1
PART II - Millennium Development Goals
Analyze the chart. Choose one issue and get ready to argue why it tops the list of your
priorities in making our world a better place.
At
the
Millennium
Summit in September 2000 the
largest gathering of world
leaders in history adopted the
UN Millennium Declaration,
committing their nations to a
new global partnership to reduce
extreme poverty and setting out
a series of targets that have
become
known
as
the
Millennium Development Goals.
To achieve these goals the UN
commissioned the Millennium
Project and developed a concrete
action plan to embrace 15 major
global challenges.
Human Rights Agenda for the 21st Century
READING -1 (Human Rights Basics)
Pre-reading: What in your understanding is a human right? Think of a definition you can give.
Read the text and answer the questions the author puts in the last paragraph.
Name organisations that deal with human rights issues in your country and globally.
Classify them.
David F. Lloyd
www.vision.org
Human rights. We hear about them constantly these days, often in a global context. Yet
according to Eleanor Roosevelt, they begin “in small places, close to home—so close and so
small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world.”
The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, now more than 65 years old, was not
the first attempt to legislate human rights on an international scale. The post–World War I
League of Nations Covenant required members to “endeavour to secure and maintain fair and
humane conditions of labour for men, women, and children,” “secure just treatment of the native
inhabitants of territories under their control,” and “take steps in matters of international concern
for the prevention and control of disease.” Out of these provisions grew the work of the UN’s
International Labor Organization.
GRADUATION COURSE
Ekaterina D. Prodayvoda
2
Since 1948, much has been said and written about human rights, and organizations such
as Amnesty International have worked tirelessly to combat flagrant violations.
Yet it never seems enough, and so the laws continue to roll out like ripples in a pond,
ever wider in scope. The U.K. Human Rights Act, for instance, incorporated the earlier European
Convention on Human Rights into British law in late 2000. About two months later, the Charter
of Fundamental Rights was adopted at the European Council meeting in Nice. Already weighing
in on rights issues were the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights,
the latter of which is based on the European Convention on Human Rights.
Legally, rights have never been so extensively defined for so many: the rights of ethnic
minorities, the rights of women, the rights of children, the rights of single parents, and the LGBT
rights. The right to claim compensation when your rights are violated. The rights of workers, of
consumers and of the “unwaged.” The rights of companies and organizations. The rights of
animals and the rights of plants. It’s a list seemingly without end.
The prosperous nations of the Western world have never been more focused on rights.
Many people would therefore say we’ve come a long way since the UN’s Universal Declaration.
But have we? Could this focus on rights have some adverse effects? Is the obsession
with rights creating a better society? Surely we should all be happier by now. But society is
increasingly self-centered and dangerous, and happiness for many is more elusive than ever.
SPEAKING 1: PAIRWORK
Given below is the list of some of the human rights. In pairs make your list of 3
rights which are most important to you. Rate them in order of priority from most to least
important to both of you. Present your lists to the class providing relevant arguments for
the ratings.
Human Right:
 to life
 to equality
 to liberty (freedom) and security (protection)
 to a fair trial
 to express your views and opinions
 to own property
 to an education
 to vote in elections
 to free movement
 to have your own thoughts, beliefs and religion
 not to be tortured or treated in a way which is cruel
 not to be required to do forced labour
 to privacy
 adequate living standard
 to peaceful assembly and association
 not to be treated unfairly because of your age, race,
religion, sex, disability or any other status
GRADUATION COURSE
Ekaterina D. Prodayvoda
FOLLOWUP
3
Choose one of the issues from your list, expand on it and develop it into a 3-minute
statement.
READING -2 (Conflicting rights. Rights vs Responsibilities)
Read the text on the correlation between rights and responsibilities, and answer the
questions that follow:
WHO’S RIGHT ABOUT WHOSE RIGHTS?
The value of certain human rights seems self-evident: the rights of people not to be
tortured or abused, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of political association.
But what happens when perceived rights conflict with one another? Rights are often in
the eye of the beholder, with some of them clearly demonstrating a perplexing and perhaps even
contradictory side.
As just one example, take the now almost unquestioned right to freely cohabit without a
commitment to the formality of conventional marriage. The statistics are now clear* and
undeniable: cohabitation is far more likely to lead to outcomes such as single parenthood,
deprived childhood and welfare dependence on. Single parenthood is itself increasingly a
lifestyle choice, but with the same outcome: greater dependence on welfare. And it is the
traditional two-parent families and those on middle incomes who bear the brunt of the tax bill.
Take another, even more controversial clash of rights: the rights of individuals to live
homosexual lifestyles on the one hand, and the rights of some in religious faiths such as
Christianity and Islam to believe and teach that homosexual acts are sin on the other. These
rights have increasingly come into conflict in such areas as ordination, definitions of marriage,
and what children are taught or not taught in faith-based schools.
Perhaps the most publicized clash is between those who fight for the right of women to
terminate an unwanted pregnancy and those who fight for the right of the unborn to live. In no
way can the rights of both groups be protected.
On what basis can we seek resolution when the perceived rights of two individuals or
groups violate one another?
One can’t help but conclude that rights require a context, a framework, to be meaningful
and workable. So what about that other R, responsibility?
As laws, proclamations and politically correct pressure groups rain supposed rights on
ever more narrowly defined and exclusive groups and causes, it is a sure sign that we are
forgetting how the very freedoms we take for granted were preserved through the centuries;
namely, by the responsibility and self-sacrifice of our predecessors.
Nobody said it better, from a national perspective, than John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what
your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
Have self-fulfillment and political correctness replaced that deeper, lasting set of values
that overarches and simultaneously underpins individual rights? Apart from a few brave and
increasingly lonely voices, it appears that even many of our religious and governmental
institutions are abandoning, indeed sometimes uprooting, the moral bases of society that were
once considered every person’s solemn duty to uphold.
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Ekaterina D. Prodayvoda
4
British writer and philosopher Anthony O’Hear has demonstrated significant insight into
where our pursuit of rights without corresponding responsibilities has taken us. “Could it be,” he
asked in his book After Progress, “that the type of material and political progress on which we
pride ourselves is actually the cause of spiritual and aesthetic decline? . . . Could the root cause
of our discontents be lack of inner resources, rather than higher expectations of life?” O’Hear
puzzles that the nation that produced such great artists as Turner and Constable should now put
animal corpses and images of human excrement on display as art, presumably because of the
right to free expression.
He reflected on “the obsessive harping on happiness in a material sense, which makes our
life today so mediocre in so many ways, which forgets that what is really worthwhile can be
achieved only through struggle and suffering, that there are aims in life higher than the
elimination of pain and the cultivation of pleasure.” Again a particular right seems to be at the
root of the problem—this time the right to achieve material happiness.
Other voices have also lamented the corrosive effect of this blinkered focus on rights and
self-fulfillment. W.A. Borst, author of Liberalism: Fatal Consequences, wrote of the United
States: “A nation which had set up a near-perfect and flexible government is now finding
common sense more endangered than the snail darter*. Lawyers have hamstrung society with
nit-picking minutiae. . . . This lack of common sense has led inevitably to a rights revolution,
where only selfishness and personal interest seem to reign supreme.”
Consider, by way of illustrating the point,
that hate-object of political correctness, the
beleaguered conventional two-parent family. The
present British government and its politicized civil
service, particularly the welfare system, often
refuse even to discuss publicly the traditional twoparent family. So where is the place for teaching
and upholding the spiritual, moral and social
responsibilities of fatherhood? And does providing
state financial support for unmarried mothers really
match teaching teens that waiting until marriage for
children is still by far their best chance for security,
success and happiness? Why won’t governments
and churches preach that message when the
miserable results of the alternatives glare out from
all recent statistics?
Many American and British moral, legal and constitutional concepts are still based,
however loosely, on biblical heritage. While that heritage has arguably suffered from faulty
transmission over the centuries and has been much maligned and eroded recently, many of our
laws and concepts of truth and morality owe a great debt to the underlying concepts and ultimate
authority of the Bible.
Our narrow and selfish preoccupation with rights is a moral, spiritual health warning that
all is not well with our society. In earlier ages, people focused on their moral and social
responsibilities rather than complaining about their lack of rights. They also expected others to
behave in the best interests of society. It worked because there was a clearer understanding that
responsibilities before God and man for one’s own actions trumped rights every time. And peer
pressure (not to mention legal enforcement) strengthened that concept.
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Ekaterina D. Prodayvoda
5
We need to apply Eleanor Roosevelt’s astute observation on rights to responsibilities.
Like rights, they also begin “in small places, close to home—so close and so small that they
cannot be seen on any maps of the world.”
Rights and responsibilities? How about responsibilities and rights? Unfortunately, you
won’t get nearly so many results for that search on the Internet.
Reading Notes:
the statistics are now clear – (treated as plural) are facts which are obtained from analysing
information expressed in numbers
(treated as singular) the practice or science of collecting and analysing numerical data in large
quantities
snail darter - a small freshwater fish of a type found in US rivers, now nearly extinct
FOLLOW-UP:
1. Decide, which of the rights you are ready to waive and which of them are absolute i.e.
can never be limited or restricted.
2. Are there rights and responsibilities so central to our way of life they should be
entrenched in the constitution?
3. Can human rights be legally contingent on the discharge of responsibilities? (Can
someone who has broken the law be denied his or her rights, for example)
4. What can governments do to strike the right balance between rights and responsibilities?
LANGUAGE FILE to Reading-2
Ex. 1
the text of Reading-2, find words synonymous with the following:
to puzzle (puzzling)
underprivileged
burden
to support
to eradicate
of only average quality
rewarding
to grieve
details
besieged
speak spitefully of someone
Ex. 2
1. Greek foreign minister said that those who bear the ______of migration flows needed
support.
2. Women are failing to fulfil their potential at work because so many ______men are being
promoted beyond their level of competence
3. Thailand's ______government today issued an ultimatum to opposition activists to halt
their siege of ministries within 72 hours
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Ekaterina D. Prodayvoda
6
4. He added that their allegations are baseless and they are doing this to ______ his name.
5. Friday's disappointing and slightly ______jobs report is likely to curb the Fed's recent
enthusiasm about the U.S. economic recovery.
6. The business community lauded the government for its decision to ______terrorism
though military operation.
7. Shared borders with Russia and Central Asia, and stable relationships with these states,
______China's lead over India.
8. Smartphones mean virtually everyone now carries a digital camera in their pocket, ready
to capture life's ______at any moment.
9. A preliminary report from the OAS ______lamented that none of the 13 political parties
in Costa Rica fielded women candidates for president.
10. The establishment of a European fund to help the most ______in our society is vital,
particularly during these tough economic times.
11. Only time will tell whether Afghan mission was really ______.
Ex. 3
The word to malign is used in the text. Consult the dictionary to trace the difference
in the meaning or usage with:
to calumniate, to defame, to libel , to slander, to vilify;
Form derivatives (nouns and adjectives) from all of the abovementioned words.
SPEAKING 2: INDIVIDUAL REPORTS
Get ready to make a statement on conflicting human rights. Present your case to the
class. Say whether the right you are talking about is absolute or it can be limited in certain
circumstances.
You may want to speak about:
1. right to life vs right to bear arms
2. civil rights vs national security interests
3. freedom of speech vs defamation charges
4. freedom of conscience vs insult to religious feelings
5. voting – a right or a responsibility
6. parental responsibility and children’s rights
7. the right for a trial by jury versus jury duty
8. the right to free speech versus the right to privacy
Prepare a 5-minute statement on any of the above-mentioned topics or suggest one of
your own. You may want to use Vocabulary notes 1:
TOPICAL VOCABULARY LIST - 1
a breach / violation / abuse / disregard / infringement of human rights
to forego / waive / give up your right to
to restrict / to limit a right
to deny sb human rights / a say - to deprive sb of rights
to respect human rights
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Ekaterina D. Prodayvoda
7
to defend human rights (defenders)
to accept / admit / assume / claim / take / take on (the) / claim responsibility — взять на себя
ответственность
to bear / exercise (the) responsibility — нести бремя, груз, тяжесть ответственности
discharge / fulfill a responsibility / perform a duty / carry out, fulfill, meet commitments /
obligations – выполнять обязательства
to disclaim responsibility — снимать (с себя) ответственность, слагать (с себя) полномочия
to dodge (taxes)/ evade (taxes, law – обходить закон) / shirk school responsibility —
избегать, уклоняться от ответственности
to share (the) responsibility — разделять ответственность
to release / free / relieve / exempt from / responsibility – освобождать от ответственности
PROJECT WORK (Stage 1)
1. Think of a topic for your Project on the UK. Come up with a list of points you will want to
cover. Share your ideas with the class. Together brainstorm for what other points might be of
interest to your peers.
2. Draft an outline of the presentation
WRITING:
AN ESSAY
Thesis writing practice
The thesis acts as the main claim of your paper, and typically appears near the end of the
introductory paragraph. The thesis expresses in one concise sentence the point and purpose of
your essay.
1) Make it arguable
Your thesis must make an arguable assertion. To test whether your assertion is arguable,
ask yourself whether it would be possible to argue the opposite. If not, then it's not a thesis -- it's
more of a fact.
2) Be specific
The thesis must also be specific. Avoid broad, vague generalizations.
3) Avoid lists
If your thesis consists of a long list of points, your essay will most likely be superficial.
Instead of trying to cover so much ground in your essay, narrow your focus more to give greater
depth to fewer ideas, maybe discussing two or three points instead.
4) Follow the format
The "although . . . actually" format is one of the most effective ways of finding
something original and controversial to say.
Another way to make your thesis effective is to write it in a form of a question. Then the
whole of your essay should be nothing but an answer to that question.
The following are theses written by students. Evaluate them according to principles of a
good thesis, and then check your answers.
1. Once a society is educated enough about the world around them they will become aware
of the changes that must be made in order for a society to prosper.
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2. People talk to each other on the Internet for weeks and feel that they know each other
well enough to give away personal information; therefore, users of online dating websites
are negatively affected.
3. Although reading material should be closely monitored to ensure its appropriateness
according to different age levels, this does not justify the complete banning of some of
the world's most beautiful works of literature.
4. Although some people may consider McDonalds as harming our society because it
causes obesity and Americanization but in truths it is helping us by reducing the
unemployment and is giving donations to help our children and the last factor that life is
faster when eating at McDonalds.
5. It is obvious that trying to make a generalization about a huge number of people,
stretching all over three countries and thus having different cultural and economic
backgrounds is an impossible thing to do.
Given below is the thesis statement for your essay. Before you start writing draft the arguments
that you will be giving to prove the point. You may use them as topic sentences for the body
paragraphs of your essay.
With so much weight being given to rights these days, it is easy to forget that there’s
another side to the equation.
READING - 3 (Human rights in the 21st century )
Pre-reading: What is the difference between civil and human rights?
How are the ways we fight for human rights changing today?
Read the text and say if you share the opinion that the Internet access should be a civil not
a human right? Give your reasons.
INTERNET ACCESS IS NOT A HUMAN RIGHT
January 4, 2012
By Vinton Cerf
FROM the streets of Tunis to Tahrir Square and beyond, protests around the world were
built on the Internet and the many devices that interact with it. Though the demonstrations
thrived because thousands of people turned out to participate, they could never have happened as
they did without the ability that the Internet offers to communicate, organize and publicize
everywhere, instantaneously.
It is no surprise, then, that the protests have raised questions about whether Internet access
is or should be a civil or human right. The issue is particularly acute in countries whose
governments clamped down on Internet access in an attempt to quell the protesters. In June,
citing the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, a report by the United Nations’ special
rapporteur went so far as to declare that the Internet had “become an indispensable tool for
realizing a range of human rights.” Over the past few years, courts and parliaments in countries
like France and Estonia have pronounced Internet access a human right.
But that argument, however well meaning, misses a larger point: technology is an enabler
of rights, not a right itself. There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right.
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9
Loosely put, it must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful
lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience. It is a mistake to place any particular
technology in this exalted category, since over time we will end up valuing the wrong things. For
example, at one time if you didn’t have a horse it was hard to make a living. But the important
right in that case was the right to make a living, not the right to a horse. Today, if I were granted
a right to have a horse, I’m not sure where I would put it.
The best way to characterize human rights is to identify the outcomes that we are trying to
ensure. These include critical freedoms like freedom of speech and freedom of access to
information — and those are not necessarily bound to any particular technology at any particular
time. Indeed, even the United Nations report, which was widely hailed as declaring Internet
access a human right, acknowledged that the Internet was valuable as a means to an end, not as
an end in itself.
What about the claim that Internet access is or should be a civil right? The same reasoning
above can be applied here — Internet access is always just a tool for obtaining something else
more important — though the argument that it is a civil right is, I concede, a stronger one than
that it is a human right. Civil rights, after all, are different from human rights because they are
conferred upon us by law, not intrinsic to us as human beings.
While the United States has never decreed that everyone has a “right” to a telephone, we
have come close to this with the notion of “universal service” — the idea that telephone service
(and electricity, and now broadband Internet) must be available even in the most remote regions
of the country. When we accept this idea, we are edging into the idea of Internet access as a civil
right, because ensuring access is a policy made by the government.
Yet all these philosophical arguments overlook a more fundamental issue: the
responsibility of technology creators themselves to support human and civil rights. The Internet
has introduced an enormously accessible and egalitarian platform for creating, sharing and
obtaining information on a global scale. As a result, we have new ways to allow people to
exercise their inalienable human and civil rights.
In this context, engineers have not only a tremendous obligation to empower users, but also
an obligation to ensure the safety of users online. That means, for example, protecting users from
specific harms like viruses and worms that silently invade their computers. Technologists should
work toward this end.
It is engineers that create and maintain these new capabilities. As we seek to advance the
state of the art in technology and its use in society, we must also be conscious of our civil
responsibilities.
Improving the Internet is just one means, albeit an important one, by which to improve the
human condition. It must be done with an appreciation for the civil and human rights that
deserve protection — without pretending that access itself is such a right.
Vinton G. Cerf is a vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google.
Vocabulary notes:
to clamp down on (sb.,sth.) - подавлять; прекращать; стать требовательнее к комул.- The government has promised to clamp down on criminal activity. — Правительство
пообещало подавить преступную деятельность. We must clamp down now, before it's too
late to stop the trouble. — Нам нужно немедленно пресечь это, прежде чем станет
слишком поздно.(сравните: crack down on)
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Ekaterina D. Prodayvoda
10
to quell (the protesters, protests, dissent, opposition…) - to suppress
indispensable (tool, link) – essential, necessary (важный, необходимый, обязательный)
~ for today’s history teaching
~ in the fight against disease
~ to her career.
to have the right to sth.
to confer sth. upon sb.- to grant (a title, an honour)
intrinsic (to) sb. – basic, inborn, inherent (in), присущий, свойственный
to overlook – to oversee, miss, forget, disregard…
inalienable (right) – integral, inherent, absolute неотъемлемый
to empower (sb) – наделять полномочиями, предоставлять право
LANGUAGE FILE to Reading-3
Look at the sentences that follow and fill the gaps with the words given above:
a. Mubarak ordered troops and tanks into cities to ______ demonstrations.
b. Argentina is not intimidating anyone, only reclaiming an ______ right to the sovereignty
of the Malvinas.
c. In saying that single mothers should go back to work, the government is trying to
convince us that only paid employment ______ dignity.
d. There are several motivations that drive a player to maximize his own ______ potential.
e. We need our legal system to protect and ______ women to make decisions about their
lives.
f. The website has disabled its file sharing services amid heated debate over Washington's
attempts to______ on online piracy.
g. Pakistan becomes the new ______ partner that anchors US national security.
h. _______ by the Academy for acknowledged masterworks, Scorsese won a long overdue
Oscar for best director in 2007.
i. No amount of pressure will be able to break our nation's determination defend its legal
and ______ rights.
j. The time is right to publish a green paper on ______regions to strengthen the
accountability of regional chambers.
k. A late October poll reveals that many Americans are still facing tough economic times,
and a majority think the government needs ______ on Wall Street.
l. Marriage ______"little if any benefit" in terms of a child's development, according to
new research,
m. Police used live bullets and tear gas to ______ rioting between followers of Sierra
Leone's ruling party and opposition.
n. Readers marveled at the cover story on architectural innovations, pointing out mankind's
______ desire to leave a creative mark.
SPEAKING 3: PAIR WORK
In pairs think of some evidence on how the Internet contributes to human rights
campaigns around the world. Get ready to present your case to the class.
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11
PROJECT WORK



(Stage 2)
Present an outline of your project. Expand on the items central to your presentation.
Try and find a catchy title for the Project (you may want to use a line from a well-known
song, a commercial slogan or a pun even for a “serious” topic)
Get ready with the ideas about the design of the slides in your PowerPoint (pay attention
to the colours and fonts you will be using)
READING - 4: Human Rights Quiz
1.
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3.
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4.
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5.
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6.
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7.
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8.
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When was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted?
5 April 1976
6 June 1923
10 December 1948
Where was the Universal Declaration adopted?
Royal Palace, in Copenhagen, Denmark
Palais de Chaillot, in Paris, France
United Nations Headquarters in New York
Who was a key contributor to the drafting of the Universal Declaration?
Eleanor Roosevelt (United States of America)
Winston Churchill (United kingdom)
Charles de Gaulle (France)
How many countries are members of the Human Rights Council?
53
191
47
When was the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights established?
1954
1973
1993
Which of these UN bodies does not hear individual complaints of human rights
violations?
The International Labour Organization
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
The Human Rights Committee
What percentage of children between the ages of 5 and 14 are currently working?
250 million
2 million
560 million
What percentage of the world’s poor are women?
22%
70%
54%
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9.
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Which country was the first to grant full voting rights to women (in 1893)?
Finland
New Zealand
Iceland
Which country was behind most Western nations to grant voting rights to women (in
1971)?
Sweden
Switzerland
Great Britain
Who was the first head of state to be arrested by another country for human rights
crimes?
Slobodan Milosevic
Pol Pot
Augusto Pinochet
Which is the most widespread violation of human rights today?
Torture of political prisoners
Insufficient state protection of the rights of women and girls
Forced child labour
READING – 5 (Voting Rights)
TEXT 1
Pre-reading: Do you think prisoners should be forbidden from voting in elections? Give your
reasons.
Read the text focusing on the English equivalents to the Russian “лишить права
голоса”. Search the dictionaries for more equivalents. Memorize them.
LET THEM VOTE
The Economist, Oct 29th 2009
Even society’s worst offenders should not lose the vote when they lose their liberty
MOST rich democracies spend a lot of time and money trying to convince more people to
exercise their right to vote. So it might seem strange that some of the same countries take some
trouble preventing thousands of citizens from going to the polls. In 48 American states and seven
European countries, including Britain, prisoners are forbidden from voting in elections. Many
more countries impose partial voting bans (applying only to prisoners serving long sentences, for
instance). And in ten American states some criminals are stripped of the vote for life, even after
their release.
Liberty is by no means the only right to be squeezed in jail, where second-order freedoms
such as the right to privacy, to family life and so on inevitably take a battering. To some, the
right to vote belongs in this category of minor, unavoidable privations. But it is neither. Those
who believe in democracy ought to place the freedom to vote near the top of any list, and
consider its removal a serious additional sanction. And losing the ability to vote is no longer a
practical consequence of imprisonment, as it may once have been. Voting by proxy or post is
easy nowadays; indeed, prisoners awaiting trial in jail do so already.
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FOLLOW-UP
The principles retrospectively volunteered are wrong anyway. Some say that withdrawing
the right to vote teaches jailbirds that if they don’t play by society’s rules they cannot expect a
hand in making them. But it has yet to be shown that withholding the vote is an effective
deterrent against offending. If anything, it is likely to militate against prisoners’ rehabilitation.
One of the aims of imprisonment is to give miscreants a shove in the right direction, through jobtraining, Jesus or whatever does the trick. Allowing prisoners to vote will not magically
reconnect them with society, but it will probably do more good than excluding them.
Serving prisoners are not numerous enough to swing many elections. But once a
government uses disenfranchisement as a sanction, it is tempted to take things further. Consider
those American states where the suspension of prisoners’ votes has morphed into a lifelong ban:
in Republican-controlled Florida, for instance, nearly a third of black men cannot vote—enough
to have swung the 2000 presidential election. Even those who don’t care much about prisoners’
rights should be wary of elected officials exercising too much say over who makes up the
electorate.
You have most probably heard of a vote of confidence, casting vote, early vote.
There are many more collocations in English with the word vote. Search the Internet for
other usages of the word, cite examples, explain the meaning.
TEXT 2
Read the text paying special attention to lexical and stylistic devices used by the
author to make the narration more figurative. Explain and expand on the underlined
sentences. Analyse the article following the instructions below.
VOX POPULI OR HOI POLLOI?
Apr 20th 2011
The Economist
Does more voting necessarily mean more democracy? People power has its perils
IN 2004, Saif Qaddafi (then seen as the Libyan ruler’s reformist scion) outlined to a
foreign visitor his plans to convert his father’s rambling theory of direct democracy into a real
political system. Something on Swiss lines would be ideal.
The particular ambition may seem risible now. Yet the general sentiment is common. The
Alpine federation’s political system, in which citizens may vote 30-plus times a year in a mixture
of local and national polls, is proving seductive for politicians and voters of all stripes.
Some Swiss votes are ordered by politicians, yet many, known as “initiatives”, are
binding votes on national legislation triggered by citizens’ petitions. In recent years these have
widened state health-insurance to cover alternative medicine; enforced deportation of foreigners
guilty of serious crimes and benefit fraud; and banned the building of mosques with minarets.
Helvetian zeal for direct votes skews global statistics. Nearly a quarter of all recorded
national referendums have taken place there. Countries hold almost twice as many referendums
as they did 50 years ago.
Politicians may be getting keener on public support for new laws. But few want to allow
voters to write them: that would be not so much democracy, they say, as ochlocracy—mob rule.
Compact and cohesive electorates, such as in a Swiss canton, are unusually good places for such
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votes to work: voters are more likely to ponder the issues fully beforehand, and to deal maturely
with the result afterwards.
So only a few countries give voters Swiss-style rights to take their own proposals to the
ballot box. Of all the citizen-initiated nationwide votes recorded since the 1980s, 90% have taken
place in Switzerland and six other states: Italy, Liechtenstein, Uruguay, Lithuania, Latvia and
Hungary. Though the United States is one of the few democracies never to have held a national
referendum, Californians were asked to vote on 14 local issues last year. Since 1996 Japan has
had several hundred local polls.
Pan-European votes are in the offing too. From April 1st 2012 the European Citizens’
Initiative (ECI) will allow petitioners in the European Union to propose legislation to the
European Commission. Among the several criteria is finding 1m signatories (0.2% of the EU
population) from a quarter of member countries. Petitions already under way include a proposal
to halt the introduction of genetically modified crops, and one that would bar Turkey from the
EU forever. Another wants shops to close on Sundays. It is noteworthy that successful petition
does not trigger a public vote or even a parliamentary debate. It only obliges the Eurocrats to
respond.
Ballot blocks
The sunshine state’s experience certainly casts a cloud over the enthusiasm for direct
democracy. Citizen initiatives there are blamed for fiscal ruin and incoherent, contradictory
mandates. Fans of direct democracy argue that California’s woes stem from the practice, not the
concept. Some say that flaws in representative forms of democracy make reform essential.
Voters increasingly want to engage in politics “issue by issue”. Greenpeace, founded in 1971,
has nearly 3m paying members. Over the same period, trust in political parties has shrivelled. In
America “independents” now outnumber Republicans or Democrats.
Yet direct democracy does not always give power to the people. Referendums in
democratic countries may now far outnumber the sham plebiscites beloved of autocratic rulers.
Yet heavy-handed rulers continue to hijack the fashion for direct democracy to quell dissent or
circumvent parliamentary limitations on their power. In November Andry Rajoelina, a 36-yearold former disc-jockey who took power in Madagascar after a military coup, called a plebiscite
to approve a new constitution—and keep him in control. In 2009 Hugo Chávez, who says his
goal is to rule Venezuela until at least 2030, used a popular vote to abolish the term limit on his
presidency. Authoritarian rulers rarely lose such votes.
The genie of direct democracy is hard to rebottle when released, even if the results prove
dysfunctional or perverse. Once empowered to pass legislation, electorates rarely initiate votes
that might limit their own power. In that respect, politicians and the people have much in
common.
An article analysis is an “essay” that seeks to summarize, analyze, comment on and
critique another article published elsewhere. Article analyses consider all angles of an article
and ultimately determine the true nature and worth of the arguments outlined within the
reviewed article. Drafting an article analysis is similar to writing an essay; the main difference
is that the reviewer must use critical thinking skills to analyze an external article.
INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Determine the author's purpose for writing the article. Assess the article's overall tone.
The writer's delivery could be detached and objective or overtly political. Typically, the author
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will implicitly or explicitly state his purpose in writing the article in the first few paragraphs,
usually in the form of a thesis statement.
2. Ascertain the author's intended audience. If the author has published an article on
molecular biology in a scholarly journal, his audience is the scientific community. However, a
letter to the editor targets a wider, more public audience.
3. Establish the subject matter of the article. Outline the author's argument and include his
main points. Typically, the first and last paragraphs of an article will contain short summaries of
an author's argument. Titled articles will likely include the author's main subject matter explicitly
within the title. The article may also have a subhead that usually carries the author’s message.
4. Do not critique the author’s argument in your introduction. Better ascertain any potential
sources of bias or conflicts of interest.
5. Draft the body of the article analysis which is the most important. State your opinions on
the author's argument and cite evidence to support your thoughts. Include an analysis of how
well the author supported his points and how well he presented evidence. Determine the strength
of his argument, assessing one point at a time. Include assessments of the article's strengths, as
well as the rhetorical or substantive shortcomings you detect.
6. The final part of your analysis will summarize the article's conclusion. Include your
thoughts on this conclusion, as well as your final thoughts about the validity of the author's
argument. Refer back to the author's initial thesis statement. Include any questions left
unanswered by the article's author and finish with a strong statement that encapsulates your
overall assessment of the article.
PROJECT WORK
(Stage 3)
Speak on the design of your Power Point Presentation slides
Draft a reference list of the sources you used in getting ready for your presentation (websites,
newspaper/magazine articles, books etc.)
Get ready to present your project in class
PROFICIENCY FILE
Gapped Sentences
1. Bill Clinton accuses Obama camp of stirring race issue in ………. of the Democratic
primary on Saturday, in which at least half the voters are expected to be black.
JAL, once the pride of Asia and a symbol of Japan’s global economic ………., today agreed to
file for bankruptcy.
Gerry Adams’ younger brother Liam traded on the Sinn Fein president’s name to ………. his
career.
2. Do Israeli human rights violations ……… an economic boycott?
It remains unclear what the Republicans will consider sufficient success to ………. bringing the
troops home.
His political activism prompted a judge to issue a ………. for his arrest in connection with an
old drugs charge.
3. America, which once seemed like a symbol of freedom, now …… the policies of force.
Animal-rights ………. in France are pushing for legislation that would outlaw the sale of
horsemeat, which they see as barbaric.
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Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, who is concerned that inflation will become another
serious problem ……. a different approach.
4. When people are ……. the right to discuss their life on the parliament floor or in the
media, they're forced into the street.
Mr Ozawa has ……. the charges, insisted that the prosecutors are politically motivated.
The Indian middle classes ……. the pleasures of consumerism ever since independence in
1947, are making up for lost time.
5. The election's problems weren't confined to the validity of the vote - although evidence
abounded of ……. rigging.
Other conservatives are disgusted by what they see Avatar’s ……. anti-Americanism,
claiming Cameron is offering a critique of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The fact that Governor Sanford he went AWOL in South America for almost a week reflected
his ……. disregard for the workings of government.
6. No……. results have been gained during the Iraq adventure by either the Americans or
the Iraqi people except getting rid of the tyrant Saddam Hussein.
There should be some ……. evidence that the economy is starting to recover, not just words.
The World Health Organization has taken the occasion of World TB Day to document the
………. progress in its fight against tuberculosis in Southeast Asia.
Multiple choice lexical cloze
EU: RIGHTS ABUSE AT HOME IGNORED
The European Union and member governments proved ………. (1) to tackle human
rights abuse at home last year, even as they proclaimed the issue’s importance in inspiring the
Arab Spring, Human Rights Watch said in its World Report 2012.
Human Rights Watch found ………. (2) trends on human rights in the European Union
region, highlighting events in nine member states and developments in the areas of migration and
asylum, discrimination and intolerance, and counterterrorism policy.
While the idea of a human rights crisis in Europe may seem ……….(3), a closer
examination reveals deeply worrying trends, Human Rights Watch said. Four developments
stand out: the erosion of rights under counterterrorism policy; growing intolerance and abusive
policies toward minorities and migrants; the rise of populist extremist parties and their influence
on mainstream politics; and the declining effectiveness of the institutions and tools that protect
human rights.
Policy responses to migration from North Africa exemplified the EU’s negative ……….
(4) in 2011. These included calls to limit free movement inside EU internal borders, disputes
over the responsibility for rescuing boat migrants in peril, and a ………. (5) to resettle refugees
from Libya.
Populist extremist parties remained strong across the EU region, corroding mainstream
politics, especially on issues related to Roma, Muslims, and migrants. EU governments
frequently responded by echoing these parties’ criticism of minorities and pursuing policies that
infringed on human rights.
Racist and xenophobic violence was a serious problem in several countries with
inadequate response from those governments. The horrific terrorist attacks in Norway in July by
a xenophobic extremist who killed 77 people ………. (6) the dangers of unchecked intolerance,
while the Norwegian government decision to respond with “more openness, more democracy
and more humanity” offered a positive example.
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Counterterrorism measures in European countries violated rights. Spain allows
incommunicado detention for up to 13 days. Reforms of police custody rules in France left in
place powers to interrogate terrorism suspects without a lawyer present, and to restrict access to
a lawyer for up to 72 hours. Legislative proposals to limit abusive counterterrorism pre-charge
detention and control orders in the UK were undermined by provisions allowing them to be
restored in an emergency.
“The net result of human rights developments in Europe causes great concern,” Ward
said. “Without concerted government action, the next generation of Europeans may see human
rights as an optional extra rather than a core value.”
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
A.
A.
A.
A.
A.
A.
inclined
troubling
far-fetched
decline
disability
highlighted
В.
В.
В.
В.
В.
B.
undecided
worrying
inventive
path
reluctance
enlightened
С.
С.
С.
С.
С.
C.
disposed
bothering
realistic
approach
desirability
espoused
D.
D.
D.
D.
D.
D.
unwilling
exciting
true
relation
inability
recovered
Open Cloze
FREEDOM MARCHES BACKWARD
You hardly need Freedom House in order to get the gist. Most people will already have
noticed that these have not (1) ………. the most inspiring of times (2) ………. democracy and
human rights. December brought the murder of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan and (3) ………. was
almost certainly the stealing of an election in Kenya, one of Africa's relative successes, fast
descending (4) ………. a nightmare of tribal violence. And now (5) ……….. confirmation from
the American think-tank. Freedom House's closely watched annual review confirms that 2007
was the second year in a (6) ………. during which freedom retreated in most of the world,
reversing a democratic tide that had looked almost unstoppable during the 1990s following the
collapse of communism and the (7) ………. of the Soviet Union
Undeniably, (8) ………. news is grim. But (9) ………. democracy is the issue, it can be a (10)
……….to extrapolate too much from the advances and retreats of a single year or two.
Word formation
HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Any discussion on the challenges to human rights in the 21st
century are (1) ……….. only as a part of a historical process wherein
society's search for prosperity and power or happiness and freedom
remained (2) ………. desires and half-finished tasks. The impulses for
prosperity and power produced market, nation state, and possessive
individual. This also led to major breakthroughs in science and technology.
The combination of these forces (3) ………. enormous wealth sufficient
for need and even for greed.
The forces of equality and freedom beaten by the counter forces are
compelled to search for deeper meaning and content and new sources of
inspiration. There are a million mutinies. Untiring and (4) ……….
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fulfil
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compromise
Ekaterina D. Prodayvoda
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struggles of human beings are there in every part of the globe. It is reported
that there are 3,000 (5) ……….ethnic conflicts and 600 (6) ……….
movements. Women - half of the sky as Mao put it - are on the warpath all
over the world. Children today are better informed and are questioning and
curious about the universe than ever before. In the specific context of
India, Dalits are challenging the hierarchical and authoritarian
stranglehold. Tribals decent and transparent human beings are engaged in a
(7) ………. struggle to protect and defend their lives, livelihood and
environment. There are amazing assertions of democratic minded people
from every walk of life in support of social causes. The (8) ……….
common thread in this entire (9) ………. is the deep urge of humanity to
change the context and content of human existence. The ideological
propaganda that there is no alternative (TINA) is a lifeless attempt to push
the struggling masses into subjugation. The successful (10) ………. of this
impasse and the realization of this unfulfilled pursuit of equality and
freedom constitute the greatest challenge of the 21st century to the theory
and practice of human rights.
go, secede
continue
lie
rest
come
Key word transformations
1. The guards wouldn’t allow him in. (denied)
Access …………….. the guards
2. The manager often tried to make us stay behind to do extra work. (pressure)
The manager often ……………stay behind to do extra work.
3. They decreased production following the economic downturn.(scaled)
Production …………… the economic downturn.
4. An awful lot has been omitted from the final draft of the agreement. (out)
An awful lot has …………… the final draft of the agreement.
5. There is growing pressure on the government to break their promise on health spending.
(back)
The government may find …………… on their promise on health spending.
6. Nobody is forcing you to take up the offer. (obligation)
You are …………… take up the offer.
7. Only people who have been given authority are allowed in. (restricted)
Entry …………… personnel.
8. I’d be grateful if you could forward any e-mails to this address. (appreciate)
I’d …………… enough to forward any e-mails to this address.
SPEAKING – 4
DISCUSSION
Go back to the text “EU: rights abuse at home ignored” (see: Multiple choice lexical cloze).
What is the situation with human rights in your country? Do you share the apprehension of the
author that it is declining in many regions of the world? What in your opinion contributes to the
fact?
READING - 6: (Women’s Empowerment)
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TEXT 1
Read the text. Bring out the author’s message. Do the assignments that follow.
FEMALE POWER
The Economist, Dec 30th 2009
Across the rich world more women are working than ever before. Coping with this
change will be one of the great challenges of the coming decades
THE economic empowerment of women across the rich world is one of the most
remarkable revolutions of the past 50 years. It is remarkable because of the extent of the change:
millions of people who were once dependent on men have taken control of their own economic
fates. It is remarkable also because it has produced so little friction: a change that affects the
most intimate aspects of people’s identities has been widely welcomed by men as well as
women. Dramatic social change seldom takes such a benign form.
Yet even benign change can come with a sting in its tail. Social arrangements have not
caught up with economic changes. Many children have paid a price for the rise of the twoincome household. Many women—and indeed many men—feel that they are caught in an evertightening tangle of commitments. If the empowerment of women was one of the great changes
of the past 50 years, dealing with its social consequences will be one of the great challenges of
the next 50.
At the end of her campaign to become America’s first female president in 2008, Hillary
Clinton remarked that her 18m votes in the Democratic Party’s primaries represented 18m
cracks in the glass ceiling. In the market for jobs rather than votes the ceiling is being cracked
every day. Women now make up almost half of American workers (49.9% in October). They run
some of the world’s best companies and earn almost 60% of university degrees in America and
Europe.
Progress has not been uniform, of course. In Italy and Japan employment rates for men
are more than 20 percentage points higher than those for women. Women earn substantially less
than men on average and are severely under-represented at the top of organisations.
The change is dramatic nevertheless. A generation ago working women performed
menial jobs and were routinely subjected to casual sexism. Today women make up the majority
of professional workers in many countries (51% in the United States, for example) and casual
sexism is for losers. Even holdouts such as the Mediterranean countries are changing rapidly. In
Spain the proportion of young women in the labour force has now reached American levels. The
glass is much nearer to being half full than half empty.
What explains this revolution? Politics have clearly played a part. Governments have
passed equal-rights acts. Female politicians such as Margaret Thatcher, Madeleine Albright,
Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton have taught younger women that anything is possible. But
politics is only part of the answer.
The rich world has seen a growing demand for women’s labour. When brute strength
mattered more than brains, men had an inherent advantage. Now that brainpower has triumphed
the two sexes are more evenly matched. The feminisation of the workforce has been driven by the
relentless rise of the service sector (where women can compete as well as men) and the equally
relentless decline of manufacturing (where they could not).
The expansion of higher education has also boosted job prospects for women, improving
their value on the job market and shifting their role models from stay-at-home mothers to
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successful professional women. The best-educated women have always been more likely than
other women to work, even after having children.
The trend towards more women working is almost certain to continue. Women will also
be the beneficiaries of the growing “war for talent”. The combination of an ageing workforce
and a more skill-dependent economy means that countries will have to make better use of their
female populations.
LANGUAGE FILE to Reading-6
Analyse the text structure (paragraphing, topic sentences). Explain and expand on the
following:
 Dramatic social change seldom takes such a benign form.
 Yet even benign change can come with a sting in its tail.
 Social arrangements have not caught up with economic changes.
 Many children have paid a price for the rise of the two-income household
 Her 18m votes in the Democratic Party’s primaries represented 18m cracks in the glass
ceiling
 The glass is much nearer to being half full than half empty
 Politics have clearly played a part
 The feminisation of the workforce has been driven by the relentless rise of the service
sector
Look back at the extract and find words or phrases which mean the same as a-g.
a. cause little disagreement or controversy
b. to break an unacknowledged barrier to advancement in a profession
c. to be in a minority
d. striking and impressive (change ….)
e. s.o. who refuses to act and stops the situation from progressing or being resolved
f. mental ability; intelligence
g. a person who derives advantage from something
Replace these words and phrases from the text with suitable synonyms or phrases.
a. benign
b. tangle of commitments
c. a generation ago
d. menial (job)
e. brute strength
f. relentless (rise, decline)
g. ageing workforce
TEXT 2
THAT'S ENOUGH POLITENESS – WOMEN NEED TO RISE UP IN ANGER
Laurie Penny
Thursday, 8 March 2012
The men who run the world have become too used to not being afraid. Let's make them afraid
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To get into the UN Commission on the Status of
Women, you have to get past several ranks of large
armed men. In the foyer, you can buy UN womenthemed hats and tote bags, and pick up glossy pamphlets
about this year's International Women's Day, but what
you can't pick up is the slightest sense of urgency. In the
101 years since the first International Women's Day, all
the passionate politics seems to have been leached out of
the women's movement.
International Women's Day began as a day of
rebellion and outlandish demands – Equal pay! Votes
for women! Reproductive rights! – but 101 years later,
judging by the invitations in my email inbox, it seems to
be more about jazzy corporate lunches, poetry
competitions and praising our valued sponsors.
A huge cultural change is taking place all over
the world right now. Over the past year, from the Arab
Spring uprisings to the global anti-corporate occupations, young people and workers have
realised that they were flogged a false dream of prosperity in return for quiet obedience,
exhausting, precarious jobs and perpetual debt – most of it shouldered by women, whose lowstatus, low-paid and unpaid work has driven the expansion of exploitative markets across the
world. Equality, like prosperity, was supposed to trickle down, but not a lot can trickle down
through a glass ceiling.
Women, like everyone else, have been duped. We have been persuaded over the past 50
years to settle for a bland, neoliberal vision of what liberation should mean. Life may have
become a little easier in that time for white women who can afford to hire a nanny, but the rest of
us have settled for a cheap, knock-off version of gender revolution. Instead of equality at work
and in the home, we settled for "choice", "flexibility" and an exciting array of badly paid parttime work to fit around childcare and chores. Instead of sexual liberation and reproductive
freedom, we settled for mitigated rights to abortion and contraception that are constantly under
attack, and a deeply misogynist culture that shames us if we're not sexually attractive, dismisses
us if we are, and blames us if we are assaulted, as one in five of us will be in our lifetime.
Feminism, however, has not been a sustained part of this mood of popular indignation.
Not yet. One year ago in Tahrir Square, women marching on International Women's Day were
sexually and physically assaulted by some of the same men they had stood side by side with
during the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. Meanwhile, with women and girls bearing the brunt of
the financial crisis across the world, the biggest discussions of women's role in the Occupy
movement have focused on how to protect them from rapes that have occurred in the protest
camps. This week, though, we've seen the first inklings of a women's fightback that is a little less
delicate and demure.
Politeness is a habit that what's left of the women's movement needs to grow out of. Most
women grow up learning, directly or indirectly, how to be polite, how to defer, how to be good
employees, mothers and wives, how to shop sensibly and get a great bikini body. We are taught
to stay off the streets, because it's dangerous after dark. Politeness, however, has bought even the
luckiest of us little more than terminal exhaustion and a great shoe collection. If we want real
equality, we're going to have to fight for it.
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Like the suffragettes and socialists who called the first International Women's Day over a
century ago, women who believe in a better world are going to have to start thinking in deeds,
not words. With women under attack financially, socially and sexually across the developed and
developing world, with assaults on jobs, welfare, childcare, contraception and the right to
choose, the time for polite conversation is over. It's time for anger. It's time for daring, direct
action, big demands, big dreams. The men who still run the world from boardrooms and
government offices have become too used to not being afraid of what women will do if we are
attacked, used and exploited. We must make them afraid.
Deeds, not words. Fewer business lunches, more throwing punches. Of course, there will
be consequences. Those large armed men aren't just there for decoration, and the suffragettes
who had their bones broken in prison 101 years ago knew that full well. But they also knew what
we must now begin to remember – that the consequences of staying quiet and ladylike are
always far more serious.
Explain and expand on the following:
1. … passionate politics seems to have been leached out of the women's movement
2. Equality, like prosperity, was supposed to trickle down, but not a lot can trickle down
through a glass ceiling
3. … they were flogged a false dream of prosperity in return for quiet obedience,
exhausting, precarious jobs and perpetual debt.
4. … the rest of us have settled for a cheap, knock-off version of gender revolution.
5. Politeness, however, has bought even the luckiest of us little more than terminal
exhaustion and a great shoe collection.
Give as many synonyms to the words from the text as you can think of:
 outlandish
 precarious
 bland
 mitigated
 misogynist
 demure
READING – 7 (Tolerance vs Permissiveness)
Picture a modern society. You have a multitude of people, all from different cultural
backgrounds, leading different lifestyles, sharing the same rights and freedoms. Everyone has the
freedom to showcase and act upon his or her views and beliefs. There are no apparent dogmas
that dictate how you go about living your life. Apart from a very deceptive one: the dogma of
tolerance. Whatever you do, you must be tolerant.
The implications that accompany the term “tolerance” go beyond semantics. Tolerating
something implies that you decide to live with it, even though you do not necessarily agree with
it. Consequently, adopting tolerance as a political strategy may translate into political
indifference. Tolerance works as a mechanism, which enables you to sit and do nothing,
ignore social problems and still feel good about yourself. After all, you’re being tolerant. In one
way or another, tolerance is the new opium.
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Do you agree that tolerance can breed indifference or even permissiveness? Think of examples
that prove your point.
TEXT 1
AS MORE COUNTRIES REGULATE WEARING OF RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS,
EUROPEAN COURT DECIDES TWO UK CASES
January 15, 2013
By Brian J. Grim
The European Court of Human Rights today announced decisions on several high profile
religious freedom cases involving the United Kingdom, including two complaints that British
law inadequately protects employees’ right to display symbols of their religion in the workplace.
The court found that there had been a violation of religious freedom in the case involving
a British Airways employee who was barred from visibly wearing Christian crosses around her
neck while at work. However, in the second case involving a nurse in the geriatric ward of a
British hospital, the court found that the protection of health and safety on a hospital ward
justified her employer’s prohibition on wearing a visible cross necklace.
A recent study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life found that
regulations on the wearing of religious symbols increased globally between mid-2007 and mid2010. In mid-2010, religious attire and other symbols were regulated in 57 countries (29%), up
from 21 countries (11%) in mid-2007. Regulations increased in places as diverse as France,
where the burqa was banned, and Rwanda, where the government prohibited religious headgear
in photos for government documents.
Regulations on religious attire differ widely. Some countries ban religious garb; Turkey,
for example, bars women from wearing headscarves in government offices. In other countries,
such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, religious coverings are required for women. And in Jordan, the
Tourism Ministry recently advised Israeli visitors to avoid wearing Jewish attire while in the
country, reportedly out of concern for their safety.
The European Court also announced decisions in a pair of cases involving employees
who contend that U.K. laws fail to protect their right to object to homosexuality on religious
grounds. The court did not uphold their complaints, finding that the right to manifest religion at
work is protected but must be balanced against the rights of others.
TEXT 2
FRENCH GAY COUPLES GET RIGHT TO 'MARRY, ADOPT CHILDREN'
bbc.co.uk, 3 July 2012
Gay couples in France will be allowed to get married and to adopt children as of 2013,
Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has announced in parliament. The announcement was part of
a keynote speech outlining the new Socialist government's five-year plan. It confirms an election
pledge made by President Francois Hollande.
At present only married couples - not civil union partners - can adopt in France.
"In the first half of 2013, the right to marriage and adoption will be open to all couples,
without discrimination," Mr Ayrault told parliament. "Our society is evolving, lifestyles and
mentalities are changing. The government will respond to that." He announced the news during a
keynote speech outlining the government's budget and political agenda.
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Gays in France make up 6.5% of the electorate, compared with practising Catholics at
4.5%, according to figures released by pollster Ifop. A survey carried out at the beginning of the
year showed 63% of French people are in favour of gay marriage while 56% support gay
adoption.
The confirmation of the new law came only days after Paris held its annual Gay Pride
parade, which this year was buoyed by the new goverment's promise to legalise gay marriage
and adoption rights.In a symbolic gesture, French Minister for Families Dominique Bertinotti
turned out to see the parade floats set off.
European nations allowing gay adoption include Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany,
Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Britain.
TEXT 3
BE GLAD YOU LIVE IN BRITAIN, NOT THE US, IF YOU'RE GAY OR A WOMAN
Mary Ann Sieghart
12 March 2012
Which ideas will endure for at least another century?" was one of the questions we were
posed at a thought-provoking conference over the weekend. We considered and dismissed
democracy – in the past century, it's been overthrown by fascism, communism and autocracy –
and capitalism, which even now seems a little under threat. One concept, though, kept bubbling
up into my mind: love.
Whether you worship the Beatles or the Bible doesn't matter. Love is either all you need
or it's greater even than faith and hope, and all three will endure. It's the biggest contributor to
human happiness, and if politicians dare to intrude into our love lives, they can have a more
profound effect than any tinkering with taxes or the national curriculum. Which is why women
and gay men should be deeply grateful that, in this era, they live in Britain and not the United
States.
In this country, people have become increasingly freer to love whom they like and to live
how they like. Tolerance of homosexuality in particular has blossomed in the past couple of
decades, making the country strikingly more generous. It's been a really big and welcome
cultural change.
As recently as ten years ago, there was no political consensus in the UK over gay
relationships. The Tories under Margaret Thatcher had been actively hostile. The notorious
Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 banned local councils from promoting
homosexuality.
Jump ahead to 2002 and you still find a Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith, trying to
whip his colleagues to vote against a law allowing gay couples to adopt a child. This time,
though, eight senior MPs rebelled and the row marked the beginning of the end of Duncan
Smith's leadership. By 2004, civil partnerships were passed into law by Labour with little
opposition.
Now a Tory leader says he supports gay marriage not despite his Conservatism but
because of it. And his Coalition Government is bringing forward proposals to legalise it. It is the
most fantastic advance in the space of a few short decades.
Compare that with the US, where the presidential election campaign is blighted again by
culture wars over sexuality and sexual behaviour. There, support for gay marriage is higher even
than in Britain. Yet the issue is hugely politically divisive.
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Among the Republican candidates, Newt Gingrich claims that a "gay and secular
fascism" is trying to impose its values on the rest of the country and that "it's a very, very
dangerous threat". He wants a constitutional amendment to prevent gay marriage. So does Mitt
Romney. And Rick Santorum believes that even gay sex undermines "the basic tenets of our
society and the family". So you can imagine what he thinks of gay marriage.
Republicans don't stop there. They are almost as obsessed with meddling in people's sex
lives as the Church. For a country in which Church and State are supposed to be strictly separate,
it's very odd how politicised the "morality" of sexual behaviour has become. I use the inverted
commas because I don't believe sexuality is a moral issue at all unless it involves people getting
hurt. Yet in America, the sex wars have now moved beyond abortion, which arguably is a moral
issue, to areas like contraception and sex education. And they're taking the country backwards.
So thank goodness for a political culture here in Britain that allows the most private parts
of our lives to remain private and cherished. Contraception is free and uncontroversial. Sex
education is broadly sensible. Gay relationships are becoming ever more normalised. Political
parties don't fight over sex. As a society, we are ever more at ease with the most important thing
in life. And that matters a lot.
READING - 8: (Privacy or Security)
Read an article on the results of the survey dealing with the attitudes of the Americans
towards privacy. In the survey, find examples of generalisations, qualifiers, cautious words.
Search the Internet for more information about the Patriot Act, its provisions and
extension debates. Report your findings to the class.
TEXT 1
POLL SHOWS MOST AMERICANS ARE WILLING TO GIVE UP SOME
PRIVACY AND FREEDOM TO FIGHT TERRORISM
September 07, 2011,
The Associated Press
Surveillance cameras in public places? Sure. Body scans at airports? Maybe. Snooping in
personal e-mail? Not so fast.
The same Americans who are increasingly splashing their personal lives across Facebook
and Twitter trace a meandering path when asked where the government should draw the line
between protecting civil liberties and pursuing terrorism.
Ten years after the 9/11 attacks led to amped-up government surveillance efforts, twothirds of Americans say it's fitting to sacrifice some privacy and freedoms in the fight against
terrorism, according to a poll by the Associated Press Center for Public Affairs Research.
A slim majority — 54 percent — say if they had to choose between preserving their
rights and freedoms and protecting people from terrorists, they'd come down on the side of civil
liberties.
The public is particularly protective of the privacy of U.S. citizens, voicing sharp
opposition to government surveillance of Americans' e-mails and phone calls.
For some Americans, their reluctance to give up any freedoms is a reflection of their
belief that the terrorists eventually will succeed no matter what.
Others worry that giving up one freedom will lead to the loss of others.
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The poll asked people to grapple with some of same quandaries that the government and
the courts have been wrestling with over the past decade, and even before the 2001 terrorist
attacks. And it turns out that policymakers, too, have drawn a zigzag line as they make tradeoffs
between aggressively pursuing potential terrorists and preserving privacy and civil liberties.
Two-thirds of those surveyed believe the resulting policies are a mish-mash created in
reaction to events as they occur rather than clearly planned.
Consider
the
rules
on
government interception of email:
Sometimes that's legal and sometimes
it's not. It depends on how old the email
is, whether it's already been opened by
the recipient, whether the sender and
recipient are within the U.S., and which
federal appellate court considers the
question. Sometimes investigators need
a warrant and sometimes no court
approval is necessary.
The AP poll found that about
half of those surveyed felt that they
have indeed lost some of their own
personal freedoms to fight terrorism.
Was it worth it? Close to half of those who thought they'd lost freedoms doubted it was
necessary.
Overall, six in 10 say the government is doing enough to protect Americans' rights and
freedoms as it fights terrorism. But people may not even be aware of what they've given up. The
extent of government eavesdropping and surveillance is something of a mystery.
There have been recent efforts in Congress — unsuccessful so far — to require the
Justice Department to estimate how many people in the U.S. have had their calls and email
monitored under a 2008 law that gave the government more surveillance authority. And a recent
AP investigation revealed the existence of a secret police unit in New York that monitored daily
life inside Muslim communities.
For all of their concern about protecting personal rights, Americans — just like
policymakers and the courts — show far more willingness to allow intrusions into the lives of
foreigners than into their own.
The poll turned up sharp divisions among Americans on whether torture — banned by the
government — should have any place in combating terrorism. Fifty-two percent said torture can
be justified at least sometimes to obtain information about terrorist activity. Forty-six percent
said it can never or only rarely be justified.
The AP poll was conducted July 28 to Aug. 15. It involved landline and cell phone
interviews with 1,087 adults nationwide, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.1
percentage points.
Find expressions in the text corresponding to the Russian word combinations:
 все более и более
 неприкосновенность частной жизни
 незначительное большинство
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







выразить резкий протест
нежелание отказаться от каких-бы то ни было свобод
несмотря ни на что
преодолеть затруднительное положение
пойти на компромисс
прослушка, перехват данных
слежка
вмешательство в личную жизнь
READING – 9 (Gun Control)
MIXED REACTIONS TO OBAMA'S GUN PROPOSALS
Public Closely Tracking Gun Debate
With the public paying close attention to the national debate over gun control, Barack
Obama’s gun proposals receive a mixed rating from the public. A 39% plurality say Obama’s
proposals are about right while another 13% say they do not go far enough. About three-in-ten
(31%) say the president’s proposals go too far; 17% do not offer an opinion.
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press,
conducted Jan. 17-20 among 1,006 adults, finds that the public is closely tracking the gun
debate: 43% followed news about Obama’s proposals very closely and an additional 29%
followed the news fairly closely.
There are wide partisan divides in views of Obama’s proposals. A 57% majority of
Republicans say the proposals go too far, just 7% say not far enough and 25% say they are about
right. By contrast, a majority of Democrats
(55%) say the proposals on guns are about right,
21% say they do not go far enough and 10% say
they go too far. Independents are divided: 36%
say Obama’s gun proposals are about right,
while about as many (33%) say they go too far;
few independents say the proposals do not go
far enough (9%).
Men are somewhat more likely than
women to say Obama’s proposals go too far in
addressing the nation’s gun laws (36% vs.
26%). As many college graduates say the
proposals go too far (25%) as not far enough
(24%). By contrast, among those without a
college degree, more say the proposals go too far than not far enough. Slim pluralities of all
education groups say the proposals are about right. The balance of opinion on Obama’s gun
proposals is similar among those who are following the debate very closely and those who are
following less closely.
About four-in-ten (43%) say they very closely followed news about President Obama
announcing proposals for strengthening gun laws; another 29% followed this story fairly closely.
Interest in the gun proposals outpaced interest in all other news stories last week, including
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economic news (36% very closely). Interest in the gun control proposals was about as high
among Republicans (44% very closely) as Democrats (47% very closely).
SPEAKING: TRAINING FOR THE DEBATE
PROPOSITION: We should limit the right to bear arms
Given below are the arguments for the proposition:
1. The only function of a gun is to kill
2. The legal ownership of guns by ordinary citizens inevitably leads to many accidental deaths
3. Gun ownership increases the risk of suicide
Extend these arguments and give others to support the proposition
Here is the example of how you can extend an argument: The only function of a gun is to kill.
The more instruments of death and injury can be removed from our society, the safer it
will be. In the U.S.A. for example death by gunshot has become the leading cause of death
among some social groups (in particular for African-American males aged from 12 to 19 years
old). Quite simply, guns are lethal and the fewer people have them the better.
Here is the counter argument:
Prohibition is not the answer, especially not in countries such as the USA where gun
ownership is such an entrenched aspect of society. Banning guns would not make them disappear
or make them any less dangerous. It is a legitimate right of citizens to own weapons with which
they can protect themselves, their family, and their property. Besides, in many cases guns serve
as a deterrent against criminals and can be viewed as crime prevention instruments.
Now think of counter arguments to two other points in support of the proposition.
SPEAKING - 6: DEBATE CLUB
Given below are five topics for the debates. In class choose three of them. Split into 2
teams: positive and negative. Elaborate on your team’s line of reasoning, decide on the
arguments and get ready for the debates.
IT IS SOMETIMES RIGHT FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO RESTRICT
FREEDOM OF SPEECH
Freedom of speech is often considered to be one of the most basic tenets of democracy.
As a fundamental right it is enshrined in documents such as the Constitution of the Russian
Federation, the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, and the European Convention on
Human Rights. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes
freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and
ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
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SHOULD BLASPHEMY BE CRIMINALISED?
Blasphemy is the act of showing contempt or speaking offensively about a deity or of
persons and symbols regarded as sacred by the followers of a specific religion. The concept of
blasphemy is mostly associated with the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam)
and many nation states which affiliate with one of these have, at one time or another, created
laws against committing blasphemous acts directed at their dominant religious tradition.
As the world in general becomes more liberal and secular however the need for such laws
has come into question. In a number of European states, blasphemy laws still exist in common
law and statute, but are left dormant and unused. Censorship and classification bodies in western
liberal democracies may be permitted to take account of statements or images that may be
blasphemous when deciding whether films or broadcast media should be cut or certified.
ASSISTED SUICIDE (EUTHANASIA) SHOULD BE LEGALIZED
Euthanasia is the act or practice of ending the life of an individual suffering from a
terminal illness or an incurable condition, as by lethal injection or the suspension of
extraordinary medical treatment.” It is an issue which causes world-wide conflict with various
countries differing strongly on their legal stances towards assisted suicide. Currently there are
only four places which openly and legally authorise assisted suicide; Oregon since 1997,
Switzerland since 1941, Belgium since 2002 and the Netherlands since 2002. Equally, there are
countries such as Russia, Hungary, Republic of Ireland and England and Wales that look upon
assisted suicide as a criminal offence with harsh penalties. Between these two extremes there are
also countries such as Germany, Denmark, Finland and Luxembourg where there is no specific
law against assisted suicide but equally there is no legislation proclaiming it to be legal.
THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS SHOULD BE LIMITED
Gun laws vary widely from country to country, so this topic focuses upon arguments for
tightening gun laws in principle. Particular debates might centre upon different categories of
guns (for example automatic weapons, handguns or shotguns), licensing requirements for
ownership, the right to carry concealed weapons, or requirements that manufacturers increase the
safety features on their weapons.
POSITIVE DISCRIMINATION IS NEEDED TO PUT MORE WOMEN IN
PARLIAMENT
Women are vastly underrepresented in democratic legislatures across the world. Until 20
years ago women had never been more than 5% of MPs in UK Parliament1. Even today women
hold barely 20% of parliamentary positions1. Many people argue for a form of 'affirmative
action' or 'positive discrimination' to boost female candidacy and attempt to ensure parliaments
will reflect the gender balance of their electorate. This may be done either via targets (aiming to
get a certain percentage of female candidates) or by quotas (requiring a certain number of
women politicians), which are legally enforceable but inflexible. Other alternatives are all
women shortlists from which parties select their candidate for constituencies.
Now hold the debates. Mind the format. Stick to formal language.
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OPTIONAL FILE
LISTENING
Listen to Remarks on the Human Rights Agenda for the 21st Century
(Hillary Rodham Clinton’s speech in Georgetown University's Gaston Hall, Washington, DC on
December 14, 2009)
When listening, make a list of human rights terms.
http://video.state.gov/en/video/57184558001
Active vocabulary:
to quell (the protesters, protests, dissent, opposition…) - to suppress
freedom from torture
~ of conscience, of speech, of access to information, of movement…
second-order freedoms
to have the right to sth./ to exercise the right to sth.
inalienable (right) – integral, inherent, absolute неотъемлемый
to empower (sb) – наделять полномочиями, предоставлять право
responsibility
to accept / admit / assume / claim / take / take on (the) / claim responsibility — взять на себя
ответственность
to bear / exercise (the) responsibility — нести бремя, груз, тяжесть ответственности
to discharge / fulfill a responsibility / perform a duty / carry out, fulfill, meet commitments /
obligations – выполнять обязательства
to disclaim responsibility — снимать (с себя) ответственность, слагать (с себя) полномочия
to dodge (taxes)/ evade (taxes, law – обходить закон) / shirk (school) responsibility —
избегать, уклоняться от ответственности
to share (the) responsibility — разделять ответственность
release / free / relieve / exempt from / responsibility – освобождать от ответственности
to respond to the threat
conscription (involuntary draft), mandatory military service (compulsory/voluntary,
paramilitary, external)
conscientious objection
indigenous peoples
refugees / internally displaced persons / asylum seekers / migrants
gender inequality
to have equal access to (education and health services)
to strip sb. of the vote / to forbid sb. from voting / to disenfranchise / to ban sb. from voting / to
withhold the vote / to withdraw, to remove, to refuse sb., to deny sb. the right to vote /
physician-assisted suicide
terminally ill patient
assisted dying
palliative care
asylum
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to grant political asylum — предоставить политическое убежище
to receive asylum — получить убежище
to seek asylum — искать убежище
to deny smb. asylum — отказать кому-л. в защите
READING 1
DOCTORS CHANGE EUTHANASIA STANCE
29 June 2006
bbc.co.uk
In a narrow vote last year, the BMA adopted a neutral stance on euthanasia and
physician-assisted suicide. The decision has now been overturned after 65% of the 500 doctors
at the BMA's meeting in Belfast voted against assisted dying. A bill to relax current law was
blocked by the House of Lords in May, but is likely to be reintroduced.
The bill, sponsored by cross-bench peer Lord Joffe, would give doctors the right to
prescribe drugs that a terminally ill patient in severe pain could use to end their own life.
However, many doctors were unhappy at the vote, remaining implacably opposed to any
form of assisted dying. They argued that improvements in palliative care meant that even the
most stricken of patients could be helped effectively through their final days.
In a heated debate, doctors argued for and against. Some claimed that despite the "blanket
cliche" of good palliative care "people still die in undignified misery.
Others insisted that terminally ill patients were mostly concerned with the effect their
illness was having on their families.
The vote lobbied by religious lobby groups found 30% of GPs would be willing, in
principle and if the law permitted, to write a prescription to assist a patient to die if their
suffering could not be relieved by palliative care.
Doctors are split and at the moment the religious lobby is winning the tactical battle, but
society should not allow religious views on the sanctity of life to trump the right to autonomy of
a patient who does not share those views.
READING 2
NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN
May 12th 2011
The Economist
Some dictators may have fallen, but human-rights abuses continue
THE world really can become a better place—that seemed to be the belief of the
protesters who have thronged streets in the Middle East. Sadly, reality attests to the wisdom of
Ecclesiastes: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that
which shall be done.”
Take the impact of technology. Facebook and other social media services have created
opportunities for dissidents and revolutionaries to organise and voice their opposition. But those
in power have discovered that they, too, can use the internet, in their case to stifle freedom of
speech. The dream of all dictators is to know as much about you as Google does.
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Authoritarian states have also learned how to use the language of human rights to
legitimise their oppressive tactics, for instance by claiming to defend religious groups. But their
tools of abuse—violence, torture and censorship—remain depressingly familiar. The grand
tradition of making opponents “disappear,” perfected by the military dictatorship is still
flourishing today.
Post-revolutionary leaders can find it all too easy to slip into the abusive habits of their
predecessors. The transitional governments use the methods of the ousted regimes: when
demonstrations break out, police uses tear gas and live ammunition, protesters are beaten and
journalists have their equipment seized.
Nor do governments have a monopoly on violence. From Jamaica to South Africa, gays
and lesbians continue to be the victims of vicious intolerance. Lesbians are raped in an effort to
“correct” their sexuality. LGBT say such is the violence typically directed at its people that it is
remarkable that only few have been murdered in the past decade.
Yet there was also brighter news. As those in power become more inventive in their
clampdowns, so do their opponents. Some have started to help victims make their experiences
public. In the age of Facebook and Google, the truth remains the most powerful weapon of all.
READING 3
DO INDIGENOUS PEOPLES BENEFIT FROM 'DEVELOPMENT'?
Stephen Corry
25 November 2011
guardian.co.uk
We need to think about whether development brings any benefits to those who are largely
self-sufficient – like many of the world's 150 million tribal people
What's "development" for? That may be straightforward to people who don't have water
or food, or sewerage in urban areas. But, although millions still lack such basics, they form only
a tiny part of what passes for development these days. The duplicity of politics and business
ensures much else – arms, for example – is shoehorned into the same category.
What should development mean for those who are largely self-sufficient, getting their
own food and building their dwellings where the water is still clean – like many of the world's
150 million tribal people? Has development got anything helpful for them, or has it simply got it
in for them?
It's easy to see where it has led. Leaving aside the millions who succumbed to the
colonial invasion, in some of the world's most "developed" countries (Australia, Canada and the
US) development has turned most of the survivors into dispossessed paupers. Take any measure
of what it ought to mean: high income, longevity, employment, health; low rates of addiction,
suicide, imprisonment and domestic violence, and you find that indigenous people in the US,
Canada and Australia are by far the worst off on every count – but no one seems to heed the
lesson.
These are the consequences of a dispossession more total in North America and Australia
than almost anywhere on Earth. The colonists were determined to steal tribal lands, and
unquestioning about their own superiority. They espoused politico-economic models in which
workers produced for distant markets, and had to pay for the privilege. The natives, using no
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money, paying no taxes, contributing little to the marketplace until forced to, were "backward".
At best, they were to be integrated to serve colonist society.
Colonialism set out to take away their self-sufficiency, on their own territory, and lead
them to glorious productivity, as menials, on someone else's. There's little point in calling for
retroactive apologies for this because it's not confined to the past: most development schemes
foisted on tribal peoples today point in exactly the same direction.
Two of its main themes are housing and education. Traditional housing has many benefits
– not least the fact that it's free – but development decrees it must be replaced by modern
dwellings. In West Papua, the tribespeople put their pigs in the new houses and live in the old.
Rwanda recently outlawed thatch altogether; everyone must use metal sheets, by law.
So what about modern education? In Australia, mixed-race children were forced into
distant boarding schools to "breed out" their "Aboriginalness" and turn them into an underclass.
From frozen Siberia to sunlit Botswana, boarding schools remain a main plank in integrationist
policies, which destroy more than educate. It's no hidden conspiracy: it's openly designed to be
about turning people into workers, scornful of their own tribal heritage.
Many indigenous people have observed that even the modern medical attention they
might receive from the wealthiest governments doesn't begin to solve the illnesses the same
government's policies have inflicted on them. It isn't "backwardness" that makes many tribal
peoples reject development projects, it's rational anxiety about the future.
As for largescale infrastructure development – dams and mines, even irrigation – its real
effect on the ground is invariably to enrich the elites while impoverishing the locals.
So is it possible to offer tribal peoples any truly beneficial development? Yes, if we
accept their right to reject what we, with our "advanced" wisdom, can give; we have to stop
thinking them childish when they make decisions we wouldn't. Everyone wants control over
their future, and not everyone wants the same things out of life, but such truisms are hardly ever
applied.
Development, at least for most tribal peoples, isn't really about lifting people out of
poverty, it's about masking the takeover of their territories. The deception works because the
conviction "we know best" is more deeply ingrained even than it was a generation ago;
Victorian-era levels of narrow-mindedness are returning.
In a 21st century of expensive water, food, housing, education, healthcare and power,
self-sufficiency has its attraction. It may not boost GDP figures, but there are many tribal peoples
in the world who live longer and healthier lives than millions in nearby slums. Who's to say
they've made a bad choice?
READING 4
HUMAN RIGHTS WIN WIDER RECOGNITION IN BRITAIN
The issue of human rights is becoming part of our everyday lives, though public
perception of what it means can often still remain hazy
Jason Bennetto
guardian.co.uk
Since the Human Rights Act came into force in 2000, the UK public has developed a
culture of wider respect for human rights, says the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
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The commission's inquiry shows how many individuals have been able to cite the act to
negotiate better conditions or treatment from the National Health Service, all the vast machinery
of local and central government and the police, courts and criminal justice system.
However, this is against a background of widespread misunderstanding and mistrust of
the act. It is disturbing but perhaps not surprising that, according to research for the inquiry,
around 40% of British people believe the only beneficiaries of human rights legislation are
criminals and terrorists.
Much of this is certainly due to bad press given to the act. The media almost always
focuses on stories that reinforce notions that human rights is a high-minded but nebulous
concept, exploited by slippery lawyers and nit-picking bureaucrats.
The inquiry discovered that much of the act's day-to-day benefits among the public sector
have gone unnoticed by a wider audience, while attention centres on a small number of highprofile civil rights cases.
But the act nevertheless ensures that the same principles of fairness, equality, justice and
respect for individuals that are usually cited in such cases can equally be applied to ordinary,
everyday situations: how you should be allowed to eat as a patient in hospital; the protection of
the vulnerable, elderly, infirm or handicapped from neglect or abuse while in the care of the
state; casual bullying in schools and workplaces that can easily become institutionalised; or the
disregard of the rights of gay and lesbian couples in adoption cases.
Katie Ghose, director of the British Institute of Human Rights, the charity that conducts
training courses for public sector workers, says: "In schools, hospitals, and care homes, people
are using the Human Rights Act to challenge poor treatment and demand better services."
One such course involved the Mersey Care NHS Trust, which enabled people with
learning difficulties and mental health problems to understand and exercise their human rights,
through role play and education. Among the beneficiaries was Carole Legge (pictured) who
suffers from learning difficulties, but was encouraged during the programme to leave a care
home after many years and live by herself, taking her own decisions about her daily needs, such
as shopping and socializing, assisted by regular carers. "I can look after myself more. I feel much
more independent because now I understand my rights,'' she said.
But not only does the Act give ordinary people the ability to seek better treatment from
the state but also imposes some "positive obligations" on public bodies to help create a much
broader culture of respect for human rights.
The inquiry heard that this approach was encouraging change in many ways. In one
hospital's A&E department, patients were being exposed to the public each time a curtain was
pulled back. One day the matron said: "Have you thought about human rights and dignity?" The
simple solution was to fit overlapping curtains.
And, if matters cannot be resolved, the public still has the right of legal redress. Five
protesters arrested in Wakefield while holding a demonstration about pensions during a visit by
the Queen won damages after the police were found to have breached the right to free expression
and peaceful protest. Individuals can still also go to the European Court of Human Rights in
Strasbourg. Diane Blood's battle to use her late husband's sperm to start a family is a well-known
example that does not involve civil liberties and terrorist groups.
But it's on everyday aspects of life that the act is having the biggest influence, says Ann
Abraham, parliamentary and health services ombudsman. She told the inquiry: "I detect a sea
change ... with a definite shift away from seeing human rights as being just about civil liberties,
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crime, national security, to a much more inclusive approach that recognises the small places
where human rights play a part in ordinary daily life."
READING 5
WHEN FREEDOM STUMBLES
Jan 17th 2008
The Economist
OVER the past half century, it often seemed that the advance of democracy and basic
freedoms—the right to speak and write without fear of persecution, to demand political change,
and so on—was ineluctable. First the Europeans let their colonies go. Then the Soviet empire
fell, and with it the communist monopoly on power in Eastern Europe. And apartheid ended in
South Africa.
Recently, though, freedom's progress may have come to a halt, or even gone into reverse.
That, at least, is the conclusion of Freedom House, an august American lobby group whose
observations on the state of liberty are a keenly watched indicator. Its annual report speaks of a
“profoundly disturbing deterioration” in the global picture, with reversals seen in 38
countries—nearly four times as many as are showing any sign of improvement.
Using the think-tank's long-established division of the world into “free”, “partly free” and
“not free” countries, the planet is still a better place than it was a quarter-century ago. In other
words, there are still net gains from the fall of communism, at least in central Europe, and the
decline of militarism in Latin America. But the short-term trends seem worrying. Last year was
the second in a row when liberty inched back. An especially disturbing sign, says the
organisation, is the number of countries in all regions of the world where a previously hopeful
trend has gone into reverse.
So where exactly does Freedom House come from? It was founded in 1941 by Wendell
Willkie and Eleanor Roosevelt, as a counter to Nazism. During the cold war it “fought the good
fight” against Soviet-backed tyrannies but also had harsh words for dictators on America's side
of the stand-off. Freedom House not only watches the state of liberty, it also calls itself a
“catalyst” for the peaceful advancement of civil and democratic rights through “analysis,
advocacy and action”. But it has firm ideas about which country is best placed to promote these
ideals: it has formally stated that whatever their differences, all trustees are agreed that
“American leadership in international affairs is essential to the cause of human rights and
freedom.” When America attacked Iraq in 2003, Freedom House wished the campaign well.
Nor does the organisation conceal its financial ties to the American government, which
supplies about 80% of its income. But it strongly denies that it acts as an arm of the government,
or that it holds back from criticising America and its friends when that is warranted. And it
would be hard to argue that diplomatic friendship with the United States has ever guaranteed a
country a free pass from the think-tank. Israel, a close American friend, used to get relatively
poor grades—a 2 for political rights and a 3 for civil liberties on a descending scale of 1 to 7. In
recent years, Israel has improved its scores, but only in 2005 did its civil-liberty rating rise to 2.
Insiders say that in years past, there was some internal debate at Freedom House over
whether or not economic welfare, which affects the range of choices people can make, should be
included in the calculus of liberty. But the decision has been to keep economic factors out. This
helps to explain why China, in the midst of the horrors of its Cultural Revolution when the
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surveys began, has hardly managed to improve on its early, rock-bottom ratings. Its “civil
liberties” are still assessed at a dismal 6.
How much freer do people feel when they have a few yuan in their pocket (and access to
other goodies like computers and compact discs)? That is an endlessly debatable question. By
contrast the sort of liberties and non-liberties measured by Freedom House (multi-party
elections, due process and so on) are relatively tangible and easy to assess. That alone may be
quite a good argument for having at least one index whose stated purpose is to assess formal
freedoms—to vote, speak, assemble and so on. That does not imply that other factors, such as
prosperity, have no bearing on how free people feel.
WORD FORMATION TECHNIQUES: COMPOUND WORDS
In texts and you have come across such words as broadband, website, healthcare, wellbeing,
self-centered, outline and many others.
All of them are compound words formed according to different patterns some of which are:
~ two nouns
~ two adjectives
~ two verbs
~ a noun joined to an adjective
Unscramble the second part of the following compound words using their definitions as a
hint or as a check
fool
a)
b)
heart
a)
b)
c)
head
a)
b)
c)
foot
a)
b)
c)
over
a)
b)
c)
by
a)
b)
c)
taking unnecessary risks (dyrah)
made in such a way that even a fool can understand or use safely (opofr)
central part of a country (daln)
burning sensation in the chest caused by indigestion (runb)
a man whose good looks excite romantic feelings in women (hbort)
forward motion, progress (yaw)
self-willed, obstinate (nrgsot)
to identify a suitable person to fill a business position (tnuh)
a safe place for the foot, especially when climbing (dohl)
a row of lights along the front of a stage (thigtls)
additional piece of information printed at the bottom of a page (toen)
covered with clouds (stac)
sum of money drawn or borrowed from a bank in excess of one's deposit (fradt)
failure to notice something (thsig)
a road that enables the traveller to avoid going through the centre of a town (sasp)
regulation made by a local authority (wal)
substance made or obtained during the manufacture of some other substance (cduropt)
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light
a)
b)
c)
stand
a)
b)
c)
up
a)
b)
c)
lay
a)
b)
c)
show
a)
b)
c)
quick
a)
b)
c)
back
a)
b)
c)
eye
a)
b)
c)
cheerful, free from care (edterah)
clever at stealing (denigfre)
giddy; thoughtless or forgetful (daehde)
unfriendly, distant in manner (fosfih)
stoppage (listl)
thing or person to be used or called on if necessary (yb)
tumult, violent disturbance (avepulah)
outcome, result (sputoh)
padding and covering of chairs and sofas (sruhopelty)
person who is not an expert with regard to a profession, science or art (amn)
manner in which something is arranged or disposed (tou)
piece of surfaced land at the side of a road where cars may park (yb)
place where goods are displayed (omor)
a full declaration of facts, intentions, or strength (wnod)
something produced mainly for show or to attract attention (ecipe)
mentally alert (tiwetd)
easily made angry (peredmet)
expanse of soil that sucks down anyone who tries to walk on it (dans)
accumulation of work or business not yet attended to (ogl)
strength of character, courage (nobe)
speaking evil of a person (tibign)
circumstance that brings enlightenment and surprise (norepe)
an ugly or unpleasant thing to look at (rose)
one who has himself seen something happen (sniwest)
Use a hyphen to combine one of the words in box A with one of the words in box B. Then
complete the sentences.
A double long short
one
B edged
sighted sided term
1 We need a................................plan for our transport systems that will take into account future
growth.
2 A warning sign was put at the site of the accident as a................................measure until a new
wall was built.
3 This argument appears to be a little.................................I'd like to hear the other side as well.
4 The management agreed to employ five more members of staff, which in hindsight was a
very............................decision because within a few weeks we were still understaffed.
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5 Globalisation is a................................sword. It promotes multiculturalism while it erodes the
local culture.
WRITING PRACTICE: MAKING A GLOSSARY (OPTIONAL)
A glossary is an alphabetical list of terms in a particular domain of knowledge with the
definitions for those terms. Traditionally, a glossary appears at the end of a report and includes
terms which are either newly introduced, uncommon or specialized. In a general sense, a
glossary contains explanations of concepts relevant to a certain field of study or action.
The word is derived from the Latin glossa, which means “foreign word.”
A bilingual glossary is a list of terms in one language which are defined in a second
language or glossed by synonyms (or at least near-synonyms) in another language.
Here are the guidelines to making a bilingual glossary:





Choose an article from an English source (approximately 15,000 printed characters) you
might want to use in drafting your diploma paper.
When choosing the article make sure it is a piece of academic writing containing relevant
data and abounding in terms.
Go through the article, locate the terms and concepts you think need explanation, make a
list of the terms (there should be no less than 20 items on your list)
Alphabetize your term list and insert the words in the left column of a table.
Fill the right column with the definitions of the terms borrowed either from dictionaries
or other reliable sources
Now follow the guidelines and make a glossary of terms based on a chosen article.
FOLLOWUP
ASSIGNMENT 17: READING AND DISCUSSION
Read an article on pros and cons of euthanasia. Below you will find arguments against
the idea that assisted suicide should be legalized. Look thems through and suggest your
counter-arguments supporting the idea.

Modern palliative care is immensely flexible and effective, and helps to preserve quality
of life as far as is possible. There is no need for terminally ill patients ever to be in pain,
even at the very end of the course of their illness.
Demanding that family take part in such a decision can be an unbearable burden: many
may resent a loved one’s decision to die, and would be emotionally scared by the
prospect of being in any way involved with their death.
There is also a danger that the terminally ill may be pressured into ending their lives by
others who are not prepared to support them through their illness.
It is vital that a doctor’s role not be confused. The guiding principle of medical ethics is
to do no harm: a physician must not be involved in deliberately harming their patient.
Without this principle, the medical profession would lose a great deal of trust.



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