The US-led liberal order: imperialism by another name?

This article argues that the biggest challenges facing the post-1945 liberal international order are to genuinely embrace ethno-racial diversity and strategies to reduce class-based inequalities. However, this is problematic because the LIO’s core foundational principles, and principal underpinning “theory” (liberal internationalism), are Eurocentric, elitist, and resistant to change. Those core principles are subliminally racialized, elitist, and imperial, and embedded in post-1945 international institutions, elite mindsets, and in American foreign policy establishment institutions seeking to incorporate emerging powers’ elites, willingly, into the US-led order. As illustration, this article considers examples that bookend the US-led system: wartime elite planning for global leadership, and the role of the UN in Korea, 1945-53, which served as the primary instrument for the creation and incorporation of (South) Korea into the US-led order; and the role of several US-state-linked initiatives in China over the past several decades, including the Ford Foundation. The article compares the contemporary and historical evidence to liberal internationalists’ claims, and those implied by the work on “ultra-imperialism” by Karl Kautsky and Antonio Gramsci’s ideas of hegemony. The article concludes that elite incorporation – by a combination of coercion, attraction, and socialisation – is the principal goal of the US-led order, not embracing diversity and moving towards genuine change felt at a mass level. Hence, we should expect domestic and international political crises to deepen

Reading the double diaspora: representing Gujarati East African identity in Britain

August 2012 saw the fortieth anniversary of the South Asian population’s expulsion from Uganda, by Idi Amin. Many members of this community, who were indeed also Gujaratis, migrated to Britain. My research, grounded in literary studies, excavates the cultural impact of these painful deracinations, which were forced in Uganda, and less coerced in Kenya. Given the trauma of departing from multiple homelands and relocating in a sometimes racist host nation, this article explicates how both individuated and collective identity are formed and reformed. Here I also seek to demonstrate a broad overview of the intervention my research eff ects within scholarship on the Gujarati diaspora, their narratives of belonging and, as Parminder Bhachu describes, discourses on the ‘twice migrant’. Within this remit, close reading of selected dance, culinary practices and visual materials will illustrate the trajectory of my research. Because of the paucity in fictional literary representation of the Gujarati East African in Britain, it is to these other forms of social knowledge that I turn. I argue that this lacuna in fictional writings highlights an inadequacy in the written text when articulating the experience of the twice displaced community. I demonstrate that it is the embodied ‘text’ that is favoured by this diasporic community in communicating identity. These embodied ‘texts’, of dance and culinary practices, are also significant in embedding knowledge covertly. The sense of secret or ‘esoteric knowledge’, that manifests itself time again within the double diaspora, is here too examined

The Affordable Care Act raises the stakes on worker classification; what does this mean for the Voluntary Classification Settlement Program

This research considers worker classification and the many implications an employer must consider when classifying a worker as employee or independent contractor. One implication relates to healthcare benefits and healthcare taxes. As such, this research will evaluate the new healthcare taxes and implications resulting from the Affordable Care Act. Furthermore, this research will relate and explain worker classification with regards to the Voluntary Classification Settlement Program. This is a program offered by the Internal Revenue Service allowing employers to prospectively classify workers as employees with tax relief for past misclassification. The healthcare implications from the Affordable Care Act have raised the stakes on worker classification. This research will confirm whether this will provide greater incentive for employers to classify workers as employees or independent contractors. This research considers worker classification and the many implications an employer must consider when classifying a worker as employee or independent contractor. One implication relates to healthcare benefits and healthcare taxes. As such, this research will evaluate the new healthcare taxes and implications resulting from the Affordable Care Act. Furthermore, this research will relate and explain worker classification with regards to the Voluntary Classification Settlement Program. This is a program offered by the Internal Revenue Service allowing employers to prospectively classify workers as employees with tax relief for past misclassification. The healthcare implications from the Affordable Care Act have raised the stakes on worker classification. This research will confirm whether this will provide greater incentive for employers to classify workers as employees or independent contractors

Impact of an Employment Guarantee Scheme on Utilisation of Maternal Healthcare Services: Results from a Natural Experiment in India

We assess the impact of India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG) scheme, the world’s largest workfare scheme, on healthcare utilisation – specifically maternal healthcare. The primary objective of NREG is to improve the income of rural households by guaranteeing 100 days of employment. We expect that by improving household income, thereby reducing some of the financial barriers, such as out-of-pocket payments, NREG can increase utilisation of maternal health services. Using a nationally representative household survey and a difference-in-differences approach that exploits the phased rollout of the scheme, we estimate the impact of NREG on utilisation of maternal health services: mainly deliveries at health facilities. We find that NREG did not increase overall facility deliveries, even though it led to an increase in deliveries at public facilities. There is weak evidence to suggest that deliveries at private facilities reduced due to NREG. Furthermore, sub-group analyses reveal that among poorer households, who are more likely to participate in NREG, there is a reduction in facility deliveries while home deliveries increased. Among richer households, NREG increased deliveries at public facilities. There was no impact on households belonging to marginalised castes. We conclude by discussing the possible mechanisms for these effects and its impact on equity in healthcare utilisation

Yunis Varon Syndrome

We have reported a case of Yunis-Varon syndrome which is a rare, autosomal recessive syndrome characterized by growth retardation, defective growth of the cranial bones, characteristic facial features, abnormalities of the fingers and/or toes & cleidocranial dysplasia. Additional features in this case were patent ductus arteriosus, CT brain findings suggestive of ischemic changes, CSF examination suggestive of pyogenic meningitis & cystic changes in right adrenal gland

XML-based genetic rules for scene boundary detection in a parallel processing environment

Genetic programming is based on Darwinian evolutionary theory that suggests that the best solution for a problem can be evolved by methods of natural selection of the fittest organisms in a population. These principles are translated into genetic programming by populating the solution space with an initial number of computer programs that can possibly solve the problem and then evolving the programs by means of mutation, reproduction and crossover until a candidate solution can be found that is close to or is the optimal solution for the problem. The computer programs are not fully formed source code but rather a derivative that is represented as a parse tree. The initial solutions are randomly generated and set to a certain population size that the system can compute efficiently. Research has shown that better solutions can be obtained if 1) the population size is increased and 2) if multiple runs are performed of each experiment. If multiple runs are initiated on many machines the probability of finding an optimal solution are increased exponentially and computed more efficiently. With the proliferation of the web and high speed bandwidth connections genetic programming can take advantage of grid computing to both increase population size and increasing the number of runs by utilising machines connected to the web. Using XML-Schema as a global referencing mechanism for defining the parameters and syntax of the evolvable computer programs all machines can synchronise ad-hoc to the ever changing environment of the solution space. Another advantage of using XML is that rules are constructed that can be transformed by XSLT or DOM tree viewers so they can be understood by the GP programmer. This allows the programmer to experiment by manipulating rules to increase the fitness of a rule and evaluate the selection of parameters used to define a solution

Media practioners engaging with higher education.

This Case Study focuses on teacher-practitioners in higher education (HE) and the benefits and challenges that they have encountered through this type of engagement. Its aim is to explore whether practitioners’ engagement with HE has made a significant impact on lifestyle and work practices. Most importantly, though, this case study will qualify what HE has given to teacher-practitioners and how they will look to apply their experiences to future achievements and aspirations