Unless We Acknowledge The Past Essay Example for Free

Unless We Acknowledge The Past Essay In 1967, facing divided military councils and serious domestic opposition to the Vietnam War, the Defense Department commissioned a team of analysts to prepare a secret study of how the United States became involved in the war. The study was intended to give America’s leaders an authoritative, objective account of the war. Parts of the secret study were leaked to the New York Times in 1971, and the newspaper began publishing reports based on these materials. The government sued to enjoin publication, but the United States Supreme Court ruled that the publication could proceed. The New York Times then published a series of articles with supporting documents, which it later issued in book form as The Pentagon Papers. The remarkable feature of The Pentagon Papers is its objectivity. Those who prepared the original study had unlimited access to government documents. Their goal was objectivity. Their work was to be secret, so that they were free of concerns about playing to a public audience. That the government sought to bar publication lent an added imprimatur of candor to the report. In their articles, the New York Times reporters strove for a similarly objective style. Chapter 5 of The Pentagon Papers shows that at a critical juncture, America’s leaders lied to the nation. In 1964, presidential candidate Barry Goldwater promised to get tough with communism. Seeking re-election, President Lyndon Johnson campaigned as a moderate. 1 The Pentagon Papers show that Johnson was secretly widening the war in Vietnam throughout 1964. To do this, he ordered an increasing range of assaults against North Vietnam. When the North Vietnamese finally responded by attacking American destroyers off their coast, Johnson blasted these attacks as â€Å"unprovoked. † He asked Congress for a joint resolution approving increased American participation in the war. A supine Congress complied. With the publication of The Pentagon Papers, Congress would discover how completely it was misled. (Sheehan) Meanwhile, America plunged ahead, fighting in a country where it soldiers were racially unlike the indigenous people, did not speak the native language, and misunderstood the culture. The Los Angeles Times recently reported another coverup. Stories beginning August 6, 2006, reported that the American military knew of killings of civilians in Vietnam, and concealed this information for nearly 40 years. These included several massacre of civilians. Servicemen reported these during the war, only to have the military throw up smoke screens of denial. As in The Pentagon Papers, the Los Angeles Times articles are based on a recently disclosed secret archive detailing attacks on civilians. These documents show that the military frequently issued denials it knew were untruthful, wrongly impugned the credibility of those who reported atrocities, and otherwise strove to maintain secrecy. Again, the credibility of the documents is boosted by the government’s stubborn efforts to keep them secret. One story in the L. A. Times recounts how a young soldier watched as American soldiers carried out gruesome orders to â€Å"kill anything that moves. † (Turse) There was no evidence that any of the nineteen Vietnamese who were killed were combatants or that they resisted the Americans in any way. Confronted with the reports that these soldiers told, the Army suppressed the truth for nearly forty years. (Turse) The United States is now at war in Iraq. As in Vietnam, this is a war of occupation, fighting insurgents from within the indigenous population. American forces are racially distinct from the native peoples. They do not speak the language. They are unschooled in the culture. Already there are reports of killings of Iraqi civilians. Responding, a retired General who helped assemble the secret archive, John H. Johns, supports the disclosure of the incidents in Vietnam in light of alleged incidents in Iraq, saying . We cant change current practices unless we acknowledge the past.

Evolution of Man :: Science Anthropology

Evolution of Man Scientists continue to debate the history of man. It is generally agreed upon by the scientific community, however, that humans evolved from lesser beings, and this essay will function to provide evidence to support this claim. Several points will be outlined, including the general physical changes that occurred between several key species on the phylogeny of man, and a discussion of dating methods used to pinpoint the age of the fossils. This essay will begin with a brief discussion of dating techniques. In the study of hominid evolution, two main methods of dating are used: carbon-14 and potassium-argon dating. Carbon-14 dating involves the decay of radioactive C-14, which has a half life of 5770 years. This makes this method useful for dating of recent fossils, with good accuracy, up to 50,000 years back. After 5770 years, half of the carbon-14 in a fossil decays to nitrogen-14. Since the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 in a living organism remains the same as in the environment around them because the organism constantly eats and replenishes it, if it were to die, the ratio would change greatly after many years. It is the difference between this ratio now and the time is died that allows a date for it to be established. Potassium-argon dating, another dating method, is possible due to volcanic ash and rocks found near many fossil sites. Rocks and ash created in this manner contain potassium-40, but no argon. As time passes, the potassium-40 decays into argon-40. In the laboratory, the sample is reheated, and since argon-40 is a gas, it is released. The ratio of argon-40 released to potassium-40 still present allows for a date to be assigned to objects near the sample. However, due to potassium's high half-life (1.3 billion years), it is only useful as a dating technique for finds older than 500,000 years old. Also, it is only useful where volcanic activity existed. Both these methods have error margins, ranging from a few thousand years in carbon-14 dating to tens of thousands of years, or more, for potassium-argon dating. However, thanks to scientific breakthroughs, these two processes can be used with reasonable security in establishing a time for fossils. Humans have existed on the Earth for approximately 3.4 million years. At least, that’s from when the oldest human ancestors have been found. The oldest known human is the fossil "Lucy," an Australopithecus, discovered by Donald Johnson and M.

Agriculture in Brazil: Perils, Trials, and Economic Crisis

This paper examined the historical and political rule of agricultural policy formulation in Brazil from 1964 to 1992. The article also centered on how trade, credit, and support-price policy evolved in response to economic crisis and democratization in the 1980s.The economic crisis caused the agricultural policy of Brazil to be redesigned with the change in political regime and with the institutions of interest-group representation that significantly influenced the direction of policy reform programs and assessments.The return to a democratic regime of this nation permitted the local legislatures and the judiciary to take part in more significant agricultural policy rules. Simultaneously, the republic led to the questioning of other institutions and there was an emergence of more participatory organizations in the agricultural sector.These changes have caused policy making to become increasingly subject to explicit rules, which should lead to more predictable policies and a long-term reduction in discrimination against Brazilian agriculture (Helfand 1999).Brazil promoted agriculture and greatly achieved a rapid expansion in this sector, but its record on poverty was disappointing (Helfand 2001). One reason was that biases within the agricultural sector, notably in taxation and subsidized credit, favor large farmers and work to the disadvantage of labor.These biases interact with the highly inequitable initial land distribution to reduce the gains to the poor from growth. Brazil vividly demonstrates that promoting agriculture is not enough. Policies within the sector also matter.Brazil's income tax greatly favors agriculture in relation to other sectors, but only the rich can reap the benefits. Through special provisions in the income tax code, corporations can exclude up to 80 percent of agricultural profits from their taxable income, and individuals can include 90 percent. Fixed investments can be fully depreciated in the first year and can even be depreciated two to six times over.This, together with high inflation, encourages corporations and the rich to over invest in land. The result has been the accumulation of largeAgriculture in Brazil: Perils, Trials, and Economic CrisisPage 2landholdings and increases in land prices that exceed growth in land productivity. The poor do not benefit from the tax breaks, since they pay no income tax, and they cannot afford to buy land. Many move to frontier areas in search of unclaimed land.A progressive land tax could offset the bias in the income tax. Brazil tried this but failed because of widespread evasion and many exceptions. One such exception, intended to encourage land use, reduces the tax by up to 90 percent if owners use the land to graze cattle. This promotes the conversion of forestland to uneconomic livestock ranching, reduces the demand for labor, and has harmful environment consequences (Grahan 1987).Agricultural credit has been exceptionally distorted in Brazil. Until recently, real interest rates on official credit were negative, and real interest rates on loans for agriculture were lower than in the nonagricultural sector (Grahan 1987).The difference in credit terms between sectors has been capitalized in the price of land. Although subsidies raise profits in agriculture, they have mainly benefited large farmers and have encouraged excessive mechanization, again reducing the demand for unskilled labor. Poor people who lack land titles have not benefited from credit subsidies.Agricultural policies in Brazil have reduced labor demand and have made it almost impossible for a poor person to buy land and become a farmer. Opportunities for unskilled workers to acquire skills by becoming long-term workers have been substantially reduced by subsidized mechanization (Helfand 1999).The years from 1947 to 1963 were generally called the import substitution period. The primary agricultural goal in the first period was to produce an adequate supply of reasonably priced fo od for urban wage earners. A secondary goal was to generate foreign exchange to finance the importation of industrial raw materials and capital goods. Agriculture was not considered a vital growth sector, but rather a reservoir for surplus labor not absorbed by rapidAgriculture in Brazil: Perils, Trials, and Economic CrisisPage 3industrialization. From 1961 to 1963, food shortages, high food prices, and near hyper-inflation forced the government to give more attention to the agricultural sector. The inability to cope with these problems and concern over leftist politics resulted in the military-led revolution of 1964.The second period (1964 to present) is a phase of economic growth characterized by export expansion and diversification. The military governments after 164 advocated a completely different role for the agricultural sector.The relative backwardness of the sector was acknowledged, but the causes and cures were perceived quite differently. Farmers were believed to be respo nsive to prices and the distortions and disincentives created in the earlier period were gradually removed. New government investments and incentives emphasized modernization of agriculture (Truran 1977).Large quantities of subsidized credit were tied to the purchase of â€Å"modern† inputs such as improved seed, fertilizers, chemicals, and machinery (Grahan 1987). These inputs were made more easily available by exchange rate controls, overvalued exchange rates, tax exemptions, and direct government distribution.Low interest loans for operating costs and investment expenditure encouraged farmers to produce certain crops and livestock. Investments to improve marketing and transportation facilities were made, in part, to benefit the agricultural sector.Agricultural research and extension received more attention as the development and adaptation of technology became important in the face of stagnant yields (Truran 1977).Agricultural development in Brazil throughout its history h as also been associated with the extension of its land frontier. After 1950, this process has been supplemented by some infrastructure development, undertaken by large farmers and private companies, whoAgriculture in Brazil: Perils, Trials, and Economic CrisisPage 4were heavily subsidized through negative interest rates, especially in the 1970s (Grahan 1987).

Radical Solutions The Libertarian Answer For Isis

Radical Solutions: The Libertarian Answer for ISIS Libertarians are often confused with Anarchists because both have anti-government and pro-individual views. These opinions are reinforced when the party s primary election issues seem to revolve around what the government shouldn t be doing, as opposed to what it can do to make the country, and even the world, a better place. For example, ask any Libertarian and they will tell you that a strong federal government is crucial to the protection of life and liberty. Where Libertarians veer away from the other major political parties is that we believe the military should only be used when the nation is in immediate peril and not for â€Å"police actions† or â€Å"nation-building.† Chief among the threats to the United States today is ISIS. To be able to know how to properly address this problem, one need only look at the beginning of the conflict to understand how to end it. The reason ISIS went from a ragtag militia to an armed force capable of fighting both the Iraqis and Syrians, was with the equipment and training provided by the US government and our allies. This was done with the explicit purpose to enact regime change and create a free, secular state. Granted, at the time they thought they were arming democratic loving rebels. But doesn t that just prove that we don t have the competence to be getting ourselves involved in conflicts where we can t tell who the good guys are? Due to Obama s decision (with Republican