Not surprisingly, permanent membership on the UN Security Council is a coveted international plum, and those countries that enjoy membership are empowered to virtually veto any substantive action on the part of the Security Council single-handedly (Carlson 9). In the alternative, if the Russian foreign policymakers accepted Germany's bid for membership, it might swing the balance of power from the existing China-Russia (and sometimes France) cabal that exists today

I. Novikov. It is not clear whether Bolotov himself was a Mason, but he certainly personally belonged to the same social circles as many leading Freemasons in Russia. In his Entsiklopediia, 128, 990, Serkov mentions Bolotov as a possible member of the Konigsberg military lodge of Joanna Krestitelia (John the Baptist) working in Elagin's system around 1773. (Cross, 105) The Freemasons continued to grow and improve Russian society until the death

Corporate Diplomacy: IKEA and the Russian Market A Communication Strategy of Multinationals in Relation to Host Governments Corruption in the Russian Market One of the main issues IKEA faced when it attempted to get into the Russian market was corruption (Heath, 2010). Because of the level at which that corruption took place, IKEA publicly rallied against it in an effort to change some of the problems that appeared to be so inherent in

Social Constructionism and Historiography of Science In the historiography of science, the debate between intenalists and externalists has been one of the major fault lines over the past century. While many historians are not specialists in physics, chemistry and biology, by training and experience they also consider the political, economic and cultural influences on any institution and organization in a given period, and science his not been exempt from historicism. Internlaists

A favorite target for conspiracists today as well as in the past, a group of European intellectuals created the Order of the Illuminati in May 1776, in Bavaria, Germany, under the leadership of Adam Weishaupt (Atkins, 2002). In this regard, Stewart (2002) reports that, "The 'great' conspiracy organized in the last half of the eighteenth century through the efforts of a number of secret societies that were striving for

Ashley, Assistant Director, Criminal Investigative Division of the FBI relates that in 1991: "...the U.S. Attorney's office in Los Angeles charged 13 defendants in a $1 billion false medical billing scheme that was headed by two Russian emigre brothers. On September 20, 1994, the alleged ringleader was sentenced to 21 years in prison for fraud, conspiracy, racketeering, and money laundering. He was also ordered to forfeit $50 million in