Restructuring the Architecture of State Regulation in the Australian and Aotearoa/New Zealand Cleaning Industries and the Growth of Precarious Employment

This paper examines changes in the commercial cleaning industry in Australasia which are occurring against a backdrop of significant transformation in the mode of labour market regulation in both countries. Specifically, whereas for most of the twentieth century both Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia had systems of labour market regulation in which the state provided minimum wage and work protections through the interventions of arbitration courts, in the past few years these courts have either been abolished (in the case of New Zealand) or severely restricted in their ambit (in the case of Australia), all as part of a neoliberal effort to introduce “flexibility” into labour markets. The result has been an erosion of wages and a worsening of conditions of employment for cleaners and many other groups of workers. At the same time, this transformation in the architecture of labour market regulation poses significant challenges to unions seeking to represent cleaners and other low‐paid service sector workers.     

努尔哈赤崛起与李成梁关系史事钩沉

清太祖努尔哈赤的成功崛起和当时镇守辽东的明朝大将李成梁有无关系,有怎样的关系?历来治史者对这个问题各有说法,本文钩沉有关史料,加以梳理,以期对此问题得出一个明晰准确的结论.     

Agricultural Transformation and the Politics of Hydrology in Northern Thailand

Tensions over water resources in upland areas of northern Thailand are often attributed to reductions in water supply caused by forest clearing. This article argues that the hydrological evidence for such reductions in supply is very weak and that, rather, the key hydrological issue in upland catchments is a significant increase in water demand, especially during the dry season. The arguments are illustrated with a detailed examination of the Mae Uam catchment, located in Chiang Mai province, where the development of dry–season soybean cultivation appears to have tested the hydrological limit of the catchment, and even exceeded this limit in drier years. The author argues that a shift in focus from water supply to water demand has fundamentally important political implications. As long as the focus of public debate is on water supply, the regulatory focus will be on those resident in the forested upland areas that are seen as being crucial in securing downstream flows. But if the water management focus is shifted to water demand, then regulatory attention must shift to the diverse sources of demand that exist throughout the hydrological system.     

二十年来中国改革史研究述评

中华民族的历史也是一部改革史。20年来,中国改革史研究取得了十分可观的成绩：改革史著作和论文大量涌现;“改革史”学科范型基本构成;社会改革作用、改革与革命的关系、改革成败规律等史学理论问题有重大突破和发展。“改革史”研究方兴未艾,必将继续呈现勃勃生机。     

Terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction: How serious is the threat?

This article examines the extent to which terrorist use of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons poses a tangible threat to international security. In the literature on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) some analysts have tended to exaggerate the scope of the threat and assumed that large-scale terrorist acts involving WMD are only 'a matter of time'. In short, there is a tendency among observers to converge on analogous assessments at the higher end of the threat spectrum. In this article I argue that although WMD terrorism remains a real prospect, the ease with which such attacks can be carried out has been exaggerated; acquiring WMD capabilities for delivery against targets is a lot more problematic for terrorists than is generally acknowledged in the literature. However, this is not to say that the possibility of such attacks can (or should) be ruled out. The rise of a 'new' brand of terrorism that operates across transnational networks and whose operations aim to inflict mass casualties, coupled with the destructive threshold crossed on 11 September 2001, mean that terrorist attacks using WMD will continue to be a realistic prospect in the future.     

‘True British sailors’: a comment on the origin of the men of the Mary Rose

Bell et al. (2009) have recently published an isotopic investigation of the origins of 18 men whose remains were found in the wreck of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's warship, which sank in 1545. They conclude that a high proportion of the ship's crew were foreigners and that this may have contributed to confusion on board ship and the sinking of the vessel. We have re-evaluated the data of Bell et al. and conclude that only one of the 18 sailors demonstrably spent his childhood outside the British Isles.