Red Scare

    This was a déjà vu moment as we had experienced it before. It was allowed to happen as we were in a vulnerable time. It was a scary time. 2 Super Powers had Atomic weapons and the USSR was the only other one. It was also allowed to happen because of the sheer scare of Communism and the though of world domination itself. This was no thanks to McCarthy as he was the one who mainly contributed to this spread of fear through his radicalist views. We could not worry though as democracy would prevail no matter what the case even if that was to happen 50 years later in the 90’s. The main reason this spread was because of fear itself.

Korean War and the difference in ideologies


      The difference between ours and the Soviets view on the policy of containment was they we were directly focused on stopping Communism. If we were going to stop Communism from spreading and help preserve the worlds view on freedom. This policy needed to be adopted. Our main goal all through the Cold War was to stop this radicalist view on government to be stopped. The USSR main goal was to spread Communism and turn countries to their view of government. Either way Communism was needed to be stopped. And that was the main driving force behind our Policy of Containment. It was to stop tyranny and keep a free world.

Agricultural History of the US and USSR

   The agriculture in both these countries was drastically different. This is mainly because the Soviets overruled everything in the country. That was the basis of this Communist society. Everything people farmed or made went through them. And because of this the country went into an economic boom and industry and the amount of products produced rose. This is also the reason the country was starving and people were experiencing widespread famine. Compared to us who have a capitalistic economy and a free market economy. We can spend and sell as we please. It is really a different view on farming. Ours is the better option though.

Japan and the Nazi…. Which Was Worse?               Mason Hanse

 

            To start off both of these events were awful in their own way. The Holocaust affected a wider range of people making it more deadly over the course of time. Whereas Japan only affected the people in and around the city. But that didn’t make Nanking any less brutal. There were beheadings and cases of murder all throughout the city. No one was spared. Not even babies. In sheer brutality, this made Nanking worse in my opinion. There has been very little like that in history and it was only one example of how ruthless the Japanese were in their conquering of these countries and cities. The Holocaust was a dragged on process over 10 years to be exact. It involved the mass killing by gas chambers and guns. This led to the deaths of millions of citizens living in those days. This can be considered worse by the death toll. The systematic killing of Jews and other “minorities” led to mass revolt against the Nazi Regime. They were at total control of a country in tough times and what did they do with it? Used the country as a chance to kill off an entire race of people. This was an awful time with atrocities being committed everywhere and for whatever reason. In Nanking people were killed for the basis that they were there at that very moment. Men were slaughtered because they looked like a soldier. It didn’t make sense in either situation. It was a tough time in history with many consequences. Overall, I believe Japan was worse on a scale of brutality. While the Holocaust was more widespread. The Nazi's responsible for this were allowed to go on trial I believe because of the fact that they were more well documented and more people witnessed them. Many didn't live to see the end of the war with Japanese atrocities committed at these hospitals and camps. The Japanese therefore got away with much more because Allied forces were focused on the Germans. These hospitals that these Germans and Japanese ran were absolute death traps. With chemicals being used that are lethal to humans. It was a very tough thing these poor citizens endured. That is why I believe that the Japanese got away with more. My opinions were solidified even after reading and I still believe Dr. Shiro Ishii and the Japanese were worse.

     The Preparedness Movement


   Fellow citizens of these great United States. An eve of a great war is soon to happen along the western front of Europe. Our business interests and our way of life is threatened as the axis powers and allied powers are being locked in a stalemate that has been dragging on for years now. The way of life as we know is being threatened as our economy will take a large hit if our ties with England are severed during this war. All the money and prosperity we know are at stake. This is unless we gear up and train our young men to fight on foreign soil. These courageous men will be key to the success of our country as a whole and will solidify our status as a world superpower.


   We need to be quick in setting up training camps and establishing bases to help train our men to fight our enemy in Europe. This men need to be trained to not only protect their families but absolutely most protect our country from a business point of view. We need to have President Wilson increase our task force in preparation for combat. This will give us the power to overcome the enemy and end this dreadful war. This is our chance at securing the ties with our ally Great Britain and will allow us to succeed in showing that our country will do whatever we have to do to stay a wealthy and free living country. So please, gather with us as we rally together to form a larger army and secure our absolutely necessary ties with Great Britain.

CIA's Prison Article


       The thought of torture is a repelling one. That being said after reading this article about this so called Salt Prison, it is appalling to find out that these torture techniques were used on these people. Even though they are probably guilty of heinous crimes, was it worth the money and cost to keep prisoners who weren't giving any information up to these interrogators. The answer is NO! This was a complete failure in the sense that we never got really in new and useful information. All we got was information that was already known or that wasn't useful to our knowledge of the terrorist groups. Don't get me wrong, I am all for finding whoever is responsible for these heinous crimes and locking them up for good. But, there has to be a better and more morally right way to do this. They were treated as sub-human and I believe that was wrong. No matter how bad of a person they are or were, no matter how much pain they caused. I do not believe that that they needed to be tortured in such a gruesome way. Let alone let the CIA just hide the information about these from the public.
  
Two Docs paid 80 million
         To start off this is a complete waste of 80,000,000 dollars. These doctors had "developed" new techniques that have already been in use for hundreds of years. This money could have gone to developing a charity or doing something productive. But nope, it went paying 2 doctors to develop ways to torture someone physically and mentally. That is almost hypocritical in the fact that as America it is our self-assigned job to protect other people. This money could have gone to cancer treatment but nope it was wasted on something as pointless as developing "new" torture techniques.


 LA Times "Salt Pit" article
      This article highlighted the torture used by the CIA agents and the sheer amount of cruelness they treated the prisoners with. Whether it was sheering music or being chained to a bar for 23 hours, these men were treated absolutely awful. Sure they all did awful things to many people but is this the answer. I don't believe it is. No matter how awful the person, inflicting pain on them will not teach them anything or get them to give up valuable information. All it will do is break a person down to being uncooperable. This is just unacceptable.


La times article: http://www.latimes.com/world/afghanistan-pakistan/la-fg-torture-salt-pit-20141210-story.html


2 doc article: http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/two-docs-got-dollar80-million-to-develop-torture-tactics/ar-BBgBe3V


CIA Prison Article: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/at-cias-salt-pit-prison-torture-reigned-with-little-oversight/ar-BBgAaEW

Muckrakers


    Our assignment was to find an example on a Muckraking articles. After looking I found one that especially intrigued me. This article was called The Real Story of Thanksgiving. In this blog I will explain why this happens to be a muckraking article and what it was about.


   The article starts off telling us about how we know Thanksgiving. We know the history as the Pilgrims had a bountiful harvest so in celebration they had a feast. And it was all good between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans. Well, this article defies and goes against by what we know by depicting  the Pilgrims as "Lazy" and "Thieves". The men who were healthy wouldn't work and the men who were weak who would work in the fields. This lead to famine and widespread starving throughout the colonies. To put it simply, they didn't do much other than sit around and watch others do their work.


   The main focus of this article is that the Pilgrims used an early form of socialism. This lead to laziness because they didn't have to work, which lead to widespread famine because no crops were being produced in the fields. Which in turn, lead to the demise of nearly 90% of Jamestown's population. What this article is saying is that Socialism lead to the decline of productivity in the colonies. But the leader of the colony, Mr. William Bardford, found an answer to these questions of how to survive. The colony's market or political views changed from Socialism to Free Market. And just like that, famine stopped, people worked harder, and they produced as much crop as they have ever had in most years beforehand.


   Each family got a parcel of land and basically could keep all crops on it or trade the land away for a sum of money. It was a genius thought and basically saved the colony from complete obliteration. So yes, in a way there was time for celebration between the years of 1623-1624. They had so much spare food, they could export it make a profit. In a way they did celebrate Thanksgiving but it was way less glorified than what it has been hyped up to be. The question behind the statement that changing to a free market economy saved the colony from certain demise. I believe it did. The evidence shown proved that because of this change the colony was saved. The statement said that the Pilgrims were lazy may have been true. If these comments said by the mayor Bardford were valid, it defies everything we ever learned about the pilgrims saying that they were hard-working settlers with good work ethic. The man did live there and was a citizen of the colony so we have every right to believe the man. But then again, it may also be his personal opinion.


  There is no way we will ever truly no for sure if any of the things said about the pilgrims and their laziness and the change from a socialistic to a free market view are totally true. But we can get an idea by looking into these muckraker articles that maybe these do have truth to them. The only way to find out is to look into these accounts written by these settlers and to form an opinion. That's all these arguments on the history of the settlers turn into is opinions. No one will ever truly no the answer because we never experienced it first hand. I think that we should look past the negative in this article and take Thanksgiving for what it is, a time for thanks. This article was extremely interesting in the fact that it opened up a whole new view for me. But then again, isn't that what a Muckraker article is supposed to do. Its job is to inform you and tell about what isn't normally talked about and exposes the stuff that doesn't get shown in mainstream articles.


   These muckraking articles are at times a very good thing to have. It exposes what we don't know and mostly tells the truth in the article. Anyways, the reason they investigated this was to show that everything in history isn't always as glorified as we make it out to be. This article was written recently I believe because of the main purpose of showing everyone today on the internet that this wasn't all joy back in the 1600's. There was death and very much famine.


  In conclusion, I have stated why I believe this article would fit in with the Muckraking category. It exposes truth behind a topic that was normally thought to be a peaceful, joyful subject. I believe though that we will never truly know if the Pilgrims were actually lazy or if the free market economy saved the colony. The only way to find out is to look at the real truths in actually realizing that it wasn't the way we picture it nowadays with the table and peacefulness but actually realize that back then there wasn't enough time to do this except for maybe 1 or 2 years. The article Real Story of Thanksgiving did a very detailed job explaining this.


Source: http://mccluresmagazine.com/_featured-2/real-story-thanksgiving