Monday, January 27, 2020

Pressure Groups And Stability Of Regime In Pakistan

Pressure Groups And Stability Of Regime In Pakistan The literature review will focus on the issues and the reasons that affect the stability of regime in Pakistan, mainly focusing on the different forms of pressure groups, the role they have played, whether positive or negative in the past and what is the future of Pakistan if these pressure groups continue to be dominating and influential. Also some of the important eras will be highlighted like Zias regime or Musharrafs regime. Most of the articles are basically theory based with no such statistical model applied and basically focus on the prevailing instability in Pakistan and issues related to it. According to the writer the reason behind the instability is basically the lack of a proper political system in Pakistan. No government has survived for long and successfully. The national assembly has been dissolved 10 times and 3 times the reason was military interference. No political parties have worked together in peace. There has been always a conflict of interest or power. At the same time religious parties have created their own brand of Islam and are exploiting the situation. Lack of fair elections and corruption has led to extreme cases like political victimization and political polarisation. Even though democratic political institutions exist they are weak and fragile. Another factor is of the existence of feudal lords, which has caused a structural imbalance between the middle class, and the upper class, which comprises of mostly landlords and industrialists. Majority of the power lies in the hands of the upper class. Another issue that has been highlighted in the article is the ethnic conflict that has been in debate for years. Other issues that are discussed in the article are the role of army, rising power of the religious parties and lack of proper rule of law. To conclude the article discusses that future of Pakistan lies in a more democratic environment where there is less corruption and the role of judiciary would be stronger in maintaining a balance between the arbitrary power and the party in power. Today the masses are more informed about the political system in Pakistan and one way it has contributed to the development of the country as a whole however there are other major factors like increase in the level of suicide attacks, food shortage, water and power shortage which has adversely affected the country. What was a basic ideology for the existence of the country is now more of a pressure group that seeks to gain power by exploiting the constant military intervention and forcing out the secular political parties. The creation of political polarisation amongst civilian and military, among different ethnic groups and provincial groups and among Islamists and secularist has disrupted the regime stability. Also now religious pressure groups have become more powerful, well armed and well financed and influence different branches of government. People have lost trust in the secular parties like Muslim League (Nawaz) and PPP and at the same time most of the military rulers have used Islamist for their own political purpose, be it Zia or be it Musharraf. According to the author the best way to control the growing power of Islamists is through democracy and strengthening the civil society. Also he suggests that U.S intervention in such matter should be taken especially after September 11 attac ks. The biggest limitation of this article is that it focused more on the role of Islamist in the past than their existing role. Also the conclusion is very uncertain and vague as to how should this pressure group be controlled. The condition of Pakistan is deteriorating and if we look at the current scenario the one of the biggest problem the religious groups that has created disruption and fear among the lives of the people. The writer focuses more on the past the past then the future. From 1947-1958 the two most economically powerful pressure groups in West Pakistan were the landlords and the business groups. In East Pakistan the power lied in the hands of the middle class income groups, after the land acquisition act in 1951. Whereas in West Pakistan feudalism was on it peak whereby one-fifth of the cultivable land was owned by one-half of one percent of the owners. Not only were these landowners active in politics by capturing the majority seats in the assembly. In provincial elections in 1951 in the former Punjab about 80 percent of the members elected were landlords. Out of 40 members in the constituent assembly 28 members were landlord groups. The landlords groups have been long engaged in rivalries. As rival groups were more or less in agreement in retaining their landed interests, politics in Pakistan has become a cynical pursuit of sheer power. The domination of feudal lords and family rivalries affected the politics of Pakistan. The influence of business groups was small since at that time there were few industries. It was indirect, whereby they were formally organized and they put effective pressure on the decision-making authorities from outside the governmental institution. The labor class is very weak, but slowly the trade unions are growing strong and influential when it comes to labor issues. Feudal system is still prevalent in the rural areas whereby the decision of the big landlord is considered to be the final verdict. Also the major leaders of political parties have the landowning background be it Asif Ali zardari, Sharif brothers or Altaf hussain. These landowners due to their rivalries have affected the stability in a bad way. Even though this article is very old but is of extreme relevance as discuses the root cause that lead to the emergence of Pressure groups in Pakistan and is can be of importance when comparing the regimes over-time and how the roles have changed. The later impact of this was that when Zias regime ended the position and the jobs that were promised to the religious Ulemas who had no formal education but merely an informal education in the madrasas were rejected. This frustrated the religious militancy, which resulted in an extreme behavior and disruption. Furthermore religious groups can be categorized as the role of Taliban in destruction of Pakistan. The impact of the training of Talibans during the Afghanistan war and providing them with arms and funding them has now become problematic for Pakistan with a huge number of suicide attacks happening and terrorizing the whole country. Zia-ul-haq immense support for the Islamic activists has resulted in the religious polarisation that exists in todays Pakistan. The statistics say that by 1996 there were around 2463 madrasas only in Punjab and 1700 were supported from outside sources that included the Persian Gulf and Middle East. These Islamic teaching centers are more now a centr al place for the political activities. Thus, it can be concluded from this article that the rise of Islamists and constant battle between Sunni and Shia has resulted in instability in Pakistan over the years. However Pakistan which is presided by Musharraf and is in the shackles of economic recession and anarchy needs heavy financing for not only sustaining the Musharrafs regime but also its economic well being. Despite strong U.S alliance it doesnt do a sufficient to save Pakistan from drenching. Religious extremism diverts a lot of attention of the government of Pakistan as the attacks and events leading to deaths and bloodshed have recently increased in the country. People feel insecure and threatened by their own fellows. In the name of religion wrong doers are exploiting the weaker ones. Military has taken over the country, sometimes directly by enforcing Marshal law and sometimes indirectly by influencing the government when making the decisions. Also the prevailing condition as the country is on the verge of Civil war military is more active within the country than on the outskirts to protect it from its neighbors. The four categories of elites are economic, political social and religious. Each of these exerts different levels of influence over the government. According to the author Political elites include, officers, and members of large landowning families. Economic elites include the industrialist class, which can be considered as newly wealthy and newly influential. The conflict between the two elite classes is one of the major reasons for instability. As 4th president has been dismissed since 1988, the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif won the majority of seats however Benazir Bhutto claimed that the elections were unfair and there has been extensive fraud. Although PPP became popular because of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto for giving an ordinary man a political voice but Benazir ruled the party in a completely opposite opinion of her father by supporting privatization over nationalization and viewing US as a major ally rather than a potential threat. From a position of weakness in martial law period the judiciary has began to re-assert its independence. However, the role of judges is still controversial. The emergence of free press was a positive sign but at the same time, Pakistans mismanagement of economies reflects the weakness of the political structure. The political game has taken over a priority in the long-term policy making. Problems such as fiscal deficiency, debt and long-term business interest erosion have always drifted the economi c cursor. The increase in ethnic fragmentation, religious extremism and centralization if political power has created political crisis which needs to be solved as soon as possible otherwise it will result in civil war amongst the ethnic groups, domestic and international terrorism and implementation of marshal law. Not only the government of Pakistan should work on this but also should form allies with the external players like US, Japan and European Union (EU). Furthermore in this article the author talked about the regime of Nawaz Sharif as this article is written during that period of time. Here the writer highlights some of policies adopted by Nawaz Sharif, in which he aims at centralizing the power to the central and creating anarchy. Furthermore the conflicts between the ethnic groups have increased widely whereby Punjab is considered to be the most popular, developed and largely focused on in terms of allocating resources, improving education system. This has resulted in other 3 provinc es becoming more backward and less developed and sense of deprivation. The writer also discusses on how the civil institution have weakened during Nawaz Sharifs era as he is trying to gain popular support of the military. Other problems that were identified in the article were drug trafficking and settling of refugees. In conclusion the writer has basically focused on support from the international players. first is democratization and civil-military relations; and second islamization and Islamisms relation to the state. Both of issues are separate yet interdependent on each other and needs to be analyzed and focused on as the future of the country is at stake. The writer also highlighted Musharrafs era and despite that he was more liberal than Zia but he used the brand of Islam and is exploiting the public.

Sunday, January 19, 2020

Essay --

â€Å"The world’s information is doubling every two years. Inter- national Data corporation believes that the Digital Universe will grow by 44 times that of 2009 by 2020. IBM estimates that data is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 64% a year or more.†[2] In such a scenario handling data in an effective manner is really important. There is a huge in- crease in data from experimental sciences. Data today comes in all types of formats. It may be structured or unstructured. Unstructured data is everywhere, some of the examples are satellite images, photographs and videos, social media data, scientific data, financial transactions and the list goes on.[3] Different types of information will have different properties. Managing and governing all these different variety of data is not easy. Beyond that managing the data without affecting the performance of the system is crucial. In this paper we will be going through four research papers from the Session Databases of CIKM 2012: Maui, HI, USA which discusses about the Information storage and retrieval. We will dis- cuss techniques that provide a better solution to manage data. The research papers present a storage system for Big spatio-temporal data, a model for positional access of rela- tional data, and approaches for querying DBpedia data and optimization of Data migration. 1. OVERVIEW In this paper, four research papers are discussed which focus on the storage and retrieval of different varieties of data. In the further sections we discuss how the papers we selected have given different models and techniques for effi- cient data management operations like storage and retrieval of different varieties of data. The organization of the paper will be as follows, section 2 will discuss... ... and how the approach gives better performance results. The other two papers Lushan et al [7] and Xiulei et al [8] provide good insights about quering DBpedia and optimizing data migration respectively. Lastly, there are no generalized methods for loading, re- trieving or as a whole handling and managing variety of data. Different approaches have to be used depending upon the kinds of data. There are numerous tools for capturing data and so the data is growing everyday bigger and bigger. Consequently, there is going to be increase in the number of tools to analyse the data because of its diversity. Each tool or technique is precise to a particular kind of data. At the user’s end, one has to learn various approaches to han- dle variety of data. To summarize, a generalized method of handling data would make life smooth. However, it’s not easy to design such a system.

Saturday, January 11, 2020

Controversial Essay: High School Students and Beginners’ Guide

To order an article, please click this link www. thepensters. com/gimatria. Thank you. Most controversial essays are emotionally-packed, hot issues that are intensifying and debatable in nature, thus, sparking conflicts. They contain disputable topics of recurring interests. Simply put, any essay contents where strong contentions are typically presented for long periods build up into particular forms of controversy. Hence, they are generally considered highly polemical pieces of essay. The reason for this is that people have varied ideas and opinions regarding topics that are contentious, debatable or disputable.Controversial essays polarize people to raise powerful arguments in favor of or against any issues. This results from concepts or ideas that have distinct viewpoints, which comprise any specific contexts. Most people are good in writing this type of essay mainly because they follow these basic ideas underlying any controversial essay topics, as follows: First, you will not fi nd any comprehensive guidelines of composing controversial essay topics, but only opinionated views. Subjective topics and observations in crafting articles generally generate controversies but primarily entirely relative.They ensure first if a particular article is a personal essay, opinion piece, news report, persuasive article or thingamajig. Anyway, you should usually come up with timely content articles in furnishing details for this type of essay. Second, identify your subject theme and be familiar with the argument. Remain centered on the theme. Have understanding of your subject matter by doing some research to write impartial content. Just take into account to keep yourself unbiased, except if it is your opinion or own piece.Needless to say, if you would like to write a contentious topic, pick one out that will appropriately elicit your own understanding about the given issue. Even so, be ready to be disputed and/or corrected. Third, be sensitive to your readers. Keep this in mind when writing: Know whom you are addressing or target audience. Keep the readers’ interest and concentrate on the end results. Ask yourself some of these questions: What is your objective as an essayist? Is your essay a controversial article, news items, or persuasive in nature?Provide only correct factual observations even when you are trying to be creative explaining some theories. Readers can be offended or even annoyed with a contentious topic; yet, this does not constitute injurious expressions or offensive practice in the slightest form. Remember, as a writer, you’ve the right to contradict or denounce unfair remarks. As such, obnoxious content should never be tolerated. On the other hand, your readers can consider forgoing your piece, talk about it, or disregard it altogether. That could be their decision. Nevertheless, no writer should be abused.Excessive prejudicial opinions and hateful bashing need to be dealt with judiciously. Injurious activities are unacceptable and no readers or author owns a right to damage or harm another person. In summary, if you choose to create controversial essay topics, yours may result in serious debates requiring supporting evidences. Really, you need profoundly, sensitive understanding of proper argumentation to deal mainly with opinionated essays, which are simply and entirely subjective any way you view them. Eilvu Gimatria Essay Guide To order an article, please click this link www. thepensters. com/gimatria. Thank you. Controversial Essay: High School Students and Beginners’ Guide To order an article, please click this link www. thepensters. com/gimatria. Thank you. Most controversial essays are emotionally-packed, hot issues that are intensifying and debatable in nature, thus, sparking conflicts. They contain disputable topics of recurring interests. Simply put, any essay contents where strong contentions are typically presented for long periods build up into particular forms of controversy. Hence, they are generally considered highly polemical pieces of essay. The reason for this is that people have varied ideas and opinions regarding topics that are contentious, debatable or disputable.Controversial essays polarize people to raise powerful arguments in favor of or against any issues. This results from concepts or ideas that have distinct viewpoints, which comprise any specific contexts. Most people are good in writing this type of essay mainly because they follow these basic ideas underlying any controversial essay topics, as follows: First, you will not fi nd any comprehensive guidelines of composing controversial essay topics, but only opinionated views. Subjective topics and observations in crafting articles generally generate controversies but primarily entirely relative.They ensure first if a particular article is a personal essay, opinion piece, news report, persuasive article or thingamajig. Anyway, you should usually come up with timely content articles in furnishing details for this type of essay. Second, identify your subject theme and be familiar with the argument. Remain centered on the theme. Have understanding of your subject matter by doing some research to write impartial content. Just take into account to keep yourself unbiased, except if it is your opinion or own piece.Needless to say, if you would like to write a contentious topic, pick one out that will appropriately elicit your own understanding about the given issue. Even so, be ready to be disputed and/or corrected. Third, be sensitive to your readers. Keep this in mind when writing: Know whom you are addressing or target audience. Keep the readers’ interest and concentrate on the end results. Ask yourself some of these questions: What is your objective as an essayist? Is your essay a controversial article, news items, or persuasive in nature?Provide only correct factual observations even when you are trying to be creative explaining some theories. Readers can be offended or even annoyed with a contentious topic; yet, this does not constitute injurious expressions or offensive practice in the slightest form. Remember, as a writer, you’ve the right to contradict or denounce unfair remarks. As such, obnoxious content should never be tolerated. On the other hand, your readers can consider forgoing your piece, talk about it, or disregard it altogether. That could be their decision. Nevertheless, no writer should be abused.Excessive prejudicial opinions and hateful bashing need to be dealt with judiciously. Injurious activities are unacceptable and no readers or author owns a right to damage or harm another person. In summary, if you choose to create controversial essay topics, yours may result in serious debates requiring supporting evidences. Really, you need profoundly, sensitive understanding of proper argumentation to deal mainly with opinionated essays, which are simply and entirely subjective any way you view them. Eilvu Gimatria Essay Guide To order an article, please click this link www. thepensters. com/gimatria. Thank you.

Friday, January 3, 2020

A Definition and Overview of Systemic Racism

Systemic racism is both a theoretical concept and a reality. As a theory, it is premised on the research-supported claim that the United States was founded as a racist society, that racism is thus embedded in all social institutions, structures, and social relations within our society.  Rooted in a racist foundation, systemic racism today is composed of intersecting, overlapping, and codependent racist institutions, policies, practices, ideas, and behaviors that give an unjust amount of resources, rights, and power to white people while denying them to people of color. Definition of  Systemic Racism Developed by sociologist Joe Feagin, systemic racism is a popular way of explaining, within the social sciences and humanities, the significance of race and racism  both historically and in todays world.  Feagin describes the concept and the realities attached to it in his well-researched and readable book,  Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, Future Reparations. In it, Feagin uses historical evidence and demographic statistics to create a theory that asserts that the United States was founded in racism since  the Constitution classified black people as the property of whites. Feagin illustrates that the legal recognition of racialized slavery is a cornerstone of a racist social system in which resources and rights were and are unjustly given to white people and unjustly denied to people of color. The theory of systemic racism accounts for individual, institutional, and structural forms of racism. The development of this theory was influenced by other scholars of race, including Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Oliver Cox, Anna Julia Cooper, Kwame Ture, Frantz Fanon, and Patricia Hill Collins, among others. Feagin defines systemic racism in the introduction to the book: Systemic racism includes the complex array of antiblack practices, the unjustly gained political-economic power of whites, the continuing economic and other resource inequalities along racial lines, and the white racist ideologies and attitudes created to maintain and rationalize white privilege and power. Systemic here means that the core racist realities are manifested in each of society’s major parts [...] each major part of U.S. society--the economy, politics, education, religion, the family--reflects the fundamental reality of systemic racism. While Feagin developed the theory based on the history and reality of anti-black racism in the U.S., it is usefully applied to understanding how racism functions generally, both within the U.S. and around the world. Elaborating on the definition quoted above, Feagin uses historical data in his book to illustrate that systemic racism is primarily composed of seven major elements, which we will review here. The Impoverishment of People of Color and Enrichment of White People Feagin explains that the undeserved impoverishment of people of color (POC), which is the basis of the undeserved enrichment of white people, is one of the core aspects of systemic racism. In the U.S. this includes the role that Black slavery played in creating an unjust wealth for white people, their businesses, and their families. It also includes the way white people exploited labor throughout the European colonies prior to the founding of the United States. These historical practices created a social system that had racist economic inequality built into its foundation and was followed through the years in numerous ways, like the practice of redlining that prevented POC from buying homes that would allow their family wealth to grow while protecting and stewarding the family wealth of white people. Undeserved impoverishment also results from POC being forced into  unfavorable mortgage rates,  being channeled by unequal opportunities for education into low-wage jobs, and being p aid less than white people for doing the same jobs. There is no more telling proof of the undeserved impoverishment of POC and the undeserved enrichment of white people than the massive difference in average wealth of white versus Black and Latino families. Vested Group Interests Among White People Within a racist society, white people enjoy many privileges denied to POC. Among these is the way that vested group interests among powerful whites and â€Å"ordinary whites† allow white people to benefit from a white racial identity  without even identifying it as such. This manifests in support among white people for political candidates who are white, and for laws and political and economic policies that work to reproduce a social system that is racist and has racist outcomes. For example, white people as a majority have historically opposed or eliminated diversity-increasing  programs within education and jobs, and ethnic studies courses that better represent the racial history and reality of the U.S. In cases like these, white people in power and ordinary white people have suggested that programs like these are hostile or examples of reverse racism. In fact, the way white people wield political power in the protection of their interests and at the expense of others, w ithout ever claiming to do so, maintains and reproduces a racist society. Alienating Racist Relations Between White People and POC In the U.S., white people hold most positions of power. A look at the membership of Congress, the leadership of colleges and universities, and the top management of corporations makes this clear. In this context, in which white people hold political, economic, cultural, and social power, the racist views and assumptions that course through U.S. society shape the way those in power interact with POC. This leads to a serious and well-documented problem of routine discrimination in all areas of life, and the frequent dehumanization and marginalization of POC, including hate crimes, which serves to alienate them from society and hurt their overall life chances. Examples include discrimination against POC and preferential treatment of white students among university professors, more frequent and severe punishment of Black students in K-12 schools, and  racist police practices, among many others. Ultimately,  alienating racist relations make it difficult for people of different races to recognize their commonalities, and to achieve solidarity in fighting broader patterns of inequality that affect the vast majority of people in society, regardless of their race. The Costs and Burdens of Racism are Borne by POC In his book, Feagin points out with historical documentation that the costs and burdens of racism are disproportionately borne by people of color and by black people especially. Having to bear these unjust costs and burdens is a core aspect of systemic racism. These include shorter life spans, limited income and wealth potential, impacted family structure as a result of mass incarceration of Blacks and Latinos, limited access to educational resources and political participation, state-sanctioned killing by police, and the psychological, emotional, and community tolls of living with less, and being seen as â€Å"less than.  POC are also expected by white people to bear the burden of explaining, proving, and fixing racism, though it is, in fact, white people who are primarily responsible for perpetrating and perpetuating it. The Racial Power of White Elites While all white people and even many POC play a part in perpetuating systemic racism, it is important to recognize the powerful role played by white elites in maintaining this system. White elites, often unconsciously, work to perpetuate systemic racism via politics, law, educational institutions, the economy, and via racist representations and underrepresentation of people of color in mass media. This is also known as white supremacy. For this reason, it is important that the public hold white elites accountable for combatting racism and fostering equality. It is equally important that those who hold positions of power within society reflect the racial diversity of the U.S. The Power of Racist Ideas, Assumptions, and World Views Racist ideology—the collection of ideas, assumptions, and worldviews—is a key component of systemic racism and plays a key role in its reproduction. Racist ideology often asserts that whites are superior to people of color for biological or cultural reasons, and manifests in stereotypes, prejudices, and popular myths and beliefs. These typically include positive images of whiteness in contrast to negative images associated with people of color, such as civility versus brutishness, chaste and pure versus hyper-sexualized, and intelligent and driven versus stupid and lazy. Sociologists recognize that ideology informs our actions and interactions with others, so it follows that racist ideology fosters racism throughout all aspects of society. This happens regardless of whether the person acting in racist ways is aware of doing so. Resistance to Racism Finally, Feagin recognizes that resistance to racism is an important feature of systemic racism. Racism has never been passively accepted by those who suffer it, and so systemic racism is always accompanied by acts of resistance that might manifest as protest, political campaigns, legal battles, resisting white authority figures, and speaking back against racist stereotypes, beliefs, and language. The white backlash that typically follows resistance, like countering Black Lives Matter with all lives matter or blue lives matter, does the work of limiting the effects of resistance and maintaining a racist system. Systemic Racism Is All Around Us and Within Us Feagins theory and all of the research he and many other social scientists have conducted over 100 years illustrates that racism is in fact built into the foundation of U.S. society and that it has over time come to infuse all aspects of it. It is present in our laws, our politics, our economy; in our social institutions; and in how we think and act, whether consciously or subconsciously. Its all around us and inside of us, and for this reason, resistance to racism must also be everywhere if we are to combat it.