The Silent Missiles of Guadalcanal: Magic as Rhetoric in the Sandline Controversy

In February of 1997, Sir Julius Chan, then Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, hired mercenaries from the Sandline Corporation to help fight the Bougainville Revolutionary Army. This act would create a distinct controversy in PNG, with the firing of the head of the PNGDF, General Singirok, a threatened coup d'etat, followed by public protests in Port Moresby and the eventual resignation of Chan. While these events were taking place, I was conducting field work in neighbouring Solomon Islands, specifically in Guadalcanal. The Vaturanga, among whom I lived during this period, took an especial interest in this controversy. They even believed that they themselves were playing a part in it, through forms of magic or sorcery, known locally as riana pupuku and poke sosolo. Guadalcanal has been renowned for its sorcery for many decades. But with modernization and its attendant institutions and patterns, these and other forms of magic have been reinterpreted by the Vaturanga and used as a sort of commentary about the economic, social and political changes they have experienced. This work explores the transnational aspects of the Sandline Controversy from the perspective of Guadalcanal Islanders and probes how this consciousness would play a role in the emergence of conflict in Guadalacanal eighteen months later.     

Obama's Executive Branch Czars: The Constitutional Controversy and a Legislative Solution

The increasingly common practice of presidential appointment of so-called executive branch czars has become especially contentious in the Obama era. Much of that controversy unfortunately is highly partisan-oriented and misses the core constitutional issues at stake. In this article, we describe and analyze the Obama-era executive branch czars controversy from a constitutional analysis framework. In so doing, we offer a working definition of executive branch czars—a much-needed corrective to the current debates in which the term has been used very loosely. We examine and analyze the scope of authority exercised by the high-level executive branch officials during the Obama administration that we consider to be constitutionally troublesome. Although our focus is on the Obama czars that have vast and largely unchecked powers, we also acknowledge that some media-labeled czar positions are statutorily created and accountable and thus should not be in the same category. After addressing the Obama-era czars, we offer a set of reform proposals that provide a much-needed corrective.     

Localisation and William Macewen's Early Brain Surgery Part I: The Controversy

Neurosurgery for the removal of brain tumours based on localising signs is usually dated from the 1884 operation by Bennett and Godlee. However, within weeks of that operation claims were made on behalf of William Macewen, the Glasgow surgeon, to have been the real pioneer of such surgery. According to Macewen's protagonists, he had conducted seven similar operations earlier than Bennett and Godlee and, in a notable 1888 address, Macewen described these seven pre-1884 cases and a number of others operated on after 1884. This paper, which is in two parts, contains an evaluation of the claims made for the priority of Macewen's pre-1884 operations. Part I deals mainly with Macewen's work in fields other than brain surgery that are relevant to it and sets out the facts of the controversy. It begins with a brief biography of Macewen, describes his pioneering work in antiseptic and aseptic surgery, his work on osteotomy and bone regeneration, and his use in brain surgery of the knowledge so gained. Part I concludes with an examination of the battle waged in the newspapers between Macewen's and Bennett's and Godlee's supporters, and of previously unpublished correspondence between Macewen himself, David Ferrier and Hughes Bennett. The primary records of the patients on whom Macewen operated, together with other materials relevant to the controversy, are examined in Part II.     

清季围绕万国新语的思想论争

语言文字是表述思想的工具还是构成民族或“国粹”的要素?它是否应为中国在近代中外国家竞争中的表现不佳承担责任?它能否影响晚清朝野试图改善中国在世界的地位这一共同的目标?如果能够,怎样影响?这些问题在清季最后几年受到朝野共同关注,曾出现了改革中文甚至废中文而用万国新语的主张,并引起激烈的观念竞争。当时的国粹派和欧化派(皆取其大意)对此有着相当不同甚至对立的答案,而革命党人内部的对立有时甚至超过其与清政府的冲突,后者那时也在充满内部阻力的情形下尝试推行拼音化的“简字”。     

China's Exchange Rate Controversy: A Balanced Analysis

A noted American authority on China's economy and monetary policy presents a statistical as well as theoretical analysis of a variety of perspectives on the controversy surrounding China's currency, basing his paper on both. The author provides the historical background and comprehensive summaries, focusing on different viewpoints about whether China's currency is undervalued, and thus may contribute to global imbalances. In the paper, he divides observers involved in the controversy into two main camps, namely the ones who find China's trade balances to be sensitive to price effects through exchange rate adjustments and those who emphasize other factors as bearing the responsibility for China's large surpluses, including the U.S. credit bubble emerging before the global financial crisis, as well as a version of Dutch disease.     

Probing A Traffic Congestion Controversy: A Comment

Ohta (2001) claims to have resolved a die-hard controversy on traffic congestion modeling by defining an inverse aggregate demand function that has traffic density as its argument—in Ohta's terminology the 'primitive term.'Using this demand function, Ohta shows that 'hypercongestion' may very well be an optimal stationary state. This contribution argues that at least if what road users demand is completed trips, and if time spent on the road while traveling implies a cost, then Ohta's approach is fundamentally flawed. Also the conclusion that hypercongestion can be optimal is no longer valid.     

孟德斯鸠对“礼仪之争”的解读

礼仪之争传入欧洲后,引起法国知识菁英的广泛关注。孟德斯鸠至迟自1713年起就关注礼仪之争,但他并不介入其中,而是冷眼旁观。他阅读了当时有关中国的绝大多数主要著作,还曾与来自中国的黄嘉略和自中国返回欧洲的傅圣泽进行长谈,从阅读和谈话中汲取了大量的信息,作出了对礼仪之争的解读。他认为,礼仪之争是一场无谓的争论,基督教在中国受挫是必然的结果,他独具特色的中国观在此基础上形成。他对中国持冷峻的态度,褒贬兼具,既肯定中国的某些优点,更严厉斥责中国的种种弊端,并断然将中国定性为专制主义。