Transitional Justice in Post-war Societies

Transitional Justice in Post-war Societies Introduction 462 What justice is, who it serves to and what forms it can take are the issues that have been challenging philosophers, legal and political scientists for centuries making them search for answers in religious norms, in the rule of law, or even in fairness itself (Ralws 1985). Reasonably, during the periods of transitions and far-reaching transformations of societies this task nevertheless resembles more a Sisyphean one since what is fair and just in extraordinary political circumstances is determined not from an idealized archimedean point, but from the transitional point itself (Teitel 2000, 224). Since every transition is a highly complex and historically contingent process, the act of tailoring an appropriate response to a repressive past is influenced by a number of factors, such as affected societys legacy of injustice, its legal culture, and political traditions (Teitel 2000, 2019). Nevertheless, not all scholars agree on this, but fully reject the relevance of these and similar f actors, considering the transitional qualifier misleading since it suggests an altered and unacceptable lesser form of regular criminal justice (Olsen, Payne and Reiter 2010, 10). This fault line leads to and further shapes another fundamental debate surrounding transitional justice whether the attitudes toward justice are relevant or not, i.e. whether the purpose of justice will be fulfilled if those who it should serve to do not see it fair. Recognizing a wide scope of political transitions and significant differences among them, this paper attempts to analyse the importance of how justice is perceived in the communities emerging from a violent conflict. Such complex environment abound with perplexity, sentiments, irrational thinking and behaviour undoubtedly prevents us from reaching clean and neat explanations of the relationship between justice and its perceptions, but at the same time reminds us of how vital this relation is to the future of transitional justice including its prospects for improvement. The main argument of this paper is that transitional justice in post-war societies will have limited success and will most likely create new grievances among affected societies if they tend to perceive the exercised justice as unfair. However, we warn against the trap of tautology of any kind and call for further research on the possibility, as well as the necessity of overcoming this inherent weakness of transitional justice in post-war circumstances. Upon setting up the theoretical framework, the paper will analyse in which manner broadly negative perceptions of transitional justice affect the success of its both retributive and restorative efforts and contribute to existing frictions between affected post-war communities. Supporting evidence to proposed hypotheses will be sought in the legacy of International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Finally, the third chapter will shortly discuss the chances for achieving transitional justice that is widely perceived as fair by the societies emerging from wars. Holistic Approach to Transitional Justice 492 Looking into definitions of transitional justice, one can notice two main approaches (Olsen, Payne and Reiter 2010, 12; Kaspas 2008, Clark 2008), coinciding and echoing the parts of the sentence we discuss in this paper. Offering different, sometimes opposing forms and mechanisms of transitional justice, these approaches differ in the aims they strive to achieve, or at least, in the order of their priorities. A narrower, retributive approach to transitional justice aims to hold perpetrators individually accountable for their wrongdoings, to punish them, and in such way bring justice to victims. Those who advocate for it are therefore primarily concerned about the fairness of the prosecutorial forms of justice (e.g. trials) where fairness is associated with traditional legal standards (Moghalu 2011, 522-524) and they are not much interested in the way justice is perceived. Although the name suggests otherwise, the restorative approach to transitional justice is more forward-looking and it attempts to bring justice by working toward a new inclusive society that addresses the fundamental needs of population (Olsen, Payne and Reiter 2010, 12) through retributive, but also via a wide range of non-prosecutorial mechanisms (truth commissions, reparations, memorialization, etc.) Being concerned about repairing harm and building and healing societies (Lederach 2001, 842), scholars and policy makers arguing for this approach are more concerned about the way these societies perceive transitional justice and tend to value the justice which restores community, rather than the justice which destroys it (Lambourne 2003, 24). In this paper we adopt a rather comprehensive, holistic definition of transitional justice offered by International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ): Transitional justice is a response to systematic or widespread violations of human rights. It seeks recognition for the victims and to promote possibilities for peace, reconciliation, and democracy. (ICTJ 2009, 1) Even though some scholars argue that including both retributive and restorative efforts dilutes the notion of justice (Olsen, Payne and Reiter 2010, 12), we believe that this kind of definition is the most appropriate one for the following analysis for two reasons. First, it does not exclude or favour, but encompasses the aims of both retributive and restorative efforts, thus providing a basis for a more comprehensive analysis of the impact of justice perceptions on all its aims. Second, such a broad definition is suitable for analysing the importance of how justice is perceived in post-war environments since even though it is almost never possible to punish all those who committed crimes nor to recognize all those who suffered during the mass violence, the survivors both victims and perpetrators will have to find their own ways to live together and to deal with the exercised justice, be that in a constructive, ignorant or a destructive manner. Since the aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of perceptions of transitional justice on its ability to serve its purpose, we will analyse the aims which stand behind restorative and retributive efforts, but not various forms they can take. Retributive efforts 624 Aiming to establish individual criminal accountability and pursuing an idealistic goal of universal legal fairness, the retributive approach to transitional justice neglects the importance, if not the centrality of fairness perceptions and thus jeopardizes a suboptimal goal of legalist justice deterring future wrongdoings.[1] Nonetheless, the capacity of transitional justice to prevent similar offences in post-conflict societies is indeed impacted by these societies attitudes towards exercised justice. The establishment of individual criminal guilt for punishable acts is supposed to mitigate the dangerous culture of collective guilt (Kritz 1999, 169) which threatens by its two equally perilous extremes blaming all members of the rivalry groups only because of their group characteristics or, conversely, falling into if everyone is guilty, than no one is guilty trap. By punishing individuals who purported to act in the name of the whole ethnicity or nation, retributive transitional justice efforts are assumed to dissolute dichotomist perceptions and nihilistic stereotypes which stigmatize entire communities and might lead to a new round of violence (Kaspas 2008, 62) and acts of private revenge. Nevertheless, no matter how successful trials in the aftermath of war might be, their unavoidable selectivity almost inevitably creates an impression of unequal treatment and unfairness among affected communities thus fostering instead of overturning their distorted group-specific conceptions and perceptions of justice (Weinstein and Stover 2006, 11) Hence, if affected communities perceive the exercised justice as unfair regardless of its legal fairness, the truth that trials aimed to establish will remain to be viewed through lenses of societal guilt (Subotic 2011) and not only that trust among communities will not be rebuilt, but more importantly from the aspect of retributive justice their trust in the rule of law will not be restored. Consequently, the deterring capacity of transitional justice will be considerably undermined. Moreover, widely-perceived-as-unfair justice may incentivise new circle of private justice by reifying divides and hostile attitudes which caused violence in the first place (Sriram 2007, 587). The reason for which the perceptions of justice are particularly important in post-war transitions, even more than in any other type of transition, is because these communities are often caught in a security dilemma which tends to get intensified in the aftermath of a war (Posen 1993, 36). If transitional justice is perceived as unfair, it will most likely create new grievances and simply institutionalize group-specific narratives that affect societies shaped by their self-understanding of sources of coercion and repression in past (Teitel 2000, 224), thus encouraging calls for revision and redressing of perceived injustices. Therefore, the attitudes that post-war societies adopt about the exercised transitional justice can not only undermine its deterring efforts, but even turn them upside do wn. This, however, does not mean that widely-perceived-as-fair justice leads to absolute success of retributive efforts it is not the case even in regular circumstances since people are not always rational actors and have different perceptions of costs and benefits, especially when their vital interests are at stake. Nonetheless, this means that deterrence capability of transitional justice is more limited if it is seen as unfair, which is especially dangerous in the transitions from war to peace, when chances for the recurrence of violence are still critically high (Collier, Hoeffler and SÃ ¶derbom 2004). However, the question then arises as whether this technocratic legalism (Sharp 2013, 150) which strives to present justice as neutral and immune to underlying political tensions can ever be sufficiently fair to post-war societies, or some correctives of fairness perceptions are always needed if communities previously in war are to be kept away from a new circle of violence, either o pen or structural. This brings us to the restorative efforts of transitional justice. Restorative efforts 681 Searching for equilibrium between the demands of justice and peace, the primary aim of restorative efforts is a successful transformation of societies previously in war towards more peaceful, inclusive, democratic, or to use an umbrella term reconciled ones (Bloomfield 2006, 16; ICTY 2009, Loyle and Davenport 2015; Uprimny and Saffon, 2006). Since the accomplishment of this aim requires active participation of the communities (even though the focus is on the victims, the involvement of both victims and offenders is equally important) (Kaspis 2008, 64), their attitudes toward exercised transitional justice are of vital importance for successful transformation. Since negative attitudes towards the exercised transitional justice significantly hinder its deterring capacity, it is not hard to assume how crucial they are for building far more demanding positive elements of peace political, economic and societal reconstruction of communities emerging from a war. What is fair and just in the periods of transition is not determined in a vacuum, but is forged against the affected societys backdrop of historical legacies of injustice which is the springboard for its imagination of transitional justice (Teitell 2000, 224). If exercised justice collides with this imagination of justice, transitional justice efforts risk falling into irrelevance or worse. Empirical evidences from various peace-building missions support this assumption since even those reconciliation efforts that come from the local civil societies tend to have rather limited success if truth and justice behind them are negatively perceived by affected communities (Andrieu 2010, Backer 2003, Rangelov 2015). Forgiveness and healing at which reconciliation aims are unthinkable in the societies which believe that exercised justice is unfair, partial, insufficient, and that it needs to be revised since their sense of justice prevents them from movingÂÂ   beyond negative coexistence (Bloomfield 2006, 14). Moreover, transitional justice which is widely perceived as unfair can even harm such cold peace between the communities previously in war. It is highly unlikely that transitional justice will have legitimizing and democratizing effect for implementing regimes (Loyle and Davenport 2015, 129) if people perceive transitional justice only as the legitimization of a new kind of repression (Stover, Megally and Mufti, 2005). Political entrepreneurs (Lemay-Hebert 2009, 28) who often appear in the aftermath of wars and during transition periods might try to manipulate these attitudes, fuel ethnocentric and nationalistic beliefs and reactions and further obstruct reconstruction efforts. Therefore, if transitional justice adds a new layer of already complex grievances among the rival communities, the process of change and redefinition of relationships between them (Ledarch 2001, 842) will hardly move towards mutual trust, empathy and harmony, but will rather be rebuilt on fear, suspicion and m utual accusations. Therefore, in fragile, post-conflict societies, the perception of justice is often as important as its delivery (Neuffer 2000, 340). However, regardless of how consistent these assumptions on the importance of perceptions of transitional justice might seem for the accomplishment of its ambitious aims, they must not at all be taken for granted. It would be naÃÆ'Â ¯ve to assume that widely-perceived-as-fair transitional justice necessarily leads to peaceful, democratic and reconciled societies. Not only do many other factors beside justice mechanisms play extremely important role in the transformation from war to peace, but perceptions of fairness themselves can be key spoilers of the real transition towards peace, democracy and reconciliation. What caused or, at least, justified the violence in the first place were those mass hostile attitudes fostered by the reservoirs of myths (King 2001, 167) of ethnic and national animosities (Kaufman 2006). If the exercised transitional justice is widely perceived as fair through these corrupted lenses, the nature of these positive attitudes needs to be considered with more attention. If these attitudes are based on the knowledge and acknowledgment of committed war crimes, they probably mean a step forward towards the aims of transitional justice. However if they are met at the expense of fairness of justice, they most likely undermine the prospects for profound transformation of the affected societies. Therefore, the relationship between the aims of transitional justice and the perceptions of affected communities in post-war transitions is extremely sensitive and complex, thus requiring a case-to-case examination. The Legacy of the ICTY More than Trials? 367 Academic debates on the legacy of the ICTY (established in May 1993 to try those responsible for violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991 (United Nations 2009)) very well reflect the general debates on the role of transitional justice and the importance of the affected communities attitudes towards it. Despite a strong consensus on the ICTYs contribution to the development of international criminal justice (Steinberg 2011), the long-term impact of the ICTY on the communities in the region of former Yugoslavia remains largely disputed. Namely, even though the ICTY is a prosecutorial, retributive mechanism of transitional justice, the expectations out of it have been much greater than those from regular courts, and it has been ascribed with restorative potential from the very beginning (. The ICTY was, according to prevailing public opinion, supposed to contribute to the healing of communities in the Balkans and the reb uilding of their inter-communitarian ties. Although substantially unrealistic, these expectations did not emerge out of thin air since the founders of the ICTY indeed set high objectives at the Tribunal. According to the Statute of the ICTY, the primary objective of the tribunal was to prosecute persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law, but also to contribute to the restoration and maintenance of peace and security in the region (UN 1993), which undoubtedly encompassed some of the restorative aims in addition to the regular prosecutorial aims of trials. Moreover, the record of the debate at the Security Council suggests that the seeds for another goal that of promoting reconciliation and good neighbourliness were planted at the ICTYs inception (Fletcher and Weinstein 2004, 36). Dealing with the way and the extent to which the perceptions of the ICTY influenced the effectiveness of its retributive and restorative efforts, we look for the answer to the concerns raised by the ICTY Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, who, during her visit to Bosnia, faced a disappointing lack of knowledge and misunderstanding of the Tribunals work among the local populations. You know, I am wondering if this is all worth it. Im wondering if what we are doing at the Tribunal is worthwhile, she said (Neuffer 2000, 354). ICTY Retributive Efforts Preventing New War Crimes 1070 Indicating 161 alleged war criminals (ICTY 2016), most of whom have already been convicted, the ICTY has undoubtedly developed and impressive body of jurisprudence and louder and clearer than ever announced the end of impunity for those who commit war crimes. Nevertheless, the very existence and work of the ICTY have never been favourably regarded in the countries where its deterrent effects should have been most pronounced (Dimitrijevic 2009, 83) since it has been met with great suspicion, disapproval and resistance by the majority of people in the Western Balkans. Despite the fact that the ICTY was established to punish war crimes of all sides to the conflict in comparison to the very limited, even discriminatory mandate of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (Loyle and Davenport 2015) its legitimacy in the region has remained remarkably low among all three communities with 71% of people in Serbia, 84% in Republika Srpska, 64% in Croatia and 39% in Federation having su m negative attitudes towards the ICTY almost twenty years after its establishment (Milanovic 2016, 240). The Serbs view the ICTY as a political anti-Serb tribunal, as a one more instrument of the Western powers whose purpose is to dispense victors justice and blame the Serbs for all the atrocities in the wars (Obradovic-Wochnik 2009; Dimirijevic 2009; Saxon 2006). The Croats believe that the Tribunal unacceptably equates the guilt of the Serbs and the Croats, making a massive wound on Croatias body by trying the best of all Croatian sons and thus attacking on the dignity and the legitimacy of the Homeland War (Dimitrijevic 2009, 84; Peskin and Boduszynski 2003, 1117; Jovic 2009, 15). Finally, the ICTY is a mixed bag (Saxon 2006, 564) of hopes and disappointments for the Muslim community which appreciates the ICTYs so far efforts and achievements, but at the same time considers them slow, mild and insufficient (Milanovic 2016, 242). Root causes of these attitudes are multitude and ar e beyond the scope of this analysis. However, what is important to notice is that even though the ICTY has done a remarkable job, in the eyes of the affected communities that job has remained somewhere else and the ICTY has become a world unto itself (Fletcher and Weinstein 2004, 33). Consequently, its negative image has hindered the efficiency of its sentences and undermined its pedagogical role in changing the attitudes towards war crimes in the region. If retributive efforts of the ICTY were successful, all sides would be ready to admit the crimes committed by their communities and recognize the victims of others sides, realizing that exercised violence should have never happened and must never be repeated. However, since significant parts among all the communities do not believe that the trials were fair and do not believe in what was established in the judgements (Milanovic 2016, 242), their persistence of their attitudes towards committed war crimes come as no surprise. Despite the extant of the facts established in front of the ICTY, they are still perceived through the lenses of nationalistic and ethnocentric narratives and myths full of self-victimhood and denial of its wrongdoings (Milanovic 2016, 243). For instance, 75.9% of Serbs and 76.2% of Croats in Bosnia believe that the members of their own community fought a defensively oriented war (Kostic 2012, 655), 74% Serbs and 43% of Croats believe that their communities were the greatest victims (Milanovic, 2016, 243-244), while only 5% of Serbs and 0.4% of Croats think that their coethnics were the greatest perpetrators (Milanovic, 2016, 243-244), even though neither of these communities had the largest number of victims or the smallest number of victimizers according to the facts established by the ICTY and the domestic courts. The lack of the recognition of war crimes is maintained through the lack of the knowledge of the facts on these crimes, which is from its side maintained through the ignorance and refusal of the justice, perceived as unfair. Many surveys show that the facts, evidences and judgements which the ICTY has made available to the public have been routinely rejected and have not influenced the attitudes these communities have towards the committed crimes (Obradovic-Wochnik 2009, 34). Moreover, perceived as unjust and unfair, the truth on war crimes which the ICTY aimed to reveal has given new impulses to old truths rooted in each of th e communities and manipulated by their greedy political leaders the truths which have throughout the history of the region justified even the worst atrocities and turned them into the acts of national heroism. The fact that the justice exercised in front of the ICTY is not owned by the locals since it has not made them recognize the victims of other sides or admit the crimes committed in the name of and by their own side, indeed limits the deterring capacity of the ICTY to a rather modest range. Nevertheless, it would be against the grain to claim that the retributive efforts of the ICTY have not been real and observable, nor is that the aim of this paper. Without the ICTY and the pressure of the international community, not only that the high-ranking political and military leaders from the region would have ever been tried, but even the persecutions of mid- or low-level offenders before the national courts of these states would be less likely. Therefore, we do not claim that the ICTYs retributive efforts have completely failed, but question their scope due to the low legitimacy of the ICTY among the communities in the region of the former Yugoslavia. There is no doubt that the main retributive aim of transitional justice the prevention of similar wrongdoings in future would have been achieved with greater certainty if the exercised justice were perceived as fair. The ICTY has failed twice already to deter the commission of war crimes in the Yugoslav conflicts since some o f the worst atrocities were committed after the establishment of the Tribunal first in Bosnia in the period from 1993 to 1995, and then in Kosovo in the period from 1998 to1999. Unfortunately, media reports on the crowds and government officials in Croatia welcoming Blaskic, or in Bosnia welcoming Krajisnik and Plavsic, or in Serbia welcoming Ojdanic and Lazarevic all convicted war criminals suggest that the legalistic fairness and retributive efforts of the ICTY have failed to root out dangerous attitudes these communities have towards war crimes. ICTY Restorative Efforts Preventing New Wars 931 The above mentioned surveys show that even though the negative peace among the Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks has been preserved for the last twenty years, their war on truth is far from an end despite all the ICTYs efforts and achievements (Hodzic 2015). The capacity of the ICTY to bring peace to these memory wars and put the former enemies on the path of reconciliation is considerably limited by its low credibility among the targeted audiences. In 2005, strikingly small 16.7% of people in Bosnia perceived the trials at the Tribunal as fair and only 26% of them believed that these trials were a precondition for just peaceful and normal relations in the region (Kostic 2012, 659). The disappointment among all three ethnic groups with fairness and relevance of the ICTY further increased by 2010 (Kostic 2012, 659). Hence, the relationship between the local populace and the Tribunal a crucial dimension for its success (Fletcher and Weinstein 2004, 44) has remained weak, limiting its contri bution to peace, stability and reconciliation in the Balkans. Perceived as unfair, the ICTY has had little chances to change the way the past is integrated and spoken between the Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats, to reconcile their contradictory versions of the truth, and to incentivize them to base their relationships on the present instead of the past (Hayner 2011). The public discourse which especially in Republika Srpska, Serbia and Croatia securitized the ICTY as an unfair political court pushed the ICTY into a transitional justice security dilemma among the Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks in which every side believed that the conviction of its nationals represented a threat to its societal security. This created a wall of risky indifference, silence and denial between these communities and the Tribunal, so the ICTY operates in a bias-driven downward spiral the more it challenges rooted nationalist narratives of each side, the more likely that it will generate distrust, and hence less likely that it will be perceived as fair (Milanovic 2016, 259). Not considered fair, hardly can it contribute to sustainable peace, democracy and reconciliation in the region. Moreover, the negative attitudes towards the ICTY have been often misused against reconciliation the very thing which transitional justice aims to foster. Democratically elected leaders in the region have been manipulating peoples perceptions of the ICTY from the very beginning, passing them through cognitive and emotional filters of prior beliefs and attitudes of these communities, thus preserving national narratives full of competitive victimhood (Subotic 2011, Dimitrijevic 2008, Jovic 2009, Fischer and Simic 2016). This has been particularly evident in election campaigns of national political elites of all three communities, who would mobilize this resentment in order to score cheap political points. For instance, trying to recover from what seemed to be a disastrous loss of support in 2000-2001 and prepare for the parliamentary elections in 2003, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) organised massive public protests against the ICTY and the indictment against noble Mirko Norac (t he General of the Croatian Army who was later convicted for war crimes), sometimes gathering more than 150.000 supporters (Jovic 2009, 15). It was by its sharp criticism of the ICTY that the HDZ reinvented itself and staged a quick comeback by taking a convincing victory in 2003 (Jovic 2009, 16). The most recent example is the Serbian Radical Party which regained its political influence and power by re-entering the Parliament after years of decreasing popular support. The most important reason for such development is the acquittal of its leader Vojislav Seselj before the ICTY, which was framed as his victory over The Hague by the Serbian radicals and the media close to them (Nikolic 2016). Many people in Serbia perceived this as a kind of correction of injustice imposed to the Serbian people by the Tribunal and the West. Therefore, the ICTY has over the years served as deus ex machina to many political actors in the region. However, these assumptions do not outspeak the main counter-argument that the situation in regards to peace and reconciliation in the region would have been worse had it not been for the ICTY. Even if some indictments or verdicts were perceived as unfair by the coethnics of alleged or condemned war criminals, the fact that they were removed from the post-Yugoslav political scene was already a significant contribution to the regional peace and security. Providing the opportunity for many victims to talk about their sufferings for the first time, the ICTY has undoubtedly open the way for a long and difficult process of reconciliation among the Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs. Nonetheless, this paper aims to emphasize that the efforts of the ICTY in combatting denial and preventing attempts at revisionism (ICTY) and its capacity to make it impossible for anyone to dispute the reality of the horrors that took place (ICTY), would have been much more successful if the exercised justice had bee n perceived as fair by the affected communities. The anniversaries of the worst war crimes in the region from the Srebrenica genocide, over the Vukovar massacre, to the Operations Flash and Storm every year warn how shallowly the hatchets were buried and how far positive peace and reconciliation seem to be despite all the truth-seeking and truth-telling at hundreds of trials. The justice that these trials brought remained trapped in the unfavourable perceptions of these communities. Nevertheless, risking returning to the very beginning and compromising our main claim, we cannot resist but raise a new question: Could the ICTY ever been perceived as fair by the Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks? (In)Surmountable Weakness? 666 Aiming to serve to all the survivors of mass violence (Shaw and Wladorf 2000, 3) direct victims, direct victimizers and members of both victim and offender communities -transitional justice in post-war societies addresses diverse audiences with considerably different experiences and interests that decisively shape their attitudes towards the exercised justice. Even though we have shown that negative attitudes towards transitional justice limit its accomplishments, we need to raise rather than answer at least two new questions. The most fundamental issue is how realistic it actually is to expect from all the sides in conflict to agree with exercised transitional justice and perceive it as fair (Bloomfield 2006, 20). When large-scale violence is committed, the way people perceive justice is not shaped only by their own suffering, but by the suffering of all members of the group they belong to since their membership in that group is what made them victims in the first place. Since no transitional justice mechanism is capable to punish all wrongdoings, even the best one will be insufficiently fair for the affected communities. This is especially problematic after civil wars when groups in conflict were often both victimized and acted as victimizers (Kaminski, Nalepa and ONeill 2006, 301), while after the war every side simply wants to see its own needs for justice met, not caring, even denying victims of the other side. The strong notion of reconciliation further fuels the distrust of former enemies

Sphere :: essays research papers

Sphere Brief Plot Summary: The military discovers a spaceship at the bottom of the ocean. A team is sent down to investigate and gets stuck down there due to a storm on the surface. A sphere is discovered inside the ship, made by an alien species. People go into the sphere and it gives them the power to create things with their minds. They realize this power is too powerful and that mankind isn’t ready for it. So they use this power to forget everything about the ship. Brief Character Description: Norman Johnson-53-year-old psychology professor, the last choice to be on the team because of his age. He’s always evaluating the mental stability of the team members. Harry Adams-A mathematician. The only black member, he thinks everyone is discriminating against him. He cracks the alien code. Beth Halpern-The team zoologist, due to bad experiences with men she doesn’t trust them. Doesn’t always think things through. Theme: There are many very intelligent animals on our planet, but the thing that sets ups apart from them is our ability to imagine thins. We can imagine something and then strive to accomplish it. We just don’t realize how powerful or important that ability is. Last Comments: I was surprised at how much the author discussed complicated matters. He mentions space-time and how we could theoretically travel in time. He talks about the â€Å"anthropomorphic problem† of how we assume that aliens would have the same thought process as humans. He also talks a lot about psychology and the human mind. Question: 1) What kind of sea creature attacks the habitat? –A giant squid 2) What power did the sphere give to people? –The ability to manifest things with their minds

Federal programs Essay

Throughout the twentieth century, Congress has established a great number of federal programs administered by agencies within the Executive Branch. Through this process of a wide-ranging allocation of authority to the executive Branch, Congress has assisted in creating a massive Federal Bureaucracy. The relationship of Congress to the Executive Branch today must therefore be seen in terms of its relation to this Bureaucracy, as well as its relation to the Presidency. In order to gain some control over the operations of the various agencies which had been established within the Executive Branch, in 1946 congress began to develop a sequence of configurations and procedures designed to manage the Administration. This process was also known as congressional oversight. There are several methods through which congressional misunderstanding operations take place: the committee process, congressional administrative offices, casework, as well as a number of administrative practices. Where the congressional oversight functions take place, there are three types of committees: authorizations committees, appropriations committees, and governmental operations committees. The first type of committee is the functional committee which initially establishes or authorizes the program or agency. In the case of a military program, this would be the Armed Services Committees in both chambers. ‘In the case of an urban program, this would be the Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee in the House and the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee in the Senate. Similarly, each program area within the Federal Bureaucracy is related to at least one specific substantive standing committee in each chamber of Congress. ’ (Issa, 2011) In attempting to follow the oversight activities through these authorization committees, a number of complications are often encountered. One of these is the result from the fact that a particular governmental agency may fall within the authority of several different practical committees or subcommittees. As a result, the agency may play ‘one committee or subcommittee against the other in order to achieve those results in Congress which tend to benefit the agency the most. (Office of The Law Revision Counsel, 2012) Another problem is that a committee which establishes a program is often too involved with the outcome of its own efforts to be willing to investigate adequately the operations of the program it has initiated. One of the most substantial places where an amount of oversight activity takes place is in the appropriations process. The budget for an agency must be approved anew each year. ’ One might assume that this yearly appropriations process would lead to a careful annual inspection of the budgets of all the various governmental agencies. (Issa, 2011) This is not the case. The federal budget is so great and compound that it is impossible to consider carefully the budget of each agency and program on a year-to-year basis. What happens instead is that budgets are often routinely approved from year to year with general reviews only occurring sporadically. In addition, many agencies develop quite close relationships with the subcommittees of the Appropriations Committees which spe cifically deal with their agency. These agencies are therefore often able to abstract some special favors from these particular appropriations subcommittees. The Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs and the House Committee on Governmental Reform were initially established to manage congressional concern over governmental processes. Thus, many see these committees as an ideal place for maintaining congressional observation over the activities of the vast Bureaucracy located within the Executive Branch. However, because of jurisdictional differences and because of the hesitancy of most representatives and senators to provide for satisfactory independent oversight activities, the efforts of these governmental operations committees have been quite restricted. The three administrative offices within Congress are used to some extent in the congressional oversight process. The General Accounting Office, The GAO has the accountability, not simply for performing accounting audits, but also for judging how various programs are being managed. In other words, the GAO often performs the task of program assessment. The GAO plays a significant role in congressional oversight. The Congressional Research Service, while preparing reports and studies to assist members of Congress, the CRS sometimes includes some information on the activities and routines of various governmental agencies. This is another important source of oversight information for members of Congress. The Congressional Budget Office gathers information on the budgets of the various governmental agencies and to report on new budgetary requirements and propositions that are made through the Executive Branch’s Office of Management and Budget. Budgetary information is an extremely important source of data upon which the various congressional committees can judge the effectiveness of specific governmental programs. Granting, the information gathered by the CBO may seem to permit for substantial congressional oversight, the fact is that it is the agencies that often use this informational link for their own purposes in pursuing their requests for additional funding directly to the congressional committee, instead of directing all their communications through the OMB. This short circuits the use of the OMB as one of the President’s management tools. Efficiency, from an overall standpoint, we can see that these three congressional offices. The General Accounting Office, the Congressional Research Services, and the Congressional Budget Office combined with the staffs of individual congresspersons and senators and the staffs of congressional committees are able to supply our national legislators with vast amounts of information and evaluations of governmental activities. ‘In fact, the United States Congress has available to it one of the most extensive research staffs of any national legislature in the world. ’ (Issa, 2011) Nevertheless, the availability of information and study alone is not sufficient for effective congressional oversight. The desire to follow through on this available information is another necessary ingredient and it is this ingredient which is often lacking. Many times congressional oversight is limited by the worries of various congressional committees and subcommittees over their particular jurisdictions and in a substantial number of instances, the burdens of organized special interests also interfere with the ability or wishes of members of Congress to significantly oversee governmental operations. Aside from these problems, there are also the boundaries of time. Congresspersons are loaded with extremely dense schedules. They have a large number of often conflicting responsibilities to perform. Representatives and senators must therefore place priorities on the use of their time. Often oversight activities lose in this shamble of priorities to legislative activities, to the creation of new programs to deal with current problems, and to casework concerns. Representatives and senators, themselves, do not usually become directly involved in much casework or fundamental services. It is their staff that deals with these matters. However, representatives and senators are usually informed by their staffs of many of these problems, and it is through these specific interactions that these legislators often get the most intense impression as to the effectiveness of many governmental programs. Casework thus provides an important source of direct, specific information which proves very useful in congressional oversight activities. Congress has also passed some major reforms and reconnoitered a number of major legislative techniques, many of which have had the effect of enlightening congressional oversight. Sunshine Laws. During the 1970s, Congress attempted to open up many facets of governmental operations to the general public. This was done through the Freedom of Information Act and the â€Å"Government in Sunshine† Act. By making information more broadly available to the public, these acts also increase the amount of information available to Congress. The Congressional Veto. Very often Congress passes rather broad pieces of legislation. It is then up to specific agencies to fill in the details of these laws, both with regard to the building of governmental agencies and the processes which they follow. One might note for example that while Congress passes general tax laws, the details of the regulations regarding the payment of federal taxes is to be found not in the tax law itself but rather in the Internal Revenue Code which is developed by the Internal Revenue Service, which is an executive agency. The problem that were presented by the executive agencies developing a great many regulations or codes is that the only way Congress is able to affect these details is through the passage of new legislative acts. As we have seen, this is often a burdensome and prolonged process. In order to avoid this, Congress now writes into some authorization bills requirements for a congressional veto. According to this procedure, when an agency disseminates rules filling in the details of congressional legislation, Congress automatically has the power within a specific time period to veto some of these rules and to demand that the agency fill in the details in a different way. The important thing is that Congress can do this without having to go through the process of passing a new law. Although this procedure is rarely used, it does offer the prospective for a far greater legislative control over the procedures by which the Bureaucracy operates. Sunset Legislation. In starting governmental programs or agencies, Congress usually sets no time limit on the functioning of the program or agency. Since the 1970s, a practice developed by which Congress authorizes the existence of a program or agency for only a inadequate amount of time. In other words, Congress specifies a date by which the agency or program will conclude to function. In order for the agency to continue its operations after that time, a new bill must be passed allowing its continued existence for another specified period of time. This practice is obviously intended to avert the continued existence of agencies or programs which no longer meet a legitimate need or which fail to meet a legitimate need effectively. A dissimilarity on sunset legislation is the procedure of annual authorization. According to this procedure, the continued existence of governmental agency must be approved on a year-to-year basis. While this practice obviously creates tremendous difficulties in the ability of such an agency to engage in long-term planning, it does suggestively increase the potential effectiveness of congressional control. ‘Zero Based Budgeting (ZBB). Zero Based Budgeting is a technique through which administrators must carefully justify their entire agencies’ budgets. Zero based budgeting requires a continual top-to-bottom assessment of all agencies’ programs designed to insure their cost effectiveness. ’ (Issa, 2011) We can see that many structures and techniques have been developed to allow Congress to be more effective in its oversight activities. However, jurisdictional disputes and pressures from various well organized special interests continue to prevent these new techniques and sources of information from being used effectively. In many occurrences, the actual nature and effect of government policy depends less on the actions of our elected officials than it does on the activities of non-elected bureaucrats who often remain totally immune from the pressures of the general public–although not necessarily from those of well-organized special interests. One of the major political issues determining our national future is the question of how well our government is able to represent effectively the needs and desires of the American people. As we have noted, the role of Congress as a representative of the people was one of the most important functions of this â€Å"first branch† of government envisioned by the Founders when they drafted the Constitution. However, the many new needs which our national government has had to meet in this century have placed this role of representation under great stress.

International Marketplace Essays - Offshoring, Canada, Free Essays

International Marketplace Essays - Offshoring, Canada, Free Essays International Marketplace Jason Racki English 123 Ms. Gigliotti Term paper The Everyday Effects of the International Marketplace American is increasingly connected to the rest of theworld as a global economy becomes more important. We participate in the international marketplace both as providers of goods and as consumers. How we buy and sell affects us both in terms of what goods we can choose from, but also what jobs are available, and what kinds of industries will come to dominate our economy. One of the most important changes in recent years in our place in the global economy is the dropping of trade barriers with such political moves as the approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This has had an impact on our economy which has filtered down to the everyday lives of our people, both as workers and as consumers. On the one hand, NAFTA has been good in that it has caused the dropping of tariffs by Mexico and Canada, making U. S. goods more affordable in those countries. This has helped to stimulate some areas of the American economy by opening up new markets to sell our products abroad. In urging the passage of NAFTA, the Clinton Administration publications said that NAFTA would increase high wage jobs, boost U.S. growth, and expand the base from which U.S. firms and workers could compete in a world-wide market. It predicted job gains of approximately a million due to increased Mexican exports, and suggested that by 1995 there would be approximately 200,000 more high wage jobs created due to the opening of free markets. The industries most expected to benefit were those dealing in computer technology, machine tools, aerospace equipment, telecommunications equipment, electronics, and medical devices all areas where wages were already 12 per cent higher than the national average (Expanding (1993), 3-5). Such growth in jobs would have an effect on the workers and their communities, giving a boost to both individual wealth and the community itself. These benefits spread outward to other areas of the economy, helping people who have jobs in retail, construction, and oth er areas where workers spend their paychecks. However, there is another effect. As a result of the cheaper labor in Mexico, participation in this part of the international marketplace has led to the loss of many American jobs in certain industries, such as the garment and textile industries. After four years of stability, apparel industry jobs plunged suddenly last year, falling more than ten percent from 945,000 at the end of 1994 to 346,000 in 1995. In addition, 42,000 jobs vanished in the fabrics industry for at total shrinkage of 141,000 jobs. These jobs represented 40 percent of all manufacturing jobs lost in the United States last year (Squeezing (1996), D1). Carl Priestland, an economist for the American Apparel Manufacturers Association, predicted that this year another America will likely lose up to another 50,000 jobs in the industry (Squeezing (1996), D1). These losses especially affect workers in small towns like Pisgah, Alabama, and Granger, Texas. The approximate 100 people let go in Pisgah this year were emotionally devastated. Not only are they seeing their specific jobs disappear, they are also faced with seeing the entire industry vanish from their area, taking their opportunities with it. One example, Martha Smith, who lost her job sewing children's clothes, is now enrolled in a state-sponsored program to learn clerical skills. She is thereby trading a blue-collar position for one which is in a low-paying and overcrowded field. In fact a great many of the over 650 people who lost sewing jobs in Alabama this year are women struggling to support their families (Squeezing (1996), D1). They face a market where they have few skills and little to offer. Given the largely female makeup of the sewing industry, it is unfeasible to try to fit all these displaced workers in the clerical field. And on top of that, when a plant such as the one in Pisgah closes, the entire town and region suffer. Many such towns are dependent on one employer. When that employer leaves for cheaper labor in Mexico, the local economy cannot easily recover. Local merchants lose their customer base; suppliers to the mills lose their markets. In the textile

Applying Kambons Theory

Applying Kambons Theory Free Online Research Papers I begin this paper with the beginnings of the life of the person that I am evaluating. The person in question is a twenty one year old lesbian African American woman. This Woman was born in Jacksonville, Florida. She lives a stable life with her siblings and loved ones at her side. Although the first few years of her life were as she would describe it â€Å"very complicated†. For the first 18 years of her life she lived in Poverty. She and her brother and sister (whom are both older than her) were not only in the system for years but they were abused and neglected. The abuse and neglect she endured was not only from her biological parents who abused drugs also but from foster parents who swore to love and care for her whilst she was out of a home and needed love and caring the most, and also from her adoptive parents who treated her and her biological brother for the most part as if they were their own personal slaves, while letting their blood related adoptive children free of the burden of any chores. Sexual abuse has also played a major part in this woman’s life for years now, not only from men but from women too. This woman was taken from her parents at the age of two due to the neglect and abuses she and her siblings endured. The woman was what is known as a â€Å"crack baby†. Crack baby is a term for a child born to a mother who used crack cocaine during her pregnancy. Although there has been disputes about the effects of crack cocaine on the fetus, nothing has been proven showing that the effects of crack cocaine will hin der the fetus from being able to grow and have a normal life. There have been accounts where some fetus’s faced mental retardation and cerebral palsy but it has not been proven that crack cocaine was the cause due to the fact that most mothers’s who use crack cocaine during pregnancy also smokes cigarettes. There is only increased risks for birth defects nothing has yet been proven fact. As a matter of fact, the woman is now a college student well on her way to graduation but she never thought that she would make it quite that far. Her parents for sure did not. Neither of her parents completed high School. They have both been incarcerated countless times on drug and theft charges. Her mother tried to make something of herself but continued to get pulled back into the addiction of crack cocaine along with the woman’s father. As of now her biological mother is a pathological liar and continues to try and gain attention by faking sick which indicates a factitious disorder (Nolen-Hoeksema, 2007). The woman’s biological father still continues to do everything he possible can to acquire crack cocaine. The woman’s adoptive mother went as far as to complete high school and one year of community college. The woman’s adoptive father did not complete high school and seems to her to have â€Å"A mental problem†. None of the parents in her life have jobs, and when they do get them they cannot keep them for more than a few months. The woman does however believe that the crack use and the abuse by the one’s whom she believed would care for her have had a negative impact on her life. The woman seems to have a problem with being around people. She seems very shy and out of place in large groups or crowds. She is afraid to talk to people for fear of embarrassment. This indicates she has a social phobia (Nolen-Hoeksema, 2007). Although the woman is very smart and has made good grades since she began attending school she does not seem to be interested in school at all. She says that she has no plan for her life. She just does not want to do anything. When I asked the woman what career she sees herself being good at she claimed that she does not think she is â€Å"cut out† for any career. She chose social work as a profession to study at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University because she believes that it was the right thing for her to do. She feels that she may be able to help other people who were in the same situation as her but she is just not sure about any of it. When she has to do projects in school or has to publicly speak she tends to have pan ic attacks, which I believe indicates an anxiety or panic disorder (Nolen-Hoeksema, 2007). She does not seem to be able to deal with stressful situations well. If it seems that something is overwhelming her she cannot seem to keep her attitude in check. She tends to lose it at the spur of the moment times. It seems to me as though she may have a bit of a bipolar complex (Nolen-Hoeksema, 2007). The woman does not have many friends. She believes that she does not really need to be around too many people or trust too many people because they will only end up hurting her anyways. The woman also has problems with coping with most all of her feelings. Almost everything she feels seems to come off as anger to the people around her. She does not seem to know how to express her feelings in a healthy way. Anger is the most prominent feeling she tends to show. The woman tries to hide her emotions from those around her. She does not want to â€Å"put her burdens off on others†. She tend s to keep things bottled up inside her until she explodes on those around her. She has taken anger management classes but she says that they only worked for so long. I feel that she is a very nice person. She loves and cares about everyone around her even strangers. She tends to want to help the homeless and any other people she sees that are in distress. Sometimes she is extremely happy and then other times she is sad and depressed and when asked why she cannot give a reason. This may also indicate symptoms of bipolar disorder (Nolen-Hoeksema, 2007). This woman does see the need to help her family make their way to the top. No matter what they have done to her if they ask her for help she does whatever it is that she can to make sure that they are ok. No matter what the consequence may be. She wants her family/group to survive (Kambon 1992). She feels that now that she is on a higher level of life so it is the least she can do to help those who need it. If this woman were to take a test on the ASC scale (Kambon 1992) I believe she would not score very high at all. The home life she describes shows that she has not had much involvement with African culture. She grew up in a small town that was predominantly white. She attended both elementary and high schools that had only a few African American students in attendance. The home in which she grew up did not have many neighbors. She lived in a very rural area for the most part of her life. She has become accustomed to the norms and values of European people (Kambon 1992). Also the way in which she was treated at home made her not want to adhere to the African culture. Her adoptive mother would beat them with extension cords when she felt necessary. She would make them work out in the field in the hot sun for hours during the day. She was not given much of anything. Her adoptive mother was raised in Georgia during the 1930’s which was predominantly racist. She believes that her mother learned the ways to treat her and her brother from white supremacy people who treated her adoptive mother and her family that way. Therefore she wants nothing to do with the pattern of how African Americans seemed to have learned from the white supremacists how to beat and discipline their own young and others around them. As far as her sense of spirituality goes she is a very spiritual person. She does not attend church at the moment but she had attended a few black churches in her past. She does have that sense of ASC. She does identify with nature and the spir it world and believes everything is connected to a higher being (Kambon 1992). I would say her personality is a mixture. She does in some part identify with African Personality as she has experienced racism, she cares to help her family therefore looking out for the group showing her sense of groupness (Kambon 1992), but she is not fully into her African personality as all African American children should be. Therefore she does not have a strong sense of African Self Consciousness, but she does however have some sense of it. She has grown up and experienced the white world first hand. She was taught by white teachers and those who have already been corrupted by white supremacy. Now that she is older however she has been getting deeper into her African Heritage. When she does find the courage to hang around people they tend to be African American. She is now attending a Historically Black College and maybe someday she will find a way back to her African roots and then will be able to score high on the ASC scale. Maybe she will be able to teach her children in the future to be of pure African nature and no longer be culturally misoriented (Kambon 1992). But as of right now I believe that she is in between, she is a mix of Eurocentric and African culture. Research Papers on Applying Kambon's TheoryPersonal Experience with Teen PregnancyMind TravelHip-Hop is ArtThe Relationship Between Delinquency and Drug UseStandardized TestingThe Effects of Illegal ImmigrationGenetic EngineeringCapital PunishmentAnalysis Of A Cosmetics AdvertisementBook Review on The Autobiography of Malcolm X

PERSONAL STATEMENTS FOR TEACHER TRAINING APPLICATION Statement

STATEMENTS FOR TEACHER TRAINING APPLICATION - Personal Statement Example I was initially enthused to pursue teaching in my work experience at XXXX, after completing my A†levels. I was guided by an enthusing primary school teacher who totally included me in helping the children with their writing and reading skills along with Mathematics. Since November 2013, I have volunteered three days every week at YYYY, which has made me more experienced in classroom†based teaching. I usually work together with the class teacher in organizing the class for activities, listening while children read, along with supporting pupils of lower ability. This made me understand the significance of differentiation in planning a lesson and how it is should be run. I have taken part in coming up with Individual Educational Plans (IEP) for pupils encouraging them to learn and personally structuring their learning as per their explicit needs. Moreover, I am extending my various teaching methods like listening exercises, starters, poster making, games, debates, quizzes, and workbooks. To inspire pupils in their learning I have invented some games as well as assessment sheets together with preparing my individual lessons. This year I am overseeing a pupil with Aspergers syndrome during break and lunch times. This chance has been rewarding, helping me to attain a wider perspective on primary school experiences, provide additional support as well as learn new behaviour management techniques. I am through with a two†week experience at this school in June 2014 where I got experience in Key Stage 1 and 2 classroom for two weeks. This enabled me to interact with as well as support children in a diverse range of abilities, lessons, as well as activities and provide them with suitable feedback including targets and rewards. I feel that my degree in history would be appropriate. It is not just an academically hard subject but it assisted me to develop several transferable skills such as the ability to construe and clarify intricate information,

Race, Politics, and Reconstruction, 1865-1875 Assignment

Race, Politics, and Reconstruction, 1865-1875 - Assignment Example Thompson worked at the radical end of the party. He was against the conservative compromises involved. He wanted the national government to reject it because it was coated with ethnicity and discrimination. Ruby was the first Black to be chosen into the state council. This became possible only because fewer Whites contested in the elections than Blacks. George ensured all races were treated with equivalence. He advocated for the fortification of civil constitutional rights of the Blacks. As the president of Texas Colored Labor Convention, he was able to assemble Republican electors in Texas. George built a foundation for black power and governances in Galveston. He cleverly advocated for their civil and party-political civil liberties. He worked cautiously with the hostile White politicians. This way, he opened more occasions for the Blacks through â€Å"compromise† politics. In the post-civil war period, Thompson had significant political power (Rabinowitz 265). He had to ensure he gratified both his goals and that of the wider social order. Through his political dispositions, Ruby compromised to ensure that his race was at least prosperous. In his efforts to safeguard the welfares of the Blacks, Ruby made some compromises in the aim of satiating later goals. In 1874, the Democrats efficaciously reclaimed power. He did not seek re-election because the Whites were prevalent in the assembly. The White politicians exhaled hostility, and Ruby had to tread carefully to guarantee his interest, and that of the Black community received the preferred