Enron Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Enron - Research Paper Example The company regularly featured into the most innovative firms categories across America (McLean & Elkind, 2003).   The first investigations was of their complex and private networking with off-shore partners and then into their accounting practices. Enron bankruptcy is also known as largest audit failure in the history of America. The bankruptcy further led to the Arthur Andersen’s dissolution, which at that time were world’s fifth largest accountancy and audit partnerships. Before Enron bankrupted in the year 2001, its annual revenues increased from around 9 billion dollars in 1995 to more than 100 billion dollars in 2000. The audit after the investigation revealed that the company’s financial conditions were covered largely by systematic, institutionalized as well as creatively planned ethical and accounting fraud (Deli & Gillan, 2000). Thomas (2002a) examined the drop of the stock prices of the firm, which was less than 1 dollar per share by 2001 from 90 dollars per share, before the investigation. It was also found that Enron revised its annual financial statements over the past five years in order to cover its 586 million dollar losses. It was declared bankrupt on 2nd December, 2001 (Bartlett & Glin ­ska, 2001). The current research paper will analyze the event’s details included conflicts in interests, management as well as accounting fraud. The analyzing will consist of both corporation’s perception and individual’s perception. The broader perspective of the research paper is to examine the scandal from multiple perspectives. The background of the paper has provided a summary of the scandal and situation of the company before and after the scandal. The paper will throw light on the business model that was implemented by Enron and culture, legal and moral implications of the business model that impacted the company in its later stages. Special light on the transformational and trait leadership in

Critically compare and contrast Karl Marx's attack on capitalism with Essay

Critically compare and contrast Karl Marx's attack on capitalism with Susan Mendus's attack on individualism. How would Ward Churchill evaluate their arguments - Essay Example n a similar way, Susan Mendus also rejects individualism on the basis that â€Å"the language of domination and subordination is a central factor to individualism†. She also argues for equality between men and women, believing that individualism does not generate equality (Mendes 1993). She equates the individualists to the bourgeois, who elevate themselves at the expense of others. Marx states that a person’s spirituality is the labor power he has. He argues that a case of alienation develops when man is deprived of the opportunity to exercise this labor power. He believes that religion is the â€Å"opium of the masses† and states that religion is the response of the oppressed person, trying to find heart in a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions (Marx 1970). He views religion as the means by which people try to deal with social inequalities. Mendus on the other hand, believes that religion is brainwashing to make people believe in certain things, but merely because they espouse such beliefs, it does not necessarily indicate that they are true. She believes that applying moral rules to love and relationships is basically flawed.(Mendus 1996). While Marx believes religion is purely palliative and does not achieve anything constructive, Mendus on the other hand states that individualism cannot serve the cause of religion or the commo n good. Ward Churchill launches an attack on the â€Å"pious† Christians of America who have been at the forefront of their leaders’ war initiatives, unleashing death and destruction upon the less fortunate world. (Churchill 2001). He would perhaps agree with Marx, who viewed religion as the opium that drugs the majority, so that they can be led to their slaughter. Similarly, religion is also functioning as the opium that dulls the individual American’s ability to think clearly and rationally about the concepts of equality and justice among people. Marx’s views on the power of the proleterait are relevant here,

Alcoholic Beverage and Quantum Software Essay Example for Free

Alcoholic Beverage and Quantum Software Essay Quantum Software does indeed have a problem involving a disagreement in the appropriateness of a company sponsored social activity. This weekly gathering is offered by Quantum’s management as a reward for their productiveness displayed throughout the week. While the get-together appears to be very popular among employees and managers alike, there is at least one party (Bill, the corporate attorney) who voices objection to the weekly festivity (Brown Harvey, 1995). The problems can be defined in terms of macro; issues having to do with leadership, resources, and the surrounding infrastructure, and micro, which include internal issues such as employee training, empowerment and organizational processes. (Packard 2005). The macro issue is that there is a difference in opinion on whether or not the â€Å"beer bust† is an appropriate means of rewarding the company’s employees. Stan and Erin, the founders of Quantum Software, feel that this time is beneficial because it provides an opportunity to â€Å"encourage the team concept† (Brown Harvey, 1995). Bill however, after witnessing an employee stumbling as a result of his drinking, questions the company’s liability of providing alcohol during the workday. The micro issue, although not specifically stated in the study, is that coworkers are subject to seeing each other as well as members of management in an intoxicated state; creating a situation where professional integrity could be compromised. The cause for the conflict is the fact that the company is offering its employees alcohol during work hours, creating a situation where Quantum would be held liable should an accident occur at work or as the employees were leaving the office. Additional concerns are warranted in considering that not all employees (based on statistically studies of drinking in the workplace) will be included in an event where drinking alcohol is involved (NZMA, 2006). Additionally, studies show that organizations that encourage drinking at work have a higher rate of employees with drinking problems; which can greatly affect worker performance (National Institute On Alcohol Abuse And Alcoholism, 2006). Alternative opportunities should be offered to the employees that would achieve the goals that Stan and Erin have set of creating an atmosphere where workers can â€Å"blow off a little steam† without providing alcohol (Brown Harvey, 1995). Recognizing that the workers are adults and have the ability to make responsible decisions in regards to drinking, perhaps a social committee could provide an alternate experience to the â€Å"beer bust† that does not conflict with the interest of Quantum Software. There are two recommendations that I would offer to the management team of Quantum Software. First, the monies dedicated to offering the current â€Å"beer bust† should be redirected to an offering that includes all employees, including those that do not drink. This will provide an inclusive atmosphere where all employees can participate. Second, an off-property location should be established by a social committee (not management) where employees have the opportunity to â€Å"socialize over a beer without the pressure of work† (Brown Harvey, 1995). This way the employees are on their own time and are responsible for their own actions; relieving Quantum Software of any responsibility for its employee’s actions. References Brown, D. Harvey D. (2006). An experimental approach to organization and development. Upper Saddle River: Pearson National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. (2008). Alcohol and the workplace Retrieved March 23, 2008 from http://alcoholism. about. com/od/work/l/blnaa44. htm NZMA (2006). Alcohol consumption. Retrieved March 23, 2008 from http://www. nzma. org. nz/journal/116-1184/645/Figures%20and%20tables. pdf Packard,T. (1995). TQM and organizational change and development. Retrieved March 23, 2008 from http://www. improve. org/tqm. html#Exhibit%20I:%20A%20Force%20Field %20.

Trust Inference Model Proposal

Trust Inference Model Proposal (step1-13 in Alg. 4) in the continu-ous case. For advogato data set, we directly report the results on all the six snapshots (i.e., advogato-1, . . . , advogato-6). For PGP, we use its subsets to study the scalability. The result is shown in Fig. 6, which is consistent with the complex-ity analysis in Section 4.3. As we can see from the figure, MATRI scales linearly wrt to both n and |K|, indicating that it is suitable for large-scale applications. The scalability result for the binary case is similar, and we omit the figures for brevity. (b) (c) (d) Fig. 3. Scalability of the proposed MATRI for continuous case. MATRI scales linearly wrt the data size (n and |K|). (a) Wall-clock time vs. n on advogato. (b) Wall-clock time vs. |K| on advogato. (c) Wall-clock time vs. n on PGP. (d) Wall-clock time vs. |K| on PGP. Fig. 4. Comparisons of alternative solutions of MATRI. Compared to MATRI-AA, MATRI-SS and MATRI-AS are more than 10x faster while preserving more than 90% accuracy on both data sets. (a) advogato data set. (b) PGP data set. (C) Comparisons of the Alternatives of MATRI. As men-tioned before, the stochastic gradient descent method (SGD) could also be used for the continuous trust inference prob-lem in computing propagation vector and solving Eq. (5). We now experimentally evaluate the efficiency of all the four alternatives of MATRI. We use MATRI-AA to denote the original MATRI, MATRI-SA to denote the case when we use SGD in the propagation step, MATRI-AS. VI RELATED WORK In this section, we briefly review related work, includ-ing trust propagation models, multi-aspect trust inference models, etc. Trust Propagation Models. To date, a large body of trust inference models are based on trust propagation where trust is propagated along connected users in the trust net-work, i.e., the web of locally-generated trust ratings. Based on the interpretation of trust propagation, we further cate-gorize these models into two classes: path interpretation and component interpretation.The proposed MATRI integrates the trust propagation with two other important properties, i.e., the multi-aspect of trust and trust bias. In addition, our multi-aspect model offers a natural way to speed up on-line query response; as well as to mitigate the sparsity or coverage problem in trust inference where some trustor and trustee might not be connected with each other both are known limitations with the current trust propagation models [10]. Multi-Aspect Trust Inference Models. Social scientists have explored the multi-aspect property of trust for several years [8]. In computer science, there also exist a few trust inference models that explicitly explores the trust propagation. Trust Bias in Trust Inference. In sociology, it was dis-covered a long time ago that trust bias is an integral part in the final trust decision [9]. Nonetheless, this important aspect has been largely ignored in most of the existing trust inference models. One exception is from Nguyen et al. [13], which learns the importance of several trust bias related features derived from a social trust framework. Recently, Mishra et al. [25] propose an iterative algorithm to compute trust bias. Different from these existing works, our focus is to incorporate various types of trust bias as specified factors/aspects to increase the accuracy of trust inference. VII CONCLUSION In this paper, we have proposed a trust inference model, as well as a family of algorithms to apply the model to both continuous and binary inference scenarios. The basic idea of the proposed MATRI is to leverage the multi-aspect property of trust by characterizing several aspects/factors for each trustor and trustee based on the existing trust relationships. In addition, MATRI incorporates the trust propagation and trust bias; and further learns their rela-tive weights. By integrating all these important properties, our experimental evaluations on real benchmark data sets show that MATRI leads to significant improvement over several benchmark approaches in prediction accuracy, for both quantifying numerical trustworthiness scores and pre-dicting binary trust/distrust signs. The proposed MATRI is also nimble it is up to 7 orders of magnitude faster than the existing trust propagation methods in the on-line query response, and in the meanwhile it enjoys the linear scalabil-ity for th e pre-computational stage in both time and space. Future work includes investigating the capability of MATRI to address the trust dynamics. REFERENCES C. Ziegler and G. Lausen, â€Å"Propagation models for trust and distrust in social networks,† Inform. Syst. Front., vol. 7, no. 4, pp.337–358, 2005. A. Jà ¸sang and R. Ismail, â€Å"The Beta reputation system,† in Proc. 15th Bled Electron. Comm. Conf., vol. 160. Bled, Slovenia, Jun. 2002. S. D. Kamvar, M. T. Schlosser, and H. Garcia-Molina, â€Å"The Eigentrust algorithm for reputation management in P2P net-works,† in Proc. 12th Int. Conf. WWW, Budapest, Hungary, 2003, pp.640–651. M. Richardson, R. Agrawal, and P. Domingos, â€Å"Trust management for the semantic web,† in Proc. 2nd ISWC, Sanibel Island, FL, USA, 2003, pp. 351–368. D. Cartwright and F. Harary, â€Å"Structural balance: A generalization of Heider’s theory,† Psychol. Rev., vol. 63, no. 5, pp. 277–293, 1956. G. Liu, Y. Wang, and M. Orgun, â€Å"Trust transitivity in complex social networks,† in Proc. AAAI, 2011, pp. 1222–1229. D. Gefen, â€Å"Reflections on the dimensions of trust and trustwor-thiness among online consumers,† ACM SIGMIS Database, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 38–53, 2002. D. Sirdeshmukh, J. Singh, and B. Sabol, â€Å"Consumer trust, value, and loyalty in relational exchanges,† J. Marketing, vol. 66, no. 1, pp.15–37, 2002. A. Tversky and D. Kahneman, â€Å"Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases,† Sci., vol. 185, no. 4157, pp. 1124–1131, 1974. Y. Yao, H. Tong, F. Xu, and J. Lu, â€Å"Subgraph extraction for trust inference in social networks,† in Proc. IEEE/ACM Int. Conf. ASONAM, Istanbul, Turkey, 2012, pp. 163–170. L. Xiong and L. Liu, â€Å"Peertrust: Supporting reputation-based trust for peer-to-peer electronic communities,† IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng., vol. 16, no. 7, pp. 843–857, Jul. 2004. J. Tang, H. Gao, and H. Liu, â€Å"mTrust: Discerning multi-faceted trust in a connected world,† in Proc. 5th ACM Int. Conf. WSDM, Washingtion, DC, USA, 2012, pp. 93–102. V. Nguyen, E. Lim, J. Jiang, and A. Sun, â€Å"To trust or not to trust? Predicting online trusts using trust antecedent framework,† in Proc. 9th IEEE ICDM, Miami, FL, USA, 2009, pp. 896–901. Y. Koren, â€Å"Factorization meets the neighborhood: A multifaceted collaborative filtering model,† in Proc. 14th ACM SIGKDD Int. Conf. KDD, New York, NY, USA, 2008, pp. 426–434. R. Guha, R. Kumar, P. Raghavan, and A. Tomkins, â€Å"Propagation of trust and distrust,† in Proc. 13th Int. Conf. WWW, New York, NY, USA, 2004, pp. 403–412. Y. Koren, R. Bell, and C. Volinsky, â€Å"Matrix factorization techniques for recommender systems,† Comput., vol. 42, no. 8, pp. 30–37, 2009. P. Massa and P. Avesani, â€Å"Controversial users demand local trust metrics: An experimental study on epinions. com community,† in Proc. 20th Nat. Conf. AAAI, 2005, pp. 121–126. B. Lang, â€Å"A computational trust model for access control in P2P,† Sci. China Inform. Sci., vol. 53, no. 5, pp. 896–910, 2010. R. Bell, Y. Koren, and C. Volinsky, â€Å"Modeling relationships at mul-tiple scales to improve accuracy of large recommender systems,† in Proc. 13th ACM SIGKDD Int. Conf. KDD, New York, NY, USA, 2007, pp. 95–104. H. Ma, M. Lyu, and I. King, â€Å"Learning to recommend with trust and distrust relationships,† in Proc. 3rd ACM Conf. RecSys, New York, NY, USA, 2009, pp. 189–196. A. Buchanan and A. Fitzgibbon, â€Å"Damped Newton algorithms for matrix factorization with missing data,† in Proc. IEEE CVPR, vol. 2. Washington, DC, USA, 2005, pp. 316–322. X. Liu, A. Datta, K. Rzadca, and E. Lim, â€Å"Stereotrust: A group based personalized trust model,† in Proc. 18th ACM CIKM, Hong Kong, China, 2009, pp. 7–16. D. Watts and S. Strogatz, â€Å"Collective dynamics of ’small-world’ networks,† Nature, vol. 393, no. 6684, pp. 440–442, 1998. J. Leskovec, J. Kleinberg, and C. Faloutsos, â€Å"Graphs over time: Densification laws, shrinking diameters and possible explana-tions,† in Proc. 11th ACM SIGKDD Int. Conf. KDD, Chicago, IL, USA, 2005, pp. 177–187. C.-W. Hang, Y. Wang, and M. P. Singh, â€Å"Operators for propagating trust and their evaluation in social networks,† in Proc. 8th Int. Conf. AAMAS, Budapest, Hungary, 2009, pp. 1025–1032. J. Leskovec, D. Huttenlocher, and J. Kleinberg, â€Å"Predicting posi-tive and negative links in online social networks,† in Proc. 19th Int. Conf. WWW, Raleigh, NC, USA, 2010, pp. 641–650. Y. Wang and M. P. Singh, â€Å"Trust representation and aggregation in a distributed agent system,† in Proc. 21st Nat. Conf. AAAI, 2006, pp.1425–1430. Y. Wang and M. P. Singh, â€Å"Formal trust model for multiagent systems,† in Proc. 20th IJCAI, San Francisco, CA, USA, 2007, pp.1551–1556. C. Hsieh, K. Chiang, and I. Dhillon, â€Å"Low rank modeling of signed networks,† in Proc. 18th ACM SIGKDD Int. Conf. KDD, Beijing, China, 2012, pp. 507–515. K.-Y. Chiang, N. Natarajan, A. Tewari, and I. S. Dhillon, â€Å"Exploiting longer cycles for link prediction in signed net-works,† in Proc. 20th ACM CIKM, Glasgow, Scotland, U.K., 2011, pp.1157–1162.

Patriot Act Essay -- essays research papers

The â€Å"Patriot Act† In the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Congress sprang into action. Within a month, U.S. lawmakers overwhelmingly approved the USA Patriot Act of 2001, giving law enforcement and intelligence agent’s broader authority to fight terrorists operating in the United States. Signed into law by the President on October 26, the Patriot Act is designed to fight terrorism on several fronts. First, it gives the U.S. government authority to hold foreigners suspected of terrorist activity for up to seven days before charging them with a crime. The legislation also gives investigators the legal right to tap any phone a suspected terrorist might use. The Act also gives complete access to financial records, medical records, and even library records. In addition to tracking cellular-telephone communication, agents can now subpoena Internet providers to surrender records of e-mails that they judge suspicious. This component of the law was significant, given that the men who hijacked the four planes on September 11 had communicated extensively about their plans via the Internet. The Patriot Act also sanctioned funds to triple the number of border-patrol agents and Immigration and Naturalization Service inspectors along the northern border. Some of the major areas of contention are as follows†¦ Conducting "sneak and peek" searches, which allow law enforc...

American Racial Discriminations against Middle Easterners and the effect it has on Middle Easterners since 911

â€Å"Middle Easterns† is not just a race residing in several countries around the world; it has evolved to depict different semantic meanings as to the term of people born in the Middle Eastern culture and way of life. (Wikipedia) The Middle East is composed of countries in the territory of Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Palestine (now Israel), Jordan, Egypt, The Sudan, Libya, and several states belonging to the state of Arabia (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates).Geographically characterizing Middle Eastern communities, it has enlarged over the years to include three other countries in the North Africa region which is Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco with associated foreign policies. The Middle East is a territory that is surrounded by the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from Morocco to the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. (Wikipedia) Middle Eastern is a modern term coined by Americans for Arabs and for people who reside in the region of the Middle East.These are Semitic people speaking the Arabic language and are generally not specified to particular residency in the Middle East. The distinction of Arabs must be clearly defined as the common perception of Arabs is that they are Muslims. Not all Arabs are Muslims, and not all Muslims are Arabs. Arabs are considered by the short lived Arabian league to be those of Arabic descent and speaking the Arabic Language. They must have originated from an Arabic country and strictly follow the rules and tenets of Arabic culture. (â€Å"Poll: Majority of US Muslims suffered post September 11 bias†, 2002)The paper will discuss the implications of the perception on Middle Easterns and the changes after the September 11 attacks in the United States. In this exposition, discrimination against Middle eastern will be evaluated and the extent to which it happened after the 9/11 attacks. The study shows what life was for Middle Eastern s before the attacks, and what they had to experience after. The study will not only focus on discrimination against Middle Easterns but also to discrimination per se on people belonging to different races.Discrimination happens due to decisive factors which differentiates one person belonging to a race from another. It is a way to make clear distinctions and act towards another person based on prejudice. It can happen through in three different ways; either base on their appearance, language, and religion. MIDDLE EASTERN DISCRIMINATION The society will more likely discriminate an individual because of what he looks like. Visual discrimination is the easiest way to discriminate someone. This is because appearance is readily available for a person to judge on especially when people base their perception on skin pigmentation.Even on how a person dresses constitutes formation of prejudices against them. Difference in religion also contributes to discrimination, not just the religion Is lam, but also other religious orientations as well. Religious discrimination is a one rampant occurrence after the 9/11 attacks. This is acting of ones bigotry against persons’ beliefs, rituals and customs in the particular religion he holds. Finally, the distinction between the different languages people speaks also accounts for discrimination to happen. Differences in language or in accent can generate misunderstanding among people.Discrimination is carried through many ways an(â€Å"DISCRIMINATION INFORMATION FROM LITERATURE REVIEW†)d forms. Middle Easterns are not just the ones affected by this act of prejudice, but all those other nationalities perceived as different. The stereotypes that greatly motivate discrimination can be attributed to how the American media portrays people. The media has adverse perpetuations in people who are different from the Americans. The American media affects how the people perceive Middle Easterns, whether physically, by religion or with language.Discrimination takes on different forms and is carried out to unlimited extent, from hate crimes to employment discriminations. (â€Å"DISCRIMINATION INFORMATION FROM LITERATURE REVIEW†) DISCRIMINATION BEFORE SEPTEMBER 11 2001 Discrimination against people with Middle East cultures is known even before the 9/11 event. But this had escalated dramatically over the years, particularly after the 9/11 attacks. They have been the subject of hate crimes, assaults and harassments due to their difference in color, race and religion.The perception of Arabs as terrorist is believed to have started in 1973 with the Arab- Israeli war and oil-embargo. The Iran hostage crisis in 1979, the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985 and the beginning of the Persian Gulf crisis added to the hostility of the American society against the Middle East culture. Prior to 911, Middle eastern were already a subject of contempt and distrust. Their portrayal in mainstream media as either lying vi llains or evil warlords has vilified their image to the American public. Fictional books, particularly after 1973 exhort American and Israeli courage under the face of their Arab oppressors.Middle Easterns were tagged as terrorists due to the perception that they are oppressors in their war against Israel. The American interest over Israel had contributed to the terrorist perception it generated. Even cartoons, like Aladdin imprint in American children the image of those coming from the middle east as liars and villains. (EEC, 2002) Before, little was known about the world that middle Easterns came from. The only feedback that the general public had was when the media reports that another terrorist attack has been perpetrated by Arab terrorists, or another take on the deemed inequalities in their culture and religion.In particular, Anti Arab sentiments have already taken hold before 911, due to the perception that these middle easterns are the oppressors in their war against Israel. The American interests in Israel have led them to promote the state at the same time portraying Muslims and the Arab world as oppressors and terrorists. Each terrorist attack by the Muslim world was broadcasted with the effect of making them the new pariahs of the world. The media and the government were very instrumental in defacing the image of middle easterns. And these acts further intensified after the tragedy that occurred on September 11 2001.THE TRAGEDY ON SEPTEMBER 11 2001 The September 11, 2001 attacks often referred to as just 911 was composed of a series of terrorist suicide attacks against the United States of America. On the morning of September 11, 2001, nineteen terrorists whose were purportedly with the al-Qaeda terrorist organization hijacked four commercial passenger airplanes. The hijackers took control of the aircraft using small knives to scare and immobilize the passenger and crew. Two of the planes (United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 11) were crashed in the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York.In Arlington County, Virginia a third airplane (American Airlines Flight 77) was crashed into the United States Pentagon, the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense. The fourth airplane crashed into a field adjacent to the town of Shanksville in Pennsylvania. The plane did not reach its reported desired objective of crashing into the U. S. Capitol due to the attempt of some passengers and crew members to regain control of the plane. In addition to the19 hijackers, 2,973 people died; another 24 are missing and presumed dead. (Wikipedia) DISCRIMINATION AFTR SEPTEMBER 11Nine days after the terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush declared to the nation that â€Å"no one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith. † His words were a little too late and apparently ineffective. After 911, there have been a large number of r eported incidents of discrimination against Middle Eastern people in the United States. Security checks in airports were tightened and Middle Eastern personas well as persons perceived to be Middle Eastern were unjustly subject to more stringent security measures.(CNN, 2001) In the three days that succeeded the 911 terrorist attacks, CNN reported that at least 300 reports of Middle Eastern being harassed and abused were received by the Council on American-Islamic relations. This number tripled the amount of received reports in the year before September 11. The most common complaints were people yelling verbal abuse like â€Å"Get out of our country! Go back to your own†, as well as the calling of insulting names like Arab dogs, whores, and other vile monikers. (CNN, 2001)The FBI also reported an increase in Muslim crimes in the US in the year 2001. The US government is also said to have detained about 1200 Middle Eastern and South Asians with the assumptions that they are ass ociated with the terrorists. A report on the study by the Council on American- Islamic Relations (CAIR) released in September 18 2005, showed an increase of more than 30% of discrimination, harassment and violations complaints against Muslim. The CAIR, the country’s largest Muslim organization had evaluated the implications of the 9/11 attacks to the Muslim community.Such incidents of discrimination, harassments and violation complaints were reported to be 1, 972 in 2005, more than what is reported in the previous year. The organization concluded the report as the highest statistic since it started doing reports on anti-Muslim activities in 1995. The organization began its yearly reporting of crime incidents towards Muslim in the year 1995 after the Oklahoma bombing. The bombing of the federal government building in Oklahoma, pointed by the mass media to have done by Arab radicals, triggered the anti-Muslim perception of the people and as a result tagged the Muslim community as villains of peace.The year 2005 reported 153 cases of anti-Muslim hate crimes and marked a 10% increase of hate crimes over the year 2004, and a dramatic 50% increase from the year 2003. Hate crimes are acts of discrimination against persons belonging to a certain race, culture or religion. (cite source) These crimes involve murder, attacks on religious institutions, shootings, vehicular assaults and verbal threats against the person. This become evident after the 9/11 attacks as the whole Muslim community were scrutinized for their involvement with the attacks.(â€Å"Class action lawsuit filed against the US government†, 2002) There were several hate crimes reported after the 9/11 attacks. Balbir Singh Sodhi in Mesa Arizona, associated with a different religion from Islam, was killed with no reason at all. It has been reported that the reason for his death was just mere association with terrorist, particularly the assumption that he looks the same as the terrorist therefo re he too is a terrorist. There has been similar incidents like what happened to Sodhi after the 9/11 attacks. In Dallas Texas, Waqar Hassan was shot to death in his own convenience store.The 46 year old Pakistani was apparently mistaken for an Arab following the 911 tragedy. His murderer, Mark Stroman, was also found guilty of killing another man, Vasudev Patel, with the same motive. (BH. , 2002) Murders without regard to affiliation, actual race and citizenship were committed after the Sept 11 attack. The list includes Adel Caras a Coptic Christian who originated from Egypt, American citizens Amil Almansoop and Jawed Wassel and Abdo Ali Ahmed among others. It would seem that the pain of the tragedy of 911 was enough reason for the murderers to perform their act.The aftermath showed that some people felt it was ok to target Middle Easterners and even people who look like them either as revenge or just as an object to vent their rage. Most murderers did not even attempt to camouflag e their act. Marks Stroman was rumored to have bragged that he just that did what every American wanted to do but didn’t have the nerve. After 911, the amount of reports of employment discrimination against Middle Easterns showed an increase. In a report of the US Equal Employment Commission in May 2002, they showed that 488 complaints were received regarding post 911 employment discrimination.Additionally, 301 of those reports were about Middle Easterns being forced out of employment. Numerous reports also abound of people ostracizing Middle Eastern co workers in the office. The united states government also aided in portraying the Middle Easterns as having direct links to terrorists. After the September 11 tragedy, the United States detained 1200 people. These were of Middle East and South Asian descent, further fueling the perception that the Arabs and the Muslims had something to do with the September 11 attacks. What’s more troubling is that in Sept. 17, 2001, int erim regulation issued by the U. S.Department of Justice allowing detention without charge for at least 48 hours in emergency situations. This regulation was used in great effect in detaining those of Middle Eastern origin. The rule was invoked in the immigration of Middle Easterns following the attack. About 763 individuals were detained and about half of them were deported. Jorge Martinez of the United States Department of Justice explains that they did not single out Arabs, they were simply following up on leads and clues. However, the proceedings regarding these immigration cases are shrouded in a veil of secrecy. Identities and charges were not officially released.According to the Justice Department, this is simply to protect the privacy of the proceedings as well as the persons involved. Most of the information that were obtained showed that those detained were held on minor visa violations and on other terrorist unrelated criminal charges. The immigration judges presiding in the trials were allowed to hold their court proceedings in secret. The release of some detainees accompanied the news that rough treatment and solitary confinement were being used in these persons. (HRW, 2003) The effect of the attacks on Middle eastern communities across the country is even more troubling.Fear and paranoia has changed the way of life that these people were accustomed to. The numerous reports of physical injury and verbal abuse against Middle Easterns have induced some to refrain from showing signs of their ethnicity. The wearing of scarves and other telltale signs of their culture has made them visible targets to public contempt and most were not willing to undergo the risk that that entails. Withdrawal from civic life also came as a result of the 911 attacks. Middle Easterns stayed at their homes, and went out only when necessary due to fear of being a recipient of abuse.Muslim communities avoid congregating in order not to be subject to suspicion by others. Middl e eastern children were ostracized in their schools, most were bullied, called names and physically assaulted. (HRW, 2003) Prior to the 911 attacks, Muslim Middle Eastern families gave generously to charities and fundraisers. This is in accordance to the practice of zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam. However, the U. S government had a crack down on Muslim charities and charity benefactors, saying that they were a front for fundraising by terrorist organizations.In Chicago, two local Muslim charities, the Global Relief Foundation and Benevolence International Foundation, were investigated and shut down due to alleged terrorist links. A wave of paranoia has been sweeping Middle Eastern communities since the 911 attacks. Reports of the government’s methods in obtaining intelligence information from these communities have resulted in a feeling of fear and dread among individuals. Many has reported having been followed, eavesdropped upon, and watched. Federal agents have bee n known to search Middle Eastern residence without due notification or even the necessary warrants.Questioning by these agents without regards to the rights of the individual has made Middle Easterns wary and afraid. Reports of new faces in Mosques and in internal gatherings have made many wary. Islam is a religion based on tolerance and love. Because of this, Middle Easterns which have grown in this culture silently suffer the indignities and abuse being shown to them. However, a new generation of middle easterns, those who have grown in American soil, are rising up and asserting their rights as individuals and as Americans. Communities have begun to band together and combat the discrimination against them.Groups like The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the Alliance of Iranian Americans (AIA), the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the National Council of Pakistani Americans (NCPA) have provided a voice to those victim to racial discrimination. The y have acted by providing data, reports, denouncing claims and by filing suits against the perpetrators. But to some this is not enough. Many young middle easterns who have experienced this discrimination have talked about fighting back. CONCLUSION Discrimination against a particular people, religion or culture is a widespread occurrence even in these times.Discrimination comes in many forms. The Middle Eastern people have suffered discrimination on American soil before and after the September 11 attacks. Prior to 911 they have endured verbal abuse, harassment, racial profiling and even hate crimes. And after the tragedy, they suffered and are still suffering much more of these. They have been treated with distrust, unearned hate and contempt. Their rights have been trampled on and their liberties taken away from them. They have known fear and paranoia. And most have resolved to be victims no longer and fight back. The September 11 attacks struck a painful blow to the American natio n.The wounds of the victims and survivors are now healing. But the wound that its effects have wrought on the Middle Easterns in America still bleeds. References BH. (2002). 9/11 Fuels Anti-Arab Crime. Boston Herald. Class action lawsuit filed against the US government. ( 2002). Retrieved October 23, 2006, from http://www. adc. org/index. php? id=1540 CNN. (2001). Hate crime reports up in wake of terrorist attacks. Retrieved October 24, 2006, from http://www. cnn. com/2001/US/09/16/gen. hate. crimes DISCRIMINATION INFORMATION FROM LITERATURE REVIEW. from http://www. d. umn. edu/~lbelote/srseminar/mideast/PAPER4.HTM EEC. (2002). EEOC Provides Answers About the Workplace Rights of Muslims, Arabs, South Asians, and Sikhs. Retrieved October 24, 2006 from http://www. eeoc. gov/press/5-15-02. html HRW. (2003). We Are Not the Enemy. Human Rights Watch: A Journa, l(14(6)), 1-39. Poll: Majority of US Muslims suffered post September 11 bias. (2002). Retrieved October 24, 2006 from http://www. cairnet. org/asp/article. asp? articleid=895$articletype=3 Wikipedia. September 11, 2001 attacks. Retrieved October 25, 2006, from http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/September_11,_2001_Terrorist_Attack#_note-CBS

Love and Everyday Life Theory Essay

Second, I focus on my first love experience and use the liquid love theory of Bauman to analyze, additional I will discuss why I have this relationship and how can I enjoy it from the theory of Beck, U. and Beck-Gernsheim, E. Third, I will demonstrate my recent real emotion situation and discuss the new forms of love with the theory of Batchelor, S. Fourth, I will integrally analyze the three external love and indicate the self-realisation what I get from the three love experiences also with the theory of Beck, U. and Beck-Gernsheim, E. Before I show the process of my first love relationship, I analyzed that the reason why I intended to start a relationship is that my everyday life was so repeating boring and I did not accept a belief like religion. In addition to it, which is most important, I had no feeling about connecting with other people from any communities. In senior high school, all of the thing I had to or I simply can do by studying in my everyday life. There are no clubs or activities in my senior high school in order to let students focus on studying so that students can get a high grade in the Gaokao. However, I had no interest in studying the boring and actually useless knowledge to deal with the Gaokao. Unfortunately, I was supervised to achieve the assignment like the exercises of universal gravitation commonplace life by teachers and my parents so that I had no chance and time to get a touch with new ideas and beliefs about life. Moreover, I got not so much touch with my classmates which are the most primary community I had because everyone is busy on their studying. Furthermore, I regarded the love as the hope and idealization due to copious propaganda from the media to a certain extent. According to Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995), the transition from pre-modern society to modern society accelerated the commodity and individualization process, change the relationship between people and cut people from their traditional ties, beliefs and social connection and religion which are lead by the enlightenment and the industrial revolution. However, with the vanish of our faith and free from the material which make people accept more education and think more about life, love is regarded as a succedaneum replacing the group, becoming the hope and idealization of people, and lead people to believe and devote themselves to it. Hence, it is proved that the reason why I chose to start a relationship with a girl is not naturally there emerged a girl I liked, but I had no value or beliefs or communities to guide my activities according to this theory. Coming from the opposite aspect, after a period time, I started to reduce the time on study, and found that there were other boys like me who are not interested in studying, so we built a group to do something together even cut a class. After that, I would not like starting a relationship imminently. Therefore, this change also supports the theory refers to why people choose to love from an opposite aspect. Nevertheless, it is stated by Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995), that divorce figures are extraordinary people who in love or marriage always complain that why living together is so difficult and why can’t keep a long and meaningful love. As for this phenomenon, the liquid love theory of Bauman may give an appropriate explanation for it. Finally, I believe that for modern young people, the desire they start a love experience is not only the effect of no beliefs and no communities, but also the propaganda effect of love of contemporary mass media. Combining my earliest love experience and the theory of liquid love, it is a typical liquid love. In the summer after the Gaokao, I went to a tourist attraction when I met my first girlfriend. I met her at an outdoor bar. We began by chatting and drinking, which are similar to the whole people to do in the bar. To a certain extent, this behavior for me may be influenced by the media about what happens in the bar and the environment around us. Then we kept touching with each other after that night. I stayed in that place for a month and before the night I left, we are agreed to start a â€Å"relationship†. The â€Å"relationship† here is not a general relationship in the dictionary because we both knew we were not in the same city, same college and she was two years older than me. However, we did not make a commitment that there is a responsibility between us. After that time and until we broke up, we did not see each other anymore. So the most vital thing is all the approaches we kept contact with are the Internet and the mobile phone. We sent messages and chat on video every day. The conversation content is stereotyped about everyday life in college, and it is irrelevant with commitment. This situation lasts two months and ends up on a meet which may lead us to break up. I went to her site and saw her on a holiday and it is confused that we can talk to each other fluently but at that day there were a obstruct separating our conversation. I think that the obstruct is afraid of responsibility. After that meet, we broke up. It is indicated that this kind of love is defined as the liquid love in the liquid modern society (Lee, 2003). To define liquid love, liquid society is supposed to be introduced. Liquid modernity is proposed by Bauman (2003) that all forms of social construction are rootless and all of the traditional notions are destroyed not to be durable owing to the commodity in liquid modernity society. And in this society some purportedly fixed and indestructible ties of family, class, religion, marriage and perhaps even love aren’t as reliable or as desirable as they were. Bauman quotes,† In a consumer culture like ours, which favours products ready for instant use, quick fixes, instantaneous satisfaction, results calling for no protracted effort, foolproof recipes, all-risk insurance and money-back guarantees†. It is summarized that the value and idea people own is influenced by the commercial purpose because except it social hierarchies do not form instantly other society power or beliefs especially in capitalist society which called †liquid life†. So when targeting consumers accepted the value designed by marketing strategies, the value is only effective for a short period, never extended term because the marketing strategies are transitory and always change. Everyday Life today is filled with elements of liquid, most people can’t reject its liquid characteristic. Take the place where I meet the girl, the marketing strategies in bar are encouraging people meet unexpectedly and developing the dubious connection. I was influenced by it and the environment so that I chose to chat with a girl not because I like her so much. Moreover, love is regarded as a consumer goods which are supposed to be yielding like any extra goods people consume. People give themselves the appropriate rights to consume love, something must be given consumers just like expectation from further purchases. That’s a factor why we break up. I expect my goods can be novel, various and disposable, If my love can’t satisfy my need for the factors when we pick up and utilize the goods, I will abandon this goods. In a word, the most fundamental elements like families, love and sex are obeying economic rules, In addition to the commodity of love, the most significant character distinguished from traditional love in liquid love is that people are afraid of assuming the responsibilities but they also enjoy the advantages of a relationships. The embody of steering of the responsibilities is not daring to make a binding commitment and use the †being connected† to replace the relationship. Although it is uncertain whether the communication technologies like the Internet and mobile phone facilitate the less responsibilities relationship and offer a approach for people who do not want to commit themselves to achieve a internet relationships or that emerges is benefited by communication technologies, It is sure that people are willing to accept to be a part of the communication technologies network to avoid the responsibilities. The only tools I used to keep touch with that girl is communication technologies which may offer me more imagination so that we can reduce the quality and quantity in our communication, after all it is not possible that I meet her everyday but just talk about the details in life and not refer to the future and responsibilities of our love. After the break-up, I can jabbered into mobile phones, addictively texted and leaped between kinds of chat room, deleted a date which wrote for my ex-girlfriend without pain. It is summarized that we immediately feel a sense of belonging, like purchasing, I picked her so she is belong to me. From psychology, Bauman (2003) concludes the duality of liquid love, that is, less responsibilities as a balance problem of freedom and security according to Freud. It also confirms the theory of Beck, U. and Beck-Gernsheim, E, I start a love because I want to find a security to make up the lack of communities, however, I chose the liquid love because I want to be free from a relationship. And at the end of this experience, I found he sign of break-up, so I increased the time of video chat and went to her site to see her in order to fix the relationship. Nevertheless, the opposite consequence indicated what Bauman writes. † attempts to tame the wayward and domesticate the riotous, to make the unknowable predictable and enchain the free-roaming – all such things sound the death knell to love†. Ultimately, it is related to a definition problem that is what is love, the courage to participate in the process or the process makes us beautiful. Take my experience as a example, My part motivation of being together with the girl is the girl is beautiful and smart so that after I can promote my image and level in love, I can show I have a experience of love and I know what love it is. Love makes me feel beautiful. This refers to a question that what is real love and that the highest form of love is. My decision is not to be the highest form of love, so I start a liquid love. And the question about the different types of love, I will use my second love experience and the four love theory of C. S. Lewis to analyze. According to Lewis (1960), my second love experience is a type of need-love. After the initial love experience, I was single for one year. I felt lonely sometimes especially when my roommates took their girlfriend outside of meal. So I decided to start my second love experience. When I firstly have a touch with this girl just because I thought she is pretty and I had no idea what characteristic this girl has. Afterward I made huge progress rapidly in just few days from chatting in the dinner time or the mobile phone. From we start a relationship to the break-up. It takes less than two months. At this period, the thing we did together every day can be concluded as three types of thing. First, we took the male together every day. Second, we sent good nights to each other every night from mobile phones. Third, she sent gifts or some daily stuff to me when I am busy. As for the break-up factor, I think there is no need-relationship existing for me. I felt bored about this mechanization love experience and we had no communication in sprit. It is typically need-love, what I need is a girl taking care of my life and pass time when I feel lonely, and what she needs may has two aspects. One aspect is someone is nice to her, the other aspect is to be a good girlfriend. She is a traditional girl and the highest standard of morality is being nice to her boyfriend so that it can satisfy her need of achieving value. Once the need is not there, the need-love vanished. According to Lewis (1960), the need love includes kinds of physically, emotionally, intellectually need like sex, avoid to loneliness. For me, it is hard to distinguish if these need is low or high or even all of them are desire. Except the need-love, Lewis (1960) similarly concludes the other two kinds love, that are, gifted-love and appreciate-love. Gift-love can take the love from parents to children for examples, and appreciate-love refer that people decide to continue to give their love to others even though they know they will never enjoy the result of their love. However, critically evaluate the theory of Lewis, there is a paradox. Take my experience for example, the need of this girl is to achieve her morality standard, but the practical way of achieving it is to give, Hence, how to make a differences between gift-love and need love or there is actually no differences between them? Additionally, the appreciate-love is described as higher than need-love and gift-love. Furthermore, the people who bestow appreciate-love may satisfy the need for achieving the value of the highest forms of love and get a self-atonement. Compared with my experience, what are the differences between these two kinds of need? In the final analysis, the need includes both physical and mental. So there is not pleasant to tell the boundary between different kinds of love. The concluding part of this project is to prove that all of these love is means to achieve self-realization and take all of my experience for examples. It is stated by Swartz (2001) that self-realization is an individualization process which free people from limitation by building the conditioned beliefs, opinions, fears, desires, and habits. Meanwhile, Beck, U. and Beck-Gernsheim, E. proposed that love is not equal with fulfilment or even require it, love is a process you can find your real identity. Before my first love experience, I dreamed of having a girlfriend like my elder sister because I have no sisters. Nevertheless I found a girl who is two years older than me. I labeled her as a smart, beautiful, sex independent elder sister, actually the imagination gave me more gratification than the fact. After that I realized that it is the question of myself. So I tried the succeeding love experience, the girl can represent the cute and virtuous types. After I find her some characteristics, I found she is not suitable for me. I realized that how a label can affect myself, I knew my habits generally, and I really knew accurately the need what can satisfy myself. Now, I am single, however, I always think what I need, reconsider my beliefs and conclude my habits. According to Batchelor (1983), being alone is a new form of love that can lead people find themselves into the world. So I can free me from labels and kinds of limitation to find my identity. However, critically evaluate this self-realization theory, it is absolute. If someone’ identity is to seek the hypocritical label as an approach to satisfy his need, how can he find his real self from love? That indicated that the real self has no standard to define. As a consequence of self-realization during this period, I had an affection for a girl. It is stated by Lewis (1960) that affection is a generalized love, which include the love between people and people, animal or objects, and the most primary feature of affection is familiar, like the child will love a crusty old gardener who is familiar with him rather than a visitor who is making every attempt to win its regard. For me, I know this girl for a long time, I am familiar with her, and I know she almost all advantages and disadvantages. However, I do not label her as which kinds of type any more, I can realize my authentic self from being with her, and I think that I can do a give-love to her. C. S. Lewis quotes,† Love, having become a god, becomes a demon. â€Å"It is can be concluded that this affection can let hate and love existing together, which I am willing to avoid. In conclusion, I show my three loves in this project and conclude them as the archetypal type with the theory of love. First is the liquid love, it has three characteristics: no commitment, commodity and duality. Second is a need-love, however, it is analytically evaluated that there is no strict boundary or differences between gift-love, need-love and appreciate-love.