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
Friday, December 12, 2014
Thursday, December 4, 2014
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
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
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
The lessons I learned from watching the movie Taking Chance is that respect for our fallen soldiers is an absolute must. These men like PFC Chance Phelps gave their life to defend this country of ours so the least we can do is show the proper respect like the citizens in the film. Knowing that this is a true story and that these people truly did all these things makes me proud knowing that there are a few people that truly respect the fallen soldiers.
One scene that I liked the most is the scene where he was in Minneapolis at the airport and as the body was at the leaving the cargo plane, Stobl saluted and all the workers put their hands to their heart and saluted him that way. The pilot of the plane was also a veteran of the war and he saluted Phelps also. This was an emotional scene that I thought really made this film.
One reason this movie did so well in recreating this is that they kept up the authenticity of the real life thing by showing how people reacted to how they saw Phelps and Stobl traveling home. I also learned that as a proper respect you don't pass a car carrying a KIA soldier. The scene where all the people are following closely behind is a good scene and also very interesting. It was very cool that all the people knew the proper respect for this KIA and followed these unwritten rules.
Our soldiers make many sacrifices, some pay the ultimate price. Like Mr.. Phelps. He was a young man who still had a full life to live. These people respecting him in the way he deserves a homecoming. He was respected as an individual after death and was also very well liked. It was very good to see that. Strobl was a very good man for doing this with Phelps.
One scene that I liked the most is the scene where he was in Minneapolis at the airport and as the body was at the leaving the cargo plane, Stobl saluted and all the workers put their hands to their heart and saluted him that way. The pilot of the plane was also a veteran of the war and he saluted Phelps also. This was an emotional scene that I thought really made this film.
One reason this movie did so well in recreating this is that they kept up the authenticity of the real life thing by showing how people reacted to how they saw Phelps and Stobl traveling home. I also learned that as a proper respect you don't pass a car carrying a KIA soldier. The scene where all the people are following closely behind is a good scene and also very interesting. It was very cool that all the people knew the proper respect for this KIA and followed these unwritten rules.
Our soldiers make many sacrifices, some pay the ultimate price. Like Mr.. Phelps. He was a young man who still had a full life to live. These people respecting him in the way he deserves a homecoming. He was respected as an individual after death and was also very well liked. It was very good to see that. Strobl was a very good man for doing this with Phelps.
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