DEFENDING THE NEW WORLD ORDER: A DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S SPEECHES REGARDING THE NECESSITY OF STOPPING THE IRAQI AGGRESSION IN KUWAIT

Valentin MUNTEANU, PhD. Candidate

National University of Political Studies and Public Administration

ABSTRACT: This paper addresses the issue of how the American officials tried to portray the Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait as a danger to the New World Order which was to be established after the end of the Cold War. The study is based on a discourse analysis of Bush administration’s speeches. In the political climate of the early 1990s, characterized by the fall of communism in the Eastern Europe and the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union, in the United States and in the whole world, all politicians were eager to announce a new era in the international relations. This new era was to be characterized by the spread of democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights. But a tragic event could have ended the plans for this new order which was supposed to bring peace and security all over the world. On August 2, 1990, Iraqi troops invaded the Kuwait territory, subduing the small country in less than 24 hours. Thus, the American decision-makers and all the officials around the world were put in front of an unexpected event: the naked aggression of a military power (Iraq had at that time the fourth largest army in the world) against a small and peaceful neighbor. If let to go unpunished, this aggression could have been a turning point in the history of the post Cold War era. It could have brought back the Hitlers and Stalins of the past and alongside them, the type of behavior in the international relations which caused two World Wars in one century. So, put in front of such an event with so terrible consequences, the George H.W. Bush administration sought to come with an adequate answer to the crisis. In a brilliant effort to put an end to the crisis, the American decision-makers rallied the entire world behind them in an effort to create a coalition to stop the Iraqi aggression.

KEYWORDS: Discourse analysis, George H.W. Bush administration, United States, First Gulf War, Iraq.

POST-MIGRATION POVERTY STRUCTURES AND PENTECOSTAL CHURCHES’ SOCIAL SERVICES IN NIGERIA

Senior Lecturer Ngozi N. IHEANACHO, PhD.

University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria

&

Chidiebere UGHAERUMBA, PhD. Candidate

University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria

ABSTRACT: Many migrants who are pulled from their culture and traditional homes for the purpose of getting ‘greener pastures’ end up without realizing such motives. They become poorer, as they lose their old means of livelihood and are also unable to find the desired better alternative. This is a ubiquitous experience in Nigerian cities. The teeming population of post-internal-migrant Nigerians make society vulnerable to low human development index and deviant behaviors. This is part of what makes poverty a social pathology of society. Apart from government programmes, churches, especially the Pentecostal paradigms, respond to poverty conditions of their followers through social services heralded in the wholesome presentation of the Christian message. In specifics, the churches’ programmes towards poverty alleviation are the provision of education and healthcare facilities and services, Pentecostal empowerment, skills development through prosperity ministry and business seminars, charity and welfare schemes, religious networking of members, corporate investment and employment, loan facilities etc. These social services and social ministry contribute in no small measure to ameliorating poverty hassles of Christians, especially in the urban centers where the post migrant poor fall back on such facilities for survival and adaptation.          

KEYWORDS: poverty, social services, Pentecostal churches,  Nigeria.

POLITICAL INTERDEPENDENCE IN THE CAUCASUS OR RUSSIA`S POSTIMPERIAL LEGITIMACY

Valeria CHELARU, PhD. Candidate

“Babeş-Bolyai” University

ABSTRACT: The most defining feature of the Caucasus and the starting point for this paper points out at the fact that due to its ethnic, religious, and linguistic mosaic, this region is probably unique in the world. Therefore, ethnic conflicts had developed there throughout history and faced various forms of sociopolitical institutionalisation within the Tsarist Empire and USSR, eventually. The collapse of the latter destabilised the apparent order imposed on these people, whereas irredentist movements emphasized the vital role of the region in reshaping Russian geopolitics. Owing to the great diversity, the nationalist tendencies did not only mean independence of the Union Republics from the USSR, but also the right to self-determination requested by the ethnic minorities which used to be seen as constituent parts of the Union Republics. The present paper is part of my PhD. research and analyses the interdependence  of interethnic conflicts in the Caucasus as a result of the dismemberment of the Soviet Union on the one hand, and the bureaucratic reforms implemented by Russia as a geopolitical necessity on the other hand. In order to demonstrate that there is a Soviet legacy which explains the causality of the current policies, I will argue that there is continuity between the immediate effects of the post-soviet nationalism in the Caucasus and the process which was institutionalised afterwards in the North Caucasus and known as Chechenization. Consequently, my perspective on the interethnic conflicts in the Caucasus follows the course of the reciprocal causation – as Robert Bruce Ware describes it – which underlines the strong dependence between Moscow and the conflict zones of the Caucasus. I will demonstrate how events in the ethnic regions of the Caucasus have not only caused major alterations of the federal structures, but also how these changes in their turn impacted on the power mechanism between the federal center and the regions I mentioned. Building a new type of dialogue based on the carrot and stick approach, the effects of this political relationship produces a type of postimperial legitimacy which derives from the interdependent nature of the actors.

KEYWORDS: Chechenization, interethnic conflicts, the carrot and stick approach, nationalism, Caucasus.

MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE 2014 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS. CASE STUDY: NATIONAL VERSUS EUROPEAN THEMES ON B1-TV

Oana Ludmila POPESCU, PhD. Candidate

National University of Political Studies and Public Administration

ABSTRACT: In the context of an electoral campaign, be it local, national or European, the role of the media as a key instrument of democracy seems to become more salient since the candidates and the electorate “meet” by means of the media. After looking at the democratic function of the media as described in literature, the present paper, which is part of a more complex study, presents the way the private broadcaster B1 TV, one of the main news channels in Romania, covers the campaign for the 2014 European elections. The study reveals the way this media broadcaster chose to approach the European elections: by debating genuine European themes, by mitigating the European dimension through a national perspective or by using smoke screens in order to detract viewers’ attention from serious matters.

KEYWORDS: European elections, electoral campaign, national media, news channel.

WOMEN INCARCERATED IN THE COMMUNIST PRISONS

Elena COSTACHE, MA Student

Teacher Training  Department, Technical University of Civil Engineering

Teacher at Professional Special School, No. 2

ABSTRACT: Romanian gulag’s literature, so much published in the last years and yet so little known and studied, is the newest part of the contemporary literature. It has been brought into light briefly a few times in some studies that represent the autobiographic gender (Eugen Simion) or in some prison memoirs (Ruxandra Cereseanu , Mihai Rădulescu, Mircea Anghelescu), in literary history (Nicolae Manolescu) or treated in a large study (Gratian Cormoş), this section of presenting the incarcerated universe is analyzed by reporting itself to a few essential aspects of this representative space for the communist Romania. At the border between literature and history (closer to the first one rather than the second), theses writings offers a perspective about the incarcerated life, but the experience is transformed in literature by the intensity of their feelings, even if the women don’t write literature and their aim is not to be seen as writers, but they just want to express their sufferance and to confess the truth about the incarcerated reality.  To present the postwar prison, aspects of each period and the way women saw the incarceration are analyzed. An overview picture about prison is highlighted only from the sum of information offered by those who knew the prison directly, not only those who suffered but also those who provoked the sufferance. Reliving the sufferance of incarceration, which implies remembering and retelling it, is the ultimate form of torture for the former prisoners, which is no longer provoked from the exterior, but they accept it as a responsibility for those want (or have the obligation) to know the truth.  And with all the difficult conditions they had to live in, the women add value to this experience, by making the knowledge about incarcerated space  and the way of living more accessible. and sometimes they even considerate it essentially. The feminine writing about detention has some particularities, as each of the prisoners dealt with detention in their own way, which is different from that written by men who expose their experience in detention, by putting an accent on the mental pain rather than the psychical one and by presenting some aspects that only women were preoccupied by.

KEYWORDS: communism, political prison, incarcerated women, memoirs about detention, literature/history.