Education Philosophy Outline

Philosophy of Education Outline I. Introduction a. Ever since I was in elementary school, I wanted to become a teacher. I have had some outstanding teachers in my lifetime and I would love to carry on the legacy. I want to inspire the future generation to make the world a better place. b. Every teacher has their own personal views on teaching, learning, goals, and professional development. c. Teaching is not just a job. Teachers mold their students’ futures every day. I believe it is highly important that each teacher strives to make a difference in each student’s life.II. Teaching d. Tools are a necessary part of learning. I plan to use a variety of tools, including SmartBoard technology, books, videos, props, etc. I believe students learn the best by participating in hands-on activities as opposed to only lectures. e. I believe that a teacher should play many roles, not just one. This includes being the motivator, facilitator, challenger, and supporter. f. The School of Thought I agree with is Democratic. This stresses the process of learning, not just the product. It also promotes outside-the-box thinking. g.My preferred educational philosophy is progressivism. I favor an open classroom where students often work together and learn to deal with social problems as well as material from the curriculum. III. Learning h. Learning is something we do every minute of every day. When someone learns, they are broadening their horizons and gaining new experiences. i. Learning is an adventure and a voyage. j. In my classroom, I plan to incorporate a variety of strategies. This includes discussion, but will also include hands-on activities, group work, and presentations. IV. Teaching Goals k.To incorporate out-of-the-box thinking and new ideas. l. To make sure every student understands the subject matter. m. To be open to change and spontaneity. V. Personal or Professional Development n. To make each student truly feel that they are a vital part of the clas sroom, and that they have the power to make a difference. o. To be just as passionate about my work and the subjects studied as I expect my students to be. VI. Conclusion p. When I become a teacher, I hope to change the lives of each and every student. q. Making a difference is inspiring our future generation to change the world.

Introduction to Early Childhood Education †Assessment Essay

Identify THREE quality indicators relevant to early childhood education and discuss why they are important for children, parents, and/or society. 300 words. The first quality indicator relevant to early childhood education would be ‘people’. Letting your child learn in an environment where the teachers and assistants are expert, well-trained and the majority of them hold qualifications in the area. They should be able to fully understand your child’s needs, communicate well with them ensuring they make your child feel safe and comfortable being around them. They should also be trusted and respected by staff, parents and children. The ‘place or environment’ would be the second indicator. The learning environment should make all children feel welcome regardless of the cultural, ethnic or language background. They should be able to provide a variety of, materials, equipment and play activity arranged to encourage children to learn. A stimulating outdoor environment that challenges and motivates children to explore, run and play is also important. An environment where they feel safe, and where parents can see their child, and feel comfortable knowing they are there. They should be able to feel secure in the environment they are in and to know their children can only benefit from being there. ‘Programme’ the third indicator. A quality learning programme should provide lots of learning opportunities in a wide range of different areas (reading, water play, sand play, dress-up, science, social play). A variety of activities either working in small groups or individual interactions with teachers. Parents should be able to BEd111: Introduction to Early Childhood Education – Assessment 20120778 Tourmaline Munday- Cooper to understand themselves about what their child is learning, having good communication with the centre employees, knowing what is going on and understanding their ways etc. an eye out being a parent and understanding the centres way. Teachers should always build trusting relationships with parents while always respecting and supporting different families cultures and languages. Reference List Identify TWO early childhood services in your community. Briefly explain their history and then compare and contrast their philosophies, educational goals and the strategies employed to achieve these goals. 450 words. Montessori is a philosophy and method of education pioneered by the Italian educationalist Dr Maria Montessori (The first Montessori school opened in 1909, the first Waldorf school in 1919 and the first Playcentre in the 1930s) Montessori ‘casa dei bambini’ or ‘children’s house’ was first opened in San Lorenzo, Rome, Italy. Dr Maria Montessori recognised that the first six years of a child’s life are the most important. Dr Montessori, trialled many materials and activities, but kept only those to which the children were spontaneously and repeatedly drawn. Playcentre began in 1941 primarily as a support service to women left raising children alone due to partners being away with the Second World War. Lack of transport and low family incomes were the reality for many women. Playcentre’s original aims were â€Å"to provide leisure for mothers and opportunities for the social development of the pre-school child† (Stover, 1998, p. 3). Playcentre is a stimulating environment, they provide a diverse and rich range of experiences, unlimited free play across all 16 areas of play, and a child initiated curriculum. Montessori has a certain structure and is based on their own philosophy unlike playcentre. Playcentre is a parent run co-operative it relies heavily on parental input, participation and support. Montessori aim is to provide an environment with structure and activities that meet the needs of the children and by giving them freedom to move and act within it, it was said that Dr Montessori had revealed the â€Å"true nature† of the child. Their philosophy is aimed for Children to be encouraged to be firmly grounded in reality before being exposed to fantasy. Montessori classrooms are very BEd111: Introduction to Early Childhood Education – Assessment 20120778 Tourmaline Munday- Cooper quiet, as children are deeply absorbed in their work. They input this by managing the classroom materials into six areas (Practical Life Exercises, Sensorial Material, Art, Mathemartics, language, cultural subjects, and also physical is brought into their daily routine). Playcentre however is marked by a stimulating environment, providing a diverse and rich range of experiences, un limited free play across all 16 areas of play, and a child initiated curriculum. Their views and goals are to promote children’s learning through play, Family involvement ( based on the importance of parents as educators of their own children) They like to View children as people who are strong and capable and can make their own choices about how and where to play (childinitiated play). Playcentre teachers are trained parents who take quite a hands on approach and implement learning, using a lot of open ended questions to extend children’s thinking. Montessori and playcentre have different methods. Both focus on the wellbeing of children, and help promote them to learn and grow through many different approaches. The key difference between Playschool and Montessori is that at playschool the whole family joins, rather than it just being a provider of education for the child. Reference List (Pre-schoolers: Preschool Education: Types of Early Childhood Care KYLIE VALENTINE 2010) (Stover, 1998, p. 3). May, H. (2002, Winter). Early childhood care and education in Aotearoa – New Zealand: An overview of history, policy and curriculum. McGill Journal of Education BEd111: Introduction to Early Childhood Education – Assessment 20120778 Tourmaline Munday- Cooper

Getting Away with Torture

Global Governance 11 (2005), 389–406 REVIEW ESSAY Getting Away with Torture Kenneth Roth The Bush administration’s use of torture and inhumane treatment has undermined one of the most basic global standards governing how governments can treat people under their control. Contrary to the efforts of the administration to pass this abuse off as the spontaneous misconduct of a few low-level soldiers, ample evidence demonstrates that it reflects policy decisions taken at the highest levels of the U. S. government.Repairing the damage done to global standards will require acknowledging this policy role and launching a genuinely independent investigation to identify those responsible and hold them accountable. The creation of regulated exceptions to the absolute prohibition of torture and mistreatment, as suggested by several academics, will not redeem the tarnished reputation of the United States or restore the global standards that the Bush administration has so severely dama ged. KEYWORDS: torture, Abu Ghraib, Guatanamo, interrogation, cruel treatment.B’Tselem, â€Å"Legislation Allowing the Use of Physical Force and Mental Coercion in Interrogations by the General Security Service,† B’Tselem Position Paper, January 2000, 80 pp. Mark Danner, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror (New York: New York Review of Books, 2004), 592 pp. Alan M. Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 288 pp. Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel, eds. , The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1,284 pp. Philip B. Heymann and Juliette N.Kayyem, Preserving Security and Democratic Freedoms in the War on Terrorism (Cambridge: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 2004), 195 pp. Human Rights Watch, The Road to Abu Ghraib (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2004), 37 pp. Sanford Levinson, ed. , Torture: A Collection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 328 pp. 389 390 Getting Away with Torture ho would have thought it still necessary to debate the merits of torture? Sure, there are always some governments that torture, but they do it clandestinely. Torture is inherently shameful—something that, if practiced, is done in the shadows.In the system of international human rights law and institutions that has been constructed since World War II, there is no more basic prohibition than the ban on torture. Even the right to life admits exceptions, such as the killing of combatants allowed in wartime. But torture is forbidden unconditionally, whether in time of peace or war, whether at the local police precinct or in the face of a major security threat. Yet, suddenly, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, torture and related mistreatment have become serious policy options for the United States.Academics are proposing ways to regulate the pain that can be inflicted on suspects in detention. Overly clever U. S. government lawyers have tried to define away laws against torture. The Bush administration claims latitude to abuse detainees that its predecessors would never have dared to contemplate. Washington’s new willingness to contemplate torture is not just theoretical. The abuse of prisoners has flourished in the gulag of offshore detention centers that the Bush administration now maintains in Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the secret dungeons where the U. S. government’s â€Å"disappeared† prisoners are held.Hidden from public scrutiny, shielded from legal accountability, the interrogators in these facilities have been allowed to flout the most basic rules for the decent and humane treatment of detainees. Yet torture remains the despicable practice it has always been. It dehumanizes people by treating them as pawns to be manipulated through their pain. It harnesses the awesome power of the state and appl ies it to human beings at their most vulnerable. Breaching any restraint of reciprocity, it subjects the victim to abuse that the perpetrator would never himself want to suffer.Before looking at why Americans are suddenly confronting the torture option, it is useful to clarify what, exactly, torture is. The word torture has entered the vernacular to describe a host of irritants, but its formal meaning in international law is quite specific: the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, for whatever reason. Torture as defined in international law is not done by private actors but by government officials or those operating with their consent or acquiescence. 1 Torture exists on a continuum of mistreatment.Abuse just short of torture is known in international law as cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The lines between these different degrees of mistreatment are W Kenneth Roth 391 not crystal clear—lesser forms are often gateways to tort ure—which is one reason why international law prohibits all such forms of coercion. 2 Torture as well as cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment is flatly prohibited by such treaties as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), and the Geneva Conventions.All of these treaties are widely ratified, including by the United States. None permits any exception to these prohibitions, even in time of war or a serious security threat. Indeed, these prohibitions are so fundamental that the Restatement of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States, the most authoritative U. S. treatise on the matter, lists them as peremptory jus cogens norms, meaning they bind governments as a matter of customary international law, even in the absence of a treaty.Breach of these prohibitions gives rise to a crime of universal jurisdiction, allowing the perpetrator to be prosecut ed in any competent tribunal anywhere. Yet it is precisely because of the fundamental character of the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment that the Bush administration’s deliberate disregard for it is so damaging. If this basic human rights protection can be cast aside, no right is secure. Moreover, the Bush administration is not just any government. When most governments breach international human rights law, they commit a violation—the breach is condemned or prosecuted, but the rule remains firm.Yet when a government as dominant and influential as the United States openly defies that law and seeks to justify its defiance, it also undermines the law itself, and invites others to do the same. That shakes the very foundations of the international system for the protection of human rights that has been carefully constructed over the past sixty years. This unlawful conduct has also damaged Washington’s credibility as a proponent of hum an rights and a leader of the campaign against terrorism. The U. S. government’s record of promoting human rights has always been mixed.For every offender it berated for human rights transgressions, there was another whose abuses it ignored, excused, or even supported. Yet despite this inconsistency, the United States historically has played a key role in defending human rights. Its embrace of coercive interrogation—part of a broader betrayal of human rights principles in the name of combating terrorism—has significantly impaired its ability to mount that defense. As a result, governments facing human rights pressure from the United States now find it increasingly easy to turn the tables, to challenge Washington’s standing to uphold principles that it violates itself. 92 Getting Away with Torture Whether it is Egypt justifying torture by reference to U. S. practice, Malaysia defending administrative detention by invoking Guantanamo, Russia citing Abu Ghra ib to blame abuses in Chechnya solely on lowlevel soldiers, Nepal explaining a coup by reference to America’s postSeptember 11 excesses, or Cuba claiming the Bush administration had â€Å"no moral authority to accuse† it of human rights violations, repressive governments find it easier to deflect U. S. pressure because of Washington’s own sorry counterterrorism record on human rights.Indeed, when Human Rights Watch asked State Department officials to protest administrative detention in Malaysia and prolonged incommunicado detention in Uganda, they demurred, explaining, in the words of one, â€Å"With what we are doing in Guantanamo, we’re on thin ice to push this. †3 Washington’s loss of credibility has not been for lack of rhetorical support for concepts that are closely related to human rights, but the embrace of explicit human rights language seems to have been calculatedly rare.In his January 2005 inauguration speech, President Bush spok e extensively of his devotion to â€Å"freedom† and â€Å"liberty,† his opposition to â€Å"tyranny† and â€Å"terrorism,† but hardly at all about his commitment to human rights. 4 The distinction has enormous significance. It is one thing to pronounce oneself on the side of the â€Å"free,† quite another to be bound by the full array of human rights standards that are the foundation of freedom. It is one thing to declare oneself opposed to terrorism, quite another to embrace the body of international human rights and humanitarian law that enshrines the values rejecting terrorism.This linguistic sleight of hand—this refusal to accept the legal obligations embraced by rights-respecting states—has both reduced Washington’s credibility and facilitated its use of coercive interrogation. Because of this hypocrisy, many human rights defenders, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, now cringe when the United States comes t o their defense. Reformers in the Middle East speak of â€Å"the hug of death†Ã¢â‚¬â€the ill effects of Washington’s hypocritical embrace.They may crave a powerful ally, but identifying too closely with a government that so brazenly ignores international law, whether in its own abuses or its alliance with other abusers, has become a sure route to disrepute. At a time when the Bush administration is extolling itself as a champion of reform in the Middle East, as the catalyst behind recent democratic developments, however modest, in Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian territories, it is a sad irony that so few reformers welcome its support.That weakening of Washington’s moral authority in the Middle East is particularly tragic, because that region is where effective counterterrorism efforts are most needed. Open and responsive political systems Kenneth Roth 393 are the best way to encourage people to pursue their grievances peacefully. But whe n the most vocal governmental advocate of democracy deliberately violates human rights, it undermines democratically inclined reformers and strengthens the appeal of those who preach more radical visions. Instead, U. S. buses have provided a new rallying cry for terrorist recruiters, and the pictures from Abu Ghraib have become the recruiting posters for Terrorism, Inc. Many militants need no additional incentive to attack civilians, but if a weakened human rights culture eases even a few fence-sitters toward the path of violence, the consequences can be dire. Why is the United States taking this approach? To vent frustration, to exact revenge—possibly—but certainly not because torture and mistreatment are required for national security or protection.Respect for the Geneva Conventions does not preclude vigorously interrogating detainees about a limitless range of topics. The U. S. Army’s field manual on intelligence interrogation makes clear that coercion underm ines the quest for reliable information. 5 The U. S. military command in Iraq says that Iraqi detainees are providing more useful intelligence when they are not subjected to abuse. In the words of Craig Murray, the United Kingdom’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan, who was speaking of the UK’s reliance on torture-extracted testimony, â€Å"We are selling our souls for dross. 6 Moreover, coercive interrogation is making us less safe by effectively precluding criminal prosecution of its victims. Once a confession is coerced, it becomes extremely difficult to prove, as due process requires, that a subsequent prosecution of the suspect is free of the fruits of that coercion. As a result, the Bush administration finds itself holding some suspects who clearly have joined terrorist conspiracies and might have been criminally convicted and subjected to long prison terms, but against whom prosecution has become impossible. In February 2005, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began openly fretting about the problem.What happens, it worried, when continuing to detain suspects without trial becomes politically untenable, but prosecuting them is legally impossible because of taint from coercive interrogation? 7 None of this is to say that the United States is the worst human rights abuser. There are many more serious contenders for that notorious title, including governments that torture more frequently and more ruthlessly. But the United States is certainly the most influential abuser, making its contribution to the degradation of human rights standards unique and the costs to global institutions for upholding human rights incalculable.It is not enough to argue, as its defenders do, that the Bush administration is well intentioned—that they are the â€Å"good guys,† in the 394 Getting Away with Torture words of the Wall Street Journal. 8 A society ordered on intentions rather than law is a lawless society. Nor does it excuse the administrati on’s human rights record, as its defenders have tried to do, to note that it removed two tyrannical governments—the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Ba’ath Party in Iraq. Attacks on repressive regimes cannot justify attacks on the body of principles that makes their repression illegal.So, how did we get here? How did the United States, historically perhaps the most vigorous governmental proponent of human rights, come to undermine through its own actions one of the most basic human rights there is? Several books, both new and old, provide insight into this sorry state of affairs. Cover-Up and Self-Investigation When the photos from Abu Ghraib became public, the Bush administration reacted like many abusive governments that are caught redhanded: it went into damage control mode. It agreed that the torture and abuse featured in the photographs were wrong but sought to minimize the problem.The abusers, it claimed, were a handful of errant soldiers, a few â€Å"bad a pples† at the bottom of the barrel. The problem, it argued, was contained, both geographically (one section of Abu Ghraib prison) and structurally (only low-level soldiers, not more senior commanders). The abuse photographed at Abu Ghraib and broadcast around the world, it maintained, had nothing to do with the decisions and policies of more senior officials. President Bush vowed that â€Å"wrongdoers will be brought to justice,†9 but as of March 2005, virtually all of those facing prosecution were of the rank of sergeant or below.To some extent, the sheer outrageousness of the sexual and physical depravity featured in the Abu Ghraib photographs made it easier for the administration to disown responsibility. Few believe that President Bush or his senior officials would have ordered, for example, Lyndie England to parade about a naked detainee on a leash. Yet behind this particular mistreatment was an atmosphere of abuse to which the Bush administration, at the highest l evels, did contribute. The ingredients of that atmosphere are described in several new books.The most comprehensive compilation of the documentary record is contained in The Torture Papers, a book edited by Karen Greenberg and Joshua Dratel, which includes all of the administration’s notorious â€Å"torture memos† available by late 2004. Mark Danner’s book, Torture and Truth, includes many of these same documents, as well as his insightful analysis, drawn from his articles in the New York Review of Kenneth Roth 395 Books, of the policy decisions that lay behind them. The Human Rights Watch report, The Road to Abu Ghraib,10 details how this atmosphere played out on he ground, as American interrogators deployed â€Å"stress and duress† interrogation techniques and then covered up the cruel and occasionally deadly consequences. Torture: A Collection, a new set of essays on torture edited by Sanford Levinson, contains thoughtful essays from a range of scholar s, including a vigorous debate about how to limit torture in the post-September 11 environment. The key to the administration’s strategy of damage control was a series of carefully limited investigations—at least ten so far.The reports of several of these are reprinted in the Greenberg and Dratel compilation. Most of the investigations, such as those conducted by Maj. Gen. George Fay and Lt. Gen. Anthony Jones, involved uniformed military officials examining the conduct of their subordinates; these officers lacked the authority to scrutinize senior Pentagon officials. Typical was the most recent investigation, conducted by Vice Admiral Albert T. Church III, who said he did not interview senior officials such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld or draw conclusions about their individual responsibility. 11The one investigation with the theoretical capacity to examine the conduct of Secretary Rumsfeld and his top aides—the inquiry led by former secretary of def ense James Schlesinger—was initiated by Rumsfeld himself and seemed to go out of its way to distance Rumsfeld from the problem. At the press conference releasing the investigative report, Schlesinger said that Rumsfeld’s resignation â€Å"would be a boon to all America’s enemies. † The Schlesinger investigation lacked the independence of, for example, the September 11 Commission, which was established with the active involvement of the U.S. Congress. 12 As for the CIA—the branch of the U. S. government believed to hold the most important terrorist suspects—it has apparently escaped scrutiny by anyone other than its own inspector general. Meanwhile, no one seems to be looking at the role of President Bush and other senior administration officials. As for criminal investigations, there has been none independent of the Bush administration. When an unidentified government official retaliated against a critic of the administration by revealing th at his wife was a CIA agent—a erious crime because it could endanger her—the administration agreed, under pressure, to appoint a special prosecutor who has been promised independence from administration direction. Yet the administration has refused to appoint a special prosecutor to determine whether senior officials authorized torture and other coercive interrogation—a far more serious and systematic offense. So far, prosecutors 396 Getting Away with Torture under the direction of the administration have focused only on the little guy. The Policies Behind Abu Ghraib What would a genuinely independent investigation find?It would reveal that the abusive interrogation seen at Abu Ghraib did not erupt spontaneously at the lowest levels of the military chain of command. It was not merely a â€Å"management† failure, as the Schlesinger investigation suggested. As shown in the collection of official documents organized by Greenberg and Dratel and Danner, Danner ’s analysis, and the Human Rights Watch study, these abuses were the direct product of an environment of lawlessness, an atmosphere created by policy decisions taken at the highest levels of the Bush administration, long before the start of the Iraq war.They reflect a determination to fight terrorism unconstrained by fundamental principles of international human rights and humanitarian law, despite commitments by the United States and governments around the world to respect those principles even in times of war and severe security threats. These policy decisions included: †¢ The decision not to grant the detainees in U. S. custody at Guantanamo their rights under the Geneva Conventions, even though the conventions apply to all people picked up on the battlefield of Afghanistan.Senior Bush officials vowed that all detainees would be treated â€Å"humanely,† but that vow seems never to have been seriously implemented and at times was qualified (and arguably eviscera ted) by a selfcreated exception for â€Å"military necessity. † Meanwhile, the effective shredding of the Geneva Conventions—and the corresponding sidestepping of the U. S. Army’s interrogation manual—sent U. S. interrogators the signal that, in the words of one leading counterterrorist official, â€Å"the gloves come off. †13 The decision not to clarify for nearly two years that, regardless of the applicability of the Geneva Conventions, all detainees in U. S. custody are protected by the parallel requirements of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention Against Torture. Even when, at the urging of human rights groups, the Pentagon’s general counsel belatedly reaffirmed, in June 2003, that CAT prohibited not only torture but also other forms of ill treatment, that announcement was communicated to interrogators, if at all, in a way that had no discernible impact on their behavior.Kenneth Roth 397 †¢ The decision to interpret the prohibition of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment narrowly, to permit certain forms of coercive interrogation—that is, certain efforts to ratchet up a suspect’s pain, suffering, and humiliation to make him talk. At the time of ratifying the ICCPR in 1992 and the CAT in 1994, the U. S. government said it would interpret this prohibition to mean the same thing as the requirements of the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution.The clear intent was to require that if an interrogation technique would be unconstitutional if used in an American police station or jail, it would violate these treaties if used against suspects overseas. Yet U. S. interrogators under the Bush administration have routinely subjected overseas terrorist suspects to abusive techniques that would clearly have been prohibited if used in the United States. That the use of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment was intentional was suggested by Att orneyGeneral Alberto Gonzales during his confirmation process.In his written reply to Senate questions—after the administration had supposedly repudiated the worst aspects of its torture memos—he interpreted the U. S. reservation as permitting the use of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment so long as it was done against non-Americans outside the United States. 14 That makes the United States the only government in the world to claim openly as a matter of policy the power to use cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.Other governments obviously subject detainees to inhumane treatment or worse as a matter of clandestine policy, but the Bush administration is the only government to proclaim this policy publicly. Reflecting that policy, the Bush administration in late 2004 successfully stopped a congressional effort to proscribe the CIA’s use of torture and inhumane treatment in interrogation. †¢ The decision to hold some suspects—eleven known15 and r eportedly some three dozen—in unacknowledged incommunicado detention, beyond the reach of even the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).Many other suspects were apparently temporarily hidden from the ICRC. Victims of such â€Å"disappearances† are at the greatest risk of torture and other mistreatment. For example, U. S. forces continue to maintain closed detention sites in Afghanistan, where beatings, threats, and sexual humiliation are still reported. At least twenty-six prisoners have died in U. S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 in what army and navy investigators have concluded or suspect were acts of criminal homicide. 16 One of those deaths was as recently as September 2004. The refusal for over two years to prosecute U. S. soldiers implicated in the December 2002 deaths of two suspects in U. S. custody in Afghanistan—deaths ruled â€Å"homicides† by U. S. Army pathologists. 398 Getting Away with Torture Instead, the interroga tors were sent to Abu Ghraib, where some were allegedly involved in more abuse. †¢ The approval by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld of some interrogation methods for Guantanamo that violated, at the very least, the prohibition of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and possibly the ban on torture.These techniques included placing detainees in painful stress positions, hooding them, stripping them of their clothes, and scaring them with guard dogs. That approval was later rescinded, but it contributed to the environment in which the legal obligations of the United States were seen as dispensable. †¢ The reported approval by an unidentified senior Bush administration official, and use, of â€Å"water boarding†Ã¢â‚¬â€known as the â€Å"submarine† in Latin America—a torture technique in which the victim is made to believe he will drown, and in practice sometimes does.Remarkably, Porter Goss, the CIA director, defended water boarding in March 2005 testimon y before the Senate as a â€Å"professional interrogation technique. †17 †¢ The sending of suspects to governments such as Syria, Uzbekistan, and Egypt that practice systematic torture. Sometimes diplomatic assurances have been sought that the suspects would not be mistreated, but if, as in these cases, the government receiving the suspect routinely flouts its legal obligation under the CAT, it is wrong to expect better compliance with the nonbinding word of a diplomat.The administration claimed that it monitored prisoners’ treatment, but a single prisoner, lacking the anonymity afforded by a larger group, would often be unable to report abuse for fear of reprisal. One U. S. official who visited foreign detention sites disparaged this charade: â€Å"They say they are not abusing them, and that satisfies the legal requirement, but we all know they do. †18 †¢ The decision (adopted by the Bush administration from its earliest days) to oppose and undermine the International Criminal Court (ICC), in part out of fear that it might compel the United States to prosecute U.S. personnel implicated in war crimes or other comparable offenses that the administration would prefer to ignore. The administration spoke in terms of the ICC infringing U. S. sovereignty, but since the ICC could not have jurisdiction over offenses committed by Americans in the United States without Washington’s consent, the sovereignty argument actually cuts the other way: it is a violation of the sovereignty of other governments on whose territory an atrocity might be committed not to be free to determine whether to prosecute the crime themselves or to send the matter to the ICC.The administration’s position on the ICC was thus reduced to an assertion of exceptionalism—a claim that no international enforcement regime should regulate U. S. criminality overseas. Kenneth Roth 399 That signaled the administration’s determination to protect U. S. personnel from external accountability for any serious human rights offense that it might authorize. Since, in the absence of a special prosecutor, the administration itself controlled the prospects for domestic criminal accountability, its position offered an effective promise of impunity. The decision by the Justice Department, the Defense Department, and the White House counsel to concoct dubious legal theories to justify torture, despite objections from the State Department and professional military attorneys. Under the direction of politically appointed lawyers, the administration offered such absurd interpretations of the law as the claim that coercion is not torture unless the pain caused is â€Å"equivalent to the pain that would be associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure, or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body function will likely result. Similarly, the administration claimed that President Bush has â€Å"command er-in-chief authority† to order torture—a theory under which Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein may as well be given the keys to their jail cells, since they too presumably would have had â€Å"commander-in-chief authority† to authorize the atrocities that they directed. The Justice Department, in a December 2004 memorandum modifying the definition of torture, chose not to repudiate the claim about commander-in-chief authority to order torture but instead stated that repudiation was unnecessary because, it said, the president opposes torture as a matter of policy.These policy decisions, taken not by low-level soldiers but by senior officials of the Bush administration, created an â€Å"anything goes† atmosphere, an environment in which the ends were assumed to justify the means. Sometimes the mistreatment of detainees was merely tolerated, but at other times it was actively encouraged or even ordered. In that environment, when the demand came from on hi gh for â€Å"actionable intelligence†Ã¢â‚¬â€intelligence that might help stem the steady stream of U. S. asualties at the hands of Iraqi insurgents—it was hardly surprising that interrogators saw no obstacle in the legal prohibition of torture and mistreatment. Nor did these basic human rights rules limit the broader effort to protect Americans from the post-September 11 risks of terrorism. To this day, the Bush administration has failed to repudiate many of these decisions. It continues to refuse to apply the Geneva Conventions to any of the more than 500 detainees held at Guantanamo (despite a U. S. court ruling rejecting its position) and to many others detained in Iraq and Afghanistan.It continues to â€Å"disappear† detainees, despite ample proof that these â€Å"ghost detainees† are extraordinarily vulnerable 400 Getting Away with Torture to torture. It continues to defend the practice of â€Å"rendering† suspects to governments that torture on the basis of unbelievable assurances and meaningless monitoring. It refuses to accept the duty never to use cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment anywhere. It continues its vendetta against the ICC. It has only selectively repudiated the many specious arguments for torture contained in the administration lawyers’ notorious â€Å"torture memos. And long after the abuses of Abu Ghraib became public—at least as late as June 2004—the Bush administration reportedly continued to subject Guantanamo detainees to beatings, prolonged isolation, sexual humiliation, extreme temperatures, and painful stress positioning, all practices that the ICRC reportedly called â€Å"tantamount to torture. †19 In selecting his cabinet for his second presidential term, President Bush seemed to rule out even informal accountability. Secretary of State Colin Powell, the cabinet official who most forcefully opposed the administration’s disavowal of the Geneva Conventions, left his post.Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who ordered abusive interrogation techniques in violation of international law, stayed on. White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, who sought production of the memos justifying torture and who wrote that the fight against terrorism renders â€Å"obsolete† and â€Å"quaint† the Geneva Conventions’ limitations on the interrogation and treatment of prisoners, was rewarded with appointment as attorney general. 20 As for the broader Bush administration, the November 2004 electoral victory seems to have reinforced its traditional disinclination to serious self-examination.It persists in its refusal to admit any policylevel misconduct in the treatment of detainees under interrogation. The Twisted Logic of Torture The Bush administration’s policy of abusive interrogation has received important support in the United States from three Harvard professors: Alan Dershowitz and Phil Heymann of Harvard Law School and Juliette Kayy em of Harvard’s Kennedy School. Rather than reinforce the absolute prohibitions of international law, each would seek to regulate exceptions to the prohibitions on mistreating detainees.Ostensibly their aim is to curtail that mistreatment but, by legitimizing it through regulation, they would have the opposite effect. Dershowitz, in his book Why Terrorism Works and in his chapter in the Levinson compilation, typifies this regulatory approach. In his view, torture is inevitable, so prohibiting it will only drive it underground, where low-level officials use it in their discretion. Instead, he would subject torture to judicial oversight by requiring investigators who want Kenneth Roth 401 to use it to seek the approval of a judge—to procure a torture warrant, much like they would seek a search warrant or an arrest warrant.This independent scrutiny, he posits, would reduce the incidence of torture. Dershowitz’s argument is built largely on faith that forcing tortur e into the open would reduce its use. But he simply assumes that judges would have a less permissive attitude toward torture than do the senior members of the Bush administration. The available evidence is not encouraging. Since torture would presumably be sought in connection with investigations into serious criminal or national security matters, the information behind the request for a torture warrant would presumably be secret.As in the case of a search warrant or a wiretap, that would mean an ex parte application to a judge, with no notice to the would-be victim of torture and no independent counsel opposing the request. How rigorous would judicial oversight be in such cases? We can derive some sense from the record of the courts used to approve foreign intelligence wiretaps, and the picture is not impressive. According to the Center for Democracy and Technology, between 1993 and 2003, courts operating under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) were asked to approve nearly 10,000 wiretaps of foreign sovereign agents.Of those, all but four were approved. When an intelligence agent claims that life-and-death matters of national security are at stake, there is no reason to believe that the scrutiny by Dershowitz’s torture courts would be any more rigorous. In the meantime, by signaling that torture is at least sometimes acceptable, Deshowitz would reduce the stigma associated with its use. Torture would no longer be a despicable practice never to be used, but merely one more tool in the law enforcement arsenal.Torture specialists eager to practice their trade would appear, international prohibitions of torture would be undermined, and America’s credibility as an opponent of torture would be deeply tarnished. Dershowitz points out that accepting clandestine torture also legitimizes it, but he seems never seriously to consider the alternative: vigorously trying to stop, and prosecute, anyone who breaches the absolute ban on torture. He ymann and Kayyem take a slightly different approach in their monograph, Preserving Security and Democratic Freedoms in the War on Terrorism. They foreswear torture but would allow a U. S. resident to order cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment so long as he or she certified to Congress that American lives were at stake. Again, the theory is that such treatment would be rare because the president would be reluctant to invoke that power. But since the president has already claimed â€Å"commander-in-chief authority† to order even torture, and since his attorney general claimed the power as recently as January 2005 to 402 Getting Away with Torture order cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment so long as it is used against non-Americans overseas,21 Heymann and Kayyem are probably overestimating presidential inhibitions.Making the defense against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment depend on the man who has made such treatment a central part of U. S. counterterrorism strategy i s truly asking the fox to guard the chicken coop. Heymann and Kayyem take a similar regulatory approach to coercive interrogation short of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The U. S. Army’s field manual on intelligence interrogation makes clear that coercive interrogation is unnecessary, unreliable, and wrong.That’s because, as most professional interrogators explain, coercive interrogation is far less likely to produce reliable information than the time-tested methods of careful questioning, probing, cross-checking, and gaining the confidence of the detainee. A person facing severe pain is likely to say whatever he thinks will stop the torture. But a skilled interrogator can often extract accurate information from the toughest suspect without resorting to coercion. Yet Heymann and Kayyem would abandon that bright-line rule and permit coercive interrogation so long as the president notifies Congress of the techniques to be used.However, setting American interroga tors free from the firm mooring of the U. S. Army field manual can be dangerous, as we have seen so painfully in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. If mere coercion (itself a violation of the Geneva Conventions in wartime) does not work—and, given that the suspect is supposedly a hardened terrorist, often it will not—interrogators will be all too tempted to ratchet up the pain, suffering, and humiliation until the suspect cracks, regardless of the dubious reliability of information provided in such circumstances.In this way, coercion predictably gives way to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, which in turn gives rise to torture. The proposals from Dershowitz and Heymann and Kayyem suffer from the same fundamental defect: they seek to regulate the mistreatment of detainees rather than reinforce the prohibition against such abuse. In the end, any effort to regulate mistreatment ends up legitimizing it and inviting repetition. â€Å"Never† can not be redeemed if allowed to be read as â€Å"sometimes. † Regulation too easily becomes license.Behind the Dershowitz and Heymann and Kayyem proposals is some variation of the â€Å"ticking bomb† scenario, a situation in which interrogators are said to believe that a terrorist suspect in custody knows where a ticking bomb has been planted and must urgently force that information from him to save lives. Torture and inhumane treatment Kenneth Roth 403 may be wrong, those who talk of ticking bombs would concede, but the mass murder of a terrorist attack is worse, so in these supposedly rare situations, the lesser evil must be tolerated to prevent the greater one.The ticking bomb scenario makes for great philosophical discussion, but it rarely arises in real life, at least not in a way that avoids opening the door to pervasive torture. In fact, interrogators hardly ever learn that a suspect in custody knows of a particular, imminent terrorist bombing. Intelligence is rar ely if ever good enough to demonstrate a particular suspect’s knowledge of an imminent attack. Instead, interrogators tend to use circumstantial evidence to show such â€Å"knowledge,† such as someone’s association with or presumed membership in a terrorist group.Moreover, the ticking bomb scenario is a dangerously expansive metaphor capable of embracing anyone who might have knowledge not just of immediate attacks but also of attacks at unspecified future times. After all, why are the victims of only an imminent terrorist attack deserving of protection by torture and mistreatment? Why not also use such coercion to prevent a terrorist attack tomorrow or next week or next year? And once the taboo against torture and mistreatment is broken, why stop with the alleged terrorists themselves?Why not also torture and abuse their families or associates—or anyone who might provide lifesaving information? The slope is very slippery. Israel’s experience is in structive in showing how dangerously elastic the ticking bomb rationale can become, as described by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem in its report on interrogations by Israel’s intelligence agency, the General Security Services (GSS). In 1987, an official government commission, headed by former Israeli Supreme Court president Moshe Landau, recommended authorizing the use of â€Å"moderate physical pressure† in ticking bomb situations.As B’Tselem describes, a practice initially justified as rare and exceptional, taken only when necessary to save lives, gradually became standard GSS procedure. Soon, some 80 to 90 percent of Palestinian security detainees were being tortured until 1999 when the Israeli Supreme Court curtailed the practice. Dershowitz cites the court’s belated intervention as validation of his theory that regulating torture is the best way to defeat it, but he never asks whether the severe victimization of so many Palestinians c ould have been avoided with a prohibitory approach from the start.Notably, Israel’s escalation in the use of torture took place even though a ministerial committee chaired by the prime minister was supervising interrogation practices—a regulatory procedure similar to the one proposed by Heymann and Kayyem. Indeed, in September 1994, following several suicide bombings, the ministerial committee 404 Getting Away with Torture even loosened the restrictions on interrogators by permitting â€Å"increased physical pressure. † Heymann and Kayyem never explain why, especially in light of the abysmal record of the Bush administration, we should expect any better from high-level U. S. officials.The Way Forward Faced with substantial evidence showing that the abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere were caused in large part by official government policies, the Bush administration must reaffirm the importance of making human rights a guiding force for U. S. conduct, even in figh ting terrorism. That requires acknowledging and reversing the policy decisions behind the administration’s torture and mistreatment of detainees, holding accountable those responsible at all levels of government for this abuse (not just a bunch of privates and sergeants), and publicly committing to ending all forms of coercive interrogation.These steps are necessary to reaffirm the prohibition of torture and ill treatment, to redeem Washington’s voice as a credible proponent of human rights, and to restore the effectiveness of a U. S. -led campaign against terrorism. Yet all that is easier said than done. How can President Bush and the Republican-controlled U. S. Congress be convinced to establish a fully independent investigative commission—similar to the one created to examine the attacks of September 11, 2001—to determine what went wrong in the administration’s interrogation practices and to prescribe remedial steps?How can Attorney-General Gonz ales, who as White House counsel played a central role in formulating the administration’s interrogation policy, be persuaded to recognize his obvious conflict of interest and appoint a special prosecutor charged with investigating criminal misconduct independently of the Justice Department’s direction? These are not steps that the administration or its congressional allies will take willingly. Pressure will be needed. And that pressure cannot and should not come from only the usual suspects.The torture and abuse of prisoners is an affront to the most basic American values. It is antithetical to the core beliefs in the integrity of the individual on which the United States was founded. And it violates one of the most basic prohibitions of international law. This is not a partisan concern, not an issue limited to one part of the political spectrum. It is a matter that all Americans—and their friends around the world—should insist be meaningfully addressed and changed.It is an issue that should preoccupy governments, whether friend or foe, as well as such international organizations and actors as Kenneth Roth 405 the UN Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights Committee, High Commissioner on Human Rights, and Special Rapporteur on Torture. Taking on the world’s superpower is never easy, but it is essential if the basic architecture of international human rights law and institutions is not to be deeply compromised.As Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the March 2005 International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security: â€Å"Upholding human rights is not merely compatible with successful counter-terrorism strategy. It is an essential element. †22 There is no room for torture, even in fighting terrorism; it risks undermining the foundation on which all of our rights rest. Notes Kenneth Roth is executive director of Human Rights Watch. 1. See Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Art. 1. . Ibid. , Art. 16. 3. See â€Å"Malaysia: P. M’s Visit Puts Spotlight on Detainee Abuse,† Human Rights Watch News, 19 July 2004, available online at http://hrw. org/english/ docs/2004/07/19/malays9097. htm. 4. Fifty-fifth Inaugural Ceremony, 20 January 2005; see www. whitehouse. gov/inaugural. 5. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Field Manual 34-52 Intelligence Interrogation, Washington, D. C. , 28 September 1992, available online at http://atiam. train. army. mil/portal/atia/adlsc/view/public/302562-1/FM/3452/FM34_52. PDF. 6. ‘Torture Intelligence’ Criticized,† BBC News, 11 October 2004, available online at http://news. bbc. co. uk/1/hi/uk/3732488. stm. 7. Douglas Jehl, â€Å"C. I. A. Is Seen as Seeking New Role on Detainees,† New York Times, 16 February 2005. 8. â€Å"Red Double-Crossed Again,† Wall Street Journal, 2 December 2004. 9. Remarks by President Bush and His Majesty King Abdullah II of the Hashemite K ingdom of Jordan in a Press Availability, 6 May 2004, available online at www. whitehouse. gov/news/releases/2004/05/20040506-9. html. 10. Available online at http://www. rw. org/reports/2004/usa0604/. 11. Josh White and Bradley Graham, â€Å"Senators Question Absence of Blame in Abuse Report,† Washington Post, 11 March 2005. 12. The 9/11 Commission Report, see http://a257. g. akamaitech. net/7/257/ 2422/05aug20041050/www. gpoaccess. gov/911/pdf/fullreport. pdf. 13. Testimony of Cofer Black, former director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, before a joint session of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, 26 September 2002, available online at www. fas. org/irp/congress/ 2002_hr/092602black. tml. (â€Å"All I want to say is that there was ‘before’ 9/11 and ‘after’ 9/11. After 9/11 the gloves come off. †) 14. â€Å"A Degrading Policy,† Washington Post, 26 January 2005; â€Å"U. S. Justifying Abuse of Detainees,† H uman Rights Watch News, 25 January 2005. 406 Getting Away with Torture 15. Human Rights Watch, The United States’ â€Å"Disappeared†: The CIA’s Long-Term â€Å"Ghost Detainees† (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2004), available online at www. hrw. org/backgrounder/usa/us1004/index. htm. 16. Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt, â€Å"U. S.Military Says 26 Inmate Deaths May Be Homicide,† New York Times, 16 March 2005. 17. Douglas Jehl, â€Å"Questions Are Left by C. I. A. Chief on the Use of Torture,† New York Times, 18 March 2005. 18. Dana Priest, â€Å"CIA’s Assurances on Transferred Suspects Doubted,† Washington Post, 17 March 2005. 19. Neil A. Lewis, â€Å"Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantanamo,† New York Times, 30 November 2004. 20. Memorandum to the President from Alberto R. Gonzales, 25 January 2002, available online at www. msnbc. msn. com/id/4999148/site/newsweek. â€Å"In my judgment, this new paradigm [the war aga inst terrorism] renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded . . . [listed] privileges. †) 21. â€Å"A Degrading Policy† and â€Å"U. S. Justifying Abuse of Detainees. † 22. Keynote address to the Closing Plenary of the International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security, â€Å"A Global Strategy for Fighting Terrorism,† Madrid, Spain, 10 March 2005, available online at www. un. org/apps/sg/ sgstats. asp? nid=1345.

The Existence of Plate Tectonics on Mars Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

The Existence of Plate Tectonics on Mars - Essay Example However, observations of the planet's current state shows Mars at much higher level of deterioration that that of Earth. NASA's latest Mars project, Phoenix, made a successful landing on Mars and spent five months collecting data that has yet to be fully analyzed on the planet's climate, soil, and atmosphere. This mission yielded further proof that there was a type of water on or near the surface of Mars. Soil samples collected prove that there could have once been sustainable life on the planet (Cowing). There have also been findings in recent years suggesting that Mars once had a molten inner core, much like our own. The presence of stripes along the crust layer of Mars, believed to be formed from the crust renewing itself through use of the molten core, lends further proof to the idea that there were once tectonic plates resembling those of Earth (Cain). "The theory of plate tectonics is based on the movement of rigid plates on the planet's surface. Plates are bounded a ridge wher e new crust is created, a trench or subduction zone, where the crust is consumed, and transform faults, along which plates slip" (Connerney, et al. 2005, p. 4). The question as to the existence of tectonic plates on Mars remains a very highly debated issues among scientists. In its current state, Mars is essentially a dead planet, meaning there is no life present and little to no activity on behalf of the planet itself. The lakes and riverbeds have dried up and what is left of the atmosphere is being blown away in chunks by massive wind shears (Cain). Though it is believed that Mars could have once supported life, that seems virtually impossible now. New theories are supported by scientific evidence which suggest that the layers of Mars once greatly resembled the layers of Earth, including a molten core, tectonic plates, and a changing crust layer. It is believed that the molten core of the planet slowly cooled, leaving the stripes currently observable in the hardened crust. Proof of the tectonic plates was recorded by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor in a 1999 (NASA Press Release). While the initial findings only showed the striping of Mar's magnetic field in the southern hemisphere, new data shows that the magnetic field covers the entire surface of the pl anet in a pattern similar to that of Earth (NASA Status Report).(NASA/JPL) Along the striped lines of the magnetic field there are also fault formations and other geographic signs that point toward the existence of a tectonic plate system similar to that of our own planet. As an example of this, the Tharsis volcanoes on Mars are actually aligned in a straight line and it is now believed that, like the Hawaiian Islands, these volcanoes formed over a hot spot in the mantle (Cain). Fault formations, similar to the Martian ones, can only be formed by tectonic plates shifting, pushing new molten crust up from the planet's mantle and changing magnetic polarity of the area as it hardens (Cain). Unfortunately an exhaustive analysis of the geology of Mars has yet to be conducted. Therefore many of the currently accepted theories of the inner workings of the planet are based on what has been observed and studied on Mars combined with what is known about its sister planet, Earth. Whatever plate tectonics previously existed on

Financial Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

Financial Management - Essay Example Dividend relevance The relevance of dividends in the price movement of the shares will be very high in case there is a shift in the fundamental factors governing dividend policy. ‘Agency theory posits that dividend mechanism provides an incentive for managers to reduce the costs associated with the principal/agent relationship. Distributing resources in the form of cash dividends forces managers to seek outside capital, thus causing them to reduce agency costs as they subject themselves to the scrutiny of the capital marketplace’ (Moh’d et al., 2005, p.367) The fundamental factors in this regard are profitability of the companies, the investment opportunities available to the companies for plough back of profits for the growth and management policy. Therefore, any change in the continued practice or policy is reviewed critically by the investors. In could affect the value of the shares in the following ways. 1. The existing investors sell the stocks if the change in policy impacts future dividends and is inconsistent with their investment objectives. 2. The change in policy could attract new investors if it is consistent with their investment objectives. 3. The demand and supply of stocks due to change in dividend policy will influence the market prices. ... The process of price discovery in the market is greatly vitiated in general by the interplay of these factors. Though these factors do cause price movements, the impact is very unpredictable. This leads to speculation with regard to the motives of the management of a company relating to dividend decisions. The investor community would generally be affected by these dividend decisions due to lack of access to market information or inability to interpret the information and its impact on the stock prices. There would be violent fluctuations of the stock prices in the short run which are caused not due to information content in respect of dividends, but other considerations or perceptions. The fundamental factors influencing dividend policy Profitability of company, its growth over years, the opportunities available to company for investment within company and management policy are the important factors governing dividend policies of the companies. Earnings growth The consistency and gr owth in payment of dividends by a company over years are discounted in the stock prices under efficient market conditions. The companies with good track record in this respect command high price/earnings multiple in valuation of their companies’ stocks. Dividend policy is, therefore, relevant to the premium in price/earnings multiple attached to the stocks. But, the recurring dividend announcements in line with the expectation of the market are not the determinants of the value of the stocks. However, when the earnings beat the expectation of the market and company increases dividends substantially or the payout ratio is increased significantly, the investors expect that the increase in dividends will be maintained in the

The Role of the Faith in social change Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Role of the Faith in social change - Essay Example These problems are then addressed by faith. They believe that the problems in a society can be addressed by the implementation of religious values. They were of the view that the government is responsible for all the problems in the society and if these matters are addressed by a religious will the all the health issues, poverty issues, wealth distribution issues and welfare issues can be resolved by the religious teachings. Thus, it depicts that the faith can bring change in the society but the potential outcomes of involving faith in daily resolution of problems would be waging a war against the secular community in the society. The church cannot be utilized as a place where activities on social issues are carried out daily. Church is an important part of the society which promotes equality, justice, peace, hope and love among the people. A Church brings people on common grounds, through which they can work for the betterment of the society, keeping in mind that religious teachings can solve the problems (Stalling, 2010). The observers of the religious change believe that it is an ongoing process which is continually evolving along with globalization. The institutions of faith are developing themselves again so that the religious values do not clash with the secular values of the modern society. The national public religion in the society is often connected with the micro and macro level processes. This process helps in developing spirituality among the individuals, who seek religious guidance for the solution of their problems. The Americans are more focused towards the religion and concentrate primarily on the supernatural forces which can help in changing the course of problems which bring about social changes. They believe that deviating from the religious instructions is the main cause of the issues which they are facing in their daily lives (Stalling, 2010). Religion in Unites

National Security Safeguards and Countermeasures Techniques Final Essay

National Security Safeguards and Countermeasures Techniques Final - Essay Example That promotes higher levels of responsibility since the executive is aware of the close supervision. Every item that makes it to the budget undergoes great consideration to determine the effect it would have on the budget and the reaction of the legislature on such expenditure. A shortfall of the concept is that it allows little or no breathing time. The executive and legislature are continually involved in the budgeting process. That may limit the time available to analyze government activities. The basis for the development of safeguards and countermeasures is the concern over the increasing threat of terrorist attacks. There has been great development in nuclear weaponry necessitating greater efforts to boost countermeasures and safeguards. The aim is to ensure national security and safety. Countermeasures help detect and identify any material with the potential to be converted into weapons that can be used in terrorism. 3. In National Security Safeguards and Countermeasures Techniques, reciprocity is necessary as it allows for the sharing of classified information, facilities and services by the different security agencies. That helps manage costs of

Rising Cost of Prescription Drugs Case 4 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Rising Cost of Prescription Drugs Case 4 - Essay Example One of the main problems for the rising costs in prescription drugs is the pharmaceutical companies. According to pharmaceutical companies, the reason why the costs of prescription drugs are rising is due to the research cost in testing new medicines that will potentially cure various ailments in patients. The drug companies use the revenue from the current prescription drug sales to pay for the research costs of testing new drugs. The new drugs that are tested are eventually marketed to the general public, but because these drugs are new and do not have a generic brand, they are much higher. The drug companies argue that this cycle of pricing drugs at much higher costs is a necessity, since revenue has to be generated to pay for future research. In addition, pharmaceutical companies have to patent new drugs to protect them from any unauthorized sales of new drugs. Patenting requires additional money to retain a lawyer to file the proper documents for patenting the new drugs. As a so lution, the federal government provides a prescription drug coverage plan for Medicare beneficiaries. Currently, the drug companies are not finding better solutions to reduce the rise in prescription medications. These drug companies rely on the revenue from the previous prescription drug sales to pay for the research, testing, and implementation of new drugs. The pharmaceutical companies are blaming the rise in prescription drugs on the increased utilization and demand for various prescription drugs, types of prescriptions that doctors are prescribing to patients, price increases, research and development, and advertising and marketing expenses. In addition, patent protection has caused prescription drugs to increase. The patent laws protect the manufacturers by providing them with an exclusive right to sell the drug products for up to twenty years. After the patent protection expires, the previous patented drugs can be manufactured and

Fundamental of International Buisness Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Fundamental of International Buisness - Essay Example It describes the increase of trade and investing due to the falling of barriers and the interdependence of countries, particularly trade liberalisation or "free trade" (Globalization, 2005). So, the main driven forces of the Southeast Asia market include political, social and economic changes. Political driven forces were caused by changes in political doctrines. Primarily, a struggle between socialist and capitalist countries is over (Buckley, Ghauri, 1999). If we assume that "the essence of globalization is a subordination of human rights, labor rights, consumer right" (Ralph Nader), we should accept the view that trade and market relations is nothing more than subordination of human rights. But it is not true. To support this point of view, it is possible to use the theory of Adam Smith who wrote that markets function without conscious control because individuals take their private decisions in response to publicly-known signals (Himmelweit, et al. 2001). It is possible to agree t hat American and European companies create jobs overseas at the expense of domestic jobs, which does not break the rights of workers from the poorest countries. In addition, the globalization of industries has created surplus production capacity on a massive scale. Proposition of quality products which compete with the national brands does not humiliate consumers rights.

Does the rise in Third World tourism help or hurt local populations Essay

Does the rise in Third World tourism help or hurt local populations - Essay Example Does the tourism a manna from the heaven for the third world countries The answer is No. Thesis In general, tourism has a negative impact on populations of the third world countries ruining their natural beauty and national identity, exploiting their resources and preventing natural economic and social development of these regions. Tourism ruins natural resources of the countries and has a negative impact on national uniqueness of the nations. Most of the third world countries are weak to resist a flux of tourists coming each year to their lands. Consequently, the marked and growing disparities of income and way of life between most people in the industrial countries and those in the developing world are widely regarded as evidence of a biased and improperly functioning global system. International worsens the problem of income inequalities. The great income disparities as resulting from different resource endowments, and the historical and technological developments affecting their use. Disputes on the origin of poverty and wealth are certain to continue, but the search today is for development strategies which will achieve decent standards of life for all people by the end of this century. Also, Duval (2004) underlines that social differentiation is a constant source of headaches. Different groups not only c ompete for scarce resources but also make claims and demands on state actors. Racial diversity is seen as a blessing. Tourism is not static changing and evolving over time. The positive approaches to tourism are based not on anthropological concerns for humanism or the survival of cultural groups but on largely monetary motives. Tourism in particular is business for local communities and musicians. Also, this source is important because it analyzes resorts and recreational facilities in the region (Mowforth, 2003). The main problem in the third world countries is that locals play a minor part in industry development occupied by foreign born tour guides and agencies. Natural beauty and uniqueness of the islands have been spoiled by tourists and lack of state interventions and controls. There is the complex links between state, ethnicity, and tourism. In addition to the economic aspects of tourism, there are the political foundations of tourism including a role of the state and lack of controls. Duval ((2004) unveils concerns and problems faced by local communities, vision that led to the dismissal of history and identity. The growth and development of the tourist industry in the Caribbean region can be understood in the broader context of a state apparatus that is inefficient both economically and politically. Among them are new routs and new 'tourist' countries, price sensitivity and improves service. The third world tourism is under pressure, either dissolving in the face of these global confo rmities or changing their form and function while it has to adapt to these new international and transnational operations. Many third world countries seek to be a cultural and political entity preserving its natural beauty and cultural heritage. The marketing of tourism is similar to international diplomacy, a field that involves national image-management

Patient care in inadvertent hypothermia Assignment

Patient care in inadvertent hypothermia - Assignment Example Perioperative hypothermia had a potential for morbidity and mortality. The patients who had perioperative hypothermia had a chance for surgical site infections especially in patients with colorectal surgery (Hart et al, 2011). The guidelines of Surgical Care Improvement Project encouraged the decrease in incidence of this illness. Human beings required internal body temperatures to be constant for the multiple organs to function optimally. The situation changed when the patient entered the operation theatre. The temperatures of the operation rooms were kept below 230C. Almost all the surgeries required this temperature for maintenance of normothermia for the reason that the operation theatre staff found the temperature for normothermia slightly warm for work. This caused the maintenance of lower temperatures in the theatre. Actual heat loss was governed by room temperature as the temperature gradient determined the heat loss. Surgeons and other staff could not withstand the warmth be cause of the stress of surgery and the layers of clothing they wore and the lead aprons. Prevention of perspiration was essential to avoid the problem of sweat polluting the surgical site. Staff could generally become lethargic with the higher room temperature hindering their vigilance which was critical in the operation theatre. However patients commented about the cold room. Inadvertent hypothermia is the aspect of care that has been selected by this researcher for study. Information on the issue of hypothermia was gathered from review of literature beginning with the study by Hart et al (2011). The review of literature provided plenty of basic information that could help readers to understand this topic of management of inadvertent hypothermia better. This researcher has carefully selected articles most recently published from the Pubmed Central site. Analysis of current evidence base Perioperative hypothermia Perioperative hypothermia of below 360C was experienced by 20% of pati ents (Kurz, 2008). Anaesthesia rendered a patient devoid of many defensive mechanisms for becoming warmer in the instance of hypothermia. Behavioural modification was eliminated so that patients became colder. Thermoregulatory mechanisms did not function so unwarmed patients became hypothermic. Perioperative hypothermia produced adverse effects like elevated loss of blood during surgery, a higher rate by 20% of allogeneic transfusions and an increase of surgical site infections by three times (Hart et al, 2011). Prevention of hypothermia had guidelines instituted by the Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP) for operative and post-operative patients. Perioperative normothermia was to be maintained by warming devices. Staff providing the warming support was to be knowledgeable about the mechanisms of temperature regulation, perioperative hypothermia and the methods to prevent or manage hypothermia. Temperature monitoring Temperature monitoring became an essential component of perio perative care. Oral temperature measurement was the best technique according to the American Society of Perianesthesia Nurses (ASPAN). The same method of measurement needed to be maintained throughout perianaesthesia (Hart et al, 2011). The temperature at the depth of the thoracic, abdominal and central nervous systems was the core temperature. It was more consistently controlled and was 2-40C higher than skin temperature. The measurement was made at the distal end of the oesophagus, from a bladder with good urine flow, the nasopharynx and the pulmonary artery in general anaesthesia patients. The core temperature was the most reliable indicator of the thermal status (Sessler, 2008). Near-core temperatures were taken from the axillary area, rectum, bladder with low urinary flow and

Arthur Millers play Essay Example for Free

Arthur Millers play Essay In the book of record that Mr Parris keeps, I note that you are rarely in church on Sabbath day twenty-six times in seventeen month, sir. I must call that rare this can cause people be rebellious and there is also the fact that not everyone feels the same way about religion and forcing people would cause resentment between the community it self, and that is exactly what we find happening. Lets take the Walcotts. They blamed Martha Corey of being a witch. This was due to the fact that she had sold them a pig and it died. When they asked for their money back saying that she had given them a sick pig, she refused and said Walcott, if you havent the wit to feed a pig properly, youll not live to own many After that, the Walcotts claimed that they couldnt keep a pig alive for more than four weeks and so accused her of being a witch. The whole witchcraft business turned into something to settle old grudges. We even find Ann Putnam accusing Rebecca Nurse, who as we know was a very religious and god fearing woman. She accuses her because of her jealousy of Rebecca having so many children and grandchildren and not one of them died. She accused Rebecca of murdering her babies with her powers as a witch. So we find that the community was very much involved in accusing and taking advantage of these witch trials as a way of solving old grudges and to put it to use for their personal vendettas. There was also the mistake of John Proctor. He should have gone to the court and told them at the beginning what Abigail had told him, before the whole thing got so out of hand. The towns mumbling witchcraft. Oh, posh! We were dancin in the woods last night, and my uncle leaped in on us. She took a fright is all This shows that Abigail admits that there is no truth in the witchcraft rumour. By the time he went and told them, they had already thrown a lot of people in jail for witchcraft. For them to listen to Proctor would be admitting that they had made a mistake, and that in it self would mean that other problems would arise for them. Proctors affair with Abigail had also somewhat caused these witch trials. Abigail, due to her infatuation with Proctor had gone to the woods where she drank a blood charm to kill his wife and was discovered by Parris. That was the start of the rumours of witchcraft. There was also the mistake of Elizabeth Proctor. If she had not lied, the court would have been overthrown. Is your husband a lecher?! No sir She spoke nothing of lechery, and this man has lied! The lie caused the fact that Abigail had confessed to Proctor that she had been dancing and that there was no witchcraft done on them, to be dismissed as a lie told by Proctor. So once again the witch trials were back on. Rebecca Nurse seemed to be the only person who understood what was going on. I have seen them all through their silly season She knew that what Betty and Ruth were doing was just their childhood mischiefs. In fact Abigail, when talking to Proctor, had said She took fright, is all about Bettys condition. So we can see that not all of the community was bad. And of course we cannot forget the legal system the courts input into the trials, as they had held them. First of all the rule that if you confessed to witchcraft you would not be hanged but if you didnt then you will hang, is totally preposterous. This means that even if people were innocent, which we know they were, they would have to confess to save their lives. If people confess then it would be known that witchcraft is about in Salem and so there would be no talk of overthrowing the court. In fact even after finding out that the accusations of witchcraft had been a hoax they were not ready to admit mistake and went on further and executed some more people. I cannot think they would run off except they fear to keep in Salem anymore. Mark it, sir, Abigail had close knowledge of this town. This shows that Abigail had been lying. So the question is how much was it Abigails fault that these witch trials took place. After gathering sufficient evidence from the play, one cannot be certain and say that Abigail was to blame entirely because we know it is not entirely true. We know there were other factors and people who supported and played a big part in the trials. We also know that a lot of it was to settle old grudges and to deal with individuals personal vendettas. Still we cannot deny the fact that Abigail was the main reason for these witch trials. The drinking of the blood charm and dancing and heaven knows what else and then being discovered started the talk of witchcraft and after that, one after the other, the drastic events of the Salem witch trials unfolded. In my opinion I feel that Abigail was to blame somewhat although I would not blame her entirely. Living in a strict community and having seen terrible things happen in front of her as a child could definitely not have helped her behaviour and mentality. I myself would also hold responsible the court and people like the Putnams and the Walcotts and also Parris, to some extent, for the trials. Not really for being a cause for starting them as such, although I do think they played some part, but mainly for contributing to them after they had started. As for Abigail, her behaviour cannot be excused, yet we can try and understand why she did what she did. We know that a lot of it had to do with her obsession with Proctor but if we were to look just beneath the surface we would find that, at least in my opinion, that Abigail was somewhat mentally psychotic in some ways and really needed a good and loving home to support her after the murder of her parents to have prevented her from her terrible deeds. By Kausar Hussain 10S Show preview only The above preview is unformatted text This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our GCSE Arthur Miller section.

Are Automotive Manufacturers more Socially Responsible?

Are Automotive Manufacturers more Socially Responsible? To what extent are car manufacturing firms operating in a more socially responsible manner when designing environmentally friendly cars? Abstract Social responsibility is one of the key differentiators between modern corporations, and is seen by many analysts as an antidote to the past few years trend towards the demonisation of corporate institutions. The recent economic crisis, in particular, has led many observers to argue that corporations that fail to address issues of social responsibility will struggle to survive. However, other observers question whether this phenomenon is anything more than a superficial consumer trend, and whether the world economy in general can seriously contemplate a corporate system in which the profit motive is subservient to the need for corporate social responsibility. This dissertation examines social responsibility in terms of the car manufacturing industry, and looks in particular at the question of whether or not the move towards environmentally friendly cars is anything more than a passing phase in an industry that is extremely sensitive to public opinion. Ultimately, the aim of the disse rtation is to determine whether or not corporate social responsibility within the car manufacturing industry is a genuine change, or whether it is simply a superficial response to a passing public trend. Introduction The concept of corporate social responsibility has been one of the dominant themes of the past decade, with consumer recognition of a corporations social responsibility being increasingly seen as a lucrative phenomenon. In the west, in particular, increasing levels of affluence have led to a trend that has seen more customers show willingness to pay more for products that are designed according to theories of social responsibility., and this shift has been nowhere more apparent than in the automobile manufacturing industry. This trend has inter-cut with a recognition (in some quarters) of the need to ensure a more environmentally-friendly approach to industrial production and consumption, and a number of corporations have secured dramatically enhanced public images through a focus on affordable but socially responsible products. However, critics argue that since the primary aim of these corporations is to increase their profits, the appearance of social responsibility has been more o f a cosmetic change than a substantial alteration of core business practices; many critics believe that corporations have, in most cases, merely become better at packaging their products as a more socially responsible, environmentally friendly alternative. Despite the recent financial crisis, the automobile manufacturing industry remains a bellwether for the global economy, and any genuine global industrial changes regarding social responsibility will likely be evident in the automobile industry at an early stage. This dissertation will examine the behaviour of car manufacturing firms and will ask whether they have genuinely become more socially responsible when designing environmentally friendly cars, or whether this is merely a superficial smokescreen designed to generate improved public exposure without leading to genuine changes in design and production philosophies. In particular, the difference between the industrys approach before and after the onset of the recent economic crisis will be examined, and these differences will be used to determine whether or not the move towards social responsibility represented a genuine change to production systems or was merely an attempt to capture the early twenty-first century zeitgeist. Furthermore, the dissertation will examine the extent to which social responsibility and environmental awareness have affected not only above-the-line (i.e. visible to the public) areas of the industry, but also below-the-line (i.e. internal corporate) systems; the d issertation will argue that firms can only be said to have adopted a greater level of social responsibility if their attempts to tackle this issue extend to below-the-line activities. The dissertation will use a series of core examples in order to determine both the hyperbole (i.e. the claims made to the public) and the core below-the-line changes that may, or in some cases may not, reflect the car manufacturing industrys more socially responsible, environmentally friendly approach to business and production. Literature Review Corporate Social Responsibility Social responsibility has been one of the key growth areas in recent years. Crane et al. (2007) define social responsibility, in the corporate context, as a companys ability to put aside the profit motive in order to perform tasks that have a beneficial effect not on the company itself in terms of capital but in terms of an entirely separate social group (Crane et al., 2007, p. 6). In this context, social responsibility can be seen as something that companies are expected to do unbidden, in much the same way as many people choose to donate their time and volunteer to help charities. In some ways, therefore, social responsibility can be seen as an attempt to anthropomorphise corporations by rendering them indebted to a cultural belief that they should act in a more ethical and moral manner. This is in some ways a cultural corrective to the idea of corporations as solely capitalistic, profit-orientated organisations. May et al. (2007) suggest that corporate social responsibility is a popular construct that seeks to imbue corporations with humanistic traits regardless of whether those traits are present or not (May et al., 2007, p. 118). In order for public recognition of these traits to be tangible, there must be a relative relationship between different corporations, so some must be seen to be exercising a great deal of social responsibility, while other must be seen to be doing very little. This is, in effect, the classic polar relationship between good and bad, and it allows consumers to associate themselves with positive, socially responsible companies purely by making certain purchasing decisions. Both sides therefore have a vested interest in social responsibility: consumers feel good if they reward socially responsible companies with their custom, and can use such purchases as a form of status symbol; corporations, meanwhile, can try to generate a larger, more loyal customer base. While some critics argue that social responsibility is a trend that will wax and wane according to various social and economic factors (May et al., 2007, p. 119), others believe that the emergence of social responsibility as a major business factor in the past decade is in fact a permanent change. Crane et al. note that growing awareness of environmental issues has led many people to recognise the importance of social responsibility (Crane et al., 2007, p. 10), and although the recent economic crisis may have led many to hold back on the spending that they would otherwise have directed towards socially responsible corporations, there still appears to be a broad consensus that social responsibility is one of the most important factors in modern business. Consequently, many companies have sought to strengthen their social policy credentials. Environmental Policy One of the key elements of social responsibility is the environment. For more than twenty years, there have been warnings about the effects of global warming. Many corporations choose to exhibit their social responsibility through one of a number of environmentally friendly policies: Reducing the environmental cost of production distribution. Reducing the environmental cost of consumption. Reducing the environmental cost of disposal. Using more environmentally-friendly materials. Reducing packaging and other superfluous elements of a product. Instigating specific environmentally-friendly technological elements. Funding research and education programs. Carbon and pollution off-setting. All of these options and more are regularly employed by companies that want to emphasise their environmental credentials. Large companies tend to focus on methods that require little more effort than throwing money at the problem, e.g. by funding research or off-setting their carbon emissions. However, some other companies are far more inventive, and genuinely try to reduce their environmental impact. Social Responsibility Aside from the environmental factors noted above, companies have found a number of ways of demonstrating their corporate social responsibility: Funding education programs. Providing services, e.g. transportation for school and disabled groups. Promoting volunteerism among their own workers. Donating money to charities. Working to eliminate abuse in the chain of production. The globalised corporate environment makes it more difficult than ever for companies to hide practices that might be unpopular in their domestic markets. For example, if a company seeks to use cheap labour in third world countries, it can make a short-term impact but will usually be exposed eventually. In other words, companies find it increasingly difficult to hide any non-socially responsible behaviour. The Car Manufacturing Industry The vast majority of manufacturers are global in terms of production facilities. The leading US and Japanese manufacturers, for example, tend to have dozens of factories, with at the top five companies all having at least one factory in each of North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australasia. As such, the industry can be said to be truly global in terms of both customer reach and production. Furthermore, companies often experience great success in non-domestic markets, e.g. Japans Toyota also sells many cars in the US, and Germanys BMW is extremely popular in the UK; the only major exceptions to this rule are two of the three big US companies, General Motors (GM) and Chrysler, both of which have been criticised for their focus on the US market. The Impact of the Economic Crisis on the Car Manufacturing Industry All the worlds car manufacturers have in recent years suffered from the global economic downturn. In the US, the big three manufacturers Ford, Chrysler and General Motors (GM) have all come close to bankruptcy, and GM has been forced to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Around the world, companies have suffered similar problems, although in most cases not to the extent of the major US companies. In Japan, both Honda and Toyota have suffered heavy losses and have been forced to reconsolidate their core business areas. As a result, the automobile industry has been undergoing a period of immense uncertainty, and this has led many consumers to believe that they can no longer rely on the continued presence of the big names. Apart from the well-publicised problems for the big three US companies GM, Ford and Chrysler, almost every other major car manufacturer around the world has suffered a slump in profits in the past two years, and many have incurred legacy debts during this period that will impact upon their performance for decades to come. Toyota reported a massive $1.7bn loss (Fackler, 2008) and, like most other manufacturers, was forced to re-focus activities on core revenue streams. As one of the key figures in the green car revolution, Toyota had been investing heavily in environmentally-friendly cars, and had been happy to make such investments since it believe there would be massive financial benefits in the long run. However, the financial crisis crippled Toyotas ability to consider the long term implications of its current activities, and forced the company to focus on its core business. As Satoshi Hino notes, Toyota has long been one of the more adventurous companies when it comes to placing substantial industrial bets on future changes in the automobile market, but these have always been backed by strong performances in the companys core activities (Hino, 2005, p. 41). The companys move into electric and hybrid cars seen by many as a key element in the push towards greener automobiles has largely been financed by success in core diesel machines, with the pay-off for this front-end investment expected to arrive between 2010 and 2015. However, with the core business model threatened by double-digit year-on-year sales drops, Toyota was forced in 2009 to consolidate its activities and re-focus on the most profitable elements of its production line. This decision by the company served as dramatic proof that while there was clearly a high degree of confidence in terms of the potential for socially responsible cars to provide a significant pay-off in the medium to long term, this confidence was not strong enough to allow the company to rely on such vehicles during a time of economic crisis. Clearly, therefore, market forces are not yet dictating the need for social responsibility in sufficient numbers, or with sufficient support via purchasing decisions . Research Methodology Research Approach The research will take two key approaches: a questionnaire will be used to conduct primary research into consumer awareness of the question of social responsibility in the car manufacturing industry, and two case studies will be used to determine how two of the worlds biggest manufacturers GM and Toyota deal with this issue. In order to assess the impact of the social responsibility policies of both GM and Toyota, the questionnaires will be designed to measure the impact of such policies (or the lack of them) and the degree to which they change public opinion and have the effect for which they were designed. These questionnaires will be vital in terms of bridging the gap between the theory and reality, and will expose the limitations inherent in this approach. In order to increase the likely response rate, and to comply with ethical considerations regarding privacy, the questionnaires were left anonymous and respondents were told that they could ignore any individual questions that they would prefer not to answer. The secondary research will focus on two case studies, one looking at the leading US car manufacturer (General Motors) and the other looking at the worlds leading car manufacturer, by sales (Toyota). These companies have been chosen for specific reasons. General Motors (GM) has had a difficult economic history over the past two decades, almost filing for bankruptcy in the 1990s before going on to enjoy considerable success with a series of non-environmentally friendly cars (SUVs) while professing to hold social responsibility as a key philosophical point, and then suffering a massive collapse that resulted in the company filing for the fourth largest bankruptcy in US history (see chapter 4). Toyota, meanwhile, has made a name for itself with a series of advanced hybrid cars, but has also suffered during the recent financial crisis (see chapter 5). In other words, GM is seen by many as one of the worlds least socially responsible manufacturers, and Toyota is seen by many as one of the worlds most socially responsible manufacturers. By comparing and contrasting their approaches and fortunes, it should be possible to develop a clear understanding of the extent to which major car manufacturers have been socially responsible in pursuing an environmentally friendly agenda. Research Questions The research is based on the following key questions: To what extent do car manufacturing companies act with a high degree of social responsibility when designing environmentally friendly cars? How important is consumer behaviour to car manufacturers interest in social responsibility? Do consumers drive companies behaviour, or vice versa? What different approaches to the subject of environmentally friendly, socially responsible cars have been taken by different companies? How has the recent economic crisis affected manufacturers interest in social responsibility? Is social responsibility progressing according to narrative trends? Is this a major change to business, or merely a passing trend? Research Limitations Any research project contains inherent limitations. If these limitations are ignored, they do not go away; rather, they linger and negatively impact the reliability of the overall project. Consequently, the best approach is to recognise these limitations from the start and to work to ensure that they are factored out of the equation as much as possible. As Saunders et al. note, its only by recognising the limitations of any research program that the problems that always affect any research project can be brought into the open, addressed and contextualised and, in some cases, turned into positives (Saunders et al., 2009, p. 51). The research limits of this project are as follows: Social responsibility is an inherently subjective matter. Something that is socially responsible in the view of one person may be socially irresponsible in the view of another. Many of the relevant subjects, such as global warming, are not universally recognised. Its therefore important to reflect the fact that there is ongoing debate. There is insufficient time and space to analyse the entire market. Therefore, key examples must be selected for the case studies. As noted in 3.1, the subjects for these case studies were chosen for very specific reasons. Questionnaires must be brief and simple to understand, yet they must also focus on the key points. Persuading respondents to fill in questionnaires can be difficult. All these limitations can be overcome, to various extents. The subjectivity inherent in the research subject is in fact relevant to the continuing social, cultural and political debates regarding the extent to which car companies should, and can, adopt socially responsible roles; some critics argue that this can only be achieved if consumers adopt socially responsible approaches to their purchasing patterns, which will inevitably force corporations to adapt to face this trend. Similarly, the continuing debate over global warming although settled in many peoples view continues to cause debate in many parts of the world. Finally, the limitations of time and space mean that the case study subjects must be analysed extremely closely, and the choices of company must be made carefully. Results Analysis Response 200 questionnaires were sent out. The expected response rate was 40-50%, as per the suggestion by Saunders et al. that any questionnaire-based research project that prompts between a third and a half of targets to respond can be said to have performed averagely (Saunders et al., 2009, p. 102). In the event, 81 questionnaires were returned, representing 40.5%, which is just within the expected range. This gives a statistically relevant sample group. Demographic Information Demographic details are important in research concerning attitudes to consumer activity and the environment, since both of these factors can impact upon an individuals view of these issues. Question 1 concerned the age of the respondents: How old are you? The majority of respondents were in their teens and twenties, with a total of three quarters being under 40. This makes the questionnaire more relevant in terms of analysing the attitudes of younger people. The second question concerned the occupation of the respondents. It was decided to provide broad categories rather than to request specific details. For one thing, this emphasised the confidentiality and privacy of the research, and for another it allowed for easy and effective categorisation of answers: What is your occupation? Around two thirds of the respondents were employed, self-employed or in part-time work, with the rest being students, retired or unemployed. Awareness of Social Responsibility among Car Manufacturers The next question asked respondents if they believed the car manufacturing industry, as a whole, to be socially responsible. A brief explanation was appended to this question, defining social responsibility as an awareness of their impact on society, including the environment, and their efforts to ensure that this impact has a positive rather than a negative effect: How responsible do you think car manufacturers are? An overwhelming majority (67.9%) considered car manufacturers to be either not very or not at all responsible. Breaking these results down according to age and occupation gave the following results: Appreciation of manufacturers social awareness, broken down by age range Clearly, levels of appreciation appear to be at least partly linked to age, with these levels peaking for individuals in their fifties. There are numerous possible reasons for this, including: Media exposure: different age groups are exposed to very different media forms and sources, each of which will likely carry very different stories concerning manufacturers levels of social awareness. Learned behaviour: older respondents will have spent longer living in a time when many of the relevant issues, particularly environmental impact, were not considered. Environmental awareness: some of the answers may be influenced by a lack of belief in the various arguments concerning the environment and, in particular, the car industrys contribution to global warming. Clearly, therefore, awareness of social responsibility is a dynamic factor that reflects a number of different viewpoints, and this factors is by no means viewed the same by different age groups. The clear correlation between age and awareness indicates that manufacturers must ensure that they operate multiple simultaneous social responsibility programs if they are to reach all these groups. However, the next question sought to determine whether or not it was strictly necessary for the manufacturers to try to appeal to everyone, and asked how important social responsibility is to purchasing decisions. First, in terms of the overall response, the result was as follows: How important is a manufacturers social responsibility for you when choosing what car to buy? Almost half (48.1%) claimed that social responsibility was either very or quite important, with just over half (51.9%) claiming that it was not very or not at all important. Given the relatively small sample group for this research project, the difference is small enough to be statistically irrelevant, and broadly indicates a 50-50 split in terms of opinion on this subject. However, looking at the results in terms of an age-related breakdown results in a very different set of results: Importance of social responsibility of manufacturers, by age The data shows a clear depreciation of the importance of social responsibility for older consumers, although there is evidence of an increase for consumers in their 50s and above. In order to determine a link between awareness of social responsibility in the industry and the importance of social responsibility in purchasing decisions, the results from figures 4 and 6 were then combined: Importance, and awareness, of social responsibility in the car manufacturing industry There is clearly an inverse relationship between awareness of social responsibility as a factor in the industry, and belief in the importance of social responsibility. For example, younger people are most likely to believe that social responsibility is an important factor when making purchasing decisions, but are the least appreciative of any efforts that have so far been made. To an extent, this can be seen to be a matter of perception, but theres also clearly a problem for the industry in terms of persuading parts of the consumer base that its intentions are genuine. In order to measure the degree to which various manufacturers have succeeded in their aim of seeming more socially responsible, respondents were next asked whether they thought the industry had become more socially responsible over the past decade: Do you think the car industry has become more socially responsible over the past decade, less socially responsible, or it has stayed mostly the same? The vast majority of respondents believe there has been no real change, strongly suggesting that either the message from the manufacturers has not got through to the public, or that there is a deep level of cynicism in terms of whether the public believe that the rhetoric has translated into genuine action. Finally, respondents were given a range of options and were asked to indicate which they believed were most important in terms of social responsibility. They were asked to tick two or three options, with the aim being to allow them to indicate the elements of corporate social responsibility that were deemed most important: Most important elements of social responsibility Clearly, the vast majority of consumers overwhelmingly equate social responsibility with environmental issues. The only other factor to come close to this in terms of relevance was making donations to charitable causes, which to an extent also involves the environment. Social responsibility is not purely about the environment, and encompasses a range of other activities that can improve society. However, for the consumers canvassed for this research project, environmental issues were by far the most important, and its therefore possible to argue that the environment has overtaken all other elements of social responsibility and has become the single most important issue. Although manufacturers could fight against this perception and attempt to focus attention on other factors, the best approach might be to accept that when it comes to social responsibility, most consumers overwhelmingly focus on the environment. Case Study 1: General Motors (US) Background General Motors (GM) is the largest US car manufacturer, and the second largest in the world (after Toyota) (Trott, 2009). The company relies heavily on four key brands: Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC. Each of these brands has a distinctive presence in the US market, but critics have argued that GM has lacked focus on the non-US markets, leaving it particularly vulnerable to domestic turmoil and economic volatility. In 1994, GM came close to bankruptcy following a $4.5bn loss, but cost-cutting measures and management changes ensured its survival. The company was one of the key instigators of the huge rise in sales for sports utility vehicles (SUVs) in the 1990s, a trend that was highly lucrative for GM but which resulted in criticism from environmental campaigners. Between 1998 and 2001, GM and Ford vied for the top spot in the US market, primarily through massively increasing sales in the SUV market. However, the downturn which followed the September 11th 2001 attacks saw GM suff er particularly hard, even compared to Ford, with the latter at least having a strong European heartland on which to rely during difficult trading conditions in the US. Nevertheless, GM bounced back and by 2005 was recording strong sales figures and was eyeing major expansion into overseas markets. However, the recent economic crisis virtually crippled GM, as well as its two key domestic rivals, Ford and Chrysler. GM lost $38.7bn in the 2007 fiscal year (Wearden, 2009), and an almost 50% drop in sales. The following year, GM predicted that it would run out of money in mid-2009 without a substantial re-financing program, and called for government help. In November 2008, the company joined with Ford and Chrysler in formally requesting help from the US government in order to stave off bankruptcy. Even in the context of the financial crisis, this move was massive, since it represented the genuine possibility of the USs three major car companies going bust almost simultaneously. Although the US government, under outgoing president George W. Bush, was initially reluctant to provide money at a time when many other businesses also had legitimate claims for government help, in December 2008 a bridging loan was finally offered. Despite numerous attempts to cut costs and reorganise the co mpany over the next six months, in June 2009 GM filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. After Lehman Brothers, Worldcom and Washington Mutual, this was the fourth largest bankruptcy filing in US history. Eventually, on July 10th 2009, the US government helped to finance a new company, NGMCO Inc., that took on the majority of the old GM assets. The old GM changed its name to Motors Liquidation Company, and the new Vehicle Acquisition Holdings company changed its name to General Motors Company, thereby bringing GM back to life. The new version of GM is mostly owned by the US government, while the old GM Motors Liquidation Company continues to go through the process of the bankruptcy filing. Social Responsibility Both the old and the new GM have been involved in programs to emphasise their social responsibility. Since 1996, GM has financed the Safe Kids USA Buckle Up program, designed to encourage children to use seatbelts. The company has also contributed to a consortium that has donated over $1.2bn to fund education for engineering graduates, a scheme that has recently been extended worldwide. GM has also donated more than $200m in the past decade to charitable causes, and has supported both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates often simultaneously. The companys more recent philanthropic activities include a new global aid program (GM, 2009) and a number of smaller, local community projects designed to improve provisions mostly for children in areas surrounding the companys main factories. These projects have, for the most part, been maintained despite the continued financial uncertainty and the chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings that took place in mid-2009. GM has also launched a major program called I Am GM, designed to showcase the companys strong workplace diversity policies. The program involves placing adverts in newspapers and magazines, and on television, in which GM employees from different ethnic backgrounds talk about their pride in the company. As well as reinforcing the idea of GM as an equal opportunities, ethnically diverse employer, the campaign is designed to show how GM works towards engineering a higher degree of diversity in society. Linked to this program is the companys renewed focus on safety, which has seen not only improvements designed to help children in the event of an accident, but also high-profile campaigns to reinforce the companys vehicles in order to make them withstand bigger crashes. The Buckle Up program has been maintained, and GM has expanded this campaign since 2008 by taking the message to schools around the US. The company claims that corporate responsibility is about more than just words its an acknowledgement that our actions shape our reputation (GM, 2009). Environmentally-Friendly Technology During the 1990s, a number of scandals saw the company accused of poor environmental management, including an accusation that sediments have been stored in unsafe conditions. In 2006, GM was one of a number of manufacturers from around the world named in a suit brought by the State of California over the issue of pollution. The case was dismissed a year later, but the damage to GMs reputation had already been done. In 2008, the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) ranked GM 18th on its list of the USs worst polluters, giving the company a toxic score of 73,248, set against the no. 1 polluter, E.I. du Pont de Nemours, which scored 285,661 (PERI, 2008). Meanwhile, in the same year, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) ranked GM 7th out of the worlds largest car manufacturers