Ethical Decision Making Model analysis Essay

What is the ethical decision making model? What is critical thinking? In this paper I will discuss the ethical decision making model and how critical thinking impacts ethical decisions. Personal experiences will be used as examples. When we are faced with making an ethical decision we are usually faced with an ethical dilemma. To make a good decision we need to use â€Å"Logical thinking that draws conclusions from facts and evidence† which according to www.ncrel.com is the definition of critical thinking. Recently I was personally faced with an ethical dilemma that has to do with work and school. I’m currently on a tuition reimbursement program though my company and there are certain criteria that will make my paid education taxable or nontaxable. Of course if my tuition is nontaxable I don’t have to pay taxes and I’ll be saving lots of money. One of the criteria for making my tuition taxable is if my educational program qualifies me for a new position at work. If I answer no, the tuition is not taxable and I’ll save some money but, in my situation the answer would be yes so my tuition should be taxed but, If I answer no, no one will find out and I’ll be cheating my company or the government out of some money. I’m now stuck with an ethical dilemma. In the end I choose to answer yes and pay the taxes, following an ethical decision making model helped me do the right thing. The ethical decision making model I followed and will break down is from the Josephson institute of ethics. The model follows 7 simple steps to finally come to a conclusion and make a decision. 1. STOP AND THINK One of the most important steps to better decisions is the oldest advice in the world: think ahead. To do so it’s necessary to first stop the momentum of events long enough to permit calm analysis. Stop and think won’t always be used if you are faced with a decision that needs to be made very quickly but, if you’re permitted the time to think about the situation you should. In my case I though about what could happen if I were to avoid paying taxes. I could get in trouble with the law and even my  company. Would it be worth getting fired? No I don’t think so. â€Å"Stopping to think provides several benefits. It prevents rash decisions. It prepares us for more thoughtful discernment. And it can allow us to mobilize our discipline† (1). 2. CLARIFY GOALS Before you choose, clarify your short- and long-term aims. Determine which of your many wants and don’t-wants affected by the decision are the most important. The big danger is that decisions that fulfill immediate wants and needs can prevent the achievement of our more important life goals. If I were to break the law it would definitely affect my goal of getting my BS in business management. I could also loose my job if I didn’t pay taxes and I wouldn’t have the resources to pay for school. 3. DETERMINE FACTS Be sure you have adequate information to support an intelligent choice. You can’t make good decisions if you don’t know the facts. To determine the facts, first resolve what you know and, then, what you need to know. If you don’t have enough facts then go find out more about it. Once we know more facts we then see that more decision factors come into play and it’s easier to make a decision. Here are some guidelines provide by Josephson institute: Consider the reliability and credibility of the people providing the facts. Consider the basis of the supposed facts. If the person giving you the information says he or she personally heard or saw something, evaluate that person in terms of honesty, accuracy and memory. Remember that assumptions, gossip and hearsay are not the same as facts. Consider all perspectives, but be careful to consider whether the source of the information has values different than yours or has a personal interest that could affect perception of the facts. Where possible seek out the opinions of people whose judgment and character  you respect, but be careful to distinguish the well-grounded opinions of well-informed people from casual speculation, conjecture and guesswork. Finally, evaluate the information you have in terms of completeness and reliability so you have a sense of the certainty and fallibility of your decisions. To find out the facts about my tax evasion I ask my friend Megan Kau who’s a tax attorney what she thought I should do. Let’s just say that the punishment is worse than the crime and that’s all the facts that I needed. 4. DEVELOP OPTIONS â€Å"Now that you know what you want to achieve and have made your best judgment as to the relevant facts, make a list of options, a set of actions you can take to accomplish your goals† (2). If it’s an especially important decision, talk to someone you trust so you can broaden your perspective and think of new choices. If you can think of only one or two choices, you’re probably not thinking hard enough but, in my case I would be breaking the law so actually there were no other choices. I was either breaking the law or not breaking the law. 5. CONSIDER CONSEQUENCES Two techniques help reveal the potential consequences also provided by Josephson Institute: â€Å"Pillar-ize† your options. Filter your choices through each of the Six Pillars of Character: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship. Will the action violate any of the core ethical principles? For instance, does it involve lying or breaking a promise, is it disrespectful to anyone, is it irresponsible, unfair or uncaring, does it involve breaking laws or rules? Eliminate unethical options. Identify the stakeholders and how the decision is likely to affect them. Consider your choices from the point of view of the major stakeholders. Identify whom the decision will help and hurt. In this case, I’ve said before, I would have been breaking the law and if I  anyone were to find out about it I would be very ashamed of what I did. In prior readings I remember a quote that said â€Å"to make a ethical decision ask yourself, would you be ok with it if it was posted on the front page of your local news paper†, If the answer is no, then don’t do it. 6. CHOOSE It’s time to make a decision. If the choice is not immediately clear, use on of the following strategies to make the decision: Talk to people whose judgment you respect. Seek out friends and mentors, but, once you’ve gathered opinions and advice, the ultimate responsibility is still yours. What would the most ethical person you know do? Think of the person you know or know of who has the strongest character and best ethical judgment. Then ask yourself: what would that person do in your situation? Think of that person as your decision-making role model and try to behave the way he or she would. I choose to do the right thing which is to pay taxes. 7. MONITOR AND MODIFY Since most hard decisions use imperfect information and â€Å"best effort† predictions, some of them will inevitably be wrong. â€Å"Ethical decision-makers monitor the effects of their choices. If they are not producing the intended results or are causing additional unintended and undesirable results, they re-assess the situation and make new decisions† (3). In my case I think I’ll live with the decision I’ve made. No one will be hurt by my decision and the law won’t be broken on my part. As you can see making an ethical decision can be broken down with the 7 steps provided and if the steps are followed, an ethical decision should be made. Critical thinking plays a big part in making my decision even when following the 7 steps listed. Again critical thinking is â€Å"Logical thinking that draws conclusions from facts and evidence†. Critical thinking plays a huge role in step 3 of the model that I used. I think step 3 is one of the most important steps in the process. Sometimes I still have the urge to save some money and skip out on paying taxes but, because I’ve used critical thinking as part of my decision, I’ve learned to know that facts are important and in the end making the right decision will better me in the future and also help me reach my goals with less obstacles. Works Cited The seven step path to better decisions http://www.josephsoninstitute.org/MED/MED-4sevensteppath.htm Web definitions www.ncrel.com

Chinese thrilling economy Essay

One of my Chinese class-fellow persuaded me to accept that China is emerging as a world super-power. He tried to convince by proving arguments that were based on misconceived notions. He also provides certain facts about Chinese thrilling economy, military might, its geo-strategic location. He further told me that China is capturing the world markets and heavy investments from world over are pouring in to bring an industrial revolution in the world. Although he mentioned these facts but I was unconvinced as he was unable to provide figures. The most disappointing thing was that he only mentioned soft power and did not realize that hard power too helps in achieving the status of super-power. If could have provided me the growing influence of China in the international socio-economic affairs, then it could be a convincing persuasion. Further, the cultural influence of china could be another valid argument but he did not mention all these. So his persuasion was an utter failure. I watched and analyzed John F. Kennedy Moon Speech in Rice Stadium in 1962. Kennedy uses his body language in a subtle way that augments the emotional effect of his speech. His body language is embellished and his movements are appropriate. He stresses his point of view on certain points by use of hands only and looks around to get the full attention of his audience. This speech is based on emotional appeal but some elements of logic are also manifested here and there. Although he provides the motives for the space program and historical land on moon but these logics are little convincing but he skillfully utilizes the emotional appeal. He sums the history of million years into a century and consider the â€Å"moon landing† the most important event of this century. He messages were very specific and he used illustrative language to show the importance this historical event. His speech is not direct but it does not create any confusion as audience is well aware of the purpose of speech already. URL: http://www. space-video. info/speech/19620912-jfk-rice. html

Representations of Illness and Recovery in ‘the Secret Garden’

â€Å"Explore The Secret Garden’s representation of illness and recovery. † The Secret Garden, written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, is a children’s story that has endured enormous popularity since its publication in 1911. The novel centres round a young and lonely protagonist, Mary Lennox. Mary’s journeys in The Secret Garden- both physical and spiritual- have been followed by child readers and often remembered long into adulthood.The text communicates to readers themes such as death, sickness, and recovery and it is largely because of this addressing of serious and sometimes relatable issues that the novel has been considered such a significant contribution to children’s literature. The notions that illness and unhappiness of all kinds can be ‘cured’ by positive thinking is a concept that runs through the text and is generally attributed to the authors own belief in Christian science.Burnett was known to have found comfort in spirituali ty and this ‘New thought’ ideology whilst dealing with the deaths that occurred in her own life and the resulting depression from them. By exploring the representations of illness and recovery within The Secret Garden readers are able to recognise the messages and lessons Burnett as an author was attempting to portray to children. From this, readers can also gain a greater contextual understanding of the kind of society Burnett- and in turn, her characters- would have existed within.In many works of children’s literature, it is common for parental figures to either not be present or to be removed from the story in some way, to allow the child protagonist to have their own ‘adventure’ without adult supervision. The Secret Garden is an example of this, but what stands apart from other children’s texts is the harshness of the situation that Mary as a character is immediately faced with. By the end of The Secret Garden’s first chapter, both Mary’s parents and any servants that provided care for her have been killed by an outbreak of cholera.Mary Lennox is instantly surrounded by death at the beginning of the story, and her sudden physical loneliness only draws attention from readers to the fact that Mary was very much alone and uncared for in the first place; as Burnett writes, as soon as there is an outbreak, â€Å"†¦She was forgotten by everyone. Nobody thought of her, nobody wanted her†¦Ã¢â‚¬  . Death and sickness are the themes that open The Secret Garden to readers and in turn give readers the first impression that these hemes are what largely define Mary Lennox as a protagonist. Before Mary is taken to live with her uncle in Yorkshire, she first stays in India with an English Clergyman and his family. What is interesting about where Mary is taken when she must leave her first home is that she is only seen as safe and away from disease when taken into a British setting- even if it is only made British by the people she is living with.It is decisions like this one made by Burnett that affirms to readers that India is seen to her as a ‘sickly’ place; the novel in fact opens with a paragraph stating Mary â€Å"had been born in India and had always been ill in one way or another. † It is important to consider that the first outbreak of Cholera is seen in the servants- those who are native to India- which is the cause of Mary’s parent’s death. India is frequently suggested to be an unhealthy place, especially in comparison to England, which as The Secret Garden progresses is shown to be the place where character’s health improve.This apparent view of an English writer seeing England as a place of good health, whilst a foreign place to be somewhere that produces sickness and death, puts forward the question to readers of whether they are being presented with an accurate perception of settings, or if they are reading the descriptions of s omeone who is significantly biased. Understanding this, adult readers should consider if child readers could be negatively influenced by the writer’s own opinions.The locked away and hidden garden in Burnett’s The Secret Garden is seen to be the symbolic centre of the novel even before its discovery. It’s introduction through Martha, who tells Mary after some hesitation â€Å"One of th’gardens is locked up. No one has been in it for ten years. † is one that creates the first real mystery of the text, something to occupy Mary’s thoughts while she begins life in Yorkshire and stir curiosity in readers, suggesting to them that there are more secrets to be discovered than just the many shut away and forbidden rooms of the old manor house.Although Burnett claims the garden at Mary’s first sight of it to be â€Å"The sweetest, most mysterious place anyone could imagine†, the first description of the setting is decidedly centred round the fact that all the trees and flowers that were once there seem to no longer be alive. Like the opening scenes of The Secret Garden, this new scene is one largely defined by death. The garden has been hidden away and unwanted, much like Mary herself in the beginning of The Secret Garden, however, the situation is different in that pon discovery, someone wishes to care for it. Mary claims â€Å"Is it all a quite dead garden? I wish it wasn’t. † These words from the protagonist could be seen as a kind of positive development in character; Mary is learning to feel compassion for other things. It could be argued that Mary’s wish to look after this garden stems from an innate desire to ‘get better’ herself. Despite Mary’s interest in caring for the garden, it is believed to be lifeless until Dickon is introduced into the text.Mary confides in him and brings him to the garden, and almost immediately he is able to find traces of life in the other wise decaying surroundings, telling Mary it is â€Å"as wick as you or me. † Dickon as a character seems to represent both nature and health; Mary finds him surrounded by animals and the author describes him have â€Å"Cheeks as red as poppies†. The way he seems to portray both health and a close bond with nature suggests to readers that Burnett herself sees a strong connotation between contact with nature and good health.Nature is often used throughout The Secret Garden to describe healthy traits; The doctor at one point claims Dickon to be â€Å"as strong as a moor pony†. Nature even outside of the garden or Moors is seen to be intrinsically linked with being healthy in the text; both Mary and Colin’s wellbeing seems to depend on the changing of the seasons. It is only when spring arrives that Colin feels strong enough to sit up for breakfast with his cousin, claiming â€Å"I am breathing long breath of fresh air. It makes you strong. † The two c hildren’s health and progress seem to rely heavily on the matching progress of nature and the seasons outside.Considering this, readers could ask themselves if Burnett has intended this to be because of how she may see nature and health intrinsically linked- the two children must ‘bloom’ with the seasons and the flowers in the garden- or whether it is because she creates two characters so dependant on nature for their happiness. In the lonely, remote manor house with barely any other children around to play with, nature and the garden are some of the only things for Mary and Colin to build an attachment to. Colin is a character who is introduced to the text after much mystery; he is the cause of the crying Mary has been hearing every night.His character of the ‘invalid hidden away’ is one that has been seen before in other works of fiction- a notable example to draw parallels to is the character of Bertha in Jane Eyre. Colin and Bertha represent the kind of characters that were created in a â€Å"Victorian fascination with the â€Å"imaginative potential of disease† . Sickness was something that could define a character and make it interesting to readers; a kind of morbid fascination with things that were not yet entirely understood. Being unwell in the Victorian period was itself not seen as an entirely negative experience.Diane Price Herndl states in Invalid Women that â€Å" Invalidism has historically offered women a way . . . to achieve a kind of power when no other means opened up†. This in theory could apply to Colin as a child character. Children, like women in the Victorian period, gained a kind of power from being unwell, as others are forced to attend to them and oblige to them for fear of sickening them further. Certainly, being treated for being unwell is the only kind of attention that Colin is able receive until later in The Secret Garden.The way Colin is treated for his illness seems to resemble t he ‘rest cure’ treatment, a method that was developed in the 19th century. He is confined to his bed and isolated from other people, told to rest and never over stress himself, isolated from anyone around him. Until Mary meets him, there seems to be no foreseeable time when he will ’get better’. Colin says to Mary when they first meet â€Å"If I live I may be a hunchback, but I shan’t live. †. Colin has essentially resigned to waiting in his room to die.Whilst Mary as a character strikes readers as having a fierce will to live, and a kind of innate desire to become more healthy, at this point in the novel Colin seems to contrast against her in that he does not see himself living past childhood- as he has been told his entire life. However, hope for his improvement is created through the situation that he and Mary are first introduced to each other. Mary meets Colin at a point where she herself is starting to improve in behaviour and become mo re like a normal, healthy child.She is confused by the way that Colin acts, telling Martha later â€Å"I think he’s a very spoiled boy. †; scarcely recognising that she herself was not very different to him before she came to Yorkshire. The fact that Mary has found Colin whilst in the process of becoming more healthy herself is encouraging to readers, as if Mary can improve from being a spoilt, ‘sickly’ child, then it seems likely that Colin is able to as well. In addition, Colin appears in the text as Mary is slowly learning to want to are for things and nurture them, implying that Mary can in turn look after and help Colin become more healthy. Colin’s actual state of health in The Secret Garden seems debatable. There is never an assigned name to the illness that keeps him from being mobile, other than being told that he may one day develop a hunchback like his father. His bouts of cold and fever seem to be directly related to how hysteric he becom es in his ‘fits’, his weakness seemingly due to the fact that he has barely ventured outside of his bedroom during his lifetime.It is Mary who is the first character to dismiss the idea of his ‘sickness’ and in turn his unavoidable premature death, telling him â€Å"There’s nothing the matter with your horrid back- nothing but hysterics! †. It is almost as if Colin’s own belief in his ill health has been created through the negative beliefs of others, and Mary as a character who is new and unfamiliar with these negative presumptions if the only person who can see past them.This concept that Colin is not truly unwell, but made to think he is and therefore acts as if he is disabled in some way, seems to align itself with Burnett’s own beliefs in Christian science and New thought ideology. It also suggests to readers at this point in the novel that Colin is a character who can become better; he has willed himself into ill health, so there is no reason why he cannot similarly will himself into becoming more healthy.Despite the authors own apparent perceptions of sickness being based on Christian Science beliefs- that sickness can be cured through positive thinking- it has been suggested by some that real forms of illness are present in some of the characters in the text. Mary and Colin are seen as neurotic figures; Mary’s indifference to death and her solitary games have seen her diagnosed as pre-schizoid, whilst Colin’s obsession with his own imaginary hunchback has been seen to class him as a hysteric.Burnett admits herself that â€Å"Perhaps they were both of them thinking strange things children do not usually think†. She as an author seems to understand that the child characters she has created do not act as normal, healthy children would. Though the possibility of Mary and Colin’s mental illnesses are just theories, it brings the question to readers of whether the treatment, or rather lack of treatment, being provided to each child is entirely appropriate. After all, each child has dealt with a great deal throughout their short lifetimes.Mary has practically witnessed the deaths of all that she first knew, whilst Colin has been confined to one room for his entire life; perhaps most importantly, neither of them have ever had loving parental figures present, so would surely be psychologically affected by this in some way. Modern day readers must consider that treatment of illness was in the time Mary and Colin would have existed in, very different to what is used now- for example, the ‘rest cure’ of enforced confinement and bed rest has since been discredited as a treatment to any condition.Whilst contact with nature and other children obviously shows signs of improvement in Colin and Mary’s wellbeing, readers might ask themselves if this would be the case of ‘real’ children in the character’s places, and if by the fi nishing chapters of The Secret Garden, Mary and Colin can be considered entirely ‘cured’ of their past problems. Word count: 2,383 Bibliography * Lawson, Kate, The Victorian Sickroom in L. M. Montgomery's The Blue Castle and Emily's Quest : Sentimental Fiction and the Selling of Dreams, Volume 31, Number 3, 2007 (http://muse. jhu. edu/login? auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/lion_and_the_unicorn/v031/31. lawson. html) * Gohlke, Madelon, Re-reading The Secret Garden, vol 41 no 8 (JSTOR) * Carpenter, Angelica, In the Garden: Essays in honor of Frances Hodgson Burnett (http://chapters. scarecrowpress. com/08/108/0810852888ch1. pdf) * Hunt, Peter, An introduction to children’s literature, 1994, Oxford University Press * Hodgson Burnett, Frances, The Secret Garden, Puffin Classics, 1911 * (http://www. sciencemuseum. org. uk/broughttolife/techniques/restcure. aspx) (definition of rest cure) ————————— Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€œ [ 1 ]. Gohlke, Madelon, Re-reading The Secret Garden, vol 41 no 8 [ 2 ].

Interview paper Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Interview paper - Assignment Example noted that she didn’t consider herself as a religious person, because she believed that religion and church were secondary things and her faith was the most important for her. However, she called herself Presbyterian, as she has been raised in this religion confession by her parents and just got used to identify herself with it. Presbyterian Church is one of the most numerous Protestant confessions on the territory of the United States. Alabama State, where Sarah lives with her family, is mostly inhabited by Protestants and Presbyterian Church commands a large part of protestant population of the state (Balmer & Winner 290). When we started talking about the religion itself Sarah said that there was a time when she considered changing her religion into Catholicism, because it seemed to her that a religion should bring discipline and she believed that it must have more rituals and religious traditions. However, in some time she realized that the main advantage of her religion was that it didn’t require any mediums and even didn’t require attending church in order to connect with the Lord. Presbyterian Church has two main ritual ceremonies which are the ceremony of Christianizing and the blessed ordinance (Balmer & Winner 290). Sarah was Christianized when she turned 21, as according to her church tradition, each parishioner should come to Jesus by oneself and the ceremony is supposed to symbolize start of the relationships between the Lord and a person. Thus when she was 21 years old Sarah realized that she was ready to establish these relationships and that she was absolutely sure about the fact that her faith was not going to be changed ever. Concerning the roots of her faith Sarah is considered to have very typical for Protestantism beliefs about God and His place in her life. She believes that her faith is guided by Holy Bible and that what is written there is the absolute truth. Whenever Sarah doesn’t know what to do in any situation of her life,

Community revitalization Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Community revitalization - Essay Example 2008: 15-20) Additionally, renovation and conservation of old buildings have contributed to the growth of infrastructure in this town and a higher economic growth is expected in the near future. The revitalization in New York is supported by several federal agencies and the state. The state and federal agencies contributing to economic development organize service provision according to regions; examples include the federal Economic Development Administration, the Thruway Authority and Canal Corporation, Metropolitan Planning Organizations, and districts defined by the Department of Transportation, the Department of Environmental Conservation, the Division of Housing and Community Renewal, the Governor’s Office of Small Cities, the Department of Agriculture and Markets, and the Empire State Development Corporation and its Division of Marketing, Advertising and Tourism. This is the same case in Dubai who has really invested much in the architectural structures, Dubai's recoveri ng property market is aiding to improvement of the economy once again after several years as a dead weight on growth (according to government report). The emirate's recovering property market - collective with a solid show in trade, manufacturing, transport and finance - lifted the emirate's GDP to more than 4 per cent in only one quarter of a year. Both property and construction contributed around 21% of Dubai's growth in the first quarter; this is second only to wholesale and retail trade, which accounted for 28 per cent of the expansion (this is according to a report from the Dubai Economic Council). New York has been going through widespread restructuring for nearly two decades as it transitions from dependency on traditional manufacturing to a more diversified economic base featuring strong service, tourism, and technology sectors. This has significantly attracted many tourists in the New York City and also attracted more investors. This has greatly been facilitated by the cent ral government who is willing to support. This is the same case in Dubai which because of its architectural strength has become a destination to every tourist in the world. Substantial resources and various organizations dedicated to economic development have been set up at local, county, regional, and state-wide levels, using a blend of proven and innovative strategic techniques. Definitely, any inventiveness which duplicates existing efforts risks increasing the system’s inefficiency by adding to its complexity Harness existing tourism, industrial, agricultural, and community improvement assets in the service of economic growth that reinforces the region’s sense of place. The Commission’s approach to heritage development also seek to identify and support the interests of all concerned by leveraging the Corridor’s wealth of historic, cultural, natural, and recreational resources for economic purposes without degrading these assets(." Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 22 Mar. 2008: 15-20) Brennan (Para. 1) has noted an enormous investment in new buildings in the New York City with more than 700 construction projects coming up in this city. In the year 2013, most of these projects have started and ground breaking has taken place for most of them while others are already under construction. Back in 2012, the $20.5 billion worth

Child labor in bangadesh Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Child labor in bangadesh - Research Paper Example p.). Emphasizing on the various scholarly articles concerning the emerging issue of child labor in Bangladesh, the primary objective of this paper is to prepare three effective action plans in accordance with the current statistical consequences regarding the respective issue in the country based on a policy claim as to how Americans can play a major role in taking steps against child labor in Bangladesh. Moreover, the discussion of the paper also incorporates the major challenging areas which are allegedly noted as the causes to the issue of growing child labor within the country. CHILD LABOR IN BANGLADESH: THE CURRENT PHENOMENON In relation to the present day context, the notion of child labor has been identified as a growing concern in Bangladesh which further conveys a debatable question in the current pace of globalization regarding ethical conscience of employers and the effectiveness of the governmental policies enforced to combat the problem of child labor. According to the s tatistical data obtained in the recent decade illustrating the issue of child labor in Bangladesh, a vulnerable figure can be apparently observed with further signifies the issue to be a major challenge not only for Bangladesh but also for other developing nations witnessing similar problems in its socio-economic stance. In this context, it can be recognized that more than 3.5million of children belonging to the age group of 5 years to 14 years are engaged with child labor in Bangladesh. The most number of children are engaged with different worst form of commercial activities including agriculture, domestic servant in the households along with other industrial operations which are further claimed to lead in health hazards among children and therefore making the future of the economy weaker with rising mortality. Moreover, the child labor of the country is often observed in the carpentry, automobile sector, and textiles along with other manufacturing firms within the country leading towards more frequent occurrences of fatal accidents (UNICEF Bangladesh, n. p.). In relation to the Labor Act of Bangladesh, it has been observed that the government has already enacted the prohibition of child labor under the age group of 14 years. Moreover, the Labor Act of the country also prohibits the engagement of children under the age of 18 years in any hazardous working activities. Undoubtedly, the rising concerns of child labor and the increasing rate of children getting engaged with hazardous work in the industrial context, indicates that the policy has failed. The reasons for its failure can be observed on various grounds. For instance, the Act has been found to allow the children above 12 years to be engaged in ‘light works’ that does not cause any risk in their physical, mental or education related interference fundamentally due to the poverty issues in the economy. Moreover, it can be firmly observed that the Act, concerning the prohibition of child labo r does not provide any strong obligation relating to the provision within the country. As a result, a large population of child labor (around 90%) is performed as an informal structure within the country

The Hear Fails without Warning Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

The Hear Fails without Warning - Essay Example It is against this background that this paper provides a textual analysis of Hilary Mantels excerpt of The Heart Fails Without Warning. From the outlook, the author seeks to inform the reader about anorexia, an illness that one of the teenage girls suffer from and from the topic, which later has fatal implications on the wellbeing of the teenage girl. To ensure objectivity, the paper employs Nord’s text analysis model to underscore the text’s communicative function. In order to effectively explore this, it will examine both the extra textual as well as intra textual factors. The translation brief provides useful information about the author of the source text. In this respect, Hillary Mantel is an author of ‘The Hear fails Without Warning’, a story that is published in the Guardian Review Magazine of October, 2009. The aim of the author is to inform the audience about the environmental and social problems that this society is grappling with. Also worth ment ioning is the need by the author to highlight the health implications that the demeaning conditions have on the wellbeing of the inhabitants. From an individual point of view, the sender of the information is the editor of the Guardian Review magazine. This is suggestive in the topic of the magazine as well as in the information contained in the source takes. It can be presumed that the editor of the Guardian Review Magazine simply wants the important message to reach the target audience- parents and guardians. Notably, they are the most directly in contact with teenage girls and hence, knowledge about the challenges that teenagers face would probably be helpful. The relative information is directed at a diverse client base. To begin with, Mantel seeks to inform the local inhabitants about the deteriorating social conditions and what they can do to protect the vulnerable children from the resultant negative implications. Another group that the author wishes to reach to pertains to t he relevant policy and decision makers as well as law enforcement agencies. These are wide and varied including the government, the police and stakeholders in the health ministry. His main intention is to inform the abovementioned individuals about the situation on the ground. This is implied in the source text and specifically in the Journal type that the article is published in. In most cases, it can be agreed that the preceding audiences are the ones who mostly read the magazine. Undoubtedly, knowledge about this would enable them to take necessary action towards protecting the welfare of the affected individuals. Since it is published in The Guardian Review magazine, the author specifically wishes to reach out to all adults who are charged with the responsibility of taking care of the young children. Relative information would enable them understand the challenges that especially face the youth. The text was published in 2009 for the purpose of informing the audience about the c hallenges that this segment of the populations was grappling with at that particular period of time. However, the facts presented herein had lasting implications on both the intended target as well as the general audience. This is particularly so because the author addresses social and environmental concerns whose implications are pervasive. This is apparent when the author cites that the family shares a small house and a bedroom and school girls are raped

How an ideal life is to be led by men Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

How an ideal life is to be led by men - Essay Example Ultimately, Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics provide different discourses on the different kinds of love, and through Socrates' conversation with Diotima, it is concluded that through love, in the purest and most powerful form, men may arrive at the highest good. In Plato's symposium, different speeches in praise of Eros was given about how great a god he is. Phaedrus began by saying how Eros was a great god, and went on to explain that love, above everything else, is the driving force of man in living a good life. He goes on to justify that love in its superior form, is one wherein a lover is willling to die for another, citing the case of Alcestis, the daughter of Pelias, who was willing to die to be able to gain entrance to the underworld to be with her lover (Plato 179c). Pausanias spoke about love of the "common" and "heavenly" kind. The common love is that which falls on ove with the body rather than the mind, and is concerned with merely the sexual act, while the heavenly love is that is free from lust, and is based on friendship and a lifetime together (Plato 180e). Pausanias also claimed that open love is better than secret love. He concludes by saying that love does not come in only one form, and love is neither right nor wrong as well, but only depends on how it is done. Eryximachus approves the dualities presented by Pausanias yet he attempts to reconcile the physical and spiritual kind of love, and in respect to his profession, cites the human anatomy and physiology as an example. He claims that just like the body, there are good and healthy elements that need to be satisfied, while there are bad and unhealthy elements that need to be kept away from (Plato 186c). Aristophanes, on the other hand, relates love to the myth that says that originally, the human being had four legs, four hands, two heads, etc. and that it was just then divided into male and female, that is why in love, two people would come together and unite as one body and one soul (Plato 190). Agathon, however, argued that love is from where all things are created. All these arguments eventually lead to the summation of all their arguments that are better said in the encounter of Socrates with Diotima. What Diotima basically preaches is that as there are many forms of love, it is neither beautiful nor good, and is neither ugly nor bad. As such, it does not really follow that what is not beautiful is ugly and that what is not bad is good (Plato 202b). In a nutshell, true happiness is found in true beauty, which is, as the clich goes, in the eyes of the beholder, and is recognized only by the mind. This powerful and purest form of love, according to Diotima, is the highest form of happiness that which man aims for. If Plato's Symposium speaks about happiness in the pursuit of love, Arostitle's Nicomahcean Ethics discusses ethics and virtue in the pursuit of happiness. The Nichomachean Ethics of Aristotle begins with the premise that "every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason, the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim." (Aristotle 363) Aristotle poses that there are different goods for which different people aim for, yet at the end of it all, it is happines that is being pursued. Furthermore, Aristotle focuses his Nichomachean ethics on virtues and that for a person to be able to succeed in his aims to

Harassment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Harassment - Essay Example The Directive defined harassment as, "[...] unwanted conduct related to the sex of a person occurs with the purpose or effect of violating the dignity of a person, and of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment" (European Parliament, 2002). The purpose of the directive was to protect equal access to employment, education, opportunity, and working conditions. Individual EU states can pass laws that are more restrictive that the EU standard, but they are required to attain the minimum standard set by Directive 2002/73/EC. Ireland broadly defines harassment as, "spoken words, gestures or the production, display or circulation of written words, pictures or other material which is unwelcome and could reasonably be regarded as offensive, humiliating, or intimidating" (Quinlivan, 2004). Outside the workplace harassment may include threatening telephone calls, bullying, stalking, or instilling fear through intimidation. According to the US Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, sexual harassment in the workplace in the United States is defined as "Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature [...]" (Sexu

Culture Theory and Popular Culture Essay Example for Free

Culture Theory and Popular Culture Essay The study of culture has, over the last few years, been quite dramatically transformed as questions of modernity and post-modernity have replaced the more familiar concepts of ideology and hegemony which, from the mid-1970s until the mid-1980s, anchored cultural analysis firmly within the neo-Marxist field mapped out by Althusser and Gramsci. Modernity and post-modernity have also moved far beyond the academic fields of media or cultural studies. Hardly one branch of the arts, humanities or social sciences has remained untouched by the debates which have accompanied their presence. They have also found their way into the quality press and on to TV, and of course they have entered the art school studios informing and giving shape to the way in which art practitioners including architects, painters and film-makers define and execute their work. Good or bad, to be welcomed or reviled, these terms have corresponded to some sea-change in the way in which cultural intellectuals and practitioners experience and seek to understand the world in the late 1980s and into the 1990s. Storey claimed that â€Å"postmodernism has disturbed many of the old certainties surrounding questions of cultural value. † This work will consider the issues of postmodernism versus modernism mostly from the perspective of the critics of postmodernism with reference to ‘good’ and ‘bad’ taste. Post-modern cultural movements first emerged in the 1960s in painting, architecture, and literary criticism. Pop art challenged modernist art by experimenting with new cultural forms and contents that embraced everyday life, radical eclecticism, subcultures, mass media, and consumerism. Sociologist Daniel Bell was one of the first to take up the challenge of postmodernism. In The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976) he identified a moral crisis in Western society bound up with the decline of Puritan bourgeois culture and the ascendence of a post-modern culture that he described in terms of an aesthetic relativism and a hedonistic individualism. Yet the most formidable critic of postmodernism and defender of modernity has been German philosopher and heir to the Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory — Jurgen Habermas. There are two problems with postmodernism. The first problem comes into focus around the meaning of the term fragmentation. This is a word which, through over-usage in recent cultural debates, has become shorn of meaning. Post-modernity has been associated by Fredric Jameson (1984) with the emergence of a broken, fractured shadow of a man. The tinny shallowness of mass culture is, he argues, directly reflected in the schizophrenic subject of contemporary mass consciousness. Against Jameson, Stuart Hall (1981) has recently said that it is just this decentring of consciousness which allows him, as a black person, to emerge, divided, yes, but now fully foregrounded on the post-modern stage. So one of the fascinating things about this discussion is to find myself centred at last. Now that, in the postmodern age, you all feel so dispersed I become centred. What Ive thought of as dispersed and fragmented comes, paradoxically, to be the representative modern condition! This is coming home with a vengeance (34). These are, then, two perspectives on the problem of postmodern fragmentation. There is Jameson, who looks back nostalgically to the notion of unity or totality and who sees in this a kind of prerequisite for radical politics, a goal to be striven for. And there is Hall, who sees in fragmentation something more reflective of the ongoing and historical condition of subaltern groups. Jamesons unified man could be taken to be a preFreudian, Enlightenment subject, and thus be discredited by those who have paid attention to Lacans notion of the fragmented subject. But the endorsement of post-modern fragmentation is equally not without its own problems. Have we become more fragmented than before? Can we specifically name a time and a place for the moment of fragmentation? Is fragmentation the other of humanity? Or is the representation of fragmentation coincidental with political empowerment and liberation? Christopher Norris (1990) has argued that post-modernity (and postmodern fragmentation) stands at the end of the long line of intellectual inquiry which starts with Saussure, works its way through post-structuralism and Lacanian psychoanalysis and ends with Baudrillard. In Norriss terms fragmentation is to be understood as marking an absolute and irreparable break with the unified subject, a break which is now writ large in culture. Present-day fragmented subjectivity is captured and expressed in post-modern cultural forms, a kind of superficial pick-and-mix of styles. According to Jameson, however, unfragmented subjectivity, by contrast, produced great works of uncluttered heroic modernism. There is a degree of slippage in the connections being made here. The problem lies, at least partly, in the imprecise use of the word fragmentation. There is a vacillation between the high psychoanalytical use of Lacan and a much looser notion, one which seems to sum up unsatisfactory aspects of contemporary cultural experience. Modernists, however, also felt confused and fragmented. Fragmentation, as a kind of structure of feeling, is by no means the sole property of those living under the shadow of the post-modern condition. Bewilderment, anxiety, panic: such expressions can be attributed to any historical moment as it is transposed into cultural and artistic expression over the last a hundred and fifty years. The category of fragmentation seems to have become either too technical to be of general use (i. e. in Lacans work) or too vague to mean anything more than torn apart. The second question which might be asked of neo-Marxist critics of postmodernity, concerns determination, and the return to a form of economic reductionism in cultural theory. Fredric Jameson argues that postmodernism is the cultural logic of capital, but his argument, as Paul Hirst writing about trends in both New Times and post-modern writing, has suggested, slips from a rigid causal determinism into casual metaphor (45). Jameson, going back to Mandels Late Capitalism, has argued that the kinds of cultural phenomena which might be described as post-modern form part of the logic of advanced or late capitalism. This does away, at a sweep, with the difficult issue of explaining the precise nature of the social and ideological relationships which mediate between the economy and the sphere of culture and it simultaneously restores a rather old-fashioned notion of determination to that place it had occupied prior to Althussers relative autonomy and his idea of determination in the last instance (67). Quoting Lyotard, Harvey (1989) takes up the notion of the temporary contract as the hallmark of post-modern social relations. What he sees prevailing in production, in the guise of new forms of work, he also sees prevailing in emotional life and in culture, in the temporary contract of love and sexuality. Like Jameson he decries this state and looks forward to something more robust and more reliable, something from which a less fractured sense of self and community might emerge. He views postmodern culture disparagingly, as aesthetic rather than ethical, reflecting an avoidance of politics rather than a rising to the challenge of a politics posed by new or changing conditions of production. Despite their sweeping rejection of post-modern writing, both Jameson and Harvey take advantage of the conceptual and methodological breadth found in these theories to circumvent (or short-circuit) the key problems which have arisen in cultural studies in the attempt to specify and under-stand the social relations which connect culture to the conditions of its production. Their conceptual leap into a critique of postmodernism allows these writers to avoid confronting more directly the place of Marxism in cultural studies from the late 1980s into the 1990s, a moment at which Marxism cannot be seen in terms other than those of eclipse or decline. Postmodernism exists, therefore, as something of a convenient bete noire. It allows for the evasion of the logic of cultural studies, if we take that logic to be the problematizing of the relations between culture and the economy and between culture and politics, in an age where the field of culture appears to be increasingly expansive and where both politics and economics might even be seen, at one level, as being conducted in and through culture. Structuralism has replaced old orthodoxies with new ones. This is apparent in its rereading of texts highly placed within an already existing literary or aesthetic hierarchy. Elsewhere it constructs a new hierarchy, with Hollywood classics at the top, followed by selected advertising images, and girls and womens magazines rounding it off. Other forms of representation, particularly music and dance, are missing altogether. Andreas Huyssen in his 1984 introduction to postmodernism draws attention to this high structuralist preference for the works of high modernism, especially the writing of James Joyce or Mallarme. There is no doubt that centre stage in critical theory is held by the classical modernists: Flaubert†¦in Barthes†¦Mallarme and Artaud in Derrida, Magritte†¦ in Foucault†¦Joyce and Artaud in Kristeva†¦and so on ad infinitum (Huyssen, 1984:39). He argues that this reproduces unhelpfully the old distinction between the high arts and the low, less serious, popular arts. He goes on to comment: Pop in the broadest sense was the context in which a notion of the post-modern first took shape†¦and the most significant trends within postmodernism have challenged modernisms relentless hostility to mass culture. High theory was simply not equipped to deal with multilayered pop. Nor did it ever show much enthusiasm about this set of forms, perhaps because pop has never signified within one discrete discourse, but instead combines images with performance, music with film or video, and pin-ups with the magazine form itself’ (Huyssen, 1984:16). In recent article, where Hebdige (1988) engages directly with the question of postmodernism, he disavows the playful elements in Subculture†¦and, more manifestly, in the new fashion and style magazines. In contrast with what he sees now as an excess of style, a celebration of artifice and a strong cultural preference for pastiche, Hebdige seeks out the reassuringly real. He suggests that the slick joky tone of postmodernism, especially that found on the pages of The Face, represents a disengagement with the real, and an evasion of social responsibility. He therefore insists on a return to the world of hunger, exploitation and oppression and with it a resurrection of unfragmented, recognizable subjectivity. He fleetingly engages with an important characteristic of the post-modern condition, that is, the death of subjectivity and the emergence, in its place, of widespread social schizophrenia. Hebdige seems to be saying that if this rupturing of identity is what postmodernism is about, then he would rather turn his back on it. The position of Clement Greenberg in his 1980 lecture entitled The Notion of the Post-Modern could be summarized in the following terms: modernism in painting has been, since its inception with Manet and the impressionists, a heroic struggle against the encroachment of bad taste or kitsch in the domain of art; postmodernism is only the latest name under which commercial bad taste, masquerading as sophisticated â€Å"advancedness,† challenges the integrity of art. Any deviation from modernism, then, involves a betrayal or corruption of aesthetic standards. Seen from this vantage point, the â€Å"post-modern† cannot be much more than a renewed â€Å"urge to relax,† particularly pervasive after the advent of pop art, with its deleterious effects on the art world. This type of argument (modernisms self-conscious mission, to exorcise bad taste from the domain of high art, is today as urgent as it ever was) appears in a variety of forms and shapes in the writings of the defenders of modernist purity against the infiltrations of commercialism and fashion. This realized art, however, is not in a harmonious universal style as Mondrian was envisaging. It consists mostly in forms of art considered banal, sentimental, and in bad taste by most in the Fine Art artworld. Further, because so many people have no interest in Fine Art, it is often thought that visual art has somehow lost its relevance and potency. People ask what the point of art is, and whether it is worthwhile spending public money on art. When people think of art, they think of Fine Art, and the influence of Fine Art seems to be in decline. However, although Fine Art seems to be in decline as a cultural force, visual art has more power in culture now than it ever had. Visual art is not all Fine Art. There is a diversity of kinds of art in contemporary culture. Besides Fine Art, there is also Popular Art, Design Art, and advertising. What Fine Art does for us is just a small part of the total cultural value we get from art. As traditional culture recedes from memory, and technology changes our lifestyles, people look for new values and lifestyles. These new values and lifestyles are carried by the art broadcast over the mass media and on the products we buy. The mass-media arts define our heroes and tell us about the good. Advertisements define pleasure and lifestyle. With mass-market goods we dress our bodies and houses in art, thus using art to define who we are. These contemporary visual arts play a large part in shaping our values, fantasies, and lifestyles. However, conventional art histories tend not to treat the other powerful visual arts of our own time beyond Fine Art, namely, Popular Art, Design Art, and advertising. Advertising is not considered â€Å"art† because it is not functionless beyond being aesthetic. Also, the advertising does not typically show personal expressive creativity. So, the Design Arts are typically considered mere decoration. Popular Art is thought of as in bad taste, banal, sentimental, and so not worthy of consideration either. Since art histories are only looking at â€Å"good† art, they tend not to consider these other arts. Standing as they most often do within the Fine Art art world, art historians use the ideology and sense of artistic value of Fine Art to evaluate all art. From the perspective of the contemporary art world, Popular Art is thought of as a kind of Fine Art; that is, bad Fine Art or Fine Art in bad taste. It seems hackneyed and banal to the Fine Art art world. From their perspective, popular taste is bad taste. For example, Osvaldo Yero, an artist who emerged in the 1990s, has based his work on the technique and poetics of the plaster figures. These figures, mostly decorations, but also religious images, were perhaps considered the last gasp of bad taste. They constituted the epitome of â€Å"uncultivated† appropriation of icons from the â€Å"high† culture as well as from mass culture, done in a poor and artificial material par excellence, worked clumsily in a semi-industrial technique and polychromed with pretentious attempts at elegance. They symbolized the triumph of â€Å"vulgarity, † the failure of the â€Å"aesthetic education of the masses† proposed by socialism. By the 1920s business and advertising agencies had realized that putting style and color choices into the products they made increased consumption. Through the use of advertising and by designing stylistic variety into their products, manufacturers elevated things into the category of fashion goods that had before just been utility goods, like towels, bedding, and bathroom fixtures. Previously these items did not have any style component, but now designers added decoration to their functional design. This meant that now consumers could choose products not just for function, but also for style. People could now have pink sheets, green toilets, and blue phones. There is a tension in design style between aesthetic formalist styles like the international style, and design styles that are figurative. Those favoring figurative design tend to think of products as coming in a great variety and designed to appeal to the various tastes of consumers. Here the style of the products are not dictated by function, but by market pressures. This is a further development of design for sales. This gave rise to what is known as niche marketing, where the styling is targeted to a smaller, more specific group than mass marketing is. Thus, they shun the idea of a unified worldwide machine aesthetic. For example, a razor can be pink with flowers on it to target it to female users, and black with blue accent lines to target it to male users. The razor is the same, but the razor is packaged with different styling to sell the product to different markets. In designing for niche markets, the styling reflects the class, age group, profession, and aspirations of the target group. This goes hand in hand with advertising, and requires a great deal of research to discover what these values are and what styling motifs succeed in communicating them. The exemplary text or the single, richly coded image gives way to the textual thickness and the visual density of everyday life, as though the slow, even languid look of the semiologist is, by the 1980s, out of tempo with the times. The field of postmodernism certainly expresses a frustration, not merely with this seemingly languid pace, but with its increasing inability to make tangible connections between the general conditions of life today and the practice of cultural analysis. Structuralism has also replaced old orthodoxies with new ones. This is apparent in its rereading of texts highly placed within an already existing literary or aesthetic hierarchy. Elsewhere it constructs a new hierarchy, with Hollywood classics at the top, followed by selected advertising images, and girls and womens magazines rounding it off. Other forms of representation, particularly music and dance, are missing altogether. Huyssen argues that â€Å"Pop in the broadest sense was the context in which a notion of the post-modern first took shape, and the most significant trends within postmodernism have challenged modernisms relentless hostility to mass culture. High theory was simply not equipped to deal with multilayered pop. † References Bell, Daniel. (1976). The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. New York: Basic Books. C. Norris, Lost in the funhouse: Baudrillard and the politics of postmodernism, in R. Boyne and A. Rattansi (eds) Postmodernism and Society, London, Macmillan, 1990. Hall, Stuart, Connell, Ian and Curti, Lidia (1981). The unity of current affairs television, in T. Bennett et al. (eds) Popular Television and Film, London: BFI. Harvey, David (1989). The Condition of Postmodernity, Oxford: Blackwell. Hebdige, Dick (1979). Subculture: The Meaning of Style, London: Routledge. Huyssen, A. (1984). Mapping the postmodern, New German Critique 33. Jameson, Fredric (1984). Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism, New Left Review 146.

Strengths And Weaknesses Of Etisalat

Strengths And Weaknesses Of Etisalat Emirates Telecommunication Corporation Etisalat was founded in 1976 as a joint-stock company between International Aeradio Limited, a British Company, and local partners. In 1983 the ownership structure changed United Arab Emirates government held a 60% share in the company and the remaining 40% were publicly traded. In 1991 the UAE central government issued Federal Law No. 1, which gave the corporation the right to provide the telecommunications wired and wireless services in the country and between UAE and other countries. It also gave the firm the right to issue licenses for owning, importing, manufacturing, using or operating telecommunication equipment. This practically gave Etisalat both regulatory and control powers, which completed the monopoly of the telecom giant in the UAE. In order to safeguard the countrys economic development, the law made provisions for the development of the telecommunication sector in the country. The increase of exchange lines from 36,000 in 1976 to more than 737,000 in 1998 was one of the important indicators of Etisalat networks growth and development. An important milestone was Etisalats commencement of international operations in January 2001, when under the brand name of Ufone it started operating out of Islamabad. Today Etisalat stands 140th among the Financial Times Top 500 Corporations in the world in terms of market capitalization, and is ranked by The Middle East magazine as the 6th largest company in the Middle East in terms of capitalization and revenues. The Corporation is the largest contributor outside the oil sector to development programmes of the UAE Federal Etisalat has also won accolades from across the region for its nationalization programme Etisalat Building in Abu Dhabi, UAE In addition to its telecommunication services provider and carrier units, Etisalat incorporates a number of additional non-telecom business units under the umbrella of Etisalat Services Holding LLC. These units support the companys operations and even provide services to other operators and organizations, namely: training and consultancy services(Etisalat Academy, SIM/smart card manufacturing and payment solutions (Ebtikar), data clearing house services (EDCH), peering/voice and data transit (Emirates Internet Exchange EMIX), call center Etisalat is a major investor in Thuraya (34.5%), a satellite geo-mobile communication systems provider. In 2006 Etisalat started a major restructuring program that resulted in the de-merger of many of its non-core business units operating under the telecoms centralized and direct management; core services were consolidated and streamlined, reflecting the companys shift from a technology-driven telecom to a customer-focused services provider. As part of the program, Etisalat has launched a re-branding campaign, releasing a new corporate logo and identity in May 2006. The restructuring culminated in the incorporation of Etisalat Services Holding LLC, which as of 2008 oversees the operation of Etisalats non-telecom business units with huge success stories . Etisalat International Investments Etisalat International Investments is the business unit of Etisalat that operates outside the UAE and manages the corporations stakes in telecommunications carriers in Afghanistan, Benin, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Gabon, India, Indonesia, Iran, the Ivory Coast, Egypt, Niger, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. The International Investments unit also manages Etisalats minor stakes in other telecommunications services providers, such as Sudatel (a mobile, fixed and Internet services provider in Sudan), and Qtel (Qatar-based telecommunications services provider). Mobily Saudi Arabia One of Etisalats first international investments was the bid to become the second mobile services operator in Saudi Arabia. Etihad Etisalat, a consortium led by Etisalat, won the 2G GSM license by offering USD $3.25 billion. Currently operating under the brand name Mobily, Etihad Etisalat offers Saudi Arabia subscribers conventional and 3.5G mobile telephony services, and has floated shares on the Saudi stock market. PTCL Pakistan Among the acquisitions of Etisalat in 2005 was a 26% management stake in Pakistan Telecommunications (PTCL) that was put on sale by the Government of Pakistan as part of a large privatization initiative. In order to outbid competitors (which included Singapore Telecommunications and China Mobile), Etisalat offered USD $2.56 billion for the stake. According to some analysts, the telecom has overpaid, as the bid went far beyond the estimated USD $2 billion value of the package. Etisalat Egypt In July 2006, a consortium led by Etisalat was granted the rights to develop Egypts third mobile network, with a winning bid of 16.7 billion Egyptian pounds (EUR à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬2.29 billion euro). The venture, Etisalat Egypt, competes with existing service providers Vodafone and Mobinil. On September 12, 2006, it was announced that the network would be built by Ericsson of Sweden, and Huawei of China, at a cost of approximately USD $1.2 billion. In 2007, at the Comms MEA Awards ceremony Etisalat was presented with the Best New Entrant award for its Egyptian operations. Award winners were selected by a panel of experts from KPMG, the Arab Advisors Group and Oliver Wyman, Dubai. Canar Sudan Etisalat is one of the founding partner companies of Canar Telecom, a fixed-line telecom services operator. In September 2007 Etisalat has raised its stake in Canar from 37% to 82% at an estimated cost of AED 584.17 million (USD $159 million). Canar was launched on November 27, 2005. The operator is reported to use NGN and Wireless Local Loop (WLL) technologies for its voice, data, internet and multimedia services. Canar is one of the first operators in Africa to use an NGN network core. EMTS Nigeria Etisalat signed an agreement to acquire 40% of and manage Emerging Markets Telecommunications Services, Nigerias fifth GSM operator. It is now operating with about 5 million Subscribers, and recently signed an agreement with Main One cable company to launch one of the first major broadband service in Nigeria. Zantel Tanzania In January 1999, Etisalat acquired a stake in Zanzibar Telecom (a Tanzania-based mobile operator) for USD $2.4 million (AED 8.8 million) and has subsequently increased the stake by 17% in July 2007. Since then, Zantel has introduced telcom services that are typical for the African region, such as mobile banking services for customers without access to banking facilities (Zpesa Mobile Banking). Atlantique Telecom/Moov West Africa In Africa, Etisalat acquired 50% of Atlantique Telecoms shares in April 2005. Based in the Ivory Coast, AT owns mobile operators in Benin, Burkina Faso, Togo, Niger, Central African Republic, Gabon and Ivory Coast. In 2007, Etisalat increased its shares in AT to 70% and again in May 2008, to 82%. AT group subscribers totaled 2.9 million at the end of 2007, which is a 107% increase from the previous year. Ivory Coast: Moov, is currently Ivory Coasts third-largest cell-phone operator with a 1.5 million customer base. In 2008 Moov Ivory Coast introduced the first nationwide cell-phone coverage, based on Thuraya satellite access technology. It is the first time that such a service has been offered in sub-Saharan Africa, outside South Africa. It was expected that the expanded coverage introduced by the satellite service would help boost Moovs customer base and even overtake France Telecoms unit Orange as the top telecom services provider in the country. Benin: Etisalat operates in Benin under the Moov brand. On 24 October 2007 the government of Benin has reassigned Telecels operating license to Etisalat. In February 2008, His Excellency Dr. Boni Yayi, President of Benin, honoured Etisalat chairman, Mohammad Hassan Omran during a ceremony to celebrate Etisalats efforts in developing and promoting the telecommunications sector in Benin. XL Axiata Indonesia Indonesia-based mobile services operator PT XL Axiata (formerly PT Excelcomindo Pratama) is Etisalats first acquisition in the Far East. In December 2007 Etisalat took a 15.97% stake after paying USD $438 million (AED 1.6 billion). At the time of the acquisition XL had 15 million mobile subscribers. Etisalat Afghanistan Etisalat Afghanistan is a newly established GSM operator, 100% owned by Etisalat. It was established in May 2006 after the UAE telecom won the license to operate the fourth mobile services provider in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Etisalats bid for the license was USD $1.2 billion (AED 4.4 billion) and services were launched in August 2007. Etisalat Afghanistan operates out of Kabul and as of March 3, 2010, the company has achieved 24 per cent market share in 27 provinces of Afghanistan. Etisalat Sri Lanka Etisalat acquired the Sri Lankan Operation of Millicom International Cellular (MIC), Tigo (Sri Lanka) on 16 October 2009. The acquisition was completed with a total enterprise value of 207 Million US$, out of which 155 Million US$ was in cash. Tigo (Sri Lanka) under the then brand name CELLTEL started operations in June 1989 on a Motorola TACS system and was the first cellular operator in Sri Lanka as well as South Asia. In January 2007, Millicom replaced the local CELLTEL brand with Tigo, their international brand. In February 2010, Tigo was rebranded as Etisalat. It competes with international operators like Dialog Telekom (Telekom Malaysia), Mobitel (Sri Lanka Telecom), Hutch (Hutchison) and Airtel (Bharti Airtel), using technologies GSM/EDGE and hopes to launch UMTS/HSDPA services over 900/1800 and 2100 MHz in 2011. Etisalat India In 2009 Etisalat has announced that its Indian unit, erstwhile Swan Telecom (owned by Dynamix Balwas Realty and Reliance Communications), headquartered in Mumbai, is renamed to Etisalat DB Telecom India Pvt. Ltd Telecom Renamed Etisalat Telecom India Pvt. Ltd. The business unit has been awarded Unified Services Access License in 15 circles Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Mumbai, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu (including Chennai), Uttar Pradesh (East), Uttar Pradesh (West), Madhya Pradesh and Bihar. In April 2010 Etisalat began signal testing in Chennai [IND 922], Delhi NCR [IND 913], Maharashtra Goa [IND 919], Mumbai [IND 916] and Gujarat[IND 914]. In May 2010, Etisalat was in talks to buy 25% stake in Reliance Communications, but the deal was not finalised. In 2010, following the $39 billion 2G spectrum scam, Etisalat DB, the Indian subsidiary of the company, was stopped from buying a stake in a Chennai-based company due to objections raised by the Indias home ministry(MHA). Etisalat DB was not allowed to buy back the 5.27 per cent stake held by Chennai-based Genex Exim Ventures since the home ministry raised objections based largely on security concerns. The MHA had pointed out four issues that needed to be resolved before allowing the company to come into Etisalat DB, a company that got scarce 2G spectrum at allegedly throwaway prices, First, vice-chairman Shahid Balwa should not be involved in the operations of the company in any capacity, because of his connections with underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, second, the MHA raised objections about the commercial relationship between the Dubai-based Etisalat Group and Chinas Huawei. The MHA suspects, Huawei has links with Chinas Peoples Liberation Army the countrys military organization of all land, sea, strategic missile and air forces and has the capacity to manipulate equipment supply, third, it raised objections about Etisalats presence in Pakistan and its connection with Pakistans intelligence agency ISI. Etisalat owns a 26% stake in Pakistan Telecommunications and has a subscriber base of 3 million in Afghanistan and fourth, the MHA has also expressed concerns about the telecom surveillance software Etisalat had used in a Blackberry service it had introduced in the UAE and recommended that the company should not be allowed to offer Blackberry services in India. b) Social; technological: Etisalat Etisalat UAE is headquartered in Abu Dhabi and includes three regional offices Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Northern Emirates. Etisalat Company is owned by the UAE government and it is stipulated law that state, with seven out of 11 of the Board of Directors being government representatives, including the Chairman. Abu Dhabi Region Key positions: Etisalat Chairman: Mohamed Hassan Omran Etisalat A/CEO: Nasser Bin Abood Senior Vice President Marketing: Khalifa Al Forah Al Shamsi Group Senior Vice President corporate Communications: Ahmed Bin Ali Corporate Governance The General Assembly The General Assembly is composed of all shareholders of the Corporation. The General Assembly is entrusted with approving the Boards Annual Report on the Corporations activities and financial position during the preceding financial year. The Assembly is also entrusted with approving the report of the external auditors, discussing and approving the balance sheet and the profit and loss account for the previous financial year, appointing external auditors and approving the Boards recommendations regarding the allocation of profit. The General Assembly exercises all powers of the Corporation within the limits of the law and the Articles of Association. The Board of Directors The Emirates Telecommunications Corporation (Etisalat) is managed by a Board of Directors presided over by the Chairman and consists of eleven members, including the Chairman, seven of whom are appointed by Presidential Decree to represent the Federal Government of the United Arab Emirates, and the remaining Four elected by the 40% non-government shareholders of the Corporation. The term of the Board of Directors is three years, as applicable to each group of members according to the date of their appointment or election. The Board of Directors carries out the Corporations business and for that purpose, exercises all powers of the Corporation, except those reserved by Law or the Articles of Association for the General Assembly of the Corporation. The Executive Committee The Executive Committee is appointed by the Board of Directors in accordance with Section 20 of the Articles of Association. It is empowered to take decisions on behalf of the Board and/ or to make certain recommendations to it concerning particular matters. The Executive Committees functions and powers include organizational matters of the Corporation (such as overseeing statutory, organizational and employment matters and Corporate performance), planning and development (overseeing development plans and projects, and approval of the budget prior to submission to the Board), operations (reviews efficiency of service and lays down policies concerning investments of surplus funds), projects (sets the terms for the project agreements, approves relevant tenders over AED 50 million, and approves project overruns and variations over AED 10 million), procurement (approves purchases over AED 50 million), and investments (including international Investments and expansion projects). The Audit Committee Communicate Entertain Inform c) Internet services The number of Etisalats Internet subscribers reportedly stands at 1.02 million.[42] Some of the Internet services for home users that Etisalat offers include: 3G Mobile Internet access Broadband Internet services (Al Shamil[43] and eLife[44]) Prepaid and post-paid dialup Internet access Etisalat also operates iZone, a system of Wi-FI hotspots in central locations, such as shopping malls, restaurants, and sheesha cafes. iZone can be accessed by either purchasing prepaid cards (AED 15/hour, USD $4.5/hour), or if using an existing account with the operator (AED 3/hour for dial-up account holders, or AED 10/hour for broadband users). Dial-up and ISDN Internet access services are billed by the hour, whereas the domestic and residential cable and DSL connections have a fixed monthly rate depending on speed. Other Internet links, aimed at business users, have traffic utilization plans and relatively high rates when exceeding the allocated bandwidth quota. This has caused bad publicity for Etisalat and is a major source of criticism. Internet censorship Page Blocked Notice Etisalat operates an Internet content filtering system that blocks access to web resources. The web resources are claimed to be controversial or offensive (i.e. sexually explicit content, certain political and religious websites, anonymizers and proxies) or harmful (i.e. numeric IP addresses, known phishing or malicious websites, botnet command servers). The use of content filtering is mandated by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) of the United Arab Emirates. The type of content that is restricted by Etisalat includes: Pornography, nudity and sexually explicit content. The entire Israel country code top-level domain (.il) Certain media-sharing websites Anti-Islamic websites. Websites criticizing the United Arab Emirates (such as UAEprison and Arab Times) Anonymous proxy sites (such as vtunnel, pzeg, etc.), Gay and Lesbian Rights websites (such as Gaydar, Mogenic etc.) Numerical IP address links (for example, http://10.11.1.1/),Voice over IP services providers websites (such as Skype, Vonage) There are claims that Etisalat breaks the rules of net neutrality by throttling peer-to-peer, gaming and other types of network traffic in order to reduce the load on its oversubscribed international links. The effect of this interference is most noticeable during weekends or periods of high network use. The overall efficiency of the country-wide content filtering is unclear, as many of the technologically savvy users have discovered tools and methods to bypass the content filter, such as using Tor. BlackBerry In July 2009, Etisalat pushed an update to BlackBerry devices operating on the telecoms national network, citing performance improvements. However, it was later discovered that the update contained eavesdropping software, developed by the US-based software development company SS8, which specializes in electronic surveillance. It is reported that the software enabled the company to monitor and forward communications on BlackBerry devices to their servers.[48][49] Research in Motion, BlackBerrys developer, acknowledged[50] that the patch was a form of spyware, and issued a removal patch on July 20. On December 27, 2009, both Etisalat and Du (telco) have been mandated by the UAE telecom regulator to start filtering BlackBerry users web access and block illegal content. Due to concerns with the security and the provisioning of legal interception for Blackberry non-voice services, on 1 Aug 2010, the Telecommunication Regularity Authority of the UAE instructed Etisalat that all Blackberry e-mail, internet and messenger functions must be suspended on 1 Oct 2010 d) The Operating Structure of the Corporation In 2009 Etisalat implemented a group structure to manage its international expansion strategy, protect value from the Corporations United Arab Emirates operations, secure value creation from its seventeen international operations, and to gain the trust of its stakeholders by putting in place a solid structure and governance and adherence to best practices. At the level of the United Arab Emirates, the Group organization structure features two autonomous Operating Units: Etisalat UAE Unit (which is entrusted with provisioning Licensed Telecom Services in the United Arab Emirates);and the Etisalat Services Unit (a wholly owned holding company entrusted with providing certain non-core, non-telecom services to the Corporation, as well as to third parties). The Group exercises and sets its various activities and responsibilities and sets its key corporate policies, prepares plans, and monitors the operational and financial performance of its operating companies, and reports the same to the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee on a regular basis. e) Consolidated income statement before the year ended 31 December 2009 Consolidated statement of comprehensive income a) DU History The Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC) is a telecommunications company in the United Arab Emirates. Although Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company is its legal name, it was commercially rebranded as du in February 2006. The company has invested AED 2.4 billion in 2009 and added 1 million active mobile subscribers in 2009, bringing its subscriber base to 3.48 million. du offers fixed and mobile telephony, broadband connectivity and IPTV services to individuals, homes and businesses, and carrier services for businesses. On February 11, 2007, du launched its own mobile service with call tariffs almost identical to those of Etisalat, thus eliminating any possibility of price competition between the two providers. Subscribers to du mobile services can be identified by the dialing prefix 055 b) Social; technological: DU Chief Executive Officer Osman Sultan Chief Financial Officer Mark Shuttleworth Chief Commercial Officer Farid Faraidooni Chief Technology Officer Yatinder Mahajan Chief Human Resources and Corporate Services Officer Fahad Al Hassawi Chief Strategy and Investments Officer Raghu Venkataraman Chief Corporate Affairs Officer Ananda Bose du is committed to operating according to global best-practice throughout all aspects of its business. While the company has continued to achieve exceptional results, the world has witnessed significant challenges against a backdrop of the financial crisis. The need for commitment to good governance has never been greater. du has operated under a strong corporate governance culture, since the company was founded. The board of directors Leading our corporate governance efforts is a Board of nine Directors, chaired by Ahmad Bin Byat, which meets on a quarterly basis. Meetings are structured to allow open discussion. All directors participate in discussing the strategy, trading and financial performance and risk management of the Company. In line with ESCA and international guidelines, the roles of Chairman and Chief Executive du board and committees In addition, the company has a number of Board Committees, including the Audit Compliance Committee, Remuneration and Nomination Committee, and an Investment Committee, which are responsible for monitoring, reviewing and making recommendations for their respective areas. audit compliance committee The Audit Compliance Committee consists of three directors and meets quarterly. The internal audit function of du has a direct reporting line into the Audit Compliance Committee. This committee is responsible for reviewing dus results and financial statements, reviewing the activities of internal auditors and monitoring compliance with statutory requirements. Audit compliance committee members: Ziad Galadari (Chairman) Younis Al Khoori Fadel Al Ali Remuneration and nomination committee The Remuneration and Nomination Committee meets as required and consists of three directors and is responsible for the assessment and recommendation of policy on executive remuneration and packages for individual executive directors. Remuneration and nomination committee members: Waleed Al Muhairi (Chairman) Abdulhamid Saeed Abdulla Al Shamsi Investment committee The investment committee, which is not an ESCA requirement, consists of four directors. Its main function is to evaluate the companys investment plans to ensure that shareholders will see an appropriate return on investment. It meets a minimum of four times per year. Investment committee members: Eissa Al Suwaidi (Chairman) Ahmad Bin Byat Jassem Al Zaabi Fadel Al Ali c) Key management decisions -DU Censorship: Unlawful websites Users who tried to access a blocked web page were initially redirected to dus first block page. As rendered in the Opera web browser In March 2008, Du began selectively blocking VOIP traffic, preventing customers from using the computer-to-phone functionality of VOIP systems. The blocking is justified on the grounds that computer-to-phone VOIP services are illegal under UAE telecom law. Both of the telecoms providers in the UAE derive a large proportion of their income from expatriates making expensive international calls to their home countries. However, a specific exemption in the telecom law permits the use of VOIP for computer-to-computer calls, and so it is still possible to access VOIP websites, download VOIP software, set up accounts and use the software to make computer-to-computer calls, both audio and video. If a computer-to-phone call is attempted, it will typically fail to connect unless a VPN is used (see below). On April 14, 2008, du started instituting the same widespread censorship of the web that has been practiced by Etisalat for some years. Any attempt to access content deemed inappropriate by the UAE censor results in a blocked page. As well as pornography, blocking includes blogs, forums and news articles that are critical of the UAE, as well as a proportion of sites that seem to be accidentally blocked as they have no obviously In March 2008, Du began selectively blocking VOIP traffic, preventing customers from using the computer-to-phone functionality of VOIP systems. The blocking is justified on the grounds that computer-to-phone VOIP services are illegal under UAE telecom law. Both of the telecoms providers in the UAE derive a large proportion of their income from expatriates making expensive international calls to their home countries. However, a specific exemption in the telecom law permits the use of VOIP for computer-to-computer calls, and so it is still possible to access VOIP websites, download VOIP software, set up accounts and use the software to make computer-to-computer calls, both audio and video. If a computer-to-phone call is attempted, it will typically fail to connect unless a VPN is used (see below). On April 14, 2008, du started instituting the same widespread censorship of the web that has been practised by Etisalat for some years. Any attempt to access content deemed inappropriate by the UAE censor results in a blocked page. As well as pornography, blocking includes blogs, forums and news articles that are critical of the UAE, as well as a proportion of sites that seem to be accidentally blocked as they have no obviously controversial content. d) Operational changes-DU Achieved record revenues of AED5.3 billion and profits of AED528 million in 2009 Added over 1 million active mobile subscribers, bringing total to 3.5 million at year end Exceeded mobile market share target, reaching 32% in third year of operation Invested AED2.4 billion on network and infrastructure development in 2009 to enhance capacity and coverage Continued to provide innovation, value for money and performance to all our customers Well positioned to achieve long term growth and sustainable profitability Listed on the Dubai Financial Market (DFM) under the ticker code: du Date of listing: 22nd April 2006 Net profit at 31st December 2009: AED528mln Earnings per share: 0.066 du is an integrated telecom service provider, offering customers throughout the UAE the best in quality, innovation, and competitive pricing. During 2009 it added more than 1 million active mobile subscribers, proving that we have established ourselves as the operator of choice for the majority of new subscribers in the UAE market. DU offered fixed and mobile telephony, broadband connectivity and IPTV services to individuals, homes and businesses, and carrier services for businesses. du is a rapidly-growing enterprise, with close to 2,000 staff, from over 60 countries, working to enhance and expand our range of service offerings. This wide variety of personnel allows us to mirror the rich cultural diversity of our nation, while being able to serve our customers in a number of different languages. Over 50% of senior management team and customer-facing staff are UAE nationals. Du is committed to provide opportunities for quality talent in a cosmopolitan working environment. e) Financial -DU Full Year 2010 results analysis Revenue Growth (AED Millions) Mobile Fixed Subscriber Growth (Thousands) Press Release du Announces Full Year 2010 Results Revenues exceed AED 7 billion with a 32% increase for the full year 2010 Net profit before royalty exceeds AED 1.2 billion with a 132% increase Dubai, 3 March 2011 Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company PJSC (du) today announced its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2010, showing record revenues, and continued healthy customer additions. Highlights for the full year 2010: 856,000 net active1 mobile customers added during the year, taking the total at yearend to 4.3 million. Revenues reached AED 7,074 million, a 32% increase versus 2009 (AED 5,339 million). Gross margin grew by 31% year on year to AED 4,601 million versus 2009 (AED 3,507million). EBITDA2 grew 90% to AED 2,018 million versus 2009 (AED 1,064 million). Net profit before royalty increased by 132% year on year to AED 1,226 million versus2009 (AED 528 million). Net profit after royalty increased to AED 1,310 million from AED 264 million in 2009,following the announcement by UAE Federal Government that the royalty rate for the Company commences from 1 January 2010 and that royalty rate for the year ended 31December 2010 is 15%.3million). Task 3 Etisalat STRENGTHS Etisalat is a monopoly shared by DU in telecommunications which allows no competition whereby maximizing profits Emirates Telecommunications Corporation (Etisalat) is majority-owned by the Ministry of Communications (60%), with the remaining shares publicly-traded on the national stock exchange and held by UAE nationals. This report outlines the companys recent activities and corporate strategy Etisalat is a company established worldwide Etisalat is well developed company with wider penetration in UAE Etisalat weakness Etisalat investments globally is not direct hence they dont have direct control over these investments; hence they only get dividends which means they are a passive player not an active player. This will limit etisalats growth to advance in terms of commercials Etisalat is a monopoly

Fighting Against Animal Cruelty English Literature Essay

Fighting Against Animal Cruelty English Literature Essay Fighting against animal cruelty is something Im particularly passionate and sensitive about. Some people may argue with me and tell me Im over reacting. However, I couldnt actually be bothered! People like myself are what our world needs to protect these creatures with no voice. In China dog control officers may kill any unaccompanied dogs on sight. There are no government supported charitable organisations like the RSPCA, which monitors the cases on animal cruelty. Animal abuse is on the increase in South Africa, and many of the perpetrators are young children. In 2006, three Randburg school girls set alight a mouse and watched as it burnt to death. They recorded the incident on a cell phone and their laughter is clearly audible as they enjoy the spectacle. Issues like THESE make me SO upset and angry! It kills me to see how people especially girls who are nurtures, can take it upon themselves to act this way! This is why taking care of or helping abused and abandoned animals is my most essential goal in life. My passion in life is to live in Paris in some little attic in someones house, and every morning wake up, set up my canvas and paint on the sidewalks. Ive wanted to do this since I was a little girl. Watching Aristo Cats and 101 Dalmatians has opened my mind to bigger things, and has showed me how free artists are in Europe. I want to paint and draw pieces that arent going to be assessed or moderated by people who are going to bring me down. I want to paint how I want to and what I want to, and then selling my artworks to people around the world and HOPEFULLY making money to open up an animal shelter or maybe more. Not only will I provide a home for all these poor lost and neglected animals; Im also going to go out and fight for them by being a part time animal cop. I can sit for hours and bawl my eyes out while I watch animal cops SA, MIAMI, HOUSTEN and PHOENIX on Animal Planet. This is what made me realise what my ambition was. Friends and family will tell you that I would sacrifice my life for an animal. And to you that may sound ridiculous, however it is the truth. Ive actually had two occasions when I felt like an animal cop. One of them was when I was in town one morning when the sun was blistering hot, I felt like I was baking! While walking along the pavement, I came across a puppy curled up in the corner of an open van. She had no water, no food and no shelter. This made me SO mad! I went back without my mum and confronted the man in that uncontrollable state. My mum was too scared to do anything about it so I stayed mad with her until she had to call my dad, who then told me to go to the nearest police station. This fortunately for me was across the road. I laid a charge by myself and those men were charged with animal abuse. After attending the circus 3 times when I was a little girl, Ive never been back since. Seeing animals being ill-treated in such an immoral and horrible way upset me terribly and my dad and I made a pledge that wed never go back to the circus again. Small things like this make a HUGE difference to our society and our world. The second incident when acting as an animal cop was when I went to my friends house to see her new kitten on a rainy night. Before I got there I had assumed that she was looking after this poor kitten that was found in the gutter. However, she was dumped in the Wendy house with no food, no water and no litter box! I found her behind some tools took her into the shower and washed her off all that dirt and grime. Shes now, living at home, with me. Her names Piglet because her nose is like a pig and she EATS like her pig! I d like to add that my cat has a bit of an identity crisis as she does no know whether shes a cat or a dog! She plays fetch with a rolled up cling wrap ball. When you throw it for her she skids and slides after it and brings it right back to you and drops it into your hand for more rounds. She sits in the shower with me because she LOVES WATER! She even plays catchers and hide and seek with me. I need say more. My mum told me that I was the animal farms weekly visitor without fail. Animals arent there for you to take your frustrations out on or to just feed them and leave. However they WILL sit there and listen to you when youre mad. upset and have no one to talk to. Whether you pass over that eagerly awaited walk in the park for the following day†¦ they still forgive you and will ALWAYS come running back into your arms. I hope that every one of you pay special attention to your animals, because just as much as they love you, they want you to love them back the exact same way without the voices to tell you so†¦

Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2004 Essay -- Investment Investor Sarbanes Oxley

Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2004 The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was signed into law on July 30, 2002 by President Bush. The new law came after major corporate scandals involving Enron, Arthur Anderson, WorldCom. Its goals are to protect investors by improving accuracy of and reliability of corporate disclosures and to restore investor confidence. The law is considered the most important change in securities and corporate law since the New Deal. The act is named after Senator Paul Sarbanes of Maryland and Representative Michael Oxley of Ohio (Wikipedia Online).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Sarbanes-Oxley consisted of 11 different titles or sections. Title I is Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. It created a five member panel known as the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, overseen and appointed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (Sarbanes-Oxley). The Board is to consist of two CPAs and three people that are not CPAs, but the chairman must be a CPA. The Board is to provide oversight of auditing of public companies while establishing auditing, quality control, independence, ethical standards (Arens 32-33). Public accounting firms that work on audits must register with the Board and pay a fee. Title I also included new auditing rules. Auditors must now retain paper work for seven years, have a second partner review and approval of audit reports, evaluate whether internal controls accurately show transactions as well as sales of assets, and describe any weaknesses or noncompliant internal controls. Public accou nting firms that issue auditing reports for more than 100 companies are to be inspected every year. Accounting firms that issue audit reports for less than 100 companies must be inspected very three years. The Board can discipline or sanction accounting firms for what it deems to be negligent conduct (Conference of State Bankers Online).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Title II of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is Auditor Independence. It creates new rules that auditors must abide by in order to keep their objectivity and accuracy. Auditors are now banned from performing most non-audit related services like bookkeeping, actuary services, and management consulting. An auditor may no longer be the lead auditor of a firm for more than five consecutive years. Auditors are now required to report all significant accounting policies and practices used in the audit, any different trea... ... GE has said that new compliance costs are about $30 million. AIG has said that Sarbanes-Oxley is costing the company $300 million. Many European companies have also complained because they are forced to comply because they are on American stock exchanges. Surveys have also found that many companies are even thinking about going private to avoid compliance Sarbanes-Oxley (Bartlett 1-3). Works Cited Arens, Alvin, Randal Elder and Mark Beasley. Auditing and Assurance Services: An Integrated Approach. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005. Bartlett, Bruce. â€Å"The Crimes of Sarbanes-Oxley.† National Review 25 May 2004.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_bartlett/bartlett200405250811.asp Conference of State Bankers Online. Executive Summary of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. 10 February 2005. http://www.csbs.org/government/legislative/misc/2002_sarbanes-oxley_summary.htm Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. 107 Cong., 2nd sess. 2004.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgibin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=107_cong_ bills&docid=f:h3763enr.tst.pdf. Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Wikipedia Online. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes- Oxley_Act.