Summary for each of the reading Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Summary for each of the reading - Assignment Example A woman can try harder to be taken seriously but it totally depends upon the other person weather he takes you and your ideas seriously or not. To be taken seriously means that a person pay attention to and reply to you. It also means that what you think and what you do matters to others. However, it does not mean to be appreciated or to be respected. If a person thinks that your ideas are innocent, senseless or ordinary then he or she is not taking you seriously (Enloes, 2014). This chapter is based on a public conservation that took place on October 26, 2004, during an important UN peacekeeping and philanthropic support operation in Haiti. This event was directed and presented by Carol Cohn. The speech was started by Nadine Puechguirbal who has a PhD in political science. She started talking about the flood that took place in Haiti and how the hurricane destroyed a city named Gonaives. She also talked about how the UN community provided charitable support the people of Gonaives. The people of Gonaives lost their houses and were living in shelters provide by the UN communities. In these very shelters violence was going on against women by the men so that they could get control over the shelters, food and water. These women did not get anything to eat or drink and therefore they started selling themselves to get food. A few cases of sexual violence were also reported in Gonaives. This book mentions that humanitarian communities are working to provide securi ty to the women so that they can protect themselves as well as their shelter and food. The War of Terror is one of the most destructive and enormous combats between different countries of the world that caused massive destruction of societies, beliefs, buildings and financial well-being, trust of the public and other bodies. The war that took place between Iran and US destroyed major instillations within Iran including nuclear research facilities and electric companies. The

Voyage Calculation Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Voyage Calculation - Research Paper Example The distances and the loads of each port have been used from internet sources. Where required the original sources have been given credit and logical formulae have been applied to arrive at the respective calculations. Tasks I. Maximum Coal Capacity 1. Maximum quantity of Iron ore that can be carried from Gladstone to Karachi. 2. Maximum quantity of Iron ore that can be carried from Newstone to Karachi. 3. Maximum quantity of Iron ore that can be carried from Hampton Roads to Karachi. II. Cost per Tonnage The cost per tonne of cargo for a round voyage from Port Gladstone to Karachi is USD 23.58 per tonnes of cargo. The cost per tonne of cargo for a round voyage from Port Newcastle to Karachi is USD 23.58 per tonnes of cargo. The cost per tonne of cargo for a round voyage from Hampton Roads to Karachi is USD 23.58 per tonnes of cargo. The cost per tonne of cargo for a round voyage from Port Roberts Bank to Karachi is USD 23.58 per tonnes of cargo. Additional notes: Allow two days for leeway per voyage for the whole trip. Allow 1 day for transiting the Suez canal. Allow half a day for bunkering in Gibraltar and in Suez. Gibraltar Bunker prices (Petromedia Ltd, 2009). Distances are obtained from Reed's Marine Distance Tables (Caney & Reynolds, 2000). Suez Canal transit cost (Leth agencies, 2009). III - Number of Shipments and ship speed a. Gladstone to Karachi There will be 3 shipments needed to transport coal from Gladstone to Karachi. The vessel will not be fully loaded on its last voyage. b. Newcastle to Karachi There will be 5 shipments needed to transport coal from Newcastle to Karachi. The vessel will not be fully loaded on its last voyage. c. Hampton Roads to Karachi There will be 5 shipments...The report will be covering the following aspects: It is necessary to understand that the contents of the report are based on a values that have been gathered from secondary research over the internet. The distances and the loads of each port have been used from internet sources. Where required the original sources have been given credit and logical formulae have been applied to arrive at the respective calculations. It is very much possible that there will be pre-monsoon and summer rains that can affect the course and speed of the vessels. Thus, allowance in the costs has to be made for such stoppages and slowdowns.

Description of the US Citizenship Process

Description of the US Citizenship Process   Jacob Hill   Citizenship isnt as simple as residence. There are many requirements beyond residence to qualify as a citizen of the United States. Some people have lived here for years and still arent qualified to vote because they are not yet citizens. Specific criterion have been set to acquire citizenship that involve things such as knowledge of basic United States history, fluent english, and many other things that will be discussed throughout this paper. Overall, as a born-in citizen, I will be discussing the other end of the spectrum and the advantages that citizens have over aliens. To become a citizen, there are a few processes an individual can take. One way is to be born in the United States, though you cant really choose this option. The other way is through naturalization. Naturalization is the established legal process that allows an individual to acquire citizenship in a new country. The naturalization process is different for every country, but in the United States of America, we like to make the process simple and overall easy. Whether this is a good thing is up to each person on their own to decide. To discuss the naturalization process, we first have to draw the lines as to who is a born-in citizen. Any person born in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, or Guam is also a citizen from birth. There are a few more rules though. Children born on an American embassy anywhere in the world are also citizens; however, a child born on a foreign embassy on United States soil isnt a citizen. This means that in America we look at both where and to whom you are born to define your citizenship. Therefore, anyone born outside of those boundaries set has to go through the naturalization process before they can enjoy their life as a citizen of the United States of America. To begin the naturalization process an applicant needs to be qualified to apply. This requires a few extra boundaries. First of all, for any of this to matter, the applicant needs to be at least eighteen years of age. This is because before a person is eighteen their citizenship is based on their parents. If a person of age is wanting to file, they need to find out if their are eligible due to their residence or spouse. A person is eligible if they fit under any of these categories for qualification by residence. An applicant must: Have lawfully been admitted for permanent residence, have resided in the states for a minimum of five years with less than one full year of absence (or only three years if married to a citizen), have been physically present in the states for at least 30 months out of the last five years (they cannot be absent for more than 6 months at one time), and have lived in a single city or state for at least three months continually. If someone has achieved any of these, they are eligible to apply for citizenship by residence. To apply based on spousal qualifications, a person needs to follow similar guidelines. They need to have lived on United States soil for at least 3 years while married to a citizen. They need to have a legal union, and the spouse had to be a citizen for the full three years, minimum. They do not have to follow the residence laws if the applicants spouse is employed by any of the following organizations: The United States government (this includes all army, navy, marine corporations, or air force employees), American Research Institutes (must be recognized by the attorney general), a recognized religious organization, or certain public international organizations involving the United States. If an applicants spouse fits any of these requirements, then they are eligible for naturalization. Once they have found out whether they are eligible or not, they need to follow the steps to complete an application for citizenship. These can be acquired through a local courthouse or a public government building. This application needs to be accompanied by two photographs of the applicant, these pictures need to meet the standards set by the USCIS (The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services). There are a few documents that are required as well as a fee for application and another fee for fingerprints. After an applicant completes all of these steps, they will receive an appointment letter from the USCIS. This is to get your fingerprinting done. Once this is done, they will set up an appointment for an interview. This interview includes a few questions about your background and about you as a person, to test the good moral character required. If the applicant is passed on, they will be given an English test to see how fluent they are. After completion of that test, they take a civics test. This is a general knowledge test of simple American history, things such as war knowledge, what wars we were involved in and why, what presidents were major models, and other questions along those lines. When the applicant has gone through all of this, they are still a few steps away from becoming a citizen. They first receive a decision. This decision comes from a member of the USCIS looking through the applicants profile and criminal history and seeing if they meet the standards for moral character. Upon examination, if there are any flaws, these will be brought up to the applicant for potential clearing up. After this, the member will look through the answers on the test, grade them, and see if they are qualified to receive a ceremony date. If they pass all tests and their moral character is in tact, they will be scheduled for a ceremony date. The ceremony is where the applicant finally officially becomes a United States citizen. This ceremony usually happens at the nearest courthouse, and includes a few more applicants. These dates are usually spread out so that there can be as many people as possible receiving their citizenship cards at the same time. When the applicant arrives at the courthouse, they are required to turn in their Permanent Resident Card. This is simply because once they are citizens they will not need it anymore. Once they do that, court is in session. In the court, they will all line up, pledge their allegiance to the United States, the usual way, and sit with the other applicants. Each individual will get up and give a speech for those in the court, usually family and friends are there to support them. They will discuss what they have been doing since they found out that they are eligible to receive their citizenship, and why they desired to be citizens of this great country. After everyone is done with their speeches, they move on as a group to the floor. They will all take the Oath of Allegiance. This is the final step to naturalization. It is the last leap to becoming a citizen, and after it is done, there is only one thing left to do, celebrate. It may be a simple process, but it is incredibly lengthy, not including the time that you have to have lived in the States. This process can really take a toll on a person, so it is a glorious time when the applicant finally receives that card. They can finally vote, and gain a United States passport. Above all, they have all the freedoms that a citizen has, and they are protected by the constitution. They can finally get a high end job, and will be respected as any other worker would be. It is difficult to get a job that isnt fast food or shelf-stocking when you arent a legal citizen, so that is a bonus. They finally gain the freedoms listed out in all of the Bill of Rights, and will be tried in court just the same as a born-in citizen would. There isnt any backlash for being a citizen in America, like there would be if you became a citizen of Cuba. The only thing that is an issue is the impossibility of dual citizenship. Here in America, there is a sort of moral code that says we believe a citizen in our country considers us their home, and having dual citizenship doesnt reflect that very well. Of course, in any case that a person truly does want to become a citizen, the process is a little bit more involved than it has been told in this paper. When a person wants to become a citizen, they dont already have the knowledge of what wars America has been in, and they surely dont know all of the presidents. There is studying to do, and along with that, the process nearly requires a lawyer who majors in legalization and immigration. The legal steps to becoming a citizen like finding out whether you are eligible, and how to display yourself to the interviewers. Also getting into the system takes a fine-tuned approach, so the best way to attack that is through someone who truly knows the system. Overall though, being a citizen of this amazing country is worth all the trouble, and the freedoms we have are the greatest we can expect from any country.

Memory and History in the Works of Michael Ondaatje :: Biography Biographies Essays

Memory and History in the Works of Michael Ondaatje In the Canadian social context, the issue of identity can be a fraught one, and the question of what it means to be Canadian is notoriously sticky, particularly given the wide variety of social and cultural backgrounds claimed by Canadians and the heterogeneity of their own experiences. This paper deals with the ways in which the Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje works with issues of understanding and accessing memories and histories outside of one’s personal lived experience. Ondaatje’s The English Patient opens with an epigraph culled from the minutes of a Geographical Society meeting in London in the early nineteen-forties. It reads: â€Å"Most of you, I am sure, remember the tragic circumstances of the death of Geoffrey Clifton at Gilf Kebir, followed later by the disappearance of his wife, Katherine Clifton, which took place during the 1939 desert expedition in search of Zerzura. â€Å"I cannot begin this meeting tonight without referring very sympathetically to those tragic occurrences. ‘The lecture this evening†¦Ã¢â‚¬  The passage introduces a number of key themes in the text, and is worth dealing with at some length. The first issue I want to examine is the opening line. Memory is arguably the most important issue at play in this novel, and its positioning here draws attention to its recurring significance throughout the text. The context of its usage is of particular interest. A later passage notes the attitude of disinterested objectivity, of scientific detachment, that pervades the lectures’ setting, and the uneasiness of the speakers as they struggle to readjust to the urban and urbane environment. ‘Someone will introduce the talk’, it notes, ‘and someone will give thanks †¦ [t]he years of preparation and research and fund-raising are never mentioned in these oak rooms †¦ losses in extreme heat or windstorm are announced with minimal eulogy. All human and financial behaviour lies on the far side of the issue being discussed — which is the earthâ€℠¢s surface and its â€Å"interesting geographical problems†Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ (134). The tension between the impersonal detachment of the lecture’s atmosphere and the terminology in the epigraph is one that operates through much of Ondaatje’s work. That tension is in the text that holds together two opposing forces — personal, lived memory, and cultural memory. Susan Sontag, in her recent book Regarding the Pain of Others, makes the somewhat contentious claim that ‘there is no such thing as collective memory †¦ all memory is individual, unreproducible — it dies with each person.

A Comparison and Contrast of Andrew Marvell’s

Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress and Robert Herrick’s Corinna’s Going A-Maying are poems which both present a familiar theme in literature which is Carpe diem which means seize the day. The poems tell about different situations wherein you have to take advantage of the moment because such instances are not permanent and wouldn’t last long.â€Å"To His Coy Mistress† is about a young man professing his love for a young lady, but the lad responds by being playfully hesitant and demure, as though she was full of uncertainty (Marvell, 1999). But according to the female, dallying as such will not do, because youth will pass them by swiftly, so there is a need for them to take advantage of the situation. He then expounds that if they had the luxury of time, then they could their days idly, admiring each other while leisurely passing time.But for them the reality is that time is not on their side because it s a winged chariot ever racing along, they wou ldn’t know exactly when their youth will be gone, but it is certain that if they don’t seize the moment, the only thing that would await them would be the grave.In â€Å"Corinna’s Going A-Maying†, the narrator urges Corinna to wake up and get up early on the first of May, so that she would be able to enjoy the fun of the day, as well as the beautiful flowers of the month of May (Herrick, 2008). She is also told to hurry her morning prayers so that she can already go out into the fields to enjoy May.The narrator also told her that while she spent her time sleeping, many couples have already been engaged, many had played the kissing game, and several other things that could encourage Corinna to go out. In the end, she is told to go while they’re still in their prime, to seize the opportunity before they grow old and die. With life being short, if Corinna would let the opportunity pass, then she couldn’t turn back the hands of time.The title â €Å"To His Coy Mistress† would mean that the lady love of young man is not an easy catch. It is phrased in a way that the author reports the plea of a young man to his beloved. The title â€Å"Corinna’s Going A-Maying† implies that Corinna would eventually go out and enjoy the month of May, as she is being persuaded by the narrator.Marvell’s poem is written in the first person point of view, though it is presented as a plea of some other person. It reports of what goes on inside the mind of the man, as his thoughts were manifested through the words in the poem.It shows of an impatient young man, who desperately urges the young lady not to waste any more time temporizing and playing hard-to-get. It can be seen as more of a selfish desire for something carnal rather than true love by the man, as he is overflowing with passion, like he can’t contain it anymore. He can be characterized as more of an immature and selfish person than a loving one.On the other hand, Herrick’s poem is also in the first persona point of view that of a narrator. He is an unnamed individual who urges Corinna to get up of from the bed, go out, and enjoy the first of May. The narrator tells more of the events that Corinna had missed while she was spending her time sleeping. It is more of an exposition of the joys that May brings, and what they could expect in the coming times. The narrator is more of a persuasive individual, telling every kind of story just to convince Corinna that she needs to go out of bed already.The setting of â€Å"To His Coy Mistress† is not specified in the poem. There is no scene that presents such a place in which the characters would interact. The young man and the young lady are assumed to be from somewhere in England, as suggested by the River Humber which was mentioned in the poem. In â€Å"Corinna’s Going A-Maying† there is also no specified place of interaction for the people in the poem. It can be assumed that it is in the house of Corinna, wherein she is still in her bedroom, still sleeping.It is evident that for both poems, the speaker or the narrator spoke first of beautiful things before telling about the consequences of not seizing the day or grabbing the opportunity. In the poem â€Å"To His Coy Mistress,† it was shown that if the lady and the man were to have the luxury of time, then they could afford of being idle, praising and adoring each other for hundreds of years to come.In the poem â€Å"Corinna’s Going A-Maying†, the narrator speaks of wonderful things that can be done outside, in order to fully enjoy May. They can pick flowers, interact with other people, and explore love with the opposite sex. However, in the end, the speakers in both poems stated that if they don’t seize the opportunity, then the only thing certain for them is that they would grow old and eventually die, without the chance of enjoying the opportunity that they missed.Andrew Marvell and Robert Herrick’s poems tell the readers about grabbing the opportunity while it is there. We cannot afford to let the opportunity pass us by because we would end up losing it forever. We don’t have the luxury of time, and we would eventually find ourselves aging, and unable to do the things when we were young. This is why we should grab every opportunity and seize the day.References:Herrick, R. (2008). Corinna's Going A-Maying.  Ã‚   Retrieved September 17, 2008, from http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/corinna-s-going-a-maying/Marvell, A. (1999). To his Coy Mistress.  Ã‚   Retrieved September 17, 2008, from http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/coy.htm  

Persusive Essay

Persuasive Essay I believe Margaret Drabble’s statement, â€Å"Our desire to conform is greater than our respect for objective facts,† to be quite true. Throughout history, people of all ages have wanted to be accepted and belong to a group rather than look at the facts and measure what is true and false. It is very evident in our society today that not only do we want to be accepted and belong, but we also are willing to do whatever it takes, no matter what the consequences turn out to be. I agree with Drabble’s statement and believe that it is true all around the world.If you were to step outside our society and look back at it objectively, I can assure you that you would see evidence of this. No matter what age, gender, or ethnicity, people are always going to have the desire to fit in with and belong to a certain clique or group of people. From my observations, people are willing to do almost anything if it means that they will feel like they belong somewhere , no matter what the facts are. Gang membership is an extreme, but valid, case. To be initiated into a gang, you must look beyond the facts and consequences of what could happen to you, and do whatever it takes to get in.This could involve taking a person’s life, robbing a store, or doing other illegal things, but if it means becoming part of a â€Å"family,† as the leaders call it, or just getting the same tattoo as everyone else, then many people are willing to take the risk and do it. Today, a lot of young people brush aside the fact that they could end up facing serious criminal charges and spend the rest of their lives in jail. They seem heedless not only about the immorality of taking a life, but also about how they are ruining their own lives. They are often aware of the facts, but choose not to listen.Gang leaders tend to manipulate the minds of those wanting to join a gang into thinking that nothing bad could happen to them if they were to become part of the à ¢â‚¬Å"family. † Often, only former gang members have the â€Å"street cred† to get through to potential gang members concerning what they are getting into. Any objective observer of the situation could easily point out the dire consequences, but only a limited number of people have even a small chance of deterring potential gang members. To feel part of a clique or group can be a great feeling and that is usually why we do what we do in the first place.I am convinced that not a lot of people can really say that they have never felt this way before. We are taught at a young age to resist peer pressure and to say no, but as we grow up it gets harder and harder, especially during the teenage years when, if you do not do as everyone else does, then you will face discrimination. High school is one of the places where this happens everyday. I can say from first-hand experience that I used to be one of those people who were willing to do whatever it took in order to feel like I belonged.Many kids are aware of the facts about what lies ahead, but just choose to ignore them because of feeling the desire to be accepted at all costs. If kids are given the option to stay at home Saturday night and study for a test or go out to a party where the most popular kids will be, most will choose the party. It does not matter that Sunday morning the chances of having a hangover and not studying for a huge test on Monday are very likely. What matters to most kids is that they want their names on the list when everyone talks on Monday about who went to the party.Whether we, as teenagers, want to believe it or not, if there is a party, then to feel popular and accepted into the group, we will want to go. We will want to go to have fun and be with our friends, but the greater factor in our decision is that on Monday morning everyone will be talking about who went and who did not. Objective facts do not deter us. People in our society today are so obsessed with being perfe ct and fitting in that very few step back to realize many of us are doing things that we will someday regret.Drabble’s statement applies to women trying to gain â€Å"the perfect figure. † Today, the perfect shape is to be model thin, which translates to dress sizes of 00-2. Each and every day, women all around the United States starve themselves and become anorexic to fit into society’s image of how a perfect woman should look. These women believe that no one will like them if their body does not look like that of a runway model and, therefore, they do whatever it takes, no matter how serious or life threatening the consequences are.Any objective observer could tell these women that they are morbidly thin, yet the women see themselves as overweight. Many women hear about the consequences of becoming anorexic or bulimic, but, at the end of the day, the majority still choose trying to meet societal expectations over their own health. Many would deny that they are flying in the face of objective fact, but when it comes down to it, no matter how harsh or life threatening the consequences, many people will o anything to experience the unity within a group or clique—from gang membership, to being part of the â€Å"in† crowd, to actually starving to death to match an image. We need to take a step back and realize what we are doing to ourselves and that there is more in life than just pleasing others and trying to fit in. I believe that Drabble’s statement will continue to be true unless we reach a time when everyone recognizes that we should not have to sacrifice objectivity to feel united.

The Difference Between Macro and Micro Sociology

The Difference Between Macro and Micro Sociology Though they are often framed as opposing approaches, macro- and microsociology are actually complementary approaches to studying society, and necessarily so. Macrosociology refers to sociological approaches and methods that examine large-scale patterns and trends within the overall social structure, system, and population. Often macrosociology is theoretical in nature too. On the other hand, microsociology focuses on smaller groups, patterns, and trends, typically at the community level and in the context of the everyday lives and experiences of people. These are complementary approaches because at its core, sociology is about understanding the way large-scale patterns and trends shape the lives and experiences of groups and individuals, and vice versa. Between macro- and microsociology are differences like which research questions can be addressed at each level, what methods one can use to pursue these questions, what it means practically speaking to do the research, and what kinds of conclusions can be reached with either. Lets examine these differences to learn more about each and how they fit together. Research Questions Macrosociologists will ask the big questions that often result in both research conclusions and new theories, like these, for example. In what ways has race shaped the character, structure, and development of U.S. society? Sociologist Joe Feagin poses this question at the beginning of his book,  Systemic Racism.Why do most Americans feel an undeniable urge to shop, even though we have so much stuff already, and are cash-strapped despite working long hours? Sociologist Juliet Schor examines this question in her classic book of economic and consumer sociology, The Overspent American. Microsociologist s  tend to ask more localized, focused questions that examine the lives of smaller groups of people. For example: What effect does the presence of police in schools and communities have on the personal development and life paths of Black and Latino boys who grow up in inner-city neighborhoods? Sociologist Victor Rios addresses this question in his celebrated book,  Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys.How do sexuality and gender intersect in the development of identity among boys in the context of high school? This question is at the center of sociologist C.J. Pascoes widely popular book,  Dude,Youre a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School. Research Methods Macrosociologists Feagin and Schor, among many others, use a combination of historical and archival research, and analysis of statistics that span long time periods in order to construct data sets that show how the social system and the relationships within it have evolved over time to produce the society we know today. In addition, Schor employs interviews and focus groups, more commonly used in microsociological research, to make smart connections between historical trends, social theory, and the way people experience their everyday lives. Microsociologists, Rios, and Pascoe included, typically use research methods that involve direct interaction with research participants, like one-on-one interviews, ethnographic observation, focus groups, as well as smaller-scale statistical and historical analyses. To address their research questions, both Rios and Pascoe embedded in the communities they studied and became parts of the lives of their participants, spending a year or more living among them, seeing their lives and interactions with others firsthand, and speaking with them about their experiences. Research Conclusions Conclusions born of macrosociology often demonstrate correlation or causation between different elements or phenomena within society. For example, Feagins research, which also produced the theory of systemic racism, demonstrates how white people in the U.S., both knowingly and otherwise, constructed and have maintained over centuries a racist social system by keeping control of core social institutions like politics, law, education, and media, and by controlling economic resources and limiting their distribution among people of color. Feagin concludes that all of these things working together have produced the racist social system that characterizes the U.S. today. Microsociological research, due to its smaller-scale, is more likely to yield the suggestion of correlation or causation between certain things, rather than prove it outright. What it does yield, and quite effectively, is proof of how social systems affect the lives and experiences of people who live within them. Though her research is limited to one high school in one place for a fixed amount of time, Pascoes work compellingly demonstrates how certain social forces, including mass media, pornography, parents, school administrators, teachers, and peers come together to produce messages to boys that the right way to be masculine is to be strong, dominant, and compulsively heterosexual. Summation Though they take very different approaches to studying society, social problems, and people, macro- and micro sociology both yield deeply valuable research conclusions that aid our ability to understand our social world, the problems that course through it, and the potential solutions to them.

An Investigation Of Nigerian Consumer’s Online Shopping Behaviour The WritePass Journal

An Investigation Of Nigerian Consumer’s Online Shopping Behaviour Abstract An Investigation Of Nigerian Consumer’s Online Shopping Behaviour Abstract1. Introduction1.1. E-commerce development in Nigeria1.2. Problem statementResearch objectives1.3. Research structure2.   Literature review3.Methodology3.1.Research approach and strategy3.2.Data collection3.3.Data analysis3.4.  Ã‚  Ethical issues3.5.Research limitations4.ConclusionReferencesAppendix 1Related Abstract This research proposal deals with an investigation of the online shopping behaviour among Nigerians living abroad. It has been established from research that a few Nigerians embrace technology in doing business. The research paper starts with an introduction about the problem statement to be addressed in the research. The objective is to find out the factors that contribute to the unique online shopping behaviour among the Nigerians. The proposal highlights trends to be investigated that are online shopping in Nigeria. Data to be used in the research will be gathered through the use of a questionnaire given at random to 100 respondents. The obtained data will be analyzed based on the scaled factors given for each response by the participants. The representative sample gives the best results because it uses respondents of diverse fields who are in a position to use online shopping systems. The results can be used by any developing country because the online shopping trends for developing countries are the same. 1. Introduction The nature of how individuals do business has changed from time to time due to individual needs and the emerging business technologies. Electronic commerce is one of the recent forms of online shopping that has been adopted by many business individuals in the world. According to Ghosh (1997, p. 1),   â€Å"E-commerce provides consumers the ability to bank, invest, purchase, distribute, communicate, explore, and research from virtually anywhere an Internet connection can be obtained.† Therefore, electronic commerce can be defined as doing business through the internet. This trend of doing business has gained momentum in the global business world because of the increased web advertising (Jackson et al. 2003). This research proposal aims at determining the effect of web advertising on the Nigerian consumer’s online shopping behaviour. 1.1. E-commerce development in Nigeria The basis of electronic commerce depends on the level of technology in a country. Nigeria is a developing country that has experienced improvements in its technological aspect in the recent past with a total population of about 16 % embracing the use of the internet (Internet World Stats, 2009). However, most of the Nigerians have not exploited the full potential of using the internet fully. In addition, the recent advancement of technology has enabled many Nigerians to see the need to embrace technology in doing business. As such, internet usage has started gaining familiarity among the Nigerians. A research by Folorunso et al. (2006, p. 2226) shows that only 32% of Nigerians who had heard about electronic commerce had embraced the technology. This low number of Nigerians using the internet to do business may contribute to the Nigerian online shopping behaviour. 1.2. Problem statement The use of the internet in doing business in Nigeria is slower than other countries in the world. This is contrary to the vital importance provided by the use of the internet in advertising the product. Most of the Nigerians are ignorant about online shopping, but those who embrace the internet do not prefer to do online shopping because they assume products advertised in the internet are either expensive or strange to their traditional culture. This consumer behaviour has reduced efforts of globalization into the Nigerian markets. The question, then, is what should be done about this online consumer behaviour to promote globalization? Research objectives This research is carried out to find out the online shopping behaviour among the Nigerians. The objectives of the study will be: To Investigate the behaviour of online shopping among Nigerians Determine whether web advertising has an influence to the online shopping behaviour among Nigerians. To investigate the risks associated with online shopping. 1.3. Research structure This research will start by introducing the problem statement why it is an important study among the Nigerians. This will be followed by outlining the objectives of the study. The existing literature review sets to give the research the basis on which the factors being studied will be based. The methodology section will propose a how the factors can be investigated and why the chosen methods for study are preferred. Lastly the research will highlight the limitations that are likely to affect the results of the study and how they can be reduced to make the results more validated. The main chapters will be as follows; Introduction Literature Review Methodology Data Analysis and Findings Conclusions and Recommendations 2.   Literature review Folorunso et al. (2006, p.2224) suggested that the factors that affect online shopping behaviour are: â€Å"establishing cost, accessibility, privacy and confidentiality, data security, network reliability, credit card threat, authenticity, citizens’ income and education.† The shopping behaviour of Nigerians living abroad is unique as it can be identified as unique among the rest. Among the factors suggested by Folorunso income levels and data security was established as the major factors contributing to the unique behaviour of the Nigerians.   In another research by Ayo (2006, p.2), he argued that cyber-crime as the major factor behind the low rate of adopting the electronic commerce technology. Further, other important factors have been established as contributing to this unique behaviour among the Nigerians. These factors are inferior online payment methods, lack of trust in web retailers, poor technological infrastructures, and fear of insufficient security in onl ine environments (Adeshina Ayo, 2010). In contrast to the slow rate at which online shopping has been embraced by the Nigerians, they have increased use of electronic banking and payment systems as they regard these technology issues as more secure. The major use of electronic banking is to pay bills, money transfer activities and obtaining banking statements at any time they wish to have the statements for their daily activities. The major factors identified on the previous research do not point to the exact situation because even through the electronic banking services provided by this technology, users are also likely to be exposed cyber crimes (Egwali, 2009). Advertising is used as a marketing strategy to familiarise the consumers to the products in the market. In a global market, advertising through the internet gives the consumers an avenue to consider a varied field of products that will satisfy their specific demand. Although internet advertising comes with a lot of advantages to both the consumer and the advertising agency, it has not been fully embraced in the Nigerian market. This indicates that the consumers in the Nigerian market have varied perceptions about web advertising. According to Wohn and Korgaonkar (2003), â€Å"males exhibit more positive beliefs about web advertising and more positive attitudes toward web adverting than females. Additionally, male are more likely than females to purchase from the web and surf the web for functional and entertainment reasons, whereas females are more likely to surf the web for shopping reasons.† From these findings, it can be deduced that there are specific online shopping behav iour among Nigerians. The research will carry out a detailed review of the existing literature on the behaviour of online shopping among Nigerians.   The researcher will critically analyse the literature both that are in support of the research and those that are not. 3.Methodology This research will use qualitative approach to establish an in-depth description of the problem of the study. This method will be the most appropriate because it does not apply any mathematical judgment of the results (Higgs Cherry, 2009).   According to Miles and Huberman (1994), qualitative approach is the best because it is concerned with meaningful characteristics, stories, visual renders, observations and words. This study will be based on the individual behaviour on online shopping. Consequently, the research sample will be identified among them Nigerian Diaspora students, professionals and business people. The research sample will be conducted to 100 Nigerians. The research sample gives a good study population because of the sample size. In addition, the use of this type of respondents will give basis to the research because these are people who have the know-how of technological matters. Additionally, since online shopping is based on the use of technology this type of respondents is the best research population because they are quite aware of the online shopping activities using the internet. Thus, the results of the findings will give a true reflection of the real behaviour of the Nigerians online shopping. 3.1.Research approach and strategy The research will be conducted for 100 Nigerian. The respondents will be selected at random both that live in UK and those that are in Nigeria. The respondents will be supplied with questionnaires to investigate their online shopping behaviour. The data that will be used in this study will be sourced from both primary and secondary sources. The primary data will be collected by sending questionnaires to the respondents. The researcher will conceal the identity of all respondents for confidentiality purposes. All respondents will be given unique ID numbers like P1, P2, and P3 that will represent participant one, two and three respectively. Secondary data will be collected from existing literature that is in the public domain. This means that there will be no permission sought to access the materials or cost incurred to collect data. 3.2.Data collection The data for this research will be collected through the use of questionnaires. The questionnaires will be subdivided into three sub-groups as follows: online shopping, electronic commerce and internet usage. Each of the sub-categories will be aiming to investigate the behaviour of online shopping among Nigerians. (See appendix 1) 3.3.Data analysis Qualitative study does not involve numerical values, and thus, an analysis tool will be used that will give correct interpretation and description while at the same time avoiding biases (Sewell, 2008). Therefore, the data will be analysed using case descriptions of the phenomenon. A detailed report will then be developed based on the analysis of the data collected through questionnaires. After, conclusions will be drawn from the analysis of the study, and more so the researcher will give recommendations that for future studies. 3.4.  Ã‚  Ethical issues The ethical issue in this research study will be to keep the anonymity of the respondents. Each of the involved respondent’s information will be treated with great privacy based on individual data protection policy. 3.5.Research limitations The sample used to represent the Nigerians is comparably small.   A bigger representative sample should be used to determine the real factors. The random sampling method is good, but is faced with the challenge of some respondents failing to cooperate. The best approach would be to administer the questionnaire directly to the respondents to ensure that there is 100% response from the targeted representative sample. 4.Conclusion This research is an important finding that can be used to implement developmental changes in developing countries. Nigeria is one of the developing countries and the trends shown by its abroad citizens can be used as a model for other developing countries. Also, since technology implementation in the business environment is inevitable then it is important to identify these factors in order to make the required adjustments to make the developing countries able to embrace technology. The representative sample will give accurate results of the research study because it will use a study population that can embrace technology. References Adeshina, A Ayo, C .2010. An Empirical Investigation of the Level of Users.   Acceptance of E-Banking in Nigeria. Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce, 15 (1), 1-13. Egwali, A. 2009. Customers Perception of Security Indicators in Online Banking Sites in Nigeria. Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce, 14 (1), 1-15. Folorunso, O et al. 2006. Factors Affecting the Adoption of E-commerce: A Study in Nigeria. Journal of Applied Sciences, 6 (10), 2224-2230. Ghosh, A .1997. Securing E-Commerce: A Systematic Approach. Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce, 1-4. Internet World Stats, 2009. Nigeria Internet Usage and Telecommunications Reports. Retrieved from http:// www.internetworldstats.com/af/ng.htm. Jackson, P. et al. 2003. e-Business Fundamentals. London: Dorset House Publishing Company. Miles, M.B. Huberman, A.M. 1994. Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook, 2ndedn, Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Sewell, M., 2008. The Use of Qualitative Interviews in Evaluation, Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona. Sewell, M., 2008. The Use of Qualitative Interviews in Evaluation, Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona. Wohn, L Korgaonkar, P 2003, Web advertising: gender differences, gender differences in belief, attitude and behavior. Florida: MCB UP. Appendix 1 The questionnaire Online shopping Have you been using online shopping in Nigeria? Do you use online shopping in the UK? If yes how many times did you shop online while in Nigeria per week? How many sites do you visit per week while in the UK or Nigeria? What products do you shop for with this service in Nigeria or the UK? What are the risks associated with online shopping? 2.0 Electronic commerce Have you been using electronic commerce while in Nigeria? Do you still use electronic shopping in the UK? If not, what are the reasons? What functions do you use the service for in Nigeria or the UK? 3.0 Internet usage Do you use internet regularly? What do you use the internet for? Do you think there are risks associated with internet usage? How often do you use the internet for online shopping?

Al Gore - Saving the Constitution Speech at Constitution hall

Al Gore Saving the Constitution Speech at Constitution Hall delivered 16 January 2006, Washington, D.C.Thank you very much. Id like to thank Michael Ostrolenk for that on-the-spot introduction, and Id like to thank Michael and the other leaders of the Liberty Coalition for the wonderful work that they are doing to try to help Americans bridge many gaps that have sometimes unnecessarily divided us. I want to thank them for co-sponsoring this event. I want to thank Lisa Brown for her friendship to me and for her outstanding leadership of the American Constitution Society. Tipper and I have long admired her work, and its a pleasure to work with her. To all of the distinguished guests who are here, Senator Dianne Feinsteinothers who are present [inaudible]. And I want to commiserate with Congressman Bob Barr, who was connected live when we walked out on the stage, but having had similar occurrences with live video feeds before, I know what can happen and what he must be feeling right now. And I want to thank all of you for coming. Id like to start by saying that Congressman Bob Barr and I have disagreed many times over the years. But we have joined together today with thousands of our fellow citizens, Democrats and Republicans alike, to express our shared concern that Americas Constitution is in grave danger. In spite of our differences over ideology and politics, we are in strong agreement that the American values we hold most dear have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power. As we begin this new year, the executive branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress precisely to prevent such abuses. It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored in our country. And that is why many of us have come here to Constitution Hall to sound an alarm and call upon our fellow citizens to put aside partisan differences insofar as it is possible to do so and join with us in demanding that our Constitution be defended and preserved. It is appropriate that we make this appeal on the day our nation has set aside to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who challenged America to breathe new life into our oldest values by extending its promise to all of our people. And on this particular Martin Luther King Day it is especially important to recall for that for the last several years of his life Dr. King was illegally wiretapped, one of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government during that period. The FBI privately labeled King the and I quote the most dangerous and effective negro leader in the country and vowed to again, I quote take him off his pedestal. The government even attempted to destroy his marriage and tried to blackmail him into committing suicide. This campaign continued until Dr. Kings murder. The discovery that the FBI conducted this long-running and extensive campaign of secret electronic surveillance designed to infiltrate the inner workings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and to learn the most intimate details of Dr. Kings life was instrumental in helping to convince Congress to enact restrictions on wiretapping. And one result was the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act, often called FISA, which was enacted expressly to ensure that foreign intelligence surveillance would be presented to an impartial judge to verify that there was indeed a sufficient cause for the surveillance. It included ample flexibility and an ability for the executive to move with as much speed as desired. I voted for that law during my first term in Congress. And, for almost 30 years, the system has proven a valuable and workable means of affording a level of protection for American citizens while permitting foreign surveillance to continue whenever it is necessary. And yet, just one month ago, Americans awoke to the shocking news that, in spite of this long-settled law, the executive branch has been secretly spying on large numbers of Americans for the last four years and eavesdropping on and I quote the report large volumes of telephone calls, e-mail messages and other Internet traffic inside the United States. The New York Times reported that the president decided to launch this massive eavesdropping program without search warrants or any new laws that would permit domestic intelligence collection. During the period when this eavesdropping was still secret, the president seemed to go out of his way to reassure the American people on more than one occasion that, of course, judicial permission is required for any government spying on American citizens and that, of course, these constitutional safeguards were still in place. But, surprisingly, the presidents soothing statements turned out to be false. Moreover, as soon as this massive domestic spying program was uncovered by the press, the president confirmed the story was true but in the next breath declared that he has no intention of stopping or bringing these wholesale invasions of privacy to an end. At present, we still have much to learn about the NSAs domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the president of the United States has been breaking the law, repeatedly and insistently. A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our founding fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. They recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution, our system of checks and balances, was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said, The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers or either of them to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men. An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the founders sought to nullify in the Constitution, an all-powerful executive; too reminiscent of the king from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elected, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet on Common Sense ignited the American Revolution, succinctly described Americas alternative. Here, he said, we intended to make certain that, in his phrase, the law is king. Vigilant adherence to the rule of law actually strengthens our democracy, of course, and strengthens America. It ensures that those who govern us operate within our constitutional structure, which means that our democratic institutions play their indispensable role in shaping policy and determining the direction of our nation. It means that the people of this nation ultimately determine its course and not executive officials operating in secret without constraint under the rule of law. And make no mistake: The rule of law makes us stronger by ensuring that decisions will be tested, studied, reviewed and examined through the normal processes of government that are designed to improve policy and avoid error. And the knowledge that they will be reviewed prevents overreaching and checks the accretion to power. A commitment to openness, truthfulness and accountability helps our country avoid many serious mistakes that we would otherwise make. Recently, for example, we learned from just-declassified documents after almost 40 years that the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which authorized the tragic Vietnam War was actually based on false information. And we now know that the decision by Congress to authorize the Iraq war 38 years later was also based on false information. Now, the point is that America would have been better off knowing the truth and avoiding both of these colossal mistakes in our history. And that is the reason why following the rule of law makes us safer, not more vulnerable. The president and I agree on one thing: The threat from terrorism is all too real. There is simply no question that we continue to face new challenges in the wake of the attacks on September 11th and we must be ever vigilant in protecting our citizens from harm. Where we disagree is on the proposition that we have to break the law or sacrifice our system of government in order to protect Americans from terrorism when, in fact, doing so would make us weaker and more vulnerable. And remember that, once violated, the rule of law is itself in danger. Unless stopped, lawlessness grows, the greater the power of the executive grows, the more difficult it becomes for the other branches to perform their constitutional roles. As the executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its mistakes and reveal errors, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police its activities. And once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we do become a government of men and not laws. The presidents men have minced words about Americas laws. The attorney general, for example, openly conceded that the kind of surveillance, in his phrase, that we know they have been conducting, does require a court order unless authorized by statue. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act self-evidently does not authorize what the NSA has been doing and no one inside or outside the administration claims that it does. Incredibly, the administration claims instead that the surveillance was implicitly authorized when Congress voted to use force against those who attacked us on September 11. But this argument simply does not hold any water. Without getting into the legal intricacies, it faces a number of embarrassing facts. First, another admission by the attorney general: He concedes that the administration knew that the NSA project was prohibited by existing law and that that is why they consulted with some members of Congress about the possibility of changing the statute. Attorney General Gonzales says that they were told by the members of Congress consulted that this would probably not be possible. And so they decided not to make the request. So how can they now argue that the authorization for the use of military force somehow implicitly authorized it all along? Indeed, when the authorization was being debated, the administration did in fact seek to have language inserted in it that would have authorized them to use military force domestically and the Congress refused to agree. Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Jim McGovern, among others, made clear statements during the debate on the floor of the House and Senate, respectively, clearly stating that that authorization did not operate domestically and there is no assertion to the contrary. When President Bush failed to convince Congress to give him the power he wanted when this measure was passed, he secretly assumed that power anyway, as if congressional authorization was a useless bother. But as Justice Frankfurter once wrote, To find authority so explicitly withheld is not merely to disregard in a particular instance the clear will of Congress. It is to disrespect the whole legislative process and the constitutional division of authority between the president and the Congress. This is precisely the disrespect for the law that the Supreme Court struck down in the steel seizure case during the Korean War. It is this same disrespect for Americas Constitution which has now brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of the Constitution. And the disrespect embodied in these apparent mass violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming indifference to the Constitution that is deeply troubling to millions of Americans in both political parties. For example, as you know, the president has also declared that he has a heretofore unrecognized inherent power to seize and imprison any American citizen that he alone determines to be a threat to our nation, and that notwithstanding his American citizenship that person in prison has no right to talk with a lawyer, even if he wants to argue that the president or his appointees have made a mistake and imprisoned the wrong person. The president claims that he can imprison that American citizen any American citizen he chooses indefinitely, for the rest of his life, without even an arrest warrant, without notifying them of what charges have been filed against them, without even informing their families that they have been imprisoned. No such right exists in the America that you and I know and love. It is foreign to our Constitution. It must be rejected. At the same time, the executive branch has also claimed a previously unrecognized authority to mistreat prisoners in its custody in ways that plainly constitute torture and have plainly constituted torture in a widespread pattern that has been extensively documented in U.S. facilities located in several countries around the world. Over 100 of these captives have reportedly died while being tortured by executive branch interrogators. Many more have been broken and humiliated. And, in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, investigators who documented the pattern of torture estimated that more than 90 percent of the victims were completely innocent of any criminal charges whatsoever. This is a shameful exercise of power that overturns a set of principles that youre nation has observed since General George Washington first enunciated them during our Revolutionary War. They have been observed by every president since then until now. They violate the Geneva Conventions, the International Convention Against Torture and our own laws against torture. The president has also claimed that he has the authority to kidnap individuals on the streets of foreign cities and deliver them for imprisonment and interrogation on our behalf by autocratic regimes and nations that are infamous for the cruelty of their techniques for torture. Some of our traditional allies have been deeply shocked by these new and uncharacteristic patterns on the part of America. For example, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan one of those nations with the worst reputations for torture in its prisons registered a complaint to his home office about the cruelty and senselessness of the new U.S. practice that he witnessed. This material were getting is useless, he wrote. And then he continued with this: We are selling our souls for dross. It is, in fact, positively harmful. Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is yes, then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? If the president has the inherent authority to eavesdrop on American citizens without a warrant, imprison American citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what cant he do? The dean of Yale Law School, Harold Koh, said after analyzing the executive branchs extravagant claims of these previously unrecognized powers, and I quote Dean Koh, If the president has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution. The fact that our normal American safeguards have thus far failed to contain this unprecedented expansion of executive power is itself deeply troubling. This failure is due in part to the fact that the executive branch has followed a determined strategy of obfuscating, delaying, withholding information, appearing to yield but then refusing to do so, and dissembling in order to frustrate the efforts of the legislative and judicial branches to restore a healthy constitutional balance. For example, after appearing to support legislation sponsored by Senator John McCain to stop the continuation of torture, the president declared in the act of signing the bill that he reserved the right not to comply with it. Similarly, the executive branch claimed this it could unilaterally imprison American citizens without giving them access to review by any tribunal. And when the Supreme Court disagreed, the president then engaged in legal maneuvers designed to prevent the court from providing any meaningful content to the rights of the citizens affected. A conservative jurist on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the executive branchs handling of one such case seemed to involve the sudden abandonment of principle and, I quote him, at substantial cost to the governments credibility before the courts. As a result of this unprecedented claim of new unilateral power, the executive branch has now put our constitutional design at grave risk. The stakes for Americas democracy are far higher than has been generally recognized. These claims must be rejected and a healthy balance of power must restored to our republic. Otherwise, the fundamental nature of our democracy may well undergo a radical transformation. For more than two centuries, Americas freedoms have been preserved in large part by our founders wise decision to separate the aggregate power of our government into three co-equal branches, each of which, as you know, serves to check and balance the power of the other two. On more than a few occasions in our history, the dynamic interaction among all three branches has resulted in collisions and temporary impasses that create what are invariably labeled constitutional crises. These crises have often been dangerous and uncertain times for our republic. But in each such case so far, we have found a resolution of the crisis by renewing our common agreement to live together under the rule of law. The principal alternative to democracy throughout history has, of course, been the consolidation of virtually all state power in the hands of a single strong man or small group who exercised that power without the informed consent of the governed. It was in revolt against just such a regime, after all, that America was founded. When Lincoln declared at the time of our greatest crisis that the ultimate question being decided in the Civil War was, in his memorable phrase, whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure, he was not only saving our union. He was recognizing the fact that democracies are rare in history. And when they fall, as did Athens and the Roman republic upon whose designs our founders drew heavily, what emerges in their place is another strong- man regime. There have, of course, been other periods in American history when the executive branch claimed new powers later seen as excessive and mistaken. Our second president, John Adams, passed the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts and sought to silence and imprison critics and political opponents. And when his successor, President Thomas Jefferson, eliminated the abuses, in his first inaugural, he said, The essential principles of our government form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. Should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and regain that road which alone leads to peace, liberty and safety. President Lincoln, of course, suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, and some of the worst abuses prior to those of the current administration were committed by President Wilson during and after World War I, with the notorious red scare and Palmer Raids. The internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II marked a shameful low point for the respect of individual rights at the hands of the executive. And, of course, during the Vietnam War, the notorious COINTEL program was part and parcel of those abuses experienced by Dr. King and so many thousands of others. But in each of these cases throughout American history, when the conflict and turmoil subsided, our nation recovered its equilibrium and absorbed the lessons learned in a recurring cycle of excess and regret. But there are reasons for concern this time around that conditions may be changing so that this cycle may not repeat itself. For one thing, we have for decades been witnessing the slow and steady accumulation of presidential power. In a globe where there are nuclear weapons and Cold War tensions, Congress and the American people accepted ever-enlarging spheres of presidential initiative to conduct intelligence and counterintelligence activities and allocate our military forces on the global stage. When military force has been used as an instrument of foreign policy or in response to humanitarian demands, it has almost always been as the result of presidential initiative and leadership. But as Justice Frankfurter wrote in that famous steel seizure case, The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority. A second reason to believe that we may be experiencing something new, outside that historical cycle, is that we are, after all, told by this administration that the war footing upon which he has tried to place the country is going to last, in their phrase, for the rest of our lives. And so we are told that the conditions of national threat that have been used by other presidents to justify arrogations of power will in this case persist in near perpetuity. Third, we need to be keenly aware of the startling advances in the sophistication of eavesdropping and surveillance technologies with their capacity to easily sweep up and analyze enormous quantities of information and then mine it for intelligence. And this adds significant vulnerability to the privacy and freedom of enormous numbers of innocent people at the same time as the potential power of those technologies grows. Those technologies do have the potential for shifting the balance of power between the apparatus of the state and the freedom of the individual in ways that are both subtle and profound. Dont misunderstand me. The threat of additional terror strikes is real and the concerted efforts by terrorists to acquire weapons of mass destruction does indeed create a real imperative to exercise the powers of the executive branch with swiftness and agility. Moreover, there is an in fact an inherent power conferred by the Constitution to any president to take unilateral action when necessary to protect the nation from a sudden and immediate threat. And it is simply not possible to precisely define in legalistic terms exactly when that power is appropriate and when it is not. But the existence of that inherent power cannot be used to justify a gross and excessive power grab lasting for many years and producing a serious imbalance in the relationship between the executive and the other two branches of government. And there is a final reason to worry that we may be experiencing something more than just another cycle. This administration has come to power in the thrall of a legal theory that aims to convince us that this excessive concentration of presidential power is exactly what our Constitution intended. This legal theory, which its proponents call the theory of the unitary executive but which ought to be more accurately described as the unilateral executive, threatens to expand the presidents powers until the contours of the Constitution that the framers actually gave us become obliterated beyond all recognition. Under this theory, the presidents authority when acting as commander in chief or when making foreign policy cannot be reviewed by the judiciary, cannot be checked by Congress. And President Bush has pushed the implications of this idea to its maximum by continually stressing his role as commander in chief, invoking it as frequently as he can, conflating it with his other roles, both domestic and foreign. And when added to the idea that we have entered a perpetual state of war, the implications of this theory stretch quite literally as far into the future as we can imagine. This effort to rework Americas carefully balanced constitutional design into a lopsided structure dominated by an all-powerful executive branch, with a subservient Congress and subservient judiciary, is ironically accompanied by an effort by the same administration to rework Americas foreign policy from one that is based primarily on U.S. moral authority into one that is based on a misguided and self-defeating effort to establish a form of dominance in the world. And the common denominator The common denominator seems to be based on an instinct to intimidate and control. The same pattern has characterized the effort to silence dissenting views within the executive branch, to censor information that may be inconsistent with its stated ideological goals and to demand conformity from all executive branch employees. For example, CIA analysts who strongly disagreed with the White House assertion that Osama bin Laden was linked to Saddam Hussein found themselves under pressure at work and became fearful of losing promotions and salary increases. Ironically, that is exactly what happened to the FBI officials in the 1960s who disagreed with J. Edgar Hoovers assertion that Martin Luther King was closely connected to communists. The head of the FBIs domestic intelligence division testified that his effort to tell the truth about Dr. Kings innocence of the charge resulted in he and his colleagues becoming isolated within the FBI and pressured. And I quote: It was evident, he said, that we had to change our ways or we would all be out on the street. The men and I, he continued, discussed how to get out of trouble. To be in trouble with Mr. Hoover was a serious matter. These men, he continued, were trying to buy homes, mortgages on homes. They had children in school. They lived in fear of getting transferred, losing money on their homes, as they usually did. So they wanted another memorandum written to get us out of the trouble that we were in. The Constitutions framers, who studied human nature so closely, understood this dilemma quite well. As Alexander Hamilton put it, A power over a mans support is a power over his will. In any case, quite soon there was no more difference of opinion about Dr. King within the FBI, and the false accusation became the unanimous view. And in exactly the same way, George Tenets CIA eventually joined in endorsing a manifestly false view that there was a linkage between Al Qaida and the government of Iraq. In the words of George Orwell, We are all capable, he said, of believing things which we know to be untrue and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time. The only check on it is that, sooner or later, a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield. Two thousand two hundred American soldiers have lost their lives as this false belief bumped into a solid reality. And indeed, whenever power is unchecked and unaccountable, it almost inevitably leads to gross mistakes and abuses. That is part of human nature. In the absence of rigorous accountability, incompetence flourishes, dishonesty is encouraged and rewarded. It is human nature, whether for Republicans or Democrats or people of any set of views. Last week, for example, Vice President Cheney attempted to defend the administrations eavesdropping on American citizens by saying that, if it had conducted this program prior to 9/11, they would have found out the names of some of the hijackers. Tragically, he apparently still does not know that the administration did, in fact, have the names of at least two of the hijackers well before 9/11 and had available to them information that could have led to the identification of most of the others. One of them was in the phone book. And yet, because of incompetence, unaccountable incompetence in the handling of the information, it was never used to protect the American people. It is often the case, again, regardless of which party might be in power, that an executive branch beguiled by the pursuit of unchecked power responds to its own mistakes by reflexively proposing that it be given still more power. Often the request itself is used to mask accountability for mistakes in the use of power it already has. Moreover, if the pattern of practice begun by this administration is not challenged, it may well become a permanent part of the American system. That is why many conservatives have pointed out that granting unchecked power to this president means that the next will have unchecked power as well. And the next may be someone whose values and beliefs you do not trust. And that is why Republicans as well as Democrats should be concerned with what this president has done. If his attempt to dramatically expand executive power goes unquestioned, then our constitutional design of checks and balances will be lost. And the next president or some future president will be able in the name of national security to restrict our liberties in a way the framers would never have imagined possible. This same instinct to expand power and establish dominance has characterized the relationship between this administration and the courts and the Congress. In a properly functioning system, the judicial branch would serve as the constitutional umpire to ensure that the branches of government observe their proper spheres of authority, observed civil liberties, adhere to the rule of law. Unfortunately, the unilateral executive has tried hard to thwart the ability of the judiciary to call balls and strikes by keeping controversies out of its hands, notably those challenging its ability to detain individuals without legal process by appointing judges who will be deferential to its exercise of power and by its support of assaults on the independence of the third branch. The presidents decision, for example, to ignore the FISA law was a direct assault on the power of the judges who sit on that court. Congress established the FISA Court precisely to be a check on executive power to wiretap. And yet, to ensure that the court could not function as a check on executive power, the president simply did not take matters to it. And did not even let the court know that it was being bypassed. The presidents judicial appointments are clearly designed to ensure the courts will not will not serve as an effective check on executive power. As we have all learned, Judge Alito is a long-time supporter of a powerful executive, a supporter of that so-called unitary executive. Whether you support his confirmation or not and I respect the fact that some of the co-sponsors of this event do; I do not but whatever your view, we must all agreethat he will not vote as an effective check on the expansion of executive power. Likewise, Chief Justice Roberts has made plain his deference to the expansion of executive power through his support of judicial deference to executive agency rulemaking. And the administration has also supported the assault on judicial independence that has been conducted largely in Congress. That assault includes a threat by the majority in the Senate to permanently change the rules to eliminate the right of the minority to engage in extended debate of the presidents nominees. The assault has extended to legislative efforts to curtail the jurisdiction of the courts in matters ranging from habeas corpus to the pledge of allegiance. In short, the administration has demonstrated a contempt for the judicial role and sought to evade judicial review of its actions at every turn. But the most serious damage in our constitutional framework has been to the legislative branch. The sharp decline of Congressional power and autonomy in recent years has been almost as shocking as the efforts by the executive to attain this massive expansion of its power. I was elected to the Congress in 1976. Served eight years in the House, eight in the Senate, presided over the Senate for eight as vice president. Before that, as a young man, I saw the Congress firsthand as the son of a senator. My father was elected to Congress in 1938 10 years before I was born and left the Senate after I had graduated from college. The Congress we have today is structurally unrecognizable compared to the one in which my father served. There are many distinguished and outstanding senators and congressmen serving today. I am honored to know them and to have worked with them. But the legislative branch of government as a whole, under its current leadership, now operates as if it were entirely subservient to the executive branch. It is astonishing to me and so foreign to what the Congress is supposed to be. Moreover, too many members of the House and Senate now feel compelled to spend a majority of their time not in thoughtful debate on the issues but, instead, raising money to purchase 30-second television commercials. Moreover, there have now been two or three generations of congressmen who dont really know what an oversight hearing is. In the 70s and 80s, the oversight hearings in which my colleagues and I participated held the feet of the executive branch to the fire no matter which party was in power. And, yet, oversight is almost unknown in the Congress today. The role of the authorization committees has declined into insignificance. The 13 annual appropriations bills are hardly ever actually passed as bills anymore. Often, everything is lumped into a familiar single giant measure that sometimes is not even available for members of Congress to even read before they vote on it. Members of the minority party are now routinely excluded from conference committees, and amendments are routinely disallowed during floor consideration of legislation. In the United States Senate, which used to pride itself on being the greatest deliberative body in the world, meaningful debate is now a rarity. Even on the eve of the fateful vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq, Senator Robert Byrd famously asked, Why is this chamber empty? In the House of Representatives, the number who face a genuinely competitive election contest every two years is typically less than a dozen out of 435. And too many incumbents have come to believe that the key to continued access to the money for re-election is to stay on the good side of those who have the money to give. And, in the case of the majority party, the whole process is largely controlled by the incumbent president and his political organization. So the willingness of Congress to challenge the executive branch is further limited when the same party controls both Congress and the administration. The executive branch time and again has co-opted Congress role. And too often Congress has been a willing accomplice in the surrender of its own power. Look, for example, at the congressional role in overseeing this massive, four-year eavesdropping campaign that, on its face, seemed so clearly to violate the Bill of Rights. The president says he informed Congress. What he really means is that he talked with the chairman and ranking member of the House and Senate intelligence committees and, sometimes, the leaders of the House and Senate. This small group, in turn, claims they were not given the full facts, though at least one of the committee leaders handwrote a letter of concern to the vice president. And, though I sympathize with the awkward position, the difficult position in which these men and women were placed, I cannot disagree with the Liberty Coalition when it says that Democrats as well as Republicans in the Congress must share the blame for not taking sufficient action to protest and seek to prevent what they consider a grossly unconstitutional program. Many did. Moreover, in the Congress as a whole, both House and Senate, the enhanced role of money in the re-election process, coupled with the sharply diminished role for reasoned deliberation and debate, has produced an atmosphere conducive to pervasive institutionalized corruption that some have fallen vulnerable to. The Abramoff scandal is but the tip of a giant iceberg threatening the integrity of our legislative branch of government. And it is the pitiful state of our legislative state which primarily explains the failure of our vaunted checks and balances to prevent the dangerous overreach by the executive branch now threatening a radical transformation of the American system. I call upon members of Congress in both parties to uphold your oath of office and defend the Constitution. Stop going along to get along. Start acting like the independent and co-equal branch of American government that you are supposed to be under the Constitution of our country. But there is yet another player. There is yet another constitutional player whose faults must also be taken and whose role must be examined in order to understand the dangerous imbalance that has accompanied these efforts by the executive branch to dominate our constitutional system. We the people, collectively, are still the key to the survival of Americas democracy. We must examine ourselves. We, as Lincoln put it, even we here must examine our own role as citizens in allowing and not preventing the shocking decay and hollowing out and degradation of American democracy. Its time to stand up for the American system that we know and love. It is time to breathe new life back into Americas democracy. Thomas Jefferson said, An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will. America is based on the belief that we can govern ourselves and exercise the power of self-government. The American idea proceeded from the bedrock principle that all just power is derived from the consent of the governed. The intricate and finally balanced system, now in such danger, was created with the full and widespread participation of the population as a whole. The Federalist Papers were, back in the day, widely read newspaper essays. And they represented only one of 24 series of essays that crowded the vibrant marketplace of ideas in which farmers and shopkeepers recapitulated the debates that played out so fruitfully in Philadelphia. And when the convention had done its best, it was the people in their various states that refused to confirm the result until, at their insistence, the Bill of Rights was made integral to the documents sent forward for ratification. And it is we the people who must now find once again the ability we once had to play an integral role in saving our Constitution. And here there is cause for both concern and for great hope. The age of printed pamphlets and political essays has long since been replaced by television, a distracting and absorbing medium which seems determined to entertain itself more than it informs and educates. Lincolns memorable call during the Civil War is now applicable in a new way to our present dilemma: We must disenthrall ourselves, he said, and then we shall save our country. Forty years has passed since the majority of Americans adopted television as their principal source of information. And its dominance has now become so extensive that virtually all significant political communication now takes place within the confines of flickering 30-second advertisements, and theyre not The Federalist Papers. The political economy, supported by these short but expensive television ads, is as different from the vibrant politics of Americas first century as those politics were different from the feudalism which thrived on the ignorance of the masses of people in the Dark Ages. The constricted role of ideas in the American political system today has encouraged efforts by the executive branch to believe it can and should control the flow of information as a means of controlling the outcome of important decisions that still lie in the hands of the people. The administration vigorously asserts its power to maintain secrecy in its operations. After all, if the other branches dont know whats happening, they cant be a check or a balance. For example, when the administration was attempting to persuade Congress to enact the Medicare prescription drug benefit, many in the House and Senate raised concerns about the cost and design of the program. But rather than engaging in open debate on the basis of factual data, the administration withheld facts and actively prevented the Congress from hearing testimony that it had sought from the principal administration expert who had the information showing in advance of the vote that indeed the true cost estimates were far beyond the numbers given to Congress by the president. And the workings of the program would play out very differently than Congress had been told. Deprived of that information, and believing the false numbers given to it, instead the Congress approved the program and, tragically, the entire initiative is now collapsing all over the country, with the administration making an appeal just this weekend asking major insurance companies to volunteer to bail it out. But the American people, who have a right to believe that its elected representatives will learn the truth and act on the basis of knowledge and utilize the rule of reason, have been let down. To take another example, scientific warnings about the catastrophic consequences of unchecked global warming were censored by a political appointee in the White House with no scientific training whatsoever. Today one of the most distinguished scientific experts in the world on global warming, who works in NASA, has been ordered not to talk to members of the press; ordered to keep a careful log of everyone he meets with so that the executive branch can monitor and control what he shares of his knowledge about global warming. This is a planetary crisis. We owe ourselves a truthful and reasoned discussion. One of the other ways the administration has tried to control the flow of information has been by consistently resorting to the language and politics of fear in order to short-circuit the debate and drive its agenda forward without regard to the evidence or the public interest. President Eisenhower said this: Any who act as if freedoms defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America. Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote, Men feared witches and burnt women. The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk. Yet in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the full Bill of Rights. Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of nuclear missiles ready to be launched on a moments notice to completely annihilate the country? Is America really in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march, when the last generation had to fight and win two world wars simultaneously? It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they did. And yet they faithfully protected our freedom and now its up to us to do the very same thing. We have a duty as Americans to defend out citizens rights not only to life but also to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is therefore vital in our current circumstances that immediate steps be taken to safeguard our Constitution against the present danger posed by the intrusive overreaching on the part of the executive branch and the presidents apparent belief that he need not live under the rule of law. I endorse the words of Bob Barr when he said, and I quote, The president has dared the American people to do something about it. For the sake of the Constitution, I hope they will. A special counsel should be immediately appointed by the attorney general to remedy these obvious conflicts of interest that prevents them from investigating what many believe are serious violations of law by the president. Weve had a fresh demonstration of how an independent investigation by a special council with integrity can rebuild confidence in our system of justice. Patrick Fitzgerald has, by all accounts, has shown neither fear nor favor in pursuing allegations that the executive branch has violated other laws. Republican as well as Democratic members of Congress should support the bipartisan call of the Liberty Coalition for the appointment of this special counsel to pursue the criminal issues raised by the warrantless wiretapping of Americans by the president. And it should be a political issue in any race, regardless of party, section of the country, house of Congress, or anyone who opposes the appointment of a special counsel under these dangerous circumstances when our Constitution is at risk. Secondly, new whistleblower protection should immediately be established for members of the executive branch who report evidence of wrongdoing, especially where it involves abuse of authority in the sensitive areas of national security. Third, both houses of Congress should, of course, hold comprehensive and not just superficial hearings into these serious allegations of criminal behavior on the part of the president. And they should follow the evidence wherever it leads. Fourth, the extensive new powers requested by the executive branch in its proposal to extend and enlarge the Patriot Act should under no circumstances be granted unless and until there are adequate and enforceable safeguards to protect the Constitution and the rights of the American people against the kinds of abuses that have so recently been revealed. Fifth, any telecommunications company that has provided the government with access to private information concerning the communications of Americans without a proper warrant should immediately cease and desist the their complicity in this apparently illegal invasion in the privacy of American citizens. Freedom of communication is an essential prerequisite for the restoration of the health of our democracy. It is particularly important that the freedom of the Internet be protected against either the encroachment of government or efforts at control by large media conglomerates. The future of our democracy depends on it. In closing, I mention that, along with cause for concern, there is reason for hope. As I stand here today, I am filled with optimism that America is on the eve of a golden age in which the vitality of our democracy will be re-established by the people and will flourish more vibrantly than ever. Indeed, I can feel it in this hall. As Dr. King once said, perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us. Thank you very much.

Compare and contrast snow crash to the matrix Essay

Compare and contrast snow crash to the matrix - Essay Example Bob Rife’s virus from spreading, Neo in the Matrix movie does the same but his fight is directed to machines. Hiro’s fight is simple as compared to the task that Neo engages into. The Matrix movie spreads a darker picture as compared to Snow Crash because of the heroic acts that Neo has to engage into to achieve justice. This paper will compare and contrast the Snow Crash novel and The Matrix Movie. As stated above, the two works present dystopian perspectives into the future where the societies in the two works are grappling with certain problems. The two societies face problems that must be urgently solved so that people can lead happy lives. The struggles can be seen in the main actors’ engagements trying to solve these issues. However, the problems are not entirely the same as in the Snow Crash, Hiro fights against the spread of the virus while in the Matrix, Neo fights with machines. Clearly, this puts The Matrix on the higher edge in terms of the magnitude of the problem. In the movie, The Matrix (1999), the audience has been put in a future dystopian society, where human beings are living a somewhat normal life but again different because they are enslaved and are used as powering gadgets for their rulers electrical requirements. They have been imprisoned and are misused to power the sentient machines. The problem arises from the fact that the sentient machines rebel against the human population because the stormy clouds blocked the sun, which acted as their main source of power. Therefore, for them to survive they have to get power from the human body heat and this is what Neo fights vehemently. Human beings are forcibly put in pods, from where the thermal energy and bioelectricity are taken out of the human beings for use by the machines. The machines also use control the minds of the human beings using cybernetic implants. This is clear in Neo’s statement where he says, â€Å"I don't like the idea that I'm not in control o f my life† (Wachowski and Wachowski). This misuse of the human beings links them to a simulated reality known as the Matrix and is what Neo tries so hard to fight against. This heroic act is like fighting against a ruler or something superior by many standards. This virtual reality world, simulated by the program characterizes the civilized world that has enslaved the minds of human beings, but cannot comprehend this. This is clearly seen when Morpheus says, â€Å"If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain† (Wachowski and Wachowski). Stevenson’s depiction of the future in unpleasant but is not forsaken as people like the one Morpheus and Neo are determined to destroy the entire ruling class having attained enlightenment. For example, Morpheus says, â€Å"I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it† (Wachowski and W achowski). Despite the fact that there is similar injustices in Snow Crash where bleak institutions have replaced the democratic ones, the injustice is not similar because the human beings show the ability to adapt to the changes. In his work, Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson, portrays a similar dystopian that is present in The Matrix. Just like in the movie, where the existence of the machines upsets human beings, the existence of the lethal drug known as the Snow Crash makes life unbearable because of the dependence and makes Hiro, the protagonist determined to des

How is Entropy and Information Gain Theory used in Coding Theory Research Paper

How is Entropy and Information Gain Theory used in Coding Theory - Research Paper Example In a communication arrangement, two sources of coding are evident, the first one is the source coding, which focuses on efficiency provision of digital presentation from source signal. Secondly, we have the channel coding mainly the error-control coding which is for the provision of reliable communications through noisy channels (Ashikhmin, Barg & Dimacs 47) In coding theory, entropy and information gain theory offers various roles. Firstly, it is concerned with data reduction, which happens mostly studying a given task and coming across extra material called side information. This will result to the need of data reduction. Therefore, appliance of entropy and information will be of pronounced meaning because it will lessen the extra information. This theory can also interpret the extra information to represent context or situation information (Roth 6). Secondly, entropy and information theory concerns the determination of indecision that is allied with the given information. For exam ple, if certain specific information is on conduction and this theory happens to known it before the transmission of that material, it will lead to the failure of that information going through transmission. Entropy focuses on maximization during the equiprobable of meanings thus determining vagueness (Roth 7). Thirdly, this theory promotes intelligence and application of secrecy to information. These concepts mostly apply to cryptography compounded with cryptanalysis (Roth 7). It focuses on the redundancy of plaintext by giving the least quantity of ciphertext ensuring exceptional decipherability. Here information theory makes us be certain that it is hard to keep any secret (Golomb, Peile & Scholtz 202). Fourthly, entropy and information gain theory deals with the gathering of unpolluted disciplines, which have already gone through investigation and transformed to engineering practice. It deals with very broad applications thus the vitality of coding theory. Fifthly, this theory i s important when it comes to â€Å"error-correcting codes† in computers with high-speed memories (Cover & Thomas 13). These codes are of vital use when it comes to enhancing the reliability of computer memories. Here the computers contain unusual features that are rarely in communication applications. These errors are due to encoding, decoding, and uncommon type of errors. When this occurs, the entropy and information gain theory are able to detect double error appearing at the same time, correcting the single errors (Cover & Thomas 13). Source coding theory is about well-organized demonstration of given data that are from a certain information source (Gray 34). For example when it is an image-coding, achieving source coding can be through manipulating terminations of that image. To attain â€Å"noiseless source coding†, the measures of given information and its complexity should be observed. Central to this, the entropy and information theory is of application when it comes to detection of total information. This theory also helps when it comes to arithmetic coding compounded with statistical modeling (Kannappan 174). Arithmetic coding avoids assigning certain bit of given patterns to the original source symbol. In entropy and information theory, a connotation with a code is given and it concludes the order of symbol. These code words have sub intervals showing the disparity