Overview: Toward a Better World for Our Grandchildren

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Hamburg ◽  
Beatrix A. Hamburg
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
First Century ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
The Internet ◽  
World War ◽  
Small Arms ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Killing Fields ◽  
The World ◽  
Prime Problem

The growing destructive capacities of humanity make this the prime problem of the twenty-first century. How we cope with this problem will have a profound bearing on the world of our grandchildren. The twentieth century was the bloodiest ever. World War II caused at least 50 million deaths. Six million died in the Holocaust. At Hiroshima, one bomb caused 100,000 deaths. Now thousands of such bombs (smaller and more conveniently transportable tactical bombs) are housed in Russia. Many are poorly guarded, susceptible to theft and bribery. Others may be made elsewhere. Danger increases with the number of such weapons existing in the world.Why? There is a greater chance of error, theft, and bribery—and ultimately their use in war or terrorism. Therefore, we should diminish the numbers as much as we can and secure responsible stewardship for those that remain. Moreover, there are still thousands of nuclear weapons that are far more powerful than the smaller tactical weapons. Biological and chemical weapons are easier to make than nuclear warheads and therefore have special appeal to terrorists. Small arms and light weapons now cover the world wall-to-wall. They include highly lethal machine guns, mortars, automatic rifles, and rocket launchers. Altogether, the destructive capacity of humanity is almost beyond imagination. Moreover, there is an exciting effect of today’s vast weapons on political demagogues, religious fanatics, and ethnic haters—and plenty of them exist in the world. Incitement to hatred and violence can occur with radio, TV, the Internet, and many other media. Thus, we can more powerfully incite violence, utilize more lethal weapons, and do much more damage than ever imaginable before. No group is so small or so far away as to prevent it from doing immense damage anywhere. The time has come to move beyond complacency, fatalism, denial, and avoidance. We must urgently seek to understand and strengthen an array of institutions and organizations that have the capacity to use tools and strategies to prevent deadly conflict. The first author (D.A.H.) considered many such possibilities in his recent book, No More Killing Fields: Preventing Deadly Conflict. Overall, this gives humanity a greater range of possibilities than ever before for building a system for preventing war and genocide. It will not be easy.

Digitization, Virtual Collections, and Total Archives in the Twenty-First Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 148-173
Author(s):  
Jason Lustig
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
First Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Materials ◽  
The World ◽  
Cairo Genizah

This final chapter argues that struggles over archival ownership and the possibility of archival totality continue far beyond the years immediately following World War II. It considers three case studies to consider new forms of total archives being created through virtual collections and digitization: The Center for Jewish History in New York City (formed in 1994/1995 and opened in 2000), the efforts by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research to digitize materials found in Lithuania and reunite them with their own files, and the Friedberg Genizah Project’s initiative to digitize and join together fragments of the Cairo Genizah found in repositories around the world. These case studies showcase enduring visions of monumentality and indicate how archival construction is not merely the province of the past. Instead, the process of gathering historical materials is a continual process of making and remaking history.

Global Organizations

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rabi S. Bhagat ◽  
Annette S. McDevitt ◽  
B. Ram Baliga
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Economic Geography ◽  
World Trade ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Global Organizations ◽  
Interdisciplinary Perspective ◽  
The World ◽  
Technological Developments

Organizations that function across dissimilar nations and cultures are known as global organizations. Their origins may be in any of the globalized countries of the World Trade Organization as well as other supernational systems that coordinate activities of the United Nations and similar organizations. Global organizations are everywhere, and their growth has been phenomenal since World War II. Managing them effectively requires in-depth knowledge of the political and economic geography in which they operate. Along with such knowledge, managers must also discern the underpinnings of cultural and technological developments in their strategic planning and implementation. A few decades ago, an interdisciplinary perspective was not regarded as crucial in understanding the functioning of global organizations. However, in the complex and dynamic era of globalization, an interdisciplinary perspective is crucial. This book adopts this perspective and integrates the often conflicting and dynamic perspectives in a fashion that sheds light for understanding the nature of global organizations in the twenty-first century.

scholarly journals Introduction: Looking Back to Look Forward

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-283
Author(s):  
Margaret P. Karns
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
First Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Member States ◽  
Look Back ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Looking Back

The seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations in 1945 invites us to look back at the achievement of creating this new organization even before the guns had fallen silent in World War II. It also prompts us to ask: Where is the organization today? How well has it fulfilled and is it still fulfilling the high ideals of its Charter? Even more importantly, how confident can we be that what has grown into the complex UN system will not just survive but also provide its member states and the peoples of the world with the organizational structures, resources, and tools needed to address twenty-first century challenges?

Ethics and aesthetics of World War II memory: The case of David Foenkinos, Charlotte

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Bracher
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Original Work ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
First Century ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Key Questions

Winner of the 2014 Renaudot prize, David Foenkinos’s novel Charlotte recounts the tragic life and highly original work of the German Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon, arrested in the south of France and deported to her death at Auschwitz in the fall of 1943. As is often the case in twenty-first-century narratives, Foenkinos engages in a highly personal mode of narration that plunges back into the most momentous aspects of World War II and the Holocaust. Charlotte thus links the quandaries of the narrator’s own life and times to those of this protagonist in ways that lead us to face key questions of ethics and aesthetics. These concern not only the destiny of Charlotte Salomon, but also our own manner of approaching and remembering the most momentous events of the twentieth century through the medium of the literary text.

Popular Understandings of the Past

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kees Ribbens
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
Comic Strips ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
Sensitive Topics ◽  
The Holocaust

This chapter presents an overview of the development of historical narratives combining visual and textual elements in comic strips and graphic novels. History comics developed strongly during the 1940s and 1950s and became popular, in particular among young readers in Western Europe and North America. Having gained increased cultural respectability, comics more recently also obtained an adult audience. Two internationally renowned educational comics from the Anne Frank House, published in the first decade of the twenty-first century, illustrate how comics are nowadays capable of representing sensitive topics from recent history, in particular World War II and the Holocaust. Yet, combining fact and fiction requires a balanced way of (re)presenting, involving discussions among historians and others on what may be possible and desirable in this specific war of making history public.

scholarly journals The Absent Parent Figure as a Representation of Post-trauma in Contemporary British-Jewish Novels

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 21-32
Author(s):  
Anita Chmielewska ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The World

A missing parent is an element that is often found in contemporary British-Jewish novels. These are mainly texts written by granddaughters of those who lived through World War II. The novels analyzed herein tend to be very similar in their depiction of parent figures, who appear to represent the remaining presence of post-trauma from the World War II era. The concept of survival during the Shoah may include various experiences but is mostly associated with those who directly experienced the Holocaust. Yet, British Jews are often those who fled the Jewish extermination before it happened and, as a result, are frequently excluded from the discussion of World War II survivorship

U.S. Strategic Debates over the Defense of Japan: Lessons for the Twenty-first Century

2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Futoshi Shibayama
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
First Century ◽  
Military Power ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Japanese Military ◽  
The World ◽  
Strategic Position ◽  
Past Half

AbstractWhat is the current meaning of Japan's military power and what contribution has that power made to America's strategic position in East Asia, even the world, over the past fifty-five years? Could there have been an alternative to Japanese rearmament? Answers to these and other related questions lie in the American debates on the nature of Japan's defense situation in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Regional and global strategic circumstances have obviously changed over the past half-century, just as have weapons systems themselves. Strategic controversies from 1945, however, endure as the fundamental framework for considering Japanese military power and its possible alternatives.

A Central European Diaspora under the Shadow of World War II: The Galician Ukrainians in North America

2006 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 17-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
John-Paul Himka
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
North America ◽  
World War ◽  
Central European ◽  
Recent Success ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The World ◽  
Sixtieth Anniversary

Sixty years after its conclusion, World War II still fills the world's memory. Massive demonstrations in China last winter recalled Japanese atrocities during the war, while just over a month ago the world marked the sixtieth anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Monuments and museums continue to be erected to commemorate the Holocaust. And films on the war, as the recent success of Downfall demonstrates, continue to attract viewers. Some of the things that happened during World War II seem to us to be unforgettable.

Serving All Languages

2020 ◽  
pp. 46-63
Author(s):  
Lea Shaver
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The Internet ◽  
World War ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Global Commerce ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
National Governments

This chapter clarifies how English is the most widely studied foreign language in the world according to David Crystal. Since World War II, it has emerged as the dominant language of global commerce and culture. The chapter emphasizes that being fluent in English greatly expands one's reading options. English accounts for 80 percent of the e-book titles available on Amazon.com, 80 percent of academic journals, and more than half of all content on the Internet. The chapter also discusses how several organizations are working to expand multilingual children's literature: the African Storybook Project, Books for Asia, the Global Book Alliance, Nabu.org, Worldreader, and myriad small publishers serving specific language communities. Their programs make clearer than ever before what it means to effectively promote the right to read. This requires the coordinated efforts of the United Nations, national governments, foundations, businesspeople, charities, publishers, authors, and illustrators.

scholarly journals (Un)Covering the COVID-19 Pandemic: Framing Analysis of the Crisis in Canada

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Poirier ◽  
Catherine Ouellet ◽  
Marc-Antoine Rancourt ◽  
Justine Béchard ◽  
Yannick Dufresne
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
First Century ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Framing Analysis ◽  
World War ◽  
Large Dataset ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
The World

The current COVID-19 crisis is unprecedented in recent history. On April 1, 2020, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, warned that the world was facing the most challenging crisis since World War II (Associated Press, 2020). With the pandemic taking on an unprecedented magnitude in the twenty-first century, it quickly monopolized media attention. As of early April, Radar+'s large dataset showed that about 65 per cent of headlines on major Canadian media websites were related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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