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111. Palestine: From the Rubble, Life

Author:
Eman Mohammed
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
GAZA, Palestinian Territories—Between the shattered memories of the past and an unknown future lies a pile of rubble that is called home. Mohammed Khaderi, his wife Ebtesam and the 22 members of their family live here, in the heart of Gaza. Their house was targeted by Israeli field operations and all but leveled during the last incursion into the Gaza Strip—the 2008-2009 war. Ever since, the Khaderi family has lived beneath a makeshift tent attached to what remains.
Political Geography:
Israel and Gaza

112. The Last Yakuza

Author:
Jake Adelstein
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
TOKYO—In June 2007, as Japan's upper house elections were drawing near, the nation's largest organized crime group—the 40,000 member Yamaguchi-gumi—decided to throw its support behind the country's second leading political party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). Fifteen of the Yamaguchi- gumi's top-ranking members made the decision behind closed doors. After the die was cast, a meeting was convened at the sprawling Yamaguchi-gumi headquarters, which take up two square blocks in Kobe. The gang's most powerful executive members, the jikisan, were summoned from throughout Japan and ordered to put their full support behind the DPJ. The message was simple. “We've worked out a deal with a senior member of the DPJ. We help them get elected and they keep a criminal conspiracy law, the kyobozai, off the books for a few more years,” one insider said. The next month, calls went out from Yamaguchi-gumi headquarters to the heads of each local branch across the country. In Tokyo, even the conservative boss Goto Tadamasa, leader of the 1,000 strong Yamaguchi-gumi unit called the Goto-gumi, told his people, “We're backing DPJ. Whatever resources you have available to help the local DPJ representative win, put them to work.” Bosses of the Inagawa-kai, Japan's third largest organized crime group (10,000 members), met in an entertainment complex they own in Yokohama, and announced to board members that the Inagawa-kai would support DPJ as well. At the same time, the yakuza allegedly struck a deal with Mindan and Chosensoren— political and social organizations that lobby for the rights and interests of Japanese of Korean descent—to support the DPJ. Party leaders, in turn, promised both groups that they would strive to get Japanese- Koreans with permanent residence equal voting rights when they took office. According to the National Police Agency [NPA], of the more than 86,000 yakuza members in Japan, a third are of Korean descent.
Political Geography:
Japan and Tokyo

113. Abkhazia on Three Wheels

Author:
Alexander Cooley and Lincoln Mitchell
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
SUKHUMI—The land between Georgia and this breakaway region represents a tense coda to a short war and a tenuous peace, a tribute to the fragile nature of such territories. Here, the frontier post is considered an international border by the Abkhaz and is patrolled by Abkhaz troops. Russian forces are camped nearby. After Russia and Georgia's brief war in 2008, Moscow recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia's declarations of independence. Since then, Abkhazia and South Ossetia have, with the Kremlin's support, lobbied for others' recognition but have, for the most part, failed. The territories are internationally isolated and increasingly dependent on Russia for security, hence the Russian troops. A steady stream of tired residents from Gali, an ethnic region on the Abkhaz side of the checkpoint, cross this frontier with shopping bags filled with goods for trade. By an unfortunate confluence of geography and politics, they are caught in between.
Topic:
Security
Political Geography:
Russia and Moscow

114. The Forever War: Inside India's Maoist Conflict

Author:
Megha Bahree
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
CHHATTISGARH STATE, India—It was 4 p.m. one March afternoon in 2008. The victims were living in a relief camp in a village called Matwada. Two dozen members of a government-backed civilian militia, accompanied by at least one police officer, burst into their homes. They dragged four men out onto the street, across from a paramilitary office, and began to beat them with sticks. They paused to pour water over the Matwada men, waking them when they fainted out of pain and fear. When their wives flung themselves across their husbands' weakened bodies, they were beaten too. Then the men were dragged from sight, into the forest. One managed to escape. The next day the remaining three were found buried next to a stream, stabbed in the eyes and the neck and finished off with a knife stab to the head. The men were suspected of being informants, of aiding the nascent Maoist insurgency in the eastern Indian state of Chhattisgarh. The survivor and three widows filed a criminal case against the state, and a court decided recently that the State of Chhattisgarh would compensate them for the wrongful attacks.
Topic:
Civil War and Government
Political Geography:
India

115. So Europe Ends at the Bosporus?

Author:
David A. Andelman
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
There is one largely unheralded, and outside its own frontiers probably little mourned, casualty of the European crisis of confidence — Turkey. In its decades-long aspiration to become a member of the European community, this nation on the fringes of the continent's southeastern frontier has played the part of the poor little orphan boy, nose pressed firmly against the glass shop window filled with sweets. Somehow, Turkey, despite its most valiant efforts, has never managed to find a way inside.
Topic:
NATO
Political Geography:
Europe and Turkey

116. The Global Canon

Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
This special edition of World Policy Journal has been two years in the making. In the fall of 2008, we assigned the novelist and screenwriter Warren Adler to speculate on the world of literature and creativity in 25 years. Almost as an aside, Adler suggested that whatever the nature of creative expression, there is one certainty—that there will never be a Global Canon. The Western Canon, which has held sway since the time of Chaucer and Shakespeare, will continue to provide inspiration to the world's writers and thinkers for the foreseeable future, Adler wrote, and certainly for the next quarter century.

117. The Big Question: Is There a Global Canon?

Author:
Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Kayhan Irani, Timothy D. Taylor, Cynthia MacMullin, Miranda Kennedy, and Alyce Mahon
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
Our world is increasingly interconnected, and artistic theft has never been easier. There were lines once, rooted in Europe, that delineated and informed the creation of a canon of great works. Those lines are now blurred, or have disappeared altogether. Artists collaborate across countries and continents, inspiring their brethren, prompting further acts of thievery. Art, literature and music live in a world without borders, where national identities can mean everything or nothing. These recent, ongoing developments have called into question the very notion, and relevance, of a Western Canon. Is a Global Canon emerging? A panel of experts, assembled by World Policy Journal, weighs in.
Political Geography:
Europe

118. Anatomy of a Music Video

Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
Shooting a music video with American pop-star Selena Gomez and an international crew in Budapest, Hungary is an exercise in multi-cultural logistics to create a product that appeals to a global audience. It begins with the studio recording, and ends after a mad dash to the finish by scores of technicians, artists and carloads of equipment to wind up going “Round and Round.” Director Philip Andelman takes us through the steps for creation of a 3 minute 20 second video that's part performance, part high-energy spy caper.

119. Teaching the Canon

Author:
David Palumbo-Liu and Dr. Paulo Lemos Horta
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
The debate over the emerging Global Canon falls within the scope of the academy, comprised of individuals who play a critical role in determining the leading works of art and literature. We engaged two professors in a discussion of the ever shifting, and increasingly global nature of literature curricula in their college classrooms. We questioned them about the specific goals of their literature classes, what role non-western writers played in class discussions, and how the diverse backgrounds of their students influenced the classroom dynamic. We began the conversation, in the form of an e-mail exchange, moderated by World Policy Journal editors, with a simple question: What goals do you have as professors of world literature, with respect to your students' curricula and their lives beyond the classroom?

120. Map Room: The New Library

Author:
Nestor K. Bailly
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
The world's libraries hold at least 1.5 billion items, according to the listings of World- Cat, the massive catalog of the Ohio-based Online Computer Library Center. Books are no longer just printed and bound words gathering dust on shelves. The holdings of national libraries (at right) may still be greater than their digital counterparts, but scanned books, available on the Internet, are revolutionizing the role of the library in civil society. In August 2010, Google estimated there are some 130 million books in the world that it hopes to digitize, and they are not the only ones with such a mission.