Nicaraguan Elections of November, 1996 free essay sample

Pre-election conditions. Reviews 1990 election effects, role of U.S., six years under President Chamoro, economics, parties candidates, constitutional issues. NICARAGUA: ELECTIONS 1996 Introduction A national election is scheduled in Nicaragua in November 1996 (Rohter A7). This research examines the political environment in Nicaragua in this period of the run-up to the election. The Last General Election: 1990 The last general election in Nicaragua was held in 1990, when on 25 February a so-called business-oriented, non liberal government headed by Violeta Chamoro was elected (Mulligan 32). Political participation in Nicaragua on the part of those who oppose the government is most often violent, because the government in power attempts to insure that opponents cannot be victorious through the electoral process. Exceptions to that case occurred in..

Criminal Profile of Serial Killer Joel Rifkin

Criminal Profile of Serial Killer Joel Rifkin For five years, Joel Rifkin avoided capture as he used the city streets across Long Island, New Jersey, and New York City as his hunting ground, but once he was caught, it took little time for police to get him to confess to the murders of 17 women. Joel Rifkins Early Years Joel Rifkin was born on January 20, 1959, and adopted three weeks later by Ben and Jeanne Rifkin. Ben worked as a structural engineer and Jeanne was a homemaker who enjoyed gardening. The family lived in New City, a hamlet of Clarkstown, New York. When Joel was three, the Rifkins adopted their second child, a baby girl who they named Jan. After a few more moves the family settled into  in East Meadow, Long Island, New York. East Meadow was then much like it is today: a community of mostly middle to upper-income families who take pride in their homes and  community. The Rifkins blended quickly into the area and became involved in the local school boards and in 1974, Ben earned a seat for life on the  Board of Trustees at one of the towns main landmarks, The East Meadow Public Library. The Adolescent Years As a child, there was nothing particularly remarkable about Joel Rifkin. He was a  nice child but terribly shy and had a difficult time making friends. Academically he struggled and from the start, Joel felt that he was a disappointment to his father who was very intelligent and actively involved on the school board. Despite his IQ of 128, he received low grades as a result of undiagnosed dyslexia. Also, unlike his father who excelled in sports, Joel proved to be uncoordinated and accident-prone. As Joel entered middle school, making friends did not come easy. He had grown into a clumsy adolescent that appeared uncomfortable in his own skin. He naturally stood hunched over, which, along with his unusually long face and prescription glasses, led to constant teasing and bullying from his schoolmates. He became the kid that even the nerdy kids teased. High School In high school, things got worse for Joel. He was nicknamed Turtle due to his appearance and his slow, unsteady gait. This lead to more bullying, but Rifkin was never confrontational and seemed to take it all in stride, or so it appeared. But as each school year passed, he distanced himself further from his peers and chose instead to spend much of his time alone in his bedroom.   Considered to be an annoying introvert, there were no attempts made from any friends to coax him out of the  house unless it was to pull a mean prank, including hitting him with eggs, pulling down his pants with girls around to see, or submerging his head into a school toilet.   The abuse took its toll and Joel began avoiding other students by showing up late to classes and being the last to leave school. He spent much of his time isolated and alone in his bedroom. There, he began to entertain himself with violent sexual fantasies that had been brewing inside of him for years. Rejection Rifkin enjoyed photography and with the new camera given to him by his parents, he decided to join the yearbook committee. One of his jobs was to submit pictures of the graduating students and activities going on at school. However, like so many of Rifkins attempts to find acceptance among his peers, this idea also failed after his camera was stolen immediately after joining the group. Joel decided to stay on anyway and spent a lot of his spare time working on meeting the yearbook deadlines. When the yearbook was completed, the group held a wrap-up party, but Joel was not invited. He was devastated. Angered and embarrassed, Joel once again retreated to his bedroom and  submerged himself into true crime books about serial killers. He became fixated on the Alfred Hitchcock movie, Frenzy, which he found sexually stimulating, especially the scenes that showed women being strangled. By now his fantasies were always made with a repetitive theme of rape, sadism, and murder, as he incorporated the murders he saw on screen or read in books  into his own fantasy world. College Rifkin was looking forward to college. It meant a new start and new friends, but typically, his expectations turned out to be far greater than reality. He enrolled at Nassau Community College on Long Island and commuted to his classes with a car that was a gift from his parents. But not living in student housing or off-campus with other students had its drawbacks in that it made him even more of an outsider than he already felt. Again, he was facing a  friendless environment and he became miserable and lonely. Trolling for Prostitutes Rifkin began cruising the city streets around areas where prostitutes were known to hang out. Then the shy, slouched-over introvert who found it difficult to make eye contact with girls at school, somehow found the courage to pick up a prostitute and pay her for sex. From that point on, Rifkin lived in two worlds - the one that his parents knew about and the one filled with sex and prostitutes and  consumed his every thought. The prostitutes became a live extension of Rifkins fantasies that had been festering in his mind for years. They also became an inexhaustible addiction that resulted in missed classes, missed work, and cost him whatever money he had in his pocket. For the first time in his life, he had women around who seemed to like him which boosted his self-esteem. Rifkin ended up dropping out of college, then enrolling again at another college only to then drop out again. He was constantly moving out, then back again with his parents each time he flunked out of school. This frustrated his father and he and Joel would often get into big shouting matches about his lack of commitment towards getting a college education. The Death of Ben Rifkin In 1986, Ben Rifkin was diagnosed with cancer and he committed suicide the following year. Joel gave a touching  eulogy, describing the love that his father had given to him throughout his life. In truth, Joel Rifkin felt like a miserable failure who was a major disappointment and embarrassment to his father. But now with his father was gone, he was able to do what he wanted without the constant worry that his dark seedy lifestyle would be discovered. The First Kill After flunking out of his last attempt at college in the spring  of 1989, Rifkin spent all of his free time with prostitutes. His fantasies about murdering the women began to fester. In early March, his mother and sister left on vacation. Rifkin drove into New York City and picked up a prostitute and brought her back to his familys home. Throughout her stay, she slept, shot heroin, then slept more, which irritated Rifkin who had no interest in drugs. Then, without any provocation, he picked up a Howitzer artillery shell and struck her repeatedly on the head with it and then suffocated and strangled her to death. When he was certain that she was dead, he went to bed. After six hours of sleep, Rifkin awoke and went about the task of getting rid of the body. First, he removed her teeth and scraped her fingerprints off of her fingers so that she could not be identified. Then using an X-Acto knife, he managed to dismember the body into six parts which he distributed in different areas throughout Long Island, New York City, and New Jersey. Futile Promises The womans head was discovered inside a paint bucket on a New Jersey golf course, but because Rifkin had removed her teeth, her identity remained a mystery When Rifkin heard on the news about the head being found, he panicked. Terrified that he was about to get caught, he made a promise to himself that it was a one-time thing and that he would never kill again. (In 2013, the victim was identified through DNA as Heidi Balch.) Second Murder The promise not to kill again lasted about 16 months. In 1990, his mother and sister left again to go out of town. Rifkin seized the opportunity of having the house to himself and picked up a prostitute named Julia Blackbird and brought her home. After spending the night together, Rifkin drove to an ATM to get money to pay her and discovered he had a zero balance. He returned to the house and beat Blackbird with a table leg, and murdered her by strangling her to death. In the basement of his home, he dismembered the body and placed the different parts into buckets that he filled with concrete. He then drove into New York City and disposed of the buckets in the East River and the Brooklyn canal. Her remains were never found. The Body Count Climbs After killing the second woman, Rifkin did not make a vow to stop killing  but decided that dismembering the bodies was an unpleasant task that he needed to rethink. He was out of college again and living with his mother and working in lawn care. He tried to open a landscaping company and rented a storage unit for his equipment. He also used it to temporarily hide the bodies of his victims. In early 1991 his company failed and he was in debt. He managed to get a few part-time jobs, which he often lost because the jobs interfered with what he enjoyed most - strangling prostitutes. He also grew more confident about not getting caught. More Victims Beginning in July 1991, Rifkins murders began to come more frequently. Here is the list of his victims: Barbara Jacobs, age 31, killed July 14, 1991. Her body was found inside a plastic bag that had been placed into a cardboard box and put into the Hudson River.Mary Ellen DeLuca, age 22, killed on September 1, 1991, because she complained about having sex after Rifkin bought her crack cocaine.Yun Lee, age 31, killed on September 23, 1991. She was strangled to death and her body was put into the East River.Jane Doe #1, was killed in early December 1991. Rifkin strangled her during sex, put her body into a 55-gallon oil drum and dumped it into the East River.Lorraine Orvieto, age 28, was prostituting in Bayshore, Long Island when Rifkin picked her up and strangled her during sex. He disposed of her body by placing it into an oil drum and into Coney Island River where it was discovered months later.Mary Ann Holloman, 39, was killed on January 2, 1992. Her body was found the following July, stuffed inside an oil drum in Coney Island Creek.Iris Sanchez, age 25, killed on Mothers Day weekend , May 10, 1992. Rifkin put her body under an old mattress in an illegal dump area located near the JFK International Airport. Anna Lopez, age 33, and the mother of three children, was strangled to death on May 25, 1992. Rifkin disposed of her body along I-84 in Putnam County.Jane Doe #2 was murdered mid-winter 1991. On May 13, 1992, parts of her body were found inside an oil drum floating in Newton Creek in Brooklyn, New York.Violet ONeill, age 21, was killed in June 1992 at Rifkins mothers home. There he dismembered her in the bathtub, wrapped the body parts in plastic, and disposed of them in rivers and canals in New York City. Her torso was found floating in the Hudson River and days later other body parts were found inside of a suitcase.Mary Catherine Williams, age 31, was killed at Rifkins mothers home on October 2, 1992. Her remains were found in Yorktown, New York the following December.Jenny Soto, 23, was strangled to death on November 16, 1992. Her body was found the following day floating in Harlem River in New York City.Leah Evens, 28, and the mother of two children  was killed on February 27, 1993. Rifkin buried the corpse in the woods on Long Island. Her body was discovered three months later. Lauren Marquez, 28, was killed on April 2, 1993, and her body was left in the Pine Barrens in Suffolk County, New York, on Long Island.Tiffany Bresciani, 22, was Joel Rifkins final victim. On June 24, 1993, he strangled her and put her body in his mothers garage for three smoldering days before getting the opportunity to dispose of it. Rifkins Crime Is Discovered At around 3 a.m. Monday, June 28, 1993, Rifkin swabbed his nose with Noxzema so that he could tolerate the pungent odor coming from the corpse of Bresciani. He placed it in the bed of his pickup truck and got on Southern State highway headed south to Melvilles Republic Airport, which is where he planned to dispose of it. Also in the area were state troopers, Deborah Spaargaren and Sean Ruane, who noticed Rifkins truck did not have a license plate. They attempted to pull him over, but he ignored them and kept driving. The officers then used the siren and a loudspeaker, but still, Rifkin refused to pull over. Then, just as the officers requested backup, Rifkin tried to correct a missed turn and went straight into a utility light pole. Unhurt, Rifkin emerged from the truck and was promptly placed in handcuffs. Both officers quickly realized why the driver had not pulled over as the distinct odor of a decaying corpse permeated the air. Tiffanys body was found and while questioning Rifkin, he casually explained that she was a  prostitute that he had paid to have sex with and then things went bad and he killed her and that he was headed to the airport so that he could get rid of the body. He then asked the officers if he needed a lawyer. Rifkin was taken to police headquarters in Hempstead, New York, and after a short period of questioning by detectives, he began to reveal that the body they discovered was just the tip of the iceberg and offered up the number, 17. The Search for Rifkins Victims A search of his bedroom in his mothers home turned up a mountain of evidence against Rifkin including womens drivers licenses, womens underwear, jewelry, prescription drug bottles prescribed to women, purses and wallets, photographs of women, makeup, hair accessories, and womens clothing. Many of the items could be matched to victims of unsolved murders. There was also a large collection of books about serial killers and porn movies with themes centered on sadism. In the garage, they found three ounces of human blood in the wheelbarrow, tools coated in blood and a chainsaw that had blood and human flesh stuck in the blades. In the meantime, Joel Rifkin was writing a list for the investigators with the names and dates and locations of the bodies of 17 women he had murdered. His recollection was not perfect, but with his confession, the evidence, missing person reports and unidentified bodies that had turned up over the years, 15 of the 17 victims were identified. The Trial in Nassau County Rifkins mother hired an attorney to represent Joel, but he fired him and hired law partners Michael Soshnick and John Lawrence. Soshnick was a former Nassau County district attorney and had a reputation for being a top-notch criminal lawyer. His partner Lawrence had no experience in criminal law. Rifkin was arraigned in Nassau County for the murder of Tiffany Bresciani, to which he pleaded not guilty. During the suppression hearing which began November 1993, Soshnick tried unsuccessfully to get Rifkins confession and his admission to killing Tiffany Bresciani suppressed, based on the grounds that the state troopers lacked probable cause to search the truck. Two months into the hearing, Rifkin was offered a plea deal of 46 years to life in exchange for a guilty plea of 17 murders, but he turned it down, convinced that his lawyers could get him off by pleading insanity. Throughout the four-month hearing, Soshnick offended the judge by showing up to court late or not at all and often arriving unprepared. This irritated Judge Wexner and by March he pulled the plug on the hearing, announcing that he had seen enough evidence to reject the defense motions and he ordered the trial to begin in April. Infuriated by the news, Rifkin fired Soshnick, but kept Lawrence on, even though it would be his first criminal case. The trial began on April 11, 1994, and Rifkin pleaded not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. The jury disagreed and found him guilty of murder and reckless endangerment. He was sentenced to 25 years to life. The Sentence Rifkin was transferred to Suffolk County to stand trial for the murders of Evans and Marquez. The attempt to have his confession suppressed was again rejected. This time Rifkin pleaded guilty and received an additional two consecutive terms of 25 years to life. Similar scenarios were played out in Queens and in Brooklyn. By the time it was all over, Joel Rifkin, the most prolific serial killer in the history of New York, was found guilty of murdering nine women  and had received a total of 203 years in prison. He is currently housed at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Clinton County, New York.

To answer question Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

To answer question - Assignment Example This is because his body is not used to the climate in Ivory Coast which is a West African tropical country. The Wald Test and the Blood Culture Test carried out on him came out negative. The liver function was elevated and the white blood count was higher than the normal haemoglobin level. Moreover, he had reduced platelet count. The C-reactive protein level was elevated, an indication that the body was infected with a microorganism. The body was trying to fight with the infection, thus having a higher count of the white blood cells. As per the case study, the most likely diagnosis is that he was infected with typhoid. This is from the symptoms that were being exhibited and the results from the Wald Test and the Blood Culture Test. Typhoid fever is caused by a harmful bacterium called Salmonella typhi (WHO, 2014). Considering the fact that he had visited West Africa, a tropical country, and the symptoms, it is clear that he must have contracted typhoid fever. The microscopic organisms that cause typhoid fever spread through polluted substances or water and sporadically through immediate contact with someone with the organism (Mayoclinic.org, 2014). Typhoid fever is a severe sickness associated with severe headache and is caused by the Salmonella typhi microscopic organisms. It can likewise be caused by Salmonella paratyphi, a related bacterium that normally prompts a less serious disease (Balentine, 2014). The bacterium that has infected the man is the Salmonella typhi since the symptoms shown were more severe than those associated with salmonella paratyphi. Laboratory testing is required to confirm the clinical diagnosis. To test for the disease, blood specimens and stool samples are required. Laboratory conclusion of typhoid fever requires separation and recognizable proof of salmonella enterica serotype Typhi. After samples are gathered, they are screened independently to distinguish the microbes. In order to

Religion and Secularism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

Religion and Secularism - Essay Example In one sense Secularism is understood as the case of absence of religion and in other sense as treating all religions equally. Thus, it is difficult enough to define secularism according to a single ideal and social, political and cultural conditions define the secularism in a particular context and area. The afore-mentioned aspect points out the origins of secularism from religion. As one of the concepts in understanding secularism is to oppose the religion in at least until some extent, the concept developed from religious context. Though the secularism has origins in religion, it is a political and social movement and retains a philosophical aspect. In many contexts, the philosophy is to oppose religion and this resulted in different type of applications of it in different situations. However, in any type of understanding the secularism a common opposition to supernatural and faith in god will exist. The concept of secularism and secularization differ as the secularization questio ns the role of religion in society and argues for sphere of knowledge. Thus in the course of questioning the religion, secularization opposes the presence of religious authorities and opposes their public authority. As a result, it catches criticism from the opponents of secularism or religious minded people. One of the important opposition is regarding favoring of explicitly basis for politics at the cost of another religion, which generally happens in developing countries like India, Pakistan and Gulf countries.

Campus BikeShare Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Campus BikeShare - Assignment Example This previous participation within such activities is the driving force for the entrepreneurs who seek to ensure other individuals also gain the same benefits through participation in the business (Jeston & Nelis, 2014). The knowledge gained while participating in cycling activities will be essential in the procurement and maintenance of the equipment used by the venture. The business will procure relatively lightweight bicycles which will be leased to customers to ensure they get the maximum benefit from riding. The riding skills of the management will be essential as they will have to conduct a testing for the bicycles before leasing them out to clients. The operations manager will be charged with the responsibility of ensuring the equipment remains in good working conditions. He/she will also be the person responsible for the procurement of new bicycles and spare parts when required. Safety personnel will be involved in ensuring that the best equipment is availed to the organisation, for the clients to attain maximum benefits of physical fitness. The equipment will be assessed and analysed in terms of the physical attributes to ensure that limited bodily strains are experienced. The safety personnel will assess the aesthetics of the bicycles to ensure they meet the minimum requirements stipulated by the organisation. The following activities will be involved in the process of developing the bike share venture into a business programme. The activities will be undertaken in the order listed below. Completion of each activity will mark the beginning of the next activity in the process of implementing the venture. The source of funding will be from personal savings of the entrepreneurs to about 30% of the total capital required by the business. The rest of the funds will be procured through grants from sponsor organisations and even other organisations which will support the programme. These

Analysis of Marxist Critiques of Liberal Capitalism

Analysis of Marxist Critiques of Liberal Capitalism The standard litany of Marxist critiques of liberal capitalism rely on a common theme which presupposes that capitalism is fundamentally flawed and evil because it relies on a structure of exploitation, i.e., the bourgeoisie, those who own the means of production, ruthlessly exploit the proletariat, the individuals who sell their labor and do not own the means of production. Marx believed, essentially, that capitalist empires are built on the backs of the proletariat, who reap inadequate rewards for their work. He hypothesized that the essential difference between the various economic forms of society, between, for instance, a society based on slave-labour, and one based in wage-labour, lies only in the mode in which this surplus labour is in each case extracted from the actual producer, the labourer. (Marx, 1859[1967], p. 209) While well intentioned and valid in some ways, Marxists critiques generally fail on intellectual, practical, and empirical levels. The first intellectual failure is manifest in Marxs own quote, above, which presumes that wage-labor is effectively the same means of oppression as slave labor. This is only true if the proletariat serving as the labor have no means or hope of achieving ownership stake in the work that they do or the organizations for whom they do the work. Though it may have been true in 1859 when he wrote it, liberal capitalism has evolved, particularly in the United States, to the state of an individual-ownership society, where opportunities abound for individuals to assume a stake in the work that they do, not merely collect a paycheck for their labor.In Marxs mind, the only way for workers to free themselves from this slavery was to collectively own the means of production. The efficacy of this intellectual model has thus far been an abject failure in terms of the re sults when it has been attempted. On an empirical level, the simple truth is that the vast majority of governments that have been formed using Marxist or Communist theory have themselves tended to be exploitative disasters in comparison to the capitalist societies over which they were intended to demonstrate moral and economic superiority. The Soviet Union, which launched its Marxist revolution in 1917 under Vladimir Lenin, became a great economic and military power, but ironically did so only by exploiting its proletariat under the corrupt, oligarchic rule of totalitarian and in the case of Stalin, genocidal dictators who ruled with a combination of an iron fist and a vast, ossified bureaucracy. The Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight, a complete ideological failure, and its member states turned to capitalist economies and democratic forms of government. (To be fair, some Soviets, at the time of Lenins ascendancy, believed it was too soon to implement Marxist philosophies, since Marxs own requirement had not been met that the countrys capitalist economy had reached its evolutionary endpoint.) China, though still a viable nation-state which wields considerable economic power, has managed to avoid the Soviet Unions fate by introducing a considerable number of free-market elements into its state-controlled economy. Unfortunately, China shares the former Soviet Unions penchant for ruthless suppression of individual rights. The only other currently remaining bona fide Marxist/Communist state is North Korea, whose atrocious economic conditions, cultish culture of worship for its dictators, and lack of regard for individual rights, speak for themselves. That in 2005 Marxis m would have been so absent from the global political map would have been a heartbreaking blow to Marx, as would the fact that the only attempts at implementing his philosophies in their purest forms have led to brutal, totalitarian regimes which have arguably disrespected the proletariat as acutely as any unregulated capitalist economy. On a political level, Marx may have also underestimated the power of the marriage of democratic forms of government to liberal capitalist systems. In theory, at least, representative democracies are inherently structured to empower the proletariat by giving them participatory voice in the decision-making that goes into governing the economic systems of their nation. Democracy, as we know it today and as the pre-eminent form of government on the planet, was arguably still a relatively young paradigm as Marx was developing his theories. The primacy of the concepts of the worth and choice of the individual individual rights, individual freedoms is an inherently democratic notion which both contradicts the passive collectivism suggested by Marxism and also provides a built-in safeguard against capitalist excesses when they begin to favor oligarchies over individual rights. Democracy is unique in its ability to lessen ameliorate the harsher effects of unregulated market capitalism. When competitive markets are allowed to flourish unchecked, certainly great wealth is created, but Marxs critiques of exploitation become valid as monopolies and oligarchies spring up to choke off competition and create an environment in which the proletariat fail to benefit from the work they have put in on behalf of, for example, corporations. However, representative democracy has suffered the horrors of untempered market cycles and reacted accordingly. One of the best examples is the American Great Depression, in which a precipitous stock market crash in October 1929 set off an economic chain reaction that left tens of millions of Americans unemployed and in starvation. The collective clamor and cries of the proletariat prompted the elected government to take serious corrective measures over the next few decades to provide for means to temper the inherent boom and bust cyc les of free market capitalism, and to create a social safety net for the poor and the elderly (e.g. Social Security, guaranteeing retirement income to senior citizens). Similarly, in Europe, countries where the scourges of free market industrialism once ravaged the countryside, such as England, democratic systems of government have gradually eased their economies into socialist hybrids, market economies with considerable elements of state control and welfare systems to ensure the proletariat are well-cared for. Unfortunately, Marx either was unable to see the potential value of these future hybrid systems, such as market socialism, with their ability to compensate for inequities, or simply refused to believe in their viability because they failed to match his strident demand for idealistic purity within human interrelations: Even if such unjust inequalities were eliminated, Marx would still object to the quality of market social relations because they would continue to be predicated on a kind of self-seeking egoism contrary to the requirement of a true community. (Warren, 1998) On a psychological level, Marxist critiques of liberal capitalism also fail because they lack practical insight into how the human psyche operates and instead rely too heavily on utopian ideals of human beings operating idealistically on a collective level. Marxs theory of human nature is a biological fantasy, and we have the corpses to prove it. Which may drive us to wonder: if communism is deadly because it is contrary to human nature, does that imply that capitalism, which is contrary to communism, is distinctively compatible with human nature? (Wilkinson, 2005) The truth of the matter is that human beings are a hierarchically inclined species that thrive on power and competition. Left unchecked, these impulses can result in ghastly, fratricidal behavior, but when harnessed and properly channeled, these impulses form the heart of the free market economy, which thrives on individual initiative, healthy competition, and the quest for self-improvement and leadership. The psychological backbone of Marxist critique is the assumption of a perpetual state of victimhood on the part of the oppressed, which fails to take into account the inherent human tendency to resist oppression and reform existing systems into more egalitarian structures. In other words, Marxist-style revolutions may well be unnecessary, as the proletariat seems to frequently find ways within capitalist systems to assert their rights. People will always have their hunter-gatherer impulses, but this does not mean they are predestined to be deleterious: There is no way to stop dominance-seeking behavior. We may hope only to channel it to non-harmful uses. A free society therefore requires that positions of dominance and status be widely available in a multitude of productive hierarchies, and that opportunities for greater status and dominance through predation are limited by the constant vigilance of the peoplethe ultimate reverse dominance hierarchy. A flourishing civil society permits almost everyone to be the leader of something, whether the local Star Trek fan club or the city council, thereby somewhat satisfying the human taste for hierarchical status, but to no ones serious detriment. (Wilkinson, 2005) In the end, Marxism is a fundamentally pessimistic and pedantic philosophy, as are its critiques of liberal capitalism, which is a fundamentally optimistic and individualistic philosophy which endows each person with both the responsibility and the power to assume control of his or her own destiny and personal fulfillment. As sociologist Ellen Huang notes, under the lens of critical Marxist theories, inequality determines all human relations, and subsequently overemphasizes the oppressed nature of the colonized. Further abstractions of the dynamic of capitalism may overlook real forms of resistance, leaving utopian dreams as the only option for the oppressed. (Huang, 2003) Humanity is always in dire need of practical options rooted in dreams, not merely the dreams themselves, no matter how well intended they may be.

Infrastructural Warfare and the Conditions of Democracy :: Warfare Violence Essays

Infrastructural Warfare and the Conditions of Democracy When political leaders refer to the September 11th attacks in New York and Washington as "war", what do they mean? It used to be that our concept of war was defined by a set of boundaries. Nation-states fought wars to defend their borders. They fielded armies, and those armies fought along front lines. Soldiers were separate from civilians, and the military domain was separate from the civilian domain. Soldiers ran the war from day to day; the civilian leadership gave the big orders and sat back. Those boundaries no longer apply, as much evidence shows: (1) If you want to destroy someone nowadays, you get into their infrastructure. You don't have to be a nation state to do it, and if your enemy retains any capacity for retaliation then it's probably better if you're not. (2) Because the fighting is all on television, the fine details of the fighting become political matters. Soldiers complain bitterly about politicians' interference, not understanding that technology has eliminated their zone of professional autonomy. The politicians are *right* to be interfering. (3) The US military thought that the Republicans would save them from the Democrats' boundary-breaching conceptions of the 21st century world, but Donald Rumsfeld's abortive reform efforts -- which are really attempts to transpose the traditionally narrow view of military affairs into a science-fiction key -- have only clarified how archaic the traditional conception of warfare really is. (4) During the campaign, George W. Bush harshly criticizied the "nation-building" activities to which military personnel have been assigned in Kosovo and elsewhere. The truth was that nation-building is a geopolitical necessity in a totally wired world, and that the soldiers themselves *like* serving in Kosovo -- they know that they are doing something useful for once. The nation-building goes on. (5) In the old days, the industry that produced military equipment was almost entirely separate from the industry that produced civilian equipment. But economies of scale in the production of technology, especially information and communications technologies, have grown so great that the military must buy much of its equipment from the civilian market, even though the civilian equipment is not hardened for military purposes (or even, in the case of computer security, for civilian purposes). (6) Even airplane hijackings have lost their old boundaries. It is becoming clear that the people in the plane that crashed in rural Pennsylvania had extensive communications to the ground, and knew about the first attack on the World Trade Center.