Regions and Regionalism in Global Politics

Regions and Regionalism in Global Politics Introduction – One View The concept of Regionalism has continued to grow, we can now unite and unify regions together to improve their political and economic agreements, the overall effect of this is to strengthen and stabilize globalization. The revival of old regionalists and the creation of new ones allows us to divide a state into smaller nations, this then gives us a better picture and greater transparency. Not everyone has the same ideology, views, values and beliefs and if we were to leave a state as a whole nation it could give rise to allegations of misconduct and corruption, but unity also isn’t guaranteed if you were to split the state into smaller sections. But there is the increased likelihood of unequal parity and rising tensions as there are so many smaller states within the nation that want to be heard and they all have different views and opinions on how they would like things to be handled. It is a fine balancing act to bring together so many people with different views and needs to be handled sensitively and diplomatically. Africa – Regional Economic Organization The African Economic Community (AEC) As a regional organization the AEC wants to enhance their economic development, based on their own rules, standards and principles, but they need to be capable of making their regionalism globalized if they wish to be successful and seen as a major contender in global politics, although the AEC is pivotal part of Africa’s regional integration; global progress has been slow as continued issues in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia have made democratic consolidation and sustained communications globally very fragile. Africa’s international economic trade agreements remain steady but they are pushing for better internal integration over global integration; their governments are backing more and more regional organizations with the aim to first better the country, their democratic roots and institutions from within before branching out internationally. Africa – Regional Security Organization The Eastern Africa Standby Force By 2015 EASF aims to have finalized the operations for an integrated regional and continental security standby force that will be able to respond to a wide range of crisis within African continent. As a regional organization they have the member states best interests at heart and can work closely with them to gain a better understanding of any situation that arises. With them only being regionalized they will only respond to the African nations conflicts and issues, African leaders felt it necessary to regionalize this African organization as they felt that there were complex challenges threatening the stability and security of their continent, and they didn’t want outside nations challenging their decisions and operations and risking the security and safety of their people. Their impact on global politics is a positive move towards cohesive crisis management not only in Africa but across the other continents. This is one of many regional organizations unlike the AEC that I think should remain regional as it will work with greater effect rather than globalizing the organization and spreading its resources to thinly that they can’t do what they were conceived to do, and in retaining their regionalism it means that they don’t figure on the global political scale, but the other continents can see what they are doing and achieving and work with them to develop their own security task force. Asia – Regional Economic Organization The Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) The success of the ECO is dependent on their member states, whilst the status and power of the ECO is improving their member states are struggling economically as they lack the basic and correct geographical factors like appropriate infrastructures, sustainable land, and economic factors like poor intra-regional trade agreements and the full cooperation of some regional and international organizations which they need to be able to make greater use of the resources and materials they have, and promote better regional and international relations. To allow political and economic integration of this regional organization to a global scale they need to be able to be able to show that they have good governance, improved education reform, investing in social improvements, and extensive knowledge of the economy, but the ECO has some very powerful member states, Turkmenistan possess the worlds fourth-largest reserves of natural gas and substantial oil resources (About Turkmenistan, ) and Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have gas fields and a pipe line that connects with China. Continued issues with Afghanistan and the Wests mistrust of Iran has prevented outside people investing in economically struggling areas. Political tension with nations states outside of the ECO are causing strained relations within the political field, this doesn’t necessarily have to impact on the ECO but improving those relations could lead to more members joining the ECO and forging better international relations. Asia – Regional Security Organization ASEAN Regional Forum(ARF) The ARF uses a process of official and non-official diplomacy, this make it unique as an international organization because they then have a two pronged approach to the regional political issues and the security issues and their developments. The associated members have the resources via a forum to discuss current security concerns and work together to enhance the overall security and peace within the region. This organization has a massive impact on global politics and the overall unity of the world; in participating its members have the opportunity to discuss ways to resolve situations without unwanted interference, armed or otherwise, from others, this allows for a greater chance of resolving any security issues through political dialogue and without force being used. To date no armed confrontation has occurred since the ARF was established over 30 years ago. If security issues can be resolved through medication and without the need for conflict management then that country will have increased power within the political world as they will show that they are willing to discuss and negotiate for a peaceful solution. Positive or Negative Regionalism can segregate nations and regions, and can cause unhealthy corrupt alliances, but by allowing the unilateral presence of nation state organizations to prosper they can create a positive and productive playing field that will raise their affectivity in Global politics field. In my opinion, the ever changing and expending world of politics means that, the more regions that are integrated into regional organization then the greater the chance we have of globally and politically effecting change. The more alliances a country can have the more prospects and opportunities it will gain. I see regionalism as neither positive or negative as there are aspects to regionalism that can fall into both categories and most out way the others. International politics is a finely balanced game of whom you can win as allies and who you can succeed as enemies. Our world is constantly changing and unlikely nations are forming alliances in the hope of achieving global sustenance within the international community, only time will tell if these alliances will be able to work effectively or whether new groups will form and break away from our current international field and attempt to create their own One World Government. References About Turkmenistan. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.dragonoil.com/our-operations/turkmenistan/about-turkmenistan/

Society MUST Understand how the Natural World Works Essay -- Argumenta

Society MUST Understand how the Natural World Works Except for children, few of us spend much time wondering why Nature is the way it is; where the Cosmos came from, or whether it was always here; or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans know. There are even children who want to know what a black hole looks like; why the sky is blue; how does a balloon stay up in the air; what makes the human body work; and why there is a Universe. I have many opportunities to teach children at various ages and have observed that many of these children are natural born scientists. They have inquisitive little minds filled with curiosity and wonder. Provocative and insightful questions bubble out them with enormous enthusiasm. I am often asked follow-up questions that have the potential to take up the whole day. These children have never heard of the notion of a dumb question. I find something all together different when talking to middle and high school students. A great deal of them seem to get by by memorizing facts and the joy of discovery that led to those facts has gone out of them. They have lost most of the wonder, and gained little skepticism. This particular age group's main concern is not taking up class time asking dumb questions. They are willing to accept inadequate answers and they don't ask follow-up questions. Many of them are more concerned with the placement of the hands on the clock and when the school bell is going to ring. The middle and high school classrooms are often saturated with indirect glances to judge the approval of their peers. As a graduate student, it is frightening to see the same behavior acted out in upper-level college courses. The negative glances from those who lack respect for learning defi... ..., drive to learn things and then to exchange the information with others (239). I understand the natural world to be an absolutely essential tool for any society with a hope of surviving the next century. It is of tremendous importance that we take responsibility as parents and teachers and start generating critical, curious, and imaginative students. The worlds needs and deserves a society with a basic understanding of how the natural world works. Works Cited Bishop, J. Thomas. "Enemies of Promise." In the Presence of Others: Voices That Call for Response. Second Edition. Andrea A. Lundsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz. St. Martin's Press. New York, 1997. 26-261. Thomas, Lewis. "The Hazards of Science." In the Presence of Others: Voices That Call for Response. Second Edition. Andrea A. Lundsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz. St. Martin's Press. New York, 1997. 239.

Compare the strategies and goals of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X during the Civil Rights Movements Essay

In the history of the American civil rights movement, two seminal figures emerge: that of the peaceful and nonviolent Martin Luther King, Jr., and the revolutionary and radical Malcolm X. From these two contrasting images, America did not know how exactly to classify the movement. On one hand, Malcolm X preached independence and a â€Å"by any means necessary† approach to achieving equality in America. And on the other, King preached a nonviolent, disobedient philosophy similar to that of Gandhi in the achievement of Indian independence earlier in the century. While most students are familiar with King as a civil rights leader, most are equally uninformed about the impact of Malcolm X in the African-American struggle for equality and freedom. And while there is much to learn from the two contrasting philosophies and approaches to change of each man, there are common threads that unite them: namely, a combined religiosity with political leadership that morphed into a demand for social and economic equality. Despite their differences, King and Malcolm X represented the same cause, and with the achievement of the movement, left a similar legacy to generations of Americans seeking change in their own time. However, from a comparative perspective, one cannot imagine a civil rights movement without the tactics King favored, or a successful movement characterized by the kind of violence and hatred advocated by Malcolm X. When one is asked to think of a comparison between two alternatives and which of the alternatives is â€Å"better†, one ought to imagine which alternative would produce the better outcome. A better outcome in any struggle for political change is one not characterized by widespread violence. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s childhood and young adulthood were exemplified by his work within the system, achieving prosperity through education and thinking, not through the violent struggle for existence like in the case of Malcolm X. In King’s â€Å"I Have a Dream† speech, he invites the listener to imagine a future in which Black children have an equal opportunity at achieving prosperity through education and hard word: an example of an equal chance not available at that time. Achieving this required nonviolent means consistent with the principles King adopted through his time studying Gandhi and civil disobedience. King called on people to be disobedient for the c ause of racial equality, whereas Malcolm X called on people to be violently forceful'†in opposition to any kind of representation of white power'†for the cause of Black power. Unlike  King, Malcolm X’s message did not convey a message of equality, but of hateful lashing out against an institution with the power to crush violent opposition. Like Gandhi, King insightfully recognized the efficacy of disobeying the system as a means of changing it. Violently attacking the system would only invite violent attacks back, and would, in the end, make the problem worse for Blacks. While Black militancy is understandable given Malcolm X’s history and his perception of the problem afflicting Blacks at the time, the better means of achieving Black rights was through nonviolence: specifically, boycotts, demonstrations, and marches. Dr. King welcomed participation from all people, including whites and other minorities, unlike Malcolm X. In historical reflections on the civil rights movement, it took both Blacks and whites (working within the white power structure) to achieve the desired outcome. For instance, white New Yorkers Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were killed by Klansmen in Mississippi decided to investigate the burning of a Black church. Viola Gregg Liuzzo, a white mother from Michigan, was killed by Alabaman Klansmen in 1965 when she tried to help Blacks in the South (Maxwell). Thousands of whites worked for Black freedom: an ideological shift supported and encouraged by the kinds of tactics Dr. King advocated. The same cannot be said of Ma lcolm X, who famously remarked that white people were â€Å"a race of devils† (Lomax 57). What white person would be encouraged to work for civil rights given such an antagonistic remark? Although Black militancy was important in the context of the entire civil rights movement, the retaliatory tenor of Malcolm X’s message was sure to cause opposition from the establishment. The message was also profoundly collectivistic and an antithesis of the American value of individualism (McTaggart). His call for Blacks to come together created a movement for Black socialism in a kind of voluntary segregation. In a way, this defeated the purpose of the civil rights movement, and, absent of the efforts of other, less oppositional leaders, would have probably worsened the problem facing Blacks in America. Forcing the Black community to remain segregated from whites as a whole could have continued the sentiment among racist Americans that Black people are not equal to white people. Dr. King, in  contrast, unswervingly advocated for a social conscience in America: drawing attention to the inequalities he witnessed in a number of areas of society. Rather than assuming these i nequalities existed and not drawing public attention to them, Dr. King made it his role in the movement to challenge social assumptions about the place of Black people in America. Despite Malcolm X’s enormous influence on the movement, his message was not one of equality, but of retaliation for inequality. Although both Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were transformational leaders who were instrumental in raising public awareness of a problem of inequality, only King’s methods could have been successful in bringing about the desired outcome of the movement. Applied to the movement as a whole, Malcolm X’s philosophy of violent retaliation would have exacerbated the problem Blacks faced at the time, forcing the white establishment to increase oppression and segregation of the Black community. Because King’s techniques were successful in challenging the establishment, Blacks achieved a number of civil rights not previously available to them. The kind of transformation leader King represents is a rare symbol, and the inspiration he provided to Black people for change still inspires people to strive for equality and freedom. Works Cited Lomax, Louis E. When the Word is Given†¦: A Report on Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and the Black Muslim World. New York: Greenwood Press, 1979. Maxwell, Bill. White friends of civil rights. 20 January 2008. 27 April 2010 . McTaggart, Ursula. The Oratory of Malcolm X. February 2006. April 2010 .

How Austen creates her novel “Pride and Prejudice” Essay

Jane Austen was extremely modest about her genius, describing her work to her work to her nephew Edward as  Ã¢â‚¬Å"That little but (two inches wide) of ivory in which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labour.† Although the world of her novel â€Å"Pride and Prejudice† is confined to a small section of society comprising of country-gentry and lesser aristocracy of England in the opening of the 19th century, the novel itself shows page by page how interesting life could be, how fascinating life’s twists and turns are, how significant the trivialities are to those concerned. The range of Austen’s novel is limited by her own circumstances, her own sex, and her position in the society. But the little world she writes about, she knows inside out. She fills her little world so artfully that when we are in it we do not long for anything else and we feel its fullness as well. She practiced what she preached. â€Å"There are four families in a country village† is the very thing to work on. She sticks to what she knows and is refusing to include in her novel what does not properly belong to village life; she is an artist. Austen has an acute interest in personalities, her field is the human heart. Therefore, although she writes in the years of war between England and France while Napoleon was changing the map of Europe, in her novel we find not mention of â€Å"Britain at war.† In â€Å"Pride and Prejudice† soldiers like Wickham, come to Meryton to provide, in a sense, amusement for the girls. Austen thus does not impose anything harsh or unnecessary on her novel; this alludes to the artistic unity of her creation. She consciously limits herself and does not write anything beyond her experience. It may well be mentioned here that in â€Å"A Room One’s Own† Virginia Woolf pays a rich tribute to Austen by mentioning that novels like â€Å"War and Peace† could never be written by any female novelist, but certainly no Tolstoy could ever write the novels of Jane Austen. Austen deliberately and wisely limits herself to a few families and a limited number of characters in â€Å"Pride and Prejudice†. Her characters live in comfort in country houses; their lives consist of holding balls, attending parties, visiting each other’s house and thus amusing themselves. In that society even a small event is given a higher importance. Thereby a ball at the Bingleys or at the Lucases is eagerly anticipated and minutely analyzed. Austen chooses her characters from very ordinary life. Her characters range from the proud aristocrat Darcy to the dull-witted Mrs. Bennet, from the good-natured Jane to the hypocritical Miss Bingley. The men-folks in her novel do not in fact do nay work whereas the young girls are always in pursuit of good husbands. The girls have somehow managed to turn themselves into husband hunting butterflies. Distant Pembrly, Netherfield and Rosings are the upper limit, whereas Sir W Lucas and Lady Catherine Debourgh are highest in rank, the still higher estates and greater aristocracy are not mentioned in the novel, since they little effect Meryton and Derbyshire. The way Austen treats her characters is satiric. Her views of life are therefore always satiric; the passionate and tragic aspects of human life are somehow discarded. Only such characters are chosen that could be satirically treated. This satiric vision of life is a limitation on Austen’s part. Critics sometimes mention that Austen â€Å"Banished nine-tenth of life, and gave us people who never work, or fight or die, or starve or go crazy.† In the view of that above-mentioned statement we find that people in â€Å"Pride and Prejudice† engage themselves in doing nothing. Mr. Darcy apparently seems to have some work to do when he is at Pemberly, the work he does there is obviously connected with his estate. Mr. Gardiner revels in fishing only. Mr. Bennet, as we are told, takes one of his farms but only emerges from his library when he needs to settle some family affairs. Mr. Hurst’s motto of life is â€Å"High living and little thinking.† Reading has a place in family entertainment and since all the novels are heard at family gatherings, the writers take care to fill up pages fit for family consumption. In fact, Austen’s knowledge of men’s ways limited, but she knew how to use  her limitation. In â€Å"Pride and Prejudice† men come and go, and sit and chat when in front of the ladies; Austen does not pursue them into their personal world. We may see Fitz William Darcy and Bingley set off in a carriage but what they discuss is never reported if no woman is present. Despite Austen’s failure to present the many facets of men’s life, she is successful in providing an illuminating insight into some of the most significant characters like that of Darcy and Bingley. For instance, Darcy’s transmigration from a proud and snob person to a compassionate and reliable one is shown with perfect dexterity. In this novel Austen does want to compete with students of political economics, or social problems. The life and its complications that she depicts are just as what she experienced as a woman. Quite naturally her themes in this novel center the complex role of money and love in marriage. In doing so she even consciously avoids any discussion on philosophical or social issues. A simple plot concerning a few number of people is woven in this novel. That Austen has no wish to exceed the limitation of her own is quite evident when we find that urban life is excluded from the novel only because she had not much experience of it. It is mentioned casually during Jane’s visit to London. We have also observed that no black-hearted villain ever makes an appearance in Austen’s pages. The greatest villainy that ever occurs in â€Å"Pride and Prejudice† is the occasional elopement of Lydia with Wickham. Wickham indeed lacks all those negative traits of character which could have made him a person of shade like that of Alec in Hardy’s â€Å"Tess of the D’urbervilles†. Therefore, Wickham’s possibility to be the only villain in â€Å"Pride and Prejudice† ends there. Still it is no shallowness or lack of insight on Austen’s part, which leads her to restrict the exploration of human nature to the apparent social level. Austen gives us in her novel an artistic unity in which nothing is forced, nothing is excessive. A simple plot proceeds bit by bit to the only conclusion possible. Her characters act and speak in a very familiar way as we can imagine. The characters are so true to nature and so well-balanced against constructing types that as they talk along the story we begin to  think that it would not matter if there were no plot. The central figures whose union we desire grow upon us as their mistakes and recoveries reveal the fineness of their spirit. Therefore, in Austen’s world there is a welcome for the sensitive reader who will accept it as it is and will not cry out for, in the words of one critic – â€Å"The moon of passionate embraces or the lightning of sword.†