Legal Review of the Government's Responsibility in Compensating for the Damage Caused by the COVID-19 Crisis

The onset and spread of COVID-19-related disease and the measures taken by the government to combat it have given rise to several legal issues. The most important of these issues can be considered the government's legal framework in the fight against this disease and the responsibility for compensation. Examining the first issue through Iran's current laws and regulations, it became clear that choosing the appropriate legal framework in the fight against this disease could be more than the basic and ordinary regulations. Instead of creating a national headquarters to fight COVID-19 under council approvals, the Supreme National Security Service shall use the capacities of the crisis management organization and the relevant law and the provisions of Article 79 of the Iranian constitution.

Stanisław Majerski i jego wkład w likwidację zniszczeń spowodowanych Wielką Wojną na terenie Galicji

[Stanisław Majerski and his contribution to removing First World War destruction in Galicia] The author presents the so far unexplored scope of work of the architect from Przemyśl, Stanisław Majerski (1872–1926) regarding his employment at the National Headquarters for Economic Reconstruction of Galicia, branch in Przemyśl, during the First World War. The 1914–1915 warfare caused enormous destruction in Galicia, particularly in the Przemyśl region; after the hostilities had ceased, estimation of the losses and reconstruction began. Based on the materials from the National Archive in Kraków the article outlines Majerski’s work at the construction branch in Przemyśl. Majerski’s work on the reconstruction of destroyed churches in Gorlice, Nisko, Stara Sól, Tamanowice and Żurawica is discussed as well.

Understanding China’s National Emergency Command System from the Perspective of Power and Responsibility Allocation

The structure between the Party and the government is the core and soul of China’s emergency management, and the allocation of power and responsibility is the core of China’s national emergency command system (NECS). The allocation of power and responsibility between the Party and the government, as well as between departments, is the main aspect of the allocation of power and responsibility in China, and is also an important component of the NECS. This paper mainly introduces the characteristics of power and responsibility allocation between the Party and the government, as well as between departments in China’s NECS, and analyzes the above-mentioned power and responsibility allocation, based on the prevention and control of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), and analyzes their development, changes, and unchanged characteristics. Through the above analysis, we found that the Party’s leadership style in dealing with emergencies has changed from indirect leadership to direct leadership. The joint defense and control mechanism has replaced the national headquarters of emergency management as the common mode.

Quest for Jobs and Housing

The fight for much needed social services for Pittsburgh's poor and working-class black families had deep roots in the prewar years. But this struggle intensified during and after World War I with the formation and development of the Urban League of Pittsburgh (ULP). Following the lead of national headquarters in New York City, the Steel City's small “ban of reformers” placed the provision of migration, work, housing, and health services at the core of its mission to Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania. After a brief moment of extraordinary success, the agency's programs dissipated during the economic downturn after the war but rebounded before the onset of the Great Depression.

Navigating Civil Rights and Black Power Struggles

By the mid-1960s, the political and social terrain on which the Urban League worked had changed dramatically. The Pittsburgh-born children of southern black migrants had come of age and pushed hard against the color line in the city's economy, politics, and institutions. National headquarters and local branches across the country worried about the increasing black nationalist turn in African American politics. But the ULP had helped to establish the postwar groundwork and even models for the fluorescence and even militance of Pittsburgh's Civil Rights and Black Power struggles of the 1960s and early 1970s.

THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ASPECTS OF CIVIL DEFENSE - CURRENT STATE AND DIRECTIONS FOR PERFECTION

The article presents legal and organizational issues related to the functional and institutional enterprises of the Civil Defense in the Republic of Poland. It was assumed that the article will be based on common knowledge from widely available studies covering the last thirty years, which means it was obtained from literature written after the political changes in Poland. The second assumption was to use the provisions of generally applicable law, both Polish and laws ratified by the Republic of Poland. Valuable sources of information subjected to analysis were also the few scientific papers released in Polish academic centers and studies prepared for the needs of the National Headquarters of the State Fire Department Service in Warsaw. The article was divided into three parts. They include: introduction, methodological assumptions, subject-and-object scope of civil defense and summary that point the direction of necessary projects aimed at improving civil defense. The article focuses on the diagnosis of the condition of applied solutions with a precise definition of the purpose, duties, tasks and powers of the authorities competent in civil defense matters. This work presents the results of an analysis of bibliographic sources, which, according to the authors' statements, was considered the most appropriate due to the adopted methodological assumptions, mainly in the scope of the adopted objective and research problem. The conducted analysis proves that the Civil Defense organization functioning in its present form for almost twenty years needs improvement. Its purpose, tasks and structure do not require changes. However, the system of directing and supervising civil defense formations calls for a different look. Changes are also necessary in terms of functional and institutional links with other state entities responsible for general security. The authors of the article put forward directions for improving the functioning of civil defense, by better adapting to the law in force in Poland regulating the issues concerning following systems: crisis management, state emergency medical services and emergency alerting. The results of the conducted research indicate, on the one hand, the need to rationalize civil defense but without the need to amend the provisions relating to the issues of conducting rescue operations.

A Double-Edged Pluralism: Paradoxes of Diversity in the International Institute Movement, 1945–1965

As a study in US pluralism, this article examines the International Institute movement—an urban network of liberal pluralist social welfare and intercultural agencies—in the early post-1945 era. It argues that the institutes were practitioners of a double-edged, or paradoxical, pluralism, in which progressive and conservative elements coexisted in tension with each other. An assessment of Institute records from the national headquarters and several local affiliates dealing with group and cultural programs and casework methods considers the possibilities, limits, tensions, and ironic implications of institute theories and practices. The analysis highlights the challenge of attaining that ever-elusive “balance” between promoting cultural diversity (and integration) and ensuring a degree of assimilation. It sheds light on a major irony—namely, that the application of modestly relativist cultural insights often generated hypotheses of im/migrant pathology. And, in regard to processes of racialization, it illuminates a paradox: that race could inflect institute “cultural” theory and practice with respect to both ethnic and racialized im/migrants and minoritized Americans. Finally, the authors suggest their framework might be of wider applicability and that critical historical thinking about contemporary multiculturalism and its long roots is both timely and important.

The Watergate Crisis

The Watergate affair has become synonymous with political corruption and conspiracy. The crisis has, through fact, fiction, and debate, become considerably more than the arrest of five men breaking into the Democratic Party’s national headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington DC in the early hours of Saturday, June 17, 1972. Instead, the term “Watergate” has since come to represent the burglary, its failed cover-up, the press investigation, the Senate enquiry, and the eventual resignation of the thirty-seventh president of the United States, Richard Nixon. Arguably, Watergate has come to encompass all the illegalities of the Nixon administration. The crisis broke when the Vietnam War had already sunk public confidence in the executive to a low ebb, and in the context of a society already fractured by the turbulence of the 1960s. As such, Watergate is seen as the nadir of American democracy in the 20th century. Perversely, despite contemporaries’ genuine fears for the future of the US democratic system, the scandal highlighted the efficiency of the US governmental machine. The investigations that constituted the Watergate enquiry, which were conducted by the legislative and judicial branches and the fourth estate, exposed corruption in the executive of the United States that stretched to the holder of the highest office. The post-war decades had allowed an imperial presidency to develop, which had threatened the country’s political equilibrium. Watergate disclosed that the presidency had overreached its constitutional powers and responsibilities and had conspired to keep those moves hidden from the electorate. More significantly, however, the forced resignation of Richard Nixon revealed that the checks-and-balances system of government, which was conceived almost 200 years before the Watergate affair, worked as those who devised it had planned. Watergate should illustrate to Americans not just the dangers of consolidating great power in the office of the president, but also the means to counteract such growth.

Corporate Social Responsibility

This chapter examines the extent to which corporate social responsibility (CSR) could generate and boost better brand perceptions and improve competitive advantage within some selected banks in Ghana. The concept of CSR, brand perception, and competitive advantage are discussed in relation to findings from a study that was conducted at the national headquarters of GCB Bank and Barclays Bank Limited in Accra. The results showed a good understanding of the concept of CSR from both customers and employees of both banks. There was a significant and positive connection between effective implementation of CSR initiatives, brand perception, and competitive advantage. CSR was discovered as a tool for business success in the banking sector in Ghana. This chapter explains the benefits of CSR activities to the development of impalpable organizational assets, and as a result, generating better results for banking institutions in Ghana. The authors make a case for the inclusion and active involvement of customers and employees in the CSR initiatives of banks in order to boost brand perception.