War on Anti-Poverty Programs One of the most violent attacks undertaken by conservative U.S. think tanks has been on the federal anti-poverty programs. Beginning in the 1980s the Manhattan Institute sponsored and promoted two publications that urged the elimination of the federal anti-poverty program. "Wealth and Poverty", concluded that poverty was the result of personal irresponsibility, while "Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950 - 1980", observed that anti-poverty programs reduced marriage incentives, discouraged workers form accepting low-wage jobs, and encouraged unintended births among low income teenage and adult women. These books were followed by Lawrence Mead's "Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship", which blamed governments for perpetuating poverty by not requiring welfare recipients to work. Other conservative grantees have used their funds for more than a decade to spread this kind of conservative political rhetoric and policy opinion through major media and conservative-controlled print and broadcast outlets. The redefinition of the problem and the demonization of the poor finally culminated in the passage of the |
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Think Tanks and the Internet As think tanks try to push policy making in their desired direction in such diverse fields as health, education, taxation, regulation and national security it is not surprising, that also the Internet has entered their issue list: Another of the big players in the elite of think tanks, the conservative Washington D.C. based Cato Institute quite surprisingly has started to defend human rights in Cyberspace. Jonathan D. Wallace' "Nameless in Cyberspace: Anonymity on the Internet." sees the constitutionally guaranteed right of freedom of speech and expression in the United States under attack by proposals to limit or restrict the use of anonymity on the Internet. Yet another conservative think tank, the U.S. based |
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Server A server is program, not a computer, as it sometimes said, dedicated to store files, manage printers and network traffic, or process database queries. Web sites, the nodes of the |
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WIPO The World Intellectual Property Organization is one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations (UN), which was designed to promote the worldwide protection of both industrial property (inventions, trademarks, and designs) and copyrighted materials (literary, musical, photographic, and other artistic works). It was established by a convention signed in Stockholm in 1967 and came into force in 1970. The aims of WIPO are threefold. Through international cooperation, WIPO promotes the protection of intellectual property. Secondly, the organization supervises administrative cooperation between the Paris, Berne, and other intellectual unions regarding agreements on trademarks, patents, and the protection of artistic and literary work and thirdly through its registration activities the WIPO provides direct services to applicants for, or owners of, industrial property rights. |
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