Journal articles on the topic 'Congresses, Internat., 1964'

The mid-1960s witnessed a landmark change in the area of civil rights policy in the United States. After a series of tortuous internal battles, with Southern legislators using all available procedural tools to maintain their states' discriminatory Jim Crow legal systems, the United States Congress adopted two statutes—the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—which insured civil and political equality for all Americans. The Acts of 1964 and 1965 were the culmination of a decade-long struggle by black Americans to secure the citizenship rights that had been denied to them for more than a half century. Beginning with the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) Supreme Court decision, the civil rights movement built momentum, as formal organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) grew in strength and informal (grass roots) organizations spread throughout the South and the Nation. As national public opinion shifted increasingly toward providing new civil rights guarantees for blacks, Congress responded with new legislation: the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (the first civil rights law since 1875), the Civil Rights Act of 1960, and a legislative proposal to prohibit the poll tax in 1962 (which would be ratified by three-quarters of the states in 1964 and become the 24th Amendment to the United States Constitution).

This research aims to examine the efforts of GUPPI in reforming Islamic education in Indonesia. This study employs a literature review methodology, utilizing a qualitative approach with a historical method. Data is collected through literature from various journals and relevant websites concerning the research subject. The findings reveal that GUPPI experienced fluctuations, both during the New Order era and the Reform era. During the New Order era, GUPPI saw institutional development in assets and territory, indicating significant progress due to its political ties with Golkar. However, GUPPI's idealism to further develop Islamic education stagnated during the Reform era. In the VII GUPPI Congress in 1998, GUPPI disaffiliated from the Golkar party and returned to being an independent organization. Post-VII and VIII Congresses from 2005 to 2011, GUPPI continued to grapple with internal issues and sought strategies for revival.

FRAGMENTO. El académico honorario Eduardo Gaitán Marulanda (1933 - 2021) se graduó Summa Cum Laude de médico en la Universidad Nacional de Colombia en 1954 y se especializó en Medicina Interna y Endocrinología en la Universidad de Tulane en New Orleans. Durante este tiempo investigó sobre las hormonas de la neurohipófisis. En 1962 regresó a Cali, Colombia, para dirigir la sección de endocrinología en el Hospital Universitario Evaristo García, donde se formaron y trabajaron importantes endocrinólogos del país, en la mejor época de la Universidad del Valle, con apoyo de la Fundación Rockfeller, del programa Tulane Colombia y de otras fundaciones. Ocupó la Cátedra de Endocrinología en la Universidad del Valle entre 1960 y 1975, donde se distinguió por sus investigaciones sobre mecanismo de acción de las hormonas de la hipófisis posterior y, particularmente, por el descubrimiento de los bociógenos naturales en las aguas de consumo humano como causa coadyuvante de la endemia bociosa, trabajos inicialmente llevados a cabo en la localidad de Candelaria y extendidos después al Valle de Sibundoy y a numerosas poblaciones del occidente colombiano. Su interés investigativo cambió al campo de la glándula tiroides, interés que continuó por el resto de su vida. Su trabajo más importante en esta etapa fue Caracterización química, geoquímica y biológica de los bociógenos naturales del agua. Fue publicado en el exterior y presentado en diversos congresos interna1 Editor Emérito Revista MEDICINA. cionales. Posteriormente fue elegido presidente de la Sociedad Colombiana de Endocrinología, cargo en el que tuve el honor de sucederlo. Desde 1975 el doctor Gaitán residió en los Estados Unidos; allí fue Profesor Titular de su especialidad en las Universidades de Alabama y de Mississippi.

Abstract Introduction This article provides historical context for understanding how the cigarette industry have manipulated language used in health warning labels (HWLs) to protect them in litigation. Methods Review of previously secret internal business records from 1964 discussing the role HWLs on cigarettes. Review of the legal challenges made by cigarette manufacturers surrounding HWLs as mandated in the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act and the language in corrective statements ordered by US Department of Justice. Results Within days after the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee issued its 1964 Report the cigarette companies plotted how they could use HWLs on cigarettes as a defense in future litigation. Industry lawyers discussed drafting legislation that would preempt other government agencies from requiring HWLs on cigarette containers and in cigarette advertising with language mirroring the key findings of the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee report. In July 1965, Congress did pass legislation which mandated a single watered-down cigarette pack HWL which excluded cigarette advertising, just as industry lawyers had recommended. Subsequent HWL laws passed by Congress in 1969 and 1984 along with the more recent history of manufacturers opposing updated graphic HWLs and corrective statements reflects a consistent and continuing effort by cigarette companies to insulate themselves from taking responsibility for harms caused by smoking. Conclusion Beginning in the mid-1960s and continuing even through today, lawyers working on behalf of cigarettes companies have worked to manipulate the language of consumer warnings to focus responsibility for the harms caused by smoking on smokers. Implications In tobacco litigation, juries should be informed about the industry’s coordinated effort to draft legislation and water down the original caution statements proposed on cigarette containers and in advertising even though Congress ultimately is responsible for the law that was enacted. In addition, even though the 1992 Supreme Court decision in the Cipollone case preempted post-1969 failure to warm claims against cigarette makers, this protection does not apply on pre-1969 warning claims where the evidence shows that cigarette companies understood they were selling a defective product that when used as intended would harm their customers. Thus, those initiating smoking before 1969 and subsequently harmed by cigarettes can hold cigarette makers responsible for their failure to warn them about health risks.

Abstract This article uncovers the financial knowledge and bond market campaigns of the paradigmatic non-violent revolution of the twentieth century—the civil rights movement. It builds on an interpretation made by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) during the early 1960s: segregation was a national problem because it was financed through a network of bankers across the country who specialized in the business of debt; certified by prominent bond attorneys in New York City, Chicago, and elsewhere; and because investors from around the country collected tax-exempt interest payments from indebted southern segregated municipalities. By weaving the internal memos, protest ephemera, and legal strategies of civil rights activists together with the credit assessments, scheduled bond offerings, and perspectives of financiers, this article reconstructs the attempts to politicize bond market transactions and efforts to place the economic certainty of segregation in doubt. In so doing, it offers a fresh perspective on the so-called classic phase of the civil rights movement (1954–1965). More generally, it raises powerful questions about the dilemmas of investment-focused campaigns, and how finance capital compounds the difficulties of organizing against authoritarian regimes.

In the mid-1950s, the Eisenhower administration proposed that the U.S. government subsidize the expansion of American corporate interests abroad. In 1954 and again in 1955, the Republican administration recommended that Congress ease the provisions of the Internal Revenue Code applicable to income earned abroad in order to encourage American multinational corporations (MNCs) to increase their investments overseas. The MNCs and exporters opposed specific components of the administration's tax package, however; Congress therefore refused to endorse it. By the end of its tenure in office, the administration itself retreated from its attempts to subsidize private capital exports and began to advocate a crackdown on tax abuse by American multinational firms.

O governo do presidente argentino Juan Domingo Perón (1946-1955) desenvolveu uma política cultural voltada aos setores populares. Para o peronismo, a questão político-social e a cultural eram indissociáveis. O Primeiro Congresso de Bibliotecas Populares da Província de Buenos Aires (1949) foi uma das iniciativas dessa política cultural peronista. Entretanto, ela foi marcada por divergências, inclusive internas, quanto à centralidade do nacionalismo, à formação que deveria ser dada aos setores populares e ao legado da tradição liberal argentina.

[Cardinal Martini, archbishop emeritus of Milan, and currently scholar in residence in Jerusalem, delivered this inaugural address on November 17, 2004, during a three-day international congress held at the Gregorian University on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Canadian Jesuit Bernard J. F. Lonergan (1904–1984). The congress explored the contribution of Lonergan to Christian theology and, in particular, his proposal for a new methodology capable of assuring the internal unity of theology as well as fostering its many integrations with the natural and human sciences, historical research, philosophical reflection, and other types of knowing. Cardinal Martini in his lecture brought out the person of Lonergan as well as his ecclesial and cultural significance.]

Once Romania came under the influence of the Soviet Union, the new regime established in 1948 was integrated into the diplomatic system created by the Kremlin. The party-state in Bucharest participated in youth festivals, the world women's movement, intellectuals' conferences, the Christian Peace Movement, and particularly the World Peace Congress. All of these events served as propaganda instruments to discourage a more assertive Western anti-Sovietism. Since 1954, Khrushchev initiated a shift in Soviet policy, one focused on peaceful coexistence rather than confrontation between the two formerly irreconcilable political camps. The Romanian People's Republic, along with other state socialist countries, emulated this novel approach in Moscow. The article explores the impact of the new course on Romania’s cultural diplomacy in the late 1950s and the early 1960s. To establish credible diplomatic efforts, there was a need to rethink socialist culture and revalue the pre-communist heritage. This new culture was based on the Leninist principle of “the new culture, national in form, socialist in content”. It signaled that the regime had moved beyond de-Stalinization, and now possessed internal legitimacy that no longer relied on the presence of Soviet troops in the country. However, this socialist culture drew inspiration from postwar autochthonized Bolshevik (Stalinist) nationalism. The medieval tradition rediscovered by Soviet cultural studies (such as Dmitry Likhachev, Viktor Lazarev, or Boris Rybakov) fueled anti-Soviet sentiments in Bucharest, leading, by 1964, to a significant distancing from Moscow. This article traces the diplomatic efforts of the Romanian People's Republic during this period of latent learning of the new rules of the political game within the socialist camp.

This study delves into Siti Walidah’s journey as a gender equality pioneer within the ‘Aisyiyah movement, utilizing four research methods: heuristic research for source collection, source criticism for source validation, interpretation employing sociological and anthropological approaches, and historiography for systematic reporting. Findings reveal that Walidah’s family and marriage to Ahmad Dahlan strongly influenced her commitment to gender equality. Dahlan played a significant role in forming views and experiences that gave birth to ideas and tangible actions in the gender equality movement. Walidah pioneered the gender equality movement by establishing places of education: launching the Sapa Tresna association (1914), ‘Aisyiyah (1917), Internaat (1919), Musholla ‘Aisyiyah (1922) which became tools for building gender equality by providing opportunities and programmes for women to obtain equal educational rights as men. She played a pioneering role in empowering women within ‘Aisyiyah, leading its congresses, and departed from religious values to advocate for gender equality through the ‘Aisyiyah organization formed in 1917, solidifying her legacy as Indonesia’s first gender equality advocate.

The paper discusses the fundamental ideas of political Zionism. Many of them were presented in the pamphlet “The Jewish State” (1896) and in a fictionalized form in the utopian novel “The Old New Land” (1902). Their author is the Austrian journalist and writer Theodor Herzl (1860–1904). Some facts and events that influenced the formation of Herzl's views are also named; a number of decisions of the first Zionist congresses are analyzed; the role of Russian Zionists in advancing the movement; the attitude of the government and society in Russia and other countries to Zionism; the perception of Zionism in the ruling and intellectual circles of Israel in our time; the correlation of the ideas of political Zionism with modern internal and external foreign policy and realities of the State of Israel. The article attempts to answer the question: to what extent modern Israel meets the ideals of classical Zionism, to what extent its main provisions were implemented in it.

A estrutura organizativa interna da Internacional Comunista (Comintern) era quase totalmente desconhecida àqueles que a observavam de fora. Contudo, ela foi fortemente influenciada pelas lutas políticas de bastidores, inclusive no Partido Comunista soviético, e pelas viradas geopolíticas promovidas pelos líderes de Moscou. Os três Estatutos da Comintern aprovados em seu 2º (1920), 5º (1924) e 6º (1928) Congressos Mundiais não esgotam a análise dos órgãos que a compunham, mas dão uma ideia de como sua estruturação, ao contrário do que pensa o senso comum, alterou-se radicalmente à medida que se desenrolavam as disputas de poder no Kremlin. Neste artigo, exponho os resultados de uma exaustiva comparação entre os três Estatutos, relacionando-os ao contexto político de cada época e apontando nas mudanças redacionais pistas sobre como se alteravam os conceitos de movimento comunista internacional e de revolução mundial.

This article attends to the abolition of the privy purses and princely privileges of ex-rulers achieved between May 1967 to December 1971 in a controversial constitutional episode, in a period of transition for Indian democracy. Moving beyond the usual figures under focus, namely Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her Principal Secretary P.N. Haksar, it brings to fore a wider cast of characters and their concerns during this campaign. Second, it seeks to take the established binary between the old of the Indian National Congress and the new of Indira’s Congress (Ruling) following the split in 1969, to stand for a wider generational passage of time at both international and internal levels. Third, probing this overlapping interaction, it presents it as one among final episodes of independent India emerging from its British world of 1947, whose relevance can be sketched beyond pressure politics inside a party and mass politics outside it. Finally, it presents this episode as a prism through which one can see the end of the ‘first phase’ of India’s democracy and one of its inherited institutions.

The organization of the National Science Foundation in 1950 gave it a late start on supporting American science. It survived as a poorly funded sister to the Office of Naval Research until the late 1950s, when Sputnik opened up the federal coffers for science support and education. This was particularly true in the ocean sciences, where NSF financial commitment to research support remained extremely limited, until the lobbying of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Oceanography, combined with the results of Sputnik, led to a dramatic new commitment of resources. One of the earliest major recipients of NSF resources in oceanography and the earth sciences was Project Mohole. Mohole gave the Foundation the opportunity to take a leadership role in oceanography and the earth sciences, although internal squabbles among supporters, along with projected cost over-runs, eventually led to a funding cut-off by Congress in 1966. However, the NSF's leadership role in the ocean sciences was by then well established.

This article examines the revival of the Ukrainian youth organization Plast in Germany in the first years after World War II. The reasons for this process have been studied. It was found that the establishing of Plast groups in di-pi camps was a spontaneous process, so Union of Ukrainian Plast Emigrants – SUPE was revived for the management of these activities and preventing of moral and physical degradation of Ukrainians. Number of meetings of the organization took place in 1946-1948 under its leadership. The most important were following: the Congress in Karlsfeld in April 1946, the meeting in Mittenwald in July 1947, and the First Ideological Plast Congress held in Ashschaffenburg in March 1948. The organizational and ideological background of Plast’ activities in the first postwar decades were adopted during these meetings. The article analyzes the ideas on the Educational Ideal of the Young Ukrainian and the principles of building further organization’ activities, in particular: apoliticalness, catholicity, acceptance of youth and senior Ukrainians without distinction of an origin and religion, using the ideas of world scouting and readiness to cooperate with other scout organizations, attention to the essence and spirit of the Plast idea and the development of propaganda among “ours”, and “of that which is not”. It was found that the 35th anniversary of the Plast establishment was celebrated in 1947–1948. However meetings of this period were dedicated not only to the summing up of the activities since its establishing. Given the fact that they took place on the eve of the mass resettlement of Ukrainians to other countries – the United States, Canada, Australia, etc., they aimed at developing the main directions of activities of the Plast members in emigration. The article explores the main achievements of the Congress held in 1948 under the slogan “On a further journey to the great purpose”. It is concluded that they were following: the election of the Main Plast Council headed by Plast Head (known as “Nachalniy Plastun”) Severin Levitsky, discussion of external and internal environment in the countries of new living and short-term prospects of this “journey”.

When studying the formation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 1914, scholars have usually focused on interest groups and electoral politics. This essay, by contrast, suggests that the reputation and network influences of an existing federal agency, the Bureau of Corporations, also shaped the creation of its successor, the FTC. Building on the concept of bureaucratic autonomy, the essay examines the structure of the bureau, its connections, and its preferences. The bureau's leaders favored a clear separation from the Department of Justice and argued for a quasi-judicial process for antitrust, which they felt would be more effective than the courts. They advocated discretion in covering small firms and mandatory annual reports, while seeking to avoid being assigned authority to clear business agreements in advance. Well before the 1914 debates, leaders at the bureau directed substantial funds toward influencing trust legislation. They contacted academics and civic leaders, tracked existing legislative proposals, and analyzed key legal terms. Internal studies examined major questions, such as how to define and regulate unfair trade practices. Bureau officials came to argue Congress could never define these in legislation. Instead a bureaucracy with appropriate authority could adapt definitions of unfair practices to changes in business. When the bureau became the nucleus of the FTC, it received much of the discretionary power it sought.

The imposition of official state ideology (Marxism-Leninism) is characteristic for Ukrainian and Romanian theoretical linguistics of the middle and second half of the 20th century. It was the leading methodology for solving the problems of nature and essence of the human language. With its help, it was possible to study internal structure of the linguistic system and use linguistic research methods, which are the subject of general linguistics. Issues that are related to the problems of ideology and specific linguistics (Ukrainization, Russification, Romanization, Magyarization, etc.) are not considered and addressed. The subject of research is the penetration of official state ideology into linguistic questions about the nature and essence of language, its reflection in the methods of linguistic research. In Ukrainian Soviet theoretical linguistics of the 1930–1940s, Marism was officially propagated as a proletarian ideology directed against bourgeois comparative studies. Some Ukrainian linguists, following Ivan Meshchaninov (which then was the official head of Soviet linguistics), used the name Marr as a “shield”. They started with quoting Marr in their own works, but that did not affect much the language material investigation (for example, Academician Mykhailo Kalynovych (1888-1949) and others). After appearance of Stalin’s work “Marxism and Problems of Linguistics” (1950), well-known quotes from this work occured widely in Ukrainian and Romanian theoretical linguistics. They were about the class nature of the language, developed the ideas of revolutionary upheavals in it, stated the need for a dialectical combination of language learning with the history of the society. They have been quoted in the linguistic literature of Ukraine until the 22nd Congress of the CPSU (1961). In Romania, they have been quoted until the death of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (1965). Only by this time the development of linguistic structuralism had begun, because the linguistic outlook of the “leader” allowed comprehending lingual facts exclusively within the framework of comparative-historical and descriptive paradigm.

This research examines the distribution of service rights for Penghayat Kepercayaan adherents in Ponorgo. This region is important because it was the venue for the 5th Indonesian Kebatinan Congress in June 1963. Through the approach of civic pluralism, especially related to the politics of redistribution, this research wants to analyze the problem of distribution of service rights for education, marriage, and death services for Penghayat Kepercayaan adherents in Ponorogo Regency, East Java. This is important because among the main elements of the idea of civic pluralism are state policies and social consensus at the community level to respond to differences and resolve frictions between communities that inevitably arise due to differences between them. This research is qualitative with library and field data collection techniques. The data collected is then analyzed using descriptive analysis method. The result of this research shows that the distribution of service rights of Penghayat Kepercayaan in Ponorogo has not been effective. There are internal and external factors related to this. Among these internal factors are: the individuals of the Penghayat Kepercayaan who are difficult to expose themselves; the fear of being alienated by their communities who adhere to other religions; and the lack of organizational awareness for the youth of Penghayat. These internal factors consequently impact external factors, whereby the Ponorogo Regency Government struggles to distribute service rights for Penghayat Kepercayaan in the fields of education, marriage, and death services.

The article is devoted to the development and correction of the village reform project, one of the least studied reforms of Pyotr A. Stolypin. Based on the documents of the Council of Ministers, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the State Duma of the Russian Empire, the author reconstructs the process of creating a draft law of the village reform and making amendments to it during 1905–08. It is shown that this bill was part of the complex Stolypin reforms of local self-government and was developed in compliance with the legislative acts of the tsarist government of 1903 and 1904, taking into account the views of the local committees of the Special Meeting on the Needs of the Agricultural Industry. There are several versions of the draft law: the initial one, which was discussed at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Council of Ministers in 1905–06; the draft law for submission to the Second State Duma in 1907; the draft law revised in the Council for Local Economy Affairs which was submitted to the Third State Duma in 1908. The article considers the discussions in the executive bodies and at the congress of the United Nobility regarding the most important articles of the draft law on property qualification, women’s suffrage, and inclusion in the village regulatory body without elections.

Um dos marcos iniciais do processo de autonomização da arte musical foi a publicação do ensaio Do Belo Musical(1854). Nele, o crítico Eduard Hanslick já estabelecia a exigência de que a música fosse considerada em virtude de sua coerência interna, enquanto “formas sonoras em movimento”. Ao defender uma estética do “especificamente musical”, Hanslick é tido como o inaugurador do formalismo em música, corrente que será desenvolvida na primeira metade do século XX por compositores como Schoenberg, Berg e, principalmente, Webern. Décadas mais tarde, alguns jovens compositores ligados à Escola de Darmstadt colocarão em questão o conceito de forma musical e de “obra”, tal como eram compreendidos até então. Ao procurar uma autonomia radical, a música tenderia a se autonomizar do próprio compositor, correndo o risco de cair em automatismos – sejam eles matemáticos ou aleatórios. A partir das discussões realizadas durante um congresso intitulado “Forma na Nova Música” (organizado no âmbito dos Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik em Darmstadt – 1965) e alguns textos complementares, o presente trabalho tem por objetivo expor, discutir e relacionar as posições de Theodor Adorno, György Ligeti, Pierre Boulez e Carl Dahlhaus a respeito da crise da forma musical no século XX e sua relação com o lugar do sujeito criador na composição musical na vanguarda pós-1950.

The paper deals with the orientation of the Yugoslav freemasonry during the existence of the Grand Lodge of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes ?Jugoslavia? (GLJ), later the Grand Lodge of Yugoslavia (GLY). The state of freemasonry in Serbia on the eve of the Great War is briefly described and followed by an analysis of how the experience of the First World War influenced Serbian freemasons to establish strong ties with French freemasonry. During the 1920s the Grand Lodge ?Jugoslavia? maintained very close relations with the Grand Orient of France and the Grand Lodge of France, and this was particularly obvious when GLJ got the opportunity to organise the Masonic congress for peace in Belgrade in 1926 through its links with French Freemasonry. Grand Master Georges Weifert (1919-34) also symbolised close links of French and Serbian freemasonry. However, his deputy and later Grand Master Douchan Militchevitch (1934-39) initiated in 1936 the policy of reorientation of Yugoslav freemasonry to the United Grand Lodge of England. Although there had already been such initiatives, they could not be materialised due to the fact that it was not until 1930 that the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE) recognised several continental grand lodges, including GLJ. In a special section efforts of GLJ to be recognised by UGLE are analysed. Efforts for reorientation of GLY were conducted through several persons, including Douchan Militchevitch (1869-1939), Stanoje Mihajlovic (1882-1946), Vladimir Corovic (1885-1941) and Dragan Militchevitch (1895-1942). Special attention is given to the plans of GLY?s grand master to make the Duke of York (subsequently King George VI), who was a very dedicated freemason, an honorary past master of GLY. This plan failed, and the main idea behind it was to make GLY more resistant to internal clerical attacks and also to the external pressure of Italy. Mihajlovic?s three official Masonic visits to Britain (1933-39) are analysed as well as a private visit of Corovic and Dragan Militchevitch in March 1940. In the context of the visits made in 1939-40 plans to establish an Anglo-Yugoslav lodge are also analysed. Finally, the context of the de facto ban on Yugoslav freemasonry in August 1940 is given and the subsequent fates of its pro-British actors are also described.

Čenču Jezups or Dzērkste (real name Jezups Kindzuļs, 1888–1941?) was a Latgalian public figure, agronomist, publicist and writer. Date of his death is unknown – he was arrested in February 1941 by NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), but after that there is no information about his further life. He participated in the Latgalian Awakening movement at the beginning of 20th century. Later J. Kindzuļs was one of the organizers of the Latgalian congress (1917) in Rēzekne and a member of Constitutional Assembly of Latvia (1920–1922). He was an editor of such periodicals as “Latgalīts” (1921), “Latgolas Zemkūpis” (1924–1935), “Latgolas lauksaimnīks” (calendar, 1924–1935). He wrote his novel “Pīters Vylāns” between 1935 and 1941. It was first published in Daugavpils in 1943 by writer and publisher Vladislavs Luocis. Later it was published again in Germany in 1967.Čenču Jezups’ novel “Pīters Vylāns” was analysed by Miķelis Bukšs, Ilona Salceviča, Oskars Seiksts. The mentioned papers reveal the meaning of Latgalian self-confidence, which is disclosed in “Pīters Vylāns”, but unfortunately the author of this novel seems to be forgotten. Therefore the aim of this research is to “decode” factors of inspiration in Čenču Jezups’ novel “Pīters Vylāns” to gain more information about author’s life and his value system.Inspiration is always connected with writer’s life experience. Furthermore, the writer creates his own world. Vladislavs Luocis wrote that J. Kindzuļs planned to write a trilogy (Lōcis 1965: 26), but because of Latvia’s occupation by the Soviet Union this intention was not fulfilled. Factors of inspiration are divided into two groups: literary and non-literary (Lukaševičs 2007: 5). Non-literary factors of inspiration are those connected with J. Kindzuļs’ life (social and political events, education and public activities, private life). Literary and cultural factors of inspiration refer to his interests and Latgalian self-identification.Novel “Pīters Vylāns” was written during the authoritarian regime of Kārlis Ulmanis (1934–1940) and deals with peasants’ life during the Russian Revolution of 1905 (1905–1907) in Latgale. The problems of Latgalian identity (to be russified or polonized, quest for identity as a possibility) are dealt with by means of such characters as Vera Semjonova, Stefa, Meikuls Stumbris and Buks. It may be that the characters Pīters Vylāns and Ontons Sleižs are the two sides of J. Kindzuļs’ alter ego. His life experience until World War I is revealed in Pīters Vylāns, but after 1920 – in Ontons Sleižs. J. Kindzuļs may have studied either agronomy or law in Petersburg (after 1907). He took part in Latgalian Musical society and later he worked in the editorial office of newspaper “Drywa” (1908–1912). J. Kindzuļs was involved in the First World War and after that he worked in Rēzekne Commerce School (1919). After 1922 he started farming in his household “Pelēķi” in Laucesa rural municipality and was busy with issues of agronomy in Latgale.J. Kindzuļs’ private life is revealed in two women characters: Elvira and Stefa. Kindzuļs himself had three wives: unknown (married before 1919), Hortenzija Kindzule (Dardedze, married about 1921), Jadviga Kindzule (Kondrāte, married before 1933). J. Kindzuļs became a widower twice. He had two sons: Česlavs (from his first marriage) and Andrivs Jēkabs (from the second marriage). The third child was a daughter, but he and his wife Jadviga lost her because she died of an illness when she was 3.Because of lack of information about J. Kindzuļs, there is no possibility to find out his interests. The only way to get more information about J. Kindzuļs is to research his novel “Pīters Vylāns”. From the novel we know that for J. Kindzuļs there are three groups of literary and cultural factors of inspiration. Firstly, it is Latgalian self-confidence, which appears in the use of Roman Catholic elements such as rites, prayers and honour songs for God. Secondly, it is syncretism of Christian faith and paganism, which is presented as rewriting of folksongs by hand and “vakariešona” or evening gathering. Thirdly, it is European culture, because it is clear that J. Kindzuļs knew, for example, such writers as Goethe, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, classical music (F. F. Chopin) and architecture. The amount of information about J. Kindzuļs must be enriched and research must be continued. Novel “Pīters Vylāns” was written after 1935 and it is autobiographical. Such characters as Pīters Vylāns and Ontons Sleižs reflect the personality of J. Kindzuļs, but Elvira and Stefa reveal some traits of his wives Hortenzija and Jadviga. J. Kindzuļs glorifies values which became significant after 1934: land and farming, peasants and unity. He describes the Latvians of Latgale during the Russian Revolution of 1905 (1905–1907), but at the same time he criticizes the tendency to be latvianized. The same attitude he has to russification. He accepts the ideological course of Kārlis Ulmanis policy and this ideological position of J. Kindzuļs is manifested as a form of rebellion.

During the creation of the modern Serbian state, Kragujevac had a continuous development, primarilythanks to its geographical position, and then to various political decisions. At the beginning of the 20th century it was the Turkish city and over time it became a real European city with all those elements of development in the 19th century. First of all, thanks to the wisdom of Prince Miloš Obrenović, various institutions were founded in Kragujevac, both administrative and educational and also cultural, and thanks to him Kragujevac became not only the center of the principality of Serbia, still under the supreme Ottoman rule, but also the center of liberation movements, which developed in this period not only in the Serbian national territories but also throughout the Balkans. The decisions of the Turkish sultans were read in Kragujevac,enablingthe city with a wide degree of autonomy so that the release from external pressure became stronger and the internal influence was felt less and less. In the process, internal political freedoms processes were also getting stronger. The Sretenje Constitution passed in 1835, and it foresaw the restriction of the Prince's power and the division into judicial executive and legislative power. The development of political freedoms was unstoppable and a certain number of laws were passed, predicting economic freedom. After passing the Constitution in 1869, and political events culminated in Kragujevac, the Principality of Serbia became an independent state, in August 1878, with the declaration of the decisions of the Congress of Berlin. Political actions after this period shifted to Belgrade, and Kragujevac gradually lost its political significance, although assemblies convened in this period. At the beginning of the Great War, Kragujevac became the military capital of the Kingdom of Serbia. Apart from these political events, Kragujevac was also developing economically, which was documented by the increase in population. One of the most important events that will undoubtedly play the most significant role in its development was Prince Aleksandar Karađorđević's decision to found the first modern arms factory in the Principality of Serbia - Topolivnica. Kragujevac, as well as Prince Miloš, was chosen because of its position. During this period, the middle of the 19th century, revolutionary changes took place throughout Europe. Topolivnica had a continuous development, and thanks to its rapid modernization Kragujevac received the first electric lighting in Serbia. It is important to emphasize that the foundation of the Military School of Arts and Crafts enabled an educated workforce in Kragujevac. Kragujevac was also the center of new political ideas that dominated throughout Europe in that period. Simultaneously with the development of the Military Factory, smaller other industrial companies were created, initially intended for the local market, however, they developed over time, especially in the early 20th century.During the continuous wars waged by the Kingdom of Serbia from 1912-1918, the economic development ceased in Kragujevac. Significant civil and budgetary losses happened in this period, as in other parts of the Kingdom of Serbia. After the First World War, the facilities of the Military Factory were devastated. The gradual recovery began in the 1920s when the elite of the newly created state decided to renovate military-industrial facilities, and the number of workers started to grow. Before the war, there were about 45,000 of them. Military and economic agreements with the Kingdom of Belgium and the Republic of France enabled the import of new modern weapons technology. All these decisions had considerable consequences for the local economy so that in this first period, the number of craft shops and privately owned industrial companies significantly increased (Stefanovići and Fijale). A time of crisis in foreign relations with the surrounding countries brought faster and greater investments into military-industrial facilities throughout the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, as well as in Kragujevac. This development also enables the strengthening of local infrastructure. This continuous development of the city lasted until 1930. Due to the Great World Economic crisis, there was a decline and significant losses appeared in the economy around the world. The Great World Economic crisis hit the private craft sector, trade and financial institutions the hardest. The production volume had been reduced by almost 2/3 and traders had a reduced sales volume. The only thing that helped maintenance of the economy in this period was the existence of the Military Technical Institute, and thanks to its existence, unemployed craftsmen had the opportunity to get a job again. Kragujevac, like other cities, did not feel the consequences of the crisis to that extent, thanks to the large military factory that employed the largest part of the population fit for military service.

A pandemia da Covid-19 mudou o mundo. Novas dinâmicas de trabalho, de ensino e, também, na pesquisa científica foram implementadas durante o período de distanciamento social físico mais restritivo. Neste artigo propomos uma reflexão sobre pesquisas no campo da Comunicação utilizando acervos e repositórios digitais online. A proposta se justifica pela relevância desses “lugares de memória” (Nora, 1984) e dos dados armazenados para a historiografia da Comunicação e da mídia e pela emergente necessidade de acesso de pesquisadores e acadêmicos aos dados de modo remoto em virtude do fechamento temporário dos acervos físicos durante a pandemia. Partindo do pressuposto da não familiaridade com acervos online, o objetivo principal do presente artigo é apresentar e discutir a importância de pesquisas a partir de acervos digitais disponíveis na internet. O artigo tem como estudos de caso (Yin, 2001) a pesquisa realizada com a revista “Intervalo” (1963-1972), através da Hemeroteca Digital da Biblioteca Nacional e outra investigação desenvolvida a partir do acervo digital do jornal brasileiro “Folha de S. Paulo” e dos “anais digitais do Congresso Nacional” (Brasil) para a reconstrução do período histórico de implantação do serviço de cabodifusão no Brasil. A partir da coleta, tratamento e análise documental do material e dos dados gerados, por exemplo, foi possível identificar como o governo militar no Brasil interferiu e atrasou a regulamentação da televisão por cabos no país com a intenção de beneficiar grupos familiares e a iniciativa privada.

From 1950 to 1960, Sino-Soviet relations transitioned from a close alliance to an eventual split. This change was influenced by various factors, including the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance, as well as the Korean War. Despite sharing communist ideologies, the two countries had fundamental differences in their developmental objectives, which led to irreparable divisions and an ultimate severance of ties. Additionally, the personal characteristics of the leaders further exacerbated suspicions and military tensions between the two nations. In the early 1950s, the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) policies were primarily focused on safeguarding its domestic interests. Despite underlying suspicions and compromises, China and the Soviet Union formalized their alliance through the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance. Chinas military involvement in Korea in 1953 further strengthened the relationship, ushering in a honeymoon period for the alliance. However, the CCP harbored a long-term objective of establishing itself as an independent entity free from external control. The underlying motives and imbalances inherent in Soviet aid began to erode the CCPs trust in the USSR. In 1956, the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) marked the onset of ideological divergences between the two nations. Subsequent internal conflicts within the socialist bloc and disagreements on how to resolve them prompted China to scrutinize the Soviet Unions true intentions and its great power chauvinism. These evolving dynamics progressively widened the divide between China and the Soviet Union, accentuating pre-existing tensions and eventually culminating in the dissolution of their alliance.

Por ocasião do comando da Política Externa Independente, o chanceler San Tiago Dantas utilizou a expressão “coexistência competitiva” em diferentes discursos, pronunciamentos e debates para fundamentar duas posições adotadas pelo Brasil em suas relações internacionais: a do restabelecimento das relações diplomáticas com a União Soviética e a do voto contrário ao isolamento de Cuba no hemisfério e à perspectiva de sua expulsão da Organização dos Estados Americanos (OEA). Esta referencia de S. T. Dantas inspirava-se, claramente, na política de “coexistência pacífica”, formulada por Chruschev no XX Congresso do PCUS de 1956 a qual, sublinhava a importância da distensão internacional e, reconhecia que o confronto entre os dois blocos (o socialista e o capitalista) não deveria constituir uma fatalidade histórica inevitável para os dois competidores. A proposta soviética da “coexistência” era a de considerar possível uma pacífica competição entre os dois sistemas na crença de que o socialismo demostrasse a todos os povos a sua superioridade e, deste modo, viesse a impor-se, principalmente, nos países industriais avançados pela via democrática e parlamentar. Para S. T. Dantas, o sentido da “coexistência competitiva” era o do desafio de colocar os dois mundos diferentes da Guerra Fria não apenas em contato, mas também em competição de modo a expor cada um deles à “influencia inevitável dos modelos, das realizações e das experiências processadas no outro”. Nesta apropriação específica do chanceler petebista e não diplomata, a política de coexistência competitiva deveria exercer na política interna brasileira um “permanente incentivo à reforma social, com a criação no seio da sociedade de pressões crescentes, que poderiam ser captadas para a modificação progressiva de sua estrutura, sem quebra da continuidade do regime democrático”. Assim, S. T. Dantas nos ofereceu, desde o início da década de 1960, dois exemplos virtuosos: a possibilidade de conceber e implementar um projeto coerente e articulado para a política interna e internacional do Brasil e, uma referencia positiva de politização da política externa brasileira com sua firme convicção de que a democracia associada às reformas sociais é, de todas as formas de governo, a que melhor resiste à confrontação e, portanto, a que melhor se impõe através da coexistência.

The activity of international organizations on the history of science and technology is a remarkable phenomenon in the world scientific and sociocultural sphere. Such centers influence and contribute to the scientific communication of scientists from different countries and the comprehensive development of numerous aspects of the history of science and technology, carry out scientific congresses. That is why the analysis of the acquired experience and the obtained results of these groups are important. The history of the formation and development, task, structure, background and directions of the activities of some international organizations in the field of science and technology, including The History of Science Society (HSS), The European Society forthe History of Science (ESHS), The Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), The Newcomen Society, The Scientific Instrument Society (SIS) have been shown. The History of Science Society (HSS) is the professional society for the academic study of the history of science. It is the world’s largest society dedicated to understanding science, technology, medicine and their interactions with society within their historical context. HSS was founded in 1924 by G. Sarton and L. Henderson. The aim of European Society for the History of Science (ESHS), founded in 2003, is to promote the history of science, technology and medicine throughout Europe. The Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) is an international interdisciplinary organization concerned with the history of technological devices and processes and with technology in history — that is, the relationship of technology to politics, economics, science, arts and the organization of production, The Newcomen Society is an international society that studies and promotes the history of engineering and technology from ancient times to the present day. It disseminates historical information by publications, meetings, correspondence and internet forums. The Scientific Instrument Society (SIS) was formed in April 1983 to bring together people with a special interest in scientific instruments, ranging from precious antiques to electronic devices only recently out of production. The Society aimed to contribute to historical knowledge and understanding through the collection, conservation and study of scientific artefacts. Ecept for the organizations considered, there are many other scientific unions and societies in the field of history and phylosophy of science and engineering, whose activities require further study and synthesis.

Introduction. The epoch of Khrushchev’s “thaw” is a turning point in the history of the development of state security agencies. There is a break in the ideological connection between Cheka agency’s methods of work and the newly formed State Security Committee under the USSR Council of Ministers, a rethinking of the structure, goals and objectives of the department in accordance with the new policy of the ruling authorities. Research methods. In order to study the reform trends in the state security bodies of 1953–1964, in the article the method of historicism was used. It allows to consider the institute of state security bodies in the context of the definitely historical conditions of its existence. Besides the elements of the comparative historical method was used for creating a general idea of the tasks and goals of the department from the beginning of its existence in the RSFSR and until the end of period. Results and discussion. The analysis of publicly available sources of scientific literature has allowed to delineate the boundaries of modernization processes in the state security agencies of the Khrushchev “thaw” period. The actual transition of the heir to the VChK – OGPU – NKVD – NKGB – MGB from subordination of the state to the party power determined the further development of the KGB. Entirely subordinate to the party apparatus, the department was transformed depending on the interests of the political bureaucracy in power. However, the absence of a specific policy and the obvious distrust of N. S. Khrushchev to the state security authorities led to mixed results in regarding the effectiveness of the KGB, designed to ensure the protection of the country. The negative consequences included “the birth trauma” of the KGB after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, denouncing the violation of legality by the past KGB, weakening the moral and psychological climate inside the system and turning the Committee, designed to protect the state and its citizens from internal and external threats, into a party appendage with the inviolability of party employees, which led to a decrease in the rule of law. The positive results of the transformation of the state security bodies consisted in partial liberalization of the established system, softening the methods of the KGB, reorienting to protect the state from external enemies, creating the legal basis of the department’s activities and promoting its positive image.

Abstract Background: In France, as in many other countries, nationwide data on prevalence are rarely available and recent prevalence estimates of Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) are scarce. Improved overall survival following the introduction of tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) is expected to have increased the prevalence of CML in Western countries. Aim: We sought to estimate and analyze the prevalence of CML in France for the year 2014 using a large health care claim-based dataset. Methods: Using the French national health insurance database that covers 98.8% of the French population (66 million people) we implemented a 3-step approach. First, focusing on the 2006-2014 period, we selected: 1) all patients treated with a TKI (ie, imatinib, dasatinib, nilotinib, bosutinib or ponatinib) and/or 2) identified by the ICD-10 diagnosis code C92.1 (Chronic Myeloid Leukemia, BCR/ABL-positive) among hospital discharge diagnoses and/or 3) identified by the ICD-10 diagnosis code C92 (myeloid leukemia) for coinsurance exemption. Then, we developed a claim-based algorithm to identify CML cases. Case definition was based on 1) identifying any TKI reimbursement lasting ≥ 2 months and 2) excluding patients receiving TKIs for diseases other than CML including Phi+ Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor, Stromal or other connective tissue tumor, and hypereosinophilic disease. Finally, prevalent CML cases were those identified by the algorithm above and having ≥ 1 healthcare reimbursement during the year 2014 and still alive on December, 31st 2014. The internal validity of the algorithm was tested on a random sample of 100 potential CML cases fulfilling ≥ 1/3 selection criteria in step 1 by comparing the results of the algorithm with the opinion of two hematologists (gold standard). For each individual, hematologists reviewed patient demographics and the sequence of care from 2006 to 2014 including healthcare resource utilization (ie, all hospitalizations and ICD-10 diagnosis codes, all medication use, all specialist consultations with date and specialist type). In addition, we assessed the external validity of the algorithm by comparing the number of incident CML patients in 2014 as identified in the French national health insurance database with the number of incident CML cases recorded in the French cancer registries for respective departments (i.e. ~ 20% of the French territory). Results: There were 10,789 prevalent CML cases in 2014 out of 68,067 individuals from the French national health insurance database who fulfilled the selection criteria for the overall 2006-2014 period. Eighty-nine percent of the prevalent CML cases were identified by at least two out of three selection criteria (TKI, ICD-10 code C92.1 among hospital discharge diagnoses, ICD-10 code C92 for coinsurance exemption). There was a 96% concordance rate (internal validity) between the algorithm and the opinion of the hematologists. For the year 2014, 162 and 150 incident CML patients were identified by the algorithm and the French cancer registries, respectively (high external validity). Median age [Inter-Quartile Range] of the prevalent population of CML patients was 63 years [51-73], with slightly more males affected (55%). On December, 31st 2014, the crude prevalence of CML was estimated at 16.3 per 100,000 inhabitants [95% confidence interval (CI) 16.0-16.6]. The crude prevalence of CML was 18.5 per 100,000 in men (95% CI 18.0-19.0) and 14.2 per 100,000 in women (95% CI 13.8-14.6). The crude prevalence of CML was less than 1.6 per 100,000 (95% CI 1.2-2.0) before 20 years of age, progressively increasing to 19.4 per 100,000 (95% CI 18.1-20.7) among those with 50-54 and reaching a peak of 48.2 per 100,000 (95% CI 45.3-51.1) at 75-79 years. There was a male preponderance in CML prevalence in all age groups. The crude prevalence of CML varied in a ratio of one to two throughout the French territory (from 10.2 to 23.8 per 100,000 inhabitants). Conclusion: Healthcare claims data are increasingly used to estimate epidemiological parameters worldwide. This approach is particularly relevant for rare diseases and administrative databases with high population coverage. Countries without national cohorts or cancer registries could easily use our algorithm to estimate their prevalence of CML. Disclosures Cony-Makhoul: Pfizer: Consultancy; BMS: Consultancy, Speakers Bureau; Incyte: Other: Travels for attending to Congress; Novartis: Consultancy, Other: Writing support, Travels for attending to Congress. Guerci-Bresler:Pfizer: Other: Fees for symposiums and boards; Novartis: Consultancy, Other: Fees for symposiums and boards; Incyte: Other: Fees for symposiums and boards; BMS: Other: Fees for symposiums and boards; Pfizer: Other: Travel fees for Congress. Delord:Incyte: Consultancy.

The purpose of the study is to study the mechanism for implementing the censorship and library policy of the Soviet state on the example of mass libraries of the Penza region in the late 1950s – early 1960s. Materials and methods. The tasks of the Internet were implemented by analyzing and summarizing the documents of the State Archive of the Penza Region (Fund R-2357 – Department of Culture of the Penza Oblast Executive Committee). The work uses methods: historical-genetic, historical-comparative. Results of the study. The article describes the regulatory framework that re-regulates the process of purging library book collections from outdated and politically harmful literature (Instructions of the USSR Ministry of Culture of September 16, 1955 and February 2, 1960, Bibliographic decrees-smolders of outdated publications, Summary lists, etc.), explaining the criteria for classifying publications as «outdated and politically harmful letter-tours». The determination of the work of cultural institutions, including libraries, in general, the configuration of library funds, in particular, political, economic, socio-cultural conditions in the state, a specific international and domestic political situation (for example, the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, the speech of the «anti-party group», etc.). Attention is paid to the activities of the Penza Regional Department for the Protection of Military and State Secrets in the press for the withdrawal of outdated and politically harmful literature from book funds, a round of quarterly and annual reports of Obllit is disclosed. On the basis of unreleased archive documents, the practice of the Department of Culture of the Penza Regional Committee for the Implementation of Soviet Censorship and Library Policy was studied. According to the work of the regional (in the Department of Culture of the Penza Regional Executive Committee), paradise and city (in the departments of culture) commissions to write off an outdated theater, visits of commission members and local inspections. The state of book funds of urban, district and rural mass libraries of the Penza region was studied for the presence of literature subject to withdrawal from mass circulation; statistics are provided on the «blockage» of book collections of mass libraries of the region. Examples of administrative and disciplinary penalties are given, which were imposed on library workers, mainly managers, for non-compliance with directives on clearing book funds of outdated literature and issuing publications to readers that were subject to seizure. Conclusions. Consideration of the content and methods of library and censorship practice made it possible to identify the features of the exercise of censorship functions in relation to mass libraries at the regional level; determine the vector of subsequent research on the scientific problem.

The birth of the independent Poland in 1918 activated a social movement against alcoholism and drug addiction. In 1919, the Polish Society for Fighting Alcoholism ,,Trzeźwość'' ("Sobriety'') was established which operated nationwide and which in the period between the two wars became the main factor of fighting alcoholism. In the light of the Statute of "Trzeźwość" and resolutions of the Polish anti-alcoholic congresses, as well as the postulates of psychiatrists, the ideas of how to fight alcoholism included three spheres: a. anti-alcoholic legislation and its practical enforcement; b. anti-alcoholic propaganda and education; c. treatment of alcoholics. In 1919, a draft was submitted to the Diet that proposed a total prohibition of production and sale of alcoholic beverages. It was referred to a Diet commission which subsequently changed its contents. Then. The Diet passed an Act of 23 April 1920 on restrictions in sale of alcoholic beverages. The Act, based on a concept of partial prohibition. Introduced considerable restrictions in sale of beverages containing over 2.5 per cent of pure alcohol, and a total prohibition of sale of beverages with over 45 per cent alcohol. Moreover, the sale of alcohol was prohibited to workers on paydays and holidays, as well as at markets, fairs, church fairs, pilgrimages, on trains and at railway stations. According to the Act, each rural or urban commune could introduce on its territory a total prohibition of sale of alcoholic beverages by voting. The Act limited the number of places where alcohol could be sold or served to one per 2,500 of the population all over the country. A licence issued by administrative authorities was required to sell or serve alcohol. The statutory instrument to this Act created commissions for fighting alcoholism of the 1st and 2nd instances which were to supervise the compliance to the Act of 1920 and to impose penalties provided for the infringement of its provisions. The commissions consisted of representatives of the State administration and social organizations engaged in fighting alcoholism. Moreover, the Act of 2l January 1922 introduced a penalty of fine or arrest for being drunk in public. A person who brought another person to the state of intoxication was also liable to these penalties. The complete execution of the anti-alcoholic Act met with obstacles: for instance, alcohol was secretly served on the days of prohibition (e.g. during fairs). The Act of 31 July 1924 established the Polish Spirit Monopoly (P.M.S.). The production of spirit and pure vodka thus became a State monopoly' Production and sale of the P.M.S. beverages increased gradually as it constituted an important source of the State revenue. For this reason. a new anti-alcoholic Act of 21 March 1931 was passed which greatly reduced the restrictions in the sale of alcohol as compared with former regulations. A further reduction in these restrictions resulted from Acts of 1932 and 1934. The P.M.S. Board of Directors argued that a growth in production was necessary to suppress illegal distilling of alcohol the products of which were imperfectly rectified and threatened the health of the population. Instead according to the conception of "Trzeźwość’’ and other social organizations engaged in fighting alcoholism. illegal distilling of alcohol should be detected and suppresed by the police while it was in the interest of the health and morals of the population to curtail greatly the sale of alcohol and for this reason it was necessary to reintroduce the anti-alcoholic Act of 1920 However, in consideration of the State's fiscal interests. the Act was not reintroduced and the other Acts that extended the production and sale of the P.M.S. products were only replaced after World War II. According to the ideas of ,,Trzeźwość'' and other organizations fighting alcoholism, anti-alcoholic propaganda and education should be made by professionals and have a wide range, since it is impossible to fight alcoholism without informing the population of the harmful effects of alcohol. Guidelines for this activity were worked out at the Polish anti-alcoholic congresses of which there were seven in the period between the wars. Besides, in 1937 the 21st International Anti-Alcoholic Congress took place in Warsaw during which the Polish draft of an international anti-alcoholic convention was Supported. The draft provided a considerable limitation of alcohol sale, a regulation of penal liability for offences and transgressions committed in the state of intoxication, and lectures on alcohology in schools. The states signatories to the convention would be called upon to pass acts consistent with the content of the convention. The work on this draft was stopped by the outbreak of the war. The resolutions of the Polish anti-alcoholic congresses demanded lectures on alcohology in all types of schools, at teachers courses and at specialist courses for employees of various departments, the Ministry in of Communication particular. The range of alcohology taught at schools should be conformed to the type of school and the general knowledge or students. The postulate of teaching alcohology in schools was partly realized and courses were organized for railway employees by the Abstainer Railwaymen League. At the State School of Hygiene in Warsaw a several days course in alcohology was organized every year in which 200--300 persons participated, mainly teachers, physicians and clergymen of various denominations. Besides, ,,Trzeźwość'' organized travelling exhibitions that made tours of towns to show the harmful effects of alcoholism. The Abstainer Railwaymen League organized, an exhibition in a railway carriage which was visited by many thousands of persons at railway stations in different parts of the country. A lecturer on alcohology was employed to have talks during the exhibition. In early February every year a nationwide Sobriety Propagation Week was organized. Various publications were also brought out which demonstrated the harmful effects of alcohol and the ways of fighting alcoholism, both scientific and those for general use. Treatment of alcoholics was postulated; it was carried out in closed hospital wards or in out-patient clinics. The former was more effective; however it was less frequently applied as compared with the out-patient treatment since there were no provisions which would legalize compulsory treatment of alcoholics and drug addicts and it was easier to obtain the patient's consent to treatment in a clinic than in a hospital. Compulsory treatment was only possible if the court applied medical security measures in cases of offences connected with abuse of alcohol or drugs. (Art. 82 of the Penal code of 1932). The mental hygiene, movement, initiated in Poland in the early thirties, resulted in a growth in the number of clinics engaged in prevention and treatment, that is in a development of treatment of alcoholics in specialized anti-alcoholic clinics. The necessity of taking the children of alcoholics under educational and medical indicated. An important part is this field fell to social nurses attached to the clinics whose task was among other things to bring the alcoholics children to the clinic and see to their medical treatment if necessary. The organization of special schools for mentally deficient and morally neglected children, whose parents were frequently alcoholics, was also initiated. Psychiatrists demanded an elaboration and introduction of an act on compulsory treatment of alcoholics and drug addicts, organization of special wards for notorious alcoholics in mental hospitals, prolongation of treatment from 6 to 12 months (which was considered particularly necessary in the case of chronic alcoholism), a joint alcoholism and psychiatric treatment if required, in the case of alcohol psychosis in particular, and check-up of the cured alcoholics and drug addicts. In Poland drug addiction has never reached the proportions of alcoholism. Its most frequent forms were morphinism and cocainism. Its fighting was facilitated by the passing of an Act of June 23, 1923 which prohibited production, processing, export. import. storage of and any trade in all drugs. For infringement of the Act, penalties of fine and up to 5 years deprivation of liberty were provided. However, there was no act to legalize compulsory treatment of drug addicts. They could only be treated in closed hospital wards since in the case of drug addiction, out-patient treatment was considered to be ineffective. In 1931, the Polish Committee for Drugs and Prevention of Drug Addiction was set up as, an advisory body attached to the Minister of Health and Social Welfare, which consisted mainly of physicians and chemists. In order to fight drug addiction effectively, increased detection of export and sale of drugs was postulated as well as supervision of prescriptions and of obtaining drugs on prescription at chemist's. Chemists were compelled to keep a special book of in- and out-goings of drugs which could only be sold on prescription for therapeutical purposes. Attenton was drawn to the necessity of an instruction, to be passed by the Minister of Internal Affairs, according to which the production of doctors seals and forms would only be possible on presentation of the identity card, since drug addicts used to order seals and forms bearing names of famous practitioners. Medical check-up of released prisoners who had been cured of drug addiction when serving their sentences was also postulated. In consequence of the spread of ether drinking in the Upper Silesia in 1936, a wide-range operation was carried out which consisted in a vigorous fight against smuggling and sale of ether (which was mainly smuggled from Germany) and in informing the population as to the harmful effects of ether drinking.

For your consideration, two fragments of Twilit history (as Rod Serling might have put it), a dimension as time-stung as eternity, unnerving as a grating laugh at three in the dark chilly morning. One: In 1946, a would-be suicide named George B. J. Stewart attracted the interest of a beefy, bearded wingless angel named Santa Claus, and discovered how to shift into mirror universes. The post-Second World War US Congress quickly established a research center to contact other angels, especially those with working wings, and subsidized the program until 1974, when President Nixon’s resignation caused funding to dry up. Despite top-secret classification masking the CLARENCE program, Stewart is rumored to be alive and still active at the North Pole at the age of 111. Two: In 1972, three Scientologists and the brother in law of the third best chess grandmaster in history were invited by the US military to launch what would become a $19.933 million program devoted to psychic powers. The initial emphasis was operational, with trained clairvoyants casting their attention into far lands and even the future. Many branches of the intelligence community sought specific double- or triple-blind tasking, alarmed by rumors that the Soviets were making advances in this domain. Despite popular rumors, CIA were not heavily involved; the major funder was DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency). Along with NASA, DARPA, US Army Medical Research and Development Command, Foreign Technology Division and others, DIA repeatedly contracted this espionage methodology. Which, if either, of these ludicrous accounts is true? Well, it turns out that CLARENCE is merely a tall story (one I just concocted). By contrast, military research programs into psychic phenomena became public after long-hidden secret documents surfaced. Most recently, four immense volumes have been published by McFarland—dubbed collectively The Star Gate Archives—providing an opportunity to track government-funded scientific research into psi (purported mental abilities able to reach beyond limits established by canonical sciences). Despite those limits, for two decades the science edge of the program was situated on the West Coast at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and then Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). A 2017 summary paper states: “In July 1972, Russell Targ, as principal investigator, submitted a grant application on Research on Techniques to Enhance Extraordinary Human Perception to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA, with Dr. Harold Puthoff as co-investigator. This started the SRI program in psi research, which eventually closed in 1995 at SAIC.”[1] Its two most effective founding viewers were Ingo Swann and Pat Price, now deceased, both devotees of L. Ron Hubbard’s cult. For internal-security reasons, the success or failure of individual efforts were rarely revealed. But since the psi operatives were sometimes called back for further clandestine tasking, it seems evident that the results were often sufficiently effective and accurate in support of more conventional intelligence activities. There’s ample evidence for this in the various volumes. [1] https://www.academia.edu/38006378/THE_STAR_GATE_ARCHIVES_REPORTS_OF_THE_US_GOVERNMENT_SPONSORED_PSI_PROGRAM_1972-1995._AN_OVERVIEW

The progress of science is discontinuous. However, accepting the dynamic nature of science, most of us have experienced the point of research crossroads when it was hard to choose the correct path. In 1962 Thomas Samuel Kuhn published his controversial book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions introducing the term “paradigm shift” raising the idea that progress isn't a continuous accumulation, but rather a revolutionary process where brand new ideas are adopted and old ideas are abandoned. Without trying to accept or argue philosphical aspects, today we experience a rapidly growing amount of research in ophthalmology. The goal of the current evidence-based approach in medicine is to optimize everyday clinical practice based on comprehensive research. However, results coming from the basic sciences sometimes may not be directly applicableto an individual patient. The latest developments, scientific achievements and research in ophthalmology steer to the exciting new perspective based on a multidisciplinary approach. Bringing together scientists whose expertise encompasses ophthalmology, physiology, mathematics, physics and engineering and who explore different aspects of the same problems empowering to make scientific progress. Can ophthalmologists think mathematically? Is it possible to provide a quantitative representation of the biophysical processes in the eye? Application of objective scientific methods and subjective perspectives can open up a wide range of educational and professional opportunities leading to a better understanding of the pathogenesis and the natural course of the disease, progression and new ways of treatment. Introducing the 2nd issue of Journal for Modeling in Ophthalmology, we hope the reader will enjoy both clinical and theoretical insights on glaucoma in short papers that followed the International Congress on Advanced Technologies and Treatments for Glaucoma (ICATTG15) held in Milan (Italy), October 29-31, 2015 (http://www.icatto.com/archive/icattg2015/). Normal tension glaucoma is a particularly difficult type of glaucoma both in terms of diagnosis and treatment. M. Iester pointed out that different types of glaucoma exist and are probably based on the presence of different risk factors. The cut-off value of 21 mmHg is not used anymore to differentiate healthy subjects from glaucoma patients. The paper by L. Quaranta et al analyses the rationale for IOP measurements throughout the 24-hour cycle. IOP is not a static number; rather, it exhibits time-dependent variations that can reach up to 6 mmHg over a 24-hour period in healthy eyes, and even more in eyes with glaucoma2-5. Regarding 24-hour IOP characteristics, only IOP peak was correlated to visual field progression, while 24-hour IOP fluctuation was not an independent risk factor6. Indeed, 24-hour mean, peak and fluctuation were all associated and a strong correlation was found between mean and peak IOP, and between fluctuation and peak IOP. Mean IOP is a strong predictor of glaucomatous damage. A desired therapeutic target is therefore a uniform reduction of IOP throughout the 24 hours. A reliable method of continuous IOP measurement would be desirable, making 24-hour IOP phasing easier and opening new pathways for research. Interestingly, the papers by M. Szopos M et al and A. Mauri et al lead to new perspectives of mathematical modeling of aqueous humor flow and intraocular pressure towards individualized glaucoma management. M. Szopos et al aimed to provide both a qualitative description and a quantitative assessment of how variations in aqueous humor flow parameters influence IOP and the outcome of IOP lowering medications. They developed a mathematical model that described the steady state value of IOP as the result of the balance between aqueous humor production and drainage and performing stochastic simulations to assess the influence of different factors on the IOP distribution in ocular normotensive and ocular hypertensive subjects and also on the IOP reduction following medications. This model may help identify patient specific factors that influence the efficacy of IOP lowering medications and aid the development of novel, effective, and individualized therapeutic approaches to glaucoma management. A. Mauri et al. theoretically analyzed new aspects of electro-fluid dynamics of aqueous humor production. The connection between HCO3, Na+ and topical medications in the regulation of aqueous humor production is still controversial and difficult to study experimentally by trying to isolate the role of a single electrolyte in regulating aqueous humor production. The use of a mathematical model appeared to be a promising approach to help unravel such a connection through simulation and comparison of different predicted scenarios. Groups of authors from Indianapolis and Milan universities contributed to glaucoma progression analysis. K. Hutchins et al paper on clinical evaluation of baseline characteristics predictive of structural and functional progression in open angle glaucoma patients with different demographic characteristics aimed to examine ocular blood flow parameters that may predict structural and functional disease progression in open angle glaucoma patients of different diabetic status, gender, ethnicity, and body mass index. D. Messenio et al. evaluated the variations of IOP, morphometric papillary characteristics, perimetric indices and electrophysiological parameters before and after topical IOP lowering therapy in patients with suspect normal tension glaucoma. They showed that electrophysiological tests could provide a more sensitive measure of retinal ganglion cell integrity and help distinguish between suspect normal-pressure glaucoma patients before perimetric alterations are evident and normal subjects with apparent larger disc cupping. Over the past decades, color Doppler imaging (CDI) has gained popularity as a reliable tool to measure blood flow in a variety of vascular beds throughout the body. The use of CDI to measure blood flow parameters in retrobulbar vessels has become very common. L. Carichino et al introduced a computer-aided identification of novel ophthalmic artery waveform parameters. The computed-aided analysis of ophthalmic artery velocity waveforms obtained via CDI were able to distinguish arterial waveform parameters values between healthy subjects and glaucoma patients, as well as between gender. Authors foresee further studies investigating the potential to predict severity and progression of glaucoma. An interesting contribution by S. Cassani et al on theoretical predictions of metabolic flow regulation in the retina aims to better understand the regulating mechanisms in health and disease. This study used a theoretical model to investigate the response of retinal blood flow to changes in tissue oxygen demand. The increase in blood flow predicted by the model due to an increase in oxygen demand was not in the same proportion as the change in blood flow observed with the same decrease in oxygen demand, suggesting that vascular regulatory mechanisms may respond differently to different levels of oxygen demand. Several studies have suggested an association between vascular factors and glaucoma7-11. Several epidemiological studies demonstrated the influence of ocular perfusion pressure on the prevalence, incidence and progression of glaucoma12. Ocular perfusion pressure refers to the pressure available to drive blood through the intraocular vasculature, with the degree of perfusion being influenced by the resistance to flow, which is a function of the vessel caliber or the vessel tone 13. While it seems a very complex parameter, A. Guglielmi et al utilized statistical techniques and analysis to show that it is the joint effect of IOP, ocular perfusion pressure and blood pressure, or, more precisely, of all the covariates in the selected logistic model, that determines the probability of disease, rather than the value of an individual covariate. Importantly, the main statistical interest should be the prediction of disease probabilities for new patients entering the study, presenting specific values of the covariates included in the model, rather than the estimated individual effect of a single predictor. It has been shown that glaucoma, proliferative vitreoretinopathy, posterior capsule opacification, diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration, pterygium and keratoconus have been associated with modulation of Transforming Growth Factor beta (TGF-β) protein expression14-20. Therapeutic intervention targeting TGF-β2 protein expression may have multifold effects on relevant intraocular tissues such as trabecular meshwork (cell invasion/migration), retina (scarring and wound-healing processes) and/or optic nerve head (neuroprotection), and warrant further evaluation in patients suffering advanced glaucoma and undergoing trabeculectomy. Hasenbach K et al. used a murine model of glaucoma filtration surgery to evaluate the effect of intraocular ISTH0036 administration. They showed that treatment with ISTH0036 resulted in prolonged bleb survival and decreased scarring (downregulation of collagen 1 and 3 fibers) in a murine glaucoma filtration surgery model. Initial results rose a strong rationale that patients with glaucoma or other ocular diseases may benefit from treatment with TGF-β2 antisense oligonucleotides. D.Paulaviciute-Baikstiene et al. performed a prospective 12 month study aiming to find the correlation between anterior segment OCT and functional outcomes of trabeculectomy by describing morphological features of successful and limited success filtering blebs. The detection of early postoperative scarring and the continuing development of surgical measures to reduce this risk represent a major challenge of filtering surgery. Authors suggest that larger internal fluid filled cavity, total bleb height, bigger bleb wall thickness and multiform bleb wall reflectivity are good indicators of successful bleb function. The 2nd Issue of the Journal for Modeling in Ophthalmology uniquely combines and balances clinical and mathematical aspects in the study of glaucoma and we believe that both ophthalmologists and modeling experts will find in it interesting aspects and new information on glaucoma and its risk factors. Enjoy your reading!

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) first officially sanctioned a charitable income tax deduction for the donation of a conservation easement in 1964. In 1980, Congress enacted § 170(h), which authorizes a deduction for the donation of a conservation easement or a façade easement that is “granted in perpetuity” to a government entity or charitable organization “exclusively for conservation purposes.” The deduction has encouraged thousands of property owners to donate easements that protect land and historic structures with important conservation and historic values. The deduction has also, however, been subject to abuse, including valuation abuse.

Within the thermodynamic framework with internal variables by Rice (1971, “Inelastic Constitutive Relations for Solids: An Internal Variable Theory and Its Application to Metal Plasticity,” J. Mech. Phys. Solids, 19(6), pp. 433–455), Yang et al. (2014, “Time-Independent Plasticity Related to Critical Point of Free Energy Function and Functional,” ASME J. Eng. Mater. Technol., 136(2), p. 021001) established a model of time-independent plasticity of three states. In this model, equilibrium states are the states with vanishing thermodynamic forces conjugate to the internal variables, and correspond to critical points of the free energy or its complementary energy functions. Then, the conjugate forces play a role of yield functions and further lead to the consistency conditions. The model is further elaborated in this paper and extended to nonisothermal processes. It is shown that the incremental stress–strain relations are fully determined by the local curvature of the free energy or its complementary energy functions at the critical points, described by the Hessian matrices. It is further shown that the extended model can be well reformulated based on the intrinsic time in the sense of Valanis (1971, “A Theory of Viscoplasticity Without a Yield Surface, Part I. General Theory,” Arch. Mech., 23(4), pp. 517–533; 1975, “On the Foundations of the Endochronic Theory of Viscoplasticity,” Arch. Mech., 27(5–6), pp. 857–868), by taking the intrinsic time as the accumulated length of the variation of the internal variables during inelastic processes. It is revealed within this framework that the stability condition of equilibrium directly leads to Drucker (1951, “A More Fundamental Approach to Stress–Strain Relations,” First U.S. National Congress of Applied Mechanics, pp. 487–497) and Il'yushin (1961, “On a Postulate of Plasticity,” J. Appl. Math. Mech., 25(2), pp. 746–750) inequalities, by introducing the consistency condition into the work of Hill and Rice (1973, “Elastic Potentials and the Structure of Inelastic Constitutive Laws,” SIAM J. Appl. Math., 25(3), pp. 448–461). Generalized inequalities of Drucker (1951, “A More Fundamental Approach to Stress–Strain Relations,” First U.S. National Congress of Applied Mechanics, pp. 487–497) and Il'yushin (1961, “On a Postulate of Plasticity,” J. Appl. Math. Mech., 25(2), pp. 746–750) for nonisothermal processes are established straightforwardly based on the connection.

A busca pela estratégia da Revolução Brasileira mobilizou intensos debates no interior do Partido Comunista Brasileiro (PCB) na virada dos anos 1950 para os anos 1960. Nesse período, os comunistas tinham uma influência muito significativa junto à classe trabalhadora e à intelectualidade, o que os credenciava como uma importante força política na sociedade. O Brasil atravessava um momento de grandes transformações econômicas e sociais, tornando ainda mais complexa a tarefa de analisar corretamente o movimento da realidade e apontar os caminhos para a ação do proletariado. Não obstante, a maior parte dos protagonistas dessa discussão concordava que as contradições centrais da formação social brasileira estavam relacionadas ao atraso imposto pelo imperialismo e pelo latifúndio. Portanto, apesar da duríssima luta interna entre os quadros do PCB, é possível afirmar que as principais divergências estavam inscritas no âmbito de uma mesma Estratégia Nacional-Democrática. Ou seja, as questões que alimentaram as polêmicas entre os comunistas não necessariamente diziam respeito ao caráter da Revolução Brasileira naquela determinada conjuntura, mas sim aos seus sujeitos e à possibilidade de uma via pacífica.

Resumo No presente artigo revisitamos o Código das Águas da República, preparado por Alfredo Valladão em 1907, promulgado pelo Congresso Nacional, Decreto nº 24.643, somente a 10 de julho de 1934. Um dos principais marcos da regulamentação do setor no Brasil, não sem intenso dissentimento, engendrou a crescente presença do Estado a partir dos anos 1930, fundamental para o desenvolvimento do setor. Nos importa retratar o espírito que animou o seu autor e seus resultados na Primeira República (1889-1930), quando o monopólio estrangeiro se inseriu e passou a controlar por quase 80 anos boa parte do setor de serviços públicos, assim como algumas das consequências que perduraram ao longo do século XX. Esse domínio foi fruto da expansão do capitalismo financeiro dos países centrais e a ordenação criada no Brasil pode ter sido a reação possível. As principais fontes e documentos foram o Código das Águas da República, edição original de 1907, e a reedição do DNAEE em 1980, o Diário da Câmara dos Deputados, entre 1907 e 1915, para tentar retraçar as causas de seu longo embaraço, o Jornal do Commercio, entre 1901 e 1932 (ambos disponíveis na internet), além de obras e autores que fizeram comentários e censuras ao Código. O panorama dos serviços públicos vem mudando novamente nos últimos 40 anos, com setores estratégicos para o desenvolvimento do país destinados, mais uma vez, ao capital privado e estrangeiro, após o período de forte presença do Estado. Torna-se premente então suscitar reflexões sobre o tema.

In this study, the policies of the Republican People's Party (RPP) in the general and local elections held in 1946, the discourses of party members and party supporters were discussed in the context of the concept of “democracy,” and their effects on domestic politics were searched. First of all, external and internal factors that were effective in Turkey's multi-party system were discussed. In this context, the victory of the democracy front in the World War II, the signing of the United Nations Constitution, and the necessity to take measures against the increasing Soviet threat caused Turkey to turn its face to the West. All these external factors signaled the democratic steps that would take place in Turkey in the years following 1945. In addition, the socio-economic problems experienced before and after the war, the pressures of the RPP government, and the extreme dissatisfaction of the people due to all these reasons made the political system be bound to change. In addition to these problems, the disagreements in the RPP regarding the “The Land Distribution Law”, “Budget Proposed Law” and the “Memorandum of the Four,” which caused great debates in domestic politics, were mentioned. As a result of those as mentioned above external and internal factors, how Turkey turned into a multi-party system was mentioned, and in this context, the establishment of the Democrat Party (DP) and the expectations and discourses of the RPP about this party were discussed. Afterward, the effects of the II. RPP Extraordinary Congress, which had a great impact on domestic politics, were mentioned. In this congress, RPP also decided to hold the general election earlier than planned, together with the local election. With the early elections, the RPP wanted to show the world public opinion that the system was democratic and tried to preserve the current one-party rule by preventing opposition parties from getting stronger. The study has an important and unique quality in terms of showing that democracy could not be fully adopted due to the policies and discourses of the RPP and that it could not find an applicable area within the one-party system. The main purpose of the research was to include the politics of domination that the RPP was trying to establish on the DP and the entire state system, by addressing the anti-democratic discourses and political steps of the RPP. The literature review method was used in the research, and archival sources constituted most of the research. In this context, the RPP's policies on democracy in the 1946 elections, the discourses of party members and supporters of the party were investigated by analyzing the important national and local newspapers of the period, the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA), and political party minutes, party programs and election manifestos. The study has revealed that the RPP's policies regarding the 1946 elections, the discourses of party members and party supporters were incompatible with the concept of democracy and that this concept could not be assimilated. Especially what happened in the general election has caused this election to be remembered as a “shady election” in Turkish political history. As a result of the events that took place in both elections, it has been understood that the RPP was trying to maintain its position in the state with its traditional, tutelary one-party understanding of democracy rather than trying to maintain the multi-party democratic system.

A produção de trabalhos científicos apresentou crescimento importante nas últimas décadas, sendo a internet seu principal fator de acesso e difusão. Consequentemente, nota-se um esforço global de todas as áreas do conhecimento quanto a estudos sobre dados de publicações científicas, a fim de conhecer o que tem sido pesquisado. Tais estudos podem servir a diversos propósitos, como fornecer base para construção de políticas de incentivo à pesquisa visando novos avanços na ciência. O objetivo deste trabalho é identificar e analisar os principais tópicos de pesquisas publicados em cada grande área do conhecimento, durante a trajetória da ciência brasileira por pesquisadores doutores que possuem currículos cadastrados na Plataforma Lattes. Para isso, após a aquisição dos currículos dos doutores, foi desenvolvido um arcabouço de componentes responsável por filtrar, tratar e consolidar separadamente os dados das publicações científicas a serem analisados. Dentre esses dados, estão todas as palavras-chave de artigos publicados entre 1962 e 2016 em anais de congressos e em periódicos, que são ranqueadas em cada grande área do conhecimento através da aplicação da medida de popularidade de tópico baseado em frequência. Os resultados possibilitaram uma caracterização geral das palavras-chave utilizadas pelos doutores, e assim, identificar os principais tópicos de pesquisas desenvolvidos em cada grande área do conhecimento. Como considerações finais, observou-se a sinergia entre as grandes áreas do conhecimento quanto aos principais tópicos de investigação e também a contribuição de cada grande área em quantitativo de artigos publicados.Palavras-chave: Palavras-chave. Tópicos de pesquisas. Bibliometria. Plataforma Lattes.Link: http://revista.ibict.br/ciinf/article/view/4059/3578

For a young researcher, the best way to improve his skills and develop his research capabilities is to work in established research laboratories where he is enabled to learn modern techniques and how to attack the scientific problems. Today, we have easy communications, including computers and the internet, but direct interactions with the most experienced scientists are the best way for young scientist to advance his research capabilities. Ulf Svante von Euler, Swedish pharmacologist and physiologist presents the best example that illustrates how interaction of a young researcher with established scientists develop his research capabilities and become a well-known scientist1.When Ulf was seventeen (1922), he came in Stockholm to study medicine. As a student, he became interested in research, and in 1926 he attended the Twelfth International Congress of Physiologists in Stockholm where he heard lectures by I. P. Pavlov, E. H. Starling and other great scientists of the time. He also observed a historic demonstration by Otto Loewi on the existence of Vagusstoff in the frog’s heart, which would stimulate his own interest and research on mediators of nerve transmission. Prior to this demonstration, Loewi had published several papers on the nature of this chemical substance that slowed the heart, but not all of his research contemporaries were convinced. However, a successful demonstration at the Congress (repeated eighteen times) convinced all critics. Von Euler recalled that these experiments inspired his enduring interest in neurohumoral transmission.Initially, von Euler was influenced by several well-known Swedish scientists: G. Liljestrand (pharmacologist/physiologist), R. Fåraeus (a hematologist) and H. Theorell (a biochemist, who received the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 1955). Ulf defended his doctoral dissertation in 1930 and became a professor of pharmacology. Then, he received a two-year scholarship for postdoctoral studies abroad that enabled him to improve his skills by working with several famous foreign researchers.The young Ulf von Euler made the most of this opportunity. He spent six months in Hampstead at Sir Henry Dale’s laboratory, two months in Birmingham with I. de Burgh Daly, eight months in Ghent with C. Heymans, and three months in Frankfurt with G. Embden. Later, in 1934, he returned to London for six months to work with A. Hill, primarily because Liljestrand advised him instead of pharmacology, rather to devote to physiology because at that time in Sweden this scientific discipline was more appreciated. Towards the end of 1937, he went back to Hampstead for five months to work again with Sir Henry Dale.

O orçamento é o ato jurídico em que se faz a previsão da receita, autorizando a sua arrecadação, e a fixação da despesa, autorizando, outrossim, a sua execução, relativas a determinado exercício financeiro. Embora o conteúdo do orçamento diga respeito à matéria de Direito Financeiro, pertinente à disciplina da receita e da despesa, a natureza jurídica da fiscalização da execução do orçamento se mantém no campo do Direito Administrativo, não obstante se utilize das normas de contabilidade pública e de técnica econômico-financeira para levá-la a cabo. Destarte, permanece no Direito Administrativo o estudo dos órgãos de controle do Estado quanto a atividade dos ordenadores da despesa e pagadores de contas, e os atos jurídicos de efetivação desse controle. Esse controle da execução do orçamento se faz através do Poder Executivo, por órgão do Ministério da Fazenda ou das Finanças, que acompanham a gestão financeira dos diferentes órgãos do Estado, e se denomina fiscalização interna; e, através do Poder Legislativo, valendo-se de pareceres de suas Comissões de Finanças ou Tomadas de Contas, e, especialmente, de órgão administrativo, autônomo, de cúpula colegiada ou individual, seu delegado, e auxiliar, ou melhor, colaborador, na verificação das contas dos órgãos do Estado, independente do Poder Executivo, e esse controle se denomina fiscalização externa. Ao Legislativo compete não só a aprovação do orçamento como a fiscalização última da sua fiel execução. Objetiva garantir o efetivo cumprimento do orçamento, quanto a receita e despesa. Sem a devida tomada de contas, os orçamentos se constituiriam em formalidades inúteis e seria impossível a apuração de responsabilidade dos agentes ordenadores e pagadores da despesa. Como órgão auxiliar do Legislativo nessa tarefa de controle de contas do Executivo se cogitou, nos países latinos da Europa, do Tribunal de Contas, também denominado Conselho de Contas ou Corte de Contas, cujos membros, chamados Ministros ou Conselheiros, gozam de imunidades que asseguram a sua independência. Esse órgão, apesar de exercer uma função administrativa, repita-se, a efetiva em caráter autônomo, e sem qualquer liame com o Chefe do Executivo. Já na Inglaterra e nos Estados Unidos da América do Norte, dito controle se faz através de Auditoria, General Accounting Office superintendida por Auditor-Geral, General Comptroller and Auditor, com garantias equivalentes às que se atribuem à magistratura, e, outrossim, em posição de absoluta independência dos órgãos governamentais controlados, inclusive do Chefe do Executivo. O exame das contas pode ser feito através de três processos diferentes que originaram os sistemas de exame prévio absoluto ou relativo, e do exame posterior. O exame prévio absoluto é aquele em que o veto do órgão fiscalizador externo impede os órgãos executivos e ativos a efetuarem a despesa em negando o seu registro, e, então, não pode ser feita. Esse veto absoluto é utilizado nos casos de falta de verba para essa despesa ou ter sido cogitada por verba imprópria. É o sistema acolhido pelo Tribunal de Contas da Itália, e, por isso, denominado de tipo italiano. Já o exame prévio relativo é aquele em que o veto do órgão fiscalizador externo, em considerada ilegal a despesa, nega-lhe o registro, e devolve a documentação aos órgãos executivos ativos com as razões do veto. Se os órgãos superiores do Executivo não se conformarem com o veto, solicitam ao órgão fiscalizador externo que faça o registro sob protesto. Após essa formalidade, ele dá ciência ao Legislativo do ocorrido, para que apure a responsabilidade dos órgãos executivos ativos, que levaram a efeito a despesa. Foi o sistema escolhido pelo Tribunal de Contas da Bélgica, e, por isso denominado de tipo belga. O exame posterior é o que a verificação da despesa se faz ao depois de efetuada. Elas não são evitadas pelo órgão de fiscalização externa, a quem cabe apenas providenciar em última análise, a punição dos culpados. Foi o sistema escolhido pelo Tribunal de Contas da França, e, por isso, denominado de tipo francês. O sistema do exame prévio absoluto adotado é conciliável com os outros dois, conforme a legislação, com referência a ato da Administração Pública de que resulte obrigação de pagamento pelo Tesouro Nacional ou por conta deste. Isto se verifica quando a recusa de registro tiver outro fundamento que a falta de verba ou disser respeito a verba imprópria, e, então, a despesa pode efetuar-se sob reserva ou protesto do órgão controlador externo, em determinada pelo Executivo a sua realização. Outrossim, ocorre o controle posterior quando, nos termos da legislação, o órgão controlador externo tem o encargo de exame do orçamento, após a sua execução, na apreciação das contas do Executivo, mediante relatório a ser oferecido ao Legislativo. Por seu turno, o sistema do veto relativo adotado é conciliável com o do exame a posteriori dos atos da Administração Pública, como seja, valendo-se do mesmo exemplo acima, quando compete ao órgão controlador externo a apresentação de relatório das contas do Executivo, em apreciando a execução por ele do orçamento, a ser, depois do exercício financeiro, encaminhado ao Legislativo. Tem o Congresso Nacional a função de fiscalizar os atos do Poder Executivo, bem como da administração indireta, e com as prerrogativas que lhe reconheça e lhe dê a lei, consoante dispõe o art. 45, da Magna Carta de 69, e, destarte, a Câmara dos Deputados e o Senado ou o próprio Congresso Nacional podem criar comissões de inquérito para a devida fiscalização a respeito. O Tribunal de Contas nasceu, realmente, na ordem jurídica pátria, somente com o Dec. 966-A, de 7.9.1890, que adotara o modelo belga. Isso logo após a proclamação da República, por ato do Governo Provisório. Ao Tribunal fora atribuída não só a fiscalização das despesas e de outros atos que interessem às finanças da República, como o julgamento das contas de todos os responsáveis por dinheiros públicos de qualquer Ministério a que pertencessem, dando-lhes quitação, ou ordenando-os a pagar o devido e quando isso não cumprissem, mandava proceder na forma de direito. A Constituição de 1891, simplesmente previu, ao dispor, no art. 89, sobre a instituição de um Tribunal de Contas, para liquidar as contas de receita e despesa e verificar a sua legalidade, antes de serem prestadas ao Congresso. Relegou, porém, para a Legislação ordinária a sua inteira organização. Posteriormente, todas as Constituições Republicanas o inseriram entre os seus dispositivos. Já as demais estabeleceram as linhas fundamentais desse órgão governamental. Valendo-se de autorização que lhe dera o Congresso Nacional pela Lei 23, de 30.10.1891, para organizar os serviços dos Ministérios, e pela Lei 26, de 30.12.1891, para organizar as repartições da Fazenda, o Poder Executivo promulgou o Dec. 1.166, de 17.12.1892, em que cogitou o Tribunal de Contas previsto pelo texto constitucional citado. Deu-lhe a competência de exame prévio das contas do Executivo e poder de veto absoluto, quanto às despesas, e, outrossim, conferiu-lhe a atribuição de julgar as contas dos responsáveis por dinheiros ou valores públicos, emprestando às suas decisões força de sentença, uma vez lhe reconhecia nessa função atuava como Tribunal de Justiça. E essa situação não se alterou na legislação posterior, até a promulgação da Constituição de 1934. Porém, essa última competência, qual seja, de julgar as contas dos responsáveis por dinheiros ou valores públicos, consoante demonstração do Prof. Mário Masagão (cf. “Em face da Constituição Federal, não existe, no Brasil, o Contencioso Administrativo”, pp. 137 a 175, Seção de Obras do Estado de S. Paulo, S. Paulo, 1927), em completo estudo sobre o contencioso administrativo no Brasil, devia ser havida como inconstitucional, isso porque a Constituição de 1891 revogara, diretamente, esse instituto estabelecendo a jurisdição una, afeta, em exclusividade, ao Poder Judiciário, ex vi do seu art. 60, “b” e “c”. Aliás, nesse sentido, já haviam se manifestado Ruy Barbosa (cf. Comentários à Constituição, coligidos por Homero Pires, vol. IV, pp. 429 e ss) e Pedro Lessa (cf. Do Poder Judiciário, p. 149). Como órgão de função administrativa, preposto do Poder Legislativo, como seu auxiliar, na verificação da gestão financeira do Estado, na verdade, pela sua própria natureza, não podia ter funções jurisdicionais. Aliás, o art. 89, citado, da Constituição de 1891, só lhe confiara aquela atribuição administrativa. Inconstitucional seria, portanto, através de lei ordinária, não só diminuí-la, como, e, principalmente, aumentá-la, dando-lhe função jurisdicional. As Constituições que se seguiram à Constituição de 1891, como salientado, mantêm o Tribunal de Contas por esta instituído e lhe dão as linhas mestras da sua organização, especificam o sistema de controle das contas adotado, e definem as suas competências. As Constituições de 1934 (cf. §§ 1.º e 2.º do art. 101) e de 1946 (cf. §§2.º e 3.º do art. 77) adotaram o sistema italiano de controle da conta, ou melhor, do veto prévio absoluto, proibitivo, com referência às despesas pretendidas em que houvesse falta de saldo no crédito ou que tivessem sido imputadas a crédito impróprio, e do veto prévio relativo, quando diverso fosse o fundamento da recusa, quanto à despesa em causa, e, ainda, o controle a posteriori relativamente a outras obrigações de pagamento. No caso de veto prévio relativo a despesa poderia efetuar-se após despacho do Presidente da República, feito, então, o registro sob reserva, com recurso de ofício à Câmara dos Deputados, segundo a Constituição de 1934, e ao Congresso Nacional, conforme a Constituição de 1946. Já as Constituições de 1937, 1967 e 1969 silenciam a respeito. Mencionam apenas as atribuições do Tribunal de Contas sem cogitar do regime de controle. Contudo, dos termos das Constituição de 1967 (art. 71, e parágrafos, e §4.º do art. 73) e Magna Carta de 1969 (art. 70 e parágrafos, e §4º do art. 72) se conclui que optaram, em princípio, pelo sistema francês, do controle a posteriori, com ligeiras restrições, ao admitirem a faculdade de o Tribunal, de ofício, ou mediante provocação do Ministério Público, ou das autoridades financeiras e orçamentárias, e demais órgãos auxiliares, verificar a ilegalidade de qualquer despesa, inclusive as decorrentes de contratos. A auditoria financeira e orçamentária será exercida sobre as contas das unidades administrativas dos três Poderes da União, que, para esse fim, deverão remeter demonstrações contábeis ao Tribunal de Contas, a que caberá realizar as inspeções que considerar necessárias (art. 79, §3.º de 69). Esses são os elementos necessários para as inspeções levadas a efeito pelo Tribunal de Contas, através dos seus órgãos de auditoria, e compreendem perícias, apuração de pagamento e de sua pontualidade, verificação do cumprimento das leis pertinentes à atividade orçamentária e financeira. Todas essas normas de fiscalização aplicam-se às autarquias, que consistem em pessoas jurídicas criadas pelo Estado, com capacidade específica de direito público na realização de objetivo administrativo (§5.º do art. 70 de 69). Por isso, como seus órgãos indiretos se acham enquadrados no todo estatal, embora seres distintos do Estado, ante a sua personalidade. Formam com ele uma unidade composta. Têm atributos de império, obrigação de agir, são criados por processo de direito público, sem objetivo de lucro e se sujeitam à fiscalização estatal. Distinguem-se em autarquias associativas e fundacionais (cf. Princípios Geral de Direito Administrativo, vol. II, p. 233). Deverá o Tribunal de Contas, em face da Constituição e no caso de concluir tenha havido qualquer irregularidade a respeito: a) assinar prazo razoável para que o órgão da administração pública adote as providências necessárias ao exato cumprimento da lei; b) sustar, se não atendido, a execução do ato impugnado, exceto em relação a contratos; c) solicitar ao Congresso Nacional, em caso de contrato, que determine a medida prevista na alínea anterior ou outras necessárias ao resguardo dos objetivos legais. Observe-se, a sustação do ato que refere a alínea “b” poderá ficar sem efeito se o Presidente da República determinar a execução, ad referendum do Congresso Nacional, sujeitando, portanto, essa ordenação apenas a controle a posteriori do Congresso Nacional (cf. Constituição de 1967, §8.º, do art. 73; de 1969, §8.º do art. 72). O Congresso Nacional deliberará sobre a solicitação de que cogita a alínea “c”, no prazo de 30 dias, findo o qual, sem pronunciamento do Poder Legislativo, será considerada insubsistente a impugnação (cf. Constituição de 1967, §5.º, “a”, “b” e “c”, e §6.º do art. 73; de 1969, §5.º, “a”, “b” e “c”, e §6.º do art. 72). Merece crítica as disposições que têm como insubsistente a falta de pronunciamento legislativo no prazo legal a ele cominado. A solução devia ser exatamente a outra, isto é, tornando a sustação definitiva, adotada, aliás, pela Constituição Paulista no seu art. 91, III. Igualmente, a orientação adotada em admitindo a possibilidade do Presidente da República de ordenar a execução do ato considerado pelo Tribunal de Contas ilegal, submetendo-o ao referendum do Congresso, mas só depois de perpetrada a ilegalidade, outrossim, merece crítica. Envolve, sem dúvida, completa falência do controle do Tribunal de Contas. Por outro lado, regulam a Constituição de 1967 e a Magna Carta de 69 do controle interno da execução do orçamento. Realmente, dispõem que o Poder Executivo manterá sistema de controle interno, a fim de: I – criar condições indispensáveis para assegurar eficácia ao controle externo e regularidade à realização da receita e da despesa; II – acompanhar a execução de programas de trabalho e a do orçamento; e III – avaliar os resultados alcançados pelos administradores e verificar a execução dos contratos (1967, art. 72; de 1969, art. 71). Mas, as censuras acima feitas mostram ser de nenhum efeito essas pretendidas cautelas, pois indiretamente com os textos anteriormente criticados, nulificam, como salientado, o real controle de resultados práticos do Tribunal de Contas. A respeito dos textos criticados, a Constituição de 1934 dispunha que os contratos que, por qualquer modo, interessassem imediatamente à receita ou à despesa, só se reputariam perfeitos e acabados, quando registrados pelo Tribunal de Contas, e que a recusa de registro suspendia a sua execução até o pronunciamento do Poder Legislativo (art. 100). Igual preceito constava na Constituição de 1946 (art. 77, §.1º). Texto semelhante impunha-se tivesse sido acolhido pela Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil e das Constituições dos Estados. Destarte, estariam libertas das críticas anteriormente feitas a respeito. Tendo a Carta de 1937 deixado a completa organização do Tribunal de Contas à lei ordinária (parágrafo único do art. 114) apenas dispôs que competiria a ele acompanhar, conforme já dispunha a de 1934, diretamente ou por delegações organizadas, de acordo com a lei, a execução orçamentária; julgar as contas dos responsáveis por dinheiros ou bens públicos; e da legalidade dos contratos celebrados pela União. Essa tríplice competência foi repetida pelas Constituições que se lhe sucederam de 1946 (art. 77, I, II e III), de 1967 (§1.º do art. 72, §§ 5.º e 8.º do art. 73), e de 1969 (§1.º do art. 71, §§5.º e 8.º do art. 73), e de 1969 (§1.º do art. 71, §§5.º e 8.º do art. 73). E a elas se acrescentou a de julgar a legalidade das aposentadorias, reformas e pensões. Salvo a Carta Magna de 37, todas elas cogitam do parecer prévio do Tribunal de Contas, no prazo de 30 dias, segundo a Constituição de 1934 (art. 102) e de 60 dias segundo as demais (de 1946, §4.º, do art. 77; de 1967, §2.º do art. 71; de 1969, §2.º do art. 70) sobre as contas que o Presidente da República deve prestar, anualmente, ao Congresso Nacional. E, se elas não lhe forem enviadas no prazo da lei, comunicará o fato ao Congresso Nacional, para os fins de direito, apresentando-lhe num e noutro caso, minucioso relatório do exercício financeiro encerrado. Sem dúvida a Constituição de 1967 e a Magna Carta de 1969 através dos seus textos retrogradaram quanto a fiscalização de maior relevo que deve caber ao Tribunal de Contas, qual seja a de fiscal da administração financeira, como preposto do Legislativo. Sem o veto absoluto nos casos de falta de saldo no crédito e nos de imputação a crédito impróprio, a atuação do Tribunal de Contas deixa de ter sua razão de ser. Sem sentido se nos afigura a opinião de alguns que declaram terem sido aumentados os poderes do Tribunal de Contas, pelos textos da Constituição de 67 e Magna Carta de 69, ante a possibilidade que lhe cabe hoje de acompanhamento do desenvolver do orçamento, mediante inspeções especiais, levantamentos contábeis, e representação, que lhe compete, ao Poder Executivo e Congresso Nacional, sobre irregularidades e abusos, inclusive as decorrentes de contrato, pois lhes falta a possibilidade de impedir, de forma coercitiva e absoluta, despesas irregulares. Disse com razão Ruy Barbosa: não basta julgar a administração, denunciar o excesso cometido, colher a exorbitância ou a permissão para punir. Circunscrita a estes limites essa função tutelar dos dinheiros públicos será, muitas vezes, inútil por omissa, tardia ou impotente. Não é de outro sentir Dídimo da Veiga quando afirmou: “O exame a posteriori ou sucessivo deixa consumar-se a despesa para depois fiscalizar a legalidade da mesma, sendo de todo o ponto ilusória a responsabilidade do ordenador, que nunca se torna efetiva, e a do pagador, sempre que a despesa paga for de cifra tão elevada que exceda o valor da caução prestada e dos bens do responsável; a fazenda pública vê-se lesada, fica a descoberto de qualquer garantia, o que, de per si só, é suficiente para coordenar o regimem da contrasteação ex post facto”. (Relatório do Tribunal de Contas de 1899, p. 13). É de lamentar-se essa restrição aos poderes do Tribunal de Contas, muito ao gosto das ditaduras e dos governos de fato. É de lamentar-se, mais ainda, que as Constituições estaduais tenham seguido essa mesma orientação. Vale a pena recordar-se que quando se quis extinguir a fiscalização prévia, com veto absoluto, no Governo Floriano Peixoto, seu Ministro da Fazenda, Seserdelo Correia, pediu exoneração do cargo, e teve oportunidade de dizer em carta ao Presidente a respeito do veto impeditivo. “Longe de considerá-lo um embaraço à administração, eu o considerava o maior fiscal da boa execução do orçamento”. E prosseguia acertadamente: “Se a despesa está dentro do orçamento, se existe verba ou se tem recurso a verba, o Tribunal não pode deixar de registrá-la. Se não existe ou está esgotada, é o caso dos créditos extraordinários ou suplementares”. O registro sob protesto, isto é, do veto relativo não basta para essas hipóteses retro apontadas, para conter os abusos dos governantes e evitar desmandos financeiros. Claro, quando a recusa do registro tiver outro fundamento ele se explica, e então o registro se faz sob reserva. O controle posterior se tem aplicado como elemento complementar, na apreciação de comportamento dos ordenadores e pagadores de despesa para efeito de parecer sobre as contas ao Congresso, e consequente apuração de responsabilidade. Em que pese opiniões em contrário, se nos afigura perfeitamente possível, sem que ocorra a pecha de inconstitucionalidade, adotem os Estados federados e os Municípios, o veto absoluto e o relativo, conforme as hipóteses, na organização dos seus Tribunais de Contas, no exercício das respectivas autonomias, asseguradas pelos arts. 13 e 15, respectivamente, da Emenda 1/1969. As matérias pertinentes aos Tribunais de Contas se enfocam em dois ramos jurídicos: o Direito Financeiro e o Direito Administrativo. As matérias de Direito Financeiro, na verdade, são de competência prevalente da União, ex vi do art. 8.º, XVIII, “c”, da Magna Carta de 69, ou seja, de estabelecer, através de textos legislativos, normas gerais sobre orçamento, despesa e gestão patrimonial e financeira de natureza pública, e, pois aos Estados compete apenas legislar, supletivamente, sobre elas, segundo o parágrafo único do citado art. 8.º, XVII, “c”. Já as matérias de Direito Administrativo, em especial sobre a organização dos seus órgãos, cabem aos Estados pois assistem-lhes todos os poderes que não lhes foram vedados, por texto constitucional. Incumbe-lhes, então, e tão-somente, respeitar os princípios constitucionais, na Magna Carta de 69. Por conseguinte, afora as competências que lhes foram proibidas, hão de obedecer apenas as limitações que defluem dos princípios estruturais do regime pátrio, constantes da Constituição Federal. Portanto, cumpre aos Estados federados, ao organizarem o respectivo Tribunal de Contas, a observância do princípio de prestação de contas da administração, segundo art. 10, VII, “f” e mais elaboração do orçamento, bem como a fiscalização orçamentária, conforme o art. 13, IV. A conjugação desses dois princípios faz com que para efetivá-los devam instituir Tribunais de Contas, com as restrições expressas de que os seus membros não poderão exercer, ainda que em disponibilidade, qualquer outra função pública, salvo um cargo de magistério e nos casos previstos nesta Constituição; receber, a qualquer título e sob qualquer pretexto, percentagens nos processos sujeitos a seu despacho e julgamento, e não deverão exceder de sete, em consonância com o art. 13, IX da CF. Afora essas delimitações aos poderes dos Estados Federados, constantes dos textos suprarreferidos, nenhuma outra foi prevista, e como a eles são conferidos todos os poderes que, explícita ou implicitamente, não lhes tenham sido vedados pela Constituição Federal, como dispõe o §1.º do art. 13, é indiscutível, a nosso ver, ao organizarem os seus Tribunais de Contas, podem fazê-lo com liberdade, em escolhendo para efeito do controle financeiro o sistema que mais lhes convenha. Assim o de veto prévio absoluto quanto as despesas em que inexista verba ou esta seja imprópria. Certo, o art. 188 da Constituição de 67, reproduzido no art. 200 da Carta de 69, invocado pelos que negam essa possibilidade, não configura o referido impedimento. Realmente, os artigos em apreço dispõem que as disposições nela constantes ficam incorporadas, no que couber, ao direito constitucional legislado pelos Estados. Com isso se pretendeu, na melhor das hipóteses, que os Estados devem adotar, no mínimo, o modelo imposto pela Carta Federal, com referência ao controle financeiro, os princípios básicos constantes dessas Constituições em referência. Eles constituem o paradigma mínimo a serem obedecidos pelos Estados, tendo em atenção o modelo federal. Mas, nada impedem melhorem o sistema federal de controle das contas estaduais e o torne mais severo. Não lhe impuseram completa simetria de organização, o que seria absurdo em um Estado federal, de grande extensão territorial, e em que as unidades federativas são de áreas díspares e com diversidade de população, e de civilização e cultura distintas. Assim sendo, deverá o Tribunal de Contas do Estado, como mínimo tão-somente: I – exercer o controle externo da administração financeira do Poder Executivo e entes autárquicos, como colaborador da Assembleia Legislativo neste mister; II – apreciar, em parecer, as contas anuais da Administração Pública, e elaborar relatório quanto ao exercício financeiro, mediante a ajuda de auditoria, tomar as contas dos administradores e outros responsáveis pelo dinheiro público, e verificar da legalidade das aposentadorias, reformas e pensões; III – gozar de autonomia interna corporis dos Tribunais Judiciários e desfrutar os seus membros de situação equiparável aos magistrados dos Tribunais de Justiça; IV – satisfazer a nomeação dos seus membros os requisitos previstos para nomeação dos magistrados; V – representar ao Poder Executivo e à Assembleia Legislativa dando notícia de atos irregulares ou abusos verificados quanto a administração financeira e orçamentária; VI – sustar os atos da administração financeira quando exaurido o prazo a ela assinado para sua regularização, bem como solicitar à Assembleia Legislativa, em casos de contratos firmados pela administração, as medidas para resguardo da regularidade dos objetivos legais, acaso desrespeitados. Aliás, se realmente fosse negado aos Tribunais de Contas Estaduais ampliar e melhorar o sistema adotado pela União, a fim de torna-los mais aptos, à consecução da sua função, quanto a organização do próprio órgão e a sua ação fiscal, seria praticamente anular a autonomia dos Estados, assegurada pelo art. 13 da Magna Carta de 69, e, consequentemente, ter como revogada a Federação, firmada no art. 1.º dela, e cuja abolição, mediante reforma constitucional, sequer pode ser objeto de deliberação proposta nesse sentido, ante o art. 47, §1.º. Em consequência, são livres de organizar o órgão e a sua ação desde que respeitem, no mínimo, quanto a organização as normas dispostas pela União e quanto a sua ação ao figurino mínimo pertinente ao controle fiscal estabelecido pela União. Parece absurdo sustentar-se que está o Estado, pela Carta de 69, impedido de melhorar a organização de seu Tribunal e de tornar mais efetiva a sua fiscalização financeira. Como já salientado, a Magna Carta de 69 assegurou no art. 15 a autonomia dos Municípios. Admitiu a intervenção do Estado nos seus negócios quando deixarem de respeitar princípios insertos no §3.ª desse artigo. E entre eles, está o de prestação das contas devidas nos termos da lei, conforme já previsto no inc. II do citado art. 15. Consequentemente, no art. 16 estabeleceu que a fiscalização financeira e orçamentária será exercida mediante controle externo da Câmara Municipal e controle interno do Executivo municipal, instituídos por lei. E no §1.º dispõe: “O controle externo da Câmara Municipal será exercido com o auxílio do Tribunal de Contas do Estado ou órgão estadual a que for atribuída essa incumbência”. Destarte, admitiu o Estado entregue tal encargo ao seu Tribunal de Contas ou a órgão estadual para tanto criado e a quem caberá essa competência. Embora em caráter de colaboração à Câmara Municipal, o parecer prévio desses órgãos estaduais só deixará de prevalecer, segundo o §2.º desse artigo, mediante decisão de 2/3 daquela. Dessa forma ficaram postas balizar aos abusos das Câmaras Municipais sob a força de pressão da política. Restrições maiores comprometeriam a autonomia do Município. Para evitar esses abusos dos governantes municipais, sem tolher a autonomia, está na adoção pelos Estados do veto prévio absoluto e relativo, com referência aos Municípios nos termos que devem ser preconizados para o Tribunal de Contas do próprio Estado, com referência ao seu controle financeiro. Discute-se sobre a possibilidade de, em existindo Tribunal de Contas nos Estados, haver possibilidade de ser por ele criado órgão estadual com o encargo de proceder a fiscalização financeira dos Municípios, como auxiliar do controle externo das Câmaras Municipais. Entendem uns a dejuntiva ou do texto constitucional faz com que só se possa admitir a criação desse órgão em inexistindo Tribunal de Contas do Estado. Já outros sustentam a permissibilidade da criação desse órgão para efeito de descongestionar os Tribunais estaduais. Estes restringiram o seu controle contábil financeiro às contas do Estado federado, e o outro órgão se destinaria a igual controle dos Municípios. Aliás, só desse sentido se pode compreender a palavra “ou” intercalada entre as duas hipóteses, isto é, uma “ou” outra. Afigura-se-nos mais consentânea com a verdade a tese da última corrente, não obstante tenha havido pronunciamento do Supremo Tribunal Federal em favor da outra. Aliás há também decisão desse Tribunal em outro sentido. A fiscalização se fará por um ou outro órgão pertinente. Adotada a primeira orientação, ainda há de ter-se como sem sentido a previsão constitucional de outro órgão, além do Tribunal de Contas, para o referido controle, porquanto todos os Estados, obrigatoriamente, devem ter Tribunais de Contas, ex vi do art. 13, IX, da CF, completado pelo art. 200 que determina a incorporação, no que couber, das disposições constantes da Carta Federal, ao direito constitucional dos Estados. Demais, o trabalho que fica a cargo dos Tribunais de Contas dos Estados, quanto ao controle fiscal da sua atuação, pode perturbar o serviço desse Tribunal para efetivar, realmente, o controle financeiro dos Municípios, e, então, se explica a criação desse órgão especial distinto dos Tribunais de Contas, a critério do legislador estadual. Esse órgão autônomo estadual, no entanto, deverá gozar de regalias que assegurem a sua independência quanto a força de pressão política, a fim de poder exercer, com absoluta isenção, a sua atividade de auditoria, seja ele colegiado ou sob a orientação singular de um auditor-chefe. Contudo, os municípios, ante o §3.º, do art. 16, da Magna Carta de 69, com população superior a dois milhões de habitantes e renda tributária acima de quinhentos milhões de cruzeiros novos, podem eles próprios instituir Tribunais de Contas. E estes devem respeitar, na sua organização e ação, os princípios mínimos adotados pela Constituição Federal nos arts. 72 e parágrafos e mais outras normas aperfeiçoando-os, como seja o veto absoluto nos casos de falta de verba ou de verba imprópria, e o veto relativo quanto a outras despesas. Já o Município de São Paulo, em virtude do art. 191, ficou assegurado, e tão-somente a ele, a continuidade do seu Tribunal de Contas, salvo deliberação em contrário da respectiva Câmara, enquanto os demais Tribunais de Contas Municipais foram declarados, por esse mesmo termo, extintos. O Tribunal de Contas do Município de São Paulo pode ser reorganizado, e quanto a sua ação, como os novos Tribunais de Contas em outros Estados, dos respectivos Municípios em que vierem a ser criados, satisfazendo as exigências do §3.º do art. 16. Além de obedecerem ao modelo federal, nos seus contornos mínimos, cumpre aos Tribunais Municipais obedecerem aos textos mínimos dispostos na Constituição Estadual e na Lei Orgânica dos Municípios. Mas podem estabelecer controle mais extenso a eles quanto ao orçamento, conforme salientado. Afinal, pondere-se: é incrível que a Constituição Paulista haja, no art. 75, disposto que nenhuma despesa será ordenada ou realizada sem que exista recurso orçamentário ou crédito votado pela Assembleia, e tenha deixado de, expressamente, prever o veto absoluto do Tribunal de Contas, tanto do Estado como do Município da Capital, ao dispor sobre as suas competências a respeito. A expressão julgar as contas dos responsáveis pelos dinheiros e bens públicos, bem como da legalidade dos contratos e das concessões iniciais de aposentadorias, reformas e pensões, ensejou dúvidas na doutrina e na jurisprudência, qual seja, se ao empregar a expressão “julgar” os constituintes cogitaram de atribuir ao Tribunal de Contas funções jurisdicionais ou não. Quanto à última, de julgar da legalidade dos contratos, firmou-se orientação de que se tratava de função administrativa, empregada impropriamente a palavra “julgar” no texto, porquanto a decisão do Tribunal de Contas só tinha o efeito de suspender a sua execução até que se pronunciasse a respeito o Congresso Nacional. Funcionava, destarte, como órgão auxiliar do Poder Legislativo, sem caráter jurisdicional, mas tão-somente administrativo. Já quanto à primeira, de julgar as contas, prevaleceu a orientação de que se tratava de função jurisdicional, atribuída ao Tribunal de Contas. Procurou-se distinguir a expressão “julgar da legalidade” da de “julgar as contas”, por empregado o verbo em regência diversa pelos constituintes. Ora, o “julgar” no sentido de lavrar ou pronunciar sentença não pede objeto direto, diz-se “julgar do direito de alguém”. Já o “julgar” no sentido de avaliar, entender, pede objeto direto, diz-se “julgo” que tem razão (cf. Cândido de Figueiredo, verbete “julgar”, in Novo Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, 3.ª ed., vol. II, Portugal-Brasil, s/d). Por conseguinte, a alteração da regência prova contra a tese dos que pretendem a expressão “julgar as contas” corresponda à de sentenciar, ou seja, de exercício da função jurisdicional. Na verdade, essa regência do verbo, ao contrário da outra de “julgar da legalidade”, autoriza a conclusão de que a expressão “julgar as contas” se refere ao significado de avaliá-las, entendê-las, reputá-las bem ou mal prestadas, jamais no sentido de sentenciar, de decidir a respeito delas. Observe-se, as Constituições de 1967 e 1969 separaram em dispositivos diferentes as duas atividades quais sejam: de julgar da legalidade dos contratos; e de julgar da legalidade das concessões iniciais de aposentadoria, reformas e pensões, juntos no mesmo item da Constituição de 1945. Quanto à primeira, isto é, legalidade dos contratos estabeleceram o princípio do recurso de ofício ao Congresso Nacional da sua deliberação. Já relativamente à segunda, ou seja, legalidade da aposentadoria, reformas e pensões, nada dispuseram a respeito, com referência à sua deliberação. Entretanto, nesta última hipótese, também, não se teve como definitiva a decisão do Tribunal de Contas. Se deixada de ser registrada pelo Tribunal de Contas, isso não impediria a sua efetivação, em mantido o ato pelo Executivo. Então, far-se-ia o registro sob protesto desses atos. Poderia, ainda, sem dúvida, em face dos textos constitucionais (1946, art. 77, III, §3.º e art. 141, §4.º; 1967, art. 73, §5.º, “b”, e art. 151, §4.º; e 1969, art. 72, §§5.º, “b”, e 8.º) o interessado interpor recurso ao Judiciário para defesa de seu direito individual acaso desconhecido, se entendesse ter direito à aposentadoria ou reforma e a sua família, se negada a pensão. Os adeptos da competência jurisdicional do Tribunal de Contas, no caso de julgar as contas dos responsáveis pelos dinheiros e bens públicos, sustentam que o fato do reconhecimento do alcance pelo Tribunal de Contas há de ser aceito sem discussão pelo Poder Judiciário. Concordam, no entanto, que a recusa na aceitação das contas, envolve apenas o reconhecimento, pelo Tribunal de Contas, de alcance por parte do ordenador da despesa ou seu pagador, pois a condenação, por crime de peculato, depende de sentença judicial do Poder Judiciário, e a condenação cível do débito, para efeito de indenização ao Poder Público, depende, também, de sentença judicial do Poder Judiciário. Destarte, ao Tribunal de Contas cabe decisão prejudicial sobre o fato. Porém, a condenação, pela prática do ilícito penal ou civil, na verdade, cabe ao Poder Judiciário, e mais a execução da sentença. Data venia, desses mestres, há de entender-se que, em ambas as hipóteses, o Tribunal de Conta só possui função administrativa de acompanhar a execução orçamentária e apreciar as contas dos responsáveis por dinheiros ou bens públicos. Com isso se não diminui o relevo do Tribunal de Contas, ao contrário se projeta na sua específica função de implantar a moralidade pública, de ordem administrativa, na fiscalização do orçamento. Na organização jurídica do Estado todos os órgãos são de igual importância no exercício de suas respectivas funções, cada uma imprescindível ao Estado de Direito. E de tal realce é a do Tribunal de Contas, que se encontra fora da concepção tríplice dos três poderes, e a quem cabe a fiscalização econômico-financeira da atividade de todos eles. Não teve o texto em causa, no entanto, o objetivo de investi-lo no exercício de função judicante, quando se expressou que lhe caberia julgar as referidas contas. Visou apenas lhe conferir a competência final na ordem administrativa sobre o assunto. Se tida como bem prestadas, está encerrado o trabalho pertinente à sua apuração, com a quitação que mandaria passar a favor dos que as ofereceram. Ao contrário, se entender caracterizado alcance quanto a dinheiro ou bem público, no exercício dessa função, determinará que paguem o considerado devido, dentro do prazo fixado, e, não satisfeita a determinação, lhe caberá proceder contra eles na forma de direito. Argui-se que, em as considerando o Tribunal de Contas irregulares, essa questão não poderia ser reaberta pela Justiça Comum, a quem caberia o processamento e julgamento do crime, consequência do alcance verificado. Portanto, caracterizado pelo Tribunal de Contas o alcance, na ação de peculato, esse pronunciamento obrigaria a Justiça Criminal Comum. Então, esta, quer dizer, a Justiça Comum, terá de aceitar dito pronunciamento sobre as contas do réu, como apuração de fato necessária à integração do delito, isto é, como apuração preestabelecida e requisito da ação, sob pena de um novo Juiz rejulgar o que tinha sido julgado por outro, incorrendo em injustificável bis in idem, em inútil nova apreciação, que resultaria em mero formalismo. Igual consideração se faz quanto à Justiça Comum, em ação executiva proposta pelo Estado, para cobrança de alcance e haver a correspectiva reposição patrimonial. Não se trata de rejulgamento pela Justiça Comum, porque o Tribunal de Contas é órgão administrativo e não judicante, e sua denominação de Tribunal e a expressão julgar ambas são equívocas. Na verdade, é um Conselho de Contas e não as julga, sentenciando a respeito delas, mas apura da veracidade delas para dar quitação ao interessado, em tendo-as como bem prestadas, ou promover a condenação criminal e civil do responsável verificando o alcance. Apura fatos. Ora, apurar fatos não é julgar. Julgar é dizer do direito de alguém em face dos fatos e relações jurídicas, tendo em vista a ordem normativa vigente. Se simplesmente apura fatos, sob a imprópria cognominação de julgar, não exerce função jurisdicional. E essa apuração poderá ser objeto de prova contrária em Juízo. Não deve constituir por isso prejudicial a ser aceita pelo Poder Judiciário sem qualquer exame. A Justiça Comum não pode ficar presa a ela, uma vez a Constituição não atribui expressamente a força de sentença as conclusões do Tribunal de Contas sobre o fato. E a quem cabe dizer do direito de alguém, em princípio, cabe a verificação do fato, em última análise. Logo, a Justiça Comum, ao dizer daquele, deve poder apreciar este. Inexiste bis in idem, porquanto uma coisa é a apreciação administrativa e outra a judicial de dado fato. Sem dúvida, a apuração do fato do alcance pelo Tribunal de Contas será uma prejudicial necessária para a propositura da ação, civil ou penal, como pressuposição do ilícito civil ou penal. Essa apuração prévia sempre se faz necessária. E, em princípio, será aceita pelo Poder Judiciário, seja no executivo fiscal para reposição patrimonial, ou na ação criminal contra o agente público. Isso porque documentalmente comprovada no procedimento levado a efeito pelo Tribunal de Contas. Contudo, se o agente público, réu em uma dessas ações, arguir cerceamento da defesa nessa apuração e trouxer para os autos provas convincentes da improcedência da apuração de ilícito civil ou penal contra ele, não pode o Poder Judiciário, que vai condená-lo, e, em seguida, executar a sua sentença, deixar de examinar essa alegação e verificar da sua procedência, se no bojo dos autos constarem elementos para admitir-se a veracidade do alegado contra o pronunciamento do Tribunal de Contas. Se os constituintes tivessem atribuído ao Tribunal de Contas função jurisdicional, deveriam tê-lo integrado no Poder Judiciário. Isso não fizeram, e, ao contrário, o colocaram entre os órgãos de cooperação nas atividades governamentais, como auxiliar do Poder Legislativo. Por outro lado, a Constituição de 91 havia abolido o contencioso administrativo. Por conseguinte o seu restabelecimento só se poderá admiti-lo, mesmo parcial, para julgamento das contas, dos responsáveis por dinheiros e bens públicos, quando tal viesse dito no texto de modo indiscutível, o que se conseguiria declarando-se que a decisão do Tribunal de Contas nessa matéria teria força de sentença. Poder-se-á contra-argumentar que se dera o título de Ministro aos seus membros, e a sua nomeação se faz nos moldes das dos demais Ministros da Corte Suprema e gozam das mesmas garantias destes, de vitaliciedade, de irremovibilidade e irredutibilidade de vencimentos, bem como quanto à organização do Regimento Interno e da Secretaria, tem o Tribunal de Contas as mesmas atribuições dos Tribunais Judiciários. Ora, o argumento prova demais. Isso se fez para assegurar a independência dos seus membros perante o Executivo no fiscalizar a sua gestão financeira, jamais para julgar das suas contas com força de sentença, de modo a obrigar, por exemplo, o Poder Judiciário a considerar como caracterizado o alcance de alguém, sem poder reapreciar essa apuração, e dever, portanto, aceitar como definitivo o julgamento do Tribunal de Contas. Não parece razoável obrigar o juiz criminal ou civil, reduzido a uma função formal a condenar alguém por provas que não o convencem ou não puder verificar de sua procedência, quando nos autos há elementos que as contestam. As leis ordinárias, que, na vigência da Constituição de 91, embora devendo ser havidas como inconstitucionais, quiseram atribuir ao Tribunal de Contas competência jurisdicional, o fizeram de forma expressa. Deram às suas decisões força de sentença. Isso não fizeram os textos constitucionais. Portanto, os textos em causa, constitucionais, devem ser interpretados como tendo em mira usar a palavra julgar no sentido restrito, atrás sustentado, isto é, dentro da órbita administrativa, pois do contrário atribuiriam a esse julgamento a força de sentença. Aliás, não se compreende que se interprete a expressão “julgar da legalidade” como restrita à órbita administrativa e “julgar as contas” se estenda ao âmbito jurisdicional. A alteração de regência do verbo não muda o sentido da função, passando-a de administrativa para jurisdicional, e, ao contrário, a regência direta não é a própria para o emprego da palavra no sentido de sentenciar, como se viu. Ambos os textos devem ser entendidos em sentido estrito, embora ao “julgar da legalidade” haja apreciação de matéria de direito, porém sem caráter definitivo, mero exame administrativo, relegada ao Judiciário a função jurisdicional. Demais, dita interpretação amolda-se à natureza do Tribunal de Contas, Tribunal Administrativo, de verificação de contas, e jamais Tribunal de Justiça, de julgamento afinal dos agentes públicos pelas contas não prestadas ou malprestadas. Aliás, não se confunde o julgar das contas com o julgamento dos responsáveis por elas. A função de julgar, no seu verdadeiro sentido, de dizer do direito em face dos fatos, diz respeito a alguém, ou melhor, a uma pessoa de direito, natural ou jurídica. No caso, o agente público que ordenou ou fez a despesa, natural, relativa ao alcance, de natureza penal, e a reparação patrimonial, de natureza civil, ou melhor, o responsável pelas contas. Já a expressão “julgar as contas” não contém qualquer função jurisdicional de dizer do direito de alguém, mas administrativo-contábil de apreciação do fato da sua prestação. Julgamento se faz dos agentes responsáveis pelas contas, jamais das contas. Estas se apreciam, como se disse, sob o aspecto administrativo-contábil. São insuscetíveis de julgamento. O Tribunal de Contas julga as contas, ou melhor, aprecia a sua prestação em face de elemento administrativo-contábil, e, outrossim, a legalidade dos contratos feitos, bem como das aposentadorias e pensões. A Justiça Comum julga os agentes públicos ordenadores de despesas e dos seus pagadores. E ao julgar os atos destes, sob o aspecto do ilícito penal ou civil, há de apreciar, também, os fatos que se pretendam geraram esses ilícitos. Repita-se, a função jurisdicional é de dizer o direito em face dos fatos. Jamais de apreciar fatos simplesmente. Mesmo se aceitasse como definitiva essa apreciação, não corresponderia a uma função de julgar. A certidão do Tribunal de Contas em afirmando o alcance do agente público, como documento de instrução do processo judicial tem tão-somente a presunção de verdade juris tantum, ante o texto constitucional e não juris et juri. Isso porque não possui força de sentença judicial e isso não pode ter, a menos que lhe fosse atribuída a competência de julgar o próprio ilícito civil e penal, atribuído aos agentes ordenadores da despesa e seus pagadores, isto é, os agentes responsáveis pelas contas. As sucessivas Constituições pátrias, expressamente, conferiram aos Juízes da União (cf. 1934, art. 81, “a”, e parágrafo único; 1937, arts. 107, 108 e parágrafo único; 1946, art. 201 e §§1.º e 2.º; 1967, art. 119, I, e 1969, art. 125, I) competência para processar e julgar as causas em que a União for interessada como autora ou ré, assistente ou opoente, e só excepcionaram dessa competência a competência da Justiça local nos processos de falência e outros em que a Fazenda Nacional, embora interessada, não intervenha como autora, ré, assistente ou opoente, e ressalvaram, ainda, a competência da Justiça Eleitoral, Militar e do Trabalho. Nada disseram quanto às contas dos responsáveis por dinheiro ou bem público. Ao contrário, as Constituições de 34 (art. 81, “i”), de 46 (art. 104, II, “a”, art. 105, depois de promulgado o AI/2, art. 6º), de 67 (art. 119, I e IV), e 69 (art. 125, I e IV), sem qualquer ressalva em favor do Tribunal de Contas, atribuíram aos Juízes Federais competência para processar e julgar, em 1.ª instância, os crimes praticados em detrimento de bens, serviços ou interesse da União ou de entidades autárquicas ou empresas públicas, ressalvadas tão-somente a competência da Justiça Militar, do Trabalho e Eleitoral. Se pretendessem excluir da competência dos Juízes Federais o julgamento dos responsáveis por dinheiro ou bens públicos, dando força de sentença à decisão do Tribunal de Contas a respeito das suas contas, deveria ter isso dito, ou, ao menos, feito remissão a esse artigo. Ao contrário, silenciaram. Não tendo excluído essa matéria da competência dos Juízes federais, ela lhes deve caber, ex vi dos artigos das diferentes Constituições pátrias, e não só a competência formal de condenar os cujas contas forem rejeitadas e havidas como tendo cometido delito, ou civilmente responsáveis, como apreciar o mérito desse ilícito penal e civil, que lhe fosse imputado. E essa competência, ora foi conferida em grau de recurso, ao Supremo Tribunal Federal (Constituição de 34, art. 76, II, “a”, c/c art. 79, parágrafo único, §1.º, 101, II, 2.ª letra “a” e art. 109 (parágrafo único); ora, aos Tribunais Federais para julgar privativa e definitivamente (Constituição de 1946, art. 104, II “a”; 67; art. 117, II, e parágrafo único; 69, art. 122, II, e parágrafo único), exceto as questões de falência, e as sujeitas à Justiça Eleitoral, à Militar e à do Trabalho. E nenhum Tribunal julga privativa e definitivamente uma questão se não puder apreciá-la, tanto no seu aspecto formal como material. Observe-se, considera-se como crime de responsabilidade dos Ministros de Estado não só os que praticarem ou ordenarem, como, ainda, os relativos a despesas do seu Ministério, a que lhes incumbe dirigir, como orientador, coordenador e supervisor dos seus órgãos, pois respondem por elas e o da Fazenda, além desses, como os pertinentes à arrecadação da receita, por lhe estar afeto ainda esse encargo. Portanto, como se poderá entender que a expressão constitucional “julgará as contas dos responsáveis por dinheiros ou bens públicos” equivale à outorga de função jurisdicional ao Tribunal de Contas? A que fica a mesma função entregue à Justiça Política e depois à Justiça Comum, nos casos de crimes de responsabilidade do Presidente da República e conexos dos Ministros de Estado, e à Corte Suprema, nos de responsabilidade dos Ministros, os quais respondem não só pelos atos que ordenarem ou praticarem, como pelas despesas do seu Ministério, e, o da Fazenda, além disso, pela arrecadação da receita? E como se processaria a responsabilidade posterior dessas autoridades, civil e criminal, perante a Justiça Comum, ao depois de condenados pela perda do cargo? Ora, nem uma palavra existe sobre o Tribunal de Contas. Considerado por este ato do Presidente da República e dos Ministros de Estado a ela conexos como tendo atentado contra a probidade administrativa ou a execução do orçamento, ficará o Tribunal Político preso aos pronunciamentos do Tribunal de Contas? Então, o órgão auxiliar do Congresso, de Fiscalização financeira e orçamentária, se sobreporá, nas suas conclusões, a ele? Não terá a Câmara dos Deputados a liberdade de apreciar da existência ou não do apontado atentado à probidade administrativa por parte do Presidente para apresentar a denúncia contra ele, e o Senado ficará obrigado a aceitar como provado esse atentado, objeto de denúncia, sem apurar a veracidade, formando por si próprio o Juízo a respeito? Consequência última a se tirar é a anteriormente preconizada, qual seja, a de que a expressão “julgar” as contas conferida ao Tribunal de Contas, aliás impropriamente, se restringe à órbita administrativa, com o objetivo de poder dar quitação ou mandar apurar a responsabilidade das contas dos responsáveis por dinheiros ou bens públicos. E, ainda, com esse mesmo sentido é dado à palavra julgar, como correspondendo a apreciar as contas tão-somente se encontra quando se atribui nas Constituições de 1934 (art. 40, “c”), 1946 (art. 65, VIII), 1967 (art. 47, VIII) e 1969 (art. 44, VIII) ao Congresso Nacional competência privativa para julgar as contas do Presidente da República. Isso porque o Presidente da República deverá apresentar ao Congresso Nacional dentro de 60 dias as suas contas relativas ao ano anterior, após a abertura da Assembleia Legislativa, ex vi do art. 81, XX, com parecer prévio do Tribunal de Contas, em 60 dias do seu recebimento. Como consideração última, pondere-se que em face das Constituições pátrias, desde a de 1946, sempre se assegurou, entre os direitos individuais dos cidadãos, e entre eles estão os agentes públicos, ordenadores de despesas e seus pagadores, que não poderia ficar excluída do Poder Judiciário qualquer lesão de direito individual, o que lhe seria assegurado por lei. Ora, em entendendo o agente público, cujas contas deixaram de ser aceitas pelo Tribunal de Contas, que com isso se acarretou lesão ao seu direito de defesa e de que a comprovação de fato arguido não é verdadeira, há de permitir-se ao Judiciário, sempre, o seu exame, sob pena de lesão desse direito individual deles, seja na arguição de ilícito civil ou criminal. Portanto, o Tribunal de Contas não exerce função jurisdicional e tão-somente administrativa de tomada de contas. Tal ponto de vista é igualmente defendido por Guimarães Menegale (cf. Direito Administrativo e Ciência da Administração, pp. 219-226, Borsói, Rio, 1957) e por José Afonso da Silva (cf. Do Recurso Extraordinário no Direito Processual Brasileiro, pp. 265-268, Livro 114, Ed. RT, 1963). Clenício da Silva Duarte (cf. Anais do VIII Congresso de Tribunais de Contas do Brasil, vol. II, pp. 441-477, João Pessoa, 1976). Em conclusão I – A função por excelência do Tribunal de Contas é o controle do orçamento, a fim de assegurar a moralidade pública. II – Os Tribunais de Contas não exercem, na verdade, função jurisdicional, mas de apreciação de contas apenas, cuja atividade a respeito é de especial relevo. III – O Tribunal de Contas na Constituição de 67 e Carta de 69 teve os seus reais poderes restringidos e assim prejudicado o exercício da sua precípua função. IV – Só o veto absoluto contra despesas sem verba ou verba imprópria permite o efetivo controle do orçamento, reservado o veto relativo para outras despesas e o controle a posteriori para a apuração final de responsabilidades dos seus ordenadores e pagadores. V – Os tribunais de Contas dos Estados e Municípios podem adotar, em face dos arts. 13 e 15 da Carta de 69 c/c o art. 1.º, o veto absoluto e relativo e o controle a posteriori nos termos acima enunciados, para garantia do cumprimento do cumprimento do orçamento. VI – Os Estados, nos Municípios em que inexiste Tribunal de Contas, podem exercer o controle dos orçamentos municipais, através dos seus Tribunais de Contas ou de órgão criado para esse fim.

On the morning of Thursday, 4 May 2006, the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held an open hearing entitled “Terrorist Use of the Internet.” The Intelligence committee meeting was scheduled to take place in Room 1302 of the Longworth Office Building, a Depression-era structure with a neoclassical façade. Because of a dysfunctional elevator, some of the congressional representatives were late to the meeting. During the testimony about the newest political applications for cutting-edge digital technology, the microphones periodically malfunctioned, and witnesses complained of “technical problems” several times. By the end of the day it seemed that what was to be remembered about the hearing was the shocking revelation that terrorists were using videogames to recruit young jihadists. The Associated Press wrote a short, restrained article about the hearing that only mentioned “computer games and recruitment videos” in passing. Eager to have their version of the news item picked up, Reuters made videogames the focus of their coverage with a headline that announced, “Islamists Using US Videogames in Youth Appeal.” Like a game of telephone, as the Reuters videogame story was quickly re-run by several Internet news services, each iteration of the title seemed less true to the exact language of the original. One Internet news service changed the headline to “Islamic militants recruit using U.S. video games.” Fox News re-titled the story again to emphasise that this alert about technological manipulation was coming from recognised specialists in the anti-terrorism surveillance field: “Experts: Islamic Militants Customizing Violent Video Games.” As the story circulated, the body of the article remained largely unchanged, in which the Reuters reporter described the digital materials from Islamic extremists that were shown at the congressional hearing. During the segment that apparently most captured the attention of the wire service reporters, eerie music played as an English-speaking narrator condemned the “infidel” and declared that he had “put a jihad” on them, as aerial shots moved over 3D computer-generated images of flaming oil facilities and mosques covered with geometric designs. Suddenly, this menacing voice-over was interrupted by an explosion, as a virtual rocket was launched into a simulated military helicopter. The Reuters reporter shared this dystopian vision from cyberspace with Western audiences by quoting directly from the chilling commentary and describing a dissonant montage of images and remixed sound. “I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters,” a narrator’s voice said as the screen flashed between images of street-level gunfights, explosions and helicopter assaults. Then came a recording of President George W. Bush’s September 16, 2001, statement: “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.” It was edited to repeat the word “crusade,” which Muslims often define as an attack on Islam by Christianity. According to the news reports, the key piece of evidence before Congress seemed to be a film by “SonicJihad” of recorded videogame play, which – according to the experts – was widely distributed online. Much of the clip takes place from the point of view of a first-person shooter, seen as if through the eyes of an armed insurgent, but the viewer also periodically sees third-person action in which the player appears as a running figure wearing a red-and-white checked keffiyeh, who dashes toward the screen with a rocket launcher balanced on his shoulder. Significantly, another of the player’s hand-held weapons is a detonator that triggers remote blasts. As jaunty music plays, helicopters, tanks, and armoured vehicles burst into smoke and flame. Finally, at the triumphant ending of the video, a green and white flag bearing a crescent is hoisted aloft into the sky to signify victory by Islamic forces. To explain the existence of this digital alternative history in which jihadists could be conquerors, the Reuters story described the deviousness of the country’s terrorist opponents, who were now apparently modifying popular videogames through their wizardry and inserting anti-American, pro-insurgency content into U.S.-made consumer technology. One of the latest video games modified by militants is the popular “Battlefield 2” from leading video game publisher, Electronic Arts Inc of Redwood City, California. Jeff Brown, a spokesman for Electronic Arts, said enthusiasts often write software modifications, known as “mods,” to video games. “Millions of people create mods on games around the world,” he said. “We have absolutely no control over them. It’s like drawing a mustache on a picture.” Although the Electronic Arts executive dismissed the activities of modders as a “mustache on a picture” that could only be considered little more than childish vandalism of their off-the-shelf corporate product, others saw a more serious form of criminality at work. Testifying experts and the legislators listening on the committee used the video to call for greater Internet surveillance efforts and electronic counter-measures. Within twenty-four hours of the sensationalistic news breaking, however, a group of Battlefield 2 fans was crowing about the idiocy of reporters. The game play footage wasn’t from a high-tech modification of the software by Islamic extremists; it had been posted on a Planet Battlefield forum the previous December of 2005 by a game fan who had cut together regular game play with a Bush remix and a parody snippet of the soundtrack from the 2004 hit comedy film Team America. The voice describing the Black Hawk helicopters was the voice of Trey Parker of South Park cartoon fame, and – much to Parker’s amusement – even the mention of “goats screaming” did not clue spectators in to the fact of a comic source. Ironically, the moment in the movie from which the sound clip is excerpted is one about intelligence gathering. As an agent of Team America, a fictional elite U.S. commando squad, the hero of the film’s all-puppet cast, Gary Johnston, is impersonating a jihadist radical inside a hostile Egyptian tavern that is modelled on the cantina scene from Star Wars. Additional laughs come from the fact that agent Johnston is accepted by the menacing terrorist cell as “Hakmed,” despite the fact that he utters a series of improbable clichés made up of incoherent stereotypes about life in the Middle East while dressed up in a disguise made up of shoe polish and a turban from a bathroom towel. The man behind the “SonicJihad” pseudonym turned out to be a twenty-five-year-old hospital administrator named Samir, and what reporters and representatives saw was nothing more exotic than game play from an add-on expansion pack of Battlefield 2, which – like other versions of the game – allows first-person shooter play from the position of the opponent as a standard feature. While SonicJihad initially joined his fellow gamers in ridiculing the mainstream media, he also expressed astonishment and outrage about a larger politics of reception. In one interview he argued that the media illiteracy of Reuters potentially enabled a whole series of category errors, in which harmless gamers could be demonised as terrorists. It wasn’t intended for the purpose what it was portrayed to be by the media. So no I don’t regret making a funny video . . . why should I? The only thing I regret is thinking that news from Reuters was objective and always right. The least they could do is some online research before publishing this. If they label me al-Qaeda just for making this silly video, that makes you think, what is this al-Qaeda? And is everything al-Qaeda? Although Sonic Jihad dismissed his own work as “silly” or “funny,” he expected considerably more from a credible news agency like Reuters: “objective” reporting, “online research,” and fact-checking before “publishing.” Within the week, almost all of the salient details in the Reuters story were revealed to be incorrect. SonicJihad’s film was not made by terrorists or for terrorists: it was not created by “Islamic militants” for “Muslim youths.” The videogame it depicted had not been modified by a “tech-savvy militant” with advanced programming skills. Of course, what is most extraordinary about this story isn’t just that Reuters merely got its facts wrong; it is that a self-identified “parody” video was shown to the august House Intelligence Committee by a team of well-paid “experts” from the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a major contractor with the federal government, as key evidence of terrorist recruitment techniques and abuse of digital networks. Moreover, this story of media illiteracy unfolded in the context of a fundamental Constitutional debate about domestic surveillance via communications technology and the further regulation of digital content by lawmakers. Furthermore, the transcripts of the actual hearing showed that much more than simple gullibility or technological ignorance was in play. Based on their exchanges in the public record, elected representatives and government experts appear to be keenly aware that the digital discourses of an emerging information culture might be challenging their authority and that of the longstanding institutions of knowledge and power with which they are affiliated. These hearings can be seen as representative of a larger historical moment in which emphatic declarations about prohibiting specific practices in digital culture have come to occupy a prominent place at the podium, news desk, or official Web portal. This environment of cultural reaction can be used to explain why policy makers’ reaction to terrorists’ use of networked communication and digital media actually tells us more about our own American ideologies about technology and rhetoric in a contemporary information environment. When the experts come forward at the Sonic Jihad hearing to “walk us through the media and some of the products,” they present digital artefacts of an information economy that mirrors many of the features of our own consumption of objects of electronic discourse, which seem dangerously easy to copy and distribute and thus also create confusion about their intended meanings, audiences, and purposes. From this one hearing we can see how the reception of many new digital genres plays out in the public sphere of legislative discourse. Web pages, videogames, and Weblogs are mentioned specifically in the transcript. The main architecture of the witnesses’ presentation to the committee is organised according to the rhetorical conventions of a PowerPoint presentation. Moreover, the arguments made by expert witnesses about the relationship of orality to literacy or of public to private communications in new media are highly relevant to how we might understand other important digital genres, such as electronic mail or text messaging. The hearing also invites consideration of privacy, intellectual property, and digital “rights,” because moral values about freedom and ownership are alluded to by many of the elected representatives present, albeit often through the looking glass of user behaviours imagined as radically Other. For example, terrorists are described as “modders” and “hackers” who subvert those who properly create, own, legitimate, and regulate intellectual property. To explain embarrassing leaks of infinitely replicable digital files, witness Ron Roughead says, “We’re not even sure that they don’t even hack into the kinds of spaces that hold photographs in order to get pictures that our forces have taken.” Another witness, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and International Affairs, Peter Rodman claims that “any video game that comes out, as soon as the code is released, they will modify it and change the game for their needs.” Thus, the implication of these witnesses’ testimony is that the release of code into the public domain can contribute to political subversion, much as covert intrusion into computer networks by stealthy hackers can. However, the witnesses from the Pentagon and from the government contractor SAIC often present a contradictory image of the supposed terrorists in the hearing transcripts. Sometimes the enemy is depicted as an organisation of technological masterminds, capable of manipulating the computer code of unwitting Americans and snatching their rightful intellectual property away; sometimes those from the opposing forces are depicted as pre-modern and even sub-literate political innocents. In contrast, the congressional representatives seem to focus on similarities when comparing the work of “terrorists” to the everyday digital practices of their constituents and even of themselves. According to the transcripts of this open hearing, legislators on both sides of the aisle express anxiety about domestic patterns of Internet reception. Even the legislators’ own Web pages are potentially disruptive electronic artefacts, particularly when the demands of digital labour interfere with their duties as lawmakers. Although the subject of the hearing is ostensibly terrorist Websites, Representative Anna Eshoo (D-California) bemoans the difficulty of maintaining her own official congressional site. As she observes, “So we are – as members, I think we’re very sensitive about what’s on our Website, and if I retained what I had on my Website three years ago, I’d be out of business. So we know that they have to be renewed. They go up, they go down, they’re rebuilt, they’re – you know, the message is targeted to the future.” In their questions, lawmakers identify Weblogs (blogs) as a particular area of concern as a destabilising alternative to authoritative print sources of information from established institutions. Representative Alcee Hastings (D-Florida) compares the polluting power of insurgent bloggers to that of influential online muckrakers from the American political Right. Hastings complains of “garbage on our regular mainstream news that comes from blog sites.” Representative Heather Wilson (R-New Mexico) attempts to project a media-savvy persona by bringing up the “phenomenon of blogging” in conjunction with her questions about jihadist Websites in which she notes how Internet traffic can be magnified by cooperative ventures among groups of ideologically like-minded content-providers: “These Websites, and particularly the most active ones, are they cross-linked? And do they have kind of hot links to your other favorite sites on them?” At one point Representative Wilson asks witness Rodman if he knows “of your 100 hottest sites where the Webmasters are educated? What nationality they are? Where they’re getting their money from?” In her questions, Wilson implicitly acknowledges that Web work reflects influences from pedagogical communities, economic networks of the exchange of capital, and even potentially the specific ideologies of nation-states. It is perhaps indicative of the government contractors’ anachronistic worldview that the witness is unable to answer Wilson’s question. He explains that his agency focuses on the physical location of the server or ISP rather than the social backgrounds of the individuals who might be manufacturing objectionable digital texts. The premise behind the contractors’ working method – surveilling the technical apparatus not the social network – may be related to other beliefs expressed by government witnesses, such as the supposition that jihadist Websites are collectively produced and spontaneously emerge from the indigenous, traditional, tribal culture, instead of assuming that Iraqi insurgents have analogous beliefs, practices, and technological awareness to those in first-world countries. The residual subtexts in the witnesses’ conjectures about competing cultures of orality and literacy may tell us something about a reactionary rhetoric around videogames and digital culture more generally. According to the experts before Congress, the Middle Eastern audience for these videogames and Websites is limited by its membership in a pre-literate society that is only capable of abortive cultural production without access to knowledge that is archived in printed codices. Sometimes the witnesses before Congress seem to be unintentionally channelling the ideas of the late literacy theorist Walter Ong about the “secondary orality” associated with talky electronic media such as television, radio, audio recording, or telephone communication. Later followers of Ong extend this concept of secondary orality to hypertext, hypermedia, e-mail, and blogs, because they similarly share features of both speech and written discourse. Although Ong’s disciples celebrate this vibrant reconnection to a mythic, communal past of what Kathleen Welch calls “electric rhetoric,” the defence industry consultants express their profound state of alarm at the potentially dangerous and subversive character of this hybrid form of communication. The concept of an “oral tradition” is first introduced by the expert witnesses in the context of modern marketing and product distribution: “The Internet is used for a variety of things – command and control,” one witness states. “One of the things that’s missed frequently is how and – how effective the adversary is at using the Internet to distribute product. They’re using that distribution network as a modern form of oral tradition, if you will.” Thus, although the Internet can be deployed for hierarchical “command and control” activities, it also functions as a highly efficient peer-to-peer distributed network for disseminating the commodity of information. Throughout the hearings, the witnesses imply that unregulated lateral communication among social actors who are not authorised to speak for nation-states or to produce legitimated expert discourses is potentially destabilising to political order. Witness Eric Michael describes the “oral tradition” and the conventions of communal life in the Middle East to emphasise the primacy of speech in the collective discursive practices of this alien population: “I’d like to point your attention to the media types and the fact that the oral tradition is listed as most important. The other media listed support that. And the significance of the oral tradition is more than just – it’s the medium by which, once it comes off the Internet, it is transferred.” The experts go on to claim that this “oral tradition” can contaminate other media because it functions as “rumor,” the traditional bane of the stately discourse of military leaders since the classical era. The oral tradition now also has an aspect of rumor. A[n] event takes place. There is an explosion in a city. Rumor is that the United States Air Force dropped a bomb and is doing indiscriminate killing. This ends up being discussed on the street. It ends up showing up in a Friday sermon in a mosque or in another religious institution. It then gets recycled into written materials. Media picks up the story and broadcasts it, at which point it’s now a fact. In this particular case that we were telling you about, it showed up on a network television, and their propaganda continues to go back to this false initial report on network television and continue to reiterate that it’s a fact, even though the United States government has proven that it was not a fact, even though the network has since recanted the broadcast. In this example, many-to-many discussion on the “street” is formalised into a one-to many “sermon” and then further stylised using technology in a one-to-many broadcast on “network television” in which “propaganda” that is “false” can no longer be disputed. This “oral tradition” is like digital media, because elements of discourse can be infinitely copied or “recycled,” and it is designed to “reiterate” content. In this hearing, the word “rhetoric” is associated with destructive counter-cultural forces by the witnesses who reiterate cultural truisms dating back to Plato and the Gorgias. For example, witness Eric Michael initially presents “rhetoric” as the use of culturally specific and hence untranslatable figures of speech, but he quickly moves to an outright castigation of the entire communicative mode. “Rhetoric,” he tells us, is designed to “distort the truth,” because it is a “selective” assembly or a “distortion.” Rhetoric is also at odds with reason, because it appeals to “emotion” and a romanticised Weltanschauung oriented around discourses of “struggle.” The film by SonicJihad is chosen as the final clip by the witnesses before Congress, because it allegedly combines many different types of emotional appeal, and thus it conveniently ties together all of the themes that the witnesses present to the legislators about unreliable oral or rhetorical sources in the Middle East: And there you see how all these products are linked together. And you can see where the games are set to psychologically condition you to go kill coalition forces. You can see how they use humor. You can see how the entire campaign is carefully crafted to first evoke an emotion and then to evoke a response and to direct that response in the direction that they want. Jihadist digital products, especially videogames, are effective means of manipulation, the witnesses argue, because they employ multiple channels of persuasion and carefully sequenced and integrated subliminal messages. To understand the larger cultural conversation of the hearing, it is important to keep in mind that the related argument that “games” can “psychologically condition” players to be predisposed to violence is one that was important in other congressional hearings of the period, as well one that played a role in bills and resolutions that were passed by the full body of the legislative branch. In the witness’s testimony an appeal to anti-game sympathies at home is combined with a critique of a closed anti-democratic system abroad in which the circuits of rhetorical production and their composite metonymic chains are described as those that command specific, unvarying, robotic responses. This sharp criticism of the artful use of a presentation style that is “crafted” is ironic, given that the witnesses’ “compilation” of jihadist digital material is staged in the form of a carefully structured PowerPoint presentation, one that is paced to a well-rehearsed rhythm of “slide, please” or “next slide” in the transcript. The transcript also reveals that the members of the House Intelligence Committee were not the original audience for the witnesses’ PowerPoint presentation. Rather, when it was first created by SAIC, this “expert” presentation was designed for training purposes for the troops on the ground, who would be facing the challenges of deployment in hostile terrain. According to the witnesses, having the slide show showcased before Congress was something of an afterthought. Nonetheless, Congressman Tiahrt (R-KN) is so impressed with the rhetorical mastery of the consultants that he tries to appropriate it. As Tiarht puts it, “I’d like to get a copy of that slide sometime.” From the hearing we also learn that the terrorists’ Websites are threatening precisely because they manifest a polymorphously perverse geometry of expansion. For example, one SAIC witness before the House Committee compares the replication and elaboration of digital material online to a “spiderweb.” Like Representative Eshoo’s site, he also notes that the terrorists’ sites go “up” and “down,” but the consultant is left to speculate about whether or not there is any “central coordination” to serve as an organising principle and to explain the persistence and consistency of messages despite the apparent lack of a single authorial ethos to offer a stable, humanised, point of reference. In the hearing, the oft-cited solution to the problem created by the hybridity and iterability of digital rhetoric appears to be “public diplomacy.” Both consultants and lawmakers seem to agree that the damaging messages of the insurgents must be countered with U.S. sanctioned information, and thus the phrase “public diplomacy” appears in the hearing seven times. However, witness Roughhead complains that the protean “oral tradition” and what Henry Jenkins has called the “transmedia” character of digital culture, which often crosses several platforms of traditional print, projection, or broadcast media, stymies their best rhetorical efforts: “I think the point that we’ve tried to make in the briefing is that wherever there’s Internet availability at all, they can then download these – these programs and put them onto compact discs, DVDs, or post them into posters, and provide them to a greater range of people in the oral tradition that they’ve grown up in. And so they only need a few Internet sites in order to distribute and disseminate the message.” Of course, to maintain their share of the government market, the Science Applications International Corporation also employs practices of publicity and promotion through the Internet and digital media. They use HTML Web pages for these purposes, as well as PowerPoint presentations and online video. The rhetoric of the Website of SAIC emphasises their motto “From Science to Solutions.” After a short Flash film about how SAIC scientists and engineers solve “complex technical problems,” the visitor is taken to the home page of the firm that re-emphasises their central message about expertise. The maps, uniforms, and specialised tools and equipment that are depicted in these opening Web pages reinforce an ethos of professional specialisation that is able to respond to multiple threats posed by the “global war on terror.” By 26 June 2006, the incident finally was being described as a “Pentagon Snafu” by ABC News. From the opening of reporter Jake Tapper’s investigative Webcast, established government institutions were put on the spot: “So, how much does the Pentagon know about videogames? Well, when it came to a recent appearance before Congress, apparently not enough.” Indeed, the very language about “experts” that was highlighted in the earlier coverage is repeated by Tapper in mockery, with the significant exception of “independent expert” Ian Bogost of the Georgia Institute of Technology. If the Pentagon and SAIC deride the legitimacy of rhetoric as a cultural practice, Bogost occupies himself with its defence. In his recent book Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, Bogost draws upon the authority of the “2,500 year history of rhetoric” to argue that videogames represent a significant development in that cultural narrative. Given that Bogost and his Watercooler Games Weblog co-editor Gonzalo Frasca were actively involved in the detective work that exposed the depth of professional incompetence involved in the government’s line-up of witnesses, it is appropriate that Bogost is given the final words in the ABC exposé. As Bogost says, “We should be deeply bothered by this. We should really be questioning the kind of advice that Congress is getting.” Bogost may be right that Congress received terrible counsel on that day, but a close reading of the transcript reveals that elected officials were much more than passive listeners: in fact they were lively participants in a cultural conversation about regulating digital media. After looking at the actual language of these exchanges, it seems that the persuasiveness of the misinformation from the Pentagon and SAIC had as much to do with lawmakers’ preconceived anxieties about practices of computer-mediated communication close to home as it did with the contradictory stereotypes that were presented to them about Internet practices abroad. In other words, lawmakers found themselves looking into a fun house mirror that distorted what should have been familiar artefacts of American popular culture because it was precisely what they wanted to see. References ABC News. “Terrorist Videogame?” Nightline Online. 21 June 2006. 22 June 2006 http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2105341>. Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: Videogames and Procedural Rhetoric. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. Game Politics. “Was Congress Misled by ‘Terrorist’ Game Video? We Talk to Gamer Who Created the Footage.” 11 May 2006. http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/285129.html#cutid1>. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006. julieb. “David Morgan Is a Horrible Writer and Should Be Fired.” Online posting. 5 May 2006. Dvorak Uncensored Cage Match Forums. http://cagematch.dvorak.org/index.php/topic,130.0.html>. Mahmood. “Terrorists Don’t Recruit with Battlefield 2.” GGL Global Gaming. 16 May 2006 http://www.ggl.com/news.php?NewsId=3090>. Morgan, David. “Islamists Using U.S. Video Games in Youth Appeal.” Reuters online news service. 4 May 2006 http://today.reuters.com/news/ArticleNews.aspx?type=topNews &storyID=2006-05-04T215543Z_01_N04305973_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY- VIDEOGAMES.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc= NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2>. Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London/New York: Methuen, 1982. Parker, Trey. Online posting. 7 May 2006. 9 May 2006 http://www.treyparker.com>. Plato. “Gorgias.” Plato: Collected Dialogues. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1961. Shrader, Katherine. “Pentagon Surfing Thousands of Jihad Sites.” Associated Press 4 May 2006. SonicJihad. “SonicJihad: A Day in the Life of a Resistance Fighter.” Online posting. 26 Dec. 2005. Planet Battlefield Forums. 9 May 2006 http://www.forumplanet.com/planetbattlefield/topic.asp?fid=13670&tid=1806909&p=1>. Tapper, Jake, and Audery Taylor. “Terrorist Video Game or Pentagon Snafu?” ABC News Nightline 21 June 2006. 30 June 2006 http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Technology/story?id=2105128&page=1>. U.S. Congressional Record. Panel I of the Hearing of the House Select Intelligence Committee, Subject: “Terrorist Use of the Internet for Communications.” Federal News Service. 4 May 2006. Welch, Kathleen E. Electric Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric, Oralism, and the New Literacy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Losh, Elizabeth. "Artificial Intelligence: Media Illiteracy and the SonicJihad Debacle in Congress." M/C Journal 10.5 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/08-losh.php>. APA Style Losh, E. (Oct. 2007) "Artificial Intelligence: Media Illiteracy and the SonicJihad Debacle in Congress," M/C Journal, 10(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/08-losh.php>.

Photo by 187929822 © Victor Moussa | Dreamstime.com INTRODUCTION The nonconsensual taking of a human organ to use in transplantation medicine violates ethical principles, including autonomy, informed consent, and human rights, as well as criminal laws. When such an organ harvesting is not just nonconsensual, but performed in a way that causes a death or uses the pretense of brain death without meeting the criteria, it also violates the dead donor[1] rule.[2] The dead donor rule is both ethical and legal. It prevents organ retrieval that would predictably cause the death of the organ donor.[3] Retrieval of a vital organ is permissible only after a declaration of death.[4] Forced organ harvesting may breach the dead donor rule as it stands. A reimagined, broader dead donor rule could consider a larger timeframe in the forced organ harvesting context. In doing so, the broad dead donor rule could cover intent, premeditation, aiding and abetting, and due diligence failures. A broad definition of forced organ harvesting is ‘‘the removal of one or more organs from a person by means of coercion, abduction, deception, fraud, or abuse of power. . .’’[5] A more targeted definition is “[t]he killing of a person so that their organs may be removed without their free, voluntary and informed consent and transplanted into another person.”[6] In the global organ harvesting context, forced organ harvesting violates the World Health Organization (WHO) Guiding Principle 3, which says “live organ donors should be acting willingly, free of any undue influence or coercion.”[7] Furthermore, WHO states live donors should be “genetically, legally, or emotionally” attached to the recipient. Guiding Principle 1 applies to deceased donors, covers consent, and permits donation absent any known objections by the deceased.[8] Principle 7 says, “Physicians and other health professionals should not engage in transplantation procedures, and health insurers and other payers should not cover such procedures if the cells, tissues or organs concerned have been obtained through exploitation or coercion of, or payment to, the donor or the next of kin of a deceased donor.”[9] There are underground markets in which organ hunters prey on the local poor in countries with low wages and widespread poverty[10] and human trafficking that targets migrants for the purpose of organ harvesting.[11] This paper explores forced harvesting under the backdrop of the dead donor rule, arguing that a human rights violation so egregious requires holding even distant participants in the chain of events accountable. By interfering with resources necessary to carry out bad acts, legislation and corporate and institutional policies can act as powerful deterrents. A broader dead donor rule would highlight the premeditation and intent evidenced well before the act of organ retrieval. I. Background and Evidence In China, there is evidence that people incarcerated for religious beliefs and practices (Falun Gong) and ethnic minorities (Uyghurs) have been subjects of forced organ harvesting. A tribunal (the China Tribunal) found beyond a reasonable doubt that China engaged in forced organ harvesting.[12] Additionally, eight UN Special Rapporteurs found a system of subjecting political prisoners and prisoners of conscience to blood tests and radiological examinations to determine the fitness of their organs.[13] As early as 2006, investigators found evidence of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners. [14] Over a million Uyghurs are in custody there, and there is ample evidence of biometric data collection.[15] An Uyghur tribunal found evidence of genocide.[16] “China is the only country in the world to have an industrial-scale organ trafficking practice that harvests organs from executed prisoners of conscience.”[17] Witnesses testified to the removal of organs from live people without ample anesthesia,[18] summonses to the execution grounds for organ removal,[19] methods of causing death for the purpose of organ procurement,[20] removing eyes from prisoners who were alive,[21] and forcing live prisoners into operating rooms.[22] The current extent of executions to harvest organs from prisoners of conscience in China is unknown. The Chinese press has suggested surgeons in China will perform 50,000 organ transplants this year.[23] Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOR) concluded, “[f]orced organ harvesting from living people has occurred and continues to occur unabated in China.”[24] China continues to advertise in multiple languages to attract transplant tourists.[25] Wait times for organs seem to remain in the weeks.[26] In the United States, it is common to wait three to five years.[27] II. The Nascent System of Voluntary Organ Donation in China In China, throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the supply of organs for transplant was low, and there was not a national system to register as a donor. A 1984 act permitted death row prisoners to donate organs.[28] In 2005, a Vice Minister acknowledged that 95 percent of all organ transplants used organs from death row prisoners.[29] In 2007 the planning of a voluntary system to harvest organs after cardiac death emerged. According to a Chinese publication, China adopted brain death criteria in 2013.[30] There had been public opposition due partly to cultural unfamiliarity with it.[31] Cultural values about death made it more difficult to adopt a universal brain death definition. Both Buddhist and Confucian beliefs contradicted brain death.[32] Circulatory death was traditionally culturally accepted.[33] The Ministry of Health announced that by 2015 organ harvesting would be purely voluntary and that prisoners would not be the source of organs.[34] There are cultural barriers to voluntary donation partly due to a Confucian belief that bodies return to ancestors intact and other cultural and religious beliefs about respect for the dead.[35] An emphasis on family and community over the individual posed another barrier to the Western approach to organ donation. Public awareness and insufficient healthcare professional knowledge about the process of organ donation are also barriers to voluntary donation.[36] Although the Chinese government claims its current system is voluntary and no longer exploits prisoners,[37] vast evidence contradicts the credibility of the voluntary transplant program in China.[38] III. Dead Donor Rule: A Source of Bioethical Debate It seems tedious to apply this ethical foundation to something as glaring as forced organ harvesting. But the dead donor rule is a widely held recognition that it is not right to kill one person to save another.[39] It acts as a prohibition on killing for the sake of organ retrieval and imposes a technical requirement which influences laws on how death is declared. The dead donor rule prevents organ harvesting that causes death by prohibiting harvesting any organ which the donor agreed to donate only after death prior to an official declaration of death. There is an ongoing ethical debate about the dead donor rule. Many in bioethics and transplant medicine would justify removing organs in specific situations prior to a declaration of death, abandoning the rule.[40] Some use utilitarian arguments to justify causing the death of someone who is unconscious and on life support irreversibly. Journal articles suggest that the discussion has moved to one of timing and organ retrieval.[41] Robert Truog and Franklin Miller are critics of the dead donor rule, arguing that, in practice, it is not strictly obeyed: removing organs while a brain-dead donor is still on mechanical ventilation and has a beating heart and removing organs right after life support is removed and cardio-pulmonary death is declared both might not truly meet the requirement of the dead donor rule, making following the rule “a dubious norm.”[42] Miller and Truog question the concept of brain death, citing evidence of whole body integrated functions that continue indefinitely. They challenge cardio-pulmonary death, asserting that the definition includes as dead, those who could be resuscitated. Their hearts could resume beating with medical intervention. Stopping life support causes death only in those whose lives are sustained by it. Some stipulate that the organ retrieval must not itself cause the death. Some would rejigger the cause of death: Daniel Callahan suggests that the underlying condition causes the death despite removal of life support.[43] But logically, a person could continue life support and be alive, so clearly, removing life support does cause death. Something else would have caused brain death or the circumstance that landed the person on mechanical ventilation. To be more accurate, one could say X caused the irreversible coma and removing life support caused the death itself. Miller and Truog take the position that because withdrawal of life support does cause death, the dead donor rule should be defunct as insincere. To them, retrieving vital organs from a technically alive donor should be permissible under limited conditions. They look to the autonomous choices of the donor or the surrogate (an autonomy-based argument). They appreciate the demand for organs and the ability to save lives, drawing attention to those in need of organs. Live donor organ retrieval arguably presents a slippery slope, especially if a potential donor is close to death, but not so close to label it imminent. They say physicians would not be obligated to follow the orders of a healthy person wishing to have vital organs removed, perhaps to save a close friend or relative. Similarly, Radcliffe-Richards, et al. argue that there is no reason to worry about the slippery slope of people choosing death so they can sell their vital organs, whether for money for their decedents or their creditors.[44] The movement toward permissibility and increased acceptance of medical aid in dying also influence the organ donation arena. The slippery slope toward the end of life has potential to become a realistic concern. Older adults or other people close to death may want to donate a vital organ, like their heart, to a young relative in need. That could greatly influence the timing of a decision to end one’s life. IV. Relating the Dead Donor Rule to Forced Organ Harvesting There is well documented evidence that in China organs have been removed before a declaration of death.[45] But one thing the dead donor rule does not explicitly cover is intent and the period prior to the events leading to death. It tends to apply to a near-death situation and is primarily studied in its relationship to organ donation. It is about death more than it is about life. Robertson and Lavee investigated data on transplantation of vital organs in China and they document cases where the declaration of death was a pretense, insincere, and incorrect. Their aim was to investigate whether the prisoners were in fact dead prior to organ harvesting.[46] (The China Tribunal found that organs have been removed from live prisoners and that organ harvesting has been the cause of death.) They are further concerned with the possible role of doctors as executioners, or at least as complicit in the execution as the organ harvesting so closely follows it. V. A Broader Dead Donor Rule A presumed ethical precursor to the dead donor rule may also be an important ethical extension of the rule: the dead donor rule must also prohibit killing a person who is not otherwise near death for the purpose of post-death organ harvesting. In China, extra-judicial killings of prisoners of conscience are premeditated ― there is ample evidence of blood tests and radiology to ensure organ compatibility and health.[47] To have effective ethical force, the dead donor rule should have an obvious application in preventing intentional killing for an organ retrieval, not just killing by way of organ retrieval. When we picture the dead donor rule, bioethicists tend to envision a person on life support who will either be taken off it and stop breathing or who will be declared brain dead. But the dead donor rule should apply to healthy people subject to persecution at the point when the perpetrator lays the ground for the later killing. At that point, many organizations and people may be complicit or unknowingly contributing to forced organ harvesting. In this iteration of the dead donor rule, complicity in its violations would be widespread. The dead donor rule could address the initial action of ordering a blood or radiology test or collecting any biometric data. Trained physicians and healthcare technicians perform such tests. Under my proposed stretch of the dead donor rule, they too would be complicit in the very early steps that eventually lead to killing a person for their organs. I argue these steps are part of forced organ harvesting and violate the dead donor rule. The donor is very much alive in the months and years preceding the killing. A conspiracy of indifference toward life, religious persecution, ethnic discrimination, a desire to expand organ transplant tourism, and intent to kill can violate this broader dead donor rule. The dead donor rule does not usually apply to the timing of the thought of organ removal, nor the beginning of the chain of events that leads to it. It is usually saved for the very detailed determination of what may count as death so that physicians may remove vital and other organs, with the consent of the donor.[48] But I argue that declaring death at the time of retrieval may not be enough. Contributing to the death, even by actions months or years in advance, matter too. Perhaps being on the deathbed awaiting a certain death must be distinguished from going about one’s business only to wind up a victim of forced organ harvesting. Both may well be declared dead before organ retrieval, but the likeness stops there. The person targeted for future organ retrieval to satisfy a growing transplant tourism business or local demand is unlike the altruistic person on his deathbed. While it may seem like the dead donor rule is merely a bioethics rule, it does inform the law. And it has ethical heft. It may be worth expanding it to the arena of human trafficking for the sake of organ removal and forced organ harvesting.[49] The dead donor rule is really meant to ensure that death was properly declared to protect life, something that must be protected from an earlier point. VI. Complicity: Meaning and Application Human rights due diligence refers to actions that people or institutions must take to ensure they are not contributing to a human rights violation. To advise on how to mitigate risk of involvement or contribution to human rights violations, Global Rights Compliance published an advisory that describes human rights due diligence as “[t]he proactive conduct of a medical institution and transplant-associated entity to identify and manage human rights risks and adverse human rights impacts along their entire value and supply chain.”[50] Many people and organizations enable forced organ harvesting. They may be unwittingly complicit or knowingly aiding and abetting criminal activity. For example, some suppliers of medical equipment and immunosuppressants may inadvertently contribute to human rights abuses in transplantation in China, or in other countries where organs were harvested without consent, under duress, or during human trafficking. According to Global Rights Compliance, “China in the first half of 2021 alone imported ‘a total value of about 24 billion U.S. dollars’ worth of medical technology equipment’, with the United States and Germany among the top import sources.”[51] The companies supplying the equipment may be able to slow or stop the harm by failing to supply necessary equipment and drugs. Internal due diligence policies would help companies analyze their suppliers and purchasers. Corporations, educational institutions, and other entities in the transplantation supply chain, medical education, insurance, or publishing must engage in human rights due diligence. The Global Rights Compliance advisory suggests that journals should not include any ill-gotten research. Laws should regulate corporations and target the supply chain also. All actors in the chain of supply, etc. are leading to the death of the nonconsenting victim. They are doing so while the victim is alive. The Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023, pending in the United States, would hold any person or entity that “funds, sponsors, or otherwise facilitates forced organ harvesting or trafficking in persons for purposes of the removal of organs” responsible. The pending legislation states that: It shall be the policy of the United States—(1) to combat international trafficking in persons for purposes of the removal of organs;(2) to promote the establishment of voluntary organ donation systems with effective enforcement mechanisms in bilateral diplomatic meetings and in international health forums;(3) to promote the dignity and security of human life in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted on December 10, 1948; and(4) to hold accountable persons implicated, including members of the Chinese Communist Party, in forced organ harvesting and trafficking in persons for purposes of the removal of organs.[52] The Act calls on the President to provide Congress a list of such people or entities and to sanction them by property blocking, and, in the case of non-US citizens, passport and visa denial or revocation. The Act includes a reporting requirement under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 that includes an assessment of entities engaged in or supporting forced organ harvesting.[53] The law may have a meaningful impact on forced organ harvesting. Other countries have taken or are in the process of legal approaches as well.[54] Countries should consider legislation to prevent transplant tourism, criminalize complicity, and require human rights due diligence. An expanded dead donor rule supports legal and policy remedies to prevent enabling people to carry out forced organ harvesting. VII. Do Bioethicists Mention Human Rights Abuses and Forced Organ Harvesting Enough? As a field, bioethics literature often focuses on the need for more organs, the pain and suffering of those on organ transplant waitlists, and fairness in allocating organs or deciding who belongs on which waitlist and why. However, some bioethicists have drawn attention to forced organ harvesting in China. Notably, several articles noted the ethical breaches and called on academic journals to turn away articles on transplantation from China as they are based on the unethical practice of executing prisoners of conscience for their organs.[55] The call for such a boycott was originally published in a Lancet article in 2011.[56] There is some acknowledgement that China cares about how other countries perceive it,[57] which could lead to either improvements in human rights or cover-ups of violations. Ill-gotten research has long been in the bioethics purview with significant commentary on abuses in Tuskegee and the Holocaust.[58] Human research subjects are protected by the Declaration of Helsinki, which requires acting in the best interests of research subjects and informed consent among other protections.[59] The Declaration of Helsinki is directed at physicians and requires subjects enroll in medical research voluntarily. The Declaration does not explicitly cover other healthcare professionals, but its requirements are well accepted broadly in health care. CONCLUSION The dead donor rule in its current form really does not cover the life of a non-injured healthy person at an earlier point. If it could be reimagined, we could highlight the link between persecution for being a member of a group like Falun Gong practitioners or Uyghurs as the start of the process that leads to a nonconsensual organ retrieval whether after a proper declaration of death or not. It is obviously not ethically enough to ensure an execution is complete before the organs are harvested. It is abuse of the dead donor rule to have such a circumstance meet its ethical requirement. And obviously killing people for their beliefs or ethnicity (and extra-judicial killings generally) is not an ethically acceptable action for many reasons. The deaths are intentionally orchestrated, but people and companies who may have no knowledge of their role or the role of physicians they train or equipment they sell are enablers. An expanded dead donor rule helps highlight a longer timeframe and expanded scope of complicity. The organ perfusion equipment or pharmaceuticals manufactured in the United States today must not end up enabling forced organ harvesting. With an expanded ethical rule, the “donor is not dead” may become “the donor would not be dead if not for. . .” the host of illegal acts, arrests without cause, forced detention in labor camps, extra-judicial killings, lacking human rights due diligence, and inattention to this important topic. The expanded dead donor rule may also appeal to the bioethics community and justify more attention to laws and policies like the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023. - [1] The word “donor” in this paper describes any person from whom organs are retrieved regardless of compensation, force, or exploitation in keeping with the bioethics literature and the phrase “dead donor rule.” [2] Robertson, M.P., Lavee J. (2022). Execution by organ procurement: Breaching the dead donor rule in China. Am J Transplant, Vol.22,1804– 1812. doi:10.1111/ajt.16969. [3] Robertson, J. A. (1999). Delimiting the donor: the dead donor rule. Hastings Center Report, 29(6), 6-14. [4] Retrieval of non-vital organs which the donor consents to donate post-death (whether opt-in, opt-out, presumed, or explicit according to local law) also trigger the dead donor rule. [5] The Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023, H.R. 1154, 118th Congress (2023), https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/1154. [6] Do No Harm: Mitigating Human Rights Risks when Interacting with International Medical Institutions & Professionals in Transplantation Medicine, Global Rights Compliance, Legal Advisory Report, April 2022, https://globalrightscompliance.com/project/do-no-harm-policy-guidance-and-legal-advisory-report/. [7] WHO Guiding Principles on Human Cell, Tissue and Organ Transplantation, as endorsed by the sixty-third World Health Assembly in May 2010, in Resolution WHA63.22 https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/341814/WHO-HTP-EHT-CPR-2010.01-eng.pdf?sequence=1. [8] WHO Guiding Principles on Human Cell, Tissue and Organ Transplantation (2010). [9] WHO Guiding Principles on Human Cell, Tissue and Organ Transplantation (2010). [10] Promchertchoo, Pichayada (Oct. 19, 2019). Kidney for sale: Inside Philippines’ illegal organ trade. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/kidney-for-sale-philippines-illegal-organ-trade-857551; Widodo, W. and Wiwik Utami (2021), The Causes of Indonesian People Selling Covered Kidneys from a Criminology and Economic Perspective: Analysis Based on Rational Choice Theory. European Journal of Political Science Studies, Vol 5, Issue 1. [11] Van Reisen, M., & Mawere, M. (Eds.). (2017). Human trafficking and trauma in the digital era: The ongoing tragedy of the trade in refugees from Eritrea. African Books Collective. [12] The Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China (China Tribunal) (2020). https://chinatribunal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ChinaTribunal_JUDGMENT_1stMarch_2020.pdf [13] UN Office of the High Commissioner, Press Release, China: UN human Rights experts alarmed by ‘organ harvesting’ allegations (UN OTHCHR, 14 June 2021), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2021/06/china-un-human-rights-experts-alarmed-organ-harvesting-allegations. [14] David Matas and David Kilgour, Bloody Harvest. The killing of Falun Gong for their organs (Seraphim Editions 2009). [15] How China is crushing the Uyghurs, The Economist, video documentary, July 9, 2019, https://youtu.be/GRBcP5BrffI. [16] Uyghur Tribunal, Judgment (9 December 2021) (Uyghur Tribunal Judgment) para 1, https://uyghurtribunal.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Uyghur-Tribunal-Judgment-9th-Dec-21.pdf. [17] Ali Iqbal and Aliya Khan, Killing prisoners for transplants: Forced organ harvesting in China, The Conversation Published: July 28, 2022. https://theconversation.com/killing-prisoners-for-transplants-forced-organ-harvesting-in-china-161999 [18] Testimony demonstrated surgeries to remove vital organs from live people, killing them, sometimes without ample anesthesia to prevent wakefulness and pain. China Tribunal (2020), p. 416-417. https://chinatribunal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ChinaTribunal_JUDGMENT_1stMarch_2020.pdf; Robertson MP, Lavee J. (2022), Execution by organ procurement: Breaching the dead donor rule in China. Am J Transplant, Vol.22,1804– 1812. doi:10.1111/ajt.16969. [19] Doctors reported being summoned to execution grounds and told to harvest organs amid uncertainty that the prisoner was in fact dead. China Tribunal (2020), p. 52-53. [20]In testimony to the China Tribunal, Dr. Huige Li noted four methods of organ harvesting from live prisoners: incomplete execution by shooting, after lethal injection prior to death, execution by removal of the heart, and after a determination of brain death prior to an intubation (pretense of brain death). China Tribunal (2020), pp. 54-55. https://chinatribunal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ChinaTribunal_JUDGMENT_1stMarch_2020.pdf [21] A former military medical student described removing organs from a live prisoner in the late 1990s. He further described his inability to remove the eyes of a live man and his witnessing another doctor forcefully remove the man’s eyes. China Tribunal (2020), p. 330. [22] In 2006, a nurse testified that her ex-husband, a surgeon, removed the eyes of 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners in one hospital between 2001 and 2003. She described the Falun Gong labor-camp prisoners as being forced into operating rooms where they were given a shot to stop their hearts. Other doctors removed other organs. DAFOH Special Report, 2022. https://epochpage.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2022/12/DAFOH-Special-Report-2022.pdf [23] Robertson MP, Lavee J. (2022), Execution by organ procurement: Breaching the dead donor rule in China. Am J Transplant, Vol.22,1804– 1812. doi:10.1111/ajt.16969. [24] DAFOH Special Report, 2022. https://epochpage.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2022/12/DAFOH-Special-Report-2022.pdf; DAFOH’s physicians were nominated for a Nobel Prize for their work to stop forced organ harvesting. Šućur, A., & Gajović, S. (2016). Nobel Peace Prize nomination for Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) - a recognition of upholding ethical practices in medicine. Croatian medical journal, 57(3), 219–222. https://doi.org/10.3325/cmj.2016.57.219 [25] Robertson and Lavee (2022). [26] Stop Organ Harvesting in China, website (organization of the Falun Dafa). https://www.stoporganharvesting.org/short-waiting-times/ [27] National Kidney Foundation, The Kidney Transplant Waitlist – What You Need to Know, https://www.kidney.org/atoz/content/transplant-waitlist [28] Wu, Y., Elliott, R., Li, L., Yang, T., Bai, Y., & Ma, W. (2018). Cadaveric organ donation in China: a crossroads for ethics and sociocultural factors. Medicine, 97(10). [29] Wu, Elliott, et al., (2018). [30] Su, Y. Y., Chen, W. B., Liu, G., Fan, L. L., Zhang, Y., Ye, H., ... & Jiang, M. D. (2018). An investigation and suggestions for the improvement of brain death determination in China. Chinese Medical Journal, 131(24), 2910-2914. [31] Huang, J., Millis, J. M., Mao, Y., Millis, M. A., Sang, X., & Zhong, S. (2012). A pilot programme of organ donation after cardiac death in China. The Lancet, 379(9818), 862-865. [32] Yang, Q., & Miller, G. (2015). East–west differences in perception of brain death: Review of history, current understandings, and directions for future research. Journal of bioethical inquiry, 12, 211-225. [33] Huang, J., Millis, J. M., Mao, Y., Millis, M. A., Sang, X., & Zhong, S. (2015). Voluntary organ donation system adapted to Chinese cultural values and social reality. Liver Transplantation, 21(4), 419-422. [34] Huang, Millis, et al. (2015). [35] Wu, X., & Fang, Q. (2013). Financial compensation for deceased organ donation in China. Journal of Medical Ethics, 39(6), 378-379. [36] An, N., Shi, Y., Jiang, Y., & Zhao, L. (2016). Organ donation in China: the major progress and the continuing problem. Journal of biomedical research, 30(2), 81. [37] Shi, B. Y., Liu, Z. J., & Yu, T. (2020). Development of the organ donation and transplantation system in China. Chinese medical journal, 133(07), 760-765. [38] Robertson, M. P., Hinde, R. L., & Lavee, J. (2019). Analysis of official deceased organ donation data casts doubt on the credibility of China’s organ transplant reform. BMC Medical Ethics, 20(1), 1-20. [39] Miller, F.G. and Sade, R. M. (2014). Consequences of the Dead Donor Rule. The Annals of thoracic surgery, 97(4), 1131–1132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.athoracsur.2014.01.003 [40] For example, Miller and Sade (2014) and Miller and Truog (2008). [41] Omelianchuk, A. How (not) to think of the ‘dead-donor’ rule. Theor Med Bioeth 39, 1–25 (2018). https://doi-org.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/10.1007/s11017-018-9432-5 [42] Miller, F.G. and Truog, R.D. (2008), Rethinking the Ethics of Vital Organ Donations. Hastings Center Report. 38: 38-46. [43] Miller and Truog, (2008), p. 40, citing Callahan, D., The Troubled Dream of Life, p. 77. [44] Radcliffe-Richards, J., Daar, A.S., Guttman, R.D., Hoffenberg, R., Kennedy, I., Lock, M., Sells, R.A., Tilney, N. (1998), The Case for Allowing Kidney Sales, The Lancet, Vol 351, p. 279. (Authored by members of the International Forum for Transplant Ethics.) [45] Robertson and Lavee, (2022). [46] Robertson and Lavee, (2022). [47] China Tribunal (2020). [48] Consent varies by local law and may be explicit or presumed and use an opt-in or opt-out system and may or may not require the signoff by a close family member. [49] Bain, Christina, Mari, Joseph. June 26, 2018, Organ Trafficking: The Unseen Form of Human Trafficking, ACAMS Today, https://www.acamstoday.org/organ-trafficking-the-unseen-form-of-human-trafficking/; Stammers, T. (2022), "2: Organ trafficking: a neglected aspect of modern slavery", Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking, Bristol, UK: Policy Press. https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/book/978144736. [50] Do No Harm: Mitigating Human Rights Risks when Interacting with International Medical Institutions & Professionals in Transplantation Medicine, Global Rights Compliance, Legal Advisory Report, April 2022, https://globalrightscompliance.com/project/do-no-harm-policy-guidance-and-legal-advisory-report/. [51] Global Rights Compliance, p. 22. [52] The Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023, H.R. 1154, 118th Congress (2023). https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/1154. [53] The Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023, H.R. 1154, 118th Congress (2023), https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/1154. [54] Global Rights Compliance notes that Belgium, France (passed law on human rights due diligence in the value supply chain), United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have legal approaches, resolutions, and pending laws. p. 45. [55] For example, Caplan, A.L. (2020), The ethics of the unmentionable Journal of Medical Ethics 2020;46:687-688. [56] Caplan, A.L. , Danovitch, G., Shapiro M., et al. (2011) Time for a boycott of Chinese science and medicine pertaining to organ transplantation. Lancet, 378(9798):1218. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(11)61536-5 [57] Robertson and Lavee. [58] Smolin, D. M. (2011). The Tuskegee syphilis experiment, social change, and the future of bioethics. Faulkner L. Rev., 3, 229; Gallin, S., & Bedzow, I. (2020). Holocaust as an inflection point in the development of bioethics and research ethics. Handbook of research ethics and scientific integrity, 1071-1090. [59] World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki: Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects, adopted by the 18th WMA General Assembly, Helsinki, Finland, June 1964, and amended multiple times, most recently by the 64th WMA General Assembly, Fortaleza, Brazil, October 2013. https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/

To sin by silence, when we should protest,Makes cowards out of men.— Ella Wheeler WilcoxProtest is culturally entwined in historical and juro-political realities and is a fundamental element of the exercise of individual and collective rights. As our title notes, while there are currently many ‘protests in progress’ around the world, there is also a great deal of ‘progress in protest’ in terms of what protests look like, their scale and number, how they are formed and conducted, their goals, how they can be studied, as well as the varying responses formed in relation to protest. The etymology of protest associates two important dynamics pertaining to the topic. Firstly, a protest is something that is put forward, forth, or toward the front (from the Latin pro); essentially, it is in one manner or another, made publically. Secondly, it suggests that a person or persons have beared witness (testis) and instead of remaining silent, have made a declaration or assertion (testari). In other words, someone has made public their disapproval or objection. The nine articles that comprise this issue of M/C Journal on ‘protest’ reminds us of these salient elements of protest. Each, in their own way, highlight the importance of not remaining silent when faced with an injustice or in order to promote social change. As Bill McKibben (7) outlines in his foreword to an excellent collection of protest documents, ‘voices of protest ... are often precisely what propels human civilisation forward and allows it to become unstuck’. However, not all forms of contemporary protest shares ideological or progressive aims. Here, we might consider the emergence of contentious formations such as the alt-right and antifa, what is considered ‘fake’ or ‘real’, and ongoing conflicts between notions of individual and collective rights and state sovereignty.This modest but insightful collection demonstrates the broad scope of this field of inquiry. This issue explores the intersections among social justice, identity and communications technology, as well as the convergences and divergences in the form, function and substance of protest. Through an analysis of protest’s relationship to media, the author’s highlight the possibilities of protest to effect social change. The issue begins with Lakota screenwriter and activist Floris White Bull’s (Floris Ptesáŋ Huŋká) discussion of the documentary AWAKE, a Dream from Standing Rock (2017) and the #NODAPL protest. The film, split into three parts, takes a poignant and quite personal look at the native-led peaceful resistance at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota in 2016. This protest involved tens of thousands of activists from all over the world who opposed the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) which was to transport fracked oil directly underneath the Missouri River and through sovereign Lakota land (see Image 1). However, the events at Standing Rock were not a single-issue protest and brought activists together over a range of interrelated issues including environmental protection, human rights, water security, community health and Native American sovereignty. The Water Protectors were also forced to contest racist and disparaging media representations. As such, Standing Rock remains a site of cultural exchange and learning. These protests are not historical, but instead, are an ongoing struggle. The film AWAKE is important as testimony to the injustices at Standing Rock. A short description of the film is first provided in order to provide some additional context to perspectives addressed in the film. From there, White Bull has been invited to respond to questions posed by the editors regarding the Standing Rock Protests and documentary films such as AWAKE. As an Indigenous person fighting for justice, White Bull reminds readers that ‘[t]he path forward is the same as it has always been – holding on to our goals, values and dignity with resilience’.Image 1: Dakota Access Pipeline Protesters, 2016. Photo credit: Indigenous Environmental Network.Cat Pausé and Sandra Grey use an example of fat shaming to investigate how media impacts body politics and determines who is enfranchised to voice public dissent. Media becomes a mechanism for policing and governing bodily norms and gendered identities. As well as outlining a brief history of feminist body activism, the authors draw on personal experience and interview material with activists to reflect on fat embodiment and politics. Also informed by intersectional approaches, their work alerts us to the diverse vectors by which injustice and oppression fall on some bodies differently as well as the diverse bodies assembled in any crowd.Greg Watson suggests that “[c]ontemporary societies are increasingly becoming sites in which it is more difficult for people to respectfully negotiate disagreements about human diversity”. Drawing on his experiences organising Human Libraries throughout Australia, Watson argues these spaces create opportunities for engaging with difference. In this sense Human Libraries can be considered sites which protest the micropublics’ “codes of civility” which produce everyday marginalisations of difference.Micropolitics and creative forms of protest are also central to Ella Cutler, Jacqueline Gothe, and Alexandra Crosby’s article. The author’s consider three design projects which seek to facilitate ethical communication with diverse communities. Drawing on Guy Julier’s tactics for activist design, each project demonstrates the value of slowing down in order to pay attention to experience. In this way, research through design offers a reflexive means for engaging social change.Research practices are also central to making visible community resistance. Anthony McCosker and Timothy Graham consider the role of social networking in urban protests through the campaign to save the iconic Melbourne music venue The Palace (see Image 2). Their article considers the value of social media data and analytics in relation to the court proceedings and trial processes. Given the centrality of social media to activist campaigns their reflections provide a timely evaluation of how data publics are constituted and their ongoing legacy.Image 2: Melbourne’s Palace Theatre before demolition. Photo Credit: Melbourne Heritage Action.For Marcelina Piotrowski pleasure is central to understanding data production and protest. She draws on a Deleuze and Guattarian framework in order to consider protests against oil pipelines in British Columbia. Importantly, through this theoretical framework of ‘data desires’, pleasure is not something owned by the individual subject but rather holds the potential to construct generative social collectivities. This is traced through three different practices: deliberation in online forums; citizen science and social media campaigns. This has important implications for understanding environmental issues and our own enfolding within them. Nadine Kozak takes a look at how Online Service Providers (OSPs) have historically used internet ‘blackouts’ in order to protest United States government regulations. Kozak points to protests against the Communications Decency Act (1996) which sought to regulate online pornographic material and the Stop Online Piracy Act (2011) which proposed increased federal government power to take action against online copyright infringement. Recently, the United States Congress recently passed the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), which hold OSPs liable for third-party content including advertising for prostitution. However, despite condemnation from the Department of Justice and trafficking victims, OSPs did not utilise blackouts as a means to protest these new measures. Kozak concludes that the decision to whether or not to utilise blackout protests is dependent on the interests of technology companies and large OSPs. It is evident that most especially since Donald Trump popularised the term, ‘fake news’ has taken a centre stage in discussions concerning media. In fact, the lines between what is fake and what is official have become blurred. Most recently, QAnon proponents have been attending Trump rallies and speeches giving further visibility to various conspiracy narratives stemming from online message boards (see Image 3). Marc Tuters, Emilija Jokubauskaitė, and Daniel Bach establishe a clear timeline of events in order to trace the origins of ‘#Pizzagate’; a 2016 conspiracy theory that falsely claimed that several U.S. restaurants and high-ranking officials of the Democratic Party were connected with human trafficking and an alleged child-sex ring. The authors investigate the affordances of 4chan to unpack how the site’s anonymity, rapid temporality and user collectivisation were instrumental in creating ‘bullshit’; a usage which the authors suggest is a “technical term for persuasive speech unconcerned with veracity”. This provides an understanding of how alt-right communities are assembled and motivated in a post-truth society. Image 3: QAnon proponents at Trump rally in Tampa, 31 July 2018. Photo credit: Kirby Wilson, Tampa Bay Times.Finally, Colin Salter analyses protests for animal rights as a lens to critique notions of national identity and belonging. Protests on whaling in the Southern Ocean (see Image 4) and live export trade from Australia continue to be highly contested political issues. Salter reflects on the ABC’s 2011 exposé into Australian live animal exports to Indonesia and the 2014 hearings at the International Court of Justice into Japanese whaling. Salter then traces the common elements between animal rights campaigns in order to demonstrate the manner in which the physical bodies of animals, their treatment, and the debate surrounding that treatment become sites for mapping cultural identity, nationhood, and sovereignty. Here, Salter suggests that such inquiry is useful for promoting broader consideration of efficacious approaches to animal advocacy and social change.Image 4: The ship Bob Barker, rammed by the Japanese whaling vessel Nishin Maru. Photo credit: Sea Shepherd Facebook Page. As indicated in the opening paragraphs, it is crucial for people committed to social justice to publically raise their voices in protest. As such, we would like to thank each of the authors for their important contributions to this issue on ‘protest’. In its own way, each contribution serves doubly as a form of protest and a means to understand the topic more clearly. There is solidarity evidenced in this issue. Taken as a whole, these articles attest to the importance of understanding protest and social change.ReferencesMcKibben, B. "Foreword." Voices of Protest: Documents of Courage and Dissent. Eds. Frank Lowenstein, Sheryl Lechner, and Erik Bruun. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2007. 7-8.Wilcox, E.W. "Protest." Poems of Problems. Chicago: W.B. Conkey Company, 1914.

Proponents of the free culture movement argue that contemporary, “over-zealous” copyright laws have an adverse affect on the freedoms of consumers and creators to make use of copyrighted materials. Lessig, McLeod, Vaidhyanathan, Demers, and Coombe, to name but a few, detail instances where creativity and consumer use have been hindered by copyright laws. The “intellectual land-grab” (Boyle, “Politics” 94), instigated by the increasing value of intangibles in the information age, has forced copyright owners to seek maximal protection for copyrighted materials. A propertarian approach seeks to imbue copyrighted materials with the same inalienable rights as real property, yet copyright is not a property right, because “the copyright owner … holds no ordinary chattel” (Dowling v. United States 473 US 207, 216 [1985]). A fundamental difference resides in the exclusivity of use: “If you eat my apple, then I cannot” but “if you “take” my idea, I still have it. If I tell you an idea, you have not deprived me of it. An unavoidable feature of intellectual property is that its consumption is non-rivalrous” (Lessig, Code 131). It is, as James Boyle notes, “different” to real property (Shamans 174). Vaidhyanathan observes, “copyright in the American tradition was not meant to be a “property right” as the public generally understands property. It was originally a narrow federal policy that granted a limited trade monopoly in exchange for universal use and access” (11). This paper explores the ways in which “property talk” has infiltrated copyright discourse and endangered the utility of the law in fostering free and diverse forms of creative expression. The possessiveness and exclusion that accompany “property talk” are difficult to reconcile with the utilitarian foundations of copyright. Transformative uses of copyrighted materials such as mashing, sampling and appropriative art are incompatible with a propertarian approach, subjecting freedom of creativity to arbitary licensing fees that often extend beyond the budget of creators (Collins). “Property talk” risks making transformative works an elitist form of creativity, available only to those with the financial resources necessary to meet the demands for licences. There is a wealth of decisions throughout American and English case law that sustain Vaidhyanathan’s argument (see for example, Donaldson v. Becket 17 Cobbett Parliamentary History, col. 953; Wheaton v. Peters 33 US 591 [1834]; Fox Film Corporation v. Doyal 286 US 123 [1932]; US v. Paramount Pictures 334 US 131 [1948]; Mazer v. Stein 347 US 201, 219 [1954]; Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aitken 422 U.S. 151 [1975]; Aronson v. Quick Point Pencil Co. 440 US 257 [1979]; Dowling v. United States 473 US 207 [1985]; Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises 471 U.S. 539 [1985]; Luther R. Campbell a.k.a. Luke Skyywalker, et al. v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. 510 U.S 569 [1994].). As Lemley states, however, “Congress, the courts and commentators increasingly treat intellectual property as simply a species of real property rather than as a unique form of legal protection designed to deal with public goods problems” (1-2). Although section 106 of the Copyright Act 1976 grants exclusive rights, sections 107 to 112 provide freedoms beyond the control of the copyright owner, undermining the exclusivity of s.106. Australian law similarly grants exceptions to the exclusive rights granted in section 31. Exclusivity was a principal objective of the eighteenth century Stationers’ argument for a literary property right. Sir William Blackstone, largely responsible for many Anglo-American concepts concerning the construction of property law, defined property in absolutist terms as “that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the whole universe” (2). On the topic of reprints he staunchly argued an author “has clearly a right to dispose of that identical work as he pleases, and any attempt to take it from him, or vary the disposition he has made of it, is an invasion of his right of property” (405-6). Blackstonian copyright advanced an exclusive and perpetual property right. Blackstone’s interpretation of Lockean property theory argued for a copyright that extended beyond the author’s expression and encompassed the very “style” and “sentiments” held therein. (Tonson v. Collins [1760] 96 ER 189.) According to Locke, every Man has a Property in his own Person . . . The Labour of his Body and the Work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. (287-8) Blackstone’s inventive interpretation of Locke “analogised ideas, thoughts, and opinions with tangible objects to which title may be taken by occupancy under English common law” (Travis 783). Locke’s labour theory, however, is not easily applied to intangibles because occupancy or use is non-rivalrous. The appropriate extent of an author’s proprietary right in a work led Locke himself to a philosophical impasse (Bowrey 324). Although Blackstonian copyright was suppressed by the House of Lords in the eighteenth century (Donaldson v. Becket [1774] 17 Cobbett Parliamentary History, col. 953) and by the Supreme Court sixty years later (Wheaton v. Peters 33 US 591 [1834]), it has never wholly vacated copyright discourse. “Property talk” is undesirable in copyright discourse because it implicates totalitarian notions such as exclusion and inalienable private rights of ownership with no room for freedom of creativity or to use copyrighted materials for non-piracy related purposes. The notion that intellectual property is a species of property akin with real property is circulated by media companies seeking greater control over copyrighted materials, but the extent to which “property talk” has been adopted by the courts and scholars is troubling. Lemley (3-5) and Bell speculate whether the term “intellectual property” carries any responsibility for the propertisation of intangibles. A survey of federal court decisions between 1943 and 2003 reveals an exponential increase in the usage of the term. As noted by Samuelson (398) and Cohen (379), within the spheres of industry, culture, law, and politics the word “property” implies a broader scope of rights than those associated with a grant of limited monopoly. Music United claims “unauthorized reproduction and distribution of copyrighted music is JUST AS ILLEGAL AS SHOPLIFTING A CD”. James Brown argues sampling from his records is tantamount to theft: “Anything they take off my record is mine . . . Can I take a button off your shirt and put it on mine? Can I take a toenail off your foot – is that all right with you?” (Miller 1). Equating unauthorised copying with theft seeks to socially demonise activities occurring outside of the permission culture currently being fostered by inventive interpretations of the law. Increasing propagation of copyright as the personal property of the creator and/or copyright owner is instrumental in efforts to secure further legislative or judicial protection: Since 1909, courts and corporations have exploited public concern for rewarding established authors by steadily limiting the rights of readers, consumers, and emerging artists. All along, the author was deployed as a straw man in the debate. The unrewarded authorial genius was used as a rhetorical distraction that appealed to the American romantic individualism. (Vaidhyanathan 11) The “unrewarded authorial genius” was certainly tactically deployed in the eighteenth century in order to generate sympathy in pleas for further protection (Feather 71). Supporting the RIAA, artists including Britney Spears ask “Would you go into a CD store and steal a CD? It’s the same thing – people going into the computers and logging on and stealing our music”. The presence of a notable celebrity claiming file-sharing is equivalent to stealing their personal property is a more publicly acceptable spin on the major labels’ attempts to maintain a monopoly over music distribution. In 1997, Congress enacted the No Electronic Theft Act which extended copyright protection into the digital realm and introduced stricter penalties for electronic reproduction. The use of “theft” in the title clearly aligns the statute with a propertarian portrayal of intangibles. Most movie fans will have witnessed anti-piracy propaganda in the cinema and on DVDs. Analogies between stealing a bag and downloading movies blur fundamental distinctions in the rivalrous/non-rivalrous nature of tangibles and intangibles (Lessig Code, 131). Of critical significance is the infiltration of “property talk” into the courtrooms. In 1990 Judge Frank Easterbrook wrote: Patents give a right to exclude, just as the law of trespass does with real property … Old rhetoric about intellectual property equating to monopoly seemed to have vanished, replaced by a recognition that a right to exclude in intellectual property is no different in principle from the right to exclude in physical property … Except in the rarest case, we should treat intellectual and physical property identically in the law – which is where the broader currents are taking us. (109, 112, 118) Although Easterbrook refers to patents, his endorsement of “property talk” is cause for concern given the similarity with which patents and copyrights have been historically treated (Ou 41). In Grand Upright v. Warner Bros. Judge Kevin Duffy commenced his judgment with the admonishment “Thou shalt not steal”. Similarly, in Jarvis v. A&M Records the court stated “there can be no more brazen stealing of music than digital sampling”. This move towards a propertarian approach is misguided. It runs contrary to the utilitarian principles underpinning copyright ideology and marginalises freedoms protected by the fair use doctrine, hence Justice Blackman’s warning that “interference with copyright does not easily equate with” interference with real property (Dowling v. United States 473 US 207, 216 [1985]). The framing of copyright in terms of real property privileges private monopoly over, and to the detriment of, the public interest in free and diverse creativity as well as freedoms of personal use. It is paramount that when dealing with copyright cases, the courts remain aware that their decisions involve not pure economic regulation, but regulation of expression, and what may count as rational where economic regulation is at issue is not necessarily rational where we focus on expression – in a Nation constitutionally dedicated to the free dissemination of speech, information, learning and culture. (Eldred v. Ashcroft 537 US 186 [2003] [J. Breyer dissenting]). Copyright is the prize in a contest of property vs. policy. As Justice Blackman observed, an infringer invades a statutorily defined province guaranteed to the copyright holder alone. But he does not assume physical control over the copyright; nor does he wholly deprive its owner of its use. While one may colloquially link infringement with some general notion of wrongful appropriation, infringement plainly implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud. (Dowling v. United States 473 US 207, 217-218 [1985]). Copyright policy places a great deal of control and cultural determinism in the hands of the creative industries. Without balance, oppressive monopolies form on the back of rights granted for the welfare of society in general. If a society wants to be independent and rich in diverse forms of cultural production and free expression, then the courts cannot continue to apply the law from within a propertarian paradigm. The question of whether culture should be determined by control or freedom in the interests of a free society is one that rapidly requires close attention – “it’s no longer a philosophical question but a practical one”. References Bayat, Asef. “Un-Civil Society: The Politics of the ‘Informal People.’” Third World Quarterly 18.1 (1997): 53-72. Bell, T. W. “Author’s Welfare: Copyright as a Statutory Mechanism for Redistributing Rights.” Brooklyn Law Review 69 (2003): 229. Blackstone, W. Commentaries on the Laws of England: Volume II. New York: Garland Publishing, 1978. (Reprint of 1783 edition.) Boyle, J. Shamans, Software, and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996. Boyle, J. “A Politics of Intellectual Property: Environmentalism for the Net?” Duke Law Journal 47 (1997): 87. Bowrey, K. “Who’s Writing Copyright’s History?” European Intellectual Property Review 18.6 (1996): 322. Cohen, J. “Overcoming Property: Does Copyright Trump Privacy?” University of Illinois Journal of Law, Technology & Policy 375 (2002). Collins, S. “Good Copy, Bad Copy.” (2005) M/C Journal 8.3 (2006). http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0507/02-collins.php>. Coombe, R. The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. Demers, J. Steal This Music. Athens, Georgia: U of Georgia P, 2006. Easterbrook, F. H. “Intellectual Property Is Still Property.” (1990) Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 13 (1990): 108. Feather, J. Publishing, Piracy and Politics: An Historical Study of Copyright in Britain. London: Mansell, 1994. Lemley, M. “Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding.” Texas Law Review 83 (2005): 1031. Lessig, L. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Lessing, L. The Future of Ideas. New York: Random House, 2001. Lessig, L. Free Culture. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004. Locke, J. Two Treatises of Government. Ed. Peter Laslett. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1988. McLeod, K. “How Copyright Law Changed Hip Hop: An Interview with Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Hank Shocklee.” Stay Free (2002). 14 June 2006 http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/20/public_enemy.html>. McLeod, K. “Confessions of an Intellectual (Property): Danger Mouse, Mickey Mouse, Sonny Bono, and My Long and Winding Path as a Copyright Activist-Academic.” Popular Music & Society 28 (2005): 79. McLeod, K. Freedom of Expression: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity. United States: Doubleday Books, 2005. Miller, M.W. “Creativity Furor: High-Tech Alteration of Sights and Sounds Divides the Art World.” Wall Street Journal (1987): 1. Ou, T. “From Wheaton v. Peters to Eldred v. Reno: An Originalist Interpretation of the Copyright Clause.” Berkman Center for Internet & Society (2000). 14 June 2006 http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/eldredvashcroft/cyber/OuEldred.pdf>. Samuelson, P. “Information as Property: Do Ruckelshaus and Carpenter Signal a Changing Direction in Intellectual Property Law?” Catholic University Law Review 38 (1989): 365. Travis, H. “Pirates of the Information Infrastructure: Blackstonian Copyright and the First Amendment.” Berkeley Technology Law Journal 15 (2000): 777. Vaidhyanathan, S. Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity. New York: New York UP, 2003. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Collins, Steve. "‘Property Talk’ and the Revival of Blackstonian Copyright." M/C Journal 9.4 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0609/5-collins.php>. APA Style Collins, S. (Sep. 2006) "‘Property Talk’ and the Revival of Blackstonian Copyright," M/C Journal, 9(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0609/5-collins.php>.

Literature—at least serious literature—is something that we work at. This is especially true within the academy. Literature departments are places where workers labour over texts carefully extracting and sharing meanings, for which they receive monetary reward. Specialised languages are developed to describe professional concerns. Over the last thirty years, the productions of mass culture, once regarded as too slight to warrant laborious explication, have been admitted to the academic workroom. Gothic studies—the specialist area that treats fearful and horrifying texts —has embraced the growing acceptability of devoting academic effort to texts that would once have fallen outside of the remit of “serious” study. In the seventies, when Gothic studies was just beginning to establish itself, there was a perception that the Gothic was “merely a literature of surfaces and sensations”, and that any Gothic of substantial literary worth had transcended the genre (Thompson 1). Early specialists in the field noted this prejudice; David Punter wrote of the genre’s “difficulty in establishing respectable credentials” (403), while Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick hoped her work would “make it easier for the reader of ‘respectable’ nineteenth-century novels to write ‘Gothic’ in the margin” (4). Gothic studies has gathered a modicum of this longed-for respectability for the texts it treats by deploying the methodologies used within literature departments. This has yielded readings that are largely congruous with readings of other sorts of literature; the Gothic text tells us things about ourselves and the world we inhabit, about power, culture and history. Yet the Gothic remains a production of popular culture as much as it is of the valorised literary field. I do not wish to argue for a reintroduction of the great divide described by Andreas Huyssen, but instead to suggest that we have missed something important about the ways in which popular Gothics—and perhaps other sorts of popular text—function. What if the popular Gothic were not a type of work, but a kind of play? How might this change the way we read these texts? Johan Huizinga noted that “play is not ‘ordinary’ or ‘real’ life. It is rather a stepping out of ‘real’ life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own. Every child knows perfectly well he is ‘only pretending’, or that it was ‘only for fun’” (8). If the Gothic sometimes offers playful texts, then those texts might direct readers not primarily towards the real, but away from it, at least for a limited time. This might help to account for the wicked spectacle offered by Dennis Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out, and in particular, its presentation of the black mass. The black mass is the parody of the Christian mass thought to be performed by witches and diabolists. Although it has doubtless been performed on rare occasions since the Middle Ages, the first black mass for which we have substantial documentary evidence was celebrated in Hampstead on Boxing Day 1918, by Montague Summers; it is a satisfying coincidence that Summers was one of the Gothic’s earliest scholars. We have record of Summer’s mass because it was watched by a non-participant, Anatole James, who was “bored to tears” as Summers recited tracts of Latin and practiced homosexual acts with a youth named Sullivan while James looked on (Medway 382-3). Summers claimed to be a Catholic priest, although there is some doubt as to the legitimacy of his ordination. The black mass ought to be officiated by a Catholic clergyman so the host may be transubstantiated before it is blasphemed. In doing so, the mass de-emphasises interpretive meaning and is an assault on the body of Christ rather than a mutilation of the symbol of Christ’s love and sacrifice. Thus, it is not conceived of primarily as a representational act but as actual violence. Nevertheless, Summers’ black mass seems like an elaborate form of sexual play more than spiritual warfare; by asking an acquaintance to observe the mass, Summers formulated the ritual as an erotic performance. The black mass was a favourite trope of the English Gothic of the nineteen-sixties and seventies. Dennis Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out features an extended presentation of the mass; it was first published in 1934, but had achieved a kind of genre-specific canonicity by the nineteen-sixties, so that many Gothics produced and consumed in the sixties and seventies featured depictions of the black mass that drew from Wheatley’s original. Like Summers, Wheatley’s mass emphasised licentious sexual practice and, significantly, featured a voyeur or voyeurs watching the performance. Where James only wished Summers’ mass would end, Wheatley and his followers presented the mass as requiring interruption before it reaches a climax. This version of the mass recurs in most of Wheatley’s black magic novels, but it also appears in paperback romances, such as Susan Howatch’s 1973 The Devil on Lammas Night; it is reimagined in the literate and genuinely eerie short stories of Robert Aickman, which are just now thankfully coming back into print; it appears twice in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast books. Nor was the black mass confined to the written Gothic, appearing in films of the period too; The Kiss of the Vampire (1963), The Witches (1966), Satan’s Skin, aka Blood on Satan’s Claw (1970), The Wicker Man (1973), and The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1974) all feature celebrations of the Sabbat, as, of course do the filmed adaptations of Wheatley’s novels, The Devil Rides Out (1967) and To the Devil a Daughter (1975). More than just a key trope, the black mass was a procedure characteristic of the English Gothic of the sixties; narratives were structured so as to lead towards its performance. All of the texts mentioned above repeat narrative and trope, but more importantly, they loosely repeat experience, both for readers and the characters depicted. While Summers’ black mass apparently made for tiresome viewing, textual representations of the black mass typically embrace the pageant and sensuality of the Catholic mass it perverts, involving music, incense and spectacle. Often animalistic sex, bestiality, infanticide or human sacrifice are staged, and are intended to fascinate rather than bore. Although far from canonical in a literary sense, by 1969 Wheatley was an institution. He had sold 27 million books worldwide and around 70 percent of those had been within the British market. All of his 55 books were in print. A new Wheatley in hardcover would typically sell 30,000 copies, and paperback sales of his back catalogue stood at more than a million books a year. While Wheatley wrote thrillers in a range of different subgenres, at the end of the sixties it was his ‘black magic’ stories that were far and away the most popular. While moderately successful when first published, they developed their most substantial audience in the sixties. When The Satanist was published in paperback in 1966, it sold more than 100,000 copies in the first ten days. By 1973, five of these eight black magic titles had sold more than a million copies. The first of these was The Devil Rides Out which, although originally published in 1934, by 1973, helped by the Hammer film of 1967, had sold more than one and a half million copies, making it the most successful of the group (“Pooter”; Hedman and Alexandersson 20, 73). Wheatley’s black magic stories provide a good example of the way that texts persist and accumulate influence in a genre field, gaining genre-specific canonicity. Wheatley’s apparent influence on Gothic texts and films that followed, coupled with the sheer number of his books sold, indicate that he occupied a central position in the field, and that his approach to the genre became, for a time, a defining one. Wheatley’s black magic stories apparently developed a new readership in the sixties. The black mass perhaps became legible as a salacious, nightmarish version of some imaginary hippy gathering. While Wheatley’s Satanists are villainous, there is a vaguely progressive air about them; they listen to unconventional music, dance in the nude, participate in unconventional sexual practice, and glut themselves on various intoxicants. This, after all, was the age of Hair, Oh! Calcutta! and Oz magazine, “an era of personal liberation, in the view of some critics, one of moral anarchy” (Morgan 149). Without suggesting that the Satanists represent hippies there is a contextual relevancy available to later readers that would have been missing in the thirties. The sexual zeitgeist would have allowed later readers to pornographically and pleasurably imagine the liberated sexuality of the era without having to approve of it. Wheatley’s work has since become deeply, embarrassingly unfashionable. The books are racist, sexist, homophobic and committed to a basically fascistic vision of an imperial England, all of which will repel most casual readers. Nor do his works provide an especially good venue for academic criticism; all surface, they do not reward the labour of careful, deep reading. The Devil Rides Out narrates the story of a group of friends locked in a battle with the wicked Satanist Mocata, “a pot-bellied, bald headed person of about sixty, with large, protuberant, fishy eyes, limp hands, and a most unattractive lisp” (11), based, apparently, on the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley (Ellis 145-6). Mocata hopes to start a conflict on the scale of the Great War by performing the appropriate devilish rituals. Led by the aged yet spry Duke de Richleau and garrulous American Rex van Ryn, the friends combat Mocata in three substantial set pieces, including their attempt to disrupt the black mass as it is performed in a secluded field in Wiltshire. The Devil Rides Out is a ripping story. Wheatley’s narrative is urgent, and his simple prose suggests that the book is meant to be read quickly. Likewise, Wheatley’s protagonists do not experience in any real way the crises and collapses that so frequently trouble characters who struggle against the forces of darkness in Gothic narratives. Even when de Richlieu’s courage fails as he observes the Wiltshire Sabbat, this failure is temporary; Rex simply treats him as if he has been physically wounded, and the Duke soon rallies. The Devil Rides Out is remarkably free of trauma and its sequelæ. The morbid psychological states which often interest the twentieth century Gothic are excluded here in favour of the kind of emotional fortitude found in adventure stories. The effect is remarkable. Wheatley retains a cheerful tone even as he depicts the appalling, and potentially repellent representations become entertainments. Wheatley describes in remarkable detail the actions that his protagonists witness from their hidden vantage point. If the Gothic reader looks forward to gleeful blasphemy, then this is amply provided, in the sort of sardonic style that Lewis’ The Monk manages so well. A cross is half stomped into matchwood and inverted in the ground, the Christian host is profaned in a way too dreadful to be narrated, and the Duke informs us that the satanic priests are eating “a stillborn baby or perhaps some unfortunate child that they have stolen and murdered”. Rex is chilled by the sound of a human skull rattling around in their cauldron (117-20). The mass offers a special quality of experience, distinct from the everyday texture of life represented in the text. Ostensibly waiting for their chance to liberate their friend Simon from the action, the Duke and Rex are voyeurs, and readers participate in this voyeurism too. The narrative focus shifts from Rex and de Richlieu’s observation of the mass, to the wayward medium Tanith’s independent, bespelled arrival at the ritual site, before returning to the two men. This arrangement allows Wheatley to extend his description of the gathering, reiterating the same events from different characters’ perspectives. This would be unusual if the text were simply a thriller, and relied on the ongoing release of new information to maintain narrative interest. Instead, readers have the opportunity to “view” the salacious activity of the Satanists a second time. This repetition delays the climactic action of the scene, where the Duke and Rex rescue Simon by driving a car into the midst of the ritual. Moreover, the repetition suggests that the “thrill” on offer is not necessarily related to plot —it offers us nothing new —but instead to simply seeing the rite performed. Tanith, although conveyed to the mass by some dark power, is delayed and she too becomes a part of the mass’ audience. She saw the Satanists… tumbling upon each other in the disgusting nudity of their ritual dance. Old Madame D’Urfé, huge-buttocked and swollen, prancing by some satanic power with all the vigour of a young girl who had only just reached maturity; the Babu, dark-skinned, fleshy, hideous; the American woman, scraggy, lean-flanked and hag-like with empty, hanging breasts; the Eurasian, waving the severed stump of his arm in the air as he gavotted beside the unwieldy figure of the Irish bard, whose paunch stood out like the grotesque belly of a Chinese god. (132) The reader will remember that Madame D’Urfé is French, and that the cultists are dancing before the Goat of Mendes, who masquerades as Malagasy, earlier described by de Richlieu as “a ‘bad black’ if ever I saw one” (11). The human body is obsessively and grotesquely racialized; Wheatley is simultaneously at his most politically vile and aesthetically Goya-like. The physically grotesque meshes with the crudely sexual and racist. The Irishman is typed as a “bard” and somehow acquires a second racial classification, the Indian is horrible seemingly because of his race, and Madame D’Urfé is repulsive because her sexuality is framed as inappropriate to her age. The dancing crone is defined in terms of a younger, presumably sexually appealing, woman; even as she is denigrated, the reader is presented with a contrary image. As the sexuality of the Satanists is excoriated, titillation is offered. Readers may take whatever pleasure they like from the representations while simultaneously condemning them, or even affecting revulsion. A binary opposition is set up between de Richlieu’s company, who are cultured and moneyed, and the Satanists, who might masquerade as civilised, but reveal their savagery at the Sabbat. Their race becomes a further symptom of their lack of civilised qualities. The Duke complains to Rex that “there is little difference between this modern Satanism and Voodoo… We might almost be witnessing some heathen ceremony in an African jungle!” (115). The Satanists become “a trampling mass of bestial animal figures” dancing to music where, “Instead of melody, it was a harsh, discordant jumble of notes and broken chords which beat into the head with a horrible nerve-racking intensity and set the teeth continually on edge” (121). Music and melody are cultural constructions as much as they are mathematical ones. The breakdown of music suggests a breakdown of culture, more specifically, of Western cultural norms. The Satanists feast, with no “knives, forks, spoons or glasses”, but instead drink straight from bottles and eat using their hands (118). This is hardly transgression on the scale of devouring an infant, but emphasises that Satanism is understood to represent the antithesis of civilization, specifically, of a conservative Englishness. Bad table manners are always a sign of wickedness. This sort of reading is useful in that it describes the prejudices and politics of the text. It allows us to see the black mass as meaningful and places it within a wider discursive tradition making sense of a grotesque dance that combines a variety of almost arbitrary transgressive actions, staged in a Wiltshire field. This style of reading seems to confirm the approach to genre text that Fredric Jameson has espoused (117-9), which understands the text as reinforcing a hegemonic worldview within its readership. This is the kind of reading the academy often works to produce; it recognises the mass as standing for something more than the simple fact of its performance, and develops a coherent account of what the mass represents. The labour of reading discerns the work the text does out in the world. Yet despite the good sense and political necessity of this approach, my suggestion is that these observations are secondary to the primary function of the text because they cannot account for the reading experience offered by the Sabbat and the rest of the text. Regardless of text’s prejudices, The Devil Rides Out is not a book about race. It is a book about Satanists. As Jo Walton has observed, competent genre readers effortlessly grasp this kind of distinction, prioritising certain readings and elements of the text over others (33-5). Failing to account for the reading strategy presumed by author and audience risks overemphasising what is less significant in a text while missing more important elements. Crucially, a reading that emphasises the political implications of the Sabbat attributes meaning to the ritual; yet the ritual’s ability to hold meaning is not what is most important about it. By attributing meaning to the Sabbat, we miss the fact of the Sabbat itself; it has become a metaphor rather than a thing unto itself, a demonstration of racist politics rather than one of the central necessities of a black magic story. Seligman, Weller, Puett and Simon claim that ritual is usually read as having a social purpose or a cultural meaning, but that these readings presume that ritual is interested in presenting the world truthfully, as it is. Seligman and his co-authors take exception to this, arguing that ritual does not represent society or culture as they are and that ritual is “a subjunctive—the creation of an order as if it were truly the case” (20). Rather than simply reflecting history, society and culture, ritual responds to the disappointment of the real; the farmer performs a rite to “ensure” the bounty of the harvest not because the rite symbolises the true order of things, but as a consolation because sometimes the harvest fails. Interestingly, the Duke’s analysis of the Satanists’ motivations closely accords with Seligman et al.’s understanding of the need for ritual to console our anxieties and disappointments. For the cultists, the mass is “a release of all their pent-up emotions, and suppressed complexes, engendered by brooding over imagined injustice, lust for power, bitter hatred of rivals in love or some other type of success or good fortune” (121). The Satanists perform the mass as a response to the disappointment of the participant’s lives; they are ugly, uncivil outsiders and according to the Duke, “probably epileptics… nearly all… abnormal” (121). The mass allows them to feel, at least for a limited time, as if they are genuinely powerful, people who ought to be feared rather than despised, able to command the interest and favour of their infernal lord, to receive sexual attention despite their uncomeliness. Seligman et al. go on to argue ritual “must be understood as inherently nondiscursive—semantic content is far secondary to subjunctive creation.” Ritual “cannot be analysed as a coherent system of beliefs” (26). If this is so, we cannot expect the black mass to necessarily say anything coherent about Satanism, let alone racism. In fact, The Devil Rides Out tends not to focus on the meaning of the black mass, but on its performance. The perceivable facts of the mass are given, often in instructional detail, but any sense of what they might stand for remains unexplicated in the text. Indeed, taken individually, it is hard to make sense or meaning out of each of the Sabbat’s components. Why must a skull rattle around a cauldron? Why must a child be killed and eaten? If communion forms the most significant part of the Christian mass, we could presume that the desecration of the host might be the most meaningful part of the rite, but given the extensive description accorded the mass as a whole, the parody of communion is dealt with surprisingly quickly, receiving only three sentences. The Duke describes the act as “the most appalling sacrilege”, but it is left at that as the celebrants stomp the host into the ground (120). The action itself is emphasised over anything it might mean. Most of Wheatley’s readers will, I think, be untroubled by this. As Pierre Bourdieu noted, “the regularities inherent in an arbitrary condition… tend to appear as necessary, even natural, since they are the basis of the schemes of perception and appreciation through which they are apprehended” (53-4). Rather than stretching towards an interpretation of the Sabbat, readers simply accept it a necessary condition of a “black magic story”. While the genre and its tropes are constructed, they tend to appear as “natural” to readers. The Satanists perform the black mass because that is what Satanists do. The representation does not even have to be compelling in literary terms; it simply has to be a “proper” black mass. Richard Schechner argues that, when we are concerned with ritual, “Propriety”, that is, seeing the ritual properly executed, “is more important than artistry in the Euro-American sense” (178). Rather than describing the meaning of the ritual, Wheatley prefers to linger over the Satanist’s actions, their gluttonous feasting and dancing, their nudity. Again, these are actions that hold sensual qualities for their performers that exceed the simply discursive. Through their ritual behaviour they enter into atavistic and ecstatic states beyond everyday human consciousness. They are “hardly human… Their brains are diseased and their mentality is that of the hags and the warlocks of the middle ages…” and are “governed apparently by a desire to throw themselves back into a state of bestiality…” (117-8). They finally reach a state of “maniacal exaltation” and participate in an “intoxicated nightmare” (135). While the mass is being celebrated, the Satanists become an undifferentiated mass, their everyday identities and individuality subsumed into the subjunctive world created by the ritual. Simon, a willing participant, becomes lost amongst them, his individual identity given over to the collective, subjunctive state created by the group. Rex and the Duke are outside of this subjunctive world, expressing revulsion, but voyeuristically looking on; they retain their individual identities. Tanith is caught between the role played by Simon, and the one played by the Duke and Rex, as she risks shifting from observer to participant, her journey to the Sabbat being driven on by “evil powers” (135). These three relationships to the Sabbat suggest some of the strategies available to its readers. Like Rex and the Duke, we seem to observe the black mass as voyeurs, and still have the option of disapproving of it, but like Simon, the act of continuing to read means that we are participating in the representation of this perversity. Having committed to reading a “black magic story”, the reader’s procession towards the black mass is inevitable, as with Tanith’s procession towards it. Yet, just as Tanith is compelled towards it, readers are allowed to experience the Sabbat without necessarily having to see themselves as wanting to experience it. This facilitates a ludic, undiscursive reading experience; readers are not encouraged to seriously reflect on what the Sabbat means or why it might be a source of vicarious pleasure. They do not have to take responsibility for it. As much as the Satanists create a subjunctive world for their own ends, readers are creating a similar world for themselves to participate in. The mass—an incoherent jumble of sex and violence—becomes an imaginative refuge from the everyday world which is too regulated, chaste and well-behaved. Despite having substantial precedent in folklore and Gothic literature (see Medway), the black mass as it is represented in The Devil Rides Out is largely an invention. The rituals performed by occultists like Crowley were never understood by their participants as being black masses, and it was not until the foundation of the Church of Satan in San Francisco in the later nineteen-sixties that it seems the black mass was performed with the regularity or uniformity characteristic of ritual. Instead, its celebration was limited to eccentrics and dabblers like Summers. Thus, as an imaginary ritual, the black mass can be whatever its writers and readers need it to be, providing the opportunity to stage those actions and experiences required by the kind of text in which it appears. Because it is the product of the requirements of the text, it becomes a venue in which those things crucial to the text are staged; forbidden sexual congress, macabre ceremony, violence, the appearance of intoxicating and noisome scents, weird violet lights, blue candle flames and the goat itself. As we observe the Sabbat, the subjunctive of the ritual aligns with the subjunctive of the text itself; the same ‘as if’ is experienced by both the represented worshippers and the readers. The black mass offers an analogue for the black magic story, providing, almost in digest form, the images and experiences associated with the genre at the time. Seligman et al. distinguish between modes that they term the sincere and the ritualistic. Sincerity describes an approach to reading the world that emphasises the individual subject, authenticity, and the need to get at “real” thought and feeling. Ritual, on the other hand, prefers community, convention and performance. The “sincere mode of behavior seeks to replace the ‘mere convention’ of ritual with a genuine and thoughtful state of internal conviction” (103). Where the sincere is meaningful, the ritualistic is practically oriented. In The Devil Rides Out, the black mass, a largely unreal practice, must be regarded as insincere. More important than any “meaning” we might extract from the rite is the simple fact of participation. The individuality and agency of the participants is apparently diminished in the mass, and their regular sense of themselves is recovered only as the Duke and Rex desperately drive the Duke’s Hispano into the ritual so as to halt it. The car’s lights dispel the subjunctive darkness and reduce the unified group to a gathering of confused individuals, breaking the spell of naughtily enabling darkness. Just as the meaningful aspect of the mass is de-emphasised for ritual participants, for readers, self and discursive ability are de-emphasised in favour of an immersive, involving reading experience; we keep reading the mass without pausing to really consider the mass itself. It would reduce our pleasure in and engagement with the text to do so; the mass would be revealed as obnoxious, unpleasant and nonsensical. When we read the black mass we tend to put our day-to-day values, both moral and aesthetic, to one side, bracketing our sincere individuality in favour of participation in the text. If there is little point in trying to interpret Wheatley’s black mass due to its weakly discursive nature, then this raises questions of how to approach the text. Simply, the “work” of interpretation seems unnecessary; Wheatley’s black mass asks to be regarded as a form of play. Simply, The Devil Rides Out is a venue for a particular kind of readerly play, apart from the more substantial, sincere concerns that occupy most literary criticism. As Huizinga argued that, “Play is distinct from ‘ordinary’ life both as to locality and duration… [A significant] characteristic of play [is] its secludedness, its limitedness” (9). Likewise, by seeing the mass as a kind of play, we can understand why, despite the provocative and transgressive acts it represents, it is not especially harrowing as a reading experience. Play “lies outside the antithesis of wisdom and folly, and equally outside those of truth and falsehood, good and evil…. The valuations of vice and virtue do not apply...” (Huizinga 6). The mass might well offer barbarism and infanticide, but it does not offer these to its readers “seriously”. The subjunctive created by the black mass for its participants on the page is approximately equivalent to the subjunctive Wheatley’s text proposes to his readers. The Sabbat offers a tawdry, intoxicated vision, full of strange performances, weird lights, queer music and druggy incenses, a darkened carnival apart from the real that is, despite its apparent transgressive qualities and wretchedness, “only playing”. References Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990. Ellis, Bill. Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media. Lexington: The UP of Kentucky, 2000. Hedman, Iwan, and Jan Alexandersson. Four Decades with Dennis Wheatley. DAST Dossier 1. Köping 1973. Huyssen, Andreas. After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1986. Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. London: Routledge, 1989. Huizinga, J. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. International Library of Sociology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949. Medway, Gareth J. The Lure of the Sinister: The Unnatural History of Satanism. New York: New York UP, 2001. “Pooter.” The Times 19 August 1969: 19. Punter, David. The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day. London: Longman, 1980. Schechner, Richard. Performance Theory. Revised and Expanded ed. New York: Routledge, 1988. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. The Coherence of Gothic Conventions. 1980. New York: Methuen, 1986. Seligman, Adam B, Robert P. Weller, Michael J. Puett and Bennett Simon. Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Thompson, G.R. Introduction. “Romanticism and the Gothic Imagination.” The Gothic Imagination: Essays in Dark Romanticism. Ed. G.R. Thompson. Pullman: Washington State UP, 1974. 1-10. Wheatley, Dennis. The Devil Rides Out. 1934. London: Mandarin, 1996.

While the television cooking genre has evolved in numerous ways to withstand competition and become a constant feature in television programming (Collins and College), it has been argued that audience demand for televisual cooking has always been high because of the daily importance of cooking (Hamada, “Multimedia Integration”). Early cooking shows were characterised by an instructional discourse, before quickly embracing an entertainment focus; modern cooking shows take on a more competitive, out of the kitchen focus (Collins and College). The genre has continued to evolve, with celebrity chefs and ordinary people embracing transmedia affordances to return to the instructional focus of the early cooking shows. While the television cooking show is recognised for its broad cultural impacts related to gender (Ouellette and Hay), cultural capital (Ibrahim; Oren), television formatting (Oren), and even communication itself (Matwick and Matwick), its role in the widespread adoption of television captions is significantly underexplored. Even the fact that a cooking show was the first ever program captioned on American television is almost completely unremarked within cooking show histories and literature.A Brief History of Captioning WorldwideWhen captions were first introduced on US television in the early 1970s, programmers were guided by the general principle to make the captioned program “accessible to every deaf viewer regardless of reading ability” (Jensema, McCann and Ramsey 284). However, there were no exact rules regarding captioning quality and captions did not reflect verbatim what was said onscreen. According to Jensema, McCann and Ramsey (285), less than verbatim captioning continued for many years because “deaf people were so delighted to have captions that they accepted almost anything thrown on the screen” (see also Newell 266 for a discussion of the UK context).While the benefits of captions for people who are D/deaf or hard of hearing were immediate, its commercial applications also became apparent. When the moral argument that people who were D/deaf or hard of hearing had a right to access television via captions proved unsuccessful in the fight for legislation, advocates lobbied the US Congress about the mainstream commercial benefits such as in education and the benefits for people learning English as a second language (Downey). Activist efforts and hard-won legal battles meant D/deaf and hard of hearing viewers can now expect closed captions on almost all television content. With legislation in place to determine the provision of captions, attention began to focus on their quality. D/deaf viewers are no longer just delighted to accept anything thrown on the screen and have begun to demand verbatim captioning. At the same time, market-based incentives are capturing the attention of television executives seeking to make money, and the widespread availability of verbatim captions has been recognised for its multimedia—and therefore commercial—applications. These include its capacity for information retrieval (Miura et al.; Agnihotri et al.) and for creative repurposing of television content (Blankinship et al.). Captions and transcripts have been identified as being of particular importance to augmenting the information provided in cooking shows (Miura et al.; Oh et al.).Early Captions in the US: Julia Child’s The French ChefJulia Child is indicative of the early period of the cooking genre (Collins and College)—she has been described as “the epitome of the TV chef” (ray 53) and is often credited for making cooking accessible to American audiences through her onscreen focus on normalising techniques that she promised could be mastered at home (ray). She is still recognised for her mastery of the genre, and for her capacity to entertain in a way that stood out from her contemporaries (Collins and College; ray).Julia Child’s The French Chef originally aired on the US publicly-funded Public Broadcasting System (PBS) affiliate WBGH from 1963–1973. The captioning of television also began in the 1960s, with educators creating the captions themselves, mainly for educational use in deaf schools (Downey 70). However, there soon came calls for public television to also be made accessible for the deaf and hard of hearing—the debate focused on equality and pushed for recognition that deaf people were culturally diverse (Downey 70).The PBS therefore began a trial of captioning programs (Downey 71). These would be “open captions”—characters which were positioned on the screen as part of the normal image for all viewers to see (Downey 71). The trial was designed to determine both the number of D/deaf and hard of hearing people viewing the program, as well as to test if non-D/deaf and hard of hearing viewers would watch a program which had captions (Downey 71). The French Chef was selected for captioning by WBGH because it was their most popular television show in the early 1970s and in 1972 eight episodes of The French Chef were aired using open—albeit inconsistent—captions (Downey 71; Jensema et al. 284).There were concerns from some broadcasters that openly captioned programs would drive away the “hearing majority” (Downey 71). However, there was no explicit study carried out in 1972 on the viewers of The French Chef to determine if this was the case because WBGH ran out of funds to research this further (Downey 71). Nevertheless, Jensema, McCann and Ramsey (284) note that WBGH did begin to re-broadcast ABC World News Tonight in the 1970s with open captions and that this was the only regularly captioned show at the time.Due to changes in technology and fears that not everyone wanted to see captions onscreen, television’s focus shifted from open captions to closed captioning in the 1980s. Captions became encoded, with viewers needing a decoder to be able to access them. However, the high cost of the decoders meant that many could not afford to buy them and adoption of the technology was slow (Youngblood and Lysaght 243; Downey 71). In 1979, the US government had set up the National Captioning Institute (NCI) with a mandate to develop and sell these decoders, and provide captioning services to the networks. This was initially government-funded but was designed to eventually be self-sufficient (Downey 73).PBS, ABC and NBC (but not CBS) had agreed to a trial (Downey 73). However, there was a reluctance on the part of broadcasters to pay to caption content when there was not enough evidence that the demand was high (Downey 73—74). The argument for the provision of captioned content therefore began to focus on the rights of all citizens to be able to access a public service. A complaint was lodged claiming that the Los Angeles station KCET, which was a PBS affiliate, did not provide captioned content that was available elsewhere (Downey 74). When Los Angeles PBS station KCET refused to air captioned episodes of The French Chef, the Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness (GLAD) picketed the station until the decision was reversed. GLAD then focused on legislation and used the Rehabilitation Act to argue that television was federally assisted and, by not providing captioned content, broadcasters were in violation of the Act (Downey 74).GLAD also used the 1934 Communications Act in their argument. This Act had firstly established the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and then assigned them the right to grant and renew broadcast licenses as long as those broadcasters served the ‘‘public interest, convenience, and necessity’’ (Michalik, cited in Downey 74). The FCC could, argued GLAD, therefore refuse to renew the licenses of broadcasters who did not air captioned content. However, rather than this argument working in their favour, the FCC instead changed its own procedures to avoid such legal actions in the future (Downey 75). As a result, although some stations began to voluntarily caption more content, it was not until 1996 that it became a legally mandated requirement with the introduction of the Telecommunications Act (Youngblood and Lysaght 244)—too late for The French Chef.My Kitchen Rules: Captioning BreachWhereas The French Chef presented instructional cooking programming from a kitchen set, more recently the food genre has moved away from the staged domestic kitchen set as an instructional space to use real-life domestic kitchens and more competitive multi-bench spaces. The Australian program MKR straddles this shift in the cooking genre with the first half of each season occurring in domestic settings and the second half in Iron Chef style studio competition (see Oren for a discussion of the influence of Iron Chef on contemporary cooking shows).All broadcast channels in Australia are mandated to caption 100 per cent of programs aired between 6am and midnight. However, the 2013 MKR Grand Final broadcast by Channel Seven Brisbane Pty Ltd and Channel Seven Melbourne Pty Ltd (Seven) failed to transmit 10 minutes of captions some 30 minutes into the 2-hour program. The ACMA received two complaints relating to this. The first complaint, received on 27 April 2013, the same evening as the program was broadcast, noted ‘[the D/deaf community] … should not have to miss out’ (ACMA, Report No. 3046 3). The second complaint, received on 30 April 2013, identified the crucial nature of the missing segment and its effect on viewers’ overall enjoyment of the program (ACMA, Report No. 3046 3).Seven explained that the relevant segment (approximately 10 per cent of the program) was missing from the captioning file, but that it had not appeared to be missing when Seven completed its usual captioning checks prior to broadcast (ACMA, Report No. 3046 4). The ACMA found that Seven had breached the conditions of their commercial television broadcasting licence by “failing to provide a captioning service for the program” (ACMA, Report No. 3046 12). The interruption of captioning was serious enough to constitute a breach due, in part, to the nature and characteristic of the program:the viewer is engaged in the momentum of the competitive process by being provided with an understanding of each of the competition stages; how the judges, guests and contestants interact; and their commentaries of the food and the cooking processes during those stages. (ACMA, Report No. 3046 6)These interactions have become a crucial part of the cooking genre, a genre often described as offering a way to acquire cultural capital via instructions in both cooking and ideological food preferences (Oren 31). Further, in relation to the uncaptioned MKR segment, ACMA acknowledged it would have been difficult to follow both the cooking process and the exchanges taking place between contestants (ACMA, Report No. 3046 8). ACMA considered these exchanges crucial to ‘a viewer’s understanding of, and secondly to their engagement with the different inter-related stages of the program’ (ACMA, Report No. 3046 7).An additional complaint was made with regards to the same program broadcast on Prime Television (Northern) Pty Ltd (Prime), a Seven Network affiliate. The complaint stated that the lack of captions was “Not good enough in prime time and for a show that is non-live in nature” (ACMA, Report No. 3124 3). Despite the fact that the ACMA found that “the fault arose from the affiliate, Seven, rather than from the licensee [Prime]”, Prime was also found to also have breached their licence conditions by failing to provide a captioning service (ACMA, Report No. 3124 12).The following year, Seven launched captions for their online catch-up television platform. Although this was a result of discussions with a complainant over the broader lack of captioned online television content, it was also a step that re-established Seven’s credentials as a leader in commercial television access. The 2015 season of MKR also featured their first partially-deaf contestant, Emilie Biggar.Mainstreaming Captions — Inter-Platform CooperationOver time, cooking shows on television have evolved from an informative style (The French Chef) to become more entertaining in their approach (MKR). As Oren identifies, this has seen a shift in the food genre “away from the traditional, instructional format and towards professionalism and competition” (Oren 25). The affordances of television itself as a visual medium has also been recognised as crucial in the popularity of this genre and its more recent transmedia turn. That is, following Joshua Meyrowitz’s medium theory regarding how different media can afford us different messages, televised cooking shows offer audiences stylised knowledge about food and cooking beyond the traditional cookbook (Oren; ray). In addition, cooking shows are taking their product beyond just television and increasing their inter-platform cooperation (Oren)—for example, MKR has a comprehensive companion website that viewers can visit to watch whole episodes, obtain full recipes, and view shopping lists. While this can be viewed as a modern take on Julia Child’s cookbook success, it must also be considered in the context of the increasing focus on multimedia approaches to cooking instructions (Hamada et al., Multimedia Integration; Cooking Navi; Oh et al.). Audiences today are more likely to attempt a recipe if they have seen it on television, and will use transmedia to download the recipe. As Oren explains:foodism’s ascent to popular culture provides the backdrop and motivation for the current explosion of food-themed formats that encourages audiences’ investment in their own expertise as critics, diners, foodies and even wanna-be professional chefs. FoodTV, in turn, feeds back into a web-powered, gastro-culture and critique-economy where appraisal outranks delight. (Oren 33)This explosion in popularity of the web-powered gastro culture Oren refers to has led to an increase in appetite for step by step, easy to access instructions. These are being delivered using captions. As a result of the legislation and activism described throughout this paper, captions are more widely available and, in many cases, now describe what is said onscreen verbatim. In addition, the mainstream commercial benefits and uses of captions are being explored. Captions have therefore moved from a specialist assistive technology for people who are D/deaf or hard of hearing to become recognised as an important resource for creative television viewers regardless of their hearing (Blankinship et al.). With captions becoming more accessible, accurate, financially viable, and mainstreamed, their potential as an additional television resource is of interest. As outlined above, within the cooking show genre—especially with its current multimedia turn and the demand for captioned recipe instructions (Hamada et al., “Multimedia Integration”, “Cooking Navi”; Oh et al.)—this is particularly pertinent.Hamada et al. identify captions as a useful technology to use in the increasingly popular educational, yet entertaining, cooking show genre as the required information—ingredient lists, instructions, recipes—is in high demand (Hamada et al., “Multimedia Integration” 658). They note that cooking shows often present information out of order, making them difficult to follow, particularly if a recipe must be sourced later from a website (Hamada et al., “Multimedia Integration” 658-59; Oh et al.). Each step in a recipe must be navigated and coordinated, particularly if multiple recipes are being completed at the same times (Hamada, et al., Cooking Navi) as is often the case on cooking shows such as MKR. Using captions as part of a software program to index cooking videos facilitates a number of search affordances for people wishing to replicate the recipe themselves. As Kyeong-Jin et al. explain:if food and recipe information are published as linked data with the scheme, it enables to search food recipe and annotate certain recipe by communities (sic). In addition, because of characteristics of linked data, information on food recipes can be connected to additional data source such as products for ingredients, and recipe websites can support users’ decision making in the cooking domain. (Oh et al. 2)The advantages of such a software program are many. For the audience there is easy access to desired information. For the number of commercial entities involved, this consumer desire facilitates endless marketing opportunities including product placement, increased ratings, and software development. Interesting, all of this falls outside the “usual” parameters of captions as purely an assistive device for a few, and facilitates the mainstreaming—and perhaps beginnings of acceptance—of captions.ConclusionCaptions are a vital accessibility feature for television viewers who are D/deaf or hard of hearing, not just from an informative or entertainment perspective but also to facilitate social inclusion for this culturally diverse group. The availability and quality of television captions has moved through three stages. These can be broadly summarised as early yet inconsistent captions, captions becoming more widely available and accurate—often as a direct result of activism and legislation—but not yet fully verbatim, and verbatim captions as adopted within mainstream software applications. This paper has situated these stages within the television cooking genre, a genre often remarked for its appeal towards inclusion and cultural capital.If television facilitates social inclusion, then food television offers vital cultural capital. While Julia Child’s The French Chef offered the first example of television captions via open captions in 1972, a lack of funding means we do not know how viewers (both hearing and not) actually received the program. However, at the time, captions that would be considered unacceptable today were received favourably (Jensema, McCann and Ramsey; Newell)—anything was deemed better than nothing. Increasingly, as the focus shifted to closed captioning and the cooking genre embraced a more competitive approach, viewers who required captions were no longer happy with missing or inconsistent captioning quality. The was particularly significant in Australia in 2013 when several viewers complained to ACMA that captions were missing from the finale of MKR. These captions provided more than vital cooking instructions—their lack prevented viewers from understanding conflict within the program. Following this breach, Seven became the only Australian commercial television station to offer captions on their web based catch-up platform. While this may have gone a long way to rehabilitate Seven amongst D/deaf and hard of hearing audiences, there is the potential too for commercial benefits. Caption technology is now being mainstreamed for use in cooking software applications developed from televised cooking shows. These allow viewers—both D/deaf and hearing—to access information in a completely new, and inclusive, way.ReferencesAgnihotri, Lalitha, et al. “Summarization of Video Programs Based on Closed Captions.” 4315 (2001): 599–607.Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). Investigation Report No. 3046. 2013. 26 Apr. 2017 <http://www.acma.gov.au/~/media/Diversity%20Localism%20and%20Accessibility/Investigation%20reports/Word%20document/3046%20My%20Kitchen%20Rules%20Grand%20Final%20docx.docx>.———. Investigation Report No. 3124. 2014. 26 Apr. 2017 <http://www.acma.gov.au/~/media/Diversity%20Localism%20and%20Accessibility/Investigation%20reports/Word%20document/3124%20NEN%20My%20Kitchen%20Rules%20docx.docx>.Blankinship, E., et al. “Closed Caption, Open Source.” BT Technology Journal 22.4 (2004): 151–59.Collins, Kathleen, and John Jay College. “TV Cooking Shows: The Evolution of a Genre”. Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture (7 May 2008). 14 May 2017 <http://www.flowjournal.org/2008/05/tv-cooking-shows-the-evolution-of-a-genre/>.Downey, Greg. “Constructing Closed-Captioning in the Public Interest: From Minority Media Accessibility to Mainstream Educational Technology.” The Journal of Policy, Regulation and Strategy for Telecommunications, Information and Media 9.2/3 (2007): 69–82. DOI: 10.1108/14636690710734670.Hamada, Reiko, et al. “Multimedia Integration for Cooking Video Indexing.” Advances in Multimedia Information Processing-PCM 2004 (2005): 657–64.Hamada, Reiko, et al. “Cooking Navi: Assistant for Daily Cooking in Kitchen.” Proceedings of the 13th Annual ACM International Conference on Multimedia. ACM.Ibrahim, Yasmin. “Food Porn and the Invitation to Gaze: Ephemeral Consumption and the Digital Spectacle.” International Journal of E-Politics (IJEP) 6.3 (2015): 1–12.Jensema, Carl J., Ralph McCann, and Scott Ramsey. “Closed-Captioned Television Presentation Speed and Vocabulary.” American Annals of the Deaf 141.4 (1996): 284–292.Matwick, Kelsi, and Keri Matwick. “Inquiry in Television Cooking Shows.” Discourse & Communication 9.3 (2015): 313–30.Meyrowitz, Joshua. No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.Miura, K., et al. “Automatic Generation of a Multimedia Encyclopedia from TV Programs by Using Closed Captions and Detecting Principal Video Objects.” Eighth IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia (2006): 873–80.Newell, A.F. “Teletext for the Deaf.” Electronics and Power 28.3 (1982): 263–66.Oh, K.J. et al. “Automatic Indexing of Cooking Video by Using Caption-Recipe Alignment.” 2014 International Conference on Behavioral, Economic, and Socio-Cultural Computing (BESC2014) (2014): 1–6.Oren, Tasha. “On the Line: Format, Cooking and Competition as Television Values.” Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies 8.2 (2013): 20–35.Ouellette, Laurie, and James Hay. “Makeover Television, Governmentality and the Good Citizen.” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 22.4 (2008): 471–84.ray, krishnendu. “Domesticating Cuisine: Food and Aesthetics on American Television.” Gastronomica 7.1 (2007): 50–63.Youngblood, Norman E., and Ryan Lysaght. “Accessibility and Use of Online Video Captions by Local Television News Websites.” Electronic News 9.4 (2015): 242–256.

A priori, buscamos descrever brevemente o contexto político-social e econômico brasileiro em que a obra a ser resenhada foi pensada e redigida, a fim de qualificar e destacar a importância deste trabalho enquanto referência atual, efetiva e fundamental ao enriquecimento dos diálogos acadêmicos daqueles pensadores que se preocupam em adotar uma postura epistemológica crítica com relação ao panorama observado e vivido no Brasil. Para tanto, compreendemos que, enquanto ordem e regime social simbólico e pragmático, o fascismo pode coexistir com o a democracia - quando este último termo é desconstruído e desconectado de sua base epistemológica - e, além disso, é apropriado pelos agentes das políticas liberais. Desta feita, em vez sacrificar e prostrar a democracia aos interesses e exigências do capitalismo global de maneira objetiva, este conceito é trivializado e subjugado diuturnamente - nas esferas políticas, na mídia e, até mesmo, na academia -, até o ponto em que este não se faz mais socialmente necessário e/ou compreensível em sua plenitude e, por fim, acaba sendo convertida exclusivamente aos desígnios do mainstream. Assim sendo, adentramos em um período histórico em que as sociedades podem ser híbridas, ou seja: politicamente democráticas (forma) e socialmente fascistas (conteúdo), frente às demandas e especificidades do mercado e seus operadores (SANTOS e MENEZES, 2009). Tal qual ocorre no Brasil contemporaneamente (TIBURI, 2015; SEVERIANO e DÓRIA, 2015). De fronte ao cenário supracitado, a obra intitulada: “A tolice da inteligência brasileira - ou como o País se deixa manipular pela elite” (272 págs.), teve sua primeira edição publicada pela Editora Leya, em 2015 e, fora escrita pelo professor e pesquisador: Jessé José Freire de Souza (Universidade Federal Fluminense). Este que possui graduação em Direito; mestrado e doutorado em Sociologia; três pós-doutorados e uma livre docência; escreveu e organizou 23 livros e mais de 100 artigos e capítulos de livros em diversas línguas, sobre temas diretamente ligados as áreas da teoria social, pensamento social brasileiro e estudos teórico/empíricos acerca da desigualdade das classes sociais no Brasil contemporâneo - e, que até o momento da ascensão e institucionalização do “novo governo” -, ocupava o cargo de Presidente do Ipea: Instituo de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada. Com este livro organizado em quatro partes e dezesseis capítulos - para além do prefácio -, a partir de um encadeamento escalar e cronológico impecável, Souza (2015), descreve, examina e conforma ideias e argumentos críticos que podem nos explicar a partir de uma abordagem teórica e histórica, as reais contradições que envolvem o Brasil e, de que forma classes sociais inteiras são feitas de tolas para que a reprodução de privilégios injustos sejam mantidos inalterados na condução dos rumos do Estado, suas instituições e suas das dinâmicas política, social e econômica, em proveito das elites - políticas e econômicas - instauradas no País. No prefácio da obra, o próprio autor desnuda os traços simbólicos e pragmáticos que a sociedade brasileira enfrenta ao longo da vida de maneira acrítica e compassiva, demostrando como se fundamentam e se alastram - de maneira livre - a ideologia e os interesses dos mais ricos do Brasil (1%), em detrimento da exploração do trabalho do restante da população (os 99% restantes). E, além disso, como o domínio das estruturas de poder, da informação e da inteligência, monopolizaram os recursos que deveriam ser de todos e, por conseguinte, abrem caminho para o empreendimento de uma violência simbólica, que permite a edificação de uma das sociedades mais desiguais e perversas do planeta (SOUZA, 2015). Já na primeira parte do livro, em seis capítulos, Souza (2015), disserta acerca da construção e fundamentação do ideário social brasileiro por parte de expoentes da História, da Antropologia e da Sociologia nacional, tais como: Gilberto Freyre, Roberto DaMatta, Sérgio Buarque de Hollanda e Raymundo Faoro - dentre outros -, questionando academicamente, de maneira clara e objetiva, quais são os contextos e os objetivos inconfessáveis dos referidos autores em erigir e, difundir reflexões pseudocríticas em que a sociedade brasileira é retratada por meio de argumentos ardilosos, em que há uma sistemática repetição das banalidades e axiomas de um senso comum permeado de preconceitos arraigados ao patrimonialismo historicamente vigente no controle do Estado brasileiro. Elucidando esta exposição, é impreterível se utilizar do próprio vocábulo de Souza (2015, p. 90): Nosso liberalismo hegemônico, na esfera pública, na grande imprensa conservador e, em boa parte do debate acadêmico é, certamente, uma das intepretações liberais mais mesquinhas, redutoras e superficiais que existe em escala planetária. Se fossemos completamente sinceros, teríamos de dizer que essa interpretação nada mais é, hoje em dia, que pura “violência simbólica”, sem nenhum aporte interpretativo efetivo e sem qualquer compromisso, seja com a verdade, seja com a dor e o sofrimento que ainda marcam, de modo insofismável, a maior parte da população brasileira. Também nesta parte do livro, Souza (2015), discute com seriedade, quais são as bases teórico-metodológicas e, além disso, quais são as perspectivas políticas, ideológicas e epistemológicas dos referidos autores - liberais conservadores -, acerca da formação e da organização da sociedade brasileira. Estabelecendo valorosos argumentos que situam nossas realidades antropológicas, institucionais e econômicas a mesma altura de qualquer outra sociedade humana e/ou país - tanto em pontos positivos, quanto em negativos. Reforçando suas ponderações sobre o quadro supracitado, mas, especificamente sobre a conjuntura atual no Brasil, Souza (2015, p. 11) indica que: Daí ser fundamental compreender como intelectuais e especialistas distorcem o mundo para tornar todo tipo de privilégio injusto em privilégio merecido (...). (...) Não basta aos endinheirados controlar todos os grandes jornais e redes de TV para legitimar seus próprios interesses. Hoje em dia esses interesses precisam ser justificados de modo que pareçam razoáveis a fim de convencer os que são feitos de tolos por essas falsas justificações. (...) criando uma ciência para seus interesses, como de fato construíram para o Brasil. Por conseguinte, na segunda parte do texto, em três matérias, Souza (2015), centra seus questionamentos e reflexões no aporte exclusivamente economicista da dimensão simbólica do capitalismo contemporâneo e, de que maneira esta abordagem se desdobra de maneira inequívoca, sobre o cotidiano da humanidade e - em especial -, dos brasileiros. Indicando como a partir desta perspectiva, todo comportamento individual/social passa a ser induzido e traduzido por meio de estímulos econômicos, tendo, deste modo, todas as qualidades humanas reduzidas ao potencial das quantidades de “coisas úteis” a serem consumidas. Nesse sentido, o autor do livro traça uma linha de pensamento em que desenvolve uma complexa narrativa em que observa e descreve como esta abordagem economicista - ao longo do tempo -, naturaliza as deformações, distorções e injustiças sociais que acometem o Brasil e como, por conseguinte, estas são secundarizadas nos discursos e nas práticas dos indivíduos, das instituições e dos governos. Criando e recriando um cenário de racismo de classe e, em igual medida, estabelecendo que todo mal - político, administrativo e econômico - é derivado da corrupção instalada - exclusivamente -, no Estado. Ignorando e negando as responsabilidades da classe burguesa e da iniciativa privada para formatação e reforço deste drástico panorama em que vivemos. Ainda no segundo segmento de seu livro, Souza (2015), traz consigo os argumentos e a construção teórica de Florestan Fernandes e, por sua vez, os questiona de maneira franca. Levantando dúvidas sobre a generalização e validade das ponderações e adágios feitos por Fernandes acerca das realidade e totalidade dos estigmas referentes e inerentes à sociedade brasileira. Por sua vez, na terceira fração de seu livro, em quatro tópicos, Souza (2015), discute como o alinhamento espontâneo a uma ideologia opressiva a diversidade brasileira, acaba por enviesar - até mesmo - as perspectivas e análises acadêmicas sobre a situação do Brasil. Visto como é grande a capacidade de dominação ideológica, os debates científicos passam a ser colonizados em seus próprios termos e conceitos, impedindo os pensadores de perceber as diferenças na estruturação dos argumentos sobre as análises e julgamentos do contexto social brasileiro. Além disso, o autor ainda descreve como esta perspectiva estreita afeta - em igual medida -, o cotidiano da população, uma vez que se estabelece uma forte influência e presença dos ideais capitalistas que fundamentam hierarquias valorativas e segregativas, a partir de mecanismos ocultos e opacos, que por fim, buscam ativamente estabelecer uma violência simbólica - naturalizada - no contato entre os extratos sociais, conformando um quadro de estamento socioeconômico e cultural internamente no País. Especificamente, em escala internacional, Souza (2015), indica que: apesar de não ser verdade. A compreensão, a construção e o reforço do status quo das sociedades avançadas e a submissão das periféricas, acabam por prosseguir sob a mesma lógica de dominação ideológica intrínseca as sociedades locais, uma vez que existe uma série de pressupostos não explicitados que acabam por viciar os exames sobre as estruturas e normas de funcionamento qualitativamente distintas em relação à formação - social, econômica, cultural, religiosa, etc. -, de cada Estado. Criando e reproduzindo perniciosos argumentos políticos, midiáticos e pseudocientíficos que baseiam e reforçam e perpetuam a condição econômica e moral de cada Estado - evidentemente, a partir de uma perspectiva exclusivamente Ocidental, Eurocêntrica e/ou em prol de países como os Estados Unidos, que subjugam e corroem as potencialidades de países de fora deste eixo, tais como o Brasil, por exemplo. Idealizando um cenário que passa a ser inatingível frente aos “oportunos” condicionantes e prerrogativas inatos a cada país, segundo este ponto de vista. Diante desta paisagem em tela, Souza (2015, p. 171), adverte: Essa dificuldade se reproduz na consideração apenas do aspecto “material” do capitalismo, que se expandiu praticamente para todas as partes do globo, e no amesquinhamento da dimensão simbólica à dimensão, quase sempre eivada de “violência simbólica”, da “cultura nacional” ou do “mito nacional”. Como a cultura nacional reflete, pelo menos em grande medida - com dizia com razão o Marx da ideologia alemã -, os interesses particulares das classes dominantes transformados em interesses de todo corpo social, estamos confrontando com a distorção da realidade quanto com sua fragmentação e redução ao elemento “material” na dimensão da comparação entre sociedades”. Na quarta e derradeira parte desta obra, Souza (2015), estabelece suas reflexões acerca de três importantes tópicos: I) sobre a cegueira do debate brasileiro sobre as classes sociais e a pobreza do debate político; II) as manifestações de junho (2013) e a cegueira política das classes; III) o golpismo de ontem e de hoje: considerações sobre o momento atual. Sobre o item I, é relevante destacar que a união entre economicismo e culturalismo conservador turva a análise e plena compreensão sobre como se dá a estruturação social, que implica a consideração de capitais que não se restringem ao econômico, mas, sobretudo, a forma velada como as classes sociais são produzidas e reproduzidas historicamente no Brasil. Souza (2015, p. 236): (...) as classes do privilégio não dispõem apenas dos capitais adequados para vencer na disputa social por recursos escassos, possuem também a “crença em si mesmo”, produto de uma autoconfiança de classe, tão necessária para enfrentar todas as inevitáveis intempéries (...) e, poder usufruir do “reconhecimento social” dos outros como algo tão natural quanto respirar. As classes populares, ao contrário, não dispõem de nenhum dos privilégios de nascimento das classes média e alta. A socialização familiar é muitas vezes disruptiva, a escola é pior e muitas vezes consegue incutir com sucesso insegurança na própria capacidade, os exemplos bem-sucedidos na família são muito mais escassos, quando existentes, quase todos necessitam trabalhar muito cedo e não dispõem de tempo para os estudos, o alcoolismo, fruto do desespero com a vida, ou o abuso sexual sistemático, são também “sobrerrepresentados” nas classes populares. E, por conseguinte, como esta situação avassaladora é ignorada sistematicamente pelas esferas políticas e, principalmente, pela mídia - que naturaliza estas pré-condições e, partem delas, para estabelecer suas interpretações e considerações -, ao longo do tempo, vão sendo apresentados casos de corrupção no Estado, crises de representação e no sistema político e, crises econômicas por conta do “descontrole” dos gastos do governo. Entretanto, em hipótese alguma, o problema de fundo é abordado de maneira clara e objetiva: o abismo socioeconômico dentre os estratos sociais do Brasil, com suas causas, suas consequências e, principalmente, sobre as formas de mitigação deste horizonte. A propósito do item II, Souza (2015), versa acerca da grande fraude encampada e reforçada pela mídia golpista com relação às manifestações de junho de 2013, em que a impressão a ser reforçada ao mundo todo, é a de que o Estado brasileiro é o vilão e a sociedade local - engajada, politizada, patriota e classe média/alta -, é o mocinho desta história de conto de fadas para adultos ingênuos e infantilizados. Entretanto, quem - por fim -, ganhou muito com as reivindicações que clamavam pelo fim da corrupção e pela mudança nos rumos da economia e política da nação, fora justamente às forças mais liberais conservadoras do País - justamente, o monstro a ser combatido. Com a propagação - via redes sociais da internet e, os chamados e apelos intermitentes da mídia - a instauração deste exercício de “democracia” e “participação popular”, ao longo de todo território nacional, a classe média acabou por distorcer as demandas sociais legitimas e, garantiu na pauta de reivindicações das manifestações, a exclusividade de seus interesses - ocultando de maneira inconfessável -, seus privilégios injustos e excludentes. Desta forma, este segmento social privilegiado garante de sobremaneira uma boa imagem, reforçando seus direitos a obter prestígio, reconhecimento e melhores salários e, além disso, a culpar as vítimas, de um processo social que torna invisível a injustiça - a exploração, a miséria e o sofrimento diário -, como se fosse possível escolher esta condição de pobreza e humilhação. Souza (2015, p. 241), ainda completa sua reflexão indicando que: (...) o fato de que a dominação social no Brasil se enfeita de outros atributos que não existem em outros lugares. Aqui, afinal, é o País em que a classe média “tira onda” de revolucionária, de agente de mudança e de lutadora por um “Brasil melhor”. Entretanto, o insucesso desta ardilosa campanha se deu com o resultado inegável das eleições presidenciais de 2014 - vencidas de maneira legítima e democrática pelo partido da situação. Todavia, este momento histórico, se consolidou como sendo o estopim da indignação das classes políticas conservadoras que lograram, inclusive, persuadir e contaminar parte importante das classes trabalhadoras ascendentes com seu discurso draconiano, incensadas pela mídia, que a cada dia apresentava um novo escândalo do “Petrolão”, envolvendo - exclusivamente e seletivamente - agentes do governo. A solução, segundo os operadores e intelectuais do apartheid conservador, é o enlace lascivo aos desígnios do capital e do mercado, com efusivos elogios as práticas da gestão enxuta, do Estado mínimo, do superávit primário, da “racionalização” dos gastos públicos, etc. Este panorama aliado à ausência crônica de debates sérios sobre a realidade brasileira, seja na academia, nos espaços públicos, na esfera política ou na mídia, torna um País tão rico e diverso como é o Brasil, com sua grande população, em uma multidão de tolos manipulados e incapazes de perceber os quais são os perigos que os assolam. Essa é uma cegueira que condena milhares de pessoas a uma vida indigna e, em igual medida, sentencia toda sua sociedade a uma reflexão amesquinhada e a uma vida apequenada em todas as suas dimensões (SOUZA, 2015). Acerca do capítulo III, Souza (2015), anota suas reflexões críticas a respeito da edificação - pari passu - do impeachment (golpe), sofrido pela presidenta eleita democraticamente pela maioria dos cidadãos brasileiros votantes - ao seu segundo mandato consecutivo: Dilma Roussef. O autor ainda destaca que ao longo de todo ano de 2015 - e, parte de 2016 -, a presidenta, sua equipe de governo e figuras de prestigio e relevância política do Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), tais como o ex-presidente: Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, foram violentamente e covardemente agredidos pela mídia e pela oposição - historicamente -, territorializada no Congresso Nacional. Sob suas exclusivas responsabilidades, todo o cômputo relativo à corrupção da esfera política brasileira foram-lhes arbitrariamente atribuídas, sem qualquer oportunidade de defesa pública e/ou jurídica. Neste caso, para além da seletividade e parcialidade que todo este maligno processo fora retratado e conduzido, com a finalidade de denegrir a reputação e, principalmente, a ideologia do PT e, dos demais partidos de “esquerda” no Brasil. Ainda se logra - a todo custo - incinerar a imagem, a representatividade e o carisma de “Lula”, de forma a inviabilizar sua candidatura - e, possível reeleição - nas próximas eleições presidenciais de 2018. Adicionalmente, Souza (2015), ainda destaca que, esta crise política criada e manipulada midiaticamente é mais uma comprovação empírica dos argumentos listados em seu livro: o tema da corrupção só pode ser utilizado para enganar e manipular a população, visto como sua definição e aplicação são arbitrárias, sendo utilizado de acordo com o interesse de quem o utiliza como forma de ataque. Nesse sentido, o “moralismo” relativo à classe média no Brasil sempre foi extremamente seletivo e antidemocrático ao mesmo tempo. Sua seletividade implica em ver o mal sempre fora de si e, nunca em suas ações cotidianas de exploração e, seu caráter antidemocrático ficou evidentemente estampado nas manifestações dos “coxinhas politizados” - ocorridas ao longo de 2015/16 -, em que a pauta de reivindicação refletia apenas uma virtude idealizada mas, que fora apresentada por meio de brados retumbantes como sendo uma vontade geral, que se erigia como “apoio popular” aos interesses das elites conservadoras do País - uma perspectiva reducionista do problema e, ainda por cima, uma ilusão autoritária que traveste de “ordem e progresso” uma caminhada acelerada em direção ao fascismo (SOUZA, 2015). Neste aspecto, a imprensa se estabeleceu como player fundamental, posto que legitimou e glorificou o assalto ao princípio basal da soberania do voto popular em um regime dito como sendo: democrático e representativo. De tal modo, Souza (2015, p 259), lembra que: O jogo da pseudodemocracia moderna brasileira se armou: aproveitando o moralismo de fachada dos setores médios, baseados no ressentimento contra os de cima (sempre corruptos, especialmente no Estado) e o ódio contra os de baixo, destinado a ser astuciosamente insuflado sempre que a imprensa, “neutra como o dinheiro”, visse seus interesses na ordem para poucos de algum modo ameaçado. Todavia, em comparação com o golpe de 1964 e a instauração do regime militar no Brasil, poucos vêm - ou, preferem não ver - a similaridade. Uma vez que as discussões atuais estão presas à conjuntura, são pobres de referencial teórico metodológico e, sobretudo, se seguem sem qualquer perspectiva histórica. Entretanto, Souza (2015), observa que a única mutação realmente efetiva ocorrida neste processo contemporâneo em relação ao do passado próximo, é a figura instituída como sendo o bastião da moralidade, da ordem, da eficiência e do direito, do herói justiceiro que trabalha incansavelmente como guardião da ordem, para incorporar os anseios gerais da sociedade sobre o mal, perfazendo suas ações em um nível acima daqueles conquistados pelos agentes da esfera política contaminada do Brasil. Os candidatos perfeitos para ocupar o hiato deixado pelos militares - por conta de sua truculência e, em igual medida, dos atos de corrupção -, vêm ao mundo, derivado do aparato dos órgãos de controle do governo e do judiciário criados pela Constituição de 1988, tais como: Polícia Federal (PF); Ministério Público (MP); Tribunal de Contas da União ( TCU), que recrutam e abrigam seus quadros, prioritariamente, nas fileiras da classe média conservadora e moralista (SEVERIANO e DÓRIA, 2015; SOUZA, 2015). Em seu último parágrafo, Souza (2015, p. 261), reflete e considera que: Mudam-se as vestes e as fantasias, “moderniza-se” o golpe, substitui-se o argumento das armas pelo argumento “pseudo-jurídico”, amplia-se a aparência de “neutralidade”, sai de cena a baioneta e entra no palco da ópera bufa a toga arrogante e arcaica do operador jurídico, mas preserva-se o principal: quem continua mandando de verdade em toda a encenação do teatro de marionetes são os mesmo 1% que controlam a riqueza, o poder e instrumentalizam a informação a seu bel-prazer. Os outros 99% ou são manipulados diretamente, com a classe média “coxinha”, ou assistem de longe, bestializados, a um espetáculo o qual, como sempre, vão ter que pagar sem participar do banquete. Por fim, esta é uma obra excepcional, que subsidia de sobremaneira a compreensão crítica da composição da sociedade brasileira e, em igual medida, descreve e analisa os fundamentos históricos e conceituais da atual crise política nacional - e, por conseguinte: o golpe. Por sua vez, este livro deve ser lido com avidez e estudado com atenção e, só posteriormente, colocado a descansar na estante, bem ao lado de importantes autores e pensadores - clássicos e contemporâneos -, desta classe literária (ciência social crítica) e opção epistemológica. E, cabe destacar que este livro versa sobre um cenário contemporâneo e, extremamente, tangível. Desta forma, as reflexões contidas nele podem e devem ser utilizadas como sendo fonte para reconstrução da realidade a partir de pensamentos e intervenções inteligentes e equilibradas no cenário brasileiro (SOUZA, 2015).

Introduction The accelerometer seems, at first, both advanced and dated, both too complex and not complex enough. It sits in our video game controllers and our smartphones allowing us to move beyond mere button presses into immersive experiences where the motion of the hand is directly translated into the motion on the screen, where our flesh is transformed into the flesh of a superhero. Or at least that was the promise in 2005. Since then, motion control has moved from a promised revitalization of the video game industry to a not-quite-good-enough gimmick that all games use but none use well. Rogers describes the diffusion of innovation, as an invention or technology comes to market, in five phases: First, innovators will take risks with a new invention. Second, early adopters will establish a market and lead opinion. Third, the early majority shows that the product has wide appeal and application. Fourth, the late majority adopt the technology only after their skepticism has been allayed. Finally the laggards adopt the technology only when no other options are present (62). Not every technology makes it through the diffusion, however, and there are many who have never warmed to the accelerometer-controlled video game. Once an innovation has moved into the mainstream, additional waves of innovation may take place, when innovators or early adopters may find new uses for existing technology, and bring these uses into the majority. This is the case with the accelerometer that began as an airbag trigger and today is used for measuring and augmenting human motion, from dance to health (Walter 84). In many ways, gestural control of video games, an augmentation technology, was an interlude in the advancement of motion control. History In the early 1920s, bulky proofs-of-concept were produced that manipulated electrical voltage levels based on the movement of a probe, many related to early pressure or force sensors. The relationships between pressure, force, velocity and acceleration are well understood, but development of a tool that could measure one and infer the others was a many-fronted activity. Each of these individual sensors has its own specific application and many are still in use today, as pressure triggers, reaction devices, or other sensor-based interactivity, such as video games (Latulipe et al. 2995) and dance (Chu et al. 184). Over the years, the probes and devices became smaller and more accurate, and eventually migrated to the semiconductor, allowing the measurement of acceleration to take place within an almost inconsequential form-factor. Today, accelerometer chips are in many consumer devices and athletes wear battery-powered wireless accelerometer bracelets that report their every movement in real-time, a concept unimaginable only 20 years ago. One of the significant initial uses for accelerometers was as a sensor for the deployment of airbags in automobiles (Varat and Husher 1). The sensor was placed in the front bumper, detecting quick changes in speed that would indicate a crash. The system was a significant advance in the safety of automobiles, and followed Rogers’ diffusion through to the point where all new cars have airbags as a standard component. Airbags, and the accelerometers which allow them to function fast enough to save lives, are a ubiquitous, commoditized technology that most people take for granted, and served as the primary motivating factor for the mass-production of silicon-based accelerometer chips. On 14 September 2005, a device was introduced which would fundamentally alter the principal market for accelerometer microchips. The accelerometer was the ADXL335, a small, low-power, 3-Axis device capable of measuring up to 3g (1g is the acceleration due to gravity), and the device that used this accelerometer was the Wii remote, also called the Wiimote. Developed by Nintendo and its holding companies, the Wii remote was to be a defining feature of Nintendo’s 7th-generation video game console, in direct competition with the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. The Wii remote was so successful that both Microsoft and Sony added motion control to their platforms, in the form of the accelerometer-based “dual shock” controller for the Playstation, and later the Playstation Move controller; as well as an integrated accelerometer in the Xbox 360 controller and the later release of the Microsoft Kinect 3D motion sensing camera. Simultaneously, computer manufacturing companies saw a different, more pedantic use of the accelerometer. The primary storage medium in most computers today is the Hard Disk Drive (HDD), a set of spinning platters of electro-magnetically stored information. Much like a record player, the HDD contains a “head” which sweeps back and forth across the platter, reading and writing data. As computers changed from desktops to laptops, people moved their computers more often, and a problem arose. If the HDD inside a laptop was active when the laptop was moved, the read head might touch the surface of the disk, damaging the HDD and destroying information. Two solutions were implemented: vibration dampening in the manufacturing process, and the use of an accelerometer to detect motion. When the laptop is bumped, or dropped, the hard disk will sense the motion and immediately park the head, saving the disk and the valuable data inside. As a consequence of laptop computers and Wii remotes using accelerometers, the market for these devices began to swing from their use within car airbag systems toward their use in computer systems. And with an accelerometer in every computer, it wasn’t long before clever programmers began to make use of the information coming from the accelerometer for more than just protecting the hard drive. Programs began to appear that would use the accelerometer within a laptop to “lock” it when the user was away, invoking a loud noise like a car alarm to alert passers-by to any potential theft. Other programmers began to use the accelerometer as a gaming input, and this was the beginning of gesture control and the augmentation of human motion. Like laptops, most smartphones and tablets today have accelerometers included among their sensor suite (Brezmes et al. 796). These accelerometers strictly a user-interface tool, allowing the phone to re-orient its interface based on how the user is holding it, and allowing the user to play games and track health information using the phone. Many other consumer electronic devices use accelerometers, such as digital cameras for image stabilization and landscape/portrait orientation. Allowing a device to know its relative orientation and motion provides a wide range of augmentation possibilities. The Language of Measuring Motion When studying accelerometers, their function, and applications, a critical first step is to examine the language used to describe these devices. As the name implies, the accelerometer is a device which measures acceleration, however, our everyday connotation of this term is problematic at best. In colloquial language, we say “accelerate” when we mean “speed up”, but this is, in fact, two connotations removed from the physical property being measured by the device, and we must unwrap these layers of meaning before we can understand what is being measured. Physicists use the term “accelerate” to mean any change in velocity. It is worth reminding ourselves that velocity (to the physicists) is actually a pair of quantities: a speed coupled with a direction. Given this definition, when an object changes velocity (accelerates), it can be changing its speed, its direction, or both. So a car can be said to be accelerating when speeding up, slowing down, or even turning while maintaining a speed. This is why the accelerometer could be used as an airbag sensor in the first place. The airbags should deploy when a car suddenly changes velocity in any direction, including getting faster (due to being hit from behind), getting slower (from a front impact crash) or changing direction (being hit from the side). It is because of this ability to measure changes in velocity that accelerometers have come into common usage for laptop drop sensors and video game motion controllers. But even this understanding of accelerometers is incomplete. Because of the way that accelerometers are constructed, they actually measure “proper acceleration” within the context of a relativistic frame of reference. Discussing general relativity is beyond the scope of this paper, but it is sufficient to describe a relativistic frame of reference as one in which no forces are felt. A familiar example is being in orbit around the planet, when astronauts (and their equipment) float freely in space. A state of “free-fall” is one in which no forces are felt, and this is the only situation in which an accelerometer reads 0 acceleration. Since most of us are not in free-fall most of the time, any accelerometers in devices in normal use do not experience 0 proper acceleration, even when apparently sitting still. This is, of course, because of the force due to gravity. An accelerometer sitting on a table experiences 1g of force from the table, acting against the gravitational acceleration. This non-zero reading for a stationary object is the reason that accelerometers can serve a second (and, today, much more common) use: measuring orientation with respect to gravity. Gravity and Tilt Accelerometers typically measure forces with respect to three linear dimensions, labeled x, y, and z. These three directions orient along the axes of the accelerometer chip itself, with x and y normally orienting along the long faces of the device, and the z direction often pointing through the face of the device. Relative motion within a gravity field can easily be inferred assuming that the only force acting on the device is gravity. In this case, the single force is distributed among the three axes depending on the orientation of the device. This is how personal smartphones and video game controllers are able to use “tilt” control. When held in a natural position, the software extracts the relative value on all three axes and uses that as a reference point. When the user tilts the device, the new direction of the gravitational acceleration is then compared to the reference value and used to infer the tilt. This can be done hundreds of times a second and can be used to control and augment any aspect of the user experience. If, however, gravity is not the only force present, it becomes more difficult to infer orientation. Another common use for accelerometers is to measure physical activity like walking steps. In this case, it is the forces on the accelerometer from each footfall that are interpreted to measure fitness features. Tilt is unreliable in this circumstance because both gravity and the forces from the footfall are measured by the accelerometer, and it is impossible to separate the two forces from a single measurement. Velocity and Position A second common assumption with accelerometers is that since they can measure acceleration (rate of change of velocity), it should be possible to infer the velocity. If the device begins at rest, then any measured acceleration can be interpreted as changes to the velocity in some direction, thus inferring the new velocity. Although this is theoretically possible, real-world factors come in to play which prevent this from being realized. First, the assumption of beginning from a state of rest is not always reasonable. Further, if we don’t know whether the device is moving or not, knowing its acceleration at any moment will not help us to determine it’s new speed or position. The most important real-world problem, however, is that accelerometers typically show small variations even when the object is at rest. This is because of inaccuracies in the way that the accelerometer itself is interpreted. In normal operation, these small changes are ignored, but when trying to infer velocity or position, these little errors will quickly add up to the point where any inferred velocity or position would be unreliable. A common solution to these problems is in the combination of devices. Many new smartphones combine an accelerometer and a gyroscopes (a device which measures changes in rotational inertia) to provide a sensing system known as an IMU (Inertial measurement unit), which makes the readings from each more reliable. In this case, the gyroscope can be used to directly measure tilt (instead of inferring it from gravity) and this tilt information can be subtracted from the accelerometer reading to separate out the motion of the device from the force of gravity. Augmentation Applications in Health, Gaming, and Art Accelerometer-based devices have been used extensively in healthcare (Ward et al. 582), either using the accelerometer within a smartphone worn in the pocket (Yoshioka et al. 502) or using a standalone accelerometer device such as a wristband or shoe tab (Paradiso and Hu 165). In many cases, these devices have been used to measure specific activity such as swimming, gait (Henriksen et al. 288), and muscular activity (Thompson and Bemben 897), as well as general activity for tracking health (Troiano et al. 181), both in children (Stone et al. 136) and the elderly (Davis and Fox 581). These simple measurements are the first step in allowing athletes to modify their performance based on past activity. In the past, athletes would pour over recorded video to analyze and improve their performance, but with accelerometer devices, they can receive feedback in real time and modify their own behaviour based on these measurements. This augmentation is a competitive advantage but could be seen as unfair considering the current non-equal access to computer and electronic technology, i.e. the digital divide (Buente and Robbin 1743). When video games were augmented with motion controls, many assumed that this would have a positive impact on health. Physical activity in children is a common concern (Treuth et al. 1259), and there was a hope that if children had to move to play games, an activity that used to be considered a problem for health could be turned into an opportunity (Mellecker et al. 343). Unfortunately, the impact of children playing motion controlled video games has been less than successful. Although fitness games have been created, it is relatively easy to figure out how to activate controls with the least possible motion, thereby nullifying any potential benefit. One of the most interesting applications of accelerometers, in the context of this paper, is the application to dance-based video games (Brezmes et al. 796). In these systems, participants wear devices originally intended for health tracking in order to increase the sensitivity and control options for dance. This has evolved both from the use of accelerometers for gestural control in video games and for measuring and augmenting sport. Researchers and artists have also recently used accelerometers to augment dance systems in many ways (Latulipe et al. 2995) including combining multiple sensors (Yang et al. 121), as discussed above. Conclusions Although more and more people are using accelerometers in their research and art practice, it is significant that there is a lack of widespread knowledge about how the devices actually work. This can be seen in the many art installations and sports research studies that do not take full advantage of the capabilities of the accelerometer, or infer information or data that is unreliable because of the way that accelerometers behave. This lack of understanding of accelerometers also serves to limit the increased utilization of this powerful device, specifically in the context of augmentation tools. Being able to detect, analyze and interpret the motion of a body part has significant applications in augmentation that are only starting to be realized. The history of accelerometers is interesting and varied, and it is worthwhile, when exploring new ideas for applications of accelerometers, to be fully aware of the previous uses, current trends and technical limitations. It is clear that applications of accelerometers to the measurement of human motion are increasing, and that many new opportunities exist, especially in the application of combinations of sensors and new software techniques. The real novelty, however, will come from researchers and artists using accelerometers and sensors in novel and unusual ways. References Brezmes, Tomas, Juan-Luis Gorricho, and Josep Cotrina. “Activity Recognition from Accelerometer Data on a Mobile Phone.” In Distributed Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Bioinformatics, Soft Computing, and Ambient Assisted Living. Springer, 2009. Buente, Wayne, and Alice Robbin. “Trends in Internet Information Behavior, 2000-2004.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 59.11 (2008).Chu, Narisa N.Y., Chang-Ming Yang, and Chih-Chung Wu. “Game Interface Using Digital Textile Sensors, Accelerometer and Gyroscope.” IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics 58.2 (2012): 184-189. Davis, Mark G., and Kenneth R. Fox. “Physical Activity Patterns Assessed by Accelerometry in Older People.” European Journal of Applied Physiology 100.5 (2007): 581-589.Hagstromer, Maria, Pekka Oja, and Michael Sjostrom. “Physical Activity and Inactivity in an Adult Population Assessed by Accelerometry.” Medical Science and Sports Exercise. 39.9 (2007): 1502-08. Henriksen, Marius, H. Lund, R. Moe-Nilssen, H. Bliddal, and B. Danneskiod-Samsøe. “Test–Retest Reliability of Trunk Accelerometric Gait Analysis.” Gait & Posture 19.3 (2004): 288-297. Latulipe, Celine, David Wilson, Sybil Huskey, Melissa Word, Arthur Carroll, Erin Carroll, Berto Gonzalez, Vikash Singh, Mike Wirth, and Danielle Lottridge. “Exploring the Design Space in Technology-Augmented Dance.” In CHI’10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2010. Mellecker, Robin R., Lorraine Lanningham-Foster, James A. Levine, and Alison M. McManus. “Energy Intake during Activity Enhanced Video Game Play.” Appetite 55.2 (2010): 343-347. Paradiso, Joseph A., and Eric Hu. “Expressive Footwear for Computer-Augmented Dance Performance.” In First International Symposium on Wearable Computers. IEEE, 1997. Rogers, Everett M. Diffusion of Innovations. New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962. Stone, Michelle R., Ann V. Rowlands, and Roger G. Eston. "Relationships between Accelerometer-Assessed Physical Activity and Health in Children: Impact of the Activity-Intensity Classification Method" The Free Library 1 Mar. 2009. Thompson, Christian J., and Michael G. Bemben. “Reliability and Comparability of the Accelerometer as a Measure of Muscular Power.” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. 31.6 (1999): 897-902.Treuth, Margarita S., Kathryn Schmitz, Diane J. Catellier, Robert G. McMurray, David M. Murray, M. Joao Almeida, Scott Going, James E. Norman, and Russell Pate. “Defining Accelerometer Thresholds for Activity Intensities in Adolescent Girls.” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 36.7 (2004):1259-1266Troiano, Richard P., David Berrigan, Kevin W. Dodd, Louise C. Masse, Timothy Tilert, Margaret McDowell, et al. “Physical Activity in the United States Measured by Accelerometer.” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 40.1 (2008):181-88. Varat, Michael S., and Stein E. Husher. “Vehicle Impact Response Analysis through the Use of Accelerometer Data.” In SAE World Congress, 2000. Walter, Patrick L. “The History of the Accelerometer”. Sound and Vibration (Mar. 1997): 16-22. Ward, Dianne S., Kelly R. Evenson, Amber Vaughn, Anne Brown Rodgers, Richard P. Troiano, et al. “Accelerometer Use in Physical Activity: Best Practices and Research Recommendations.” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 37.11 (2005): S582-8. Yang, Chang-Ming, Jwu-Sheng Hu, Ching-Wen Yang, Chih-Chung Wu, and Narisa Chu. “Dancing Game by Digital Textile Sensor, Accelerometer and Gyroscope.” In IEEE International Games Innovation Conference. IEEE, 2011.Yoshioka, M., M. Ayabe, T. Yahiro, H. Higuchi, Y. Higaki, J. St-Amand, H. Miyazaki, Y. Yoshitake, M. Shindo, and H. Tanaka. “Long-Period Accelerometer Monitoring Shows the Role of Physical Activity in Overweight and Obesity.” International Journal of Obesity 29.5 (2005): 502-508.

Introduction In this article, we hypothesise how mainstream media coverage can promote the spread of disinformation about Covid-19. Mainstream media are often discussed as opposed to disinformation (Glasser; Benkler et al.). While the disinformation phenomenon is related to the intentional production and spread of misleading and false information to influence public opinion (Fallis; Benkler et al.), mainstream media news is expected to be based on facts and investigation and focussed on values such as authenticity, accountability, and autonomy (Hayes et al.). However, journalists might contribute to the spread of disinformation when they skip some stage of information processing and reproduce false or misleading information (Himma-Kadakas). Besides, even when the purpose of the news is to correct disinformation, media coverage might contribute to its dissemination by amplifying it (Tsfati et al.). This could be particularly problematic in the context of social media, as users often just read headlines while scrolling through their timelines (Newman et al.; Ofcom). Thus, some users might share news from the mainstream media to legitimate disinformation about Covid-19. The pandemic creates a delicate context, as journalists are often pressured to produce more information and, therefore, are more susceptible to errors. In this research, we focussed on the hypothesis that legitimate news can contribute to the spread of disinformation on social media through headlines that reinforce disinformation discourses, even though the actual piece may frame the story differently. The research questions that guide this research are: are URLs with headlines that reinforce disinformation discourses and other mainstream media links shared into the same Facebook groups? Are the headlines that support disinformation discourses shared by Facebook users to reinforce disinformation narratives? As a case study, we look at the Brazilian disinformation context on Covid-19. The discussion about the disease in the country has been highly polarised and politically framed, often with government agents and scientists disputing the truth about facts on the disease (Araújo and Oliveira; Recuero and Soares; Recuero et al.). Particularly, the social media ecosystem seems to play an important role in these disputes, as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters use it as a key channel to spread disinformation about the virus (Lisboa et al.; Soares et al.). We use data from public groups on Facebook collected through CrowdTangle and a combination of social network analysis and content analysis to analyse the spread and the content of URLs and posts. Theoretical Background Disinformation has been central to the Covid-19 “infodemic”, created by the overabundance of information about the pandemic, which makes it hard for people to find reliable guidance and exacerbates the outbreak (Tangcharoensathien et al.). We consider disinformation as distorted, manipulated, or false information intentionally created to mislead someone (Fallis; Benkler et al.). Disinformation is often used to strengthen radical political ideologies (Benkler et al.). Around the world, political actors politically framed the discussion about the pandemic, which created a polarised public debate about Covid-19 (Allcott et al., Gruzd and Mai; Recuero and Soares). On social media, contexts of polarisation between two different political views often present opposed narratives about the same fact that dispute public attention (Soares et al.). This polarisation creates a suitable environment for disinformation to thrive (Benkler et al.) The polarised discussions are often associated with the idea of “bubbles”, as the different political groups tend to share and legitimate only discourses that are aligned with the group's ideological views. Consequently, these groups might turn into ideological bubbles (Pariser). In these cases, content shared within one group is not shared within the other and vice versa. Pariser argues that users within the bubbles are exposed exclusively to content with which they tend to agree. However, research has shown that Pariser’s concept of bubbles has limitations (Bruns), as most social media users are exposed to a variety of sources of information (Guess et al.). Nevertheless, polarisation might lead to different media diets and disinformation consumption (Benkler et al.). That is, users would have contact with different types of information, but they would choose to share certain content over others because of their political alignment (Bruns). Therefore, we understand that bubbles are created by the action of social media users who give preference to circulate (through retweets, likes, comments, or shares) content that supports their political views, including disinformation (Recuero et al.). Thus, bubbles are ephemeral structures (created by users’ actions in the context of a particular political discussion) with permeable boundaries (users are exposed to content from the outside) in discussions on social media. This type of ephemeral bubble might use disinformation as a tool to create a unique discourse that supports its views. However, it does not mean that actors within a “disinformation bubble” do not have access to other content, such as the news from the mainstream media. It means that the group acts to discredit and to overlap this content with an “alternative” story (Larsson). In addition, the mainstream media might disseminate false or inaccurate disinformation (Tsfati et al.). Particularly, we focus on inaccurate headlines that reinforce disinformation narratives, as social media users often only read news headlines (Newman et al.; Ofcom). This is especially problematic because a large number of social media users are exposed to mainstream media content, while exposure to disinformation websites is heavily concentrated on only a few users (Guess et al.; Tsfati et al.). Therefore, when the mainstream media disseminate disinformation, it is more likely that a larger number of social media users will be exposed to this content and share it into ideological bubbles. Based on this discussion, we aim to understand how the mainstream media contribute to the spread of disinformation discourses about Covid-19. Methods This study is about how mainstream media coverage might contribute to the spread of disinformation about Covid-19 on Facebook. We propose two hypotheses, as follows: H1: When mainstream media headlines frame the information in a way that reinforces the disinformation narrative, the links go into a “disinformation bubble”. H2: In these cases, Facebook users might use mainstream media coverage to legitimate disinformation narratives. We selected three case studies based on events that created both political debate and high media coverage in Brazil. We chose them based on the hypothesis that part of the mainstream media links could have produced headlines that support disinformation discourses, as the political debate was high. The events are: On 24 March 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro made a public pronouncement on live television. In the week before the pronouncement, Brazilian governors decided to follow World Health Organisation (WHO) protocols and closed non-essential business. In his speech, Bolsonaro criticised social distancing measures. The mainstream media reproduced some of his claims and claims from other public personalities, such as entrepreneurs who also said the protocols would harm the economy. On 8 June 2020, a WHO official said that it “seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person transmits [Covid-19] onward to a secondary individual”. Part of the mainstream media reproduced the claim out of context, which could promote the misperception that both asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic persons (early stages of an illness, before the first symptoms) do not transmit Covid-19 at all. On 9 November 2020, Brazil’s national sanitary watchdog Anvisa reported that they had halted the clinical studies on the CoronaVac vaccine, developed by the Chinese company Sinovac. Bolsonaro often criticised CoronaVac because it was being produced in partnership with São Paulo’s Butantan Institute and became the subject of a political dispute between Bolsonaro and the Governor of São Paulo, João Dória. Bolsonaro said the halt of the CoronaVac trial was "another victory for Jair Bolsonaro". Anvisa halted the trail after a "severe adverse event". The mainstream media rapidly reverberated the decision. Later, it was revealed that the incident was a death that had nothing to do with the vaccine. Before we created our final dataset that includes links from the three events together, we explored the most shared URLs in each event. We used keywords to collect posts shared in the public groups monitored by CrowdTangle, a tool owned by Facebook that tracks publicly available posts on the platform. We collected posts in a timeframe of three days for each event to prevent the collection of links unrelated to the cases. We collected only posts containing URLs. Table 1 summarises the data collected. Table 1: Data collected Dates March 24-26 2020 June 8-10 2020 November 9-11 2020 Keywords “Covid-19” or “coronavirus” and “isolation” or “economy” “Covid-19” or “coronavirus” and “asymptomatic” “vaccine” and “Anvisa” or “CoronaVac” Number of posts 4780 2060 3273 From this original dataset, we selected the 60 most shared links from each period (n=180). We then filtered for those which sources were mainstream media outlets (n=74). We used content analysis (Krippendorff) to observe which of these URLs headlines could reinforce disinformation narratives (two independent coders, Krippendorff’s Alpha = 0.76). We focussed on headlines because when these links are shared on Facebook, often it is the headline that appears to other users. We considered that a headlined reinforced disinformation discourses only when it was flagged by both coders (n=21 – some examples are provided in Table 3 in the Results section). Table 2 provides a breakdown of this analysis. Table 2: Content analysis Event Mainstream media links Headlines that support disinformation discourses Number of links Number of posts Economy and quarantine 24 7 112 Asymptomatic 22 7 163 Vaccine trial 28 7 120 Total 74 21 395 As the number of posts that shared URLs with headlines that supported disinformation was low (n=395), we conducted another CrowdTangle search to create our final dataset. We used a sample of the links we classified to create a “balanced” dataset. Out of the 21 links with headlines that reinforced disinformation, we collected the 10 most shared in public groups monitored by CrowdTangle (this time, without any particular timeframe) (n=1346 posts). In addition, we created a “control group” with the 10 most shared links that neither of the coders considered could reinforce disinformation (n=1416 posts). The purpose of the “control group” was to identify which Facebook groups tend to share mainstream media links without headlines that reinforce disinformation narratives. Therefore, our final dataset comprises 20 links and 2762 posts. We then used social network analysis (Wasserman and Faust) to map the spread of the 20 links. We created a bipartite network, in which nodes are (1) Facebook groups and (2) URLs; and edges represent when a post within a group includes a URL from our dataset. We applied a modularity metric (Blondel et al.) to identify clusters. The modularity metric allows us to identify “communities” that share the same or similar links in the network map. Thus, it helped us to identify if there was a “bubble” that only shares the links with headlines that support disinformation (H1). To understand if the disinformation was supporting a larger narrative shared by the groups, we explored the political alignments of each cluster (H2). We used Textometrica (Lindgreen and Palm) to create word clouds with the most frequent words in the names of the cluster groups (at least five mentions) and their connections. Finally, we also analysed the posts that shared each of the 10 links with headlines that reinforced disinformation. This also helped us to identify how the mainstream media links could legitimate disinformation narratives (H2). Out of the 1346 posts, only 373 included some message (the other 973 posts only shared the link). We used content analysis to see if these posts reinforced the disinformation (two independent coders – Krippendorff’s Alpha = 0.723). There were disagreements in the categorisation of 27 posts. The two coders reviewed and discussed the classification of these posts to reach an agreement. Results Bubbles of information In the graph (Figure 1), red nodes are links with headlines that support disinformation discourses, blue nodes are the other mainstream media links, and black nodes are Facebook groups. Our first finding is that groups that shared headlines that support disinformation rarely shared the other mainstream media links. Out of the 1623 groups in the network, only 174 (10.7%) shared both a headline that supports disinformation discourse, and another mainstream media link; 712 groups (43.8%) only shared headlines that support disinformation; and 739 groups (45.5%) only shared other links from the mainstream media. Therefore, users’ actions created two bubbles of information. Figure 1: Network graph The modularity metric confirmed this tendency of two “bubbles” in the network (Figure 2). The purple cluster includes seven URLs with headlines that support disinformation discourse. The green cluster includes three headlines that support disinformation discourse and the other 10 links from the mainstream media. This result partially supports H1: When mainstream media headlines frame the information in a way that reinforces the disinformation narrative, the links go into a “disinformation bubble”. As we identified, most of the headlines that support disinformation discourse went into a separate “bubble”, as users within the groups of this bubble did not share the other links from the mainstream media. Figure 2: Network graph with modularity This result shows that users’ actions boost the creation of bubbles (Bakshy et al.), as they choose to share one type of content over the other. The mainstream media are the source of all the URLs we analysed. However, users from the purple cluster chose to share only links with headlines that supported disinformation discourses. This result is also related to the political framing of the discussions, as we explore below. Disinformation and Political Discourse We used word clouds (Lindgreen and Palm) to analyse the Facebook groups’ names to explore the ideological affiliation of the bubbles. The purple bubble is strongly related to Bolsonaro and his discourse (Figure 3). Bolsonaro is the most frequent word. Other prevalent words are Brazil, patriots (both related to his nationalist discourse), right-wing, conservative, military (three words related to his conservative discourse and his support of the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985), President, support, and Alliance [for Brazil] (the name of his party). Some of the most active groups within the purple bubble are “Alliance for Brazil”, “Bolsonaro 2022 [next presidential election]”, “Bolsonaro’s nation 2022”, and “I am right-wing with pride”. Figure 3: Purple cluster word cloud Bolsonaro is also a central word in the green cluster word cloud (Figure 4). However, it is connected to other words such as “against” and “out”, as many groups are anti-Bolsonaro. Furthermore, words such as left-wing, Workers’ Party (centre-left party), Lula and Dilma Rousseff (two Workers’ Party ex-presidents) show another ideological alignment in general. In addition, there are many local groups (related to locations such as Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais, and others), and groups to share news (news, newspaper, radio, portal). “We are 70 per cent [anti-Bolsonaro movement]”, “Union of the Left”, “Lula president”, and “Anti-Bolsonaro” are some of the most active groups within the green cluster. Figure 4: Green cluster word cloud Then, we analysed how users shared the mainstream media links with headlines that support disinformation discourses. In total, we found that 81.8% of the messages in the posts that shared these links also reproduced disinformation narratives. The frequency was higher (86.2%) when considering only posts that shared one of the seven links from the purple cluster (based on the modularity metric). Consequently, it was lower (64%) in the messages that shared one of the other three links. The messages often showed support for Bolsonaro; criticised other political and health authorities (the WHO, São Paulo Governor João Dória, and others), China, and the “leftists” (all opposition to Bolsonaro); claimed that quarantine and social distancing measures were unnecessary; and framed vaccines as dangerous. We provide some examples of headlines and posts in Table 3 (we selected the most-shared URL for each event to illustrate). This result supports H2 as we found that users shared mainstream media headlines that reinforce disinformation discourse to legitimate the disinformation narrative; and that it was more prevalent in the purple bubble. Table 3: Examples of headlines and posts Headline Post "Unemployment is a crisis much worse than coronavirus", says Bolsonaro Go to social media to support the President. Unemployment kills. More than any virus... hunger, depression, despair and everything UNEMPLOYMENT, THE DEPUTIES CHAMBER, THE SENATE AND THE SUPREME COURT KILL MORE THAN COVID19 Asymptomatic patients do not boost coronavirus, says WHO QUARANTINE IS FAKE #StayHome, the lie of the century! THIS GOES TO THE PUPPETS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTIES THE AND FUNERARY MEDIA Anvisa halts Coronavac vaccine trial after "serious adverse event" [The event] is adverse and serious, so the vaccine killed the person by covid And Doria [Governor of São Paulo and political adversary of Bolsonaro] wants to force you to take this shit This result shows that mainstream media headlines that support disinformation narratives may be used to reinforce disinformation discourses when shared on Facebook, making journalists potential agents of disinformation (Himma-Kadakas; Tsfati et al.). In particular, the credibility of mainstream news is used to support an opposing discourse, that is, a disinformation discourse. This is especially problematic in the context of Covid-19 because the mainstream media end up fuelling the infodemic (Tangcharoensathien et al.) by sharing inaccurate information or reverberating false claims from political actors. Conclusion In this article, we analysed how the mainstream media contribute to the spread of disinformation about Covid-19. In particular, we looked at how links from the mainstream media with headlines that support disinformation discourse spread on Facebook, compared to other links from the mainstream media. Two research questions guided this study: Are URLs with headlines that reinforce disinformation discourses and other mainstream media links shared into the same Facebook groups? Are the headlines that support disinformation discourses shared by Facebook users to reinforce disinformation narratives? We identified that (1) some Facebook groups only shared links with headlines that support disinformation narratives. This created a “disinformation bubble”. In this bubble, (2) Facebook users shared mainstream media links to reinforce disinformation – in particular, pro-Bolsonaro disinformation, as many of these groups had a pro-Bolsonaro alignment. 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