Distributed by Third World Newsreel, 545 Eighth Avenue, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10018; 212-947-9277Produced by Tracy AssingDirected by Tracy Assing2010, DVD, color, 40 min. âOur ancestors were written out of history. Finding out what our story is continues to be a work in progress. It is true that a few more books have been written, but Caribbean history remains largely under researched. In some ways the damage has already been done, because most people believe there are no true Caribs, because an only true Carib is a dead Carib.â Tracy Assing, The Amerindians. The Amerindians is a documentary that details the history and the current day concerns of one of the few remaining indigenous communities in the Caribbean. Tracy Assing, the director and narrator of the film, is a member of the Santa Rosa Carib Community located in Arima, Trinidad. Ms. Assing learned in school that there were 2 tribes in the Caribbean: the Arawaks and the Caribs. The Arawaks were peace loving farmers and the Caribs, warlike cannibals. Both groups were eventually decimated by the Spanish. Assing understood she was Carib, but the Caribs were annihilated; these revelations made her begin to ask her family who were they and lead her on a journey to discover the truth about her identity. Assing knew what the history books alleged, but wanted to speak to respected educators to find out if research discovered any new information. She found Dr. Basil Reid (Lecturer in Archaeology) and Dr. Bridget Brereton (Professor of History) both of the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. Dr. Reid thinks there needs to be a way to redefine history. History in the Caribbean starts with the beginning of the arrival of Columbus. However the Amerindians were there long before Columbusâ arrival, with a history of their own. Dr. Reid also states that researches use the terms Arawak and Carib as a function of convenience, but these terms donât mean much in relations to Caribbean archaeology since it is not possible to go back in time and ask these individuals how they referred to themselves. Dr. Brereton further explains that the inhabitants present at the time of European contact were divided into several ethnic communities, but they or their ancestors came from the northern area of South America and spoke a language from the Arawakan Language Group. Traditionally, historians had written Amerindians out of the national history. They have followed the narrative that the pure-blooded Amerindians disappeared, and that evidence was accepted as proof that Amerindians as Amerindians had no part to play in the modern history of Trinidad or Tobago. In reality, by the end of the 15th century there were as many as 40,000 Indians living on the island. Based on early writings of French, Spanish, Dutch and English explorers it is known that some of their tribal names were Taino, Guarani, Yaio and Warao. However, in the late 1780âs the last Spanish governor Jose Maria Chacon gathered together the remaining Christianized Amerindian people and relocated them to Arima. Since then, Arima has been seen as the main center of Amerindian settlement and civilization for the remaining indigenous population in Trinidad. Only converted Indians were allowed onto the mission in Arima because priests and bishops felt that segregation was the only way in which the Christianized Indios would not be tempted by the pagan practices of the uninitiated. The residents of the mission were first referred to as Indios and within time then Carib. Later migration of Indios were integrated onto the mission where they mixed with the converted Indios (their descendants are now the current population of Arima). In 1974, the Santa Rosa Carib Community was formed. Its main mandate was the up keep of the Santa Rosa Festival. The President/Chief of the organization Ricardo Bharath-Hernandez realized there was more at stake and invited descendants of other indigenous groups from Guyana, Suriname and St. Vincent for a community exchange. Thus began the Amerindian Day of Recognition, celebrated on October 14th of every year. Not everybody is satisfied with the Amerindian Day of Recognition. Cristo Adonis (Santa Rosa Carib Communityâs Medicine Man) views the celebration as a show. He thinks the additional land requested by the Carib Community should be given to them so there could be a better celebration, not only for song and dance but in a more educational way with young people being more involved and along these lines the different parties that come to Trinidad for the for the Amerindian Day of Recognition can stay for longer than a few days and participate in workshops. The Santa Rosa Festival, which celebrates the Feast of Santa Rosa de Lima (the first canonized Roman Catholic Saint from the Americas) still takes place each year during the last weekend of August and has become a uniting and dividing factor among the members of this society. Assing admits that she stopped taking part in Festival when she was 8 years old because she felt the legend of Santa Rosa had more in common with the fantasy stories written by Edith Blyton that she was reading at the time. Also, by then she had developed an awareness that being indigenous had less to do with being a good Catholic and more to do with the sense of belonging to the land. Cristo Adonis is in agreement with Assing. Adonis respects the elders that take part in the Festival and would not want it to end but his opinion is the myth is a made-up story. Meanwhile, Parish Priest Monsignor Christian Pereira confirms that the validity of the story may be questionable, but understanding the meaning of the myth is more important than whether it was true or false. There are also other issues of contention within the Santa Rosa Carib Community. Assing and her cousins grew up hunting, fishing, harvesting fruit, herbs and flowers and learning how to plant corn and cassava. Now her cousinsâ children will not fish in the river due to the pollution and houses take up spaces where gardens would have been made. When the Spanish arrived they found bones within dwellings and it was assumed this was confirmation of cannibalism, but what was going on was a form of ancestral worship. When individuals died, the bones of the deceased remained with their relatives. The bones were used to communicate with those who had passed on by making offerings to them and using them in smoke ceremonies; it was like the member of the family was still alive. Today when someone dies, they go to the Catholic Church where there is a mass, procession and funeral and the deceased is put into the ground. No indigenous aspect to the funeral rite remains. Assing sees this as a loss of connection with her ancestors, a loss of tradition and a loss of an important avenue of communication. During the âConsultationâ on: Indigenous People Rediscovering and Preserving a Way of Life (held December 13, 2009 at the Arima Town Hall) Assing retold a story where she had a frank discussion with the President of the Santa Rosa Carib Community Ricardo Bharath-Hernandez (who declined to be interviewed for the documentary). She asked him what he wanted his legacy to be and later put forth a proposal to have the community center become an operational research center. She describes as a child how she visited the community center where she saw artifacts, woven baskets and mats, and photographs. Now as an adult she walks into the community center and sees the same things, even though many researchers have come to interview members of the community and as a consequence there is video. Equally, there are books and papers being written, therefore the question remains how can and why donât the youth of the Carib Community have access to this information. Assing felt this is something that needs to be addressed because there is more to the Santa Rosa Carib Community than the Catholic festival. Between these two entities the core of the main dispute within the Carib Community is once again revealed: Assing feels that the Carib Community is more than and has more to offer than the Santa Rosa Festival, while Ricardo Bharath-Hernandez feels due to the Santa Rosa Festival the remnants of the indigenous population in Arima has survived. Nonetheless, during the 2010 Amerindian Day of Recognition celebration, the Minister of Arts and Multiculturalism, Winston Peters gave assurances that he would ensure indigenous people would receive land they deserved and through the Amerindian Project Communities in collaboration with the Santa Rosa Carib Community, the government is working on several proposals for long-term development of the indigenous community. The pacing of the documentary is slow and it does not pick up until after the 15 minute mark. The first half of the film is basically dedicated to giving background information about the Santa Rosa Festival. While, I understand the background information was necessary to show that the concentration on the Festival is taking away from the further exploration and preservation of the Carib culture, too much time was taken up on the Festival. Also at times the film seemed disjointed. The film would have flowed better if it started with the history of indigenous peoples in the Caribbean, followed by the community issues and ending with the information about the Festival. The movie does show some interesting artifacts and illustrations and when it focuses on the land and nature, the colors and surroundings are vibrant, and the cinematography is crisp and clear. Even though the film has its problems, the second half of the movie does make up for the first half and as Tracy Assing states, there is not a lot of research being done on Caribbean history much less history of indigenous cultures in the Caribbean. Hence, I would still recommend The Amerindians.
The decentralization process was continuous in Romania starting with 1990, generating the implication of local authorities in local public finance, as a result of exclusives, shared and delegate competences and, so, the necessity of ensuring a good management of resources and expenditures. Therefore, the decentralization of competences / responsibilities from State to local governments was a major Romanian political theme and a first rank component of management of local public finance, as main driving instrument for local development. Specific legal framework of local responsibilities is established both to European and national level. Researchers based on regulation and practice have tried to quantify the responsibilities developing different models to measure local revenue and expenditures autonomy. The paper aims is to identify some models for measuring local expenditure autonomy and to apply for Romania. The study is oriented to measure local expenditure autonomy in Romania using Bell, Ebel, Kaiser and Rojchaichainthorn's model.
Amanda Talsma, Jan Sloots, Janneke van de Ouweland
Dit onderzoek is verricht voor het Lectoraat Duurzaam Financieel Management aan de Hanzehogeschool. Er wordt onderzocht welke gevolgen het gebruik van de Bitcoin heeft voor de maatschappij.
This study attempted to investigate the An assessment on Decentralized Service Delivery in the \nHealth Sector in Ahferom Wereda which is one of the administrative divisions of Tigray National \nRegional State. The main objectives of this study was to examine adequate human resources and \nhealth service availabilities including pharmaceutical commodities, the local level health \nservice delivery arrangements in terms of accountability, the institutional capacity of local \ngovernment in implementing and coordinating decentralized health service programs and \npolicies and identify the challenges of decentralized governance in the process of health service \nprovision. The study used a descriptive survey research design and employed both qualitative \nand quantitative data types, specifically semi -questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and \nfocus group discussion. In addition to this, study was employed both primarily and secondary \nsources of data. The sampling designs used in this study are both probability and non probability \nsampling designs. These are, purposive, clustered, lottery method, proportionate sampling and \nfinally convenience sampling was employed. For the purpose of this, the study used a sample of \n190 house hold heads. In addition to this, the study used 20 key respondents purposely. The key \nrespondents with regard to this objective were officials in health related management and health \nservice providers of the wereda .The major findings of this study reveals that though \ndecentralization is contributing better health services availability, it constrains ensuring of \nadequate human recourse, geographical accessibility and adequate pharmaceutical commodities \nfor better health service delivery to the public. Besides, there is failure of accountability in \nrelation to financial planning, reporting and implementation of activities, the availability of \nchanneling procedures for complaints, strong institutional capacity in terms of leadership, \nhuman resources management and financial management capacity. In relation to the challenges \nin health service delivery; shortage of sufficient and competence human racecourses, inadequate \npharmaceutical commodities, insufficient financial resources and weak leadership are identified \nas the major challenges. The study recommended organizing public to participate in financing \nand health service delivery, enhancing leadership and improvement, filling vacancies and \nenhancing competency of the staff, strengthening standardized auditing instrument and \nimproving and strengthening inter-organizational relations with different NGOs are more \nrelevant.
Pakistan has taken steps to deliver social protection services, including unanimously passing the Benazir income support programme act in 2010, and setting up systems for targeted cash transfers to the poor. Such measures are critical in a country with endemic poverty, significant food insecurity, low education, and poor health outcomes. But more efforts are needed, including bringing the federal and provincial governments together as partners in social protection service delivery, especially in the new decentralized context since the 18th amendment to the constitution was approved in 2010. A national social protection framework is to be established, and its overarching objective should be a technically sound and financially viable system that provides appropriate, adequate, and predictable benefits to the target population. To meet this objective, policy makers can ensure that the framework is coherent between federal and provincial authorities, harmonize systems for design and delivery of social protection within that framework, ensure financing for social protection based on affordability and efficiency principles, and enable effective post disaster early recovery cash transfers as part of the future disaster- response action plan.
Although Pakistan has made some progress in improving access to education over the past decade, it still faces major challenges in providing access to quality education at all levels. It has the world's second highest out-of-school population (7 million), two-thirds of them girls (though enrollment rates vary appreciably between and within provinces). National surveys of student learning suggest that achievement is also very low, a sizable share of school leavers do not achieve even minimum mastery of mathematics, reading, and language, as defined by the government. The main contributing factors include poor teacher quality and accountability, inadequate and inefficient funding, and weak management and governance. Since the 18th amendment was passed in 2010, the management and financing of education has been decentralized to the provinces, but national standards need to be set and their achievements monitored to address disparities in access to quality education between provinces. The federal government should play this role and coordinate and facilitate the provision of 'education for all.'
The privacy of users has rapidly become one of the most pervasive and stringent requirements in distributed computing. Designing and implementing privacy-preserving distributed systems, however, is challenging since these systems also have to fulfill seemingly conflicting security properties and system requirements: e.g., authorization and accountability require some form of user authentication and session management necessarily involves some form of user tracking. In this work, we present a solution based on declarative design. The core component of our framework is a logic-based declarative API for data processing that exports methods to conveniently specify the system architecture and the intended security properties, and conceals the cryptographic realization. Invisible to the programmer, the implementation of this API relies on a powerful combination of digital signatures, non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs of knowledge, pseudonyms, and reputation lists. We formally proved that the cryptographic implementation enforces the security properties expressed in the declarative specification. The systems produced by our framework enjoy interoperability and open-endedness: they can easily be extended to offer new services and cryptographic data can be shared and processed by different services, without requiring any extra bootstrapping phase or interaction among parties. We implemented the API in Java and conducted an experimental evaluation to demonstrate the practicality of our approach.
This study of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte recovers the life of an impressive woman who successfully challenged the gender, political, and cultural conventions of the early American republic to reinvent herself as a European lady of taste and refinement. Born in 1785, the Baltimore beauty rebelled against the democratic world of her homeland. Achieving personal independence through, ironically, her unsuccessful marriage in 1805 to Jerome Bonaparte, younger brother of the French emperor, she found her land of opportunity in the Old World, where she styled herself an aristocrat, attaining transatlantic celebrity. While most Americans prized democratic equality, she found a comfortable niche toward the top of a well-defined social hierarchy. When many in the new nation feared the corrupting influence of aristocratic luxury, she embraced lavish display as proof of superior culture. And even as most American men and women found themselves moving in increasingly âseparate spheres,â with women building domestic virtue while men staked out their places in public, Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte enjoyed âmixed-gender sociabilityâ (p. 158). Rejecting domesticity, she asserted that âMarrying is almost a crimeâ (p. 205); moreover, her manipulative motherhood focused more on social positioning than moral training.
Kai-Min Chung, Daniel Dadush, Feng-Hao Liu, Chris Peikert
The smoothing parameter $η_Δ(\mathcal{L})$ of a Euclidean lattice $\mathcal{L}$, introduced by Micciancio and Regev (FOCS'04; SICOMP'07), is (informally) the smallest amount of Gaussian noise that "smooths out" the discrete structure of $\mathcal{L}$ (up to error $Δ$). It plays a central role in the best known worst-case/average-case reductions for lattice problems, a wealth of lattice-based cryptographic constructions, and (implicitly) the tightest known transference theorems for fundamental lattice quantities. In this work we initiate a study of the complexity of approximating the smoothing parameter to within a factor $γ$, denoted $γ$-${\rm GapSPP}$. We show that (for $Δ= 1/{\rm poly}(n)$): $(2+o(1))$-${\rm GapSPP} \in {\rm AM}$, via a Gaussian analogue of the classic Goldreich-Goldwasser protocol (STOC'98); $(1+o(1))$-${\rm GapSPP} \in {\rm coAM}$, via a careful application of the Goldwasser-Sipser (STOC'86) set size lower bound protocol to thin spherical shells; $(2+o(1))$-${\rm GapSPP} \in {\rm SZK} \subseteq {\rm AM} \cap {\rm coAM}$ (where ${\rm SZK}$ is the class of problems having statistical zero-knowledge proofs), by constructing a suitable instance-dependent commitment scheme (for a slightly worse $o(1)$-term); $(1+o(1))$-${\rm GapSPP}$ can be solved in deterministic $2^{O(n)} {\rm polylog}(1/Δ)$ time and $2^{O(n)}$ space. As an application, we demonstrate a tighter worst-case to average-case reduction for basing cryptography on the worst-case hardness of the ${\rm GapSPP}$ problem, with $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{n})$ smaller approximation factor than the ${\rm GapSVP}$ problem. Central to our results are two novel, and nearly tight, characterizations of the magnitude of discrete Gaussian sums.
In the Grid computing environment, computation, services, and storage belong to different organizations or individuals with different objectives. Entities in this domain are autonomous and self-interested; however, they are willingly to share their resources to achieve their individual and collective goals. In such open environment, the scheduling decision is a challenge given the decentralized nature of the environment. Each entity has specific requirements that need to achieve. This work analysis the environment structure for the Grid, proposes a bidding language that is expressive and a winner determination algorithm that is adequate for the Grid computing environment.
Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency powered by a decentralized peer-to-peer network of computers, has been hot this season. With the exchange rate bobbing around US $100, those involved in creating new bitcoins' and upholding the network that makes them valuable' have become locked in an arms race of sorts, seeking new, powerful machines that will enrich them but that could also destabilize the nascent virtual money.
This paper examines how organization and financing of maternal health services influence health-seeking behavior in Bosomtwe district, Ghana. It contributes in furthering the discussions on maternal health-seeking behavior and health outcomes from a health system perspective in sub-Saharan Africa. From a health system standpoint, the paper first presents the resources, organization and financing of maternal health service in Ghana, and later uses case study examples to explain how Ghana's health system has shaped maternal health-seeking behavior of women in the district. The paper employs a qualitative case study technique to build a complex and holistic picture, and report detailed views of the women in their natural setting. A purposeful sampling technique is applied to select 16 women in the district for this study. Through face-to-face interviews and group discussions with the selected women, comprehensive and in-depth information on health- seeking behavior and health outcomes are elicited for the analysis. The study highlights that characteristics embedded in decentralization and provision of free maternal health care influence health-seeking behavior. Particularly, the use of antenatal care has increased after the delivery exemption policy in Ghana. Interestingly, the study also reveals certain social structures, which influence women's attitude towards their decisions and choices of health facilities.
Information theory is a powerful tool to express principles to drive autonomous systems because it is domain invariant and allows for an intuitive interpretation. This paper studies the use of the predictive information (PI), also called excess entropy or effective measure complexity, of the sensorimotor process as a driving force to generate behavior. We study nonlinear and nonstationary systems and introduce the time-local predicting information (TiPI) which allows us to derive exact results together with explicit update rules for the parameters of the controller in the dynamical systems framework. In this way the information principle, formulated at the level of behavior, is translated to the dynamics of the synapses. We underpin our results with a number of case studies with high-dimensional robotic systems. We show the spontaneous cooperativity in a complex physical system with decentralized control. Moreover, a jointly controlled humanoid robot develops a high behavioral variety depending on its physics and the environment it is dynamically embedded into. The behavior can be decomposed into a succession of low-dimensional modes that increasingly explore the behavior space. This is a promising way to avoid the curse of dimensionality which hinders learning systems to scale well.
A collection of questions about Bitcoin and its hypothetical relatives Bitguilder and Bitpenny is formulated. These questions concern technical issues about protocols, security issues, issues about the formalizations of informational monies in various contexts, and issues about forms of use and misuse. Some questions are formulated in the more general setting of informational monies and near-monies. We also formulate questions about legal, psychological, and ethical aspects of informational money. Finally we formulate a number of questions concerning the economical merits of and outlooks for Bitcoin.
With the advent of the information age, the network security is particularly important. The secure multiparty computation is a very important branch of cryptography. It is a hotspot in the field of information security. It expanded the scope of the traditional distributed computing and information security, provided a new computing model for the network collaborative computing. First we introduced several key technologies of secure multiparty computation: secret sharing and verifiable secret sharing, homomorphic public key cryptosystem, mix network, zero knowledge proof, oblivious transfer, millionaire protocol. Second we discussed the applications of secure multiparty computation in electronic voting, electronic auctions, threshold signature, database queries, data mining, mechanical engineering and other fields.