United States Ambassador’s Speech to the United Nations Essay Example for Free

United States Ambassador’s Speech to the United Nations Essay Ladies and gentlemen and citizens of the world, my name is Susan Rice and I am honored to speak to you today. Our countries, which all embrace the United Nations’ quest for worldwide peace and stability, face many challenges that we can and must solve together. My nation, the United States of America, is prepared and determined to act constructively, responsibly and morally to contribute toward the realization of our shared goals. The United States of America has recently chosen a new and hopeful president who has bold, optimistic, and pragmatic ideas for his country and for our world. I am fortunate and privileged to have known and worked closely with Mr. Obama for the last several years, and I am honored that he nominated me for this post within this eminent organization. Working closely with all of you, I will strive to reflect and embody our country’s renewed principles of fairness, justice, respect for human rights, and love of freedom. Our individual homelands and our world as a whole face daunting challenges as we gather here today. Economic turmoil, security threats, political instability and human rights violations weigh on all our minds and on the minds of our respective countrymen. Let me assure each of you, and the people of your country by extension, that we are intent on charting a hopeful new path that will benefit us all. The United States is proud of our history of doing what’s right for our country and for the world of peace-loving nations as a whole. We believe that the vast majority of our actions over our more than 200 years have been just and beneficial for the free world. However, we know that our record is not perfect. Our new administration is committed to righting recent wrongs and working with our United Nations counterparts to face and conquer the issues and challenges that confront us today. I want to lay out some broad concerns and objectives that we believe must be addressed and confronted for the benefit of all our nations. Let me quote our United Nations charter. It â€Å"gives the Security Council primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security† (United Nations, 2009). As we all know, that objective is never easy to attain. As a permanent member of the Security Council, the United States holds a precious and weighty leadership role in helping to keep our world safe from those elements and regimes that plot every day against freedom and its enduring principles. We steadfastly and clearly say to those rogue elements that our nation and our allies cannot afford and will not allow your efforts to succeed. This body has the obligation and the ability to impose sanctions on those countries and factions that are intent on assailing peace and freedom. Within that framework for peace and worldwide security, the cessation of nuclear proliferation will continue to be an unyielding quest. We will strive to lower the number of nuclear weapons that exist across the world and we will tirelessly seek to thwart the development and deployment of nuclear warhead delivery systems. More specifically, let me address another security issue that threatens all our countries, directly or indirectly. Political instability is a major problem within many countries, particularly those who are engaged with us today, on their soil, in the fight against terrorism. Let me quote Mr. Obama directly as he engages our enemies of freedom. Our president stated yesterday â€Å"Let me be clear: Al-Qaida and its allies†¦are in Pakistan and Afghanistan and we have a clear and focused goal to disrupt, dismantle and defeat (them)† (C-Span, 2009). In that vein, let me also assure each of your nations that our country will not engage in cruel or tortuous practices on any of the combatants that we capture and detain. Let me close by stating that United States foreign policy goals are consistent and congruent with the stated goals of the United Nations. We are honored, one nation in a sea of many, to contribute to the well-being and security of our world. References C-SPAN. (2009, March 27). C-span. org. United Nations. (2009, March). un. org.

The Wifes Lament Essay -- Poet Wifes Lament Speaker

The Wife's Lament Over the years, there have been many interpretations of who the speaker of The Wife’s Lament could be. These range from very interesting ideas to ones that seem a little rough around the edges. It is obvious that no sure answer can be found due to the fact that whoever wrote this poem is dead and that the answer will always be in speculation even if it is correct. Hopefully, at the end of this quest I will be slightly more enlightened as to who the true speaker may really be. There are some things that we do know about this poem. It is most often referred to as an elegy because of the mood of mourning and regret. Upon further reading I discovered that this poem is like others of its time period. Many parallels can be seen between The Wife’s Lament and The Wanderer. The Wanderer is a poem about a man that is exiled due to war and details his miserable life in the wintry wilderness. Another poem that resembles The Wife’s Lament is Wulf and Eadwacer. In both of these poems, the speaker is interpreted to be a woman unlike other poems of the time. Wulf and Eadwacer is about a woman who has been involved with two men, the dreaded love-triangle. When the woman was separated from her lover, Wulf, she is taken into the comforting arms of another man, Eadwacer. This causes her much happiness but also pain over the lost love of Wulf. Thus the lament of this woman is very similar to the speaker in The Wife’s Lament. The various interpretations of The Wife’s Lament may argue on who the speaker is, but there is one thing that can not be denied. There is no doubt that this poem is about lamenting exile and the trials the speaker must face due to this exile. No matter who the speaker is, he/she is wroug... ... I think that anyone that reads this poem should be told about this interpretation so that they can at least consider it. The question of who is speaking in The Wife’s Lament will never be answered because there are too many facts that aren’t provided. It would have been wonderful if the poet would have stated straight away that the speaker was a woman or a goddess or any of the other possible people or things. The only thing that readers of this poem can do is take all of these interpretations into consideration and use them to form their own idea of who the speaker is. I am very glad that I was introduced to this work and that I had the possibility to examine the various arguments of who is speaking. I think that when reading any piece of literature it should be looked at in a similar fashion as trying to pick apart who is speaking in The Wife’s Lament.

Menelaus and Helen In ‘The Trojan War’ Essay

Menelaus and Helen are the main characters of the poem, hence, its title. This draws the readers’ attention mostly to the characters rather than to the Trojan myth. The title could have been, ‘The Trojan War’, but rather than doing this, Brooke focused mostly on the main characters, for the poem is more about them, than about the actual happening of the Trojan War. The perspective, and of whose point of view the poem has been written, does not change. It is always from Menelaus point of view of what is happening. Both in part one which describes the scene of the Trojan War, and how Helen has been captured by Paris and is token away from Menelaus, and in part two, which talks about the future, and supposition of how Menelaus and Helen would be years after, it is all Menelaus’ point of view, and not Brookes. The effects of this are that we only have the point of view of one of the main characters, so we do not know how the others felt about the same situation, because Brooke just describes Menelaus’ thoughts and not Helens. It is distinct in the poem that the persona is not Brooke, and that Brooke is simply writing as if he knew what Menelaus thought. This can be told because Brooke writes, â€Å"Menelaus broke To Priam’s palace†, and not â€Å"I broke into Priam’s palace†. The speaker clearly indicates what took Menelaus to this action, his reasons, his feelings, and sensations; Brooke refers to Menelaus’ actions, the scene, as if it were a fact, he does not at any moment of the poem, show his opinion. He is not biased; he simply tells what happens when Helen is captured, as if he were an observer. In the second stanza, it is not Brook’s thoughts, but Menelaus’ feelings towards Helen. It is very clear that Brooke does nto put himself as if he were Menelaus, â€Å"He had not remembered that she was so fair†, he just describes his thoughts as if he knew what Menelaus though about Helen. In the second part of the poem, Brooke analyses the scene and gives his opinion, â€Å"perfect knight†, in the third stanza he continues analyzing, he writes about Menelaus thoughts. So there is a clear distinction between the writer and the persona, we can tell whether or not the character and voice is in the poem or not. Brooke does not only state the facts, he is writing as if he could read Menelaus’ mind and thoughts about his future with Helen, he then goes back to telling the facts and what actually happened when they got old, relating the facts, being omniscient and analyzing what happens, this enriches our comprehension about what is going on. The poem does not have a formal structure. Although we can depict some rhymes at the end of lines, they do not follow a regular pattern. There is also some sense of symmetry, for the stanzas are reasonably the same length. The poem is divided into two parts, the firs one which is a myth and the second one which is the reality. The theme is first presented by a description of the scene, the capturing of Helen by Paris, then, the feelings of Menelaus towards Helen and their lives, following a vision and analysis of the result of the capturing and how Menelaus imagined his future would be, finally, a report on how their lives actually turned out to be. Brooke narrates the scene, he describes Menelaus’ thoughts and therefore does not use speeches in his poem. When there is use of speeches, we know exactly what are on the characters mind, but he does not use them, and we still understand the thoughts of Menelaus because the author does not write of his point of view, but as he were thinking like Menelaus. There are connotations such as when Brooke relates Helens voice as being golden. In this case his intentions are not to say that her voice is made of gold, but this suggests that she has a soft voice, which gives an impression that she is a delicate and elegant woman. Brooke does not literally mean that Helens voice is gold. Brooke does not need to tell the readers that Helen is a feminine woman, because, by saying that her voice is golden, that is already noticed by who reads the poem.

The s Death And Death Caused By Immanuel Kant - 1452 Words

In April of 2014, Brittany Maynard’s life was shattered. She was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer called a glioblastoma, and the chances of her surviving were practically nonexistent. Instead of prolonging her life for as long as possible, she decided to move to Oregon to take advantage of its aid-in-dying law. After her health began to deteriorate rapidly, Brittany swallowed a large quantity of the sedative pentobarbital, which had been prescribed to her by a physician. She passed away shortly afterwards, surrounded by her family and friends. She was not quite thirty years old (â€Å"The Brittany Fund†). Brittany’s death caused an enormous controversy. Some people said that she had the right to end her life, while others†¦show more content†¦In this way, allowing yourself to die could be considered using oneself as a means to an end – the ultimate end, as a matter of fact. He also stated that allowing suicide could never be consi dered a universal law, and would thus violate his famous categorical imperative. As he puts it, â€Å"It is then seen at once that a nature whose law it would be to destroy life itself and by means of the same feeling whose destination is to impel toward the furtherance of life would contradict itself†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Shafer-Landau 94-95) In other words, no law can simultaneously state that life is good and that ending life is good. Using these premises, Kant would say that Brittany’s suicide was immoral. Both of these arguments are reasonable, but are there any proclamations Kant made that contradict these statements? Equally importantly, how applicable are they in the case of Brittany Maynard? According to Iain Brassington, Kant’s categorical imperative does not apply to euthanasia, aid-in-dying, or any end-of-life issue. He states that if the categorical imperative applied here – if there really was a contradiction in the natural laws of the universe whenever someone decided to commit suicide – then it would be exceedingly difficult to do. As he puts it, â€Å"The currency of impermissibility rests on possibility. If suicide is possible, then either it must be compatible with the laws of nature that