Current caselaw discrepancies in the protection of national symbols and state representatives between the European Court of Human Rights and Spanish courts: a vicious circle

Despite the general consensus about freedom of expression being a basic fundamental right on every democratic society, the debate about its boundaries has never found such a pacific agreement. Thus, the Spanish Penal Code has several articles that punish its abuse that are highly contested, like articles 490.3 and 543 that penalize the offenses directed towards national symbols or State representatives. This being so, this article examines the controversy generated by the application of this articles through the analysis of two judgements issued by the European Court of Human Rights against Spain, and a third one issued by the Spanish Constitutional Court that could follow the same path. This work will be done to describe the clash that exists between the caselaw of these two jurisdictions, in order to critically analyze the approach Spanish courts have to behaviors that criticize national symbols and state representatives.

Commissions of inquiry and pathways to accountability in Plateau State, Nigeria

ABSTRACTFor decades, Plateau State in Nigeria's Middle Belt has witnessed repeated ethnoreligious violence. Over this period, both state and federal governments have established formal Commissions of Inquiry (COIs) in response to unrest, tasked with investigating violence, identifying perpetrators, and – ultimately – strengthening accountability. While commissions’ mandates and specific outcomes varied, there is general consensus that inquiries have been largely ineffective at securing justice or establishing accountability for violence. This study seeks to understand the expectations placed on, and role of, COIs in Plateau State as pathways to formal accountability in a context of recurring violence. We argue that COIs are embedded in the complex, multilevel networks and politics of state and non-state institutions. Civil society, in turn, has diverse expectations and demands, and articulates these in fragmented ways. As a result, COIs served primarily as another avenue for interest-based negotiations.

A Normative Survey on Auditory Perception and Semantic Descriptors of Musical Timbres

Timbre are commonly described using semantic descriptors such as ’dark’, ’bright’ and ’warm’. The use of such descriptors are useful and largely practiced by trained individuals in music related industries. Such descriptors are subjective as it could be interpreted differently by different individuals determined by factors such as training and exposure. Semantic descriptors also lacks granularity, in a sense that the descriptor does not indicate the amount or intensity of the description. A numerical representation for timbral description addressees these issues. Computational approach for numerical measure of timbre are at present under study by music technology researchers. Such studies requires a benchmarking process in order for viability tests. To provide a set of data that can be used for benchmarking, a survey on auditory perception and semantic descriptors of musical timbres were conducted. The conducted survey looks to find out if a general consensus can be observed for semantic description of musical timbres using a normative survey methodology. This article reviews the conducted survey, presenting the survey’s approach, results and findings

Conflicts between the Companions of the Prophet in the light of Sunnah

The companions of the Prophet have an esteemed and dignified status. This study deals with a few conflicts of opinion that occurred amongst them after the death of the Prophet. The study shows that at times their disputes even led to civil wars such as the battle of al-Jammal and Siffin was for the retribution of blood of the third caliphate Uthman. There is a general consensus on this that these armed conflicts were a result of Ijtidai error between the companions of the Prophet [peace is upon him]. Therefore, the study shows that their conflict is beyond judgement of being right and wrong.

Illusions of Liveness: Producer as Composer

<p>The practise of creating music for the recorded medium has been a fluid and constantly changing enterprise since its inception. Emergences of new studio technologies over the last fifty years have spurred new cultures, philosophies and approaches to music production and composition, ultimately seeing a merging of the once disparate roles of producer and composer. It is this contemporary, technology-informed new role of producer-composer that brings with it discussion - for much of which there is no general consensus - over issues pertaining to perceived liveness, the producer-composer’s control over the resulting sound, and most contentiously the use of music technology itself: its transparency and its legitimacy as substitutions for real instruments. These are all fluid and complex issues and this paper does not attempt to provide answers for, nor take a definitive stance on them other than in the sharing of opinions formed from my own experiences in applying production as composition to the creative aspect of this project. In this paper I seek to share some of the current discussion regarding production-as-composition, in light of my own compositional experiment, which strives to create a simulation of real-performance via almost entirely artificial means within an idealised, hyper-musical sonic environment. By bringing together real musicians and virtual instruments within a recorded track and edited via music production technology, the experiment aimed to produce an illusion of liveness.</p>

Illusions of Liveness: Producer as Composer

<p>The practise of creating music for the recorded medium has been a fluid and constantly changing enterprise since its inception. Emergences of new studio technologies over the last fifty years have spurred new cultures, philosophies and approaches to music production and composition, ultimately seeing a merging of the once disparate roles of producer and composer. It is this contemporary, technology-informed new role of producer-composer that brings with it discussion - for much of which there is no general consensus - over issues pertaining to perceived liveness, the producer-composer’s control over the resulting sound, and most contentiously the use of music technology itself: its transparency and its legitimacy as substitutions for real instruments. These are all fluid and complex issues and this paper does not attempt to provide answers for, nor take a definitive stance on them other than in the sharing of opinions formed from my own experiences in applying production as composition to the creative aspect of this project. In this paper I seek to share some of the current discussion regarding production-as-composition, in light of my own compositional experiment, which strives to create a simulation of real-performance via almost entirely artificial means within an idealised, hyper-musical sonic environment. By bringing together real musicians and virtual instruments within a recorded track and edited via music production technology, the experiment aimed to produce an illusion of liveness.</p>

Conceptualizing interstate cooperation

There seems to exist a general consensus on how to conceptualize cooperation in the field of international relations (IR). We argue that this impression is deceptive. In practice, scholars working on the causes of international cooperation have come to implicitly employ various understandings of what cooperation is. Yet, an explicit debate about the discipline's conceptual foundations never materialized, and whatever discussion occurred did so only latently and without much dialog across theoretical traditions. In this paper, we develop an updated conceptual framework by exploring the nature of these differing understandings and situating them within broader theoretical conversations about the role of cooperation in IR. Drawing on an array of studies in IR and philosophy, our framework distinguishes between three distinct types of cooperative state interactions – cooperation through tacit policy coordination (‘minimal’ cooperation), cooperation through explicit policy coordination (‘thin’ cooperation), and cooperation based on joint action (‘thick’ cooperation). The framework contributes to better theorization about cooperation in two main ways: it allows scholars across theoretical traditions to identify important sources of disagreement and previously unnoticed theoretical common ground; and the conceptual disaggregation it provides grants scholars crucial theoretical leverage by enabling type-specific causal theorization.

International Law and Cyberoperations

Foreign cyberattacks and interferences are becoming more frequent and sophisticated. In the continued absence of a general consensus regarding the applicability of concrete international legal rules in the domain of cybersecurity, individual States are beginning to determine unilaterally their national positions. The article introduces and critically assesses the national strategy of France published in late 2019 in light of current international law and further developments in 2020. France confirms the validity of current international legal norms and raises challenging and innovative legal points for an efficient update such as the right to respond to any unlawful cyberoperation that targets France, right to preemptive self-defence, and violation of the due diligence principle. The mission of the article is to evaluate the document as an important source of impetus and the potential of its impact in international law of cybersecurity.

A Look Back: Preschool perspectives in Kappan

In this monthly column, Kappan managing editor Teresa Preston looks back at how the magazine has covered early childhood education. Since the 1960s, authors have largely agreed about the benefits of high-quality early childhood education, and there has been general consensus about what such a program should look like. However, expanding access to such programs has remained a challenge.

The origin of nasality in Macedonian dialects

There is general consensus that the southern Macedonian dialects have partially retained the Proto-Slavic nasal vowels, and that the preservation was favoured by local Greek phonetics. There was, however, an additional source of (non-etymological) nasality in Macedonian – the Greek pre-nasalisation of stops. In the article, I would like to re-examine this issue in terms of the hypothesis that the source of nasality in Macedonian dialects was not the old nasal vowels, but the Greek pre-nasalisation of stops.