Academic literature on the topic 'Posen, Poland (Province)'

Municipal Gasworks in the Poznań Province during the Interwar Period Established in 1919, the Poznań Province covered almost entirely the former Prussian Poznań Province (Provinz Posen) and initially comprised 118 cities, which decreased to 101 in 1938. On the eve of World War I, as many as 80 out of 129 cities had gas in Provinz Posen, and nearly 1/4 of them were supplied with gas from miniature gasoline gas plants. In the wake of World War I and immediately after its end, most small gasoline plants and numerous coal gas plants were shut down and eventually permanently closed down. In total, almost all gasoline and one acetylene gas plant (19 in total), as well as five coal plants, went bankrupt in the Interwar period. Of the latter type, there was a plant in Czempiń, which was shut down only around 1938, after the town was electrified. Ujście is another addition to the list, as it ceased to supply gas from Schneidemühl (Piła) in the mid-1930s. Ultimately, in 1939, gas was used in 43 out of 101 cities in the Province, which was also due to the fact that some of the gas-supplied cities had been moved to the Pomeranian Province a year before. In the Interwar period, several key factors influencing the gasworks in Greater Poland can be observed: the aforementioned liquidation of many gas plants and the transition from gas to electricity in many cities; reconstruction and relaunching of some coal gas plants; and – finally – modernization, combined with optimization of technological processes and expansion of existing gas plants. In the case of several cities, i.e. Międzychód, Nakło nad Notecią and Strzelno, the problem of communalization of plants owned by private German companies should also be noted, as well as Polish-German cooperation in terms of gas supply to the Polish Ujście gas plant from Schneidemühl (Piła).

Abstract The incorporation of Greater Poland [in Polish: Wielkopolska] into the Kingdom of Prussia was the beginning of a direct neighbourhood of Poles and Germans in a relatively small area. This paper shall present the experiences of Prussian / German settlers in the Poznań Province which are based on autobiographical literary texts authored by officials and teachers (with their families) who came to this region. While reading these memoirs one can infer that they made efforts to “familiarise” new and ethnically foreign elements in the annexed territory. They cultivated and promoted their own culture here while concurrently not being too eager to participate in the culture and social life of the Polish locals. They manifest characteristic features typical of the colonist’s attitude. On the one hand, they present the country they colonise as foreign. On the other hand, they depict indigenous people whom they describe as individuals standing on a lower levelcivilisation-wise compared to the German “culture-bearers” who came here [“Kulturträger”]. The key issue in the discussed literary material of the long-term mobility of German families of officials and teachers allows to consider the following issues: How do the authors present migration to the Poznań Province and its effects? What stood in the way of building a sense of belonging and relationship between representatives of different nationalities in a new place? What does the studied autobiographical material say about the phenomenon of transnationality? Can one talk about transnational practices or their elements based on the specificity of the Poznań Province?

Regional development is a complex economic category and a commonly used term today, yet it is vaguely defined and, therefore, interpreted implicitly and understood intuitively. From a statistical point of view, this concept, on account of its imprecision and ambiguity, is a kind of multidimensional characteristic which may be measured, though not conclusively. Due to the lack of a universal set of diagnostic variables adopted in taxonomic analyses, the quantitative approach to the examined research area, which is in most cases presented descriptively, poses the main problem. The objectives of the article are to rank the provinces of Poland in terms of regional development in the years 2006–2018 and to assess the similarity of results over time. The research study is based on linear ordering methods within the scope of multidimensional statistical analysis. The results of the conducted analyses allowed us to rank the provinces of Poland in terms of regional development in the years 2006–2018 and to assess the similarity of the results over time. The results of the analysis indicate a clear stabilization of high ranked positions during the examined period, last places are generally taken by the same regions. This situation may indicate an increase or at least strengthening of the disproportions between the most and least developed regions in Poland. Theoretical considerations presented in the article as well as the empirical results of our own research may provoke more detailed discussion on the subject.

A disadvantageous tendency of resigning from milk production by small and medium sized farms has been observed in the recent years in the provinces of Southern Poland. It results from the low profitability of milk production on these farms and therefore the difficulties in reaching the income parity. It leads to a decline in the bovine population not compensated by an increase in the yield per animal and it poses a serious hazard to protecting the natural resources which is the function dairy farms perform in this region. The problem is serious since in the analyzed region, milk is acquired from 75% of farms keeping herds of up to 10 cows. Moreover, grasslands constitute a notably high share in the arable land structure, and for maintaining them cow keeping is a crucial condition. Hitherto functioning system of EU payments proved insufficient; therefore the Polish government intends to provide an additional financial support for dairy farms. The authors intended to reason that despite the hardly important participation of the analyzed regions in total milk production in Poland, an additional support for small and medium sized dairy farms from the state budget is socially necessary, in the first place because of the additional functions fulfilled by these farms.

This article presents two 17th-century poets, Joost van den Vondel and Jan Andrzej Morsztyn, against the backgrounds of the Dutch and the Polish Golden Age. They were ‘connected’ in their times: both through poetry and politics. Vondel’s Parnaes aen de Belt (1657) included a poem for Tobiasz, the brother of the Polish poet, in which he was praised as the “Getrouwste hofstijl der Sarmaeten” (Most fidel court pillar of the Sarmatians); and also Jan Andrzej received praise here. In his other poems, Vondel had written about the greatness of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, among other things about the city of Danzig (Polish: Gdańsk), which he, in his ode “Bestand tusschen Polen en Zweden. Aen Dantzik”; (Truce between Poland and Sweden. For Danzig”; 1635), called the “Parrel aen de Kroon van Polen” (Pearl at the Crown of Poland).On the other hand, the Morsztyn brothers were interested in the developments of the Republic of the United Provinces. Like many other foreigners, they undertook a Peregrinatio Academica to Leiden where they could see the prosperity of the Republic at first hand, together with other Poles (including the poet-preacher Samuel Przypkowski, the poet-preacher Andrzej Węgierski or the later secretary of the Polish King Andrzej Rej). This Polish circle in the Republic is also shown here.However, there is a double meaning to be discovered in the connection ‘Morsztyn-Vondel’: there was more politics in it than poetry. Morsztyn’s perspective was mainly directed to France (even against the Polish king) — and Vondel’s perspective not to Poland as a political power, but to the Dutch ‘Moedernegotie’ (Mother of all trades) in the Baltic Sea, between the Danish Sound and Danzig. This double meaning is also shown here.

Road alleys are multifunctional features in open landscapes that serve as ecological corridors connecting habitats, and play an important role in sustaining ecological stability. However, multiple road authorities claim that tree-lined routes pose a threat to traffic safety and should therefore be removed. This aspect of safety seems crucial to authorities, significantly overwhelming the benefits of road alleys. Problems with the vitality of the trees (which are mainly mature and aging) deliver arguments for cutting them down. The aim of this paper is to examine the environmental and natural value of road alleys based on a 14 km long section of the Gamerki—Jonkowo Road in the Province of Warmia (Northeast Poland). Further, we aim to verify the degree of hazard posed by trees to be felled for safety reasons. An examination framework with six components was developed for the research. This framework includes a tree risk assessment and vitality evaluation, pulling tests, an examination of the protected hermit beetle and lichen species, and an examination of bat fauna. The results revealed that no trees were in the resignation phase and confirmed that the alley is a unique natural habitat with protected species of lichen, a few bats, and valuable insect species, among others the hermit beetle (Osmoderma barnabita). Therefore, the alley cannot be perceived only as a component of the road infrastructure. The maintenance of the trees seems to be essential when taking into account the environmental stability of the region.

The implementation of the provisions of the Unification Act of 1933 in rural communes in western Poland13 July 1933 was marked by the entry into force of the Act on Partial Change of the Local Government System of 23 March 1933. The most important changes introduced by the new law concerned mainly rural communes in western regions of Poland Poznań and Pomeranian Provinces. The existing individual communes were replaced with collective communes as well as the so-called gromadas, which had not existed in the region before. At the same time the Unification Act abolished the existing administrative units wójtostwo and estate district, with the collective rural commune, usually encompassing several localities, taking over their functions. The commune system could not be transformed within a short period. First, the authorities had to deal with the new territorial organisation of rural communes, division of communes into gromadas, new bodies to govern rural communes and gromadas, questions concerning property and settlements between the newly established rural communes and gromadas as well as rural areas.Die Einführung der Vorschriften des Zusammenlegungsgesetzes aus dem Jahre 1933 in den Dorfgemeinden der westlichen Republik PolenAm 13. Juli 1933 trat das Gesetz vom 23. März 1933 über die teilweise Änderung der Struktur der territorialen Selbstverwaltung in Kraft. Dieses Gesetz führte die wesentlichen Änderungen in der Struktur der Dorfgemeinde in den westlichen Woiwodschaften Posen und Pommern ein. An Stelle der bisherigen Einzelgemeinden wurden Sammelgemeinden und sogenannte Gromaden kleinste Verwaltungseinheiten, die es früher auf diesen Gebieten nicht gab, eingeführt. Gleichzeitig hob das Zusammenlegungsgesetz die bisher in den westlichen Woiwodschaften tätigen Vogtschaften und die Gutsbezirke auf und die Sammeldorfgemeinde, die in der Regel einige Ortschaften umfasste, übernahm ihre bisherigen Funktionen.Die Umgestaltung der Gemeindeverfassung konnte nicht in kurzer Zeit eingeführt werden. Vor allem musste man sich mit der neuen territorialen Organisation der Dorfgemeinden, der Teilung der Gemeinden in Gromaden, der Wahl der neuen Organe in den Dorfgemeinden und Gromaden, den Vermögensangelegenheiten und den Abrechnungen zwischen den neugebildeten Dorfgemeinden und den Gromaden sowie den Dorfbezirken berchäftigen.

The aim of the article is to present the process of non-state actors’ involvement in the implementation of educational tasks. The author focused on the most engaging form of participation in terms of education policy, which is the acquisition of education tasks, including school management by non-public stakeholders. The non-public stakeholders’ participation in education policy implementation discussed in the article has been present for a few years now and used by Polish municipalities as a tool to reduce costs of educational tasks. The costs of education policy implementation have been steadily increasing for years, disproportionately to the number of students. The problem of high costs of education is particularly acute for small municipalities, especially rural and urban-rural. Looking for solutions to rationalize local expenditures and curb spending on education policy, which in some municipalities consumes more than 60% of the total budget spending, the authorities look for new ways to save money.
 Such a solution is the possibility of transferring small schools (up to 70 students) to non-public stakeholders (including social organization or natural person) to avoid their liquidation. On the one hand, the implemented solution was created to support local governments, which, in the face of growing educational expenditures, had limited investment opportunities in other areas. On the other hand, this solution corresponds to local communities’ needs and takes into account the specificity of rural areas and the relationships within local communities (usually small, rural) for which the school was not only educational institution, but also integration and meetings centre.
 In this article the author analyzes the conditions of involving non-public stakeholders in the process of carrying out educational tasks as well as the current formal and legal basis of this procedure. The process of implementing educational tasks by non-public stakeholders refers to the concept of co-production of public services, which is the theoretical framework of the present article. The analysis presented in the text is based on the concept of co-production as a form of performance of public tasks involving members of the local community who contribute and bear partial responsibility for the performance of public services, with a view to improving their quality and delivery standards.
 In the course of the analysis, the author tries to verify the hypothesis, that the actual participation of non-state actors manifests itself in full engagement in public tasks, involving expenditure (financial, labour), personal commitment and responsibility. In this sense, participation can be considered a form of co-production. By examining the hypothesis, the researcher poses the following research questions: What are the constraints between the apparent and the actual participation of the stakeholders in education policy?, What are the circumstances of the participation of non-public actors in the public service provision? What are the conditions of the non-public entity’s participation in the public service delivery system? How do the roles of both public and non-public actors change in the context of co-production of public services?
 In the article, the author uses the following research methods: the analysis of existing sources, including the content of normative acts and documents as well as the literature of the subject. In addition, the partial empirical studies conducted by the author in Polish municipalities were used in the publication. In total, the author conducted 60 semi-structured interviews based on the interview scenario. The selection of respondents to the study was purposeful and selected in two stages. In the first stage, the author selected the provinces (województwa) to study, among those in which the most and the least local schools were closed in 2006–2014. Then, the author selected the municipalities in each of the provinces (4 municipalities in each province). In the second stage, the respondents were selected. In the group of respondents were the representatives of local authorities (executive and constituent bodies), the representatives of the school community, the representatives of social organizations, local community members as well as public officials and local leaders of the selected municipalities.
 The conclusions of the research indicate that the mechanism in the form of participation of non-public actors in the performance of educational tasks is in practice difficult to implement and depends on a number of factors, such as: the level of local community activity, the experience of cooperation between public authorities and local community in other areas, the attitude of local authorities to cooperate with social actors. The reluctance to cooperate, the lack of mutual trust between local governments and local communities, and the domination of the traditional model of local governance with the leading position of local authorities (as a creator and public service contractor) make the running of schools by non-public actors rarely practiced. Frequently, the main problem is the relationship and attitude of both local authorities and the local community, which make this solution impossible to implement. In the course of the research three models of relations between local authorities and local stakeholders were identified: a) the so-called “radical model” – local authorities plan to liquidate the school entirely and do not plan to transfer it to other entities; b) the so-called “cooperative model” – local authorities propose to delegate educational tasks to non-public stokeholds declaring financial and non-financial support; c) the so-called “conciliation model” – local authorities do not plan to transfer the school, but in a face of local community initiative they agree to let it be run by a non-public stakeholder.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

The future development of oil and gas reserves in remote Polar Regions areas will require a new generation of highly ice-capable vessels. Many may need to be capable of operating at all times of the year. These ships will need to be able to travel faster in heavy ice than all but the largest icebreakers, which poses challenges for both hull and machinery design. The American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), BMT Fleet Technology Limited (BMT) and Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) are currently undertaking a joint project aimed at addressing these design challenges. Because of the unique and innovative aspects of large fast ships for Polar ice development, new methodologies for direct calculation of loads on all areas of the hull are needed. The project is also addressing the need for new techniques for the analysis of the outer hull, double hull and gas containment systems of these ships under design and accidental loads; areas in which ‘rule design’ can only provide a starting point. This paper focuses on the midbody ice loads that may results from both ice pressures and from glancing collisions in the midbody area. The paper highlights some of the challenges of direct design.

Every aspect of human operations faces a wide range of risks, some of which can cause serious consequences. By the start of 21st century, mankind has recognized a new class of risks posed by climate change. It is obvious, that the global climate is changing, and will continue to change, in ways that affect the planning and day to day operations of businesses, government agencies and other organizations and institutions. The manifestations of climate change include but not limited to rising sea levels, increasing temperature, flooding, melting polar sea ice, adverse weather events (e.g. heatwaves, drought, and storms) and a rise in related problems (e.g. health and environmental). Assessing and managing climate risks represent one of the most challenging issues of today and for the future. The purpose of the risk modeling system discussed in this paper is to provide a framework and methodology to quantify risks caused by climate change, to facilitate estimates of the impact of climate change on various spheres of human activities and to compare eventual adaptation and risk mitigation strategies. The system integrates both physical climate system and economic models together with knowledge-based subsystem, which can help support proactive risk management. System structure and its main components are considered. Special attention is paid to climate risk assessment, management and hedging in the Arctic coastal areas.

Every aspect of human operations faces a wide range of risks, some of which can cause serious consequences. By the start of 21st century, mankind has recognized a new class of risks posed by climate change. It is obvious, that the global climate is changing, and will continue to change, in ways that affect the planning and day to day operations of businesses, government agencies and other organizations and institutions. The manifestations of climate change include but not limited to rising sea levels, increasing temperature, flooding, melting polar sea ice, adverse weather events (e.g. heatwaves, drought, and storms) and a rise in related problems (e.g. health and environmental). Assessing and managing climate risks represent one of the most challenging issues of today and for the future. The purpose of the risk modeling system discussed in this paper is to provide a framework and methodology to quantify risks caused by climate change, to facilitate estimates of the impact of climate change on various spheres of human activities and to compare eventual adaptation and risk mitigation strategies. The system integrates both physical climate system and economic models together with knowledge-based subsystem, which can help support proactive risk management. System structure and its main components are considered. Special attention is paid to climate risk assessment, management and hedging in the Arctic coastal areas.

Reports of Climate Change, decreasing ice concentration, overall thinning of the polar cap and longer periods of open water could give the designers of ships and structures, and their operators, a false sense of security about the amount of dangerous ice, and the likelihood of encountering it. And that could have serious repercussions for everyone involved, including those who live in the Arctic. Contrary to what one might expect, the lengthening summers may actually increase the hazard that multi-year ice poses for ships and structures. Why? Because the absence of first-year ice increases the ease with which multi-year ice moves through the Arctic, and the period during which it is mobile. Take, for example, the spring of 2007, when the ice bridge that usually forms in Nares Strait, blocking the outflow of thick multi-year ice from the Lincoln Sea, failed to form. As a result, old ice streamed out of the Lincoln Sea throughout the winter – pushing the floes in front of it further and further south (Figure 1-a). Two of those floes were instrumented in Nares Strait during the summer of 2006 (Figure 1-b). One of them, Floe 5, had spent 10 months migrating south, arriving off the coast of Newfoundland in the spring of 2007. That floe, along with many others, conspired to make ice conditions off Newfoundland the worst seen in 10 to 15 years (Figure 1-c). The absence of an ice bridge across Nares Strait was one of the factors lead to the unusual amount of old ice off the coast of Newfoundland that spring. Perhaps the decreased extent of first-year ice will allow multi-year ice to move more freely, you say, but surely the longer summer and extended open water season will result in a net decrease in the thickness and strength of these multi-year ice floes? The past three years of measurements on multi-year ice are used to answer that question, starting with the topic: does very thick multi-year ice still exist?. The more than 300 drill hole measurements made on 15 multi-year ice floes in Nares Strait (2006 and 2007 seasons) and the central Canadian Arctic Archipelago (2007 and 2008) show that multi-year ice in excess of 15 m thick commonly occurs in both regions. Comparison of our measurements to past thickness measurements on multi-year ice in the Beaufort Sea (Dickins, 1989; Kovacs, 1983; Wright et al., 1984) shows good agreement in the thickness distributions of multi-year ice Arcticwide. Given Climate Change and its effect on the polar pack, are the drill hole measurements from the 1980s still representative of ice in the Beaufort Sea? The three years of on-ice measurements are also used to describe the changes that multi-year ice undergoes during its summer melt/migration period. The temperature, salinity and strength profiles of a multi-year ice hummock visited in May, June and July reveal that rapid changes occur in the uppermost 4.5 m of ice during the summer melt period (Figure 2). Results from more than 400 borehole jack tests on multi-year ice are used to demonstrate the direct relation between the temperature of multi-year ice and its strength. These kinds of on-ice measurements provide insight into the dramatic changes that have been observed in the Beaufort Sea multi-year pack ice in recent years – ships operating in the Beaufort Sea continue to report back about the decayed state of the ice cover. Ship-based and satellite observations both indicate that large areas of the multi-year pack ice seem to be rapidly disappearing. Some of those observations are discussed in the guide Understanding and Identifying Old Ice in Summer, which is discussed in Johnston and Timco (2008). The results discussed here complement that work.