Thursday, February 27, 2020

The Effects of War and Peace on Foreign Aid Term Paper

The Effects of War and Peace on Foreign Aid - Term Paper Example Before a state donates I suggest its’ leaders consider carefully what goals it wishes o accomplish with their donation and assess critically the prospects for accomplishing these goals. For example, aid may be siphoned off by an elite and not reach the intended beneficiaries, or it may not be the best way to help the recipients develop their own resources. Or the provision of aid may have unintended adverse consequences. For example, Rwanda has received considerable foreign aid and although by some criteria it has benefited from this aid, much of the population has not profited. In fact, it has helped perpetuate and even exacerbate sectarian inequalities which could easily bring a return to the civil war and genocide of 1994. While there is no longer a genocide or overt civil war in Rwanda it can by no means be described as a peaceful country. Hostility and distrust continue to prevail between the ruling minority urban Tutsis and the majority impoverished rural Hutu. And overt civil war could break out at any time long after the 1994 genocide. Thus although Rwanda has received a massive infusion of foreign aid this has disproportionately benefited the elite Tutsis. On the positive side, Rwanda is the only country in sub-Saharan Africa on track to meet all health-related UN goals including reducing under5 mortality by two thirds. Also since 1994 per capita income has almost tripled and GDP quadrupled. ( Farmer 2013) However, these positive statistics hide significant disparities in ethnic aid beneficiaries. More than half of the aid received is distributed through Tutsi dominated government institutions so that it benefits mostly already comparatively better off Tutsis rather than the impoverished Hutus ( Farmer 2013)) Thus even though statistics indicate overall per capita income and GDP have risen rural Hutus who make up 84% of the population remain impoverished, (Endless and Hakizimana 2009).

Monday, February 10, 2020

Comparing Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove to the Reality of the Essay

Comparing Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove to the Reality of the American West - Essay Example This is also an obvious example on how the Americans try to look for the thrill in the midst of the challenges and once again, rise and see the co-called modern reality of boundary expansion. Going back to the story, we can recall that each character has different internal conflicts that make up and or create their identity. A brief example of this is Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae who have different persuasions and trips in life. Call is a loner which solely justifies his need for distance seeing that he is a very responsible person and a leader in image as seen and felt by people around him. McCrae on the other hand has his on longing for love and acceptance from Lorena Wood which in the end, only after he dies shall he get upon the realization of Wood that the short time marriage that MacCrae offered at the middle part of the story is indeed significant. Other characters also have their own mini conflict if that is the perfect way to see it, and these conflicts when joined all together will form one particular dilemma that can only be triggered by Call and McCrae's wanting to travel and search for the best time in their lives traveling away from the Lonesome Dove. It is surprising and or rather ironic to know that while the title suggests of the name of the place where the characters belong and where their identities are formed, the events happen away from the place of the subject. The characters are moving away from their identities which can all be related to the idea of American expansion. By the time the story is written, in the late 80' s to be specific, Americans have been struggling to fight against the Indians, all for the sake of land. This issue on land can all bring us back to the movies that proliferated in the early 80's with a topic of mostly protecting the boundaries which in history Americans try to defend. In short, this story of the Lonesome Dove presents to us a myth like art which can be seen as a rationalization of the movement being made in history, the movement of development from the part of the Americans and even from the European people as they join the world in settling for a culture that will soon be part of their identity and social living. However, the movie is not enough to conclude white male supremacy and its longing for Western expansion because it will be a harsh generalization to say such idea exists when others, specifically those in Europe are themselves finding a way to move to different directions to look for lands to toil and improve. The decline of the western as a commercially viable film and television genre in the 1970s and 1980s is not tied only to its traditional association with white male supremacy, however. After all, other currently popular action genres, including those that have absorbed some of the western's traditional thematic concerns, are similarly dominated by white male protagonists (e.g., the science fiction film: The Road Warrior "solves" the problem of the vanished wilderness by blowing up the world and starting from scratch, placing Mad Max as the reluctant and cynical avatar of a new civilization in a post-apocalyptic frontier). Rather, the western was rendered obsolete primarily because of its close ties with the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century myth of free-enterprise capitalism. In the present postindustrial era, as more and more people find themselves permanently un- or