Russia Pestel Essay Example for Free

Russia Pestel Essay Recent dissolution of the form Communist state of the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation. Russia’s economy is in transition from a a state-controlled to a market-controlled economy. †¢Vladimir Putin, moved to reduce the political influence of oligarchs soon after taking office, forcing some into exile and prosecuting others. Bbc Still strained relationship between the Russian Federation and the West (U.S) rooted from the cold war Uncertainty of control within the Russian government 2003 October Billionnaire Yukos oil boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky arrested and held in custody over investigations into tax evasion and fraud. Mr Khodorkovsky had supported liberal opposition to President Putin. (bbc) The energy giant Gazprom is close to the Russian state and critics say it is little more than an economic and political tool of the Kremlin. Existing taxes on oil companies * Royalty (6-16% of gross revenue).  * Mineral resource tax (10% of gross revenue less the value of the taxpayer spending on exploration). * Excise tax (66 rubles/tonne of oil, equal to 2.5%, according to calculations of the Ministry of Finance based on the weighted average price of Russian oil and taking into consideration export and domestic sales). http://www.ogj.com/articles/print/volume-99/issue-33/special-report/the-russian-oil-gas-industry-analysis-raises-questions-about-russian-tax-proposal.html Uncertainties about legal rights, infrastructure, ownership, and liability have slowed development despite the high hopes of many western corporations. http://archive.greenpeace.org/climate/arctic99/reports/blackice-8.html Yet, by end of 1998, the oil industry was fully privatized, substantially  deregulated, and had undergone significant internal restructuring (see Table 1 below). Even more recently, the Russian government has adopted (1998-2000) and enacted (1999-2002) a new Tax Code that by most accounts exceeds Western standards.5 For example, it introduced a 13 percent flat tax on personal income, capped corporate contributions to the social insurance fund, reduced the profits tax (a.k.a. corporate income tax) rate from 35 to 24 percent, abolished turnover taxes (as of 2003), tied export tariffs directly to the price of oil, and established new accounting procedures that are on par with International Accounting Standards Foreign Investment policies The Yukos crisis began when Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, chief executive of Yukos and Russias richest man, was jailed at gunpoint Oct. 25 on charges of fraud, forgery and tax evasion. Mr. Khodorkovsky insists his arrest and the prosecution of other large Yukos shareholders are politically motivated. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/03/world/signs-of-damage-control-in-russia-s-oil-scandal.html Tax and royalties http://new.aibse.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Patton2008.pdf

George Washington Carver :: essays research papers

George Washington Carver was born near Diamond Grove, Missouri in 1864 on a plantation owned by a slave owner. His father, Moses Carver, and his mother, Susan Carver, were slaves on that plantation. As a young infant, George along with his mother was kidnapped by Confederate night raiders and was taken to Arkansas to be sold into slavery. Moses Carver‘s owner searched for George and finally found him and reclaimed him, but his mother was already sold. The man who owned George at the time didn’t want to give George back, so Moses’ owner traded a horse for the boy. George was given back to his father suffering from a terrible case of whooping cough, and ended up with a noticeable stutter.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Back on his father’s owner’s plantation, George was now too sick to work out in the fields, so he mainly worked indoors. He helped around the kitchen and in a small garden. It was the garden that George came to love the most. He was often called “The Plant Doctor'; because of his love of plants.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  After the Civil War, George was set free at the age of 10. Once he was free, George set out to get an education. While trying to overcome many frustrating and bitter obstacles, George finally made his way through high school. George went to school until the age of 30, but his age didn’t stop him from finding more education. George tried applying to many colleges and all of those attempts failed. George almost gave up until Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa finally accepted him as a freshman.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  To support himself through college, George had odd jobs such as ironing and washing the clothes of his fellow and more fortunate classmates. In 1891, George was transferred to Iowa State College of Agriculture, which is now Iowa State University. It was there that George became the first African American to get a Bachelor’s Degree and a Masters Degree in bacterial botany and agriculture. After his graduation, George started teaching classes about agriculture and chemurgy. In 1897, Booker T. Washington, the founder of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro’s, convinced George to come there and serve as the director of agriculture. It was at this Institute that George made many discoveries that led to many of his inventions. He would grow plants such as sweet potatoes, peanuts, and soybeans and then do experiments with them.

Modern public life Essay

â€Å"Modern Public life could not exist or function properly without the Media† In this essay I will be discussing the above statement and arguing that without Media, modern public life could not exist. I will first explain some key terms to help in the argument including explaining the meaning of the term Public Life. According to the Collins Dictionary â€Å"The Public is people in general or the people of a particular place. Public is used to talk about the feelings and behaviours of people in general. If someone is a public figure or is in public life, they are well known. Public is used to talk about things being said or done so that everyone can hear them or see them†. What is meant by the term Public Life is a space where a body of people can come together to discuss issues relating to their group. These groups can be very small like a book club or large like the United Nations and they can discuss anything from the latest Bryce Courtney novel to world peace. Geoffrey Craig in his book The Media Politics and Public Life explains the concept of public life as: â€Å".. A body of people within a society and a domain within which debate about that society occurs†¦ The public is also a subject, and people come together as a public in modern times when they engage in readings of the events, the stories and the debates that circulate in the society. â€Å"(2002. P49) Public life occurs where private issues are brought to the attention of the general public through the use of the media. Without out the media it would be private life, not public life. Media, as defined by the Collins dictionary is the plural of medium which â€Å"is a means of communicating or teaching something. † When we talk about the media we do not just use traditional forms of media like newspapers, television and radio but we also use other forms of media like movies, the internet, transnationals companies and communication technologies. All of these forms of media are sites where the meanings of public life are played out, debated and evaluated. Our everyday lives could not function properly without the media. Media is a drug that we cannot live in a democratic society without. We listen to the radio on the way to work to hear the traffic reports and to know where the multi-novas are hidden. When election time comes, we can’t invite John Howard round for dinner to discuss his policies so we rely on the media to show us them through television radio and newspapers. When a cyclone is coming our way, how do we know to lock up the house or leave town? The media inform us. Even the very early smoke signals were a form of media, a form of communication. It is important to stress here that there is no way that public life could function without the use of the media as the understandings of our society, the norms and values of the world in which we live are the products of living in a mediated world. We as a public only ever see the representations of a breaking story through the television or in the paper. We rely on the media to tell us breaking stories that are happening around the world because of our geographical locations. John Hartley (1992 P1) has noted: â€Å"while [the public domain and the public] don’t exist as spaces and assemblies, the public realm and the public are still to be found, large as life in the media. Television, popular newspapers, magazines and photography, the popular media of the modern period, are the public domain, the place where and the means by which the public is crated and has its being. † In talking about public life we must clarify the notion of having a public sphere. By public sphere we mean any activities that occur in the public eye or that is brought to the attention of the public through the media. Habermas argues that the original public spheres originated with the early Bourgeois movement in the tea houses, libraries and reading societies in England. It was here where people gathered to discuss issues concerning their lives and the society in which they lived. What made this a public sphere was that the people were all gathered in one place discussing issues that were relevant to them. Although this was regarded as one of the original democracies that were a voice for the people, Habermas also understood that the early tea house publics were not totally representative of the communities for which they were fighting for. In the early days women were not included in the tea house discussions, also, only a certain class of people were allowed to enter the tea houses and those that could not read would not need to go to reading houses or libraries. Of course those that could not travel to these public events had no said either. This limited the voice of the people to only those that were upper-class, well educated men that could travel. This was not representative of the wider communities. The next stage in the evolution of public life was when the printing presses made literature available to the mass public. This literature was free from state control and was the newest site for public life to be played out on. Of course if you were illiterate the medium was useless but for those that could read and had access to the literature a new public was formed. The reading public was not tied by geographical restrictions. The development of film was again a new medium that with it brought a new public. By now we have to understand that there are a huge amount of publics that all have their own issues to debate. A person can be part of a number of publics at one time. She may be a single mother, working at the supermarket, she is part of the conservative party, is a part of a sci-fi reading club, she buys Thai cooking books, buys red wine and goers to wineries, is part of a mothers group at day care, has a network of other single friends on the internet and is part of a union at work. All of these publics want very specific things and all lobby for different things, the private issues become public when they are played out through the different types of media. Without the media the issues would not be brought into the public spotlight and would likely not be resolved. It is essential to point out that modern public life is played out through our media consumption and not through our everyday experiences. We collectively watched the September 11 attacks through our televisions, listened to the disaster unfold on our radios and read about and saw the pictures of the devastation in newspapers. Without these sites we would not have experienced it at all. This highlights the fact that we rely on the media to get information that would not readily be available to us. Peter Dahlgren argues that the public sphere is not just a â€Å"marketplace for ideas or an information exchange depot but also a major societal mechanism for the production and circulation of culture†. This idea of the media framing culture is very important because it gives the media great power to give meaning to our identities. Culture, which consist of ideas, customs, norms, values and attitudes are shared by the people of a particular country. Campaigns that promote a type of culture are often produced by government and portrayed through various media outlets. Popular campaigns that frame our culture are the domestic violence ad â€Å"Australia says NO to domestic violence† and the drink driving campaign, that enforce that fact that those things are going against our culture and that that type of behaviours is not accepted. These campaigns are dependant on the media getting the message out there. The main media technologies that are responsible for the communication of public news are television, radio and print and these all function as journalism. These are seen as the most trustworthy sources of information as they are governed by laws that protect privacy, defamation and the use of misleading information. Journalisms main role is to seek the truth and tell the masses. Although these forms of media are self regulated (to be free of outside influence) their guidelines that journalists have to abide by are strict to keep the freedom to self regulate. Television is the most powerful mass medium and is an absolute must in every household. In my house alone there are four televisions and there are only 2 people living there. â€Å"A productivity commission report found that Australia’s spend over 20 hours per week or 36% of their leisure time watching television†(Productivity Commission 200, P62). The ability to actually see an event or person and hear them speak makes television the most trustworthy of the media outlets. Politicians often measure the success of a campaign on the presentation of their image/policy/media events. Although television has taken over from the print media as the most popular type of news media, many argue that the print media are the most influential mass medium for political debate. Agenda setting for the day is mostly done by the ‘quality’ morning newspapers. Newspapers are often more detailed in their dissemination of public life because they are not restricted by the time factor that is TV. Radio is the secret weapon in the fight for a public life. The radio doesn’t have the ability to show the audience an event or doesn’t even give them a chance to read about an issue but it is the most pervasive forms of media as it can be listened to whilst driving or doing the housework. Politicians often use talkback radio as a direct link to the public. It is often the closet the general public will get to speaking with high profile players. Because the media is the chief agency to communicate public life and the world that we know is based on the representations of the media, there is much scrutiny placed on the authenticity of the stories that are shown to us. In Australia there are laws that ensure that one source does not have monopoly over the content of our media, Australia’s former prime minister Paul Keating put it best when he said that the cross ownership laws meant you could be a ‘prince of print or a queen of screen’ but not both. This means that one person will not be in control of all of the media of our country and so a true representation of society’s issues would be presented by the media. Again without the media, Australia would not be able to be a democratic society and have a public life. Through many different sites issues and events are played out and become open to the scrutiny of the general public. These different issues and events create discussion between the people that read or hear about them and this is what is meant by a public life. People that are hundreds of miles away from each other can be discussing the same issues without even having to talk to one another. These systems of communication enable us to live in a democratic society, a society where we can chose who leads us in government and we can discuss issues relating to our society. This would not happen if wasn’t for the role of the media. Without the media to portray issues and events we would never hear about a sale on in the city or about governmental policy that is set to affect us all. Public life as we know it would not be able to function properly without the media. References Craig, Geoffrey. Chapter 1, 2 and 3. The Media, Politics and Public Life. Victoria: Allen and Unwin, 2004. Cunningham, Stuart and Graeme Turner. The Media and Communications in Australia. St Leonard’s, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2002. Dahlgren, Peter. Television and the Public Sphere: Citizenship, Democracy and the Media. London: Sage, 1995 Grossberg, Lawrence, Ellen Wartella and D. Charles Whitney. â€Å"The Media and the Public. † Media Making: Mass Media in a Popular Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA:Sage, 1998. 357-374 Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into the Category of Bourgeois Society. Trans, T. Burger. Cambridge: Polity, 1992. Scannell, Paddy. â€Å"Public service broadcasting and modern public life† Media, Culture and Society. 11(1989):135-166. Thompson, John. â€Å"The Media and the Development of the Modern Societies† The Media and Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995. 44-69 Wark, McKenzie. Celebrities, culture and cyberspace: the light on the hill in a post-modern world. Sydney: Pluto Press, 1999. 128-136 http://malagigi. cddc. vt. edu/pipermail/icernet/2004-January/002743. html http://www. zip. com. au/~athornto/thesis2. htm http://www. gseis. ucla. edu/faculty/kellner/kellner. html.

Essay on Player Piano - 1049 Words

Player Piano In Player Piano, everything is controlled by machines and computers and depends on productivity. The managers and engineers only create new programs for more productive production. Even the rates of production and consumption are calculated by a computer (EPICAC), which is seated in the large Carlsbad cavern system. The EPICAC computer even determines the peoples careers and in this way their whole lives. It gives intelligence tests to everyone, and on the basis of their results it sorts people into two categories - suitable for university entering exams and suitable for work. The university studies allow their graduates to become managers, engineers, writers or public relation workers. You may become a writer only if†¦show more content†¦Computers control all the other. He is a married, thirty-five-year old, tall, and thin man of darkish skin. His father was a celebrated founder of the local industrial plant and its first general manager. All Pauls career is before him, wai ting for him. He is a candidate for a better job, and he might grow up in the hierarchy of the American industry to be offered the seat of general manager of the state industrial division. His wife Anita relies on him and she still keeps telling him to be a correct son of his father. She trains him in the hierarchy rules and opportunism. He feels he should follow his fathers tracks, but he is not very fond of being a general manager. He doesnt not know of any better job, and in fact he even would not want to get any. He tries to be as best a s possible although he finds no interest in his job. His kind and fatherly superior Kroner relies on him because he used to be an old friend of Pauls father in the days of his life. Kroner sees the old Dr. Proteus in Paul and treats him so. He trusts in Pauls powers and abilities and he would like to see the young engineer in the highest possible post. Paul has got an old university friend, a character who is very important for this book. His name is Ed Finnerty. He is the fatal character for Paul because he is the one who makes Paul realize his real position and all the peoples real positions. He isShow MoreRelatedPresentation Is A Guide For Beginner Piano Players1415 Words   |  6 Pagesis a guide for beginner piano players. The essential concepts needed for beginner players to transition to the intermediate level are learning the notes on the piano, establishing a rudimentary foundation in theory, obtaining proper form and technique, practicing finger exercises, and learning the right music. (Slide 1 and 2) The first tip in learning how to play the piano is understanding how many keys are present, and where each note and octave is located. 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