Olympic Games

Olympic Games:

The modern Olympic Games are a major international event featuring summer and winter sports in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games are considered to be the world's foremost sports competition with more than 200 nations participating. The Games are currently held biennially, with Summer and Winter Olympic Games alternating, meaning they each occur every four years. Their creation was inspired by the ancient Olympic Games, which were held in Olympia, Greece, from the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD. Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894. The IOC has since become the governing body of the Olympic Movement, with the Olympic Charter defining its structure and authority.

The evolution of the Olympic Movement during the 20th and 21st centuries has resulted in several changes to the Olympic Games. Some of these adjustments include the creation of the Winter Games for ice and winter sports, the Paralympic Games for athletes with a disability, and the Youth Olympic Games for teenage athletes. The IOC has had to adapt to the varying economic, political, and technological realities of the 20th century. As a result, the Olympics shifted away from pure amateurism, as envisioned by Coubertin, to allow participation of professional athletes. The growing importance of the mass media created the issue of corporate sponsorship and commercialization of the Games. World wars led to the cancellation of the 1916, 1940, and 1944 Games. Large boycotts during the Cold War limited participation in the 1980 and 1984 Games.

The Olympic Movement consists of international sports federations (IFs), National Olympic Committees (NOCs), and organizing committees for each specific Olympic Games. As the decision-making body, the IOC is responsible for choosing the host city for each Olympic Games. The host city is responsible for organizing and funding a celebration of the Games consistent with the Olympic Charter. The Olympic program, consisting of the sports to be contested at the Games, is also determined by the IOC. The celebration of the Games encompass many rituals and symbols, such as the Olympic flag andtorch, as well as the opening and closing ceremonies. Over 13,000 athletes compete at the Summer and Winter Olympics in 33 different sports and nearly 400 events. The first, second, and third place finishers in each event receive Olympic medals: gold, silver, and bronze, respectively.

The Games havegrown in scale to the point that nearly every nation is represented.Such growth has created numerous challenges,including boycotts, doping, bribery,andterrorism.Every two years, the Olympics and its media exposure provide unknownathletes with the chance to attain national, and sometimesinternational fame. The Games also constitute a major opportunity forthe host city and country to showcase themselves to the world.

Nelson Mandela - Mohandas Gandhi

Nelson Mandela:

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (born 18 July 1918) is a South African politician who served asPresident of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, the first ever to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before being elected President, Mandela was a militant anti-apartheid activist, and the leader and co-founder of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). In 1962 he was arrested and convicted of sabotage and other charges, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Mandela went on to serve 27 years in prison, spending many of these years on Robben Island. Following his release from prison on 11 February 1990, Mandela led his party in the negotiations that led to the establishment of democracy in 1994. As President, he frequently gave priority to reconciliation, while introducing policies aimed at combating poverty and inequality in South Africa.

In South Africa, Mandela is often known as Madiba, his Xhosa clan name; or as tata (Xhosa: father). Mandela has received more than 250 awards over four decades, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize.

Political Actitvitie: After the 1948 election victory of the Afrikaner-dominated National Party, which supported the apartheid policy of racial segregation, Mandela began actively participating in politics. He led prominently in the ANC's 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People, whose adoption of the Freedom Charter provided the fundamental basis of the anti-apartheid cause. During this time, Mandela and fellow lawyer Oliver Tambo operated the law firm of Mandela and Tambo, providing free or low-cost legal counsel to many blacks who lacked attorney representation.

Mahatma Gandhi influenced Mandela's approach, and subsequently the methods of succeeding generations of South African anti-apartheid activists. Mandela later took part in the 29–30 January 2007 conference in New Delhi marking the 100th anniversary of Gandhi's introduction of satyagraha (non-violent resistance) in South Africa.

Initially committed to nonviolent resistance, Mandela and 150 others were arrested on 5 December 1956 and charged with treason. The marathon Treason Trial of 1956–1961 followed, with all defendants receiving acquittals. From 1952–1959, a new class of black activists known as the Africanists disrupted ANC activities in the townships, demanding more drastic steps against the National Party regime. The ANC leadership under Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu felt not only that the Africanists were moving too fast but also that they challenged their leadership. The ANC leadership consequently bolstered their position through alliances with small White, Coloured, and Indian political parties in an attempt to give the appearance of wider appeal than the Africanists. The Africanists ridiculed the 1955 Freedom Charter Kliptown Conference for the concession of the 100,000-strong ANC to just a single vote in a Congressional alliance. Four secretaries-general of the five participating parties secretly belonged to the reconstituted South African Communist Party (SACP). In 2003 Blade Nzimande, the SACP General Secretary, revealed that Walter Sisulu, the ANC Secretary-General, secretly joined the SACP in 1955which meant all five Secretaries General were SACP and thus explains why Sisulu relegated the ANC from a dominant role to one of five equals.

In 1959, the ANClost its most militant support when most of the Africanists, withfinancial support from Ghana andsignificant political support from the Transvaal-based Basotho,broke away to form the PanAfricanist Congress (PAC)under the direction of RobertSobukwe and PotlakoLeballo.

Mohandas Gandhi:

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (October 1869 – 30 January 1948), commonly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was the preeminent leader of Indian nationalism in British-ruled India. Employing non-violent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for non-violence, civil rights and freedom across the world.

Son of a senior government official, Gandhi was born and raised in a Hindu Bania community in coastal Gujarat, and trained in law in London. Gandhi became famous by fighting for the civil rights of Muslim and Hindu Indians in South Africa, using the new techniques of non-violent civil disobedience that he developed. Returning to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants to protest excessive land-taxes. A lifelong opponent of "communalism" (i.e. basing politics on religion) he reached out widely to all religious groups. He became a leader of Muslims protesting the declining status of the Caliphate. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, endinguntouchability, increasing economic self-reliance, and above all for achieving Swaraj—the independence of India from British domination.

Gandhi led Indians in protesting the national salt tax with the 400 km (250 mi) Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in demanding the British to immediately Quit India in 1942, during World War II. He was imprisoned for that and for numerous other political offenses over the years. Gandhi sought to practice non-violence and truth in all situations, and advocated that others do the same. He saw the villages as the core of the true India and promoted self sufficiency; he did not support the industrialization programs of his discipleJawaharlal Nehru. He lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn he had hand spun on a charkha. His political enemy Winston Churchill ridiculed him as a "half-naked fakir." He was a dedicated vegetarian, and undertook long fasts as means of both self-purification and political mobilization.

In his last year, unhappy at the partition of India, Gandhi worked to stop the carnage between Muslims on the one hand and Hindus and Sikhs that raged in the border area between India and Pakistan. He was assassinated on 30 January 1948 by a Hindu nationalist who thought Gandhi was too sympathetic to India's Muslims. 30 January is observed as Martyrs' Day in India. The honorific Mahatma(Sanskrit: mahāt̪mā)or "Great Soul", was applied to him by 1914. In Indiahe was also called Bapu (Gujarati: bāpuː or"Father"). He is known in India as the Fatherof the Nation; his birthday, 2 October, iscommemorated there as GandhiJayanti, a nationalholiday, and world-wide as the InternationalDay of Non-Violence. The title of 'Father of Nation'was not formally conferred by the Government on Gandhi. Gandhi'sphilosophy was not theoretical but one of pragmatism, that is,practicing his principles in real time. Asked to give a message tothe people, he would respond, "My life is my message."

Values

Value: 

 A personal orcultural value isan absoluteor relative ethical value,the assumption of which can be the basis for ethical action. A valuesystem isa set of consistent values andmeasures. A principlevalue isa foundation upon which other values and measures of integrity arebased. Those values which are not physiologically determined andnormally considered objective, such as a desire to avoid physicalpain, seek pleasure, etc., are considered subjective,vary across individuals and cultures and are in many ways alignedwithbelief andbelief systems. Types of valuesinclude ethical/moral value, doctrinal/ideological (religious,political) values, social values,and aesthetic values.It is debated whether some values which are not clearlyphysiologically determined are intrinsic suchas altruism andwhether some such as acquisitiveness should be valuedas vices or virtues.Values have typically been studied in sociology, anthropology, socialpsychology, moralphilosophy,and businessethics.

Values can be defined as broad preferences concerning appropriate courses of action or outcomes. As such, values reflect a person’s sense of right and wrong or what “ought” to be. “Equal rights for all”, "Excellence deserves admiration", and “People should be treated with respect and dignity” are representative of values. Values tend to influence attitudes and behavior. For example, if you value equal rights for all and you go to work for an organization that treats its managers much better than it does its workers, you may form the attitude that the company is an unfair place to work; consequently, you may not produce well or may perhaps leave the company. It is likely that if the company had a more egalitarian policy, your attitude and behaviors would have been more positive.

Personal Value: According to Morris Massey values are formed during three significant periods: 1. Imprint period from birth to 7 years. 2. Modelling period from 8 –13 years. 3. Socialization period from 13 –21 years.

Personal Values provide an internal reference for what is good, beneficial, important, useful, beautiful, desirable, constructive, etc. Values generate behaviour and help solve common human problems for survival by comparative rankings of value, the results of which provide answers to questions of why people do what they do and in what order they choose to do them.

Over time the public expression of personal values, that groups of people find important in their day-to-day lives, lay the foundations of law, custom and tradition. Personal Values in this way exist in relation to cultural values, either in agreement with or divergent from prevailing norms. A culture is a social system that shares a set of common values, in which such values permit social expectations and collective understandings of the good, beautiful, constructive, etc. Without normative personal values, there would be no cultural reference against which to measure the virtue of individual values and so culture identity would disintegrate.

Wyatt Woodsmall points out that “'Criteria' are used to refer to 'the standards on which an evaluation is based'.” Values relate then to what one wants and in what order one wants them, criteria can only refer to the evidences for achieving values and act as a comparative standard that one applies in order to evaluate whether goals have been met / values satisfied.

Values are obtained in many different ways. The most important piece for building values is a person's family. The family is responsible for teaching children what is right and wrong long before there are other influences. As it is said that, a child is a reflection of the parents. As a child starts school, school helps some to shape the values of children. Then there is religion that the family introduces to a child that plays a role in teaching the right and wrong behaviors.

Mafalda

 

Mafalda is a comic strip written and drawn by Argentine cartoonist Joaquín Salvador Lavado, better known by his pen name Quino. The strip features a 6-year-old girl named Mafalda, who is deeply concerned about humanity and world peace and rebels against the current state of the world. The strip ran from 1964 to 1973 and was very popular in Latin America, Europe, Quebec, and in Asia, leading to two animated cartoon series and a movie.

The character Mafalda and a few other characters were created by Quino in 1962 for a promotional cartoon that was intended to be published in the daily Clarín. Mafalda's name was inspired by David Viñas's novel Dar la cara. Ultimately, however, Clarín broke the contract and the campaign was canceled altogether.

Mafalda became a full-fledged cartoon strip on the advice of Quino's friend Julián Delgado, at the time senior editor of the weekly Primera Plana. Its run in that newspaper began on 29 September 1964. At first it only featured Mafalda and her parents. Her friend Felipe came on the scene in January 1965. A legal dispute arose in March 1965, which led to the end of Mafalda's Primera Plana run on 9 March 1965.

One week later, on 15 March 1965 Mafalda (the character at the age of five) started appearing daily in Buenos Aires' Mundo, allowing the author to follow current events more closely. The characters of Felipe, Manolito, Susanita and Miguelito were created in the following weeks, and Mafalda's mother was pregnant when the newspaper shut down on 22 December 1967.

Publication resumed six months later, on 2 June 1968, in the weekly Siete Días Ilustrados. Since the cartoons had to be delivered two weeks before publication, Quino was not able to comment on the news to the same extent. After creating the characters of Mafalda's little brother Guille and her new friend Libertad, he definitively ceased publication of the strip on 25 June 1973.

After 1973,Quino still drew Mafalda afew times, mostly to promote humanrights.In 1976, he reproduced Mafalda for the UNICEF illustratingthe Conventionon the Rights of the Child.

Joaquín Salvador Lavado, better known by his pen name Quino (born 17 July 1932) is an Argentine cartoonist. His comic strip Mafalda (which ran from 1964 to 1973) is very popular in Latin America and many parts of Europe.

Quino's daily newspaper strip Mafalda washis most successful cartooning venture. Mafalda ranfrom 1964 to 1973. The comic was translated into more than 30languages.However,it never received much of an audience in the English-speaking world,perhaps because, as Quino put it, the strip was "too LatinAmerican." In1976, the character Mafalda was chosen by UNICEF tobe a spokesperson for the Conventionon the Rights of the Child. Mafalda isstill translated in book collections. Argentine director Daniel Mallotranslated 260 Mafalda stripsinto 90-second cartoons that aired in Argentina, starting in 1972.