Questões de Inglês - Advérbios e conjunções | Adverbs and conjunctions para Concurso

                       Rule of Law and Democracy: Addressing

                        the Gap Between Policies and Practices

      The Declaration adopted on 24 September 2012 by the United Nations General Assembly at the High-level Meeting on the Rule of Law at the National and International Levels reaffirmed that “human rights, the rule of law and democracy are interlinked and mutually reinforcing and that they belong to the universal and indivisible core values and principles of the United Nations”. Indeed, government responsiveness to the interests and needs of the greatest number of citizens is strictly associated with the capacity of democratic institutions and processes to bolster the dimensions of rights, equality and accountability.

      If considered not solely an instrument of the government but as a rule to which the entire society, including the government, is bound, the rule of law is fundamental in advancing democracy. Strengthening the rule of law has to be approached not only by focusing on the application of norms and procedures. One must also emphasize its fundamental role in protecting rights and advancing inclusiveness, in this way framing the protection of rights within the broader discourse on human development.

      A common feature of both democracy and the rule of law is that a purely institutional approach does not say anything about actual outcomes of processes and procedures, even if the latter are formally correct. When addressing the rule of law and democracy nexus, a fundamental distinction has to be drawn between “rule by law”, whereby law is an instrument of government and government is considered above the law, and “rule of law”, which implies that everyone in society is bound by the law, including the government. Essentially, constitutional limits on power, a key feature of democracy, require adherence to the rule of law.

      Another key dimension of the rule of law-democracy nexus is the recognition that building democracy and the rule of law may be convergent and mutually reinforcing processes whenever the rule of law is defined in broad, endsbased terms rather than in narrow, formal and exclusively procedural terms. The nexus is strong whenever the rule of law is conceived in its relationship with substantive outcomes, like justice and democratic governance.

(https://unchronicle.un.org/article/rule-law-and-democracy-addressinggap-between-policies-and-practices. Adaptado)

A recent study, performed with children aged 2 months to 10 years, produced clinicai evidence delineating the stages a child goes through in developing a self-image. It involved exposing the child to his reflection in both a true mirror and then one that was convexly distorted. Children from 9 to 10 months old were highly responsive to both the true and the distorted mirror images. Their excitement, attention, and activity seemed to be unaffected by the distortion, indicating they had no self-image. Slightly older children, aged 10 to 11 months, made rhythmic circular movements when exposed to their distorted image as though attempting to correct the distortion. This change in response indicates the child may have some idea of his image and perhaps recognizes the distorted image is wrong. Amarked change in response changes when a child reaches 18 to 22 months of age. The child avoids both images, having begun to develop a self-image which does not match the mirror image. From 2 to 5 years, the child has developed a definite self-image which is recognizable in the mirror, since the child literally flees the distorted image. Children ages 7 to 10 had reached a levei of cognitive development which allowed them to laugh at the distorted images, play with the mirror and observe the changes they could effect.

                                                                                                                       Crescer magazine 1992

AUNT ACQUITTED IN NIECE’S HIT-AND-RUN DEATH

WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 2015 BY TAMARA APARTON

      San Francisco, CA − A woman charged with child endangerment after a hit-and-run driver fatally struck her 2-year-old niece as the family crossed against a traffic light was acquitted of all charges today, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi announced.

      Jurors deliberated a day and a half before clearing Loyresha Gage, 26, of felony child endangerment resulting in death and misdemeanor child endangerment. Gage faced up to 10 years in state prison, said her attorney, Deputy Public Defender Kevin Mitchell.

      The tragic incident occurred Aug. 15, 2014. Gage was caring for her sister’s 2-year-old twins. As the three left the Metreon after seeing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, Gage took a long-awaited call from a friend who had been a no-show to the planned movie date. ..I.. still on the phone, Gage attempted to navigate a crosswalk on Mission Street.

      After waiting for traffic to clear, Gage and her niece, Mi’yana Gregory, stepped into the crosswalk. A little less than halfway across Mission Street,

      Gage realized her nephew was still on the curb and panicked. As she sprinted back to pick him up, a sedan sped down Mission and fatally struck Mi’yana.

      Gage was arrested Aug. 19 and police never found the hit-and-run driver.

      Gage’s family did not want her prosecuted and attended the trial to support her. The prosecutor’s decision to charge Gage was extremely painful for her family, who were struggling to cope with losing Mi’yana, Mitchell said.

      Adachi praised the jury’s decision.

      “The decision to treat this tragic mistake like a crime only added to the pain and suffering Ms. Gage and her entire family experienced. Fortunately, her public defender worked hard to ensure her case was heard,” Adachi said.

(http://sfpublicdefender.org/news/2015/07/aunt-acquitted-in-nieces-hit-and-run-death/) 

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Environmental law in Brazil

      BRAZIL’S gridlocked Congress often ends up passing contentious laws only after the combatants collapse in exhaustion. So it is with the revision of the Forest Code, a set of rules that, ...A... the name, apply to all privately owned rural land, not just plots in wooded areas. The code, originally approved in 1965, requires owners to keep native vegetation on parts of their land − 80% in the Amazon, less elsewhere − and in erosion-prone and biodiverse areas such as riverbanks and mangrove swamps. But it was long ignored.

      Since harsher penalties and enforcement were introduced in the late 1990s the ruralistas, as Brazil’s powerful farming lobby is known, have been trying to revise the code. On April 25th, after 13 years of arguments, rewrites and stalling, the final text landed on the desk of the president, Dilma Rousseff. It was far from the version she wanted. Two government defeats in the ruralista-packed lower house meant it contained few of her own previous revisions or those of the more green-friendly Senate.

      The president faced a difficult choice: to scrap the text and start again − which would probably be taken as a declaration of war by the ruralistas − or to make the best of a bad job. She chose the latter. On May 25th ministers went to Congress to say that the president would veto 12 of the new code’s 84 articles and make 32 smaller cuts. The resulting holes would be backfilled in a separate executive decree. Only on May 28th were the details published.

       Under Ms Rousseff’s veto, the amnesty sought by ruralistas will apply only to smallholders, who will still have to replant 20% of their plots. Everyone else will have five years to right past wrongs and add their properties to a new Rural Environmental Register. Holdouts will be denied bank loans and face prosecution.

      Rubens Ricupero, one of ten former environment ministers consulted by the president before the veto, praises her attempt to strike a balance. Treating small landowners more leniently was both practical, he thinks − they account for 90% of rural properties by number but just 24% by area − and socially just: few could afford much replanting.

(Adapted from http://www.economist.com/node/21556245?zid=305&ah=417bd5664dc76da5d98af4f7a640fd8a) 

The Great Wall of China

Walls and wall building have played a very important role in Chinese culture. These people, from the dim mists of prehistory have been wallconscious; from the Neolithic period – when barriers were used - to the Communist Revolution, walls were an essential part of any village. Not only towns and villages; the houses and the temples within them were somehow walled, and the houses also had no windows overlooking the street, thus giving the feeling of wandering around a huge maze. The name for “city” in Chinese (ch’eng) means wall, and over these walled cities, villages, houses and temples presides the god of walls and mounts, whose duties were, and still are, to protect and be responsible for the welfare of the inhabitants. Thus a great and extremely laborious task such as constructing a wall, which was supposed to run throughout the country, must not have seemed such an absurdity. 

However, it is indeed a common mistake to perceive the Great Wall as a single architectural structure, and it would also be erroneous to assume that it was built during a single dynasty. For the building of the wall connected the various dynasties, and each of these dynasties somehow contributed to the refurbishing and the construction of a wall, whose foundations had been laid many centuries ago. It was during the fourth and third century B.C. that each warring state started building walls to protect their kingdoms, both against one another and against the northern nomads. Especially three of these states: the Ch’in, the Chao and the Yen, corresponding respectively to the modern provinces of Shensi, Shanzi and Hopei, over and above building walls that surrounded their kingdoms, also laid the foundations on which Ch’in Shih Huang Di would build his first continuous Great Wall. 

The role that the Great Wall played in the growth of Chinese economy was an important one. Throughout the centuries many settlements were established along the new border. The garrison troops were instructed to reclaim wasteland and to plant crops on it, roads and canals were built, to mention just a few of the works carried out. All these undertakings greatly helped to increase the country’s trade and cultural exchanges with many remote areas and also with the southern, central and western parts of Asia – the formation of the Silk Route. Builders, garrisons, artisans, farmers and peasants left behind a trail of objects, including inscribed tablets, household articles, and written work, which have become extremely valuable archaeological evidence to the study of defence institutions of the Great Wall and the everyday life of these people who lived and died along the wall