|
| history |
| |
|
The
period between the Sino-Japanese and Russian-Japanese
wars is one of crucial importance for Korea. At the same
time, these two wars were also turning points for all
the countries involved. The Sino-Japanese War marked not
only the defeat and humiliation of China but also the
break up of the Sino-centric regional order and the demise
of the imperial system in China in 1911. The Russo-Japanese
War solidified Japan’s regional assertiveness and threw
Russia into a chain of dramatic internal shifts that ultimately
led to the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. |
| Avram
Agov |
|
| Media
Times Review Special |
| |
| Henry
David Thoreau's writings have always been open to numerous
interpretations. The ones Walden and Civil Disobedience
have provoked in Bulgaria have always been related to
certain periods of spiritual emancipation. Moreover, the
appearances of Thoreau in Bulgarian both in the 1920s
and in the late 80s and early 90s were actually called
forth by these periods of spiritual emancipation and thus,
regardless of all differences in political and cultural
circumstances, gained a significance that prevented them
from remaining mere cultural coincidences. |
| Albena
Bakratcheva |
|
| photography |
| |
Street
photography is a reflection of every day life; real, unaltered
impressions of public places. Places that everybody visits
every day - the street where you live, the parking lot
of your favorite grocery store, the subway. Street photographers
document the truth - take candid pictures of things that
you don't notice in your daily grind. |
|
| history |
| |
| It
was when Takayasu Mitsui suffered defeat in Omi province
at the hands of Oda Nobunaga, one of the great unifiers
of Japan, that the Mitsui family realized its strength
did not lie with the sword. Takayasu moved with his family
to Isem province after barely escaping death (he was spared
by Nobunaga). His son, Sokubei Mitsui, started what has
become one of the legends of Japan’s business history.
Upon discarding his two swords and announcing to his family
that he would become a commoner, Sokubei said: “A great
peace is at hand. The shogun rules firmly with justice
in Edo. No more shall we live by the sword. I have seen
that great profit can be made honorably. The Mitsuis must
get money. We can get money only by entering the field
of trade... |
| Avram
Agov |
|
| perspectives |
| |
| An
awareness of the potentials and limits of all approaches
may help move our epistemological base from cocksure conviction
to thoughtful uncertainty in the attempt to understand
the impact of globalisation in our increasingly peripatetic
lives. |
| Hyung
Gu Lynn |
|
| cinema |
| |
| For
some time now the cinema productions of South Korean conquers
the screens of Europe, the hearts of the audience and
the approval of the international juries during the film
festivals. The latest proof of that is the award of the
director Kim Ki-Douk for his film “Samaria” during Berlinale
2004. After this probably earned reward and also after
the good presentation of the Korean cinema during the
festival in San Sebastian (with Bong Joon-ho’s “Memories
of Murder” and Kim Ki-Duk’s “Spring, summer, autumn, winter
and spring”) critics articles were published about the
so-called “festival fashion for Korean cinema” and “the
Korean syndrome on screen”. In fact, even if there is
such fashion – it is a proper and high quality alternative
for the mass Hollywood production that is flooding the
cinema halls around the world more and more. |
| Andronika
Martonova |
|
| internet |
| |
| A
powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet,
people are discovering and inventing new ways to share
relevant knowledge
with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting
smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies. |
| Christopher
Locke, Rick Levine,
Doc Searls and David Weinberger |
|
| photography |
| |
|
| literature |
| |
| The
studies in this book have been written in the last ten
years or so, from 1992 to 2002. In a preface to a collection
of this sort, academic practice requires me to enumerate
the essays one by one by providing a short synopsis of
each and, finally, to append a long list of acknowledgements.
I would rather skip the first part of this academic routine
for if a reader wants to peruse the essays, he will; and
in this case the abstracts would be redundant. And if
he were unwilling to browse the studies, no promotional
ruses disguised cleverly as abstracts would tempt him
into the labor of reading. |
| Nikita
Nankov |
|
|
|
| world
review |
| |
| The
consensus uniting governments and people in the Balkans
is that the region cannot achieve prosperity and stability
outside the process of European integration. At the same
time, it is quite clear that the dysfunctional states
and protectorates that characterise the region actively
hinder the inclusion of the Balkans into the European
mainstream. In this sense, the status quo is a problem
because it is blocking the road to EU accession… |
| Report
of the International Commission on the Balkans |
|
| perspectives |
| |
| What
provokes the anti-American is American activism: not the
role America plays in the world but that it is in the
world at all. Whatever the American action, the anti-American
denounces it, but particularly when the action is couched
in a policy of defending the freedom to act, which in
turn implies a set of democratic values. The absence of
freedom in particular locales—Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans—is
typically of concern only for tiny non-governmental organizations,
not for the mass-movement public, except when the United
States intervenes.The mass movement only emerges when
the authoritarian regime is challenged. |
| Russel
A. Berman |
|
| economy |
| |
| A
century of political freedom and economic development
was lost due to the seduction of the socialist promise
that all you had to lose was your chains, but a real future
of peace and prosperity awaits for those who finally throw
off the shackles of the state and socialism and embrace
the free market and the entrepreneurial ethos of creative
destruction. |
| Peter
J. Boettke |
|
| perspectives |
|
How
Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture
and Control Creativity |
Lawrence
Lessig |
|
| economy |
| |
|
The collapse of the socialist regimes in eastern Europe
and central Asia brought an unprecedented increase in
economic freedom for hundreds of millions of people. Many
people, however, still believe that their lives have become
worse since the start of the transition. One apparent
reason for this belief is a perceived increase in income
inequality, a perception supported by income surveys.
However, an analysis of these survey results shows that
the argument that democratization led to a real increase
in income inequality is weak and that the pretransition
survey data are poor and biased in an unknown direction. |
| David
R. Henderson, Robert M. McNab and Tamas Rozsas |
|
| history
& perspectives |
| |
| An
excerpt from “America's Role in Nation-Building: From
Germany to Iraq” by James Dobbins, John G. McGinn, Keith
Crane, Seth G. Jones, Rollie Lal, Andrew Rathmell, Rachel
Swanger, and Anga Timilsina |
| RAND
Corporation |
|
| religion |
| |
| Eleven
years ago, it seemed that the beast of communism, which
had set its face against the church of Jesus Christ, was
dead in Eastern Europe. I remember the 200,000 Bulgarians
with raised hands and open souls standing in Sofia's downtown
square in 1991. They gathered not to march in honor of
the ruling party but to hear an overseas evangelist preach
Christ and heal the sick. I was in the crowd, a graduating
law student, a former anticommunist revolutionary, and
a new Christian. I drank from the invigorating hope and
joy that had descended from heaven on that warm summer
night. A nation haunted by darkness for years was about
to receive a new heart. But things did not go quite the
way I hoped... |
| Victor
Kostov |
|
| religion |
| |
|
Many church people are happy about this removal of the
intellectuals from public influence and from the permission
to ask the radical questions. But do not be happy about
this in the name of religion. It is a fascist form, to
use this general word, which always, and I can speak out
of experience from Nazism, first turns against the intellectuals
because radical questions should be excluded. But even
more important than this political danger is the spiritual
danger of the fight against the intellectual critic, namely,
the danger that religion become superstition. Every religion
which cannot stand ultimately the radical question that
is asked by the intellectual critic of religion, is superstition. |
| Paul
Tillich |
|
| perspectives |
| |
|
World cataclysms in XX century, as well as the cardinal
changes in the beginning of XXI century reflect on the
Bulgarian state. Russia takes up a significant part in
the Bulgarian history, politics and diplomacy. Its role
in the Balkan, respectively Bulgarian processes are often
disputed, politicized and often denied. |
| Prof.
Dr. Nina Dyulgerova |
|
|
| Copyright
©2001- 2005 Media Times Review
|
| All
Rights reserved |
|
