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Begin New Search Political Geography New York Content Type Journal Article

1. Rolf Hosfeld, Karl Marx. An Intellectual Biography (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013)

Author:
David Ragazzoni
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Central European University Political Science Journal
Institution:
Central European University
Abstract:
The book by Rolf Hosfeld is a sophisticated exploration into the intellectual and historical context in which Karl Marx developed his thought and work. A scholar with a broad and highly interdisciplinary cultural background, the author effectively combines the histor y of political and philosophical ideas, political and intellectual history and the attention to the world of literary works to cast light upon the multiple sources and internal developments of Marx's ideas. Unlike most of the literature that developed arou nd the Marxian world, he provides both a thorough analysis of philosophical issues and an enjoyable portrait of events and intellectuals; at the same time, he focuses on Marx 'the philosopher' as well as on Marx 'the man', underlying the intimate connectio n between the public and the private sphere in the way he shaped his own thought throughout his life.
Topic:
History
Political Geography:
New York

2. The "Responsibility to Prevent": An International Crimes Approach to the Prevention of Mass Atrocities

Author:
Ruben Reike
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
On September 9, 2013, diplomats and civil society activists gathered in a ballroom in New York to welcome Jennifer Welsh as the UN Secretary-General's new Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP). In her first public appearance in that role, Special Adviser Welsh explained that one of her top priorities would be “to take prevention seriously and to make it meaningful in practice.” “In the context of RtoP,” Welsh added during the discussion, “we are talking about crimes, and crimes have implications in terms of how we deal with them. You'll hear me say that a lot.” Welsh's approach of treating RtoP as a principle that is primarily concerned with prevention and is firmly linked to international crimes neatly captures the evolution of RtoP since its formal acceptance by states at the 2005 UN World Summit. Paragraphs 138 to 140 of the World Summit's Outcome Document not only elevated the element of prevention to a prominent place within the principle of RtoP but also restricted the scope of RtoP to four specific crimes under international law: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. The crime and prevention–focused version of RtoP has subsequently been defended and promoted by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and by UN member states. This article seeks to systematically explore some of the implications of linking RtoP to the concept of international crimes, with a particular focus on the preventive dimension of RtoP, the so-called responsibility to prevent. What, then, are the consequences of approaching the responsibility to prevent as the prevention of international crimes?
Political Geography:
New York

3. Reconceiving Citizenship: Noncitizen Voting in New York City Municipal Elections as a Case Study in Immigrant Integration and Local Governance

Author:
Lauren Gilbert
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
This paper uses New York City's consideration of an amendment to its charter that would extend voting rights to noncitizens in municipal elections as a case study in immigrant integration and local governance. It argues that New York City's biggest challenge in moving this issue forward is dealing successfully with two related questions: 1) why the New York City Council should be able to decide who “the People” are without approval from the state government in Albany and 2) whether it should attempt to enact the measure without a referendum. The analysis first examines the role of local government in regulating the lives of immigrants, contrasting enforcement-oriented strategies with those that are more integration-oriented. It then spotlights federal law obstacles to noncitizen suffrage, concluding that while neither federal criminal nor immigration law prevents state or local governments from extending the franchise to noncitizens in state or local matters, federal law imposes impediments that may deter some noncitizens from registering or that could carry serious immigration consequences for those who vote in violation of federal law. The article then focuses on state law obstacles, including New York's constitution, its state election law and its home rule provisions. It contrasts other recent experiences with noncitizen suffrage around the country, looking at both municipal and school board elections. Finally, it provides some thoughts on best practices in moving forward the issue of noncitizen suffrage in New York City and other locales. New York law is ambiguous enough that good arguments can be made for why neither Albany's approval nor a city-wide referendum is required. However, given New York City's historic relationship with Albany and the state legislature's power to preempt local law on election matters, if the city council attempts to expand the franchise to noncitizen voters without a referendum or comparable measure, it could trigger preemptive action in Albany or lengthy, divisive, and costly battles in the courts.
Topic:
Immigration
Political Geography:
New York

4. Some of our hemisphere's emerging leaders in politics, business, civil society, and the arts

Author:
Mari Hayman
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Lisa Besserman could be at home anywhere in the world; but last year, the Queens, New York, native put down roots in Argentina to launch Startup Buenos Aires, to motivate, support and connect startups across the globe. The 29-year-old tech entrepreneur, named one of the “100 Most Influential Tech Women on Twitter” by Business Insider Australia in May, says that her goal is to put Buenos Aires “on the map of global startup ecosystems.”
Political Geography:
New York, Argentina, and Australia

5. Innovators

Author:
Kate Brick, Mari Hayman, and Rebecca Bintrim
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Some of our hemisphere's emerging leaders in politics, business, civil society, and the arts.
Political Geography:
New York

6. The Failed-State Paradigm and Implications for Politics and Practices of International Security

Author:
Mohamed Omar Hashi
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
From the 1940s to the 1970s, the world witnessed considerable and tumultuous change. This change was, on the one hand, based on the independence realized by the territories that European empires had controlled during the colonial era. On the other hand, just as the struggle against colonial rule ended, new conflicts erupted in many of these newly independent nations. In contrast to the colonial era, after the culmination of the Cold War, which reshaped the world order, the number of newly independent states unable to fulfill their obligations to their citizens increased. Such failures became apparent as states failed to provide a certain level of functions that would ensure both the security and the well-being of their respective populations. Although such crises of statehood are often depicted as mainly internal in nature, their roots and ramifications transcend the intrastate and are often ignored in the literature. While there was an increase in violence, some scholars attempted to identify the reasons underlying the failure of such states to perform key functions. In doing so, the debate was joined by a body of literature that offered the common assumption that these conflicts usually come under a state's failure. The “failed state” notion became prominent among people in diplomatic, political, and academic circles, as it gradually became rooted in the literature. While in the beginning it concentrated on states within Africa, the label was embraced as an international concern in the aftermath of the “9/11” terror attacks on Mohamed Omar Hashi 79 the twin towers in New York City. As a result, failed states were seen as a threat to international security since such states could potentially offer a safe haven to terrorist organizations. Although virtually no one disagrees that the majority of supposed failed states suffer many severe political, security, and socioeconomic challenges, the failed-state thesis has come up short in sufficiently elucidating the development of such obstacles. Furthermore, there is a lack of clarity and much disagreement, often governed by subjective interpretations, in the academic and policy discourse over how to define the concept and when and how it should be used. This brief essay acts as a beginning critique of the failed-states discourse and thought. The intention is to highlight the problems associated with the current debates. It is not the aim here to present a new approach. The essay will begin with a quick analysis of the theoretical- cum-policy debates underpinning state failure. Thereafter, observation will be made on the apparent growing international security and political interest in the state-failure thesis, with particular reference to the recently emerging pathology of terrorism and its implications for those countries labelled as failed.
Political Geography:
New York and Europe

7. The Coasean Framework of the New York City Watershed Agreement

Author:
Geoffrey Black, D. Allan Dalton, Samia Islam, and Aaron Batteen
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Over 50 years ago, in "The Problem of Social Cost," Ronald Coase (1960) attempted to reorient the economics profession's treatment of externalities. He wanted to draw economists' attention away from the world of pure competition as a policy standard and investigate the consequences of transaction costs and property rights for the operation of markets. In 1991, he was awarded the Nobel prize in economics "for his discovery and clarification of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy" (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 1991). The Academy cited both his 1960 article and his 1937 article "The Nature of the Firm."
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
New York

8. Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand's Ideas Can End Big Government

Author:
Trevor Burrus
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
In Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand's Ideas Can End Big Government, Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), and Don Watkins, a fellow at ARI, give a full-throated and spirited defense of Rand's arguments for freedom, self-actualization, and the just society. The book is a clear explanation of objectivism that weaves in timely and accurate policy discussions, such as the chapter on health care, that buttress the overall point.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
New York

9. The Great Rent Wars: New York 1917-1929

Author:
Peter Van Doren
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Economic shocks in an unregulated textbook world are managed through the price system. During gluts, prices fall and the least efficient firms lose wealth and exit the market. The result is that supply falls and demand increases. Eventually a new equilibrium is reached in which prices increase toward marginal cost and risk-adjusted returns to firms equal the cost of capital. During shortages, prices rise, existing firms receive rents, and new firms enter the market. The result is that supply increases and demand falls. Eventually a new equilibrium is reached in which prices decrease toward marginal cost and risk-adjusted returns to firms fall to equal the cost of capital.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
New York

10. The Rising Global Thermostat: What business can do to lower the temperature

Author:
Ban Ki-moon
Publication Date:
04-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
The private sector has long been a key partner for the United Nations on advancing sustainable development initiatives throughout the world. Today, climate change presents one of the most urgent global challenges to sustainable development, and it will demand the support and engagement of the private sector to confront it effectively. Investing in green energy is not only the right thing to do morally, but also, for companies who take it up, benefits the bottom line.
Topic:
Environment
Political Geography:
New York and United Nations

11. Eco-friendly mining in Colombia — Latinos in Nevada — A network for Puerto Rico's diaspora — Engaging artists in New York City

Publication Date:
04-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Business Innovator: Felipe Arango, Colombia The Chocó region in western Colombia is one of the most mineral-rich places in the hemisphere. It is also ecologically rich, boasting species of flora thought to be unique to Chocó. But due to years of commercial gold and platinum mining that have leached mercury and cyanide into local rivers, the Chocó region has also become one of the most threatened natural areas in the world. Felipe Arango has been working to change that. Arango, 34, is CEO of Oro Verde—an NGO based in Medellín, Colombia, that empowers local miners to use more ecologically friendly artisanal mining techniques. Founded in 2003, the organization purchases gold produced by certified artisanal miners, many of them Afro-Colombian, and sells it to socially conscious jewelers around the world. Oro Verde takes a 2 percent cut to fund its operations and administration, and contributes its profits and reinvested premiums to the protection of 11,120 acres (4,500 hectares) of tropical rainforest. Oro Verde's gold certification process, meanwhile, has influenced the development of a global “fair-trade, fair-mined” gold certification process.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Human Rights
Political Geography:
New York and Colombia

12. Celebrating Germany in Brazil — Dominica hosts the World Creole Festival — Tackling Mexico City's traffic jams —10 Things to Do in Antigua

Publication Date:
04-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Prost, Brazil! Grab a stein-full of caipirinha and stroll down to Ipanema beach in your lederhosen—it's Germany-Brazil Year in Brazil. The yearlong festival, aimed at deepening German-Brazilian relations, kicked off in May with the opening of the German-Brazilian Economic Forum in São Paulo. “Brazil is one of the most successful new centers of power in the world,” says Guido Westerwelle, Germany's foreign minister. “We want to intensify cooperation with Brazil, not only economically but also culturally.” It's no surprise that Brazil, the sixth-largest economy in the world, has caught the attention of Europe's financial powerhouse. Brazil is Germany's most important trading partner in Latin America, accounting for $14.2 billion in imports in 2012. With some 1,600 German companies in Brazil providing 250,000 jobs and 17 percent of industrial GDP, it's an economic relationship that clearly has mutual benefits.
Topic:
Security, Economics, and Environment
Political Geography:
United States, New York, Europe, Brazil, Germany, and Mexico

13. Extreme Sustainable City Makeover: New York

Author:
Michael Sorkin
Publication Date:
05-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Most of us are familiar with the concept of the "ecological footprint." Originally developed by Canadian academics Matthis Wackernagel and William Rees, the idea embodies a series of algorithms (numerous versions are available on the web) that convert a wide variety of consumption inputs into a single quantity: area. Using this model, one can compare how much of the Earth's surface is required to build a car, heat a house, produce a meal, sink the carbon from a coal-burning power plant, etc.
Political Geography:
New York and Canada

14. How Do We Make Sustainable Cities Sustainable Policies?

Author:
Hannah Thonet
Publication Date:
05-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Several of the region's high-profile mayors who championed sustainability during their administrations have recently left—or will soon leave—office. This raises an important question: what will happen to the policies and programs they left behind?
Political Geography:
New York

15. Celebrating Afro-Peruvian culture through dance — Bringing essential services to Detroit — Creating a global market for Guatemalan weavers — Bringing education to Chile's Indigenous people

Publication Date:
05-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Arts Innovator: Luis Antonio Vilchez, Peru Watch a video of Luis Antonio Vilchez dancing in Times Square below. Passing through New York's Times Square one winter day in 2010, Lima native Luis Antonio Vilchez noticed a group of street percussionists playing a familiar Afro-Peruvian rhythm—and immediately decided to join them. Soon, a large crowd gathered as Vilchez, wearing a button-down shirt and a winter coat, burst into a dance performance that was so impressive even the drummers watched in awe. The same kind of impromptu creativity dominates Adú Proyecto Universal (Adú Universal Project), a nonprofit arts organization Vilchez founded four years ago to re-imagine Peruvian identity through dance, theater and percussion. Financed by money the group earns from its performances, Adú (which means “friend” in limeña slang) encourages its 20 members—all dancers—to combine different dance and music genres, crossing back and forth between tradition and modernity.
Topic:
Economics, Education, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States and New York

16. Celebrating Chinese New Year in Cuba — 10 Things to Do in Valparaíso — Mezcal goes upscale in Mexico—Graphicanos.

Author:
Richard André
Publication Date:
05-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Graphicanos View a slideshow of Graphicanos prints below. Indiana is better known for the Indy 500 and sports teams than for a thriving art culture, so most art lovers would be surprised to stumble upon the cutting-edge exhibit of serigraphic prints—a contemporary art form that uses block-size ink stencils to print images onto canvas—on display this winter at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art. Charles Shepard, the museum's executive director and curator of the groundbreaking exhibit—Graphicanos: Contemporary Latino Prints from the Serie Project—likes to point out that there is a thriving art world beyond the traditional centers of New York and San Francisco. And he believes presenting often-ignored contributions of Latino artists in the American “heartland”—not usually seen as a center of Latino culture—reflects the rich diversity of U.S. society today. “Every part of our diverse culture is making art in some form,” Shepard says. “And as a museum, we should be looking at that.” The museum hosts an annual Día de los Muertos celebration every November, which attracts about 2,000 visitors from a variety of cultural backgrounds. The event became so popular that it inspired him to collaborate with the late Sam Coronado, a Mexican-American serigraphic print artist, for the Graphicanos exhibit.
Topic:
Agriculture
Political Geography:
New York, Cuba, and Mexico

17. Political Self-Sacrifice: Agency, Body and Emotion in International Relations

Author:
Andrew A.G. Ross
Publication Date:
04-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Political Self-Sacrifice: Agency, Body and Emotion in International Relations, K. M. Fierke (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 281 pp., $95 cloth. What could we learn from examining suicide bombing, self-immolation, or hunger strikes not through the lens of state security but from the position of those individuals who use such acts to achieve normative change? In addressing this question, Political Self-Sacrifice brings what seem like senseless acts of desperation into focus as strategically intelligible and culturally meaningful techniques of resistance. By disentangling the logic of “political self-sacrifice,” K. M. Fierke offers an important and timely account of the political strategies, cultural meanings, and normative aspirations associated with those participants in international affairs who, as she puts it, “play with a weak hand” (p. 8).
Topic:
International Relations, Politics, and Regime Change
Political Geography:
New York

18. Timeline: Politicization of Sexuality

Author:
Meehyun Nam- Thompson
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
While international organizations and governments move to expand equality for all—regardless of sexual orientation—recent global developments threaten this progress. The timeline begins at a pivotal moment, the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York, widely regarded as a catalyst for the modern LGBT movement. Stonewall is considered the first instance of community solidarity against systematic, state-sponsored persecution of sexual minorities. While the struggle has been ongoing, the most significant developments have occurred in the last 25 years, including expansion of voting rights, social welfare benefits, and political power. We end our timeline, however, with a disturbing new trend—the passage of homophobic legislation in Africa, South Asia, and Russia.
Political Geography:
Africa, Russia, New York, South Asia, and Asia

19. Currency Wars

Author:
David A. Andelman
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
At noon on August 10, 1978, I arrived at the frontier between Austria and Czechoslovakia in my rickety old Opel sedan that was The New York Times bureau car. I'd driven up from Belgrade, where I was then based, covering an Eastern Europe thoroughly in the grip of communism. Now, when I arrived at the frontier, I steeled myself. I was about to pass through what Winston Churchill had 32 years earlier dubbed the Iron Curtain, separating East from West. These were difficult times. Communism and capitalism were very much at each others' throats, and there was no more extreme a contrast than in some of these heavily-fortified border points where the favored few could cross in both directions, provided they had all the right papers. Indeed, I had my American passport, my Czechoslovak visa, a fistful of dollars, my notebooks, and some background material, from which I had carefully expunged any Czech contacts and sliced off the letterhead of Radio Free Europe Research, the virulently anti-communist, American-backed propaganda source, that would likely have landed me in hot water with the ever-vigilant border police.
Political Geography:
New York and Europe

20. Just Communicating

Author:
David A. Andelman
Publication Date:
06-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
PARIS—In March 1975, in what would turn out to be the final month of the war in Cambodia, I thought it might be a nice touch to place a call to my bride of six months and wish her a happy birthday. My interpreter/fixer/photographer, Dith Pranh, advised me to book the call a week or so in advance, which I did at the PTT (Post Telegraph)—the only locale where an international call had even a prayer of going through. At the appointed time, I appeared there and, after a wait of only several hours, the operator announced that my party was on the line in New York, and I could pick up "the apparatus" in Cabin #1. I lifted the phone and there, 7,000 miles away, was a very faint voice of Susan making its way through a cloud of electronic noise, crackles, and pops. We shouted at each other for a minute or so, before we finally gave up on any meaningful communication.
Political Geography:
New York, Paris, and Cambodia

21. Europe's Existential Threats

Author:
David A. Andelman
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
On Saturday, October 1, 1977, I arrived in Belgrade to take up my post as East European bureau chief of The New York Times. I'd timed my arrival to coincide with the opening of the conference of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), one of many efforts during the depths of the Cold War to facilitate dialogue between East and West—the two halves of a very much divided, and at times hostile, Europe.
Political Geography:
New York and Europe

22. The End of Geography: The Changing Nature of the International System and the Challenge to International Law

Author:
Daniel Bethlehem
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
This lecture, inaugurating a lecture series in honour of Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, looks at the changing place of geography in the international system and the challenges that this poses to international law, from the central place of geography in the Westphalian legal order to its less certain place in the rapidly globalizing and diffuse international society of the present day. Examining these issues through the contrasting prisms of the principal political organs of the United Nations in New York, on the one hand, and the UN Specialized Agencies centred in Geneva, on the other, the lecture also explores these issues by reference to Thomas Friedman's thesis that The World Is Flat. The lecture concludes by identifying a number of areas of international law, and the international legal system, that will require creative thinking in the period to come to reflect the diminishing importance of geography.
Topic:
International Law
Political Geography:
New York

23. The End of Geography: The Changing Nature of the International System and the Challenge to International Law: A Reply to Daniel Bethlehem

Author:
David S. Koller
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
This article responds to Daniel Bethlehem's assertions that globalization is diminishing the importance of geography, and thereby challenging the Westphalian order on which international law is constructed. It contends that international law does not take geography as it is but actively creates and sustains a state-based geography. It argues that the challenges Bethlehem identifies are not new but are inherent in international law's efforts to impose a state-based order on a global world. The question is not whether international lawyers will respond to these challenges, but how they will respond. Will they follow Bethlehem in reinforcing a statist order, or will they place sovereignty of states in the service of the global human community?
Topic:
Globalization and International Law
Political Geography:
New York and Europe

24. The Ever-Ending Geography of International Law: The Changing Nature of the International System and the Challenge to International Law: A Reply to Daniel Bethlehem

Author:
Carl Landauer
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Daniel Bethlehem makes a convincing case in 'The End of Geography' that the growing challenges of our contemporary world require a move from our state-centred international legal system. This reply places Bethlehem's voice among a growing list of those who either describe or prescribe a move from the traditional Westphalian state system. It argues, however, that the challenges have always been transboundary and that the Westphalian state system has never been as strong or as long-lived as envisaged by its critics.
Topic:
International Law
Political Geography:
New York and Europe

25. A Constant Craving for Fresh Brains and a Taste for Decaffeinated Neighbours

Author:
Maria Artistodemou
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
This article is a radical rethinking of public international law through the use of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Its central thesis is that while contemporary scholarship addresses what Lacan calls the symbolic and imaginary registers including law, politics, and ideology, it continues to ignore and repress the dimension of the real. The article illustrates this with a clinical example examined by Kris and discussed by Lacan. Imagining public international law as an indefatigable neurotic in search of 'fresh brains', the article shows why meeting her in the domains of law and politics is not enough to satiate her appetite. What continues to resist is the 'extimate', the inhuman element within the human that the subject hides so well from herself that it is excluded in the interior. A major instance of the extimate is the 'caffeinated neighbour', that is, the neighbour who is not in our image because her disturbing core has not been subtracted. The article argues that unless international law comes to terms with this inevitably ugly and obscene core, in oneself as well as in the neighbour, it cannot hope to achieve any meaningful changes. That the need to recognize the extimate is the ethical demand facing international law now; unless we address it, our symptoms will continue to grow and we will continue to crave fresh brains.
Topic:
International Law
Political Geography:
New York

26. UN Immunity or Impunity? A Human Rights Based Challenge

Author:
Rosa Freedman
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
National courts have long understood the UN to have absolute immunity from their jurisdiction, based upon provisions in the UN Charter and the Convention on Privileges and Immunities of the UN. While state immunity has evolved over recent decades, allowing restrictive immunity that distinguishes between acts jure imperii and those jure gestionis, questions have arisen as to whether that doctrine applies to international organizations and, specifically, the UN. The counterbalance to the UN's absolute immunity is the requirement that it provide alternative mechanisms for resolving disputes. This raises concerns about accountability and internal review. Case law from various courts demonstrates an increasing willingness to attempt to challenge absolute immunity on the basis that the bar to jurisdiction violates claimants' rights to access a court and to a remedy. In all of those cases, individuals' ability to access alternative mechanisms for dispute resolution has been used to show that their rights have been realized. Recent events concerning the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti may lead to a challenge to the UN's absolute immunity. The UN has deemed those claims to be 'not receivable', which denies the claimants their rights to access a court and to a remedy. In October 2013, lawyers for the Haiti cholera victims filed a class action in the Southern District of New York, seeking to challenge the UN's immunity by bringing the Organization before a national court. This article explores whether the events in Haiti may provide the first successful, human rights-based challenge to the UN's absolute immunity.
Topic:
Human Rights
Political Geography:
New York

27. An International Lawyer in Democracy and Dictatorship – Re-Introducing Herbert Kraus

Author:
Heiko Meiertöns
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Herbert Kraus (1884–1965) is among the forgotten international lawyers of the 20th century. Kraus took part in a number of developments of great importance for the shaping of modern international law: he participated in the drafting process of the Versailles Peace Treaty and the Treaty on the European Coal and Steel Community and acted as defence counsel at Nuremberg. The founding director of the Institute for International Law at the University of Göttingen was forced to retire between 1937 and 1945 due to his criticism of National Socialism. The post-war perception of his work was coined by his forced retirement. However, his work between 1933 and 1937 sheds light on the dilemma of choosing between opposition and adjustment that Kraus was faced with during that period. This article re-introduces Kraus – a complex German character of international law – and the main features of his work.
Topic:
International Law
Political Geography:
New York

28. Helping tech startups in Buenos Aires — Tearing down cultural walls in Cuba — Battling Colombia's corrupt politicians — Promoting HIV awareness.

Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Business Innovator: Lisa Besserman Lisa Besserman could be at home anywhere in the world; but last year, the Queens, New York, native put down roots in Argentina to launch Startup Buenos Aires, to motivate, support and connect startups across the globe. The 29-year-old tech entrepreneur, named one of the “100 Most Influential Tech Women on Twitter” by Business Insider Australia in May, says that her goal is to put Buenos Aires “on the map of global startup ecosystems.” Her clients seem to agree. A year after its launch, her organization—which helps local startups find employees and funding, and connects local tech talent to projects and employers—has attracted some 4,000 members, including foreign firms. Besserman is a successful example of a new class of global workers that could be called “tech nomads.” In November 2012, feeling constrained by corporate culture in New York City, Besserman left her job as director of operations at AirKast Inc., a mobile app development startup, and looked at a map to determine where she'd begin her next business venture. The only requirement: the city had to have a similar time zone to the East Coast to make doing business easier.
Political Geography:
New York, Colombia, and Cuba

29. Seven Pleasures, by Willard Spiegelman

Author:
Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:
06-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness, by Willard Spiegelman. New York: Picador, 2009. 208 pp. $16 (paperback). In Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness, Willard Spiegelman asks: “In adulthood, what should—what does—one read? No longer having the luxury of youthful promiscuity, knowing that the clock ticks, that every choice of something eliminates something else, what should you do?” (p. 49). Spiegelman suggests rereading “those books that gave pleasure in the past.” He adds: A photographic memory is not necessarily a blessing; there's a charm in forgetting, so if you're not cursed with perfect recall, you'll have the joy of discovering some things as though for the first time, while others will hit you with the refreshing rush of repetition. As an older version of the person you've always been, you can have things two ways at once: something old, something new; something recalled, something revealed. (p. 49) Although Spiegelman does not directly advise going back to what one loves and extracting still more pleasure from it, or learning to convert a declining memory into a source of enjoyment, he nevertheless provides example after example of himself doing just such things. Whereas other books about happiness tell readers how to become happy, in Seven Pleasures Spiegelman simply discusses the activities that have made him happy and shows how he has learned to deeply enjoy his life.
Political Geography:
New York

30. he Rape of the Masters, by Roger Kimball

Author:
Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:
08-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art, by Roger Kimball. New York: Encounter Books, 2005. 200 pp. $17.95 (paperback). Reviewed by Daniel Wahl Roger Kimball begins The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art by asking why we teach and study art history. “It is a question,” he says, “that elicits a complicated answer.” To learn about art, yes, but also to learn about the cultural setting in which art unfolds; in addition, to learn about—what to call it? “Evolution” is not quite right, neither is “progress.” Possibly “development”: to learn about the development of art, then, about how over the course of history artists “solved problems”—for example, the problem of modeling three-dimensional space on an essentially two-dimensional plane. Those are some of the answers, or some parts of the answer, most of us would give. There are others. We teach and study art history—as we teach and study literary history or political history or the history of science—partly to familiarize ourselves with humanity's adventure in time. We expect an educated person in the West to remember what happened in 1066, to know the plot of Hamlet, to understand (sort of) the law of gravity, to recognize Mona Lisa, Botticelli's Birth of Venus, or Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergère. These are aspects of a huge common inheritance, episodes that alternately bask in and cast illuminations and shadows, the interlocking illuminations and shadows that delineate mankind's conjuring with the world. All this might be described as the dough, the ambient body of culture. The yeast is supplied by direct acquaintance with the subject of study: the poem or novel or play, the mental itinerary a Galileo or Newton traveled, the actual work of art on the wall. In the case of art history, the raison d'être—the ultimate motive—is supplied by a direct visual encounter with great works of art. Everything else is prolegomenon or afterthought: scaffolding to support the main event, which is not so much learning about art as it is experiencing art first hand. Or so one would have thought. What has happened to the main event? (pp. 1–2) As Kimball makes clear, the main event has changed.
Political Geography:
New York

31. The Martian, by Andy Weir

Author:
Ari Armstrong
Publication Date:
08-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
The Martian, by Andy Weir. New York: Crown, 2014. 384 pp. $24 (hardcover). Reviewed by Ari Armstrong Imagine you're on a mission on Mars. Your space suit, not to mention your body, was punctured by an antenna blown loose by a raging sandstorm. Luckily, although the blow knocked you unconscious, the blood from your wound helped seal the hole, so you didn't die from lack of oxygen. Now that you're awake and moving again, you realize an unfortunate fact: Your entire crew, reasonably thinking you died and facing the dangerous storm, took off in the MAV (Mars Ascent Vehicle) and left you behind. You are now totally alone on a planet hostile to life. Your food supplies are running low, and you have no obvious way to communicate with Earth, much less to get home. What do you do? If you're Mark Watney, the main character of Andy Weir's near-futuristic, science fiction novel The Martian, you carefully think about what you need to do to stay alive and get rescued, and then you methodically do it. Watney's training as a botanist and a mechanical engineer gives him the skills he needs to survive; and his fierce desire to live, his fortitude, and his quirky sense of humor give him the strength of will to do it. Fortunately, Watney's own mission and various other missions to Mars have left a number of important tools at his disposal. He has a reasonably well-stocked Hab (basically, a giant pressurized tent), some solar cells, several functional space suits, two functional rovers, duct tape, glue, and various other machines and items. Oh, and he has some live potatoes, which his crew was supposed to have cooked for Thanksgiving dinner. Don't forget the potatoes! They become crucially important in Watney's efforts to survive. The story revolves around Watney coming up with clever ways to keep sucking air and consuming calories, then figuring out how to travel some two thousand miles across the cold Martian landscape to the site of a future Mars landing.
Political Geography:
New York

32. The existence and use of 'evil' in international politics

Author:
Anna Geis and Christopher Hobson
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
There is an extensive literature on acts, events and people in international politics that may be described as 'evil' , but much less work specifically focusing on how this idea operates and is used in an international context. This has begun to change recently, however, as a result of leading international figures–most notably George W. Bush–using the term prominently. This special issue seeks to further advance scholarship on these issues by moving beyond purely philosophical accounts on the nature of evil, and considering: how it has been used to frame the identities of actors in international relations (IR); whether it works to enable or preclude specific kinds of behaviour; and what role it plays as part of our moral and political vocabulary. This introduction provides a brief survey of the literature on evil in IR, and gives an overview of the contributions to the special issue.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
New York

33. The Touch of Midas: Money, Markets, and Morality

Author:
Edward Skidelsky
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Money has always inspired obsession, both in those who amass it and in those who think about it. “Man will never be able to know what money is any more than he will be able to know what God is,” wrote the French financier Marcel Labordère to his friend John Maynard Keynes. The analogy is apt. Money, like God, injects infinity into human desires. To love it is to embark on a journey without end. Three new books testify to money's enduring power to fascinate and horrify. The most scholarly of them, The Invention of Market Freedom by political theorist Eric MacGilvray, traces the emergence of the distinctively modern or “market” conception of freedom out of its “republican” predecessor. The general story is somewhat familiar, but MacGilvray complicates it by showing that market freedom did not vanquish its republican competitor in open combat but subverted it from within, like a parasite devouring its host.
Topic:
Economics and Markets
Political Geography:
New York

34. At the Edge of US Immigration's "Halt of Folly:" Data, Information, and Research Needs in the Event of Legalization

Author:
Fernando Riosmena
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
Virtually all accounts of the state of the US immigration system point to its patently broken condition, with the presence of almost 12 million people without legal status paramount to this characterization. Because of several recent developments including continued and renewed interest in regularizing the status of most unauthorized migrants in executive and legislative branch agendas, the Center for Migration Studies of New York, with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, convened a group of immigration specialists, researchers, scholars, and advocates in Washington, DC in September 2013 to discuss potential data, information, and research needs in the event of the enactment of large-scale legalization programs for the unauthorized population.
Topic:
Development
Political Geography:
New York and Washington

35. The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto

Author:
Joseph Kellard
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
“[E]ach person shall remain free, especially in his religion, and . . . no one shall be persecuted or investigated because of their religion” (p. 96). Those words evoke America's revolutionary era, but they were penned two centuries earlier. They are part of the Dutch de facto constitution, the Union of Utrecht, drafted in 1579 after thousands of Dutchmen had suffered religious persecution by the Spanish in the form of torture and death. To Russell Shorto, a writer for The New York Times Magazine, these words speak directly to the “tolerance” embodied by the 17th-century Dutch Republic and its colonies, particularly the island colony of Manhattan, or New Amsterdam, after English explorer Henry Hudson claimed the land for the Netherlands in 1609.
Political Geography:
New York, America, Spain, Netherlands, Island, and Dutch

36. Editor's Note

Publication Date:
04-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
On March 21, almost one million Kurds gathered in Diyarbakir to celebrate the Kurdish New Year, Newroz and listened to the message of Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the outlawed PKK. In the midst of the cheers and applauses, Ocalan declared that the era of armed struggle for the Kurds ended and the PKK would lay down its arms. This was a historic public demonstration of a new peace process conducted by the Turkish government on the one side and Abdullah Ocalan on the other to reach a negotiated settlement for the Kurdish insurgency.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
New York and Turkey

37. The Rise of Latin America: Reforming, Fast and Slow

Author:
Madeline K. B. Ross
Publication Date:
05-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Affairs
Institution:
School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Abstract:
After Neoliberalism? The Left and Economic Reforms in Latin America Gustavo A. Flores-Macías (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 261 pages.
Political Geography:
New York and Latin America

38. Teaching Palestine

Author:
Matthew Abraham
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
The Politics of Teaching Palestine to Americans: Addressing Pedagogical Strategies, by Marcy Jane Knopf-Newman. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. xxvi + 196 pages. Notes to p. 235. Bibliography to p. 247. Index to p. 265. $85.00 cloth. JSTOR
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
New York, America, and Palestine

39. What's Wrong with the Fed? What Would Restore Independence?

Author:
Allan H. Meltzer
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
On September 1, 1948, Allan Sproul, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, commented on Fed independence: I don't suppose that anyone would still argue that the central banking system should be independent of the Government of the country. The control which such a system exercises, over the volume and value of money is a right of Government and is exercised on behalf of Government, with powers delegated by the Government. But there is a distinction between independence from Government and independence from political influence in a narrower sense. The powers of the central banking system should not be a pawn of any group or faction or party, or even any particular administration, subject to political pressures and its own passing fiscal necessities [Letter to Robert R. Bowie, in Meltzer 2003: 738].
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
New York

40. Dodd-Frank: Money Never Sleeps

Author:
Christopher Whalen
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Abstract:
PRESIDENT OBAMA and Congress continue to wrestle with competing ideas to fix America's housing crisis, ranging from abolishing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to introducing new regulations for repairing the rickety mortgage-financing system years after it crashed. To understand the enduring nature of today's housing-system mess, it is not really necessary to do much more than to look backward. To look, that is, at the careers of two former prominent politicians, each of whom has played an integral role in American finance in recent decades.
Topic:
Government and Reform
Political Geography:
United States, New York, and America

41. Millett, Allan R. and Williamson Murray, eds. Military Effectiveness, 3 volumes. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Author:
Keith Hann
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Cambridge University Press has seen fit to re-release this seminal three-volume work, produced under the stewardship of Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray and originally published by Unwin Hyman in 1988. This work, covering the armies of most of the major powers in the First World War (volume one), the Interwar Period (volume two), and the Second World War (Volume three), contains essay from a veritable who's who of military historians: Earl F. Ziemke, Brian Sullivan, MacGregor Knox, Paul Kennedy, Holger H. Herwig, and many more. Well regarded upon its original release, it has been cited again and again by scholars over the past twenty-five years, both by those looking to understand the nature of military effectiveness as well as by those seeking deeper insight into a particular nation's armed forces, and a reissue is more than welcome.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
New York

42. The Pilgrims Society: A Special Relationship Between Great Britain and the United States

Author:
William J. vanden Heuvel
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Council of American Ambassadors
Abstract:
One hundred and ten years ago, on the eve of his coronation, Edward VII had appendicitis. The coronation was postponed for six weeks. In those days, ocean travel was the only transportation link between Great Britain and its former colony. Many Americans were in London for the coronation—an event that they had never seen since Queen Victoria's reign had lasted 64 years—so during this unplanned interval, they had lunches, and dinners, and dinners and lunches—and at one of them, on the very eve of the Royal event, a hundred Englishmen and Americans who saw in the greater alliance of their two countries the possibilities of a better world, forged the structure of the Pilgrims Society, an organization to exist separately in London and New York with the mutual purpose of “promoting the brotherhood among nations especially the United States and the British Empire.” In its illustrious history, Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Reigning Sovereigns have praised the Pilgrims Society's role as an advocate of the Special Relationship between Britain and America.
Political Geography:
Britain, New York, America, and London

43. The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade

Author:
Krisztian Simon
Publication Date:
12-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Affairs
Institution:
School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Abstract:
The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade Andrew Feinstein (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 672 pages. In Shadow World, a book on the global arms trade, author Andrew Feinstein argues that there is only a thin line between what constitutes legal and illegal. "With bribery and corruption de rigueur," he writes, "there are very few arms transactions that are entirely above board." Feinstein notes that manufacturers are often major donors to political parties and prospective employers of defeated politicians, which ensures that the beneficiaries of arms deals seldom face justice. According to the author's estimates, including the trade in conventional arms-which includes military vehicles, missiles, and ammunition-is worth $60 billion per year, accounts for more than 40 percent of the corruption in world trade, and has cost the lives of 231 million people in the last century. The money spent on arms, especially by developing countries, is desperately needed in other areas. Feinstein, who resigned from the African National Congress and South Africa's governing party after they were unwilling to launch an investigation into a major arms deal recalls that, in the late 1990s, the South African government spent £6 billion (nearly $10 billion) on guns it barely used, even while it could not afford antiretroviral drugs for the country's 6 million HIV-infected citizens. According to Feinstein, more than 355,000 of them died between 2000 and 2005. Using numerous interviews and confidential documents, Feinstein reconstructs the major arms deals of the last hundred years, describing in great detail the interactions of governments, manufacturers, and powerful arms dealers and provides an astonishing and insightful description of the world's "second-oldest profession." Although many of the stories were reported in the international press, they have rarely been described in such great detail. What is missing, however, is a more detailed analysis of the reasons for the lack of political will for reform, though Feinstein does offer some guidelines to help future policy makers deal with the arms industry. Unfortunately, Feinstein does not expect to see any changes in the near future; the first decade of the new millennium was, in his view, even more violent than the previous century.
Political Geography:
Africa, New York, and South Africa

44. Mexico's Struggle for Public Security: Organized Crime and State Responses

Author:
Laura Vargas
Publication Date:
12-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Affairs
Institution:
School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Abstract:
Mexico's Struggle for Public Security: Organized Crime and State ResponsesGeorge Philip, Susana Berruecos, eds.(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 204 pages.
Political Geography:
New York and Mexico

45. Book Reviews

Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
German Politics and Society
Institution:
German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:
Abstract:James Cronin, George Ross, and James Shock, eds. What's Left of the Left: Democrats and Social Democrats in Challenging Times (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011)Reviewed by Willy JouJames Bohman, Democracy across Borders: From Dêmos to Dêmoi (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2007)Reviewed by by Conrad KingRitter, Gerhard, The Price of German Unity. Reunification and the Crisis of the Welfare State, translated by Richard Deveson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)Reviewed by Joyce M. MushabenMichaela Hoenicke Moore, Know Your Enemy. The American Debate on Nazism, 1933-1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010)Reviewed by John BendixElena Mancini, Magnus Hirschfeld and the Quest for Sexual Freedom: A History of the First International Sexual Freedom Movement (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).Reviewed by Leila J. Rupp Paul Betts, Within Walls: Private Life in the German Democratic Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)Reviewed by Charles S. Maier
Political Geography:
New York and Germany

46. Book Reviews

Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
German Politics and Society
Institution:
German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:
Abstract:David Meskill, Optimizing the German Workforce: Labor Administration from Bismarck to the Economic Miracle (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010) Reviewed by Gregory Baldi;Jan-Werner Müller, Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011) Reviewed by John Bendix;Douglas B. Klusmeyer and Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Immigration Policy in the Federal Republic of Germany (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009) Reviewed by Suzanna M. Crage;Derek Hastings, Catholicism the Roots of Nazism: Religious Identity and National Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) Reviewed by Robert P. Ericksen;Review of Pertti Ahonen, Death at the Berlin Wall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) Reviewed by Hope M. Harrison;Wolfgang Scholz, The Social Budget of Germany: Keeping the Welfare State in Perspective (Berlin: edition sigma, 2009) Reviewed by John Bendix;Philip Broadbent and Sabine Hake, eds., Berlin. Divided City, 1945-1989(New York: Berghahn Books, 2010) Reviewed by Helge F. Jani;Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010) Reviewed by Larson Powell
Political Geography:
New York and Germany

47. Book Reviews

Publication Date:
12-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
German Politics and Society
Institution:
German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:
Abstract: William Collins Donahue, Holocaust as Fiction: Bernhard Schlink's "Nazi" Novels and Their Films(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)Reviewed by Margaret McCarthyTheodor W. Adorno, Guilt and Defense: On the Legacies of National Socialism in Postwar Germany, edited, translated, and introduced by Jeffrey K. Olick and Andrew J. Perrin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010)Reviewed by Gregory R. Smulewicz-ZuckerFriedrich Pollock, Theodor W. Adorno, and Colleagues, Group Experiment and other Writings: The Frankfurt School on Public Opinion in Postwar Germany, edited and translated by Andrew J. Perrin and Jeffrey K. Olick (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011).Reviewed by Jan BoestenGabriele Mueller and James M. Skidmore, eds. Cinema and Social Change in Germany and Austria(Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012).Reviewed by Sabine von MeringChristopher J. Fischer, Alsace to the Alsatians? Visions and Divisions of Alsatian Regionalism, 1870-1939(New York: Berghahn Books, 2010)Reviewed by Jennifer A. Yoder
Political Geography:
New York, Germany, and Austria

48. Graham Smith, Democratic Innovations: Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Author:
Daniela Sirinic
Publication Date:
02-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Central European University Political Science Journal
Institution:
Central European University
Abstract:
Resurgence and reappraisal of democracies and democratic ideals in the 21st century has surely received its due share of academic attention. However, growing discontent with the existing forms and practices of representative democracy has facilitated the emergence and revival of ideas of deliberative and direct democracy. As a critical examination of the existing practices of 'democratic innovations', Graham Smith's book is a systematic and coherent collection of previously disengaged thoughts, practices and criticisms that were under-analyzed in the literature. Moreover, as a unique amalgam of democratic theory and new practices, it is the first comprehensive study of the different forms of democratic innovations.
Political Geography:
New York

49. . . . and New York and The Hague and Tokyo and Geneva and Nuremberg and . . .: The Geographies of International Law

Author:
David Koller
Publication Date:
02-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
In the dominant narrative of international law, historical events in space and time are made to fall along an invisible line of progress, from Westphalia in 1648 through the Bretton Woods and San Francisco conferences of 1944 and 1945 to the present day and continuing on through the future to a more just world. Against this, a counter-narrative has emerged which denies the possibility of such linear development and consigns international law to forever tracing an unending circular path between points of idealism and realpolitik. This article examines how international lawyers have created and continue to create these metaphysical geographies of international law. Drawing on the work of the French multi-disciplinary thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, this article shows that both approaches, and indeed the very concept of international law, can at most only replicate and impose pre-conceived theories and that the imposition of such theories is contrary to the natural patterns of human consciousness. It urges us to see international law rather as but one manifestation of the ongoing struggle between efforts to impose unity on and to control human consciousness and the mind's efforts to break free of such restricting structures.
Political Geography:
Geneva, New York, Tokyo, San Francisco, Papua, and Westphalia

50. UN-Appointed Palmer Commission, Report on the Gaza Flotilla incident, New York, July 2011 (excerpts).

Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
On 2 August 2010, in response to the continuing fallout over Israel's 31 May 2010 attack on a humanitarian aid flotilla bound for Gaza that resulted in the death of nine Turkish citizens, the UN Secretary formally established a panel of inquiry into the incident. The six-vessel flotilla, led by the Turkish-owned Mavi Marmara and heading toward Gaza with the stated intention of breaking Israel's siege, was boarded by Israeli forces some seventy-two nautical miles out to sea. The incident further strained Israeli-Turkish relations, which had deteriorated sharply over Israel's Operation Cast Lead in 2008–9.
Political Geography:
New York and United Nations