A distinguishing feature of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is its “whole-of-society” approach, which includes states, but also engages a “broad multi-stakeholder” partnership to address global migration “in all its dimensions”. As one of the stakeholders that participated in the shaping and implementation of this new global normative instrument, we suggest that a spirit of international solidarity can be located in the cooperative and consensual processes and platforms that make up its architecture. Drawing on the English (...) school’s conception of international society, we argue that the GCM has advanced international solidarity in the acceptance by stakeholders of agreed core principles relating to migration governance and in the creation of spaces and platforms for whole-of-society dialogue. It is within these emergent spaces of the GCM that the possibility of concrete and meaningful improvement in the lives of migrants and other people on the move can be made. (shrink)

The absence of an English translation of Gonzaga's writings, both as a whole and separately, , inspired me to undertake it with the aim of making it more accessible to the public. If I were to talk briefly about the outline, the first original French version of the text appears as an anonymous author's work. In that first version signed by Sir Thomas Witth whom nothing is known about, Gonzaga doesn’t appear. His name hadn’t been appearing in the first booklet (...) for seven years until it appeared as translator in the 1807 version. Researchers concur that this was actually a trick which Gonzaga has been hiding behind because he probably never had the courage to introduce himself as the author. It is claimed that it has been conducted a lot of research in order to recover the text of Sir Thomas Witth or other possible authors with a similar name but any satisfactory solution to the riddle has not yet been given. Regarding historical data carried out during my research, I would like to offer my opinion that there is the Scottish philosophy of Common Sense hidden behind this pseudonym which deserves attention. (shrink)

Public’s concern about poor animal welfare provided by intensive farming systems has increased over the last decades. This study reviewed the interest of the scientific research on the pain issue in pig production to assess if the societal instances may be a driving force for the research activity. A literature search protocol was set up to identify the peer-reviewed papers published between 1970 and 2017 that covered the topic of ‘pain in pigs’ using Scopus®, database of Elsevier©. One hundred and (...) thirty papers were selected and they were mainly focused on the practice of castration followed by tail docking. The scientific community first focused on these painful practices as a way to improve production efficiency and quality issues while more recently, due to the increased pressure by the public opinion, turned its interest towards the search of alternative solutions. A text mining analysis on the abstract of the selected papers clearly indicated the effort of the research to explore solutions to alleviate pain. Evocative words of this target were the selected terms ‘pharmacological analgesic’ and ‘anaesthetic treatments’. The text mining highlighted vocalizations as the main pain indicators in pigs as this term was frequently associated to ‘acute stress’. Ethical issues were a minor research topic in the scientific literature on pig breeding but in the short run, they are supposed to become a major subject to justify the acceptance of the modern production systems at the eyes of the consumers. (shrink)

Nell'estate del 1886 Nietzche cura a proprie spese, da Sils-Maria, in Engadina, la pubblicazione di Al di là del bene e del male. Tra le recensioni che più entusiasmarono il filosofo tedesco vi fu quella di Joseph Widmann, pubblicata su 'Der Bund' di Berna, il quale paragonò il libro a quei carri che, inalberando bandiera nera come segno di pericolo, trasportavano la dinamite attraverso le quiete valli svizzere passando per il tunnel del San Gottardo. Nietzsche comincia la sua guerra, (...) dopo una guerriglia condotta a colpi di aforismi, contro tutti i pregiudizi morali e filosofici, contro l'illusionismo magico di parole e concetti. Un attacco che diventa più organico e sistematico, e che con la stessa intensità poetica segue il dionisiaco abbraccio alla vita selvaggia dell Zarathustra. (shrink)