Race and Representation -Media Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Race and Representation -Media Analysis - Essay Example These image representations fall under sub-genre of exploitation images (Fanon, 1986). The degree of representation in these images is highly detailed. It is explicit that the human figure of the drawing has been based on a live model hence it is â€Å"a life drawing†. The aspect of color plays an important role in ensuring that the recipients get the right information. Color has been used to distinguished blacks from whites. The element of aesthetic has also been used. In the first two images, the blacks are revealed to be ugly whereas the whites are portrayed as beautiful. Lighting has been used to reflect the location of this incident (Snead, 1994). Ideological critique of the Images These are stereotyped images of blacks that are found in the national archives of developed countries of the west. According to Bonnett (2000), such images were dominant in European culture especially during the era of Western imperialism. The images negatively represent the blacks as a way of undermining their humanity. It is the concept of whiteness that contributes to the belief by many whites that blacks are naturally deviant people. Black males have been mythologized as hyper-sexed. This is reflected particularly by the first two images where blacks are stereotyped as animal-like entity (Gates, 1999). The whiteness concept treats whiteness as a social construction. The concept is cultural property that has been used to undermine the rights and privileges of the blacks. The concept has been used to provide symbolic privileges to the whites as portrayed by the images. The conception of the beauty is tied the whiteness and explicitly exclude the blacks as indicated in the images (Bonnett, 2000). The images have been used to reveal gendered social framework within which the relations between the blacks and the whites has been taking place. From the images, black femininity has been devalued. The images show that black male go for white female hence privileging white femi ninity (Carrington, 2002). From ideological perspective, whites perceive black people as sub-human. The image representations mean that blacks cannot easily attain standards of morals. The belief that blacks are animal-like is portrayed in their biological make-up through the image comparison of black male with primates as portrayed in the first two images. Whites believe that black people are the most degraded human race. The approaches commonly used by these individuals are similar to those of wild beasts and their intelligence is low enough to fit in the social systems (Watkins, 2004). The question racism has been inherently portrayed by the image representation of black masculinity as a sexual threat. The image is connected with a vast range of issues concerning gender and sexuality. They powerfully demonstrate gender dynamics as fundamental aspect through which whites can secure and maintain imperial enterprise. The images show close connection between domination of black peopl e and sexuality thus explaining the lynching that commonly takes place in the west. According to Coleman (2005), many blacks were lynched in the 20th century especially in the United States of America. Majority of these cases occurred on accusation of blacks for rape activities. The image representation of the blacks in these circumstances sought to portray the character of black communities as negative. During and after World War I, black males were

The key international trading factors between the European Union and Research Paper

The key international trading factors between the European Union and the Middle-Eastern countries. Specifically the countries in - Research Paper Example The European countries consists of religions like Roman Catholicism,  Orthodox Christianity, Protestantism,  Sunni Islam, Shia Islam,  Judaism and Buddhism. All these religions entities are different in their traditions, beliefs and ideologies. Catholic Christians are concentrated mainly in countries like, Italy, Vatican, France, Hungary, Poland etc. Turkey, Syria, Algeria like countries have Islam as the major religion Orthodox Christians are heavily populated in countries like, Russia, Ukraine, Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece whereas Protestant Christians are staying in mainly in countries like Denmark, Germany, Finland, Sweden etc. Even amidst these extremely diverse cultural diversities, most of the European countries were able to assemble under the flag of EU for improving their bargaining power in the global trade activities. Common currency Euro is introduced in order to improve the integration process further. Middle East, especially the gulf countries are traditionally goof trading partners of Europe. In fact most of the gulf countries are engaged in more trade activities with the Europe than with any other region in the world. Majority of the gulf countries are Muslim countries and even then they have less political problems with the European world. On the other hand, America’s foreign policies and activities were watched suspiciously by the Gulf countries because of America’s unholy tie up with Israel. Thus most of the Middle Eastern countries took the EU as their best friend in trade activities. However, the trade activities between the gulf countries and the EU have witnessed lot of ups and downs in the recent times because of various reasons. This paper analyses the success and failures of EU’s trade tie ups with Middle East over the years. Relations between the European Union and the GCC date back to the mid-1980s. In 1989, the two organizations signed a cooperation agreement, which included a wide range of sectors: agricultu re, fisheries, industry, energy, sciences, technology, investment, environment, and trade. Over the years, dialogue between the EU and GCC has been characterized by ups and downs and has mainly focused on trade cooperation. During the 1990s, trade flows between the two blocks were actually very low, and only since 2001 they have began to intensify, thanks to the increase in oil prices rather than to the intensification of trade volumes. Negotiations on a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) have been part of EU-GCC cooperation, but after 20 years, this goal is still elusive (Talbot, p.13) Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are the major GCC countries which have strong trade tie ups with the Europe. These six countries formed a regional organization; The Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) in May 1981. â€Å"The major objectives of this cooperation are to enhance coordination, integration and inter-connection among its Member States in di fferent spheres†(The EU & the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)). â€Å"All these six GCC countries currently benefit from preferential access to the EU market under the EU's Generalized System of Preferences (GSP)†(Gulf region 2010). Even before the formulation of European Union,

WMP 4 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

WMP 4 - Essay Example The result of the appeal such argument present endows the writer with authority in his presentation. From the book, it is easy to point a few steps that the author has identified as the paramount process of ensuring effective arguments. First, the author suggests that there is a need to identify the weaknesses and the strengths of the argument. This should be further narrowed to specific weaknesses and strengths that are much more relevant to the argument. The writer is expected to take time to think of ideas that may support the position that they had identified. In the book, the author has tried to explain in details what narrative argument is and what entails the development of such argument. The author point that; a narrative argument is the argument which is developed through telling a story or a narrative. Narrative argument has been misconstrued to mean the same as a conventional argument. However this is not usually the case. Conventional arguments usually lack enough fact and figures that would work towards validating their position. This is in contrast with the narrative argument that always rely on the story itself it to justify and validate the position that one takes. The main objective of narrative argument according to the author is to ensure that the writer exploits the characterization of the story as presented by the writer so as to develop a justification that can be used as a support to the argument they are fronting. The same acumen by the writer of identifying the quality of the characters may be extended to the plot of the story. A plot of a story has certain sequence through which a story progress. Usually, arguments are always presented in a certain sequence. It is this attribute of arguments that may allow the writer to borrow a flow of a plot to ensure that they use such story to justify

Investment & Private Banking Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Investment & Private Banking - Essay Example In this era, corporate issuers search for any form of low-cost funds and then use the derivatives market to alter those claims in a risk profile that cater the financing needs of the corporation (Bethel & Ferrell, 2006). The increased use of derivatives has given sophisticated institutional investors a way to attain risk exposures that they desire and the ability to manage their existing risk exposures in a dynamically cost-effective way. Derivatives are increasingly becoming more and more accepted in the financial markets with competitive prices and margins. But the margins earned by the institutions are declining and thus they have began to engineer more complex securities known as structured products. As the derivatives became more advanced, corporate as well as private investors wanted to protect their downside as well as upside participation in the bear market and bull market respectively. This paved the way for a new kind of derivatives called the structured investment products or structured finance products (Bethel & Ferrell, 2006). Structured products have no exact definition in the business or in the regulatory framework. Definition used by SEC, NASD and NYSE for structured products is that it is an instrument or security that is derived from another security, index, commodity or basket of commodities (Bethel & Ferrell, 2006). This is a broad definition that includes a wide range of products such as equity linked, collateralized debt obligations, credit-default swaps, commodity-linked debt and reverse convertibles. For this reason, according to Hens & Reiger (2009) structured products are also called equity linked or index linked notes that combine one or more assets such as stocks or bonds with a derivative providing a bundle that have specific characteristics for different investors like participation and protection of capital.

Democracy in Ukraine Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Democracy in Ukraine - Essay Example not stealing from the state coffers and protecting favored oligarchs, but actually representing the people who elected them. For most people, this is a first taste of real self- determination" (Paton) In other democracies (such as the United States) are the chances of voter fraud minimized by the old established checks and balances " the vote fraud in (circa 2004) November's Ukrainian election, which denied Yuschenko his victory, was no different than the vote fraud in the United States election that same month, which denied John Kerry his victory; in both cases, there was a major discrepancy between exit polls and the official count. The exit polls in the United States were off by less than 2%. This discrepancy can largely be explained by exit pollsters acknowledged over sampling of women voters, new rules that limit nonvoters proximity to polling places, and the apparent high level of interview cooperation by Kerry supporters than by Bush advocates. The difference between exit polls and the official count in the Ukraine, by contrast, was more than 14%, and considerable evidence suggests that the Kiev government tampered with the results. For example in the Donestk region, officials claimed that Yushchenko won by less than 3% of the vote. International observers, also reported widespread intimidation of election monitors, ballot stuffing, multiple voting, and government pressuring of voters" (Zunes). In the United States the concept of free and fair elections may in some situations be viewed only as the ideal, but the electorate and the candidates have a target to aim for,... The Ukrainian media is state controlled and its primary thrust leading up to the election was the promotion of pro-government candidates. Once the government learned who the opposition candidates were, government controlled thugs went about the business of disrupting opposition campaign activity and were also engaged in act of violence. â€Å"Mykota Shkribliak, a leading opposition politician was murdered in 2002, and journalists who reported on corruption or criticized government policies were subjected to particularly serious harassment and violence. The judiciary in the Ukraine is notoriously inefficient and subject to corruption. It is clear that emerging or newdemocracies are beset with a number of the same common problems. In Czechoslovakia, Petr Cibulka is a five time political prisoner and has done time in the toughest communist prison camps in Czechoslovakia repeatedly between 1979 and 1989, he was jailed and in 1979 he conducted a 31-day hunger strike. In 1991 Cibulka began publishing his paper, Uncensored News, which took a hard line opposition stand against the official information blockade organized by the communists through their â€Å"soft† control of the mass media. In 1992 Mr. Cibulka acquired and published data fromsecret police files, including the names of 200,000 communist spies and collaborators.In April 2005 Mr. Cibulka was interviewed concerning his experiences and perceptions about the current state of democracy in Czechoslovakia. One of the questions posed to him was.

Strategic Information Technology Management Essay

Strategic Information Technology Management - Essay Example Giving a user-friendly experience to the customer with trusting environment was the main objective of the company. From the very beginning the company started earning profit. In the year 1998 eBay was declared public with $18 per share and in the very next year 1999 eBay share was traded at b$282 a share. Soon it became the most valuable retailer over internet and even surpassed the giant like Amazon.com in respect of market capitalization. The core business functionality of the company mainly depends on trust and faith which the company always look very seriously and deal each people as goods that drive the business. The honest environment and respect for everyone whether big or small business or an individual is very important for the firm to grow its reach to the customers. The sellers who are the pillars of the business are taken care of at every step. For long-term profitability, trust and loyalty are the core strategies for the market development. The idea of internet auction p latform even facilitated the process of e-commerce which helps trade people to trade on anything available in the market. The efficient and effective transaction process of eBay helped a lot to grab the market for which people without any worry can buy and sell products online just by few clicks. The growing company continued its business expansion with more and more products and services and even entered into bidding of cars and real estate in recent years (Gopalkrishnan, Gupta, n.d. p. 1). Information Communication Technology implementation In the modern world of technology information and communication plays a great role in the business process in various ways. Amongst the various technological implementations the most prominent role is played by the concept of e-commerce in the... ‘Strategic Information Technology Management’ uses for an example online retail giant eBay.com because it is one of the popular online market place which not only operates locally but also national and internationally. The core business functionality of the company mainly depends on trust and faith which the company always look very seriously and deal each people as goods that drive the business. The honest environment and respect for everyone whether big or small business or an individual is very important for the firm to grow its reach to the customers. The sellers who are the pillars of the business are taken care of at every step. For long-term profitability, trust and loyalty are the core strategies for the market development. The idea of internet auction platform even facilitated the process of e-commerce which helps trade people to trade on anything available in the market. The efficient and effective transaction process of eBay helped a lot to grab the market for which people without any worry can buy and sell products online just by few clicks. The growing company continued its business expansion with more and more products and services and even entered into bidding of cars and real estate in recent years. The eBay.com with its diversified items and technological advancement gives a great prospect for the company for the growth in e-commerce industry. E-commerce offers a great growth rate for any company than any other traditional way of businesses. EBay took this opportunity to grow by using its enhanced e-commerce based business and its electronic data interchange technique for secured transaction for the customers.

The Economic Reality of Hybrid Vehicles Essay Example for Free

The Economic Reality of Hybrid Vehicles Essay The high price of gas at the pump has many Americans looking for alternates to their gas powered vehicles. One of the most popular option right now is a hybrid vehicle. The question that comes to mind is, are hybrid vehicles worth it? With record high gas prices due to the price of oil, most car owners out there have major concerns over their gas usage. Over the past ten years, the cost of gasoline has grown 250%! The price of oil has doubled since January of this year. The high prices of oil and gas is the driving factor for most of the people to trade their gas powered vehicles for hybrid vehicles. These vehicles promise to give consumers more mileage per gallon, the truth is that only a few vehicles currently in the market actually make any sort of financial sense. There are quite a few issues with buying hybrid vehicles, even with gas prices at more than $4 a gallon. First, these vehicles are much higher in price than their gas powered counter part so, the premiums attached to their price tags do not justify extra mileage that you get. In some cases car dealers are selling popular vehicles at much higher prices than MSRP. Second, there are no laws and regulations controlling the technology, price, and the mileage per gallon required out of these vehicles. Currently, there are hybrid vehicles in the market that offer an improvement of 3MPG to 18 MPG over their gas powered counterpart. This is a huge range that needs to be controlled. Third, the demand of these vehicles is driving the prices of the vehicles even higher, if people knew that it would take many years for fuel savings to pay back the hybrid premium on many models, the demand on these models would be much lower, driving the prices down. The solutions that I would like to propose is the government to work with auto manufacturers to develop a standard for hybrid vehicles. This standard should control the minimum mileage offered per gallon, and control the premium allowed to be charged by the manufacturers. There are vehicles in the market that offer only a marginal benefit over the gas powered vehicles and yet the manufacturers charge thousands of dollars premium. Background: Today people all around the world are facing unusually high oil price hikes. Oil has become so very expensive that people are trying all kinds of extreme measures to lower the price. The hike in price has affected every nation; the entire world is trying to find a way out of the soaring prices. Thanks to the oil prices, travel expenses have increased, not just flying being expensive, driving your own car is very expensive. The chart below shows a trend in oil prices since 1990 with some of the major events leading to this increase. Note that since January of 2007 the oil prices have increase by 162%. With high gas prices, hybrid cars are a more affordable option than ever in terms of gas mileage, but only a handful of hybrid cars make solid financial sense, and only for some consumers, according to a new study by NADAguides. com, a vehicle pricing and information website. Using current gas prices for ten major metropolitan areas, the company studied the number of miles needed to recoup the extra cost of buying a hybrid car over its gasoline-only counterpart. The study showed, for example, that a driver in Los Angeles, the city with the highest gas prices in the study, will break even about 18 percent faster than a driver in Houston, the city with the lowest gas prices, assuming both are driving the same miles. The study found that, even at todays high gas prices, only a handful of hybrid cars make financial sense for a consumer who buys a new car every five years or less and drives an average number of miles per year. Even at Los Angeles-area gas prices, there are only five hybrid cars that would allow consumers to recoup their additional investment before they sold the car, assuming they drive an average of 15,000 miles per year. In order of shortest time to break even, they are: 1. Toyota Camry Hybrid 2. Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid 3. Nissan Altima Hybrid 4. Toyota Prius 5. Honda Civic Hybrid Following is a chart of the top five hybrid cars with the greatest return on investment and the number of miles to break even in 10 major metropolitan areas at current gas prices. Issue: Even with gas prices at more than $4 per gallon, there are quite a few issues with buying hybrid vehicles. Issue 1: High Prices Hybrid vehicle prices are higher than their gas powered counterpart. The demand for these vehicles in the last year has increased a lot, increasing the prices even further. In some areas people are actually paying premium over MSRP and waiting for more than two years to get some vehicles. The price premium attached to the hybrid vehicles are just too great to be considered a cost savings relative to purchasing their gasoline counterpart. If people knew how long it would take them to pay off the increased premium the demand for the hybrid would be lower than what it is now, decreasing the prices. Issue 2: High Prices The second issue with the hybrid vehicles is that there are no laws and regulations controlling the technology, price, and the mileage per gallon required out of these vehicles. Currently, there are hybrid vehicles in the market that offer an improvement of just a few miles per gallon over their gas powered counterpart, yet the manufacturers are charging thousands more for the premium for a so called hybrid technology. The table shows the amount of time it would take a buyer to offset the hybrid premium by fuel savings. The table also shows the miles per gallon and annual gas savings. These numbers clearly show the need to have some regulations to control the miles per gallon offered and the amount of premium that is charged by the manufacturers. Let’s look at some vehicles: Starting with the worst of the bunch, the Lexus LS600H. The premium charges on this vehicle is about $19,000, yet it only offers about 20 to 22 miles per gallon. It would take almost a century to break even. The next worst seems to be the Saturn Aura which only offers an annual gas savings of $171. The best one seems to Toyota Prius, but this car is so popular these days that in some areas there is a wait list of two years. In areas where it’s available, the dealers are charging more than $5,000 over MSRP. Solution: ?Better education to customers about the ownership costs of a hybrid vehicle ? Government should offer incentives like tax break to buy hybrid vehicles ? Have a standard to develop hybrid vehicle to encourage mass production, bringing the vehicle prices to even less than current gas-powered vehicles ? Force auto makers to sell hybrid vehicles at no more than, about 10%, premium to the customers Conclusion: Reference: Web Site: Bespoke Investing Group http://bespokeinvest. typepad. com/bespoke/.