Three weeks into my freshman year Russian language class, I was certain I had made a mistake in choosing to study Russian. I chose Russian because, after four years of French in high school, I wanted the challenge of a new language in college. I wanted to push myself. Russian was a completely new language to me. French and English share the same alphabet and have words in common. I could understand Urdu, my parents’ first language, and if I wanted to improve I had family ready to teach me. In my mind, Russian was the perfect language for the challenge I desired.
But Russian was difficult. After three weeks, my classmates could carry on basic conversations during tutorial while I barely had the alphabet down. Next to their growing competency, I felt tongue-tied. My classmates would welcome
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When I was 16 years old, I saw two armed, uniformed men drag a blindfolded man between them and then shove him to the ground. Right next to the group of men was a burning car. I was in Karachi, the day after Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. The city had experienced riots throughout the night. By the time my flight arrived, the city was mostly quiet and army tanks were stationed everywhere. I do not know what happened to that man, but I know that what happened to him was not an isolated incident. I am certain that man was not the only one blindfolded and detained that day.
It would be simple to pass off the perversion of justice that I witnessed in Karachi as the problem of a failed state, but arbitrary arrests are not unique to Pakistan. Abuses of power and rights violations are not unique to Pakistan. Experiences in Russia, France, and Iraq—travels I undertook to expand my perspective and build a non-U.S. centric view of the world—gave evidence to a common thread of denied access to rights, a desire for justice, and human suffering when law is used as a tool to
Originally born in Moscow, Russia, I came to the United States fourteen years ago with my parents along with my unrelated brother as their newly adopted children. Transitioning to a new country can be hard, but not knowing the language is even harder. For the first few years of my life, I struggled to speak, write and read any English. Since then, I have become acclimated to the American culture and state of mind and learned English proficiently, but, lost touch with my mother tongue because I spoke minimal Russian. I have always been proud to acknowledge and tell others that I am adopted from Mother Russia. However, over the past several years my curiosity and desire to learn about my native homeland have increased significantly. My interest in the Russian language reignited last year when I overheard a Russian and Kazakh having a conversation in Russian. I soon found myself listening to anyone anywhere, who spoke Russian.
In “Four Human Rights Myths” Susan Marks discusses several conceptions (or misconceptions according to her) about human rights. She begins her paper with a case study of the 2011 London riots and how distinctively different is their coverage by the British prime minister and two scholars.
The Russian Revolution occured in two stages/times, February nd October of 1917. As cited in document 1, "Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown and a liberal democratic government came to power." What lead to the Febraury Revolution was the peasant agriculture to the Russian population, autocracy, and the outbreak of WW1. A long-term cause was the peasant agriculture to the Russian population. As said in document 1, "For all of its history before the 20th cwntury, 80-95% of the population were poor pasants, farmers just barely scratching a living form the land. For most of that history (between 1694-1861) the majority of these peasants were enserfed." to enserf means to be aprovd of liberty and personal rights. Before 1917 peasants recieved sympathy from
For many victims of violence, human rights advocates and many others affected by human rights violations, amnesties represent the basest of pragmatic accommodations with former despots, murderers, and torturers. At first thought, amnesties do not give the impression of working at the victim’s favor but for the benefit of political leaders, elites and the perpetrators themselves. When societies accept amnesty, victims assume a position of forgetting the past actions of military and political power for the concept of forgiveness. Rights such as truth and justice are sacrificed for political stability. Where amnesties deny victims their rights to truth, justice, and reparations, they can potentially aggravate the victims’ suffering by shrouding the impunity cast by a blanket amnesty and denying victims full recognition of their suffering. The choice for transitional governments addressing past crimes is often framed in a false dichotomy: peace verses justice. This however, is not the case.
Ramsay, Peter. 2013. "Voters should not be in prison! The rights of prisoners in a democracy."Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 16(3): 421-438
Farkhunda, a Muslim woman who lived in Afghanistan, was murdered nearly six months ago and justice has yet to be done. Farkhunda’s memorial is frequently visited but it is not likely that justice will be fully served any time soon. She had been falsely accused of burning the Koran, which led to a mob to lynch her. Since then, there have been protests by thousands of Afghans demanding justice for Farkhunda as well as bringing awareness of the violence still committed towards women today.
I had not realized it, but I had fainted. I came to when they doused me with cold water. I was still lying on the crate. In a blur I could see the wet ground next to me. Then I heard someone yell. It had to be the Kapo” (Elie Wiesel “Night” 58). Some humans by nature are cruel, and don’t care if they torture, starve, or even kill another human life. Some of this is even carried out on some of the most primitive rights. Even now these rights are being taken with brute force, “Due to her increased prominence, both in Pakistan and around the world, the Taliban target Malala. A masked gunman boards Malala’s school bus and asks for her by name. He shoots Malala in the head, neck and shoulder” (Malala’s Story Malala Fund, www.malala.org/malalas-story?). Just for going to school she was almost killed. It is an easy right to enforce, but people like Malala’s assailants will always
How do you characterize a country, the people who occupy the land, their livelihood and who they are as a group? Culture is the answer that can illustrate a country with millions of people. Culture is the culmination of social interactions in a certain region, terrain, religious beliefs, and society as a whole. Russia is a nation that has been molded and formed by their culture, for better or worse. Russia is described through its vast history, population, politics and events that have molded Moscow’s attributes.
In all, it is important for students of all abilities to learn a foreign language. Not only
As a schoolgirl in a Soviet school, Merkel was not only expected to do well in learning German but expected to learn Russian as well; she excelled at it, receiving awards for her proficiency in the language. She wanted to show her peers and superiors her aptitude to learn so she studied very hard (Kottasová, 2013, n.p). Merk...
Around the world and around the clock, human rights violations seem to never cease. In particular, torture violations are still rampant all over the world. One regime, the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, establishes a strong elaboration of norms against torture. Despite its efforts, many countries still outright reject its policies against torture while other countries openly accept them, but surreptitiously still violate them. The US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia all have failed to end torture despite accepting the provisions of the Convention.
The method for this experiment consisted of taking a sample of 88 sixth-grade children that came from socioeconomically middle-ranked elementary schools in northern Israel. There were three groups of children. The first group was made up of 31 Russian-Hebrew speaking biliterates. The second group comprised of 16 Russian-Hebrew speaking bilinguals but with only very basic knowledge of the Russian alphabet. The third group was a group of 41 monolingual Hebrew-speaking children.
Today Kazakhstan is one of the well developing countries in the whole world. Since Kazakhstan became independent country in 1991 and from that period many things were significantly changed including of course business environment. The country was developing in terms of such factors as economic, political and legal, demographic, social, competitive, global, and technological. Kazakhstan is in the 9th place by territory and located in Central Asia, and also has access to the Caspian and the Aral Sea where a huge amount of oil has. The neighbors that Kazakhstan has connect are China, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and the Russian Federation. In addition, with all these countries Kazakhstan has good relationships in different spheres. As I mentioned above from the moment when Kazakhstan got independence there were a lot of changes, for example, whether before the capital was Almaty then from 1997 the capital of Kazakhstan became Astana. Today Astana is one of the biggest and beautiful cities that attract many tourists to visit Kazakhstan. Talking about language that official is definitely Kazakh and also Russian language is quite widespread that many people can speak free. Furthermore, Kazakhstan possesses a rich selection of mineral reserves as well as numerous oil and gas fields. Kazakhstan’s strategic location in Eurasia has important implications on the country’s economy, politics, and culture which collectively create a favorable business environment for multinational companies. The factors that I would like to write are economic, legal and political.
Choudhry, Dr. Shabir. “Human Security and Protection of Rights of Kashmiri People under Pakistani Administration.” Counterurrents.org. N.p., 18 Mar. 2011. Web. 15 May 2011. .
The issue focused on importance of learning of foreign languages. Many people ask "Why should I learn foreign languages?" Learning a foreign language takes assiduity and free time. In order to understand this importance we need first to understand benefits of knowing and learning foreign languages. I offer several groups of these benefits below, which may help to convince you to take the plunge, if you need such persuasion. One groups of benefits represent economic and practical reasons, others have intellectual and even sentimental content, but whatever reasons you choose, you will have a clear idea of why learning foreign language so important and how it can help to motivate you in your studies.