Why Do Good People Do Bad Things Essay Example

Why Do Good People Do Bad Things Essay In this essay I will talk about the torturing of prisoners in Abu Ghraib. I will also write about the Stanley Milgrim Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. All of these relate to one of the topics we have covered this term. There is an excellent example of uniforms influencing power in the Stanford Prison experiment which took place in1971, it was lead by Prof Zimbardo1 (see footnote) in which a group of students were selected to act as prison guards and prisoners in a ‘fake’ prison. Even though the students who were selected to take part were completely aware it was a simulation, the experiment descended into chaos, the guards had started to torture the prisoners and even made the prisoners simulate sodomy on each other. The experiment was abandoned after the six days of the intended 2 weeks as it was too immoral. Perhaps the guards tortured the prisoners because of the uniforms. 30 years later, this behaviour was mirrored in a real prison at Abu Graib as I will explain. Boston Globe Article: ‘Good soldiers turn into bad eggs’, May 2004 There is another excellent example of how uniforms influence power and dehumanisation in the prison at Abu Graib. The incident at Abu Ghraib has left a black mark on America’s history but also provides an excellent subject to write about. The incident at Abu Ghraib happened from 2003-2004. The prisoners at Abu Ghraib were tortured and degraded until they managed to get information out of them, this included st ripping them naked and piling them on top of each other, putting a leash on them and pulling them around the prison and forcing them to masturbate. We will write a custom essay sample on Why Do Good People Do Bad Things specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Why Do Good People Do Bad Things specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Why Do Good People Do Bad Things specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer The people that we know did this were, Lynndie England and Charles Graner who was Lynndie’s lover â€Å"Some residents said Pte England was a model soldier who only did what she was told and must have been acting on commands from above. † This was said in a report from the BBC on the Baghdad prison, this shows that the soldiers that worked there were very closely bonded. 2 2 http://news. bbc. co. uk/1/hi/world/americas/4490795. stm There is another example of how uniforms influence power is the Stanley Milgrim Experiment which. This is an example of diffusion of power, this is an example of this because the supposed ‘teacher’ keeps referring to the professor as the boss saying, ‘shall I carry on? ’ ‘I don’t want to do this’ and most of the time they do what the teacher says but some of the time they don’t, for example when the ‘student’ says that he wants to get out then they normally go. Of course the student isn’t actually receiving any shocks the responses are just pre-recorded responses so the teacher thinks that he is. http://www. youtube. com/watch? =BcvSNg0HZwk My opinions on the matter of Abu Ghraib are that it was a major flaw in judgement from Lynndie England and it was almost blinded love for her boyfriend Charlie Graner. I also think that it had to do with something from higher up in the army, for example maybe a captain that had told them to do whatever it takes and they would have taken that more literally then it was int ended to be. However, I still think that this is an immoral and unethical way to treat a human being, even if they are different in skin colour and religion. With the Stanley Milgram experiment it shows that if someone sees someone else with a kind of uniform they would naturally gravitate towards them as a helping figure as they have to almost ‘earn’ their uniform and this shows that they are a good person. Also it shows that no-matter the uniform once the person getting the shock gets into a serious pain threshold then most of them stop as they cannot go all the way to seriously hurting people. Overall I think that the Abu Ghraib incident was a seriously inhumane and unethical thing to do and I think the people that committed that crime were let off to easily and that the people that had it done to them should have some sort of compensation. With the Stanley Milgrim Experiment I think it shows that most people are willing to give people pain but not lots of pain and certainly not enough to inflict serious injury on someone. With the Stamford Prison Experiment I think it was right to be pulled off early as it could of progressed to something much worse.

Army out of Vieques essays

Army out of Vieques essays Rafael Torres, a former security guard at the U.S. Navy base in Vieques, said he still hears noises in his head. A sound like the fighter jet that in 1995 hurled two cement-filled projectiles a few feet from where he was standing (ROSS A10). "The other day I was sleeping in my armchair, and I dove on the floor when I heard airplanes buzzing in my ears," said Torres (qtd in ROSS A10), 49, who has since retired with a disability pension because of psychological trauma from the accident. He said one bomb struck the three-story observation post he was guarding, crashing through the top two floors. The second landed feet away from where he stood, spewing chunks of cement. Torres didn't realize this at the time, but this narrow miss foreshadowed a much more serious accident (ROSS A10). Months later on April 19,1999, one of Torres's co-workers, David Sanes Rodriguez was pulling duty at the same post when a Navy F-18 dumped two 5,000-pound bombs about 1.9 miles off course. Unlike the inert practice bombs Torres encountered, these projectiles packed lives explosives. Sanes was killed, and four other base employees were injured. This incident has stirred widespread political opposition to the Navy's 60 year hegemony over this Puerto Rican island-municipality. Now, the pentagon is in danger of losing its premier naval training facility. The Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Facility in Vieques, which is judged by military analysts to be an irreplaceable national security asset and the only site where the military can stage integrated sea and air training (The Pentagon A32). Puerto Rico has been a United States territory for 102 years, and for 61 of those years the U.S. navy has used the Puerto Rican island of Vieques as a practice bombing range. United States troops have trained on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, since World War II. Seventy percent (about 22,000 of 33,000 acres) of Vieques is controlled by the U.S. Navy. ...

Finance In mauritius Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Finance In mauritius - Essay Example The rising market volatility due to the growing speculation in the stock markets led to failure in payment of debt among the banks, insurances and mortgage companies. The gravity of the problem was such that even the banks with huge capital reserves could not evade the situation (Mohamudally-Boolaky & Ramlall, 2010). This led to the fall of the one of the four pillars of Wall Street Lehman Brothers while some of the once ‘unfathomable to fall banks’ were either taken over at very low valuations or had to be rescued by the government. 1.1 Background Chan Lau (2008), states that the credit turmoil sent the US economy into a jittery. Even the European economies could not escape from the crisis and it gradually spread across the emerging economies. Initially, it was believed that the impact of the financial fiasco would be least on the African countries due to their limited exposure to structured financial products. However, this proved to be false. Ramlall (2009) highlighte d that the financial crisis increased the sensitivity of the stock market index of Mauritius to international markets (Mohamudally-Boolaky & Ramlall, 2010). ... The financial system of Mauritius is mainly bank-based with the banks representing 70 percent of the overall assets. In the â€Å"Financial Stability Report of the Bank of Mauritius† released in the year 2009 it has been stated that the recent credit fiasco did not have much impact on the indigenous banking sector. It is mainly because the banks in the country were not directly exposed to any toxic debt that affected the worldwide financial markets. The recent credit crisis has put forth the requirement to safeguard from vulnerabilities like rising foreign currency and credit risk, funding reliability and lending practices (Mohamudally-Boolaky & Ramlall, 2010). 1.2 Impact on financial parameters of Mauritian banks In a survey of Mauritian commercial banks and three important insurance companies it has been revealed that impact of the crisis was severe on the exports of the country with the mixed responses regarding the impact on the banks. As per this survey most of the banks witnessed a lag effect of the credit crisis mainly during the period 2009-10. Table 1- Impact of crisis on important banking ratios Source: (Mohamudally-Boolaky & Ramlall, 2010). The above table shows that the banking system in the country has emerged unscathed from the crisis. A rise in important financial parameters shows that the performance of the banks rose considerably. This implies that most of the banking activities are internal making it less risky as compared to those arising out of foreign operations (Mohamudally-Boolaky & Ramlall, 2010). The recent global financial crisis is reckoned as the worst credit crisis after the Great Depression. It initiated a number of policy actions by the central banks and governments across the world but