this research is how Sicilian state university mathematics professors faced the challenge of teaching via distance education during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the pandemic entered our lives suddenly, the professors found themselves having to lecture using an e-learning platform that they had never used before, and for which they could not receive training due to the health emergency. In addition to the emotional aspects related to the particular situation of the pandemic, there are two aspects to consider when teaching mathematics at a distance. The first is related to the fact that at university level, lecturers generally teach mathematics in a formal way, using many symbols and formulas that they are used to writing. The second aspect is that the way mathematics is taught is also related to the students to whom the teaching is addressed. In fact, not only online, but also in face-to-face modality, the teaching of mathematics to students on the mathematics degree course involves a different approach to lessons (as well as to the choice of topics to explain) than teaching mathematics in another degree course. In order to investigate how the Sicilian State university mathematics professors taught mathematics at distance, a questionnaire was prepared and administered one month after the beginning of the lockdown in Italy. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were made, which allowed us to observe the way that university professors have adapted to the new teaching modality: they started to appropriate new artifacts (writing tablets, mathematical software, e-learning platform) to replicate their face-to-face teaching modality, mostly maintaining their blackboard teacher status. Their answers also reveal their beliefs related to teaching mathematics at university level, noting what has been an advantageous or disadvantageous for them in distance teaching.


2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 633-645
Author(s):  
Cornel Samoilă ◽  
Doru Ursuţiu ◽  
Vlad Jinga

Abstract MOOC appearance has produced, in a first phase, more discussions than contributions. Despite pessimistic opinions or those catastrophic foreseeing the end of the classic education by accepting MOOC, the authors consider that, as it is happening in all situations when a field is reformed, instead of criticism or catastrophic predictions, an assessment should be simply made. MOOC will not be better or worse if it is discussed and dissected but can be tested in action, perfected by results, or abandoned if it has no prospects. Without testing, no decision is valid. A similarity between the MOOC appearance and the appearance of the idea of flying machines heavier than air can be made. In the flight case, the first reaction was a strong negation (including at Academies level) and only performing the first independent flight with an apparatus heavier than air has shifted orientation from denial to contributions. So, practical tests clarified the battle between ideas. The authors of this article encourage the idea of testing–assessment and, therefore, imagined and proposed one software for quickly assess whether MOOC produces changes in knowledge, by simply transferring courses from ‘face-to-face’ environment into the virtual one. Among the methods of statistical analysis for student behavioral changes was chosen the Keppel method. It underpins the assessment method of this work being approached using both the version with one variable and also with three variables. It is intended that this attempts to pave the way for other series of rapid assessment regarding MOOC effects (using other statistical methods). We believe, that this is the only approach that can lead either to improve the system or to renunciation.


2014 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
David Harvey

At 3.60 Herodotus tells us that he has dwelt at length on the Samians because ‘they are responsible for three of the greatest buildings in the Greek world’: the tunnel of Eupalinos, the great temple, and the breakwater that protects their harbour. As successive commentators have pointed out, that is not the real reason for the length of his account. We hear about the tunnel for the first time in this chapter (60.1–3); Maiandrios escapes down a secret channel at 146.2, which may or may not be Eupalinos' tunnel; we hear about the temple of Artemis, not of Hera, at Samos in 48; dedications in the temple of Hera are mentioned in passing at 1.70.3, 3.123.1, 4.88.1, and 4.152.4, but the temple itself cannot be said to play a major part in Herodotus' narrative; naval expeditions sail from Samos (e.g. 44.2, 59.4) but there is no emphasis on the harbour or its breakwater. What Herodotus should have said is ‘I have dwelt at length on Samos, because I am interested in the island's history; and, by the way, they are responsible for three…’; but it is not our job to tell him what he ‘should’ have said. As David Asheri remarks, ‘We can explain it [the length of the Samian logos] most simply by supposing that the logos already existed before the final draft of the book’.


1996 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Capitanchik

The Israeli General Election of 1996 Has Been Described as a ‘referendum’ on the Middle East peace process, the central issue in the campaign. However, important as it was, the outcome of the election was determined not so much by the issue of peace, as by a change in the electoral law providing for the direct election of the prime minister. On 29 May, for the first time, Israelis went to the polls to elect a prime minister as well as a new Knesset and the result was yet another upheaval in Israeli political life.


1962 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 897-904 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. E. McKeen

The anterior flagellum of the zoospores of Phytophthora fragariae, P. megasperma, P. cambivora, Saprolegnia parasitica, Achlya americana, and Pythium aphanidermatum projects straight in front of the zoospore and never moves except during encystment whereas the posterior flagellum is active during the swimming period. In the secondary zoospore the anterior and posterior flagella are attached a short distance apart in the center of the depression on the concave side and respectively pass forward and backward through a groove and form a central axis about which the zoospore rotates. Hyaline vesicles which also have been called beads or paddles form at the base of the flagella at the beginning of encystment and glide part or all the way down the flagella. Movement of flagella after they are released from the zoospore is reported for the first time. Encystment may result from contact stimulus except in the case of Allomyces anomalus. A filament on which vesicles may occur may be secreted or retracted by the Allomyces zoospore.


1938 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 98-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. P. V. D. Balsdon

The available evidence concerning the history of the Extortion Court, the quaestio repetundarum, at Rome is tabulated opposite page 114. In view of the bulk of this evidence, it is at first sight surprising that this should be one of the most confused chapters of Roman history. Indeed, it is improbable that all Roman historians would agree upon any more precise statement of certainty than the following: that C. Gracchus, whether by a lex Sempronia iudiciaria, or by a lex Sempronia de repetundis, or by a lex Acilia de repetundis which may, or may not, be reproduced in the lex repetundarum, fragments of which are preserved at Naples and at Vienna (CIL i, 583), established equites (selected either from owners and past owners, within certain age limits, of the equus publicus, or from all those who possessed the equestrian census) either in place of, or in association with, senators as jurors in the quaestio de repetundis; that Q. Servilius Caepio, probably in his consulship in 106 B.C., proposed, and perhaps carried, a judiciary law in the interest of the Senate; that C. Servilius Glaucia either in m (Mommsen), 108 (Carcopino) 104 (Last) or 101 B.C. (Niccolini) carried a lex repetundarum and perhaps other judiciary laws in which he possibly either gave for the first time, or restored, to the equites complete possession of the juries and certainly effected two reforms in procedure, (a) by legalising the prosecution not only of recent magistrates and pro-magistrates, but also of their accomplices and (b) by introducing the form of ‘double action’ known as comperendinatio; that M. Livius Drusus, as tribune in 91 B.C., endeavoured unsuccessfully to establish, or to re-establish, as the case may be, mixed juries of senators and equites, and to make equestrian as well as senatorial jurors liable to prosecution for accepting bribes; that in 89 B.C. by a lex Plautia of the tribune M. Plautius Silvanus mixed juries were established, certainly for trials of maiestas, and perhaps for repetundae too. After this, the way is clearer, Sulla re-established senatorial juries, which survived until 70 B.C., when, by the lex Aurelia, jurors were selected from three panels—from senators, equites and tribuni aerarii.


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