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National Security Presidential Memorandum-20 (NSPM-20) (Launch of Spacecraft Containing Space Nuclear Systems) provides updated guidelines for launch authorization for three categories of proposed ...

This article uses primary sources to evaluate how Harold Pinter’s screenwriting for the film The Quiller Memorandum (1966) operated in the business context of film production in Britain. In the mid...

Drawing on the belief that photographs could critically scrutinize landscape uses, this essay attempts to locate and discuss projects published and exhibited in Portugal from May 2011 to May 2014. ...

Afghanistan faces significant challenges as it seeks to emerge from thirty years of civil war and insurgent violence and promote lasting peace and security. Terrorist incidents, which have increased dramatically since 2004, continue to pose a major threat to security, destabilizing governance and fracturing state initiatives to guarantee rule of law to citizens. An urgent priority for the government, as part of its development of counterterrorism policy, is to ensure that the formal criminal justice system responds effectively to the threat of terrorism by creating mechanisms and procedures that support the rights and needs of victims in accordance with international human rights standards. To date, examining victimhood in Afghanistan and accurately understanding the assistance and support that victims of terrorism receive and to which they are entitled during criminal justice processes have avoided academic scrutiny. Informed by empirical evidence and qualitative interviews with justice officials in Afghanistan, this article aims to fill this important gap in scholarship. It does so by drawing on an international framework for good practices outlined in the Global Counterterrorism Forum’s Madrid Memorandum to shed new light on gaps in existing national law. In doing so, it makes important recommendations for both institutional and legislative reform designed to strengthen protections and assistance for victims of terrorism and inform contemporary reviews of criminal procedural law being undertaken by justice ministries in Afghanistan.

British officials knew a good deal about the upsurge in malignity following the terrible euphoria of the Anschluss in March 1938. Word even reached a British consul working under Sir Freder...

From the moment the first scholars tried to understand the events of Britain during the fifth and early sixth centuries, two British historical documents have been central to their efforts,...

While the effects of the Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order have been analysed by a number of scholars, little attention has been paid to the ways in which this program ...

Once an oppositional ideology in the 1990s that united Muslim intellectuals around a radical critique of the state based on the ideals of democracy, civil society and pluralism, how has Turkish Islamism transformed into a state-centric and conservative world-view? This paper aims to document this transformation by scrutinizing the writings of a group of intellectuals in the context of (I) the 28 February 1997, military memorandum and the subsequent events which culminated in the AKP’s first electoral victory in 2002; and (II) the series of trials that started in 2008 known as the Ergenekon trials through which the AKP gained the upper hand in Turkish politics. In so doing, the paper problematizes the prevalent narratives on the relationship between Islam, on the one hand, and democracy and civil society, on the other, that miss how formulations and articulations of Islamism evolve in changing political contexts.

The Schlieffen Plan is the name conventionally assigned to a memorandum of December 1905 in which Alfred von Schlieffen, then chief of the Prussian general staff, outlined the project of a decisive...

“This is the Author’s Original Manuscript of a book review published by Taylor & Francis in RUSI Journal on 30 May 2019" This study, Modern Political Warfare: Current Practices and Possible Responses, examines political warfare as practiced today by both state and nonstate actors, including Russia, Iran, and the Islamic State. The study recommends revisions in U.S. military and nonmilitary approaches and capabilities to better address threats short of conventional warfare. The findings and recommendations should be of interest to the U.S. military, the U.S. State Department, and those in the executive and legislative branches charged with national security policy responsibilities. Allied and wider public audiences may also find this study of interest.

There is a story about an American bureaucrat in the 1980s who wrote a strong memorandum warning of the dangers the Soviets posed to the strength of the Atlantic Alliance. His boss reprimanded him ...

The first documentary publications on the history of Russian conservatism at the start of the twentieth century appeared in the 1920s. In 1922 the famous ‘Durnovo Memorandum’ was published.1 In the...

The Estonian dissidents’ Memorandum to the United Nations, drafted as a call for national self-determination in 1972, set new standards for the emigre community’s campaigns. Although its political message was initially dismissed as utopian, the subsequently emerging cooperation between emigre and homeland activists via intricate courier networks significantly strengthened the authority of Estonian voices in the West. By the early 1980s, the political alliances across the Iron Curtain eventually bore fruit. The Memorandum’s core demands reappeared in political debates on Baltic issues on both sides of the Atlantic, foreshadowing the massive Western support for the Baltic cause during the Singing Revolutions.

The Integrated Network for Social Sustainability (INSS) is a research-coordination network supported by the National Science Foundation that is currently in its third year of activities. Individual and institutional members, representing a wide range of fields and interests, are devoted to addressing social sustainability as an important, understudied issue under the broader rubric of sustainability and sustainable development. The INSS has developed a number of affinity groups and a set of activities to facilitate its development. An annual conference draws members together to review and report on their efforts. At the first conference, a group interested in developing a research agenda formed. This Community Essay shares its members’ perspectives about priorities for future research and education on social sustainability, highlighting efforts for greater inclusion of marginalized populations in research.

Many contemporary academics and policy analysts have revisited the Anglo-German rivalry before 1914 to predict what may await China and the United States in the twenty-first century. However, few, if indeed any, have specified in what sense this comparison can be made. This paper attempts to fill this gap with a detailed analysis of the strategic parallels between the Anglo-German rivalry then and the China–US competition now through the lens of the Crowe Memorandum. The author argues that the basic parallel between the rise of Germany and the rise of China lies in the challenges they posed or pose to the dominant maritime power and system leader – Great Britain then and the United States today. This parallel also explains the similarity between the Triple Entente initiated by Great Britain prior to 1914 and the Rebalance to Asia launched by the United States in 2011. Furthermore, as in the case of the Anglo-German rivalry before 1914, the most crucial problem underlying the mounting China–US comp...

In an unpublished memorandum written six years before his famous Epistola de Tolerantia (1685), John Locke recorded an anecdote about the English ambassador to Constantinople. Having opened a room ...

‘We've received an update this morning to say that Chennai is still being seriously affected by flooding due to further torrential rain. This has resulted in widespread disruption, there is no power, mobile communication is very badly affected with systems down and people unable to charge their phones and, internet connectivity is also very badly affected. Staff have not been able to come to the office, and given the conditions we have asked them not to try, when we have been able to contact them at all.’1 (Internal memorandum, 3.12.15)That was the situation as reported that morning in Chennai, India, in, December 2015 as the just completed issue of CITY, 19.6, awaited publication. In one sense there had been a breakdown in communications under adverse weather conditions – that was all. But in another sense, looking at what was to be and eventually was transmitted, the breakdown can also be regarded as more than that, as, on the one hand, an example of the fragility of our technological condition, an intr...

Appearing along the margin of a July 7, 1971 memorandum from the Citizens for Artists Housing is a space once filled by the artist Donald Judd's (1928–1994) name. By preserving the trace of Judd's former involvement with the group, this space signals an opening in the historical record: a starting point from which to consider how artists and organizations asserted often incommensurate courses for New York's Lower Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo in the early 1970s. Documents ranging from public memoranda to private correspondences and formal stationery templates to handwritten notes reveal the under-considered contentious relationships between SoHo's resident artists and their supporters. Rather than a narrative about how artists banded together to protect a culture of loft living against municipally sanctioned programs of urban redevelopment, exposed are wide ideological spaces between members of overlapping art worlds.

The right home environment is essential to health and well-being, throughout life. To secure the greatest and fastest possible improvement to the health of Greater Manchester (GM) citizens, homes need to be warm and safe, affordable and accessible, secure and supportive. Devolution provides an opportunity to improve housing, and the Prevention and Early Intervention Memorandum signed in July 2015 recognises housing as an ‘enabling’ priority. For the first time (under devolution) different parts of the public sector are coming together across the conurbation to identify new, different and integrated ways of working that will bring financial and health benefits. It is proposed that a programme will be developed and directed by a multi-disciplinary task and finish group, representing the housing, health and social care sectors. This paper sets out some of the challenges, solutions and what this programme is hoping to achieve in relation to housing under the new devolution deal for GM.

This article explores chaos or ‘mania’ as a leitmotif in Memorandum: A Story with Paintings by Marlene van Niekerk and Adriaan van Zyl (2006. Cape Town: Human & Rousseau). I argue that ‘mania’ is an evocation of the Dionysian forces in life and art: what Friedrich Nietzsche relates to the destructive-transformative power of primordial creative energy, and the urge to cosmic interconnectedness. The tale of Johannes Frekerikus Wiid is a Nietzschean quest in which the protagonist's reconstruction of an overheard conversation – a ‘word and allusion mania’ (2006, 35) – unexpectedly becomes the catalyst for his transformation into a creator and artist. This article focusses on the death of Wiid's interlocutors (Messrs X and Y) and how their breaths become divine afflatus for Wiid's imagined conclusion to their conversation: an allusive and enigmatic dialogue of their final passage across a personalized river Styx to their cosmic nest. This dialogue is intermediated by Van Zyl's ‘Hospital Diptych III’, a paintin...

This column explores current research questions around shared print (SP) and shared digital (SD) data sources as well as the data sources available to evaluate these questions, including memorandum of understandings (MOUs) and publicly available datasets. The work employs exploratory extraction and analysis to identify how the available metadata supports research and practice around SP and SD policies in five key areas: (1) validation level, (2) retention period, (3) use level (e.g., open, dim, dark), and (4) community localization (e.g., archive is built internally, collaboratively, outsourced). This work yields useful paths forward for more detailed research using publicly available datasets as well as potential next steps in research.

The term “open government” is frequently used in practice and science. Since President Obama’s Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies in March 2009, open government has attracted an enormous amount of public attention. It is applied by authors from diverse areas, leading to a very heterogeneous comprehension of the concept. Against this background, this article screens the current open government literature to deduce an integrative definition of open government. Furthermore, this article analyzes the empirical and conceptual literature of open government to deduce an open government framework. In general, this article provides a clear understanding of the open government concept.

The failure of the security assurances contained in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum to prevent Russia's annexation of Crimea and support for eastern Ukrainian separatists has been widely viewed as a s...

CBS radio listeners who tuned in at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 25, 1944, were treated to the dramatic retelling of a 1930s FBI success story, the St. Paul, Minnesota, killing by Bureau agents of Eddie "the Wise" Green, a member of John Dillinger's outlaw gang. At FBI headquarters, Crime Records Division chief Louis B. Nichols monitored the broadcast, which was the premiere of The FBI in Peace and War, sponsored by Lava Soap and based on Frederick L. Collins's Bureau-authorized, bestselling book of the same title.1In his review, Nichols noted that the antagonist's name had been changed from Eddie to Johnny for radio and that the narrator had credited the FBI with cleaning up the entire Dillinger gang "J. Edgar Hoover style."2 Because of the authoritative nature of the program and the invocation of Hoover's name, listeners likely inferred that the program was authorized and sponsored by the FBI. That was not the case, and in his memorandum Nichols objected to the failure of Collins and his sponsor to include a clear disclaimer in the program. "There was no tag line to the effect that the show has no official connection with the Federal Bureau of Investigation as we had specifically stipulated with Collins previously," Nichols wrote in a memorandum to Associate Director Clyde Toison. "The impression was very obvious by the use of the Director's name and the statement relative to FBI files that this was an FBI show." 'For weeks before the broadcast, Hoover, through his press and entertainment intermediary Nichols, had urged Collins to drop the program. Given his prior work with the FBI on an authorized book, Collins had developed the radio concept and sold it, through the Biow advertising agency of New York, to Procter & Gamble without first informing Hoover. Collins was to be paid $1,000 per episode by the sponsors with his primary contribution being access to FBI public relations materials.4 Nichols expressed the prevailing attitude among top FBI administrators when his review compared The FBI in Peace and War to another popular radio program Hoover despised. "All in all, the program is very much on the Gang Busters style, and, in fact, Gang Busters might even be considered more dignified."4Beginning in 1935 and continuing throughout the era of radio's dominant position in American entertainment culture, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI battled with producers of radio shows such as Gang Busters and The FBI in Peace and War, objecting to portrayals of the Bureau. FBI officials believed that those and certain other programs undermined the Bureau's authority and legitimacy through story lines emphasizing sensational violence and the thrill of the chase rather than staid logic and scientific detection. After nearly ten years battling those off-message portrayals, the FBI created and promoted its own radio crime drama in an effort to control its public image, valorize its authority and justify its ongoing cultural and jurisdictional growth. The details of the FBI's efforts to control its image, as revealed by its own meticulously maintained files, offer a cautionary tale of how a government agency, particularly a law enforcement agency, carries an outsized ability to influence news and entertainment portrayals of its work, in effect creating a mythical version of itself that can potentially hide abuses of power from the public.6The FBI's efforts to control its portrayal on radio may be viewed in context of a dramatic expansion of government propaganda that was initiated by the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration in the early 1930s. That expansion of government propaganda was accelerated by the maturation of radio in the mid- to late 1930s. According to Gerd Horton, the expansion of radio networks and sponsored national radio programs had made radio a central part of American life by the late 1930s.7 By the 1940s, federal government agencies such as the Department of the Treasury and the Department of War had begun collaborating with radio networks to sell war bonds through entertainment programming. …

Alfred von Schlieffen was responsible for all German Army operational planning as chief of the Prussian General Staff from 1891 through 1905. Immediately upon retiring, he wrote “Memorandum for a W...

This article takes a detailed look at the way in which the Habsburg Monarchy’s policy towards Serbia subtly shifted between 1881, when the Monarchy forced a secret treaty of alliance on the Serbian government, and the end of the Serbo-Bulgarian War of November 1885. Gustav von Kalnoky, the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, inherited a policy largely shaped by his Hungarian predecessor, Count Gyula Andrassy, which relied on controlling Serbia through the person of its ruler, the wayward Milan Obrenovic. The Austrophile and highly unpopular Milan, however, was a disastrous instrument of Austro-Hungarian control, and by the end of the Serbo-Bulgarian conflict, by which point Milan was pleading to be allowed to abdicate, Kalnoky had come to the conclusion that this “personal policy” was a failure, and that the Monarchy was better off relying on the outright coercion of Serbia. The article reconsiders some of the key stages in this development, in particular Andrassy’s memorandum of 24 November 1885, ...

A recent paper in this journal (Drechsler, 2013) traced the origins of modern public management to the Wanyanshu, a memorandum Wang Anshi submitted in 1058 to a Song Dynasty emperor in China. We raise doubts about the author's assessment and claims about that still remarkable document about government human resource management, in part by citing Chinese historians' ambivalence. Believing in the value of Sino-Western comparative research in public management, we push back the origins of Chinese statecraft by 2,000 years by suggesting further research into older and greater Chinese contributions to global public management.

Twenty years ago the issue of nuclear weapons on Ukraine's territory, and of security assurances to be given to Ukraine in return for becoming a non-nuclear-weapon state, was at the center of atten...

There exist incompatible depictions of the Second World War, and specifically of the year 1941. Numerous documents from the archives now available in Moscow and Washington invite comparison with the memoirs of contemporary witnesses. The present article first describes the situation in German–Soviet relations before 22 June 1941. Then it contrasts the memoirs of the interpreters involved (in the German Embassy in Moscow, in the Soviet Embassy in Berlin, and at the delivery of the memorandum by Ribbentrop to Dekanozov) with newly available archive material and with the official records of the Nuremberg trial. The goal of this comparison is to form an assessment of these memoirs as subjective historical sources and to arrive at a new evaluation of their reliability.

The past decade has seen attempts by librarians and their allies to respond to inefficiencies in the market for scholarly journals and introduce infrastructure to support open solutions. Recently these efforts have contributed to success at the national level, first with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy's 2013 policy memorandum on Expanding Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research and in 2014 with the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which incorporates the substance of the memorandum into law. This column provides a review of efforts by librarians to advocate for open scholarship, describes the federal actions that will expand public access to research, and concludes with a discussion of next steps in this evolving effort.

The cross-border co-ordination necessary for the successful resolution of global systemically important financial institutions (G-SIFIs) has emerged as a major issue in the post-crisis reforms. In particular, the Financial Stability Board addressed this issue in its “Key Attributes of Effective Resolution for Financial Institutions”, adopted in 2011. However, little exists by way of operational machinery to give effect to the Key Attributes. The memorandum of December 2012 setting out the understandings of the resolution authorities in the US and the UK as to how they will effect a “single point of entry” resolution of a G-SIFI is thus an important first step. This article analyses the agreement, identifying the conditions necessary for it to operate successfully. It is noted that, for understandable reasons, both countries have also put in place resolution mechanisms which do not depend upon appropriate action by the home-state regulator.

This paper offers an explanation of the current Greek crisis, it disputes the mainstream “debt crisis” explanation and argues that it is a twin crisis: a crisis of capital over-accumulation aggravated by the participation in the European Union. The second part analyses the turbulent historical course of Greek capitalism through the main phases of its development, their crises and resulting restructurings. In particular, it pinpoints its status as a second-generation middle-range capitalist country with limited imperialist abilities. The third section analyses the position of Greek capitalism within the European imperialist bloc and the advantages but also the dangers stemming from its participation in it. The fourth section focuses on the current global crisis and how it has been expressed in Greece. The last section concludes with the current situation of the Greek economy after the imposition of the IMF-ECB-EU Memorandum.

The article constitutes a preliminary attempt to address the effects of the current economic crisis on the Greek environment. The austerity policies and other conditions imposed by the Memoranda of Understanding with the troika of international lenders are undermining the progress made in the pre-crisis years in the framework of European Union (EU) environmental policy. The latter conflicts with the EU's new priorities in the context of the Greek bailout programme. Examples include the air pollution caused by fuel substitution following a vast increase in heating fuel tax, the escalating environmental conflict related to gold-mining investment, and the crumbling environmental management apparatus. Strictly monitored by the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, Greece needs to carefully delineate the trade-offs inherent in the country's ‘new’ model of growth. Proper policies are needed to avoid natural resource depletion, environmental decay and further national wealth...

Recent interest in Shakespearean phonology in the 2000s, under the heading of ‘original pronunciation’ (OP), has a history which can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century. A memorandum by Richard Grant White in 1865 was followed by a detailed analysis by Alexander Ellis, particular attention being paid to Shakespeare’s rhymes. Later studies, transcriptions, or presentations include those of Wilhelm Vietor, Daniel Jones (whose influence was particularly important), Harold Palmer, F. G. Blandford, and A. C. Gimson. BBC broadcasts of extracts from Shakespeare in OP took place during the 1930s and 1940s, and proved popular, but full productions in London and Cambridge during the 1950s received mixed reviews. Dramaturgical and scholarly criticisms are briefly discussed, and the value of the reconstruction exercise strongly affirmed.

In March 1942 Stephen Payne, the manager of the construction department, HM Dockyard Devonport, in a memorandum to his Admiral Superintendent, with distribution to the super–intendents of the other...

By offering a reinterpretation of an Anglo-American pact known as the House-Grey Memorandum, this article challenges prevailing views about British decision-making in 1916 in the months leading up to the Battle of the Somme. It argues that serious doubts that the war could still be won without American assistance were the defining characteristic of their deliberations. Owing to deep scepticism about the proposed offensive and severe worries about their financial resources, a majority of the key British civilian leaders were prepared to accept a compromise peace mediated by the United States. Yet these efforts failed primarily because of intrigue at the highest levels of British politics, hard-line Conservative opposition and serious diplomatic missteps by American President Woodrow Wilson. In the end, although doubting it would produce any meaningful results, the British civilian leadership allowed the Somme offensive to go forward only because of their failure to unite on another course of action to prev...

This article examines how policy-based evidence making (marshalling research in support of a predetermined policy) can delegitimize the role of social science in informing and influencing changes in public policy and practice. First, this study offers a content analysis of the memorandum of the U.S. defense secretary establishing the comprehensive review of 10 U.S.C. § 654, the “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy, identifying the designations and attributions used in this memorandum. Second, this article proposes a six-part test for policy-based evidence making and pilot this test on the “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” review memorandum. Implications for policy practice are discussed.

The political crisis in England in 1450 and the deteriorating relationship between King Henry VI and Richard, duke of York, in the summer of that year are examined in the light of two new documents. These provide direct evidence of the reaction of the royal household, if not the king himself, and his advisers to the duke of York's return from Ireland, firstly from the Midlands in the summer of 1450, and secondly, from North Wales around April 1451. Both items were sent to Lord St Amand. The first, from the duke of Buckingham, notes the arrival of a notable force in Warwickshire and a stand-off between the bishop of Coventry and Lichfield and the men of Stafford and its region. The second, from a royal servant, Thomas Broun, is a memorandum of advice for St Amand, who was shortly to become chamberlain in North Wales. It focuses on the excesses of Sir Thomas Stanley, one of a small group of royal household officials holding office in this area, and the threat they posed to the king's regime and its financia...

Publication of the first issue of Phycologia on 29 March 1961 (Fig. 1) marked the onset of an internationally important and respected scientific journal produced under the auspices of the International Phycological Society (IPS), itself officially founded on 1 January 1961. Now entering its second half-century, Phycologia continues to publish original research articles covering all aspects of phycology, and the IPS remains dedicated to its constitutional objectives (IPS Constitution, Art. 2): the development of phycology, the distribution of phycological information, and international cooperation among phycologists and phycological organizations. The nascence of both the journal and the Society dates from 6 September 1955 when a proposal to investigate possible establishment of an international phycological society and feasibility of initiating and supporting a phycological journal on an international basis was put fourth at the 10th annual Phycological Society of America (PSA) business meeting by then PSA President, Harold C. Bold (Silva 1955). The proposal was approved, and, as noted by Silva & Papenfuss (1981: 92), a Committee on International Cooperation among Phycologists was appointed. The Committee, consisting of George F. Papenfuss, Chm, Seymour H. Hutner, Luigi Provasoli, and Paul C. Silva, reported back to the 11th annual PSA business meeting (Silva 1956). At the 1956 meeting, it was felt that further pursuit of the project should not stem officially from the PSA but rather from individual members of the Society. The 1956 PSA President G.F. Papenfuss then appointed P.C. Silva to represent interested members of the PSA in co-opting a committee. An Organizing Committee of 11 members (Figs 2–12) had been co-opted by early 1960. On 29 April 1960, the Organizing Committee was asked by letter (Figs 13–14) to select a title for the planned journal and to approve three documents: a letter to prospective members with a memorandum on finances, Articles of Organization, and a membership application form (see Silva & Papenfuss 1981). Phycologia was the journal title chosen, and printed copies of the above named documents (Figs 15–19) were sent to several hundred prospective members on 15 September 1960. These events led the formal founding of the IPS on 1 January 1961, the date recorded in the minutes of the First General Meeting (see Phycologia 1: 188–191, 1961). Society operations are governed by a Constitution, which initially was called Articles of Organization. Successive versions of these documents, each approved by the Society membership, have appeared in Phycologia 2: 197–199 (1963), 8: 221–222 (1970), 14: 173–175 (1975), 21: 196–198 (1982), 24: 122–124 (1985), 32: 468–470 (1993), 37: 73–75 (1998), 40: 101–103 (2001), and 41: 203–205 (2002). Various milestones (Table 1) mark the first half-century of both Phycologia and the IPS, including those noted in Silva & Papenfuss (1981), Woelkerling & Mann (2001), and Wynne & Woelkerling (2001). The founding Editor-inChief, Paul Silva, was elected the first honorary member of the Society (Hoek 1985) and further honoured with an 80th birthday tribute (Mann et al. 2002); while Tyge Christensen (1918–1996; see Moestrup & Thomsen 1997), the first Assistant Editor, was honoured by the establishment of the Tyge Christensen Prize in Phycology (Guiry 1997), awarded annually for the best paper published in Phycologia (alternating between microalgal and macroalgal papers published in the preceding two years). As of 23 September 1961, the Society had 380 individual members and 17 institutional subscribers to the journal (Phycologia 1: 188–189), but the first Society membership

ILAP (The Latin American Institute of Psychoanalysis) is a relatively recent project of the IPA and FEPAL (The Latin American Psychoanalytical Federation). Its formal origin, marked by the signature of a memorandum recording an agreement between the presidents of both institutions, Claudio Eizirik and Alvaro Rey de Castro respectively, dates from January 2006, but the governing body of ILAP was formed in December of the same year. Given this, we might say that as of December 2008 ILAP had effectively existed for two years. This is a short and very intense period and for that reason the time for general assessment, conclusions, and suggestions for change has not yet come. We shall simply give a critical history of the project, its antecedents, what it has realized, and the difficulties and limitations encountered hitherto, as well as sketch future perspectives.

In response to Osterle et al.'s ‘Memorandum on Design Oriented Information Systems Research’, this commentary disputes, and expands the context of, several premises used to justify the main argument in the memorandum. These include: (1) claims about the evolution and role of design science research in the broader IS community and its position in the so-called ‘Anglo-Saxon community’, (2) the journal reviewing standards applied to design science research and what is perceived to be a sole focus on behavioral ‘descriptive’ research in certain IS journals. This commentary also discusses how such journals operate and set up their missions, review principles, and standards.

Editor-in-ChiefEuropean Journal of Information Systemsadvance online publication,7 December 2010; doi:10.1057/ejis.2010.57In this issue, EJIS is publishing ‘Memorandum on Design OrientedInformation Systems Research’, an opinion that has engendered muchdebate in the German-speaking Information Systems (IS) community.Already published in German, we present an English translation. Followingthe Memorandum is ‘A Response to the Design-oriented InformationSystems Research Memorandum’ by Richard Baskerville, Kalle Lyytinen, V.Sambamurthy, and Detmar Straub. To a certain degree, these opinionpapers are part of a wider and continuing discourse about the evolvingmores in the assessment of academic research. This discourse hasmaterialized in a number of EJIS articles, for example, relating to Britain(Paul, 2008), Finland (Iivari, 2008), and Europe in general (Lyytinen et al.,2007).There are many issues; but a central theme in this discourse has beenthe value and scientific quality associated with the various artifacts thatrepresent IS research outcomes. Such artifacts not only include reportssuch as books, journal articles, and conference presentations, but becauseof the underlying technology they may also include operational computerprograms, machinery, and practices (Committee on Academic Careersfor Experimental Computer Scientists, 1994). The precedence in thevalue attached to these artifacts is evolving and is relative to differentinstitutions, academic traditions and cultures. In some cases, journalarticles are particularly privileged, and this privilege may even exclusivelyvalue only ‘top’ journal articles. In this editorial, our central concern froma perspective of editors of EJIS is this focus on the high value often attachedto our journal review and acceptance decisions. The basis of suchvaluations is not only ours, but also the precedence attached by others.These valuations are often situated within specific institutions or scholarlycultures. For example, in the scholarship of discovery (Boyer, 1996),articles in the scientific literature are often rightfully favored. In thescholarship of teaching, textbooks are rightfully valued (which does notlessen the value of scientific papers).A part of these issues therefore lies with various institutional or culturalvaluations of scholarly artifacts. Such valuations may err by levelingexpectations for research journal publications from scholars whoseduties do not actually involve scientific research. Research journal qualitymanagement has worked quite well to advance the community’s research-oriented knowledge via competitive peer reviews. These processes are notto blame for the rejection of artifacts that lack a serious researchcontribution.Further, a part of these issues is the evolution within some evaluationbodies toward the assignment of a singular importance of top journalplacements, and associated risks of a too rigid system in terms ofresearchers’ learning and personal development, complementarities ofpublications and diversity of outputs for overall richer knowledge andtools creation (Loos et al., 2010). Such evaluations will leave other artifacts

Colonel Edward M. House, the close personal confidant of American President Woodrow Wilson, disembarked in Great Britain in January 1916 on a mission to bring the First World War to a close under the auspices of American mediation. Although his mission, which culminated in a secret pact between the United States and Great Britain known as the House-Grey Memorandum, has been studied by several scholars, the involvement of British intelligence with respect to that mission has never received more than cursory attention. Through a careful analysis of the surviving documents, this article reconstructs British intelligence's activities with respect to House's mission, examines the countermeasures that House employed as he attempted to protect the secrecy of his negotiations, delineates the role played by different British intelligence agencies and assesses their response to their findings.

At the end of April 1922, S.P. Waterlow of the Central Department of the Foreign Office, which dealt with Franco–German relations and European security, put up a memorandum. This claimed: “Except on paper and as an expedient for minor purposes or an escape for some dilemma, we have not taken the League [of Nations] seriously.” It contrasted London's indifference with the active use which Paris was making of the League, asserted that “the objects of British policy and those of the League are broadly speaking identical,” and urged: “let us institute a genuine and energetic League of Nations policy.” This recommendation was strongly endorsed by the Assistant Under-Secretary, Sir William Tyrrell, who believed that such a policy would secure almost universal popular support for co-operation with France, and he proposed making a joint declaration that for the purpose of maintaining the frontiers created by the Treaty of Versailles: “the two countries would place at the disposal of the League all their resources...

Two newly available sources for World War II intelligence history consist of French pre-war mainly intelligence documents held for years in the Soviet Union and recently returned to France and of German pre-war documents, primarily cryptologic, held for years in the United Kingdom and recently restituted to the Federal Republic. In addition, a memorandum of 1930 reveals that the future spy Hans-Thilo Schmidt frequently visited the factory making the Enigma machine and coolly asked the manufacturer for basic details, which they gave him and which he later sold to the French, leading eventually to the Allied reading of Engima-enciphered messages during World War II.

This article examines the Zambian dimension in the calling and aftermath of the Morogoro Conference of 1969. After the failure of the Wankie and Sipolilo campaigns, Chris Hani and six other members of MK produced a memorandum, which constituted a devastating attack on the ANC’s exile leadership. The authors of the memorandum were expelled and were unable to attend the conference, but their memorandum had a strong influence on its deliberations. The conference recommended their reinstatement, but this did not resolve the crisis in Lusaka, which had ‘tribal’ undertones, and was intensified by Zambian government pressure to remove MK from Lusaka and the country. The reinstatement of Hani and his comrades was followed by protests and defiance by about 30 members of a Transvaal group. Attempts to remove MK members from Lusaka to a bush camp resulted in further defiance and the expulsion of 30 members. There were further crises involving the movement of arms and an ill‐fated attempt by Flag Boshielo and three o...

Martha Moulsworth's The Memorandum of Martha Moulsworth, Widow (1632) is the first autobiographical poem by a woman and, indeed, one of the earliest known examples of female autobiographical writing in England. With its deliberate construction and artful rhetoric, the Memorandum seems to contradict the idea of autobiography as a truthful and honest account of individual experience. This essay poses the question whether consciously elaborate poetic composition, far from being inhibiting, could provide a secure framework for female authorial expression at a time when female writing was generally met with apprehension. The abundant tensions and ambiguities in the poem—for example, in Moulsworth's depiction of her marriages and relationships with her husbands, her remarks about the deaths of her children or her attitudes to female education—suggest that poetry could open up a space for feminine self-expression precisely because of the generic constraints it imposes and the intricate layers of meaning that it ...

In 2007, the Solicitor for the Department of Interior advocated for an interpretation of the phrase, “a significant portion of its range,” that would effectively narrow the definition of endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. We review the controversy concerning the government's interpretation of the “significant portion of its range” phrase, focusing on recent case law, the Solicitor's Memorandum, and relevant listing actions. We concentrate our discussion on two key conclusions reached by the Solicitor: (a) the term “range” in the phrase refers only to a species' current range, not its historical range and (b) the government is entitled to adapt its definition of the term “significant” on a case by case basis. We find that implementation of the Solicitor's interpretation could significantly reduce the number of species that qualify for protections and ultimately, result in a diminished capacity to provide for the conservation of threatened and endangered species.

This article examines the notion of international cooperation in affairs concerning China in the 1920s from the point of view of a major foreign power at that time, Britain, as it sought to find a suitable response to the huge outburst of nationalistic and anti‐imperialist feelings in China in the summer of 1925. It aims to show that the “December Memorandum” issued by Britain in December 1926 was not a sudden liberal turning‐point in British policy towards China as is commonly viewed, but must be properly understood in the context of the events preceding it. This misplaced faith in the notion of international cooperation by a major foreign power, Britain, would have far‐reaching consequences for the future of Chinese nationalism.