Examples of Introduction and thesis. Example #1 In the 1920s, the Russian secret police would interrogate a prisoner by beating him with a whip with metallic ends “until his back, from the neck to the pelvis, was one mass of torn, dangling flesh”.1 This technique did not stand alone and in fact is not the worst thing that could be, and was done to detainees in prisons around the world. Torture has been a method of gaining information for many countries throughout history. It is something that has progressed as war tactics and the understanding of the human psyche has changed. Governments have funded psychological research in order to better understand how to manipulate the human mind into providing information. Unfortunately their research has led to the awful practices we see today. Whether it is Nazi internment camps during the Holocaust, the aggressive military coup led by Augusto Pinochet, or the so called interrogation techniques in places like Abu Ghraib; one aspect remains the same. Torture is, and always will be, a blatant violation of human rights. Example #2 One of today’s most deadly weapons, biological weapons offers a silent weapon that cannot be easily detected before it becomes deadly. Biological weapons exist in many different forms. Many bio weapons are weaponized forms of pathogens, bacteria and viruses. Objectives of biological warfare is to poison water sources, food supplies or man himself.2 Some applications can have delayed effects, such as the assassination of George Markov in 1978.3 With the spread of travelers, bacteria can cause widespread epidemics and plagues. The black 1 Darius Rejali, Torture and Democracy (United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 2007) 78. 2 Baldwin, Hansen W. “Biological Warfare.” New York Times, July 14, 1946 3Edward M. Spiers. History of Chemical and Biological Weapons. Clerkenwell, England: Reaktion Books, 2010.plague is an example of how fast diseases can travel and how deadly they can be. From 400 C.E. to the present, the invention and use of biological weapons caused the proliferation of diseases throughout the world and the loss of thousands of lives and entire civilizations. Despite common misconceptions, every major world power has used and abused these weapons including the United States, Japan, Germany and France. History reveals that countries resort to biological warfare against three instances: to end prolonged, intractable types of warfare, to even the odds against a much larger force, and to keep their use of biological agents a secret from others, as this method of warfare is difficult to trace. Example #3 In the Middle East today, most conflicts are attributed to Islamic militant groups focused on carrying out their jihad against groups that foster beliefs different from their own. So often, these conflicts are painted as a narrow picture of Muslim groups targeting Christians or Jews in the region; in reality, conflict also frequently arises between various sects of Islam whose views differ from each other. These less-sensationalized conflicts have recently come to the forefront with the formation of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), with their pronounced persecution of nearly every religious group in Iraq and Syria that deviates even slightly from extremist interpretations of the Quran. The formation of such groups and modern conflict in the region stem from a combination of early conflicts in the Islamic faith and more recent periods of minority control in Islamic theocracies, which becomes evident through deeper understanding of the historical unrest between various Islamic sects and the political conflicts that have occurred mainly over the last century. Example #4It can be seen that energy in the modern world is harnessed by utilizing a variety of fossil fuels, the natural environment, and nuclear fission/fusion. There is no doubt that energy is necessary to sustain society. Without it, most transportation methods would no longer be viable, the production of goods would default to manual labor, and common and convenient utilities that require electricity or a fuel source would become useless. With this in mind, it can be established that there is an undeniable dependence on energy. Would it then be an overstatement to say that the modern world is excessively dependent on energy? According to the 2011 UN Energy Statics, Asia alone consumes over 10.3 million pounds of oil and oil equivalents on an annual basis –enough to fill approximately 5664 Olympic swimming pools.4 The amount of oil being consumed on the global scale is even larger (2.5billion tons by 1970).5 The fact that the usage of oil and oil equivalence only makes up a fraction of what meets today’s demand makes the collective amount of energy consumed unfathomable. Such dependence brings up many issues that include detrimental impacts to the environment, and give rise to conflict over the control of different energy sources, the root of which, can be traced back to the Industrial Revolution. It is mankind's desire for growth and development throughout history that led to its colossal dependence on energy today, and though the industrial revolution seems to have set the parameters for the contemporary issue that exists today, the continuation of this revolution guarantees ways for humans to make the dependence no longer an issue. 4 "Production, Trade and Consumption - Oil Equivalent." 2011 Energy Statistics Yearbook (New York: United Nations, 2014), 39. 5 John Foster, The Vulnerable Planet. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1999),