An Analysis on Mixed English-Indonesian Demonstration Banners on Instagram

Indonesia is currently experiencing a significant heated political upheaval as many students from various universities took to the streets to express their dissatisfaction with the House of Representatives (DPR). This research was more focused on identifying the type of sarcasm in the demonstration banner against the criminal code bill that were occurred in 2019 as the movement of the sea of Indonesian students in voicing opinions and forms of harsh criticism to the government policies that are considered detrimental to the people. The research used qualitative method. The data used in this research were 48 demonstration banners against the Criminal Code Bill on the Instagram account. The results showed that propositional sarcasm was obtained as much 10 data (21%), lexical sarcasm was 11 data (23%), illocutionary sarcasm was 26 data (54%) with sentimental contradiction (18 data), manner violation (1 data), lexical contradiction (3 data), and hyperbolic combination (3 data), while ‘like’ prefixed sarcasm was 1 data (2%) from 48 sarcasm in the demonstration banner against the criminal code bill. This research could also be a reference material for the researchers who want to research the topics that were relevant to this research. For the readers, it was expected to understand and take lessons from the result of research for application in social life.

Arno Babajanian: “Radicalisms” of the 1960s

Пришедшие в отечественную музыку в 1960-е годы западные новации были встречены бурной критикой со стороны хранителей «чистоты» советского искусства. Композиторы и их сочинения, созданные с применением новых техник, рассматривались как идеологически опасные. Однако творческие эксперименты некоторых авторов получили официальное одобрение. Среди них был А. Бабаджанян, который в равной степени уловил модные тенденции времени как в сфере академической музыки (додекафония в «Шести картинах»), так и в сфере массовой эстрадной песни (твисты «Королева красоты» и «Лучший город земли»). В статье анализируются его новации в обеих областях. Western innovations that came to Soviet music in 1960s were met with harsh criticism from the guardians of the “purity” of Soviet art. Composers and their works, which were created using avant-garde techniques, were considered as dangerous for soviet ideoLogy. However, creative experiments of some authors have received approval Among them was A. Babajanian, who picked up the modern tendencies both in the academic music (dodecaphony in “Six Pictures”) and mass pop song (twists “KoroLeva krasoty” and “Luchshiy gorod zemLi”). His innovations in these two areas are anaLyzed in the articLe.

A New Kind of Vanguard: Cuban−North Korean Discourse on Revolutionary Strategy for the Global South in the 1960s

During the 1960s, the Cuban government attempted to play a leadership role within the Latin American Left. In the process Cuban leaders departed from Marxist−Leninist orthodoxy, garnering harsh criticism from their Soviet and Chinese allies. Yet Cuba found a steadfast supporter of its controversial positions in North Korea. This support can in large part be explained by the parallels between Cuban and North Korean ideas about revolution in the developing nations of the Global South. Most significantly, both parties embraced a radical reconceptualisation of the role of the Marxist−Leninist vanguard party. This new doctrine appealed primarily to younger Latin American militants frustrated with the established leftist parties and party politics in general. The Cuban/North Korean theory of the party had a tangible influence in Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Mexico, Bolivia and Nicaragua, as revolutionary groups in these societies took up arms in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Chinese Translation of Samuel Beckett: A Critical History

In light of the relevant merits and defects of translation practice over sixty years, this article presents a critical history of the Chinese translation of the work of Samuel Beckett. The article argues that the history may be divided into two periods: the pre-1980 period and the post-1980 period, with China's reopening to the outside world in the late 1970s as the watershed. The first period is dominated by the politically propelled translation of Waiting for Godot and harsh criticism of Beckett as a ‘decadent’ author. The second period, characterized by a more complex aesthetic response, may be further divided into three stages: the first stage is marked by the pioneering Proust as a booklet on irrationalism and the debatable Collection of Samuel Beckett translated from French; the second stage by the annotated Complete Works of Samuel Beckett; the third stage by the scholastically motivated Letters of Samuel Beckett. In retrospect, the transition between the two periods is a dramatic one from political misreading to aesthetic appreciation. Or, rather, the progress of the Chinese translation since the turn of the twentieth century mirrors both the re-evaluation of Beckett as an innovative artist and the ‘inward turn’ of Chinese intellectual circles.

From Nasser to al-Sīsī

After the events of June 30 and July 3, 2013, that brought the Muslim Brotherhood rule to an end, Egyptian President ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ al-Sīsī has been carried aloft on waves of adulation of most of the Egyptian people. This phenomenon was reflected in popular expressions and in the Egyptian media, and any criticism of it was minimal. Interestingly, it was the portrayal of al-Sīsī in a children’s magazine, Samīr (February 1, 2014), that generated vocal public debate on issues of the exposure of children to political content and their indoctrination. This article examines why this case provoked such harsh criticism even though political content and indoctrination in children’s magazines are not a new phenomenon in Egypt but rather a continuation of past traditions, and discusses what insights can be gleaned from the affair with regard to Egyptian society today.

The reasons of the unreasonable: Is political liberalism still an option?

In this study, we claim that political liberalism, despite harsh criticism, is still the best option available for providing a just and stable society. However, we maintain that political liberalism needs to be revised so as to be justifiable from the perspective of not only the “reasonable” in a Rawlsian sense (that we define as “fully” reasonable) but also the ones whom Rawls labels as “unreasonable.” To support our claim, going beyond Rawls’s original account, we unpack the concept of unreasonableness and identify three different subsets that we label as the “partially reasonable,” the “non-reasonable,” and the “unreasonable.” We argue that both the “fully” reasonable and the “partially reasonable” would be included into the constituency of public justification; more specifically, we claim that the latter would support liberal institutions out of their reasons: we define these reasons as mutually intelligible reasons and claim that they allow to acknowledge the importance of a convergence approach to public justification. As for the “non-reasonable” and “unreasonable,” we claim that they cannot be included in the constituency of public justification, but they nonetheless could be compliant with liberal institutions if political liberalism offers them some reasons to comply: here, we claim that political liberalism should include them through engagement and propose reasoning from conjecture as an effecting way of offering reasons for compliance. In particular, we claim that through reasoning from conjecture, the “non-reasonable” could find conciliatory reasons to comply with liberal institutions on a stable base. With regard to the “unreasonable” in the strict sense, we claim that through reasoning from conjecture, their unreasonableness could be contained and they could find reasons—even if just self-interested—for complying with liberal institutions rather than defying them. In our discussion, we consider the different subsets not as “frozen” but as dynamic and open to change, and we aim to propose a more complex and multilayered approach to inclusion that would be able to include a wider set of people. To strengthen our argument, we show that the need for a wider public justification and for broader inclusion in liberal societies is grounded in respect for persons both as equal persons and as particular individuals. In particular, we claim that individuals’ values, ends, commitments, and affiliations activate demands of respect and can strengthen the commitment to the liberal–democratic order. Through a reformulation of the role of respect in liberal societies, we also show a kind of social and communitarian dimension that, we claim, is fully compatible with political liberalism and opens it up to “civic friendship” and “social solidarity,” which are constitutive elements for the development of a sense of justice and for the realization of a just and stable society.

Gender Relations and Female Agency in Claire Keegan’s Antarctica

Claire Keegan is one of the most prominent voices within the contemporary Irish short story panorama. Internationally acclaimed, her prose has been praised for its frank and bitter portrayal of a rural world, whose outdated values, no matter how anchored in the past they might be, still prevail in a modern milieu. Keegan’s unsympathetic views on society, mainly on the Catholic Church and the family, are the main targets of her harsh criticism. Issues like gender and sexuality, two social constructs with which to validate an uneven distribution of power, constitute the pillars of most of her plots. Bearing these aspects in mind, my proposal focuses on the analysis of Keegan’s first collection of short stories, Antarctica 1999, in light of gender relations and female agency, in an attempt to find patterns of – often thwarted – female emancipation in the context of the rapid changes of a society that is still adjusting to a globalised world. This article will also engage in the discussion of her second collection, Walk the Blue Fields 2007, and her long short story Foster 2010.

Normative Power ASEAN? Globalisation of Asian Values and Its Limits

The idea of normative power Europe, pioneered by Ian J. Manners, is usually applied to the European Union’s foreign policy. It states that the EU promotes one’s norms and values among adjacent states, determining what is “normal” in international relations. This paper, along with the burgeoning literature that looks for normative power beyond Europe, argues that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is another regional grouping that attempts to disseminate its norms and values worldwide, thus transforming itself into a nascent “normative power.” Structure-wise, this paper proceeds as follows. First, I will briefly overview the concept of Ian Manner’s normative power and its applicability to Europe and Asia. Second, I will determine the Asian values that may be the basis for ASEAN’s normative stance in the world. My comparison of ASEAN and the EU’s values are structured along with several topical issues: the role of a state in people’s quotidian life and the question of human rights promotion. I exemplify the latter with the Myanmar crisis that evoked harsh criticism of the international community. I conclude that the transformation of ASEAN into a “normative power” is rather dubious since there are limits in promoting the Asian norms and values. In ASEAN, there is a group of developing countries that reject Western universalism and struggle to find their own way in world politics.

Easing Medical Device Regulatory Oversight: The FDA and Testing Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic

The FDA already subjects most medical devices to much less stringent approval requirements than drugs and biologics, and attempts to speed up rollout during the COVID crisis have been problematic. Agency decisions, including to allow antibody test marketing without emergency use authorization or review, and the back-and-forth guidance on laboratory-developed tests, have met harsh criticism and unreliable results. Though the long-term results of these decisions are unclear, the FDA’s credibility, reliability, and commitment to safety are threatened by even further lessening medical device regulatory oversight during the coronavirus pandemic. The relaxed and fix-it-later approach to many of the FDA’s public health emergency decisions regarding medical devices reflect the ongoing criticisms of medical device regulation in general, specifically the 510(k) process and laboratory developed test regulation, offering a point of reflection towards reform. Adaptive legislation and a risk-based and evidentiary approach to premarket and postmarket review can begin to address these issues both generally and in an emergency context.

China Belt and Road Initiative: Give-and-Take of Infrastructure Development in the North Africa Subregion

It is not a secret that Africa is richly endowed with raw materials, which has raised the stakes for foreign interests. The amplification of these riches has created a sense of urgency in developed nations to enter partnerships to have access to the resources. North Africa, though more advance than its sub-Saharan neighbors falls in the essential corridor of the Belt and Roads Initiative (BRI); and thus, requires infrastructure improvement to meet the overall BRI agenda. This yearning for infrastructure development in Africa has generally been met by China’s search for natural resources. The BRI is that infrastructure investment platform that allows for connectivity between member nations. This semi-systematic literature review identifies and appraises relevant research and collects and analyzes data about the impact of BRI on development in this subregion. Even though the BRI has shown some evidence of constructive growth in infrastructure connectivity, the opaque nature of the engagements has been the subject of harsh criticism; with some critics describing China’s motive as an attempt to recolonize Africa. Chinese partnerships in Africa have resulted in major investments and credit flows providing the much-needed resources to the BRI member countries to implement the very much needed development schemes, despite the main challenge that remains—sustenance of these extensive projects. The most significant implication of the BRI has been the concern about a possible conflict between China and the US. A key to averting open conflict between China and the US is through an alliance and coordinated response by Europe and the US.