La nazione italiana nell'esercito di Alessandro Farnese nei Paesi Bassi: nuove prospettive

The multinational army, under Alessandro Farnese, had a large presence of Italians. In the light of new archival documentation this paper deals with their recruitment, careers and employment. The preferential treatment accorded by the general to his fellow countrymen created him problems with soldiers of other nationalities and with the Spanish court and contributed greatly to the decision of his removal from power. The biography of Paolo Rinaldi, written to defend the memory of Alessandro, memorials of his officers and their correspondence indicate what was the reason for his behaviour. The general aimed to get the support of the local population, and especially of the peasants, for military operations and Italians, thanks to the stricter discipline he could impose on them, could help him in achieving his objectives, better than soldiers of other nations. Not always his hopes were realized

Holzbeschaffung und nachhaltige Holznutzung

Im Schweizer Wald wächst derzeit mehr Holz nach als genutzt wird. Die vorliegende Synthese zeigt auf, wie eine vermehrte Holznutzung dazu beitragen könnte, den ökologischen Fussabdruck der Schweiz gleich auf mehrfache Weise zu verkleinern – und sie belegt auch, dass hierzulande die Holzgewinnung nicht mit dem Erhalt der anderen Waldfunktionen in Widerspruch steht

Approvisionnement et utilisation durable du bois

A l’heure actuelle, l’accroissement du bois dans les forêts suisses dépasse les quantités exploitées. La présente synthèse propose des pistes en vue d’une utilisation accrue du bois, laquelle permettrait en même temps de réduire l’empreinte écologique de la Suisse de diverses façons. Ces travaux révèlent également que l’exploitation du bois n’est pas incompatible avec la préservation des autres fonctions de la forêt dans notre pays

Final report on the dissemination activities and materials

The final MADFORWATER dissemination report outlines the dissemination and communication tools and activities implemented over the project’s execution period. MADFORWATER dissemination actions aimed to communicate project activities and results to a wide audience, including relevant stakeholders and the general public. The aim of the dissemination and communication activities was: (i) to widespread the project objectives and potential benefits towards the stakeholders in order to generate awareness without compromising IPR; (ii) to obtain feedback and suggestions about the intermediate project results to get a comprehensive validation from stakeholders covering all the targeted market sectors; (iii) to spread out the project outcomes and results not only at European and North African levels but also globally, in order to create awareness of the MADFORWATER potential and expand the project network, as well as gathering and incorporating valuable input from all stakeholders; (iv) ensure that there is an on-going reporting of the MADFORWATER results to all the relevant stakeholders; (v) support research entities and SMEs in maximizing the impact of their participation in EC-funded projects; (vi) foster international cooperation between European and MAC research and industrial partners in the field of water. The report presents the final update of the description of the communication channels and tools that have been adopted to disseminate the MADFORWATER project objectives and results. This entails the visual identity, promotion materials and tools and channels for engagement with stakeholders and the general public. Next to this, an overview of documents and materials created to help partners disseminate their results to relevant stakeholders. Furthermore, it presents the results of the D&C efforts set against the key performance indicators. The document will summarize the initiatives implemented to increase the effectiveness of said efforts during the project. Lastly, an overview of the dissemination and communication efforts of the individual partners will be provided

Severe Personality-Disordered Defendants and the Insanity Plea in the United States: a Proposal for Change

People who live in society are bound together by laws based on duties and rights. Even though primarily born out of acceptance and respect for one another, these laws, part of an ethical system of communal life, are also utilitarian in their essence. Though accepting the above postulates, people are at times the subject of feelings, drives, and actions contrary to respectful interaction with others. Society has, therefore, created criminal laws, codified through the centuries, with the purpose of controlling the deviant and impulsive behavior of some of its members in order to maintain, in as much as possible, societal homeostasis. Ethical principles, such as beneficence and non-maleficence, especially in a democratic society, are basic to legal systems whose purpose is to dispense justice in its various courts of law, where victims and miscreants, represented by their respective advocates, contend over guilt and exculpation. The majority of criminal cases involve mentally competent persons, who maliciously do not conform to the requirements of the law and, furthermore, often do not conform to basic moral values. A small percentage of those who break the law suffer from a severe mental disorder, which, if present at the time of a crime, may annul or greatly diminish their mental capacity to appreciate the nature, quality and consequences of their criminal behavior or their capacity to conform to the requirements of the law. These persons are allowed by the law to enter an exculpatory plea and to attempt to prove at trial that they were legally insane at the time of an alleged offense. There is, in addition, a substantial cohort of persons who suffer from a severe personality disorder for whom entering a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity in United States courts at present is typically a futile exercise, even though their behavior at the time of their alleged crime was bizarre, confused and irrational. The futility of their plea stems from the practical reality that their disorder is not recognized as a mental illness.They cannot take advantage of the insanity plea because of the prevailing legal view that they cannot meet its threshold criterion. Even if they were in a court that would allow them to surmount that hurdle, they would still be subjected to exceptionally strict scrutiny.It is the argument of this thesis that, in regard to individuals suffering from a severe personality disorder, in the United States the criminal law operates if not from unfounded prejudice certainly from a foundation that disregards current scientific knowledge. The premise underlying this argument is that persons with a severe personality disorder (many of whom are capable of only marginal functioning in daily life), under severe stress, may at times undergo a personality disintegration that is tantamount to a frank psychotic episode, which should make them eligible for an insanity plea. However, United States courts, including the United States Supreme Court, have held explicitly that criminal defendants have no due process right to 2 how the insanity defense is framed or worded, what sorts of conditions it may cover or exclude, or even whether they may have the benefit of an insanity defense at all—or any number of other exculpatory concepts. (See, e.g. Montana v. Egelhoff, 518 U.S. 37 (1996); Clark v. Arizona, 126 S. Ct. 2709 (2006)). Elementary fairness suggests they ought to be allowed to assert their non-accountability in the context of an insanity defense or any other defense. Of course, it is well known that offenders at times attempt to malinger mental disorders, or to greatly exaggerate any existing mental pathology. That is a risk that is run with any offender. However, it is better to free ten guilty people than to convict one innocent one. It serves as the justification for requiring, that is, an extraordinarily high standard of proof (beyond a reasonable doubt) in criminal prosecutions. The argument of this thesis is that the preclusion to plead insanity or the non-credibility of those rare personalitydisordered offenders who are allowed to enter the plea, is based on socio-political factors rather than psychological and psychiatric ones