Persuasive Essay- Beggars Essays

Persuasive Essay- Beggars Essays Persuasive Essay- Beggars Essay Persuasive Essay- Beggars Essay Essay Topic: Persuasive Persuasive essay- beggars When you walk in the street and suddenly see a beggar asking for money, then you may have a dilemma about whether you should give him money or not; if they deserve the money or not. Here I am going to discuss this dilemma. A beggar sitting on the street may have gone trough very difficult time and tough experiences. Therefor, the last resort they have is to beg for money. But why should I give away my money to someone I do not know how would use them? Even though the beggars all have the same goal; ask for money, we can separate them into three different groups. The first group is those who only want the money for alcohol and drugs and felt that begging was the easiest way. The second group is those who have been struggling to get a job but gave up because they did not get one so they decided to start begging. The third group is the little minority of beggars who really have no other options. Begging is an ideology; an ideology that says that there is no better way than the easy way. In Norway there are a lot of helping organizations created only to help people who needs money but do not have. An example of some well known organizations is probably â€Å"Frelsesarmeen† and â€Å"Kirkens Bymisjon†. They know people who really are in need; but cannot afford money to buy clothes and food. Therefore, those organizations provide it to those who are in need. Furthermore, â€Å"Fattighuset† (or the poor house) is very famous among beggars. On Mondays and Tuesdays from 12PM to 3. 30 PM they have clothing distribution, and on Fridays, they have food distribution from 12PM to 3. 30 PM to all their members. According to SSB statistics measures how many people have a persistent low income over three years. Low income is regarded as less than 60% of the overall income level. For a single person, this amount is about 170  000 NOK on average for the years 2007-2009. Statistics from 2009 show that about 360  000 people in Norway earn less than 60% of the general income level. In addition, those helping organizations are willing to receive money from helping hands to those who are in need for help. Moreover, they are also willing to receive anything you feel you do not need anymore as long as it is capable, like kitchen utensils, food, shoes, books, clothing for summer and winter, etc.. Therefore, if you want to be sure the money you give away won’t be used on alcohol or drugs; you can provide them to those organizations. In addition, to not feel guiltiness about not giving money to someone who is starving; you can buy some food for the beggar to be sure he is not hungry. On the other hand, the beggars have the opportunity to find a job with some help from those organizations. It is very hard for a beggar to try to find a job by himself, but if he gets help, it is not impossible. As a result, if you continue giving money to the beggars, their ideology will grow and they will continue begging. This sustains the practice of begging and may encourage other people to also start begging, when in fact; begging should not be an alternative in a rich country like Norway. [ 1 ]. fattighusetoslo. no/ [ 2 ]. ssb. no/emner/05/01/10/inntekt/ [ 3 ]. nrk. no/programmer/tv/migrapolis/1. 7838155 [ 4 ]. fattighusetoslo. no/du-kan-bidra/

A Query into the Relationship between Gender and Self Esteem in Adolescent Females essays

A Query into the Relationship between Gender and Self Esteem in Adolescent Females essays Self-esteem is defined as the way in which a person views their performance in areas principal to them personally, and the way they believe others of significance perceive them. Those who suffer from a deficiency of self-esteem have a heightened susceptibility to experiencing depression, becoming involved in drug use or other precarious behaviors; they may suffer from insomnia due to anxiety and are more likely. To show prejudice and disparage others. Abraham Maslow, creator of the hierarchy of needs, recognized the importance of self-esteem when he included it as the last necessary level one must fulfill before one can be actualized. Psychodynamic psychologist Alfred Adler once said that the Supreme Law of life should be that the sense of worth of the self shall not be allowed to be diminished. Despite the importance of having high self-esteem, far too many adolescent girls are allowed to fall through the cracks and suffer from the diminished senses of self at ever increasing ages. Why do girls experience more pronounced problems with self-esteem than their male counterparts and what has caused this gender gap to emerge in a supposed society of equality? Kennon M. Sheldon Ph.D of the University of Missouri-Columbia states in a report issued in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that once identified, psychological needs can be targeted to enhance personal thriving, in the same way that the organic needs of a plant, once identified, can be targeted to maximize thriving in the plant. According to the study, self-esteem is the most fundamental psychological need of American college students. Participants were asked to identify most satisfying and unsatisfying events in their life at different time intervals. The most unsatisfying events lacked the top four qualities associated with psychological well being. In all three United States samples self-esteem topped the list w...

O2 environment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

O2 environment - Essay Example This means that Telefà ³nica has to major in various aspects that will see it grow (Matsumoto, Umeda, Masui and Fukushige 2012:57). O2 understands the impact that customer needs have on the growth and success of the company. Over the past five years, the company has been looking for different ways of building resilience in the provision of critical national infrastructure in accordance with the ISO 22301 guidelines (Kelion 2013). The important aspect, as noted by the company is to work on safeguarding the interests of the customers by establishing strong staff welfare policies. This assures them that the employees are satisfied and can serve the clients with confidence. They have established mechanisms to assist in the faster recovery of any critical disruptions that affect clients wherever they are. This allows the company to maintain a good rapport with the employees and clients as much as possible. Further, it increases customer confidence and reassures them of its zeal towards the realisation of successful operations (Matsumoto, Umeda, Masui and Fukushige 2012:57). The company is also working hard to ensure that shareholders recognise the business’s resiliency in the highly competitive market. The industry is quite competitive and they wanted to have as many investors in their corner. They have changed their strategies to accommodate the different shareholder attributes that will in turn increase the profits the company needs most (Kelion 2013). To deal with the competitors, the company has made good use of its strategic position within the UK to serve its more than 23 million customers. The 3G network is one of its unique selling points in the UK that has added 84% of the UK population to its list of customers. It has been able to work on different technology versions that have made it easy to supply the customers with faster 3G speeds (O2 2015). This

Female representation in computer games Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Female representation in computer games - Essay Example The essay "Female representation in computer games" discovers the Images of Women in Computer Based Gaming. The game World of Warcraft allows the player to create their own representation, but most of the females and males have sexualized representations that engage the user in very real objectification of the human form. In a discussion of the theories proposed by John Berger, the nature of the consumer to art can be seen through the examination of the art and imagery that has been developed in the gaming world. The nature of gaming is such that it creates an alternative space in which female and male objectification is engaged so that not only is the concept of the human shifted into a different space, the actions that are taken as representations of heroic are placed within the sexual fantasy space. Images that are used for gaming are representations of contemporary art, created through different mediums used for different purposes. Most of it is created through computer generatio n, but there is a great deal of art that is done through the traditional medium of canvas and brush with either oils or acrylics. These pieces are used for promotional value, although computer generation of images has advanced to the point where artistically rendered work is very similar to that which used to require canvas and paint. As an example, Fig.1, Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 are a female and male characters from World of Warcraft, rendered artistically as an emotive piece which is intended. to engage the consumer by creating envy. Berger discusses the role of envy in glamour, the nature of plying the consumer with attributes of a representational figure that can never be achieved, thus maintaining an envious connection which is never transferred to the consumer. La Grange paraphrases Berger and states that â€Å"The imagine themselves transformed by buying the product and envy this transformed self. In effect, the publicity image has lowered the spectators’ self-esteem and of fers it back if they buy the product† (8). Gaming literally offers the experience of becoming the enviable figure, the consumer able to manipulate the actions of the character, achieving goals and setting a course through that image. Berger discusses the way in which the identity and the self are interlaced with the concept of ownership and envy. In owning a thing, the desired effect is to have become the representation of how that thing creates the identity of the self. In owning something, there is never a pay-off of real happiness, but a movement towards acquiring the next thing. La Grange states that Berger proposed that â€Å"The individual is trapped between what he is and what he would like to be† (9). In choosing what to buy, the individual seeks to find happiness, but because happiness cannot be achieved by the acquisition, the individual is essentially powerless. In some ways, gaming fills this gap as the manipulation of the image that has been chosen becomes an extension of the self, the individual placed within the space of the game as that image and acquiring through the choices that are made about the actions of the image. La Grange explains the relationships of the ownership of art as it is relevant to the identity. She states that through Berger, it can be seen that â€Å"oil painting celebrated private property; it expressed the idea that you are what you have†

Biography of Plato Essay Example for Free

Biography of Plato Essay Plato was a Greek philosopher, mathematician, rhetorician, writer, founder of Academy, and even a double Olympic champion. He was born in 427 BCE in family of wealthy and influential Athenian parents: Ariston and Perictione. Platos real name was Aristocles. For his athletic figure his wrestling coach called him Plato, which means â€Å"broad†. As Plato was from a wealthy family, he got the best teachers of that time, who taught him music, grammar and athletics. At the age of 20 years old, Plato meets Socrates, who became his teacher, mentor and closest person. Eight years with Socrates influenced Platos life path. After Socrates died, Plato travels to Egypt, Italy, Sicily and Cyrene. Then he came back and opened his famous philosophical Academy. The Academy was an institution of higher education. Such philosophers as Aristotle, Heraclitus, Crates and Xenocrates attended Platos Academy. Plato’s writings are dialogues and letters to his teacher Socrates, which talks about a variety of different topics, ranging from philosophy to ethic, from mathematics to rhetoric. In these dialogs Plato used Socrates as a fictional person. His early dialogues are typically devoted to investigation of a single issue, where results are rarely achieved. The middle age dialogs developed, expressed, and defended Platos conclusions about central philosophical issues. And his later writings often modify or abandon the structure of a dialogue, they were critical examinations of the theory of forms, discussions of the problem of knowledge and cosmological speculations. Platos most famous works are: The Apology of Socrates, The Symposium and The Republic. Plato started the very first University in Europe – The Academy in 387 BC in Athens. Though the Academic was not open for the public, it did not charge fees for education there. Therefore no formal teachers or students, but there was unspoken distinction between teachers and students. One of the most famous Platos student, who also attended Academy for more than 20 years was Aristotle. There are evidences of lectures given in the Academy, such as Platos lecture On the Good and The use of dialectic. Academy continued on for nearly 1000 years until it was closed by emperor Justinian, because it was believed not to follow the Christian religion. Plato died on the day of his birthday at 347 BC. It is unknowing how he died, there are multiple versions from committing suicide to according to The American Scholar, Plato died in his bed, whilst a young girl played the flute to him. Plato moves his finger to indicate the beat and rhythm to get the right measure for her. When the girl gets the right measure, Plato died listening to the correct measure. References: Schall, James V. , â€Å"On the Death of Plato. † The American Scholar 65 (1996): 401-15. Print. Kemerling, Garth. â€Å"Plato. † Philosophy pages. Web. 9 Aug. 2006 Kraut, Richard, Plato, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed. ), .

What Is Truth :: essays research papers

What is Truth?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Four values above all are the key to ultimate happiness and contentment and are evident in the first paragraph of 'The Sound of Laughter';. Here it reads: 'My memory when I'm gone will be colorful, rich, full of happiness and light.…they will see a bright smiling picture with trickles of laughter in the background and the chirp of peace echoing throughout my aura.'; Here my value of optimism is shown through being vulnerable to having your heart filled with color, richness, and light. If you can do this it enables you to overcome the nasty demons that destroy such powerful things as optimism and vulnerability. If you hold the capacity to instill such values within yourself you will finally see the truth in the phenomenon that says light always overcomes such demons as darkness and seclusion. To be peaceful is another value I paint by saying '…a bright smiling picture with trickles of laughter echoing throughout the background.'; To be peaceful is to reside where such light is resonated. When you reach such an elevated state of consciousness such light will resonate through you enabling your inner peace be your amour, protector of any outside hurt rising you out of pain. To see beauty is another value I uncover to you by giving you an optional lucid dream. This dream is hinted in the background meanings of descriptive, and almost poetic suggestions like, ';My memory when I'm gone will be colorful, rich and full of happiness and light…they will see a bright smiling picture with trickles of laughter in the background…chirp of peace echoing throughout my aura.'; If you can remain optimistic and peaceful it would only be natural to see the poetic beauty and the movement of the words used for description in the above excerpt because your higher level of consciousness breaks away such chains of fear and hurt and gives you a holy armor. Finally the last hidden value of truth is my final and most important moral value. It rises above the rest because it is the only one that will insure complete an angelic state. It is a universal truth that lives within each of us.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Truth is universally important. Without truth nothing is real, all would be an illusion of lies and fables steering us into the confusion and chaos of a complex mirage. Who is to know what really exists, what is really pure and what is completely uncontaminated by lies?

McDonaldization of Society

Ritzer’s theory of McDonaldization proposes a new interpretation of modern world order, social structure of society and business relations. Efficiency is one of the main components of McDonaldization. Ritzer (2000) explains: â€Å"McDonald's offers efficiency, or the optimum method for getting from one point to another. For consumers, this means that McDonald's offers the best available way to get from being hungry to being full† (9). Efficiency helps companies to adopt particular cause of action. Efficiency means the best solution to meet the needs of parties involved. Efficiency involves the identification of a problem or issue which requires consideration. At this stage there will be a decision to do nothing or pursue the issue. For instance, fast food restaurants help customers to save time and money. People can buy meals in a short period of time ‘without leaving their cars’ (9). Efficiency can be explained as rationality, fast service delivery and low cost solutions.   Continued change is inevitable and likely to develop at an even faster rate. â€Å"The fast-food model offers people, or at least appears to offer them, an efficient method for satisfying many needs† (10). A salad bar is a vivid example of efficiency: a customer buys a plat and creates a salad himself. By keep ­ing the objectives in mind and always looking for ways in which both parties can work together to achieve their common objectives, it should be easier to reach a mutually acceptable service. If efficiency concept is followed, the company is required to identify possible courses of customers’ action to solve the problem. www.expedia.com is a travel agency which follows an efficiency principle in order to deliver quality services at low cost. ‘Self-service’ is the main tool used by Expedia Travel. A client can plan his trip or vocation according to his budget and wants. A client calculates the price of his trip himself and can reduce its cost choosing a cheaper hotel or flight. This self-service presents opportunities for diverse customer groups. This approach is interesting to everyone who wants to plan a good vocation at low cost. On the other hand, a client is forced to spend more time on planning and organizing process, mastering new technology and computer skills. The case of Expedia travel shows that in changing environment, the use of technology requires more problem solving skills and the ability to interpret data. Routine tasks requiring a low level of skill are disappearing fast. Used in conjunction with flexible planning, efficiency requires a customer’s participation in service delivery. Using this approach many firms adopted that principle understands it as clients’ participation in planning which have the potential to improve the quality of their work. Any improvement here is said to be beneficial. Important in the above is the recognition that involvement of clients in examining problems and seeking to develop solutions is only one part of the efficiency approach. Moreover, all manner of developments and improvements are discussed in the context of the strategy that management has agreed upon in order to turn the company around. Through involvement of all parties and by bringing in new skills new ways of doing things are sought. Ritzer’s concept of ‘efficiency’ shows that involvement of a customer/client in service delivery process helps companies to reduce operational costs and time. Ritzer underlines that a modern consumer pays for this privilege. Beyond this it is essential that customers are given a chance to seek out and develop cost-effective solutions. Works Cited Ritzer, G. The McDonaldization of Society. Pine Forge Press; 2000.

Ethnic Intolerance Essay

The Yugoslavia collapse was a homemade tragedy. In sharp contrast to most of Balkan history, outside powers did not play a major role in stimulating Yugoslav division. Societies in which human development needs are threatened are ripe for conflict. In Yugoslavia ethnic groups misunderstood each others needs and desires. Political elites deliberately perpetuated and exploited conflicts between the general populace. The hypothesis of the essay is that the main propellant behind war in Yugoslavia was not ancient history and ancient hatreds but recent hatreds manipulated by elites. As it the case in all ethnic crises, it is possible to identify a wide rage of questions that have arisen during the course of Yugoslavia crises. In my opinion, there are some points of particular importance, where my paper will be based on. These are: (1) why has the ethnic hatred exploded now, after half a century of peaceful intermingling? (2) Are the roots and causes of the ethnic war ancient or recent? (3) Do politicians create nationalism, or does existing nationalism shape the political power struggle? I will handle the subject in four parts- `Socialist development and Yugoslavism`, ‘Post- Tito debate`, ‘New elites, old leaders’ policy (post-federalism)’, and ‘The slide toward disintegration’. Socialist development and Yugoslavism The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (the SFRY) was born â€Å"Phoenix-like, †¦ rising from the ashes† (Judah 2000, p. 136) of the World War II to live under the iron presidency of a Communist Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980). Whatever controversial Tito’s political reputation is, researchers acknowledged that he was the only leader whose â€Å"wartime record, †¦ undeniable charisma and †¦ ability to stand up to the Soviets in 1948 to assert Yugoslav independence allowed †¦ for several decades to maintain at least an illusion of the country’s unity† (Kozhemiakin 1998, p. 73). Williams (1998, p. 48) insisted that the head of the re-born country, Josip Tito, â€Å"deliberately aimed to create an entirely different sort of state† in 1945, and one of the most significant differences was â€Å"the equal treatment of the various groups in the population and a down-playing of the nationalities issue† (Williams 1998, p. 48). According to Judah (2000), the chronology of an ethnic question in the Yugoslavia under Tito consists of three phases: 1945-66, 1966-74, and 1974-80. During the first period, the Communist leaders were rather successful in keeping the lid on the boiling pot of nationalism. The new Yugoslav federalism was created after the USSR model with its autonomous unites within the single state framework. Under the 1946 Constitution the SFRY consisted of six republics (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia–Hercegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia and Slovenia) and two autonomous regions (the multi-national Autonomous Province of Vojvodina and the predominantly Shipetar, or Albanian Autonomous District of Kosovo-Metohija [KOSMET] within Serbia). Conversely, the Yugoslavia national identity consisted of six ‘nations,’ or â€Å"officially recognized groups with national homes in one of the federal republics† (Hudson 2003, p. 50): Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins, Macedonians and Muslims (those slavs who converted to Islam under Ottoman rule); eight ‘nationalities,’ or â€Å"officially recognized groups† who â€Å"had an internationally recognized national homeland outside Yugoslavia† (Hudson 2003, p. 50): Albanians, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Czechs, Italians, Romanians, Slovaks and Turks; two ‘nationalities’ – Roma and Ruthenians – who â€Å"did not have a national homeland outside Yugoslavia† (Hudson 2003, p. 50); and others (Austrians, Greeks, Jews, Germans, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Vlachs, etc.). It seems that the republican and district borders were established holding ethnic, historic and economic factors in view. Tito himself underlined that the aim of republican and district borders was not †¦ drawing a boundary line between this federal unit and the other, and now you on the other side shall do as you please, and I shall do as I please on my side of the boundary. No! These boundaries, figuratively speaking, should resemble the white lines on a marble column. The boundaries of the federated units within the federal state of Yugoslavia do not denote separatism but unity. (as cited in Judah 2000, p. 140) As Judah (2000, p. 137) noted, â€Å"Bosnia was restored, with its historic 1878 frontiers, in recognition of its mixed population and to prevent it becoming the renewed object of dispute between Serbs and Croats.† The Slavs of the Macedonian region were acknowledged to be neither Serbs nor Bulgarians, but a distinctive group, therefore the Macedonian republic was created to eliminate the possible â€Å"bone of contention† (Frankel 1955, p. 416) between Serbia and Bulgaria. Montenegro acquired a republican status â€Å"in recognition of its historic status and so partly to satisfy that portion of the population which resented being relegated to the position of a far-flung province of Serbia† (Judah 2000, p. 138). The large groups of the Albanians in Kosovo and the Hungarians in Vojvodina received ‘nationalities’ status because they had homelands outside Yugoslavia. The re-born Yugoslavia has never ceased to be a shelf stuffed with ‘skeletons’ of reciprocal convictions between different ethnic populations. However, until the mid-1960s people’s minds were occupied rather with the agrarian reform, Tito’s split with Stalin, and the economic innovation of self-management. A two-chamber legislature, the Federal People’s Assembly, consisted of a directly-elected Federal Council and a Council of Nationalities, comprising delegates from the assemblies of the republics (25 representatives of each Republic, 15 of the Autonomous Province, and 10 of the Autonomous District). The Federal People’s Assembly elected the Praesidium and the Executive Council. Tito has been occupying the seat of the Executive Council’s chairman for thirty-five years, and simultaneously he was the head of the Communist party. The 1946 SFRY Constitution granted equal power to both cameras of Federal People’s Assembly, and was said to rely on â€Å"the principles of equality and voluntariness† (Frankel 1955, p. 422): The Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia is a federal people’s State of republican form, a community of peoples equal in rights who, basing themselves on the right to self-determination, which includes the right to separation, have expressed a will to live together in a federal State. At the initial stage of the Yugoslav consolidation under the Communist dictatorship, the group in power was likely to understand that the state â€Å"should not rest on coercion, brute force, or realpolitik†: [The Communists] sought [legitimacy] in an explanatory creation myth: the new Yugoslav state had come into being as a result of â€Å"two kinds of solidarity, that of the Yugoslav nations who had united to fight the enemy, and that of the Partisan veterans, the stari borci, who had done the actual fighting.† (Bokovoy 1998, p. 36) The new Yugoslav leaders relied heavily on the concept of ‘bratsvo i jedinstvo’ (â€Å"brotherhood and unity†). It declared â€Å"that Yugoslavia would be strong, not because its peoples were one, but because they were many, and that strength was born of unity† (Judah 2000, p. 136). However, the concept of unity was treated in a rather original way. Lake and Rothchild (p. 105) paraphrased Djilas (1995) who stated that â€Å"the communist party served as the primary safeguard [to the treat of nationalism] in Yugoslavia, largely through coercion and repression.† A critical eye should not be blinded by the phrase about possible separation of any federal units. Elazar (1991, p. 176) stated that â€Å"the constitutional process in Yugoslavia is very centralized indeed.† As Burg (1982, p. 131) observed: The federal system was originally adopted by [the Yugoslav] leadership in order to accommodate the frustrated national aspirations of the Yugoslav peoples and thereby to mobilize national sentiment in support of the establishment of a socialist order. But commitment to a Stalinist model of development, and ideological conviction that that development would reduce and eventually eliminate the political salience of nationality, led the postwar Communist leadership to subordinate the constituent republics to a powerful federal center and to resist meaningful concessions to their national distinctiveness. (Burg 1982, p. 131) Tito and the Communists re-arranged the ethnic map of the country according to their ideological concerns. Soon after the end of WWII the Yugoslav government began to organize peasantry into cooperatives. The region of Vojvodina became the first experimental ground for collectivization. The leadership moved almost 300,000 Serbs from Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia-Hercegovina to Vojvodina to prove the effectiveness of a socialist agrarian experiment â€Å"with the hope of cultivating a Yugoslav identity† (Bokovoy 1998, p. 49). However, in the 1960s, the Yugoslav leadership was split by arguments about â€Å"the question of decentralisation, the introduction of certain market mechanisms and the related issue of increasing republican autonomy† (Judah 2000, p. 144). Hot arguments between elites triggered a tide of reciprocal convictions between the Croats and the Serbs. The Serbs were accused of the attempts to â€Å"Serbianize Croatia,† as Petar Segedin, the president of the Croatian Literary Society, has put it (Judah 2000, p. 146). Bosnia was covertly inflamed by statistics produced by Matica Hrvatska, a Croatian intellectual organisation, to prove the jeopardy of pan-Serbianism. Serbian intellectuals reacted accordingly. The Bosnians and the Serbian Kosovars wanted to get rid of the Albanians, who in turn went into streets demanding a republican status for the province and the establishment of an Albanian-language university in 1968. Despite the evident shift towards liberalism and decentralisation provided by the 1967 and 1971 amendments, there was an â€Å"upsurge of nationalism† that â€Å"met a harsh response† (Hudson 2003, p. 52) from the Yugoslav President. Tito was a proponent of ‘ethnic contracts’: â€Å"nationality or ethnic representatives met with the president in cabinet sessions, where strong differences were sometimes aired by group spokespersons behind closed doors† (Lake & Rothchild 1997, p. 115). The constitution of 1974 seemed to break a fragile balance between the ethnic groups inspired by nationalism (the discussion will continue in the sections above). Cottam (2004, p. 201) called the constitution â€Å"an example of †¦ reduction of power†: In that constitution, Tito gave Kosovo and Vojvodina more power and autonomy (their own assembly, representation in the Serbian assembly, and a turn in the rotating presidency), Serbian power was reduced, and the other republics were reassured that Serbia would not be able to control the federal government. (Cottam 2004, p. 201) It seems that constitutional amendments were introduced partly in response to â€Å"nationalists who favoured the concentration of power with the republican elites† (Hudson 2003, p. 53). Tito warned about the menace caused by those emerging local elites in 1972. By 1980, when he died leaving no political heir to delegate powers to, the Yugoslav power-sharing system – â€Å"a form of coordination in which a somewhat autonomous state and a number of less autonomous ethnic-based and other interests engage in a process of mutual accommodation in accordance with commonly accepted procedural norms, rules, or understandings† (Lake & Rothchild 1997, p. 115) – collapsed. As Chary (2000, p. 735) stated: Tito could not solve all of Yugoslavia’s problems. He was never able truly to unite the country, and hostility among the nationalities remained, although he was able to keep them under control while he lived. When he died, however, these burst forward with a new fury. Post- Tito debate Cottam (2004, p. 201) described the situation in Yugoslavia immediately after Tito’s death in 1980: †¦ the economy was on a downward spiral, and no political leader had emerged who could fill Tito’s role as national unifier. †¦ He did not promote a successor, but instead developed the peculiar idea of a rotating federal presidency, which would rotate among the republics annually. This made it virtually impossible for any single political figure to emerge as a national leader, and it fueled the rise of nationalism among the separate nationalities in Yugoslavia. Despite the economic and political turmoils, as Popov (2000, p. 96) stated, â€Å"[e]ven after his death, Tito’s authority was untouchable.† Dimitrijević (2000, p. 424) also acknowledged that new political leaders (e.g., MiloÃ… ¡ević) were â€Å"actively protecting the cult of Tito’s personality primarily to please the army.† The concept of â€Å"collective leadership† introduced by Tito was aired by the 1980-leadership as â€Å"After Tito – Tito!† (Judah 2000, p. 156). Doder (1993, p. 3) once has remarked that â€Å"Tito’s strong hand was replaced by a council of bland ethnic chieftains.† It has been already noted that Yugoslavia represented an ethnical mosaic with people of different national backgrounds living under the same federal roof. Of course, by the 1980s the SFRY has stopped being an ideal federation where the units equally and eagerly complied with the economic and political dictatorship of the federal center. Since 1963, the Yugoslav leadership attempted at least formulaic retreats towards the ideas of republican individuality and decentralisation . The 1974 SFRY Constitution has granted the status of a â€Å"‘socialist, self-managing, democratic community’ of working people and citizens, and of the particular set of nations and nationalities comprised by it†Ã¢â‚¬  (Burg 1982, p. 141) to each of the republics and autonomous lands. They received a greater portion of authority in regard to decision-making at the local and federal levels. The paradox was that â€Å"Yugoslavia [appeared to be] a country without Yugoslavs† (Lendvai & Parcell 1991, p. 253). In other words, artificially drawn borders failed to coincide with cultural demarcation lines inherited by national memories. In regard to national self-identification, Sekulić, Massey and Hodson (1994) found out that the census category of ‘Yugoslav’ was introduced only in 1961, thus fifteen years upon the creation of the SFRY. However, the term denoted not all citizens of the federation, but â€Å"‘nationally noncommitted persons,’ and was treated as a residual category for those who offered no particular national identity† (Sekulić, Massey & Hodson 1994, p. 84). The identifier ‘Yugoslav’ was eagerly utilized by the Bosnians and the Kosovars of Muslim confession who protested against registering themselves as ‘Serbs’ or ‘Croats’ in the 1961 national census. By 1981, however, more and more people started identifying themselves as ‘Yugoslav’ in Croatia, Vojvodina and even Bosnia. Apart from the trend, the Kosovars preferred to register themselves as either ‘Albans’ or ‘Serbs.’ The trend points at the rise of national self-identification that climaxed after Tito’s death. In the early 1980s, as Burg (1982, p. 133) observed, â€Å"Despite the evolution of consensual decision-making practices, †¦ neither the central party leadership nor the federal government could resolve the conflicts that divided their members, and each fell victim to paralyzing deadlock.† The most vivid example of the post-Tito political imbalance was Kosovo. Hudson (2003, p. 64) called it â€Å"a powerful symbol in Serbian history.† However, the majority (85 percent) of the people who inhabited that autonomous province in the 1980s were ethnical Albanians. The constitution of 1974 granted Kosovo that was dominated by the Albanians enough voting power to take part in presidential and other elections, but many Albanian radical nationalists treated it as minor â€Å"step on the way to a Greater Albania† (Hudson 2003, p. 64). The Kosovan Albanians marched to the streets in 1981 to demand a republican status for their province and, in some ultimate cases, for the unification of Kosovo with Albania. The Yugoslav army entered Kosovo in the late 1983 to face terrorism in response to mass arrests (Hudson says that almost 7,000 people were arrested throughout the 1980s for nationalist activity in Kosovo). The minor group of Kosovars who were Serbs by origin fled the province. Stories began to circulate about the ‘persecution’ of Kosovo Serbs, the destruction of their churches and graveyards and frequent acts of violence. For every real incident, though, the rumour mill could fabricate a thousand more. (Judah 2000, p. 156) The poisonous smog of mythmaking and resurrection of past nationalist sorrows and grievances could not be dispelled by â€Å"the party [that] was governed by conservative nonentities who had been recalled by Tito from retirement, in conjunction with the obedient apparatchiks who had replaced the liberals and technocrats ten years earlier and who had been promoted on the basis of the criteria of obedience and faithful repetition of current slogans† (Dimitrijević 2000, p. 421). As Van Evera (1997, p. 54) has stated, such leadership’s bankruptcy in face of ideological distortion was logical in case of the post-Tito Yugoslavia: Democratic regimes are less prone to mythmaking, because such regimes are usually more legitimate and are free-speech tolerant; hence they can develop evaluative institutions to weed out nationalist myth. Absolutist dictatorships that possess a massive military superiority over their citizens are also less prone to mythmaking, because they can survive without it. The most dangerous regimes are those that depend on some measure of popular consent, but are narrowly governed by unrepresentative elites. Things are still worse if these governments are poorly institutionalized, are incompetent or corrupt for other reasons, or face overwhelming problems that exceed their governing capacities. The case of Kosovo contributed to the wave of Serbian nationalism. As Kozhemiakin (1998, p. 73) observed, â€Å"The most active revisionists were Serbs who were discontented with the structure of the federal system created by Tito †¦ and its alleged discrimination against Serbia.† Once Lendvai & Parcell (1991, p. 253) named four reasons for the nationality problem of Yugoslavia: â€Å"a fundamental conflict between federalism and centralization, a situation in which the largest nation’s overriding claims to power come up against the defence of the interests of the smaller nations and minorities,† â€Å"the bankruptcy of so-called ‘self-management socialism’,† â€Å"economic crisis† and â€Å"the North-South divide within the state.† The access of revisionism on the part of Serbs fitted their national leadership’s call for liberal democracy, that is â€Å"reformists were seeking to mobilize broader popular sentiment against conservative positions among party rank-and-file as well as the wider population, at a time when the economic crisis had discredited the conservatives’ ideological stance† (Gagnon 1997, p. 148). Although any remote possibility of liberalism sent shivers down the spine of Slobodan MiloÃ… ¡ević, a new Chairman of the Serbian League of Communists since 1986, it was he who unified Serbs under the slogan â€Å"No one should be allowed to beat you!† (as cited in Hudson 2003, p. 70) announced on the Kosovo battlefield, another cultural icon for the Serbs, in April 1987. By 1989, the autonomy of Vojvodina and Kosovo within the Serbian republic was abolished. Kosovo was stirred up by Albanian miners who protested against the Serbian expansion. The protestants were publicly justified by the Slovene president Milan Kućan that caused Serbs a great pain. Hudson (2003, pp. 70-71) stated on the point: Milosević’s championing of the Serbian cause against the autonomous provinces was in a sense ‘saying what had for long been unsayable under the prohibitions of the Titoist state. The political inconsistencies of the constitution served as an easily identifiable â€Å"cause† for the multiplicity of ills afflicting post-Tito Serbia. Thus, the terrible impact of the IMF [International Monetary Fund] reforms, which had exacerbated and compounded the tendencies towards secessionism in Slovenia and Croatia, also contributed to the rise of Serbian nationalism. (Hudson 2003,) In other words, it seems that not only MiloÃ… ¡ević was to be blamed for the disintegration of the Yugoslav state and the mass hysteria of nationalism torturing the South Slavs throughout the 1990s. To conclude the section about the post-Tito debates about the future of Yugoslavia without its charismatic proponent of Non-Alignment Communism and the artificially centralized federation, it makes sense to return to Sekulić, Massey and Hodson’s research (1994). The scholars observed a significant shift in public opinion from the consolidated Yugoslav national identity to the nation- and ethnic-specific formulations. The shift was made especially vivid from 1985 to 1989 across Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia. The American scholars stated that the Yugoslav national identity was significantly affected by four factors: modernization, political participation, demographic factors, and majority/minority status. They emphasized that the concept of ‘Yugoslavism’ became a defensive strategy for the communities portrayed as minority nationalities (the cases of Croat-born individuals in Bosnia and Serbia, and of Serbs in Croatia). Sekulić, Massey and Hodson (1994, p. 95) finally stated: While this failure to establish a shared identity among the people of this region cannot be said to explain the disintegration of Yugoslavia, it is apparent that a shared identity was not much in evidence as a mediating mechanism sustaining Yugoslavia through difficult transitions or slowing its disintegration into warring national camps. Without any restrictive mechanisms to stop the SFRY disintegration, the country sloped down into the chaos of national conflicts. New Elites, Old Leaders’ Policy:   Post-Federalism Judah (2000) was evidently right saying that â€Å"history is accelerating† (p. 295), meaning that, â€Å"While the great empires of the past †¦ lasted for centuries, ‘modern’ empires are increasingly short-lived affairs.† The researcher also demonstrated that history repeated itself when he restored â€Å"all the old arguments which had so sapped the Yugoslavia born in 1918† (Judah 2000, p. 104). In 1918, Stjepan Radić, the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party, declared to the deputies of a National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs: †¦ you think it is enough to say we Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes are one people because we speak one language and that on account of this we must also have a unitary centralist state †¦ and that only such a linguistic and state unity can make us happy. . . . our peasant in general, and especially our Croat peasant, does not wish to hear one more thing about †¦ a state which you are imposing on him by force. . . . You think that you can frighten the people and that in this way you will win the people to your politics. Maybe you will win the Slovenes, I do not know. Maybe you will also win the Serbs. But I am certain that you will never win the Croats . . . because the whole Croat peasant people are equally against your centralism as against militarism, equally for a republic as for a popular agreement with the Serbs. And should you want to impose your centralism by force, this will happen. We Croats shall say openly and clearly: If the Serbs really want to have such a centralist state and government, may God bless them with it, but we Croats do not want any state organization except a confederated federal republic. (as cited in Judah 2000, pp. 105-6) Radić was excluded from the party for his words, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was declared on 1 December 1918. From this date onwards people of Yugoslavia could at least hope for, if not live in, the state where every nation would enjoy equality and solidarity. The Yugoslav constitution of 1974 put an end to those idealistic aspirations. Dimitrijević (2000, p. 399) named it to be â€Å"one of the reasons for the civil war in that country, or at least as one of the contributing factors leading to Yugoslavia’s disorderly and bloody dissolution.† The document’s aim was to smooth †¦ a general pattern of inter-regional and inter-ethnic fragmentation which had occurred in the late 1960s but which Tito had sharply quashed through the ‘surgical’ use of military police power and political purges of the regional party machines. (Cohen 1992, p. 304) Pursuing such goal, the constitution of 1974 allowed a few liberal amendments conducted in 1971 in favor of republics and autonomous regions. As Burg (1982) observed, the Montenegro region was able to extend the conceptual framework of ‘the republic’ by introducing categorization by ethnicity. A functionary of the Montenegrin regional parliament notes that â€Å"public discussions of the Draft Constitution showed that the constitutional definition of the republic has politico-psychological significance. . . .† Added to the draft definition was a section that â€Å"emphasizes that Montenegro is the state of the Montenegrin people and members of other nations and nationalities. . . .† (Burg 1982, p. 141) Serbia was defined as â€Å"†the state of the Serbian people and parts of other nations and nationalities who live and realize their sovereign rights in it† (Burg 1982, p. 141). Despite those â€Å"concessions to the linguistic, cultural and corporate political rights of the nations and nationalities,† as Burg (1982, p. 142) observed, the constitution of 1974 â€Å"continues to hold the line against changes that might threaten the cohesiveness of Yugoslav society.† However, in 1992 it became apparent that those few ‘concessions’ became a ‘magic stick’ for â€Å"ethno-regional political and bureaucratic elites† that allowed them â€Å"to substantially advance their autonomy and power during the 1980s† (Cohen 1992, p. 304). Dimitrijević (2000) argued that the constitution of 1974 contained at least some grains of confederate structure that would be possible for Yugoslavia on due time. Article 3 defined the republics as state structures organized according to the principles of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘equal rights.’ Dimitrijević stressed that the term ‘sovereignty’ was used only in regard to the republics but not the federation itself. Part I of Basic Principles became â€Å"an ominous statement† (Dimitrijević 2000, p. 406) in this context so far as it talked about â€Å"the right to secession, on the basis of their will freely expressed in the common struggle of all nations and nationalities in the National Liberation War and Socialist Revolution, and in conformity with their historic aspirations† (as cited in Dimitrijević 2000, p. 406). A reference to ‘historic aspirations’ was really dangerous. As Van Evera (1997, p. 46) has noted, when â€Å"the groups with the greatest historic grievances [are] also the groups with the greatest power,† such â€Å"combination brings together both the motive and the capacity to make trouble† and becomes really explosive. This happened when MiloÃ… ¡ević initiated the â€Å"wave of nationalist euphoria† (Judah 2000, p. 163), and †¦ the Serbs were going through an exercise of mass catharsis. All the old fears and the old banned nationalist songs bubbled back up to the surface. (Judah 2000, p. 163) The Serbs always used to victimize themselves and, to be sincere, they had enough reasons to do so. However, that aggrievement, as Van Evera, was far from being passive. General Veljko Kadijević, Yugoslavia’s defence minister, played a significant role in arming the Serbs’ national grievance. By 1990 the Yugoslav military adopted the system of the Territorial Defence (TO) and Total National Defence. This meant that, apart from the regular army, each republic had reserve forces to call upon in the event of war. These were to be local forces which, in the event of a breakdown in communications, would be able to continue functioning on their own. For political guidance they would work closely with the leadership of the local Communist Party. By substituting the Communist Party with the SDS [Serbian Democratic Party], the Serbian leadership was able to make use of the TO system for mass mobilisations of Serbs in what was to become Krajina and then in Bosnia. (Judah 2000, p. 170) When Slovenia declared independence on 25 June, 1991, within the following forty-eight hours the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) attempted to retake the Slovene border that had turned from the inter-republican into the international one. The Slovene TO forces blocked the JNA soldiers who were predominantly conscripts. As Judah (2000, pp. 178-9) observed, The fact that the army had got involved in fighting in Slovenia was at the time seen by some as proof that nostalgic communist generals were desperate to preserve the old country. In fact it was nothing of the kind. Many people were of course deeply confused and loyalties were divided, but in the end men like Kadijević had already made the decision that as Yugoslavia was dying they had little choice but to seize as much of it as they could for the Serbs. Judging from the researchers’ accounts (Judah 2000; Hudson 2000; Dimitrijević 2000), there could be no bloodshed if there was a chance of a proper confederalizing process. Dimitrijević (2000, p. 421) blamed †¦ constitutional experts, political scientists and jurists who do not seem to have made any effort to provide constitutional solutions for real political difficulties, to secure alternative decision making in the case of the failure of the party system and thus not to save Yugoslavia if it was not wanted, but to increase the chances for a reasonable transition into explicitly confederate arrangements and the peaceful dissolution or separation of the constituent units. Another group of researchers (Gagnon 1997; Snyder & Ballentine 1996) accused Yugoslav political and military elites of playing with the dangerous fire of nationalism. Snyder and Ballentine (1996) argued that nationalism could be an incident product of the old and new elites re-arranging the informational marketplace in democratizing states. Snyder and Ballentine (1996, p. 10) introduced the concept of ‘the marketplace of ideas† as the situation â€Å"in which contending discourses and evidence confront each other directly on an even playing field.† The scholars argued that the Yugoslav marketplace of ideas was highly segmented in the 1980s that caused an informational imbalance: Tito’s decentralizing reforms of the 1960s, which were intended in part to assuage and defuse ethno-nationalism, put Yugoslavia’s media in the hands of regional leaderships, which in the 1980s fell into the hands of nationalists like MiloÃ… ¡ević. This federalization of power left pan-Yugoslav reformers like Ante Marković with no instrument for transcending the Serb and Croat nationalists’ media monopoly over their respective ethnic niche markets. (Snyder & Ballentine 1996, p. 21) It seems that the post-Tito Yugoslavia was a place where a severe intra-elite competition took place. Cohen (1992, p. 302) spoke about â€Å"the impressive pluralization of the Yugoslav political landscape† after Tito, accompanied by the lamentably â€Å"rapid erosion of federal authority.† Prime Minister Ante Marković, who had skillfully reoriented federal government policy along post-socialist reformist lines, made an admirable effort to implement country-wide economic and political changes during 1990, but his ability to fully accomplish such measures was stymied by the autarkic policies of contending ethno-regional elites. Marković’s formation of a federally-oriented party in mid-1990 – the Alliance of Reform Forces – to garner support for the unity of the country looked initially promising, but the Alliance did poorly against ethnically and regionally-oriented parties in the republican elections. (Cohen 1992, p. 302) Snyder & Ballentine (1996, p. 16) explained the shifts of political regime on the scale from autocratic to pluralistic in economic terms: As a democratizing political system opens up, old elites and rising counter-elites must compete for the support of new entrants into the marketplace through popular appeals, including appeals to the purported common interests of elites and mass groups in pursuing nationalistic aims against out-groups. In many instances, including the case of Serbian President Slobodan MiloÃ… ¡ević, these elites evince little interest in nationalism until rising pressure for mass political participation gives them an incentive to do so. It is interesting that Gagnon (1997, p. 134) also talked about elites manipulating public opinion and remaking a political scene to suit their needs: †¦ violent conflict along ethnic cleavages is provoked by elites in order to create a domestic political context where ethnicity is the only politically relevant identity. It thereby constructs the individual interest of the broader population in terms of the threat to the community defined in ethnic terms. Such a strategy is a response by ruling elites to shifts in the structure of domestic political and economic power: by constructing individual interest in terms of the threat to the group, endangered elites can fend off domestic challengers who seek to mobilize the population against the status quo, and can better position themselves to deal with future challenges. Gagnon pointed an indicative finger solely at Serbian elite for all the internal wars that shook Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Conversely, Hudson (2003) referred to Croatian and Bosnian Muslim nationalists as warmongers. But the researcher saved even bitterer accusations for international elites: Without the prospect – and eventual achievement – of international recognition, and the acceptance by a number of foreign states of the arguments of the nationalists, it is possible that a negotiated settlement could have been arrived at which would either have maintained some form of Yugoslavia, or achieved a peaceful dissolution. (Hudson 2003, p. 89) To provide an account of Yugoslavia sliding towards disintegration, it makes sense to summarize the viewpoints of that time Yugoslav political leaders in regard to the federation/confederation dichotomy. Serbs, Croats and Muslims were the groups most susceptible to nationalism so far as they were scattered across the republics and districts. Two of those groups identified themselves as ‘nations’ by language, history, and culture, whereas Muslims distinguished themselves from the other Yugoslavs on the principle of confession. Both Serbs and Croats had their own republics of Serbia and Croatia, respectively, but each republic (as well as other regions) had the so-called ‘pockets,’ like Krajina between Serbia and Croatia or Kosovo, where various nations, nationalities and ethnic groups were closely intermingled. Montenegrins historically and culturally associated themselves with Serbs although did not want to lose their independence. Slovenia was rather ethnically homogenous, whereas Bosnia hosted people of not only various ethnicities but also of various confessions. As it has been mentioned above, a Bosnian Croat Marković who was the last Yugoslavia’s Prime Minister (March 1989 – December 1991) was the proponent of pan-Yugoslavism so that the country of South Slavs despite its motley ethnic composition would be a solid economic and political body. The Serbs insisted on centralization of the state that resembled a person who carried fire in one hand and water in the other. The Serb leadership called for preserving the federal structure because in case of confederalizing many Serbs would stay outside the Serbian Republic borders. The Bosnians initially supported the idea of a centralized state, whereas the Croats and Slovenes violently opposed it, demanding either to weaken federative bonds or let them secede. In such a hot atmosphere, the Yugoslavs stepped into â€Å"the idiotic chaos in which the state died† (Judah 2000, p. 109). The Slide toward Disintegration Slovenia declared independence on 25 June, 1991, and issued its declaration of sovereignty in July 1991. Croatia seceded from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) the same day as Slovenia although it declared independence only on October 8, 1991. Thus, these two former SFRY-republics were the first to flee the burning house of Yugoslavia despite loud protests of Serbs, both the Belgrade leadership and the common people from northern Dalmatia, Lika, the Kordun, and Banija that were situated in the then sovereign Croatia. By that time, those Serbs who lived on the territory of then sovereign Croatia have already tasted all bitterness of Tudjman’s regime. Croats elected Franjo Tudjman, the leader of Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), as president in May, 1990, †¦ in an anti-semitic, anti-Serb campaign under slogans such as ‘a thousand years of uninterrupted Croatian statehood’. †¦ Slogans like ‘Croatia for the Croats only’, led to excesses against the Serbs, who were not only pushed out of their positions in the police force – a move authorized by the Croatian government, but also from posts in administration and enterprises. (Hudson 2003, p. 79) Once could say that a catastrophe started in January 1990, when Slovenian deputies aired their vision of the Yugoslav Communist League as â€Å"an alliance of republican communist parties† (Hudson 2003, p. 78) at the YCL’s Extraordinary 14th Congress session. They aimed at diminishing the authority of the old partocracy and to pave the road for secession. In April 1990, Milan Kućan, once a communist and then the leader of a centre-right coalition, has easily won the republican elections in Slovenia. In May 1990, the Yugoslav Communist League was dissolved by the Yugoslav Congress, and multi-party elections were held in all republics. By that time the Serbs of the Serbian Republic have been applauding to the three-component strategy of the conservatives and their leader MiloÃ… ¡ević who formally assumed presidency on 8 May 1989. MiloÃ… ¡ević and his allies have already indisposed the Yugoslav army against internal and external enemies, more or less successfully repressed the reported cases of ethnic â€Å"genocide† against Serbs from Kosovan Albanians, and have made multiple attempts â€Å"to portray Serbia as the victim of Yugoslavia, setting the stage for attacks on the other republics’ autonomy free multi-party elections† (Gagnon 1997, p. 150). The Serbian new elite were obsessed with the idea of ‘Pan-Serbianism.’ By the fall of 1990 the Serbian conservative government had dissolved the Kosovo Assembly whose Albanian delegates drafted a 140-article Constitution of the â€Å"sovereign Republic of Kosovo† demanding a status of independent Yugoslavia’s unit for their autonomous district. As Cohen (1992, p. 310) have noted, â€Å"The Serbian government labelled the ‘so-called’ Constitution as an illegitimate action on the part of ‘a movement directly and exclusively targeted at the breaking up the territorial integrity of Serbia and Yugoslavia’.† In 1990, as Judah (2000, p. 165) observed, only Bosnians â€Å"were still talking about keeping Yugoslavia together,† whereas â€Å"MiloÃ… ¡ević ‘s Serbian nationalism was the greatest boost to Tudjman’s Croatian nationalism, [so] that the Pandora’s box had been opened [and] there was no shuttin g it.† On 12 May 1991 referendum in Krajina was held for the local Serbs to choose either to join the Republic of Serbia, â€Å"and thus remain in Yugoslavia with Serbia, Montenegro and others that want to preserve Yugoslavia† (Judah 2000, p. 180), or be labelled as predators. It was one of many Serbian referendums that were to punctuate the political landscape over the next few years. It was a farce dressed up as democracy, by which people who had been bombarded by a single media message were herded to the polls to turn in the requisite popular mandate for the authorities. There was never any public debate on the question and it could be assumed that if you were not going to vote as the authorities wanted then you were not a Serb and hence had no right still to be living where you were. (Judah 2000, p. 180) On June 30, 1991, the Council for the Defense of the Constitution held a secret meeting, when the Serbian representative, Borislav Jović, officially stated that the Serbian leadership would not object to Slovene secession. The Federal Defense Secretary at the time, General Veljko Kadijević, warned that once Slovenia was let go, the JNA would defend the borders of a new Yugoslavia. Judah (2000, p. 178) called that meeting â€Å"simply the last nail in Yugoslavia’s coffin.† To utilize the concept proposed by Snyder and Ballentine (1996), the Yugoslavian ‘marketplace of ideas’ was not only segmented but multi-layered. That was a time of secret alliances and councils’ closed sessions. In public the presidents of the six republics were still arguing about whether some form of Yugoslavia could be preserved. MiloÃ… ¡ević wanted a ‘modern federation’, which was code for Serbian domination. Kućan and Tudjman wanted ‘an asymmetric federation’, which was code for independence while still enjoying the benefits of Yugoslavia without paying for them. Alija Izetbegović of Bosnia and Kiro Gligorov of Macedonia argued for a compromise, but having little political clout they were ignored. (Judah 2000, p. 180) Gagnon (1997, p. 157) directly called the elite’s policy of shaping public opinion Machiavellian: The Serbian conservatives’ response was to continue to demonize other ethnic nationalities, and also to begin provoking confrontations and violent conflicts along ethnic lines and to discredit the very idea of a federal Yugoslavia, calling it the creation of a Vatican-Comintern conspiracy. While the public had to listen to those hypocritical debates in media, the so-called RAM plan was secretly adopted in 1991-1992. It was said to allow the Serb occupation of territory in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina and the invasion of the JNA troops into a Muslim area. Croatia and Serbia armed at full speed and started mutual firebombing. On 27 April 1992, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) was founded as comprising Serbia and Montenegro. It was supposed to enlarge the FRY at the expense of Krajina and some territories carved from Bosnia-Herzegovina to form the Republika Srpska. The FRY constitution proclaimed the newly born state to be the successor state of the old Yugoslavia that caused active protests from other former republics. And only a decade later people could read the sincere opinion of one of the key figures of that period on the issue of preserving Yugoslavia.   Judah (2000, p. 201) reported that on 23 January 1992 Nikola Koljević, once a teacher from Sarajevo and then one of the most radical pro-Serbian nationalists from the SDS (Serbian Democratic Party), said: It’s time to stop this absurd idea of a mini-Yugoslavia this is just a game. If only Serbs and Montenegrins want it, what’s the point of trying to force others to stay? We should start thinking in terms of a new federation of Serb lands. When the SDS leader was pronouncing those words, the Serbs (still federals) and Croats (already non-Yugoslavs) have just agreed to cease fire under the pressure of international community. The Bosnian Serbs have gone through a referendum held in November 1991, in which they voted down the possibility of Bosnia secession from Yugoslavia. A month later upon Koljević’s confession on the issue of federalism, Bosnia-Hercegovina declared its independence. That resulted in the Republika Srpska (created by Serbs leaving in Bosnia-Hercegovina) declaring its own independence under the leadership of Radovan Karadzić. The civil war in Bosnia between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims continued for three and a half years ending on 1 November 1995 due to the armed interference of the United States, United Nations and NATO military forces. In 1997, MiloÃ… ¡ević was elected President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavi. The third wave of terror and aggression poured down onto Yugoslavia at night between March 24 and 25 1999 when the United States bombed Belgrade in response to the reports of Kosovan Albanians about Serbs treating them inappropriately. On 9 June the same year Yugoslav military leaderships agreed to remove their forces from Kosovo in exchange to the withdrawal of the NATO army and the entry of an international security force. The bombardment was stopped on 10 June with the adoption of UN Resolution 1244. In September 2000, MiloÃ… ¡ević lost in the Yugoslav presidential election. As Hudson (2003, p. 138) observed: The US and the EU used these elections finally to achieve what they had been trying to do for over a decade, and had failed to do through bombing – to satisfy their own economic and strategic goals in the post-Soviet period. These included the integration of all of the component republics of the former Yugoslavia into the free-market economic system, and the removal of a government in Belgrade which had not only a socialist economic orientation, but also a strategic orientation away from NATO and towards Russia. That was the end of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Conclusion One would say that it was Serb nationalism that provoked counternationalism in other Yugoslav republics. However, it would be better to state without bias that Serbs are to be blamed as much as Croats or Albanians in the dissolution of Yugoslavia and mass killings. On the level of the state or quasi-state, new elites used national claims over pieces of Yugoslavia’s territory (that was an ethnic mosaic) to pursue their own economic and political goals. The struggle for power was not only for Serbian or Albanian control over Kosovo but for power per se. In their ambitious attempts, new political elites exploited the disturbances that already existed in the general populace and, when desirable and feasible, they created new turmoils. Disturbances stemmed from the national identities of each group and from the ways in which those identities played out in everyday life. So Judah was right (2000, p. 313) stating that there was â€Å"the cancer of discontent, which ended up killing Yugoslavia.† Bibliography Bokovoy, M. K. 1998, Peasants and Communists: Politics and Ideology in the Yugoslav Countryside, 1941-1953, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa. Burg, S. L. 1982, ‘Republican and Provincial Constitution-Making in Yugoslavia Politics’, Publius, vol. 12, no. 1, 131–55. Chary, F. B. 2000, ‘Tito’ in World Leaders of the Twentieth Century, Salem Press, Pasadena, Calif. Cohen, L. J. 1992, ‘Post-Federalism and Judicial Change in Yugoslavia: The Rise of Ethno-Political Justice’, International Political Science Review, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 301-319. Cottam, M. L. 2004, Introduction to Political Psychology, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, N.J. Dimitrijević, V. 2000, ‘The 1974 Constitution as a Factor in the Collapse of Yugoslavia, or as a Sign of Decaying Totalitarianism’ in The Road to War in Serbia: Trauma and Catharsis, ed. N. Popov & D. Gojković, New York Central European University Press, Budapest. Doder, D. 1993, ‘Yugoslavia: New War, Old Hatreds’, Foreign Policy, no. 91, pp. 3-23. Elazar, D. J. 1991, Exploring Federalism, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL. Frankel, J. 1955, ‘Federalism in Yugoslavia’, The American Political Science Review, vol. 49, no. 2, pp. 416-430. Gagnon, V.P. 1997, ‘Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict: The Case of Serbia’ in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict, ed. Michael E. Brown, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Hudson, K. 2003, Breaking the South Slav Dream: The Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia, VA Pluto Press, Sterling. Judah, T. 2000, The Serbs History, Myth, and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn. Kozhemiakin, A. V. 1998, Expanding the Zone of Peace?: Democratization and International Security, Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Lake, D. & Rothchild, D. 1997, ‘Containing Fear: The Origins and Management of Ethnic Conflict’ in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict, ed. Michael E. Brown, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Lendvai, P. & L. Parcell. 1991, ‘Yugoslavia without Yugoslavs: The Roots of the Crisis’, International Affairs, vol. 67, no. 2, pp. 251-261. Popov, N. 2000, ‘Traumatology of the Party State’ in The Road to War in Serbia: Trauma and Catharsis, ed. N. Popov & D. Gojković, New York Central European University Press, Budapest. Sekulić, D., G. Massey & R. Hodson. 1994, ‘Who Were the Yugoslavs? Failed Sources of a Common Identity in the Former Yugoslavia’, American Sociological Review, vol. 59, no. 1, pp. 83-97. Snyder, J. & K. Ballentine. 1996, ‘Nationalism and the Marketplace of Ideas’, International Security, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 5-40. Van Evera, S. 1997, ‘Hypotheses on Nationalism and War’ in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict, ed. M. Brown, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Williams, J. 1998, Legitimacy in International Relations and the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

Egypt Cult of the Sun God and Akhenatens Monotheism

Egypt Cult of the Sun God and Akhenatens Monotheism Egypt During the New Kingdom, the cult of the sun god Ra became increasingly important until it evolved into the uncompromising monotheism of Pharaoh Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV, 1364-1347 B.C.). According to the cult, Ra created himself from a primeval mound in the shape of a pyramid and then created all other gods. Thus, Ra was not only the sun god, he was also the universe, having created himself from himself. Ra was invoked as Aten or the Great Disc that illuminated the world of the living and the dead. The effect of these doctrines can be seen in the sun worship of Pharaoh Akhenaten, who became an uncompromising monotheist. Aldred has speculated that monotheism was Akhenatens own idea, the result of regarding Aten as a self-created heavenly king whose son, the pharaoh, was also unique. Akhenaten made Aten the supreme state god, symbolized as a rayed disk with each sunbeam ending in a ministering hand. Other gods were abolished, their images smashed, their names excised, their temples abandoned, and their revenues impounded. The plural word for god was suppressed. Sometime in the fifth or sixth year of his reign, Akhenaten moved his capital to a new city called Akhetaten (present-day Tall al Amarinah, also seen as Tell al Amarna). At that time, the pharaoh, previously known as Amenhotep IV, adopted the name Akhenaten. His wife, Queen Nefertiti, shared his beliefs. Akhenatens religious ideas did not survive his death. His ideas were abandoned in part because of the economic collapse that ensued at the end of his reign. To restore the morale of the nation, Akhenatens successor, Tutankhamen, appeased the offended gods whose resentment would have blighted all human enterprise. Temples were cleaned and repaired, new images made, priests appointed, and endowments restored. Akhenatens new city was abandoned to the desert sands. Data as of December 1990Source: Library of Congress Country Studies Ancient Egypt LOC Articles Ancient Egypt - New Kingdom 3d Intermediate Period Ancient Egypt - Old Middle Kingdoms and 2d Intermediate Period

Biography of Mary McLeod Bethune, Civil Rights Activist

Biography of Mary McLeod Bethune, Civil Rights Activist Mary McLeod Bethune (born  Mary Jane McLeod; July 10, 1875–May 18, 1955) was a trailblazing African-American educator and civil rights leader. Bethune, who strongly believed that education was the key to equal rights, founded the groundbreaking Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute (now known as the Bethune-Cookman College) in 1904. She also opened a hospital, served as CEO of a company, advised four U.S. presidents, and was chosen to attend the founding convention of the United Nations. Fast Facts: Mary McLeod Bethune Known For: Bethune was an educator and activist who fought to improve the lives of African-Americans.Also Known As: Mary Jane McLeodBorn: July 10, 1875 in Mayesville, South CarolinaParents: Sam and Patsy McLeodDied: May 18, 1955 in Daytona Beach, FloridaSpouse: Albertus Bethune (m. 1898–1918)Children: Albert Early Life Mary Jane McLeod was born on July 10, 1875, in rural Mayesville, South Carolina. Unlike her parents, Samuel and Patsy McLeod, Mary, who was the 15th of 17 children, was born free. For many years after the end of slavery, Marys family continued to work as sharecroppers on the plantation of former master William McLeod until they could afford to build a farm. Eventually, the family had enough money to erect a log cabin on a small plot of farmland they called Homestead. Despite their freedom, Patsy still did laundry for her former owner and Mary often accompanied her mother to deliver the wash. Mary loved going because she was allowed to play with the toys of the owners grandchildren. On one particular visit, Mary picked up a book- only to have it ripped from her hands by a white child, who screamed that Mary wasnt supposed to read. Later in life, Mary said that this experience had inspired her to learn to read and write. Early Education At a young age, Mary was working up to 10 hours a day, often in the fields picking cotton. When she was 7, a black Presbyterian missionary named Emma Wilson visited Homestead. She asked Samuel and Patsy if their children could attend the school she was establishing. The parents could afford to send only one child, and Mary was chosen to become the first member of her family to attend school. This opportunity would change Mary’s life. Eager to learn, Mary walked 10 miles a day to attend the one-room Trinity Mission School. If there was time after chores, Mary taught her family whatever she had learned that day. Mary studied at the mission school for four years and graduated at the age of 11. With her studies completed and no means to further her education, Mary returned to her familys farm to work in the cotton fields. A Golden Opportunity Still working a year after graduation, Mary fretted about missing additional educational opportunities- a dream that now seemed hopeless. Ever since the McLeod familys only mule had died, forcing Marys father to mortgage Homestead to buy another mule, money in the McLeod household had been even scarcer than before. Luckily for Mary, a Quaker teacher in Denver, Colorado, named Mary Chrisman had read about the blacks-only Mayesville school. As a sponsor of the Northern Presbyterian Churchs project to educate former slave children, Chrisman offered to pay tuition for one student to receive a higher education- and Mary was chosen. In 1888, 13-year-old Mary traveled to Concord, North Carolina, to attend the Scotia Seminary for Negro Girls. When she arrived at Scotia, Mary stepped into a world very different from her Southern upbringing, with white teachers sitting, talking, and eating with black teachers. At Scotia, Mary learned that through cooperation, whites and blacks could live in harmony. Studies Study of the Bible, American history, literature, Greek, and Latin filled Marys days. In 1890, the 15-year-old completed the Normal and Scientific Course, which certified her to teach. However, the course was the equivalent of todays associates degree, and Mary wanted more education. She continued her studies at the Scotia Seminary. Lacking money to travel home during summer vacations, the principal of Scotia found her jobs as a domestic with white families for which she earned a little money to send back to her parents. Mary graduated from Scotia Seminary in July 1894, but her parents, unable to get enough money together for a trip, did not attend the graduation. Shortly after graduation, Mary boarded a train in July 1894 with a scholarship to the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois, again thanks to Mary Chrisman. Mary took courses that would help her qualify for missionary work in Africa. She also worked in Chicagos slums, feeding the hungry, assisting the homeless, and visiting prisons. Mary graduated from Moody in 1895 and immediately went to New York to meet with the Presbyterian Churchs mission board. The 19-year-old was devastated when she was told â€Å"coloreds† could not qualify as African missionaries. Becoming a Teacher With no options, Mary went home to Mayesville and worked as an assistant to her old teacher, Emma Wilson. In 1896, Mary moved to Augusta, Georgia, for an eighth-grade teaching job at the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute. The school was located in an impoverished area, and Mary came to realize that her missionary work was most needed in America, not Africa. She began to seriously consider founding her own school. In 1898, the Presbyterian board sent Mary to Sumter, Carolinas Kindell Institute. A gifted singer, Mary joined the choir of the local Presbyterian church and met teacher Albertus Bethune at a rehearsal. The two started courting and in May 1898, 23-year-old Mary married Albertus and moved to Savannah, Georgia. Mary and her husband found teaching positions, but she stopped teaching when she became pregnant, and he began selling menswear. Mary gave birth to son Albertus McLeod Bethune, Jr. in February 1899. Later that year, a Presbyterian minister convinced Mary to accept a mission-school teaching position in Palatka, Florida. The family lived there  for five years, and Mary began selling insurance policies for Afro-American Life. (In 1923, Mary founded Tampas Central Life Insurance, becoming the companys CEO in 1952.) Plans were announced in 1904 to build a railroad in northern Florida. Aside from the project creating jobs, Mary saw an opportunity to open a school for migrant families- envisioning funds coming from the wealthy of Daytona Beach. Mary and her family headed to Daytona and rented a run-down cottage for $11 a month. But the Bethunes had arrived in a city where blacks were lynched every week. Their new home was in the poorest neighborhood, but it was here that Mary wanted to establish her school for black girls. Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute On October 4, 1904, 29-year-old Mary McLeod Bethune opened the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute with only $1.50 and five 8- to 12-year-old girls, and her son. Each child paid 50 cents a week for a uniform and to receive rigorous training in religion, business, academics, and industrial skills. Bethune often lectured to raise funds for her school and recruit students, emphasizing education to achieve self-sufficiency. But Jim Crow was law and the KKK was again raging. Lynching was common. Bethune received a visit from the Klan over the formation of her school. Tall and hefty, Bethune stood resolutely in the doorway, and the Klan left without causing harm. Many black women were impressed once they heard Bethune speak about the importance of education; they too wanted to learn. To teach adults, Bethune provided evening classes, and by 1906, Bethunes school boasted a 250-student enrollment. She bought the adjacent building to accommodate expansion. However, Mary McLeod Bethunes husband Albertus never shared her vision for the school. The two could not reconcile on this point, and Albertus left the family in 1907 to return to South Carolina, where he died in 1919 of tuberculosis. School Growth Bethunes goal was to create a top-rated school where students would acquire the requisite needed to succeed in life. She provided agricultural training so that students would learn how to grow and sell their own food. Accepting everyone who wanted education caused major overcrowding; however, Bethune was determined to keep her school afloat. She purchased more property from a dumpsites owner for $250, paying $5 a month. Students hauled junk away from the place they named Hells Hole. Bethune also swallowed her pride and decided to solicit aid from rich whites. Her tenacity paid off when James Gamble (of Proctor and Gamble) paid to build a brick schoolhouse. In October 1907, Mary moved her school to the four-story building she named Faith Hall. People were often moved to give due to Bethunes powerful speaking and passion for black education. For example, the owner of White Sewing Machines made a large donation to build a new hall and included Bethune in his will. In 1909, Bethune went to New York and was introduced to Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Guggenheim. Rockefeller created a scholarship program for Mary through his foundation. Angry at the absence of healthcare for blacks in Daytona, Bethune built her own 20-bed hospital on campus. The consummate fundraiser hosted a bazaar, raising $5,000. Famed industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie donated. With this support, Bethune focused on acquiring accreditation as a college. Her proposal was rejected by the all-white board, who believed an elementary education was sufficient for blacks. Bethune again sought the help of powerful allies, and in 1913 the board approved junior-college accreditation. Merger Bethune maintained her Head, Hands, and Heart teaching philosophy and the overcrowded school kept growing. To expand, the 45-year-old Bethune hopped on her bike, going door-to-door soliciting contributions and selling sweet potato pies. However, the 20-acre campus still struggled financially, and in 1923 Bethune decided to merge the school with the Cookman Institute for Men in Jacksonville, Florida, which doubled student enrollment to 600. The school became the Bethune-Cookman College in 1929, and Bethune served until 1942 as the first black female college president. Women’s Rights Bethune believed that raising the status of African-American women was key to elevating the race; thus, beginning in 1917, she formed clubs championing the causes of black women. The Florida Federation of Colored Women and the Southeastern Federal of Colored Women addressed important topics of the era. A constitutional amendment granted black women voting rights in 1920, and an overjoyed Bethune got busy organizing a voter registration drive. This roused the ire of Klansmen, who threatened her with violence. Bethune urged calmness and courage, leading the women in exercising their hard-won privilege. In 1924, Bethune defeated Ida B. Wells, with whom she had a contentious relationship over teaching methods, to become president of the 10,000-strong National Association of Colored Women (NACW). Bethune traveled often, singing and speaking to raise money, not only for her college but also to move the NACW’s headquarters to Washington, D.C. In 1935, Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW). The organization sought to address discrimination, thereby improving every facet of African-American life. Advisor to Presidents Bethune’s successes did not go unnoticed. After she returned to her school in October 1927 from a European vacation, she attended a brunch at the home of New York governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This began a lifelong friendship between Bethune and the governors wife Eleanor. A year later, it was U.S. President Calvin Coolidge who wanted Bethune’s advice. Later, Herbert Hoover sought Bethunes thoughts on racial affairs and appointed her to various committees. In October 1929, Americas stock market crashed, and black men were the first to be fired. Black women became primary breadwinners, working in jobs of servitude. The Great Depression increased racial hostility, but Bethune ignored established mores by frequently speaking out. Her outspokenness caused journalist Ida Tarbell to deem her one of Americas most influential women in 1930. When Franklin Roosevelt became president, he created several programs for blacks and appointed Bethune as his advisor of minority affairs. In June 1936, Bethune became the first black woman to head a federal office as director of the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Association (NYA). In 1942, Bethune assisted the war secretary during World War II in creating the Womens Army Corps (WAC), lobbying for black women military officers. From 1935 to 1944, Bethune advocated passionately for African-Americans to receive equal consideration under the New Deal. Bethune also assembled a black think tank for weekly strategy meetings at her home. On October 24, 1945, President Harry Truman chose Bethune to attend the United Nations founding convention. Bethune was the only black female delegate, and the event was the highlight of her life. Death Failing health forced Bethune into retirement from government service. She went home, maintaining only certain club affiliations, and wrote books and articles. Knowing death was near, Mary penned My Last Will and Testament, in which she summed up her lifes achievements. The will read, I leave you love. I leave you hope. I leave you a thirst for education. I leave you racial dignity, a desire to live harmoniously- and a responsibility to our young people. On May 18, 1955, 79-year-old Mary McLeod Bethune died of a heart attack and was buried on the grounds of her beloved school. A simple marker reads, Mother. Legacy Against all odds, Bethune greatly improved the lives of African-Americans through education, political involvement, and economic enablement. In 1974, a sculpture of Bethune teaching children was erected in Washington D.C.s Lincoln Park, making her the first African-American to receive such an honor. The United States Postal Service issued a stamp commemorating Bethune in 1985. Today, her legacy lives on through the college that bears her name. Sources Bethune, Mary McLeod, et al.  Mary McLeod Bethune: Building a Better World: Essays and Selected Documents. Indiana University Press, 2001.Kelley, Samuel L.  Faith, Hope and Charity: Mary McLeod Bethune. Xlibris Corporation, 2014.

Love and the supernatural in methamorphosis ey ovid and midsummers Essay

Love and the supernatural in methamorphosis ey ovid and midsummers night dream by shakespeare - Essay Example While the former uses love and supernaturalism in order to transcend the material and induce a feeling of goodness about the world at the end, the latter, uses these two themes to criticize and disapprove the contemporary political and scientific theories. Though the literary pieces under consideration were composed at a gap of centuries, yet influences of Ovid can be detected in Shakespeare’s play. It is analysed by critics that the ‘gods and goddesses ’of Metamorphoses’ had influenced the construction of ‘fairies’ in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. It may be claimed that Ovid’s construction of a mythological and mystic world through the random use of immortal characters and supernatural elements, has been attempted by Shakespeare to recreate in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ by using elements like magic and fairies. Whether both the texts establish the same idea, or are widely different from one anothe r is the subject of the analysis below. There is a prevalent use of supernatural elements in the plays of Shakespeare. Be it ghosts, witches, or fairies, or the technique of prediction and foretelling, paranormal and bizarre factors have always played a major role in the plot and thematic structure of the plays. The people of the Elizabethan period to which Shakespeare belonged to, were much superstitious, and their belief in supernaturalism dictated their life and actions to large extent. It may be said that Shakespeare’s use of elements of supernatural in his works shows the Elizabethans’ obsession with mythical beliefs. Though he was much influenced and pressurized by the demands of the contemporary stage goers to include supernatural elements in the plays, Shakespeare’s inherent genius was such that nowhere in the plays, the supernatural constituents appear incoherent or unnecessary to the plot. Those were incorporated ingeniously and made an dispensable

How can Economic Value Added (EVA) statements be used to improve Essay - 2

How can Economic Value Added (EVA) statements be used to improve financial statement reporting, results, and success What are some problems found with EVA - Essay Example Making financial decisions only based on accounting data is a traditional way that can be misleading for the financial managers to make bad decisions. EVA measures are useful for the business to make decisions that can help the business to grow and help in making future ones. EVA creates the ‘value’ in the business decisions and financial management. The EVA calculations and statements are drawn by evaluating the value that has been added to the company. It shows how much the business has grown in terms of the worth it has. There are many factors that the EVA statements take into consideration to make sure that all the relevant data is considered when measuring the value of the business. It calculates how much the growth of the business is and how much has been invested for that growth. It takes out the net benefit that the business has gained and in regard of that cost that has been put in for that benefit (Grant, 2003). The EVA statements allow the business to take decisions about those projects that have to be accepted by the business. EVA statements would accept those projects that give the business a chance to experience growth and that add to the value the business. However, the financial managers will not accept those projects that seem to bring less benefit to the business and its value, no matter how much financial gain that project may bring. Although it may seem that the EVA statements neglect the financial figures, the concept is simple which suggests that decisions should be taken on account of the business’s financial health, and not taking those decisions that may financially hurt the business. EVA statements are greatly used to improve the business’s financial statement reporting, results and the future success. It allows the business to take decisions that are beneficial for the business financial position. Moreover, it allows the financial managers to evaluate the financial results in relation to