13th & 14th Amendment

The 13th Amendment forbids slavery in the United States and any area under the control of the United states. Forbids forced labor except if it is punishment for a crime. It was proposed in January 31, 1865 and ratified Dec 6, 1865. Affects prisons today because they can force labor on the inmates.

The 14th Amendment defines who United States citizens are. If you are born in America you are automatically a citizen. This Amendment made the 3/5 compromise obsolete. All people have rights but not all people can vote.

From the beginning of the United States of America, our people have been very proud in having the right to be free and to have to choice of what to do with their life. Communism threatens those rights to individuals in other countries around the world. America has sworn to be against communism in everything they do.

During the Red Scare people began to see fear with the ideal of communism. People of America started to accuse each other of communism and there was a lot of chaos starting in America. When accused of being a communist, even if you are not affiliated with the group, you will still be seen as one because if generalized as a communist people already think you are one.

During the twentieth century the United States tried to stop the spread of communism throughout the world. America even created policies that said they would help countries that were being forced into communistic states by communistic countries. The policy the US created called “containment” stated that America would have to step in when it came to cases such as Korean and Vietnam wars. Powerful communistic countries were trying to overpower smaller weaker countries and that forced the United States to step due to the Containment policy. America did not prefer to trade with communistic countries, so most people thought that the United States only created to Containment policies to benefit themselves and open up more opportunities with other countries.

The farming in America had and has a higher success rate because most of the farms in the United States are more family owned and family corporations are more popular. The agriculture here may have been better because the people that worked the farms got profits that match the output they have. When in the USSR they got the same amount of profits no matter how much output the workers have. Also many of the USSR’s best farmers were put into industrial plants, while the US had 15 of its population as successful farmers. America also has more trading opportunities because it trades with more countries than just the ones with their economic status, while the USSR usually just trades with other communistic countries like China and North Korea.

There is no doubt that all of these so called “doctors” performed experiments that were unethical and inhuman. Although both of these men were not ethical they were similar in ways but they were also completely different in others. Dr. Josef Mengele performed human experiments to try and change people to a certain look by creating formulas and injecting people to change their physical appearance while Dr. Shiro Ishii conducted physiological experiments on human subjects, including vivisections, forced abortions, and simulated strokes, heart attacks, frostbite and hypothermia.

Many people perished from these awful experiments, but I believe that Ishii’s experiments where worse because he was trying to make people die or give them awful or painful diseases. Josef Mengele was trying to make his subjects into the blonde-haired, blue-eyed people that Hitler wanted at the time and most of his subjects died during the process.

According to research statistics, only a select few Japanese people were not tried for their war crimes.  All together there were 5725 people tried for 3 different classes of war crimes and the other individuals got off no charge but they went on national television and revealed their stories and experiences.

After watching the Nanking film, I have a whole new thought on the Japanese Imperial Army. I thought they were just an army like all the other armies fighting in WWII but I did not realize all of the horrific things they did.

 Acquiring land through the process of colonization was a large impact for the start of World War I. In early times, Great Britain and France created large empires all throughout the world by claiming as much land as they possibly could. As time evolved, the world did not have as many resources in the available land. With Germany becoming another power country, they also wanted to have colonies to acquire resources from. The only way the Germans could do this would be to take land from other countries and that is where tensions started to be raised. With tensions already high throughout the European nations, the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand quickly ignited the war. The Great War, later known as the World War I has begun.

With the ideal of Nationalism, countries cannot think about just their own national interest, but the interest of other countries that their actions could effect. One source of trouble was the Alsace-Lorraine border, a border between France and Germany. The land occupied by Germany was one of the lands that France yearned to reacquire. In 1871 the land was conquered and the Germans had too much National pride to let the land be taken, while the French people had historic ties to the small strip of land.

A system of allies had developed during the 1900’s when the tensions in Europe started to reach maximum levels. Allies are other countries swearing to help each other in the case of national attack. The Central Powers:  Germany and Austria-Hungary and the Allies: Great Britain and Frances, and in case of major attack the United States was ready to come to the aid of Great Britain.

Recently, news of torturing captured terrorist has made national and international spotlights in the media. Although the news of such events may be shocking to some American people, there have been American prisons that have used torture methods for decades. Information states that two former psychologists, Grayson Swigert and Hammond Dunbar, were paid 40 million dollars each to devise new torture tactics. These tactics were used on 9/11 suspected terrorist. Some of the tactics included waterboarding and mock burial. They were performed on the CIA’s most significant detainees. What just makes the situation worse is that the money to pay the psychologists is American taxpayer dollars.

Ridha Najjar who was once a bodyguard for the Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was one of the detainees interrogated in the facility north of Kabul known as the Salt Pit. When he refused to comply, he tortured by being left alone in the shadows, with blaring music, a cold room, and was often times shackled to an overhead bar for 22 hours a day. Another prisoner was killed due to extreme abuse and hypothermia with lacerations and bruises on his face, legs, shoulders, and waist. Some torture tactics may be useful but when people are being killed and they still are not talking something needs to be changed.

After doing some research an article states that in some cases the CIA interrogators were often untrained and in some instances made up torturous techniques as they went along. If this is the case, the CIA needs to have some changes in its code of conduct and maybe strengthen its morals. There needs to be better leadership roles and there needs to be people that know when torture crosses the line. There is no wonder why America is one of the largest terrorist targets. But just because these people are terrorist does not mean they should be tortured to death, they are people to.