The USA PATRIOT Acts (et al): Collective Amnesia, Paranoia and Convergent, Oligarchic Legislation in the ‘Politics of Fear’

Comparative analysis has been ignored in recent decades as the mantra of ‘convergence’ has taken hegemonic forms under globalisation and, more recently, under the exporting of a United States–inspired ‘exceptionalism’ within this Neo-liberal project. The ‘War on Terror’ provides an unusual window for ‘seeing’ real convergence in the largely ‘invisible’ manoeuvring over framing and re-framing of anti-terrorist legislation in the US, UK/Europe and Australia. A cursory, comparative glance at The USA PATRIOT Act 2001, The USA PATRIOT Act 2006, other legislative variations in the United Kingdom/European Union (UK/EU) and Australia, and Stalinist legislation - Article 58, Criminal Code of the RSFSR (1934) - provides uncomfortable reading and an interesting convergence in the use/abuse of the ‘politics of fear’. Within Neo-liberalism, arguably, the destruction of long standing civil and political rights in the name of defending such rights is surely an issue for future democratic account. The current irrelevance of Habeas Corpus in so-called Anglo-American democracies would have many a tyrant marvelling at the rapidly convergent, authoritarian behaviour of political oligarchs in Liberal-democratic societies and the actual de-legitimation of sovereignty and democratic values under the onslaught of hubris, propaganda and fear

Solving Stochastic B\"uchi Games on Infinite Arenas with a Finite Attractor

We consider games played on an infinite probabilistic arena where the first player aims at satisfying generalized B\"uchi objectives almost surely, i.e., with probability one. We provide a fixpoint characterization of the winning sets and associated winning strategies in the case where the arena satisfies the finite-attractor property. From this we directly deduce the decidability of these games on probabilistic lossy channel systems.Comment: In Proceedings QAPL 2013, arXiv:1306.241

Directors' remuneration: The need for a geo-political perspective

There are many ways to construct an incentive program. However, most compensation plans tend to be focused on profitability and profitability-related accomplishments with little or no incentive for corporate social responsibility. Director's compensation continues to climb with the United States leading and Britain following modestly behind. The question as to where fair pay ends and over-compensation begins – and what that means for the community – is rarely raised. In order to understand the impact of fair and over-compensated director's pay on other stakeholders, a geo-political perspective is proposed that builds on knowledge of existing theories of the firm

Designing Balance into the Democratic Project: Contrasting Jeffersonian Democracy against Bentham's Panopticon Centralisation in determining ICT adoption

Positioned in a critical realist perspective, this paper examines the impact of systematic and institutional distortion to communication and the use of information and communicative technology (ICT) for control over citizen participation within the Liberal-democratic process. The paper contrasts the Jeffersonian vision of democracy against Bentham’s Panopticon dystopia and reviews comparative models of democratic processes. In so doing, it is argued that the role of ICT, the role of pressure groups and concentrated media ownership and control pose significant issues for E-democracy, in particular that of less unfettered communication within the context of Liberal democracy. It is concluded that a new constitutional organ is required to enhance genuine participation within the Panopticon proclivities emergent in E-democra

Auditing employee ownership in a neo-liberal world

Purpose - Employee ownership has attracted much attention across the globe. Whether affected by the global financial crisis (GFC), or not, this paper seeks to canvass what is known about employee ownership in neo-liberal political economies. Design/methodology/approach - This paper is a literature review, cross cultural analysis and critique. Findings - The findings indicate future research directions. Research limitations/implications - The paper suggests a reconsideration of organizational configurations for possible greater application in the future. Social implications - The paper hightlights the re- regulation of neo-liberal markets. Originality/value - The paper focuses on employee share ownership schemes

City of Essendon : an illustrated report

Research Report (Undergrad) -- University of Melbourne, Faculty of Architectur

Theory-Y leadership in the knowledge economy: Towards tackling the tacit knowledge enigma

The changing nature of the psychological contract between employer and employee has brought new challenges to leaders of organizations in the knowledge era. A major challenge for leadership now is what form of psychological contract will motivate people to share the knowledge held in the heads of knowledge workers, which is mostly tacit? Related to this is the setting up of an environment in an organization to facilitate knowledge transfer. It has been mentioned that in an age where organizations have become flat, networked and amorphous, leadership is actually distributed according to the circumstances. So setting up effective practices to develop many leaders is also an issue for organizations. Long before industries caught up with the idea of knowledge as a resource, Universities had been in the business of managing knowledge. They provided an appropriate environment to facilitate creation, sharing and dissemination of knowledge based on collaboration and trust, and public recognition as a currency of exchange for using other peoples knowledge. This may lead us to believe that the academic model of leadership is applicable to industry. The general management of academics and staff at the University seems to be catching up with the commercial world these days. Therefore it is futile to look for a new leadership model for the knowledge age in the University governance area. Could mentoring, coaching and the use of reflective practice, used successfully in the supervision of research in the University, provide clues to a model for leadership and leadership development that can be applied in industry in the knowledge age

Je regrette: Towards marshalling remorse in knowledge transfer

In the manifold excesses of current Anglo-American managerial praxis, from short-term time horizons, grossly distorted expressions of managerial prerogatives and remuneration rationales and a calculated brutality far in excess of any Human Relations sensitivity, the need to inflate shareholder perceptions of the bottom line has led to a managerial immorality that staggers many ethical and stakeholders boundaries. Post Enron, Tyco and others, can much change? Are all senior managers doomed to the moral/ethical vacuum of the bottom line? With remuneration packages deliberately focused around an economic-rationalist brutality, what reflective space, what discourse allows and enables moments of remorse/regret and accommodates the inevitable need for personal accountability and attempts at restitution? Is it merely recourse to recalcitrant legal/governance codes that provides for accounting for managerial incompetence and ideologized greed? How will management discourse remember the current regressive nature of managerial behaviour? How will Knowledge Management, in full flight with rhetoric about the importance of Tacit Knowledge, deal with organizational incompetence

Symposium the dismal (delusional and dangerous) \u27science\u27 of economics and the \u27capture\u27 of public administration: introduction: after the neoliberal \u27babble\u27 and the \u27silence\u27: alternative voices/narratives for economics in crisis

The breathtaking extent of the systemic collapse of the financial and banking system (2007-2009) must be considered as an inevitable consequence of the deliberate destruction of government and regulatory oversight by the interlocked economic/ideological and political/propaganda components of neoliberalism. Whether public choice theory (PCT) ideological agendas -- the subjugation of analysis of governance to market linked fantasies -- are an extension of RAND\u27s invention of rational choice theory, the matrix Code of the West , the imperial extension of such agendas into other disciplinary discourses represented the clearest continuing danger to democratic public policy and praxis. In terms of fellow travelers, neoliberal economic babble based on PCT and its bastard child, new public management, might stand alongside with Marxist babble. Even if only a fraction of scholars and practitioners in the field do their work while thinking about ways to increase public awareness of alternative futures and the possibilities of constructive change, the future can be a better place