Self-Counsel Press
Livres Canada Books
View Rights PortalGAPSK and YLPSK are the standardized test of Chinese language for children from 3 to 15. From the world- renowned Peking University, GAPSK and YLPSK are certified and approved by the Chinese Ministry of Education as language proficiency measuring tool for children . GAPSK, YLPSK could be conducted on site or completely online. Come join over 100,000 students who taken the tests, contact us at info@gapsk.org. Find out more at www.ylpsk.org
View Rights PortalBetween 1983 and 1987, mercenaries adopting the pseudonym GAL (Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación, Antiterrorist Liberation Group) paid by the Spanish treasury and relying upon national intelligence support were at war with the Basque militant group ETA (Euskadi (e)Ta Askatasuna, Basque Country and Freedom). Over four years, their campaign of extrajudicial assassinations spanned the French-Spanish border. Nearly thirty people were killed in a campaign comprised of torture, kidnapping, bombing and the assassination of suspected ETA activists and Basque refugees. This establishment of unofficial counterterrorist squads by a Spanish Government was a blatant detour from legality. It was also a rare case in Europe where no less than fourteen high-ranking Spanish police officers and senior government officials, including the Minister of Interior himself, were eventually arrested and condemned for counter-terrorism wrongdoings and illiberal practices. Thirty years later, this campaign of intimidation, coercion and targeted killings continues to grip Spain. The GAL affair was not only a serious example of a major departure from accepted liberal democratic constitutional principles of law and order, but also a brutal campaign that postponed by decades the possibility of a political solution for the Basque conflict. Counter-terror by proxy uncovers why and how a democratic government in a liberal society turned to a 'dirty war' and went down the route of illegal and extrajudicial killing actions. It offers a fuller examination of the long-term implications of the use of unorthodox counter-terrorist strategies in a liberal democracy.
Religion is taught in schools as if a branch of science consisting of some Koranic verses, prophetic tradition (Hadith), creed, worships, and biography! Pupils usually study such items by heart, then they go to exam and forget all. Religion is neither a branch of science nor a branch of material knowledge. Religion is a spiritual education that had to be applied in society. It is felt in the way people behave or conduct. Sometimes we meet a clever pupil but he has bad manners! Another, may get high marks in religion but dismissed out of the school for his ill behaviors and bad manners. I believe that religion must be taught as a spiritual education surrounded by a sphere of sympathy and affection. It is something felt by heart, not studied by heart. Teachers have to adress minds to make pupils convinced. They have to teach them biography of the prophet and also of the orthodox Caliphs. They have to select Koran verses according to “the age and the need”. For example Koranic verses dealing with” prayers”, must be studied in an early stage. Then Koranic verses dealing with “fasting”. After that comes verses dealing with moral conducts. In an advanced stage or secondary school, students can study views, ideas, conceptions, visions and philosophy of Islamic eminent characters, as well as eminent characters of other religions. There is a sort of a deflagrated competition between different religions, though they are similar in concepts and attitudes. Also, rivalary between Islam and Western civilization, and communism, is considered. Western civilization has its own entity. It is an integral doctrine having its theories and applications. Western civilization admits human rights and free economy. It could achieve marvellous progress in different fields of life. At the other hand communism also has its own integral doctrine with a private philosophy, economy and ruling systems. It aspires equality between all people, regardless to their colour or race. As a matter of fact it could achieve marevellous progress in different fields of life. Islam stands in between those two different civilizations, trying to get up and rise after a long sleep in the darkness of stagnancy and retardation. Lately, Islam did not achieve adequate progress in fields like modern science, technology, and material power. But it didn’t surrender, because it is till standing as a civilization having its own historical dignity and tradition. But now it is working hard to compensate what it did lose and indemnify what has gone, without contradicting its message and entity.
Country houses and the British empire, 1700-1930 assesses the economic and cultural links between country houses and the Empire between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Using sources from over fifty British and Irish archives, it enables readers to better understand the impact of the empire upon the British metropolis by showing both the geographical variations and its different cultural manifestations. Barczewski offers a rare scholarly analysis of the history of country houses that goes beyond an architectural or biographical study, and recognises their importance as the physical embodiments of imperial wealth and reflectors of imperial cultural influences. In so doing, she restores them to their true place of centrality in British culture over the last three centuries, and provides fresh insights into the role of the Empire in the British metropolis.
Daniel Calparsoro, a director who has made a crucial contribution to contemporary Spanish and Basque cinema, has provoked strong reactions from the critics. Reductively dismissed as a works of crude violence by those lamenting a 'lost golden age' of Spanish filmmaking, Calparsoro's films in fact reveal a more complex interaction with trends and traditions in both Spanish and Hollywood cinema. This book is the first full-length study of the director's work, from his early social-realist films set in the Basque Country to his later forays into the genres of the war and horror. It offers an in-depth film-by-film analysis while simultaneously exploring the director's position in the contemporary Spanish context, the tension between directors and critics and the question of national cinema in an area - the Basque Country - of heightened national and regional sensitivities.
Daniel Calparsoro, a director who has provided a crucial contribution to the contemporary scene in Spanish and Basque cinema, has provoked strong reactions from the critics. Reductively dismissed as a purveyor of crude violence by those critics lamenting a 'lost golden age' of Spanish filmmaking, Calparsoro's films reveal in fact a more complex interaction with trends and traditions in both Spanish and Hollywood cinema. This book is the first full-length study of the director's work, from his early social realist films set in the Basque Country to his later forays into the genres of the war and horror film. It offers an in-depth film-by-film analysis, while simultaneously exploring the function of the director in the contemporary Spanish context, the tension between directors and critics, and the question of national cinema in an area - the Basque Country - of heightened national and regional sensitivities. ;
Contemporary focus, right up to date with material from 1980s and 90s. Wide-ranging analyses of major directors, themes, genres and issues, including historical film, genre cinema, women in film and autonomies.
This volume examines the films of Hispanic and Lusophone women filmmakers from the 1930s to the present day. It establishes productive connections between film practices across these geographical areas by identifying common areas of concern on the part of these female filmmakers. Focusing on aesthetic, theoretical and socio-historical analyses, it questions the manifest or latent gender and sexual politics that inform and structure the emerging cinematic productions by women filmmakers in Portugal, Spain, Latin America and the US. With a combination of scholars from the UK, the US, Spain and Latin America, the volume documents and interprets a fascinating corpus of films made by Hispanic and Lusophone women and proposes research strategies and methodologies that can expand our understanding of socio-cultural and psychic constructions of gender and sexual politics. An essential resource to rethink notions of gender identity and subjectivity, it is a unique contribution to Spanish and Latin American Film Studies and Film Studies.
This book describes how human rights have given rise to a vision of benevolent governance that, if fully realised, would be antithetical to individual freedom. It describes human rights' evolution into a grand but nebulous project, rooted in compassion, with the overarching aim of improving universal welfare by defining the conditions of human well-being and imposing obligations on the state and other actors to realise them. This gives rise to a form of managerialism, preoccupied with measuring and improving the 'human rights performance' of the state, businesses and so on. The ultimate result is the 'governmentalisation' of a pastoral form of global human rights governance, in which power is exercised for the general good, moulded by a complex regulatory sphere which shapes the field of action for the individual at every turn. This, unsurprisingly, does not appeal to rights-holders themselves.
A moving exploration of the life and work of the celebrated American writer, blending biography and memoir with literary criticism. Since James Baldwin's death in 1987, his writing - including The Fire Next Time, one of the manifestoes of the Civil Rights Movement, and Giovanni's Room, a pioneering work of gay fiction - has only grown in relevance. Douglas Field was introduced to Baldwin's essays and novels by his father, who witnessed the writer's debate with William F. Buckley at Cambridge University in 1965. In Walking in the dark, he embarks on a journey to unravel his life-long fascination and to understand why Baldwin continues to enthral us decades after his death. Tracing Baldwin's footsteps in France, the US and Switzerland, and digging into archives, Field paints an intimate portrait of the writer's life and influence. At the same time, he offers a poignant account of coming to terms with his father's Alzheimer's disease. Interweaving Baldwin's writings on family, illness, memory and place, Walking in the dark is an eloquent testament to the enduring power of great literature to illuminate our paths.