Alternative Energy Sources Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Alternative Energy Sources - Essay Example export or import based on competitive pricing and expertise, Bauman (2004, p. 13-15). A free market determines how the global economy functions based on comparative advantage. States are able to specialize on what one does best. Such scenarios would yield into timely production and supply due to the competitive nature of the operation. A free market would provide good incentives for producers to supply and respond to consumer demand. Extraction of renewable energy sources would be done at an increased competitive level of cleaner, cheaper and adequate energy. Private equity investment, free markets attract private equity, which is reasonably important for investment in exploration and exploitation of renewable energy. Private investment injected into projects is crucial towards the creation of employment in the private sector to professionals who may not be fortunate enough to gain meaningful employment in the government. Investors in the energy sector may enjoy various incentives from the government which aims at encouraging investment in renewable energy sources. Such incentives may include tax exemptions, tax credits and infrastructure development in extraction fields. However, allowing the free market can also be catastrophic to the economy, this argument presents a case for argument in favor of government intervention. According to Katrin Jordan (2011, p. 19-25), free-market approach encourages existence of natural monopolies and cartels. Liberalization of the sector would leave cleaner energy needs at the hands of a few with capital resources, thus holding state and industries functionalities at ransom especially when supply costs are low. Monopolies and cartels create an artificial shortage thus increasing the cost of energy. Cartels have in the past been used to cripple crucial government operations thus it becomes necessary for the state to be involvement in

Art as a Political Statement Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Art as a Political Statement - Essay Example But it is a measure of his talent, of his ability to meld form and context, that these works have only served to enhance his reputation over time. In fact, one of his political paintings is generally considered to be his greatest work. The Death of Marat portrays the murder of Jean-Paul Marat, one of the French Revolution’s most incendiary journalists and radical thinkers. Just as Marat himself was a polarizing figure who stirred powerful sentiments, David’s portrait of his murdered corpse was intended to elicit an emotional response from the viewer. The painting’s context is clear: Marat has been martyred by an enemy of the revolution, whose act should serve as a rallying point for those whom Marat sought to inspire. Marat had admitted into his chambers a young Girondist woman named Charlotte Corday, a citizen of the provinces. She plunged a knife deep into Marat’s chest as he sat in his bathtub, killing him in seconds. David’s representation of th e murder exhibits a form that is at once affecting and subtle, as though the artist sought to make a political statement in a way that would be impactful without alienating the viewer’s sensibility. There is a blending of subject and background that focuses attention on the dead man’s body in a unique manner. ... xiv). It is a remarkable achievement. The Death of Marat is undoubtedly a work of political propaganda by an artist deeply moved by a politically motivated assassination. David’s painting was also remarkable for the effect it had on its subject’s legacy. In Revolutionary France, Marat was widely seen as a rabble rouser, an unscrupulous politico and opportunist who had parlayed unprecedented social and political turmoil into a stage for his own renown. In spite of this, David’s subliminal appeal to the viewer, his classically oriented interpretation of the Revolutionary period’s most famous assassination has obscured the negative aspects of Marat’s persona. David’s purpose in The Death of Marat is to bring attention to Marat’s prestige as a leader of transformative social change, a matter for which the artist cares deeply. Marat himself is â€Å"idealized and flawless,† an expression of the â€Å"compassion and outrage† Da vid felt at his murder (Twomey, 2012). It is this expressiveness that makes David one of the greatest synthesizers of form and content within the context of politics. Pablo Picasso - Guernica The great abstract artist Pablo Picasso was decidedly not a propagandist, though he is responsible for what many consider the greatest anti-war painting ever created. Guernica is Picasso’s representation of the slaughter of innocent citizens in the Basque village of Guernica by fascist (German and Italian) armed forces under the command of Spain’s nationalist government, headed by the dictator Francisco Franco. Picasso’s mural, created for the 1937 Paris International Exposition, portrays a chaotic, jumbled scene meant to convey genocidal destruction let loose by the fascists on a profoundly vulnerable populace. It is also

Causes and Solutions to the Obesity Epidemic

Causes and Solutions to the Obesity Epidemic Poor eating habits and the physical health of 21st century human beings has become the centre of worldwide discussions. It is far more complex than merely understanding and using the nutritional information available. A mixture of an individual’s financial position, geographical location and will power are to blame but it seems as if unethical scientific studies, uninformed decisions by members of government and the availability of false information are major contributing factors to the status quo. However, it is evident that healthy people are less of a burden on society than those who overeat and do not partake in regular exercise. Obesity is an epidemic defined as the abnormal or excessive fat accumulation of which millions of individuals around the world have fallen victim to. The disease is preventable but more than 65% of the world’s population live in areas where overweight and obesity kills more than underweight, 10% of the world’s adult population is clinically obese and 40 million children under the age of 5 are classified as being overweight. The statistics are horrifying but the effects are evident particularly in the United States of America where its affects are seen in every state. The obesity statistics in South Africa are no better. Currently 29% of men and 56% of women are classified as being overweight or obese and of those individuals 71% have never tried to cut down and 78% think that they are perfectly healthy. The blame seems to be on Westernisation and Urbanisation as well as the fact that we are among the highest consumers of alcohol in the World. Obesity has doubled since 1980 and it is currently the 5th leading cause of death. The fix is near impossible especially with the current nonchalant attitude with regard to the addressing of the disease. The lack of urgency towards addressing the problem is evident worldwide, particularly in the United Arab Emirates where type-2 diabetes is now seen in children as young as the age of 10. It appears that in affluent countries such as the UAE-where people are spoiled by higher incomes-that overeating rather than the sedentary lifestyle is to blame for the poor health statistics. The rapidity of the problem took hold half a century back where their lifestyle changed as a result of population growth and urbanisation. The UAE staple diet now consists mainly of rice, bread and sweet fruits and the sudden explosion of delivery services and restaurants has compiled the problem. According to Dr Kazem Behbehani, â€Å"We need to invest heavily in nutrition,† and so the UAE draft strategy was implemented. The aim is to educate the public with regard to health and nutrition and also target the manufacturing sector where it will emphasise ethical marketing and labelling strategies. The epidemic can be reduced through a combined effort by the individual, society and the food industry. The individual has the responsibility to limit energy intake and partake in regular physical activity. Society must show its sustained political commitment and make pursuing a life of health, affordable and easily accessible. The biggest responsibility lies with the food industry as they are the ones that should provide healthy and nutritious choices and ensure responsible marketing. Another factor to consider with regard to the poor health of individuals around the world is the fast food industry. According to the Huffington post about 50% of all meals consumed daily are away from home and one in five breakfasts is eaten from McDonalds. The calorie intake has surged since 1980 from 3200 calories per day to a whopping 3900 and can be seen by looking at figure 14 that shows the changes of calorie intake over the past 40 years. The fact that there are over half a million fast food restaurants staking their claim around the world is a concern as it shows the demand for them outweighs the supply. McDonalds alone feeds 68 million people per day and is the largest toy distributer in the world which explains why children develop such resilient reliance and trust with McDonalds at a very young age. Calorie intake varies according to gender, age and height. There are, however, calorie intake guidelines for adults. The recommended calorie intake per day for sedentary males and females is 2,000 to 2,600 and 1,600 to 2,000 respectively. If an individual is active these amounts increase, for males it is 2,400 to 3,000 and for females it is 2,000 to 2,400 calories per day. What many people do not realise is how many calories are in the food they consume particularly in fast food. If we compare the amount of calories in a fast food meal (regular burger, fries and a milkshake) from the three major fast food chains around the world, namely KFC, Burger King and McDonalds one will notice that an individual would have almost expended their daily calorie intake in one meal. †¢McDonalds (Big Mac, Regular Fries and a Chocolate Milkshake) = 1780 †¢KFC (Burger, Regular Fries and a Crusher)= 1125 †¢Burger King (Whopper, Regular fries and a Chocolate Milkshake)= 1750 As a result of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act all restaurant chains with 20 or more locations in the United States are now required to post the calorie contents of their products on menus or boards. The calorie information is relatively easy to find but whether or not people use them is debatable but a study conducted by NYU Langone confirms that the posting of nutritional information at fast food chains does not influence an individual’s choice in product consumption. As a result it has no effect on the amount of calories consumed, â€Å"10 percent of the respondents in our study said that calorie labels at fast-food chains resulted in them choosing fewer calories.† A comprehensive study conducted in Boston and Philadelphia by Bryan Bollinger, Phillip Leslie, Alan Sorensen and their team found that, â€Å"Mandatory calorie posting does inà ¯Ã‚ ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å¡uence consumer behaviour at Starbucks, causing average calories per transaction to decrease by 6%.† But the effect is insignificant when you look at figure 12.4 where calorie posting before and after produced practically identical graphs of calorie consumption. They also note that, â€Å"Calorie posting did not cause any statistically significant change in Starbucks revenue overall.† If calorie posting does not affect a company’s overall revenue one wonders why every fast food chain does not partake in global calorie posting. Whether or not the effects on weight loss are statistically significant or not calorie posting should become the norm. Society needs to be constantly exposed to calorie posting if the effects on an individual’s health are to be meaningful. Bryan Bollinger makes an interesting comment. It seems only reasonable to assume that the providing of nutrition information to consumers would assist them in purchasing healthier products. The idea is that consumers would be shocked to realise how many calories are in the beverage and/or food that they consume. However, it appears that consumers at chain stores are more concerned about convenience, price and taste, rather than the nutrition information. And those who do care about nutrition information and calories either do not go to fast food chains in the first place and/or are already well-informed because the information is easily accessible on company websites. If nutritional information were going to make a difference it would appear at chain stores, however, if they assume that the calorie consumption for all chain stores was reduced by 6% then, â€Å"It would imply a decrease in total calorie consumption on the order of 1.5%† This amounts to a mere 30 calories and if it was going to have any meaningful effect on weight loss it would have to be between 500-1000 calories per day. The paper suggests that mandatory calorie posting is only an acceptable policy if the benefits outweigh the costs. If anything they hope that calorie posting will encourage companies to offer more low-calorie items and that the consumer’s exposure to this information will make them more aware of the nutritional value of the foods they eat. They conclude that, â€Å"Our back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that average reductions resulting from calorie posting in chain restaurants will not by themselves have a major impact on obesity.† The study does have its shortfalls and the effects of calorie posting may have been understated as they acknowledge in the paper: 1.The study assumed that the calorie intake of every individual was 2000 calories per day. They comment that it may be higher and this would mean that the reduction of calories per day could be much higher. 2.The study was only taken from Starbucks and this could understate the impact of nutrition information at other chain stores. In their study they found that consumers were more sensitive to calories ingested from food and not beverages which means that the effects of nutrition posting could be higher at other chain stores. 3.The impact of nutrition posting could be much higher chain stores promoted tasty, low-priced, low-calorie products. The single most significant factor on the state of an individual’s health and eating habit is their diet. A diet is a concept whereby an individual eats food in a regulated fashion with the aim to either maintain, increase or decrease their current weight. It is often used in combination with exercise but studies by the APA journal (among others) have found that the majority of individuals regain all weight irrespective whether or not they maintain diet and exercise. There are a variety of diets that either restrict calorie intake or a particular macronutrient but meta-analysis of randomised controls found no difference in weight loss. It appears that as long as calories are reduced weight will be lost but it is also evident that the restriction of certain macronutrients such as carbohydrates results in fast weight loss over a shorter period of time. Diets appear to arise as a result of an individual’s own miraculous weight loss and William Banting is no exception. In his Letter on Corpulence that he wrote in 1863 he describes his low-calorie and low-carb diet. Banting was morbidly obese and he blamed it on his love for farinaceous foods such as, â€Å"Bread, milk, butter, sugar and potatoes [†¦] these, said my excellent advisor, contain starch and saccharine matter, tending to create fat.† Many individuals-like Banting and others-do not realise that their daily eating habits have a detrimental effect on their health. Generally poor eating habits result in a poor state of heath. †¢Drinking alcohol: Increases ones insulin resistance which results in the storage of excess carbohydrates in the form of fat and hinders its use as fuel. †¢Compulsive snacking and food binging: Eating large amounts of food (often driven by emotions) results in eating beyond the point of being full. †¢Skipping breakfast: It is by far the most important meal of the day and failing to eat at this time results in an energy drain, disruption of metabolism, reduction in the amount of carbohydrates burned and increases likelihood of snacking. †¢Eating heavy meals before bed: Your body fails to burn and digest the carbohydrates as fuel and as a result the body stores it as fat. Dieting is not as simple as it is made out to be as many individuals have realised. However, Tim Noakes believes that the current poor health of individuals around the world is the result of an unethical study conducted by Ancel Keys that has resulted in decades of individuals failing to lose weight. The ‘Seven-Countries Study’ conducted by Keys is considered a case of manipulated bias. The study was published in 1953 by Keys who was already a well-respected American biochemist. In the publication he drew a comparison to the cholesterol levels in individuals and the amount of fat that one consumed. Despite having enough statistics from 22 countries he only selected 7 of them that supported his theory. The countries that were omitted did not support his hypothesis such as Holland and Norway whose diets comprised of large amounts of fat but who had some of the lowest cases of heart disease. Conversely there were cases where fat consumption was low but heart disease was high such as in Chile. There were many flaws in Keys work: 1.The data came from 7 of the 22 countries that suited his theory. 2.He failed to use randomised controlled clinical trials and only ever reported observational studies. As a result he could not prove his theory unequivocally. 3.He never considered other variables that could explain the relationship explored in his theory such as the growth in cigarette consumption. 4.He was not a clinician and had never treated a patient that suffered from the disease. Political events such as the desperate need to bring down the food price and increase the wealth of US farmers allowed for the global exploitation of Keys false theory. Senator George McGovern wanted to restrict the intake of saturate fats and eggs by implementing the United States Dietary Goals for Americans (USDGA). The guidelines for the USDGA were compiled by Nick Mottern who had no formal training in nutrition science and now the American diet was based on 8-12 servings of grains and cereals a day so that they could successfully implement industrial scale production of corn and soy. US government agencies such as the National Institute of Health used research budget to prove that people that follow the guidelines will become immune to diabetes, heart disease and obesity. They spent over $700 million promoting the Food Pyramid but could not prove that a dietary change would produce significant health benefits. Figure 2 shows that the sudden increase of obesity since the 1980s is as a result of the USDGA. The stimulatory effect of carbohydrates on hunger results in the increase in calorie consumption and figure 5 shows that the increased consumption of calories from carbohydrates matches exactly the increasing rates of obesity from the beginning of the 1980s. What many people do not know is that out of all the macronutrients (fat, protein and carbohydrates) available the one that our body can do without are carbohydrates. Humans have the ability to obtain their energy requirements from proteins and fats-a process called gluconeogenesis-and there are no scientific studies that show that avoiding carbohydrates have short or long term effects on humans. There are, however, studies that support the Low-Carb, High-Fat diet (LCHF) promoted by Noakes and his team as a more suitable means of weight loss as opposed to other diets. A study conducted by the New England Journal of Medicine in 2003 found statistically no difference over a period of 12 months but low-carb diets are a more effective means of weight loss over a shorter period of time when compared to low-fat diets. History shows that ancient humans such as the Egyptians suffered from severe tooth decay, bone fractures, high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity. These are symptoms similar to those that we now see in many individuals today. It is believed that the Egyptians diet, like ours, comprised mainly of refined carbohydrates. As Michael Eades says in his book Protein Power if such is the ultimately health diet, â€Å"Rich in all foods believed to promote health and almost devoid of saturated fat and cholesterol [†¦] then ancient Egyptians should have lived forever.† There are many shortcomings to the LCHF diet promoted by Professor Tim Noakes as explained by Christopher Gardner in a presentation presented at the Stanford University. One cannot confirm if it is the reduction of carbohydrates or the increase of fat in an individual’s diet that is behind the miraculous weight loss. The mere fact that you are restricting your carbohydrate intake to extremely low levels means that you immediately reduce calorie intake and despite having the ability to eat copious amounts of fat one cannot eat a tub of butter without bread to put it on. The result of the LCHF diet means your stomach shrinks and you have the ability to go without feeling hungry for 6-12 hours. There is also the important issue of fat loss versus muscle loss. Weight loss typically involves loss of fat, water and muscle. The aim of weight loss is to reduce the percentage of body fat. Muscle tissue, however, is denser than fat and a mere 10% reduction can have a dramatic effect on the shape of the body. The fact that muscle loss occurs is based on our Basic Metabolic Rate (BMR). This is the amount of calories the body requires when at rest and is influenced by the weight and muscle mass of an individual. More muscle means more calories without any ‘weight’ gain. In order to lose fat one must have a daily caloric intake that is greater than or equal to the BMR. Muscle and fat loss occurs when the daily caloric intake is less than or equal to the BMR. Maintaining muscle whilst losing fat is difficult but muscle loss can be restricted by regular lifting of weights and sufficient protein intake. There are many other diets such as the famous Atkins diet but a more recent diet based on the idea that no two humans are the same and that means one should eat according to their genetic make-up. The diet is as a result of Dr Peter D’Adamo’s work that certain foods are beneficial to certain blood types where others are harmful. It is evident that there is just far too much information out there surrounding proper dieting and nutrition. Individuals are bombarded with information that could possibly be false and based on no scientific studies but even those that are could not work for some individuals. It comes down to will power. If one partakes in regular exercise, follows an eating plan that contains sufficient nutrients and stays committed then I believe that anyone has the ability to live a healthy lifestyle. Finally the effect of obesity on the modern world is a financial one. It costs the United States government $190 billion a year in treatments alone and it is expected to rise to $344 billion by 2018. This means that the obesity-related treatments make up 10% of the annual medical spending. On average obese people spend 42 percent more on healthcare costs than healthy-weight people and obesity-related job absenteeism costs $4.3 billion annually. In closing poor eating habits and the physical health of human beings is only partly dependent on the availability and the understanding of nutritional information as the issue is far more complex. Individuals are bombarded with information (correct or not) and are far more concerned with price and taste rather than their well-being. Simplistically, the more educated we are in nutritional information the more informed we can be as individuals to take responsibility for our own health. It is however clear that healthy people are less of a burden on society.

Perception of American Exceptionalism Essay -- US Politics Identity

Americans through the years of existence have adapted well to the radical changes throughout the world. Technology, independence and social equality are some of the diverse concepts the United States have adapted to and developed in order to become a more unified country. Our nation believes that it is exceptional when it comes to other countries worldwide. As can be shown through the popular reference to America as the ‘shining city on a hill’. The term â€Å"American exceptionalism† is derived from ideals held by many Americans throughout history. Different people have analyzed American exceptionalism through multiple literary devices. Works such as A Model of Christian Charity, What is an American and Acres of Diamonds illustrate the sentiment that America is incomparable to any other country through different approaches. On the contrary, Democracy in America and How the Other Half Lives are two documents that argue against this theory through harsh yet meani ngful remarks. Since the time of European settlement, Americans have seen themselves as the epitome of the perfect civilization. The works of Winthrop, Crevecoeur and Conwell can support this concept. John Winthrop emphasizes the importance of America maintaining moral values because of their standing as this perfect society in his piece, A Model of Christian Charity, â€Å"For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us† (Winthrop, 20). The belief that Americans are so important that everyone else is analyzing their actions supports the idea of American exceptionalism. By stressing the connection of morality to this high standing, Winthrop indicates that exceptionalism is conditional. In order for America to keep its place on the... ... of the outstanding country. As for other authors, the thought of America classifying itself as exceptional is shameful by the way the country actually functions. These different people have analyzed American exceptionalism through multiple literary devices all through history. Works Cited Winthrop, John. "A Model of Christian Charity." Five Hundred Years. Casper and Daviess. 1630. Crevecoeur, Hector St. John de. "What is an American." Five Hundred Years. Casper and Daviess. 1782. Conwell, Russell H.. "Acres of Diamonds." Five Hundred Years. Casper and Daviess. 1862. Tocqueville, Alexis de. "Democracy in America." Five Hundred Years. Casper and Daviess. 1835. Riis, Jacob. "How the Other Half Lives." Five Hundred Years. Casper and Daviess. 1890. Ferguson, Andrew. "Are Americans Closet Statists?." Weekly Standard, 09 Aug 2010. Web. 7 Dec 2010.

A comparison of the development of tragedy Essay

This essay compares the differences and similarities in the way in which the tragedies develop in Macbeth and A View from the Bridge. Macbeth is a more intense tragedy, as innocent people die as a result of his madness, before he himself is killed. A View from the Bridge is a softer tragedy, dealing with two men who want the same lady. Straightaway, with such a high-powered storyline, Macbeth is going to be the more intense tragedy. The aim of a tragedy is to inspire a mix of emotions in the reader, where they have attachments to both sides, and to present an unfortunate sequence of events that cause an unfortunate ending. With so many more characters involved in Macbeth and a much longer sequence of events, it can be considered better at creating a mix of emotion in people, and thus might be considered the better tragedy. Both of the primary victims in Macbeth and A View from the Bridge performed a favour for the individual that murdered them, which adds to the tragedy. In Macbeth, Macbeth murders King Duncan in order to become king. King Duncan refers to Macbeth as his ‘worthiest kinsman’ and his ‘worthy Cawdor’ after he made Macbeth thane of Cawdor, which was a rank of nobility. Furthermore, upon staying within the Macbeth household, Duncan ‘granted many gifts’. He presented a diamond to Lady Macbeth for her ‘boundless hospitality’. This makes Duncan’s death evermore tragic and unjust, as he did not deserve to die. Similarly, in A View from the Bridge, Eddie offers two illegal immigrants a place to stay in his home while they find work, and insists he has to ‘buy a tablecloth’ to make his guests feel more welcome. Yes, Eddie’s relationship with Roldolpho sours, but his initial welcoming was an act of kindness. In both Macbeth and A View from the Bridge, the story started off well. During the development of the tragedies, Eddie went against advice from Alferi, which was to leave Catherine and Roldolpho to it. Had Eddie taken this advice, he would likely still be alive, so ignoring the advice lead to his demise. Contrarily, it can be argued that Macbeth took a lot of advice from Lady Macbeth and bended to her will. Macbeth was very uncertain about taking this advice, as he considered his loyalty to Duncan as his ‘kinsman and his subject’, and recognised that Duncan had his own noble qualities, as he ‘[h]ath borne his faculties so meek’. Had Macbeth not taken this advice and listened to himself, he would probably also still be alive. This is a difference in the development of the tragedies because both victims took opposite decisions, but ultimately ended up with the same fate. Macbeth was killed by Macduff, because previously Macbeth had murdered Lady Macduff and their children. Macbeth had not harmed Macduff himself, so he had not directly attacked the man who killed him, but the people who were close to him. Marco killed Eddie, though Eddie had not had problems with Marco, only Roldolpho. Thus, both characters were killed by people they had not directly attacked. This adds to the tragedy in both cases because it might cause the viewer to have some sympathy for the victim, or sympathy for the murderers who acted out of revenge in both cases. More sympathy might be afforded for Eddie than Macbeth, because the fate that Eddie got was not one he had inflicted on anyone else. While he lunged at Marco with a knife, it could have been that he was acting out of self-defence. However, Macbeth had ordered the deaths of absolutely innocent people. Lady Macduff, her children, Banquo and Duncan and the chamberlains, and had planned to kill other innocent people – Macduff and Fleance. Thus, in this case, it could be argued that Macbeth’s fate was a certain kind of karma. The same cannot be said for Eddie in A View from a Bridge, so this might cause the reader to have more sympathy for Eddie than more Macbeth. Macbeth focuses more on the depths of despair that its characters fall into more than A View from a Bridge. Lady Macbeth’s personal tragedy is explained, her blood-stained hands and her dreams and her eventual suicide may make the reader feel her tragedy as well as her husband’s. Duncan’s fall into the depths of despair are also poetically made apparent, through soliloquies and expressions such as ‘Will all Neptune’s great ocean wash this blood’, which is the expression of Duncan’s blood on his hands that haunts Macbeth throughout the play. The reader isn’t given the same insight into the raw mix of emotions in each character in A View from the Bridge, so the same mix of opinions of the characters is difficult to achieve. To conclude, while there are similarities and differences between the development of tragedy in both Macbeth and A View from a Bridge, Macbeth gives a much fuller and complex development of tragedy. It has so many elements in its plot and unfortunates in the sequence of events that lead to the end that it is difficult to fully explore its development of tragedy in comparison with such a short book.

Getting Away with Torture

Global Governance 11 (2005), 389–406 REVIEW ESSAY Getting Away with Torture Kenneth Roth The Bush administration’s use of torture and inhumane treatment has undermined one of the most basic global standards governing how governments can treat people under their control. Contrary to the efforts of the administration to pass this abuse off as the spontaneous misconduct of a few low-level soldiers, ample evidence demonstrates that it reflects policy decisions taken at the highest levels of the U. S. government.Repairing the damage done to global standards will require acknowledging this policy role and launching a genuinely independent investigation to identify those responsible and hold them accountable. The creation of regulated exceptions to the absolute prohibition of torture and mistreatment, as suggested by several academics, will not redeem the tarnished reputation of the United States or restore the global standards that the Bush administration has so severely dama ged. KEYWORDS: torture, Abu Ghraib, Guatanamo, interrogation, cruel treatment.B’Tselem, â€Å"Legislation Allowing the Use of Physical Force and Mental Coercion in Interrogations by the General Security Service,† B’Tselem Position Paper, January 2000, 80 pp. Mark Danner, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror (New York: New York Review of Books, 2004), 592 pp. Alan M. Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 288 pp. Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel, eds. , The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1,284 pp. Philip B. Heymann and Juliette N.Kayyem, Preserving Security and Democratic Freedoms in the War on Terrorism (Cambridge: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 2004), 195 pp. Human Rights Watch, The Road to Abu Ghraib (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2004), 37 pp. Sanford Levinson, ed. , Torture: A Collection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 328 pp. 389 390 Getting Away with Torture ho would have thought it still necessary to debate the merits of torture? Sure, there are always some governments that torture, but they do it clandestinely. Torture is inherently shameful—something that, if practiced, is done in the shadows.In the system of international human rights law and institutions that has been constructed since World War II, there is no more basic prohibition than the ban on torture. Even the right to life admits exceptions, such as the killing of combatants allowed in wartime. But torture is forbidden unconditionally, whether in time of peace or war, whether at the local police precinct or in the face of a major security threat. Yet, suddenly, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, torture and related mistreatment have become serious policy options for the United States.Academics are proposing ways to regulate the pain that can be inflicted on suspects in detention. Overly clever U. S. government lawyers have tried to define away laws against torture. The Bush administration claims latitude to abuse detainees that its predecessors would never have dared to contemplate. Washington’s new willingness to contemplate torture is not just theoretical. The abuse of prisoners has flourished in the gulag of offshore detention centers that the Bush administration now maintains in Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the secret dungeons where the U. S. government’s â€Å"disappeared† prisoners are held.Hidden from public scrutiny, shielded from legal accountability, the interrogators in these facilities have been allowed to flout the most basic rules for the decent and humane treatment of detainees. Yet torture remains the despicable practice it has always been. It dehumanizes people by treating them as pawns to be manipulated through their pain. It harnesses the awesome power of the state and appl ies it to human beings at their most vulnerable. Breaching any restraint of reciprocity, it subjects the victim to abuse that the perpetrator would never himself want to suffer.Before looking at why Americans are suddenly confronting the torture option, it is useful to clarify what, exactly, torture is. The word torture has entered the vernacular to describe a host of irritants, but its formal meaning in international law is quite specific: the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, for whatever reason. Torture as defined in international law is not done by private actors but by government officials or those operating with their consent or acquiescence. 1 Torture exists on a continuum of mistreatment.Abuse just short of torture is known in international law as cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The lines between these different degrees of mistreatment are W Kenneth Roth 391 not crystal clear—lesser forms are often gateways to tort ure—which is one reason why international law prohibits all such forms of coercion. 2 Torture as well as cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment is flatly prohibited by such treaties as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), and the Geneva Conventions.All of these treaties are widely ratified, including by the United States. None permits any exception to these prohibitions, even in time of war or a serious security threat. Indeed, these prohibitions are so fundamental that the Restatement of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States, the most authoritative U. S. treatise on the matter, lists them as peremptory jus cogens norms, meaning they bind governments as a matter of customary international law, even in the absence of a treaty.Breach of these prohibitions gives rise to a crime of universal jurisdiction, allowing the perpetrator to be prosecut ed in any competent tribunal anywhere. Yet it is precisely because of the fundamental character of the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment that the Bush administration’s deliberate disregard for it is so damaging. If this basic human rights protection can be cast aside, no right is secure. Moreover, the Bush administration is not just any government. When most governments breach international human rights law, they commit a violation—the breach is condemned or prosecuted, but the rule remains firm.Yet when a government as dominant and influential as the United States openly defies that law and seeks to justify its defiance, it also undermines the law itself, and invites others to do the same. That shakes the very foundations of the international system for the protection of human rights that has been carefully constructed over the past sixty years. This unlawful conduct has also damaged Washington’s credibility as a proponent of hum an rights and a leader of the campaign against terrorism. The U. S. government’s record of promoting human rights has always been mixed.For every offender it berated for human rights transgressions, there was another whose abuses it ignored, excused, or even supported. Yet despite this inconsistency, the United States historically has played a key role in defending human rights. Its embrace of coercive interrogation—part of a broader betrayal of human rights principles in the name of combating terrorism—has significantly impaired its ability to mount that defense. As a result, governments facing human rights pressure from the United States now find it increasingly easy to turn the tables, to challenge Washington’s standing to uphold principles that it violates itself. 92 Getting Away with Torture Whether it is Egypt justifying torture by reference to U. S. practice, Malaysia defending administrative detention by invoking Guantanamo, Russia citing Abu Ghra ib to blame abuses in Chechnya solely on lowlevel soldiers, Nepal explaining a coup by reference to America’s postSeptember 11 excesses, or Cuba claiming the Bush administration had â€Å"no moral authority to accuse† it of human rights violations, repressive governments find it easier to deflect U. S. pressure because of Washington’s own sorry counterterrorism record on human rights.Indeed, when Human Rights Watch asked State Department officials to protest administrative detention in Malaysia and prolonged incommunicado detention in Uganda, they demurred, explaining, in the words of one, â€Å"With what we are doing in Guantanamo, we’re on thin ice to push this. †3 Washington’s loss of credibility has not been for lack of rhetorical support for concepts that are closely related to human rights, but the embrace of explicit human rights language seems to have been calculatedly rare.In his January 2005 inauguration speech, President Bush spok e extensively of his devotion to â€Å"freedom† and â€Å"liberty,† his opposition to â€Å"tyranny† and â€Å"terrorism,† but hardly at all about his commitment to human rights. 4 The distinction has enormous significance. It is one thing to pronounce oneself on the side of the â€Å"free,† quite another to be bound by the full array of human rights standards that are the foundation of freedom. It is one thing to declare oneself opposed to terrorism, quite another to embrace the body of international human rights and humanitarian law that enshrines the values rejecting terrorism.This linguistic sleight of hand—this refusal to accept the legal obligations embraced by rights-respecting states—has both reduced Washington’s credibility and facilitated its use of coercive interrogation. Because of this hypocrisy, many human rights defenders, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, now cringe when the United States comes t o their defense. Reformers in the Middle East speak of â€Å"the hug of death†Ã¢â‚¬â€the ill effects of Washington’s hypocritical embrace.They may crave a powerful ally, but identifying too closely with a government that so brazenly ignores international law, whether in its own abuses or its alliance with other abusers, has become a sure route to disrepute. At a time when the Bush administration is extolling itself as a champion of reform in the Middle East, as the catalyst behind recent democratic developments, however modest, in Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian territories, it is a sad irony that so few reformers welcome its support.That weakening of Washington’s moral authority in the Middle East is particularly tragic, because that region is where effective counterterrorism efforts are most needed. Open and responsive political systems Kenneth Roth 393 are the best way to encourage people to pursue their grievances peacefully. But whe n the most vocal governmental advocate of democracy deliberately violates human rights, it undermines democratically inclined reformers and strengthens the appeal of those who preach more radical visions. Instead, U. S. buses have provided a new rallying cry for terrorist recruiters, and the pictures from Abu Ghraib have become the recruiting posters for Terrorism, Inc. Many militants need no additional incentive to attack civilians, but if a weakened human rights culture eases even a few fence-sitters toward the path of violence, the consequences can be dire. Why is the United States taking this approach? To vent frustration, to exact revenge—possibly—but certainly not because torture and mistreatment are required for national security or protection.Respect for the Geneva Conventions does not preclude vigorously interrogating detainees about a limitless range of topics. The U. S. Army’s field manual on intelligence interrogation makes clear that coercion underm ines the quest for reliable information. 5 The U. S. military command in Iraq says that Iraqi detainees are providing more useful intelligence when they are not subjected to abuse. In the words of Craig Murray, the United Kingdom’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan, who was speaking of the UK’s reliance on torture-extracted testimony, â€Å"We are selling our souls for dross. 6 Moreover, coercive interrogation is making us less safe by effectively precluding criminal prosecution of its victims. Once a confession is coerced, it becomes extremely difficult to prove, as due process requires, that a subsequent prosecution of the suspect is free of the fruits of that coercion. As a result, the Bush administration finds itself holding some suspects who clearly have joined terrorist conspiracies and might have been criminally convicted and subjected to long prison terms, but against whom prosecution has become impossible. In February 2005, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began openly fretting about the problem.What happens, it worried, when continuing to detain suspects without trial becomes politically untenable, but prosecuting them is legally impossible because of taint from coercive interrogation? 7 None of this is to say that the United States is the worst human rights abuser. There are many more serious contenders for that notorious title, including governments that torture more frequently and more ruthlessly. But the United States is certainly the most influential abuser, making its contribution to the degradation of human rights standards unique and the costs to global institutions for upholding human rights incalculable.It is not enough to argue, as its defenders do, that the Bush administration is well intentioned—that they are the â€Å"good guys,† in the 394 Getting Away with Torture words of the Wall Street Journal. 8 A society ordered on intentions rather than law is a lawless society. Nor does it excuse the administrati on’s human rights record, as its defenders have tried to do, to note that it removed two tyrannical governments—the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Ba’ath Party in Iraq. Attacks on repressive regimes cannot justify attacks on the body of principles that makes their repression illegal.So, how did we get here? How did the United States, historically perhaps the most vigorous governmental proponent of human rights, come to undermine through its own actions one of the most basic human rights there is? Several books, both new and old, provide insight into this sorry state of affairs. Cover-Up and Self-Investigation When the photos from Abu Ghraib became public, the Bush administration reacted like many abusive governments that are caught redhanded: it went into damage control mode. It agreed that the torture and abuse featured in the photographs were wrong but sought to minimize the problem.The abusers, it claimed, were a handful of errant soldiers, a few â€Å"bad a pples† at the bottom of the barrel. The problem, it argued, was contained, both geographically (one section of Abu Ghraib prison) and structurally (only low-level soldiers, not more senior commanders). The abuse photographed at Abu Ghraib and broadcast around the world, it maintained, had nothing to do with the decisions and policies of more senior officials. President Bush vowed that â€Å"wrongdoers will be brought to justice,†9 but as of March 2005, virtually all of those facing prosecution were of the rank of sergeant or below.To some extent, the sheer outrageousness of the sexual and physical depravity featured in the Abu Ghraib photographs made it easier for the administration to disown responsibility. Few believe that President Bush or his senior officials would have ordered, for example, Lyndie England to parade about a naked detainee on a leash. Yet behind this particular mistreatment was an atmosphere of abuse to which the Bush administration, at the highest l evels, did contribute. The ingredients of that atmosphere are described in several new books.The most comprehensive compilation of the documentary record is contained in The Torture Papers, a book edited by Karen Greenberg and Joshua Dratel, which includes all of the administration’s notorious â€Å"torture memos† available by late 2004. Mark Danner’s book, Torture and Truth, includes many of these same documents, as well as his insightful analysis, drawn from his articles in the New York Review of Kenneth Roth 395 Books, of the policy decisions that lay behind them. The Human Rights Watch report, The Road to Abu Ghraib,10 details how this atmosphere played out on he ground, as American interrogators deployed â€Å"stress and duress† interrogation techniques and then covered up the cruel and occasionally deadly consequences. Torture: A Collection, a new set of essays on torture edited by Sanford Levinson, contains thoughtful essays from a range of scholar s, including a vigorous debate about how to limit torture in the post-September 11 environment. The key to the administration’s strategy of damage control was a series of carefully limited investigations—at least ten so far.The reports of several of these are reprinted in the Greenberg and Dratel compilation. Most of the investigations, such as those conducted by Maj. Gen. George Fay and Lt. Gen. Anthony Jones, involved uniformed military officials examining the conduct of their subordinates; these officers lacked the authority to scrutinize senior Pentagon officials. Typical was the most recent investigation, conducted by Vice Admiral Albert T. Church III, who said he did not interview senior officials such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld or draw conclusions about their individual responsibility. 11The one investigation with the theoretical capacity to examine the conduct of Secretary Rumsfeld and his top aides—the inquiry led by former secretary of def ense James Schlesinger—was initiated by Rumsfeld himself and seemed to go out of its way to distance Rumsfeld from the problem. At the press conference releasing the investigative report, Schlesinger said that Rumsfeld’s resignation â€Å"would be a boon to all America’s enemies. † The Schlesinger investigation lacked the independence of, for example, the September 11 Commission, which was established with the active involvement of the U.S. Congress. 12 As for the CIA—the branch of the U. S. government believed to hold the most important terrorist suspects—it has apparently escaped scrutiny by anyone other than its own inspector general. Meanwhile, no one seems to be looking at the role of President Bush and other senior administration officials. As for criminal investigations, there has been none independent of the Bush administration. When an unidentified government official retaliated against a critic of the administration by revealing th at his wife was a CIA agent—a erious crime because it could endanger her—the administration agreed, under pressure, to appoint a special prosecutor who has been promised independence from administration direction. Yet the administration has refused to appoint a special prosecutor to determine whether senior officials authorized torture and other coercive interrogation—a far more serious and systematic offense. So far, prosecutors 396 Getting Away with Torture under the direction of the administration have focused only on the little guy. The Policies Behind Abu Ghraib What would a genuinely independent investigation find?It would reveal that the abusive interrogation seen at Abu Ghraib did not erupt spontaneously at the lowest levels of the military chain of command. It was not merely a â€Å"management† failure, as the Schlesinger investigation suggested. As shown in the collection of official documents organized by Greenberg and Dratel and Danner, Danner ’s analysis, and the Human Rights Watch study, these abuses were the direct product of an environment of lawlessness, an atmosphere created by policy decisions taken at the highest levels of the Bush administration, long before the start of the Iraq war.They reflect a determination to fight terrorism unconstrained by fundamental principles of international human rights and humanitarian law, despite commitments by the United States and governments around the world to respect those principles even in times of war and severe security threats. These policy decisions included: †¢ The decision not to grant the detainees in U. S. custody at Guantanamo their rights under the Geneva Conventions, even though the conventions apply to all people picked up on the battlefield of Afghanistan.Senior Bush officials vowed that all detainees would be treated â€Å"humanely,† but that vow seems never to have been seriously implemented and at times was qualified (and arguably eviscera ted) by a selfcreated exception for â€Å"military necessity. † Meanwhile, the effective shredding of the Geneva Conventions—and the corresponding sidestepping of the U. S. Army’s interrogation manual—sent U. S. interrogators the signal that, in the words of one leading counterterrorist official, â€Å"the gloves come off. †13 The decision not to clarify for nearly two years that, regardless of the applicability of the Geneva Conventions, all detainees in U. S. custody are protected by the parallel requirements of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention Against Torture. Even when, at the urging of human rights groups, the Pentagon’s general counsel belatedly reaffirmed, in June 2003, that CAT prohibited not only torture but also other forms of ill treatment, that announcement was communicated to interrogators, if at all, in a way that had no discernible impact on their behavior.Kenneth Roth 397 †¢ The decision to interpret the prohibition of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment narrowly, to permit certain forms of coercive interrogation—that is, certain efforts to ratchet up a suspect’s pain, suffering, and humiliation to make him talk. At the time of ratifying the ICCPR in 1992 and the CAT in 1994, the U. S. government said it would interpret this prohibition to mean the same thing as the requirements of the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution.The clear intent was to require that if an interrogation technique would be unconstitutional if used in an American police station or jail, it would violate these treaties if used against suspects overseas. Yet U. S. interrogators under the Bush administration have routinely subjected overseas terrorist suspects to abusive techniques that would clearly have been prohibited if used in the United States. That the use of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment was intentional was suggested by Att orneyGeneral Alberto Gonzales during his confirmation process.In his written reply to Senate questions—after the administration had supposedly repudiated the worst aspects of its torture memos—he interpreted the U. S. reservation as permitting the use of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment so long as it was done against non-Americans outside the United States. 14 That makes the United States the only government in the world to claim openly as a matter of policy the power to use cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.Other governments obviously subject detainees to inhumane treatment or worse as a matter of clandestine policy, but the Bush administration is the only government to proclaim this policy publicly. Reflecting that policy, the Bush administration in late 2004 successfully stopped a congressional effort to proscribe the CIA’s use of torture and inhumane treatment in interrogation. †¢ The decision to hold some suspects—eleven known15 and r eportedly some three dozen—in unacknowledged incommunicado detention, beyond the reach of even the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).Many other suspects were apparently temporarily hidden from the ICRC. Victims of such â€Å"disappearances† are at the greatest risk of torture and other mistreatment. For example, U. S. forces continue to maintain closed detention sites in Afghanistan, where beatings, threats, and sexual humiliation are still reported. At least twenty-six prisoners have died in U. S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 in what army and navy investigators have concluded or suspect were acts of criminal homicide. 16 One of those deaths was as recently as September 2004. The refusal for over two years to prosecute U. S. soldiers implicated in the December 2002 deaths of two suspects in U. S. custody in Afghanistan—deaths ruled â€Å"homicides† by U. S. Army pathologists. 398 Getting Away with Torture Instead, the interroga tors were sent to Abu Ghraib, where some were allegedly involved in more abuse. †¢ The approval by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld of some interrogation methods for Guantanamo that violated, at the very least, the prohibition of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and possibly the ban on torture.These techniques included placing detainees in painful stress positions, hooding them, stripping them of their clothes, and scaring them with guard dogs. That approval was later rescinded, but it contributed to the environment in which the legal obligations of the United States were seen as dispensable. †¢ The reported approval by an unidentified senior Bush administration official, and use, of â€Å"water boarding†Ã¢â‚¬â€known as the â€Å"submarine† in Latin America—a torture technique in which the victim is made to believe he will drown, and in practice sometimes does.Remarkably, Porter Goss, the CIA director, defended water boarding in March 2005 testimon y before the Senate as a â€Å"professional interrogation technique. †17 †¢ The sending of suspects to governments such as Syria, Uzbekistan, and Egypt that practice systematic torture. Sometimes diplomatic assurances have been sought that the suspects would not be mistreated, but if, as in these cases, the government receiving the suspect routinely flouts its legal obligation under the CAT, it is wrong to expect better compliance with the nonbinding word of a diplomat.The administration claimed that it monitored prisoners’ treatment, but a single prisoner, lacking the anonymity afforded by a larger group, would often be unable to report abuse for fear of reprisal. One U. S. official who visited foreign detention sites disparaged this charade: â€Å"They say they are not abusing them, and that satisfies the legal requirement, but we all know they do. †18 †¢ The decision (adopted by the Bush administration from its earliest days) to oppose and undermine the International Criminal Court (ICC), in part out of fear that it might compel the United States to prosecute U.S. personnel implicated in war crimes or other comparable offenses that the administration would prefer to ignore. The administration spoke in terms of the ICC infringing U. S. sovereignty, but since the ICC could not have jurisdiction over offenses committed by Americans in the United States without Washington’s consent, the sovereignty argument actually cuts the other way: it is a violation of the sovereignty of other governments on whose territory an atrocity might be committed not to be free to determine whether to prosecute the crime themselves or to send the matter to the ICC.The administration’s position on the ICC was thus reduced to an assertion of exceptionalism—a claim that no international enforcement regime should regulate U. S. criminality overseas. Kenneth Roth 399 That signaled the administration’s determination to protect U. S. personnel from external accountability for any serious human rights offense that it might authorize. Since, in the absence of a special prosecutor, the administration itself controlled the prospects for domestic criminal accountability, its position offered an effective promise of impunity. The decision by the Justice Department, the Defense Department, and the White House counsel to concoct dubious legal theories to justify torture, despite objections from the State Department and professional military attorneys. Under the direction of politically appointed lawyers, the administration offered such absurd interpretations of the law as the claim that coercion is not torture unless the pain caused is â€Å"equivalent to the pain that would be associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure, or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body function will likely result. Similarly, the administration claimed that President Bush has â€Å"command er-in-chief authority† to order torture—a theory under which Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein may as well be given the keys to their jail cells, since they too presumably would have had â€Å"commander-in-chief authority† to authorize the atrocities that they directed. The Justice Department, in a December 2004 memorandum modifying the definition of torture, chose not to repudiate the claim about commander-in-chief authority to order torture but instead stated that repudiation was unnecessary because, it said, the president opposes torture as a matter of policy.These policy decisions, taken not by low-level soldiers but by senior officials of the Bush administration, created an â€Å"anything goes† atmosphere, an environment in which the ends were assumed to justify the means. Sometimes the mistreatment of detainees was merely tolerated, but at other times it was actively encouraged or even ordered. In that environment, when the demand came from on hi gh for â€Å"actionable intelligence†Ã¢â‚¬â€intelligence that might help stem the steady stream of U. S. asualties at the hands of Iraqi insurgents—it was hardly surprising that interrogators saw no obstacle in the legal prohibition of torture and mistreatment. Nor did these basic human rights rules limit the broader effort to protect Americans from the post-September 11 risks of terrorism. To this day, the Bush administration has failed to repudiate many of these decisions. It continues to refuse to apply the Geneva Conventions to any of the more than 500 detainees held at Guantanamo (despite a U. S. court ruling rejecting its position) and to many others detained in Iraq and Afghanistan.It continues to â€Å"disappear† detainees, despite ample proof that these â€Å"ghost detainees† are extraordinarily vulnerable 400 Getting Away with Torture to torture. It continues to defend the practice of â€Å"rendering† suspects to governments that torture on the basis of unbelievable assurances and meaningless monitoring. It refuses to accept the duty never to use cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment anywhere. It continues its vendetta against the ICC. It has only selectively repudiated the many specious arguments for torture contained in the administration lawyers’ notorious â€Å"torture memos. And long after the abuses of Abu Ghraib became public—at least as late as June 2004—the Bush administration reportedly continued to subject Guantanamo detainees to beatings, prolonged isolation, sexual humiliation, extreme temperatures, and painful stress positioning, all practices that the ICRC reportedly called â€Å"tantamount to torture. †19 In selecting his cabinet for his second presidential term, President Bush seemed to rule out even informal accountability. Secretary of State Colin Powell, the cabinet official who most forcefully opposed the administration’s disavowal of the Geneva Conventions, left his post.Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who ordered abusive interrogation techniques in violation of international law, stayed on. White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, who sought production of the memos justifying torture and who wrote that the fight against terrorism renders â€Å"obsolete† and â€Å"quaint† the Geneva Conventions’ limitations on the interrogation and treatment of prisoners, was rewarded with appointment as attorney general. 20 As for the broader Bush administration, the November 2004 electoral victory seems to have reinforced its traditional disinclination to serious self-examination.It persists in its refusal to admit any policylevel misconduct in the treatment of detainees under interrogation. The Twisted Logic of Torture The Bush administration’s policy of abusive interrogation has received important support in the United States from three Harvard professors: Alan Dershowitz and Phil Heymann of Harvard Law School and Juliette Kayy em of Harvard’s Kennedy School. Rather than reinforce the absolute prohibitions of international law, each would seek to regulate exceptions to the prohibitions on mistreating detainees.Ostensibly their aim is to curtail that mistreatment but, by legitimizing it through regulation, they would have the opposite effect. Dershowitz, in his book Why Terrorism Works and in his chapter in the Levinson compilation, typifies this regulatory approach. In his view, torture is inevitable, so prohibiting it will only drive it underground, where low-level officials use it in their discretion. Instead, he would subject torture to judicial oversight by requiring investigators who want Kenneth Roth 401 to use it to seek the approval of a judge—to procure a torture warrant, much like they would seek a search warrant or an arrest warrant.This independent scrutiny, he posits, would reduce the incidence of torture. Dershowitz’s argument is built largely on faith that forcing tortur e into the open would reduce its use. But he simply assumes that judges would have a less permissive attitude toward torture than do the senior members of the Bush administration. The available evidence is not encouraging. Since torture would presumably be sought in connection with investigations into serious criminal or national security matters, the information behind the request for a torture warrant would presumably be secret.As in the case of a search warrant or a wiretap, that would mean an ex parte application to a judge, with no notice to the would-be victim of torture and no independent counsel opposing the request. How rigorous would judicial oversight be in such cases? We can derive some sense from the record of the courts used to approve foreign intelligence wiretaps, and the picture is not impressive. According to the Center for Democracy and Technology, between 1993 and 2003, courts operating under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) were asked to approve nearly 10,000 wiretaps of foreign sovereign agents.Of those, all but four were approved. When an intelligence agent claims that life-and-death matters of national security are at stake, there is no reason to believe that the scrutiny by Dershowitz’s torture courts would be any more rigorous. In the meantime, by signaling that torture is at least sometimes acceptable, Deshowitz would reduce the stigma associated with its use. Torture would no longer be a despicable practice never to be used, but merely one more tool in the law enforcement arsenal.Torture specialists eager to practice their trade would appear, international prohibitions of torture would be undermined, and America’s credibility as an opponent of torture would be deeply tarnished. Dershowitz points out that accepting clandestine torture also legitimizes it, but he seems never seriously to consider the alternative: vigorously trying to stop, and prosecute, anyone who breaches the absolute ban on torture. He ymann and Kayyem take a slightly different approach in their monograph, Preserving Security and Democratic Freedoms in the War on Terrorism. They foreswear torture but would allow a U. S. resident to order cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment so long as he or she certified to Congress that American lives were at stake. Again, the theory is that such treatment would be rare because the president would be reluctant to invoke that power. But since the president has already claimed â€Å"commander-in-chief authority† to order even torture, and since his attorney general claimed the power as recently as January 2005 to 402 Getting Away with Torture order cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment so long as it is used against non-Americans overseas,21 Heymann and Kayyem are probably overestimating presidential inhibitions.Making the defense against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment depend on the man who has made such treatment a central part of U. S. counterterrorism strategy i s truly asking the fox to guard the chicken coop. Heymann and Kayyem take a similar regulatory approach to coercive interrogation short of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The U. S. Army’s field manual on intelligence interrogation makes clear that coercive interrogation is unnecessary, unreliable, and wrong.That’s because, as most professional interrogators explain, coercive interrogation is far less likely to produce reliable information than the time-tested methods of careful questioning, probing, cross-checking, and gaining the confidence of the detainee. A person facing severe pain is likely to say whatever he thinks will stop the torture. But a skilled interrogator can often extract accurate information from the toughest suspect without resorting to coercion. Yet Heymann and Kayyem would abandon that bright-line rule and permit coercive interrogation so long as the president notifies Congress of the techniques to be used.However, setting American interroga tors free from the firm mooring of the U. S. Army field manual can be dangerous, as we have seen so painfully in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. If mere coercion (itself a violation of the Geneva Conventions in wartime) does not work—and, given that the suspect is supposedly a hardened terrorist, often it will not—interrogators will be all too tempted to ratchet up the pain, suffering, and humiliation until the suspect cracks, regardless of the dubious reliability of information provided in such circumstances.In this way, coercion predictably gives way to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, which in turn gives rise to torture. The proposals from Dershowitz and Heymann and Kayyem suffer from the same fundamental defect: they seek to regulate the mistreatment of detainees rather than reinforce the prohibition against such abuse. In the end, any effort to regulate mistreatment ends up legitimizing it and inviting repetition. â€Å"Never† can not be redeemed if allowed to be read as â€Å"sometimes. † Regulation too easily becomes license.Behind the Dershowitz and Heymann and Kayyem proposals is some variation of the â€Å"ticking bomb† scenario, a situation in which interrogators are said to believe that a terrorist suspect in custody knows where a ticking bomb has been planted and must urgently force that information from him to save lives. Torture and inhumane treatment Kenneth Roth 403 may be wrong, those who talk of ticking bombs would concede, but the mass murder of a terrorist attack is worse, so in these supposedly rare situations, the lesser evil must be tolerated to prevent the greater one.The ticking bomb scenario makes for great philosophical discussion, but it rarely arises in real life, at least not in a way that avoids opening the door to pervasive torture. In fact, interrogators hardly ever learn that a suspect in custody knows of a particular, imminent terrorist bombing. Intelligence is rar ely if ever good enough to demonstrate a particular suspect’s knowledge of an imminent attack. Instead, interrogators tend to use circumstantial evidence to show such â€Å"knowledge,† such as someone’s association with or presumed membership in a terrorist group.Moreover, the ticking bomb scenario is a dangerously expansive metaphor capable of embracing anyone who might have knowledge not just of immediate attacks but also of attacks at unspecified future times. After all, why are the victims of only an imminent terrorist attack deserving of protection by torture and mistreatment? Why not also use such coercion to prevent a terrorist attack tomorrow or next week or next year? And once the taboo against torture and mistreatment is broken, why stop with the alleged terrorists themselves?Why not also torture and abuse their families or associates—or anyone who might provide lifesaving information? The slope is very slippery. Israel’s experience is in structive in showing how dangerously elastic the ticking bomb rationale can become, as described by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem in its report on interrogations by Israel’s intelligence agency, the General Security Services (GSS). In 1987, an official government commission, headed by former Israeli Supreme Court president Moshe Landau, recommended authorizing the use of â€Å"moderate physical pressure† in ticking bomb situations.As B’Tselem describes, a practice initially justified as rare and exceptional, taken only when necessary to save lives, gradually became standard GSS procedure. Soon, some 80 to 90 percent of Palestinian security detainees were being tortured until 1999 when the Israeli Supreme Court curtailed the practice. Dershowitz cites the court’s belated intervention as validation of his theory that regulating torture is the best way to defeat it, but he never asks whether the severe victimization of so many Palestinians c ould have been avoided with a prohibitory approach from the start.Notably, Israel’s escalation in the use of torture took place even though a ministerial committee chaired by the prime minister was supervising interrogation practices—a regulatory procedure similar to the one proposed by Heymann and Kayyem. Indeed, in September 1994, following several suicide bombings, the ministerial committee 404 Getting Away with Torture even loosened the restrictions on interrogators by permitting â€Å"increased physical pressure. † Heymann and Kayyem never explain why, especially in light of the abysmal record of the Bush administration, we should expect any better from high-level U. S. officials.The Way Forward Faced with substantial evidence showing that the abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere were caused in large part by official government policies, the Bush administration must reaffirm the importance of making human rights a guiding force for U. S. conduct, even in figh ting terrorism. That requires acknowledging and reversing the policy decisions behind the administration’s torture and mistreatment of detainees, holding accountable those responsible at all levels of government for this abuse (not just a bunch of privates and sergeants), and publicly committing to ending all forms of coercive interrogation.These steps are necessary to reaffirm the prohibition of torture and ill treatment, to redeem Washington’s voice as a credible proponent of human rights, and to restore the effectiveness of a U. S. -led campaign against terrorism. Yet all that is easier said than done. How can President Bush and the Republican-controlled U. S. Congress be convinced to establish a fully independent investigative commission—similar to the one created to examine the attacks of September 11, 2001—to determine what went wrong in the administration’s interrogation practices and to prescribe remedial steps?How can Attorney-General Gonz ales, who as White House counsel played a central role in formulating the administration’s interrogation policy, be persuaded to recognize his obvious conflict of interest and appoint a special prosecutor charged with investigating criminal misconduct independently of the Justice Department’s direction? These are not steps that the administration or its congressional allies will take willingly. Pressure will be needed. And that pressure cannot and should not come from only the usual suspects.The torture and abuse of prisoners is an affront to the most basic American values. It is antithetical to the core beliefs in the integrity of the individual on which the United States was founded. And it violates one of the most basic prohibitions of international law. This is not a partisan concern, not an issue limited to one part of the political spectrum. It is a matter that all Americans—and their friends around the world—should insist be meaningfully addressed and changed.It is an issue that should preoccupy governments, whether friend or foe, as well as such international organizations and actors as Kenneth Roth 405 the UN Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights Committee, High Commissioner on Human Rights, and Special Rapporteur on Torture. Taking on the world’s superpower is never easy, but it is essential if the basic architecture of international human rights law and institutions is not to be deeply compromised.As Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the March 2005 International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security: â€Å"Upholding human rights is not merely compatible with successful counter-terrorism strategy. It is an essential element. †22 There is no room for torture, even in fighting terrorism; it risks undermining the foundation on which all of our rights rest. Notes Kenneth Roth is executive director of Human Rights Watch. 1. See Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Art. 1. . Ibid. , Art. 16. 3. See â€Å"Malaysia: P. M’s Visit Puts Spotlight on Detainee Abuse,† Human Rights Watch News, 19 July 2004, available online at http://hrw. org/english/ docs/2004/07/19/malays9097. htm. 4. Fifty-fifth Inaugural Ceremony, 20 January 2005; see www. whitehouse. gov/inaugural. 5. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Field Manual 34-52 Intelligence Interrogation, Washington, D. C. , 28 September 1992, available online at http://atiam. train. army. mil/portal/atia/adlsc/view/public/302562-1/FM/3452/FM34_52. PDF. 6. ‘Torture Intelligence’ Criticized,† BBC News, 11 October 2004, available online at http://news. bbc. co. uk/1/hi/uk/3732488. stm. 7. Douglas Jehl, â€Å"C. I. A. Is Seen as Seeking New Role on Detainees,† New York Times, 16 February 2005. 8. â€Å"Red Double-Crossed Again,† Wall Street Journal, 2 December 2004. 9. Remarks by President Bush and His Majesty King Abdullah II of the Hashemite K ingdom of Jordan in a Press Availability, 6 May 2004, available online at www. whitehouse. gov/news/releases/2004/05/20040506-9. html. 10. Available online at http://www. rw. org/reports/2004/usa0604/. 11. Josh White and Bradley Graham, â€Å"Senators Question Absence of Blame in Abuse Report,† Washington Post, 11 March 2005. 12. The 9/11 Commission Report, see http://a257. g. akamaitech. net/7/257/ 2422/05aug20041050/www. gpoaccess. gov/911/pdf/fullreport. pdf. 13. Testimony of Cofer Black, former director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, before a joint session of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, 26 September 2002, available online at www. fas. org/irp/congress/ 2002_hr/092602black. tml. (â€Å"All I want to say is that there was ‘before’ 9/11 and ‘after’ 9/11. After 9/11 the gloves come off. †) 14. â€Å"A Degrading Policy,† Washington Post, 26 January 2005; â€Å"U. S. Justifying Abuse of Detainees,† H uman Rights Watch News, 25 January 2005. 406 Getting Away with Torture 15. Human Rights Watch, The United States’ â€Å"Disappeared†: The CIA’s Long-Term â€Å"Ghost Detainees† (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2004), available online at www. hrw. org/backgrounder/usa/us1004/index. htm. 16. Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt, â€Å"U. S.Military Says 26 Inmate Deaths May Be Homicide,† New York Times, 16 March 2005. 17. Douglas Jehl, â€Å"Questions Are Left by C. I. A. Chief on the Use of Torture,† New York Times, 18 March 2005. 18. Dana Priest, â€Å"CIA’s Assurances on Transferred Suspects Doubted,† Washington Post, 17 March 2005. 19. Neil A. Lewis, â€Å"Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantanamo,† New York Times, 30 November 2004. 20. Memorandum to the President from Alberto R. Gonzales, 25 January 2002, available online at www. msnbc. msn. com/id/4999148/site/newsweek. â€Å"In my judgment, this new paradigm [the war aga inst terrorism] renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded . . . [listed] privileges. †) 21. â€Å"A Degrading Policy† and â€Å"U. S. Justifying Abuse of Detainees. † 22. Keynote address to the Closing Plenary of the International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security, â€Å"A Global Strategy for Fighting Terrorism,† Madrid, Spain, 10 March 2005, available online at www. un. org/apps/sg/ sgstats. asp? nid=1345.

Euthanisa essays

Euthanisa essays Not many of us spend our days in agonizing pain lying in bed wishing we were dead. Not many of us ponder up ways to end our own lives while thinking of ourselves as just burdens on those around us. For those that do however, there is often that chance to call for help. Having someone knowingly and intentionally provide the means to help suicidal persons kill themselves in a dignified manner is called assisted suicide, also known as euthanasia (Merrian-Webber 56-59). But, does assisted suicide really insure a dignified death? Euthanasia has been accepted legally and ethically in various forms in many societies. Euthanasia (Greek meaning "easy death") is the act of inducing gentle death (Cassell 1) . In ancient Greece and Rome it was permissible in certain situations to help others die. Both Socrates and Plato sanctioned forms of euthanasia in certain cases. Voluntary euthanasia for the elderly was an approved custom in several ancient societies. Great Britain, in 1935 and the United States, in 1938 established organizations supporting the legalization of voluntary euthanasia(Rehnke 7). The United States Supreme Court ruled that individuals have the constitutional right to decide what they want to happen to their body in the event that they become terminally ill or comatose (Russell 1). As, always there are those who disagree with anti-euthanasia task forces, and they will stop at nothing to continually push for the right to have assistance in dignifying their own death (Offsie 3). Many fight for those with a terminal illness arguing that it is their only way out of the pain and agony, and many speak out for those sentenced with other life changing problems, arguing that life no longer has any quality. It is not right for people to stop others from pursuing their hopes and wishes when it comes to suicide, but it is not justifiable to provide m ...

Political Psychology essays

Political Psychology essays Psychology has played an integral part in the scope of politics throughout history, from ancient times, through World Wars, and probably even more so, through the present day American government and all of its political scandals. In a broad sense, politics are the acts or practices of those individuals who seek any position of power or advantage. The psychology of politics refers to an individuals concerns, his conceptions, his reactions, and his responses to his, and in a sense, others political experience and behavior. Political behavior includes all of an individuals activity that is directed toward a solution of the problems of daily living. Quite possibly, the most important thing for any politician, or any leader for that matter, to gain, and maintain, is control over those that this person wishes to govern or rule. Control can be gained in a number of ways; through coercion, persuasion, and even fear, to name a few. Since politics is an aspect of control, there is a relation between coercion and politics. There are various theories that coercion is the main characteristic of politics. There are two steps in the use of coercion to control. First, the politician or leader must induce in the person or group that he is looking to control, a severe discomfort, such as, injury, either to them or objects or things that they would consider dear or important to themselves. Second, he must convince the person or group, that the only way to lessen the discomfort is to comply or conform to a course of behavior as set by the politician or leader. Because of the potential for severe discomfort, coercion has a large effect o n the psyche. This model, though not as readily used now, was very present and widely used, especially in Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, and in Russia, under Josef Stalin. This model is what is commonly known at totalitarianism. The object of the totalitarian government is simple: to contro ...

Active Voluntary and Nonvoluntary Euthanasia Essay Example for Free

Active Voluntary and Nonvoluntary Euthanasia Essay ? The term euthanasia originated from the Greek word for â€Å"good death. † It is the act or practice of ending the life of a person either by lethal injection or the deferment of medical treatment (Munson, 2012, p. 578). Many view euthanasia as simply bringing relief by alleviating pain and suffering. Euthanasia has been a long-standing ethical debate for decades in the United States. Active euthanasia is only legal in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland and in the United States in the states of Washington, Oregon and Montana (Angell). Several surveys indicate that roughly two thirds of the American public now support physician-assisted suicide, and more than half the doctors in the United States do too (Angell). Active voluntary and nonvoluntary euthanasia matter because they allow the patient or family to relieve them of pain and suffering, and to die with dignity and respect. In this paper I will argue that it is immoral and unethical to deny a patient the right to die and that active voluntary and nonvoluntary euthanasia should be a legal practice in the United States. When denied the right to die one can endure a tremendous amount of physiological and emotional pain. The 1973 case of Dax Cowart is a great example of this. Dax went through fourteen months of grueling, barbaric treatments of skin debriding, tank soakings, and dressing changes. He compared the debridements to being skinned alive and the solutions poured over his skin were like having alcohol poured over raw flesh except it burns more and longer (Asher). Dax requested on several different occasions to just leave him alone and let him die but all of his physicians’ refused his requests and kept going with their treatment plan. The physicians were going against the principle of non-maleficence, which states, â€Å" Physicians have an obligation to do no harm to the patient† (Munson, 2012, p. 892). Dax suffered through painful debridements for months without proper pain control because his physicians were too worried about him becoming addicted to the pain medications. They knew how painful these debridements were for their patient and they continued to maintain the same treatment plan with no modifications. They deliberately violated the principle of non-maleficence. If active voluntary euthanasia were an acceptable practice in society, Dax ould have been able to refuse the treatments and die by way of infection, or a physician could have given him a lethal injection. Either of these options would have helped Dax to die keeping his wishes of dignity and respect intact. In this case, death is less harmful than the barbaric treatments that Dax had to endure for countless months. Today, many Americans are so concerned about the possibility of a lingering, high technology death that they are responsive to the idea of doctors being allowed to help them die (Angell). This is why we need to legalize active voluntary and nonvoluntary euthanasia in the United States. In an article from The New England Journal of Medicine, Marcia Angell states, â€Å"The most important ethical principle in medicine is respect for each patient’s autonomy, and that when this principle conflicts with others, it should almost always take precedence† (Angell). To deny someone his or her autonomy is to treat that individual as something less than a person (Munson, 2012, p. 900). It is wrong to take control of someone else’s life and to dictate their actions. Each person has a right to act autonomously; in doing this they must have the ability to choose among different options. A forced option is no option at all (Munson, 2012, p. 901). Dax Cowart was denied his autonomy when the doctors would not listen to his wishes of wanting to die; instead they did what they wanted. Munson states that, â€Å"Making decisions for the good of others, without consulting their wishes, deprives them of their status as autonomous agents† (Munson, 2012, p. 902). Dax was not given options to choose from, nor was his voice heard at all in the process, which violated the entire principle of autonomy. It should have been his choice because it was his life. In a completely different case, Terri Schiavo was denied her autonomy when she was kept alive on a feeding tube, when she had previously stated this was not what she wanted if it ever came down to it. With our autonomy, we should have the right to say how and when we die. It should not be based solely on societies morals, values, and beliefs. No one else should have the right to decide how one ends their life, except for that person. We value our autonomy because we are more willing to live with our own choices then to have somebody else decide for us. Active voluntary and nonvoluntary euthanasia give patients their autonomy and right to die with dignity. Active voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia should be an approved practice because it allows patients who are in a persistent vegetative state the chance to die with dignity, while allowing their loved ones to keep their morals and values in place. Patients that end up in such unfortunate circumstances are unable to use their autonomy and make decisions regarding their treatment and potential end of life care. Maintaining one’s autonomy is part of a dignified death. If these were approved practices, it would allow family members the chance to put an end to their loved one’s suffering the way they would have wanted. It is unethical to force someone to do something against their will, as it is also immoral to make someone live if it’s against their wants or beliefs. On February 26, 1990, Terri Schiavo collapsed and unexpectedly went into a persistent vegetative state, where she remained for fifteen years by sustaining artificial hydration and nutrition through a feeding tube. Terri lost all dignity and autonomy when her terminal illness came, requiring care around the clock. Michael Schiavo believed that his wife would not want to be kept alive in her condition, which ultimately lead to his decision of discontinuing her feeding tube. After a long, tortuous thirteen days, Terri starved to death. The way Terri died was very inhumane and unethical; however it is an approved practice in the United States that continues to be used even today. If active voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia were an acceptable practice in the United States, patients like Terri would not have to die in such a barbaric way. It is unethical to allow a patient to starve to death, as it is also unethical to deny a patient the right to die (Munson, 2012). Non-voluntary euthanasia would have allowed Terri to die pain free with her dignity and wishes in place. In Timothy Quill’s article, Death and Dignity, A Case of Individualized Decision Making, he talks about his patient Diane, who was diagnosed with leukemia. Diane denied all treatments and eventually agreed upon home hospice care. It was extremely important to Diane to maintain control of herself and her dignity during the time remaining to her. She wanted to remain an autonomous person, and when this was no longer possible, she clearly wanted to die. She asked Dr. Quill for sleeping pills, which he wrote a prescription for knowing she had trouble sleeping, but also knowing it could be a means to an end when the time came for Diane. Diane was able to make an informed decision to take her own life and to die with dignity and her wishes respected in the end. Dr. Quill states, â€Å"I know we have measures to help control pain and lessen suffering, to think that people do not suffer in the process of dying is an illusion† (Quill 2). This is why people in our society should be more open-minded to active voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia. These two concepts can allow our terminally ill, suffering, loved ones to die with the dignity and respect they deserve, like Diane was able to do. Patients who are diagnosed with a terminal illness such as cancer or progressive neurological disorders eventually become weak and debilitated. These patients end up relying on family, friends, and healthcare workers to help them do their activities of daily living such as batheing and eating. Many of these terminally ill patients lay in bed suffering, with zero quality of life, just waiting to die. These patients have lost their will to live and find no joy or simple pleasures left in life because their pain has become too unbearable. These patients suffer on a daily basis, while family and friends watch, helplessly; as their loved ones decline day by day. It is unethical for society to expect these patients to go on with the quality of life they are maintaining. Terminally ill patients should be allowed to control their demise and end their suffering at their own disposal. Therefore, active voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia should be a socially acceptable and approved legal practice in the United States. One could oppose the original argument saying that active voluntary and nonvoluntary euthanasia should remain illegal in the United States because it is inhumane and barbaric. Patients do have other options such as hospice programs and pain control. These provide alternative options that can be ethically and morally acceptable in our society. There are a number of options to treat chronic pain such as narcotics. There are an enormous variety of narcotics on the market, all of which can be tried until a specific one is found to be to right for that patient. Palliative care and hospice programs are gaining more attention for the end of life care they provide for terminally ill patients. The goals of these programs are based on comfort care, dignity and respect to the terminally ill patient. These programs allow patients to die with their dignity, respect, morals, and values all in place. Due to the fact that there are other options available for terminally ill patients, other than death, active voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia should remain an illegal practice in the United States. Another powerful argument made by Marcia Angell is that â€Å"people do not need assistance to commit suicide, with enough determination they can do it themselves† (Angell). People who are too debilitated for physical means can simply just stop eating and drinking and ultimately starve to death, while others given a terminal diagnosis, that have physical means, can end their lives by pills or a gun. This is another reason why active voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia should remain an illegal practice in the United States. In response to this objection, a rule utilitarian could argue that, the taking of a human life is permissible when suffering is intense and the condition of the person permits no legitimate hope (Munson, 2012, p. 84). Pain cannot always be controlled by narcotics and pain-alleviating techniques, there will always be a small percentage of patients whose suffering simply cannot be adequately controlled. Palliative care and hospice programs are a great idea but are not available to everyone because not everyone has insurance and the means to afford them. They can be very pricy and space is very limited, even with insurance and affordab ility in place. Allowing active voluntary and nonvoluntary euthanasia would give patients more ethical options for death, rather then having to commit the ultimate sin of suicide by starvation or the use of a gun. It is unethical to make a person feel that starvation or the use a gun are their only options. Having the options that active voluntary and nonvoluntary euthanasia can give, would enable a patient to many more ethical options for death, which would ultimately, relieve family members from having to deal with the emotional pain and suffering of finding their loved one’s mutilated body after a self inflicted suicide by use of a gun. Based on the ethical dilemma at hand, my three points have proven that active voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia should be a legal practice in the United States. One could object this, but I have proven my argument by the physiological and emotional pain one can endure when denied the right to die, by maintaining patients’ autonomy and dignity throughout the process, and by focusing on the quality of life for patients diagnosed with terminal illnesses. The long-standing ethical debate of euthanasia is decades old and will never have a perfect resolution, but one must take into account all sides of each argument to make an informed decision for their self. It is crucial that society remain open-minded regarding this issue. It is unethical to deny a person the right to die. Therefore, active voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia should be made an approved and acceptable end of life medical practice in the United States. Active Voluntary and Nonvoluntary Euthanasia. (2016, Dec 13).

American Identity Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

American Identity Paper - Essay Example e people live in a well established society and it carries all the negative aspects whereas in America the society is not well established and whatever it has, it displays more of positive aspects. In the very outset of the letter the author makes it clear that there is not much of disparity between the rich and the poor in America as the poor and the rich are far removed from each other in Europe; for him, one can find in America â€Å"no aristocratical families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion, no invisible power giving to a few a very visible one; no great manufacturers employing thousands, no great refinements of luxury in Europe† (Crevecoeur, p.49). In America people are after the primary needs of the society whereas in Europe people have already achieved the primary needs and they are after the secondary or tertiary needs of the society. In America all are equipped with ‘the spirit of an industry which is unfettered and unrestrained’ (Crevecoeur, p.50). As the Americans have no superiors to work for, they work for themselves and everyone adheres to the common goodness. No castles and no proud mansions can be seen here: on t he other way the perfect living of both cattle and men are here. J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur considers an American as â€Å"a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury, and useless labour, he has passed toils of a very different nature, rewarded by ample subsistence† (Crevecoeur, p.56). The life in the British colonies of the North America had contributed a lot to the unique identity of the American people. In the British North American colonies people migrated from various places like England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Denmark, Germany, and Sweden. In each and every place of the colonies people had different attitudes, aspects, and notions too. When these mixtures of people joined together