Book Portfolio Q.4 - Josh Braley

Josh Braley

Book Portfolio Q 4

Period 1

Black Elk Speaks
 

    The book i read is "Black Elk Speaks" by John G. Neihardt.  When someone or something is bigger and stronger then you it doesn't mean that you have to give them everything.  In the time of Wounded Knee and Battle of Little Big Horn the white men were trying to take over the Sioux territory and the Indians were not just going to let them have it.  The Indians fought for their land and freedom, though they did not win they still got to stick together as a tribe and live somewhat the way they used to, which is better than being slaves or having the tribes completely destroyed.  The Sioux Indians and many more tribes were very brave to stick up for their land and rights, the white Americans had many more numbers and higher kill power weapons and still the little kid on the play ground stood up to the big bad bully.
    You don't always have to back down from someone bigger and stronger than you, sometimes you can fight them and still get a little.  The Americans had a lot larger numbers then the Sioux Indians and they still fought.  Sioux didn't have as powerful weapons as the Americans did and still they fought.  The Americans massacred the Indians at Wounded Knee, there was so many women and children and elders and the whites took their lives.  The Sioux didn't have anything to defend themselves they were helpless.  The Indians tried to always fight they never wanted to back down from anything.  
    In this book the Sioux Indians are forced to leave their land and buffalo herds for living in a reservation.  They did not do this willingly, though if they had not stood up for themselves a little then it could have been a lot worse.  When  the Indian boy has his dream about the white men coming and taking everything they did not pack it up and run away, they stayed and fought.  Instead of fleeing or just giving in which could have resulted in death and a total loss of their Native American ways, they stayed and at least got a little amount of land.  The white men in back in those times did not care about anyone other then themselves, so they probably would have just killed all of the Sioux or taken them as slaves, but the Sioux stood up and made the white men realize that they valued their way of life.  So the Americans allowed them a little bit of "freedom" even though the Sioux did not see it that way.  Today we could have zero Native American tribes, but we do, and it is because of the tribes like the Sioux who didn't back down and in return they got to live a little.
    In this book Black Elk, the holy man of the Sioux tribe tells his story of the dream or vision that he had when he was nine years old.  He tells how his grandfathers called him and they had a meeting and each granfather turned into something different like a buffalo or something like that, then the last grandfather turns into Black Elk himself so he is looking at himself.  Black Elk is supposed to use this dream to guide his people through this time of the white men.  He knows how much the Indian people love their way of life and he dose not want to ruin it for them so he sticks up for what he believes is right and does what he thinks should be done which is fight.  He took his first scalp at the battle of Little Bighorn at a very young age so he had been fighting for his and his peoples freedom right from the beginning.  It is very significant that Black Elk is the main character of this book because he is the boy who had the vision of all that was supposed to happen, he helped out the Sioux in a great way by being their holy man.
    When someone bigger and stronger then you is trying to knock you down and take everything you've got, don't give them everything stand up and give them only what you can get away with giving them.  We have National Indian reserves today because of the tribes that stood up to America by not letting them take all of their land and by holding on to their beloved ways of life.  Black Elk was a very good holy man for the Sioux tribe and he helped see and make it so the Indians could still be Indians today.  It's important to remember this time period because it shows how someone little can stand up for themselves and hold on to everything they've got, the Native Americans could have been a lot worse off and they would have been if they had just rolled over and died.

 

American Slavery

Exam Presentation

Native Americans and Today slide show

History Is A Weapon-Josh Braley

Josh Braley

  4/8/09

 

 The Descision to Use Atomic Weapons
A People's War?
Howard Zinn

         Still, the vast bulk of the American population was mobilized, in the army, and in civilian life, to fight the war, and the atmosphere of war enveloped more and more Americans. Public opinion polls show large majorities of soldiers favoring the draft for the postwar period. Hatred against the enemy, against the Japanese particularly, became widespread. Racism was clearly at work. Time magazine, reporting the battle of Iwo Jima, said: "The ordinary unreasoning Jap is ignorant. Perhaps he is human. Nothing .. . indicates it." ....      
        The bombing of Japanese cities continued the strategy of saturation bombing to destroy civilian morale; one nighttime fire-bombing of Tokyo took 80,000 lives. That is a lot of death for one night. -Braleyboy1 4/8/09 6:25 AM And then, on August 6, 1945, came the lone American plane in the sky over Hiroshima, dropping the first atomic bomb, leaving perhaps 100,000 Japanese dead, and tens of thousands more slowly dying from radiation poisoning.  that is crazy, one plane carrying one bomb killing more than 100,000 people.-Braleyboy1 4/8/09 6:26 AM Twelve U.S. navy fliers in the Hiroshima city jail were killed in the bombing, i'm sure they did not plan on hitting them and killing our own people -Braleyboy1 4/8/09 6:28 AM a fact that the U.S. government has never officially acknowledged, according to historian Martin Sherwin (A World Destroyed). Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, with perhaps 50,000 killed.  I wonder why there wasn't as many dead during the second dropping?-Braleyboy1 4/8/09 6:29 AM 
       The justification for these atrocities was that this would end the war quickly, making unnecessary an invasion of Japan. Such an invasion would cost a huge number of lives, the government said-a million, according to Secretary of State Byrnes; half a million, Truman claimed was the figure given him by General George Marshall. (When the papers of the Manhattan Project-the project to build the atom bomb- were released years later, they showed that Marshall urged a warning to the Japanese about the bomb, so people could be removed and only military targets hit.) These estimates of invasion losses were not realistic, and seem to have been pulled out of the air to justify bombings which, as their effects became known, horrified more and more people. it would be kind ofhard to tell how many people died if the atomic bomb completely disinagrated things. -Braleyboy1 4/8/09 6:38 AM Japan, by August 1945, was in desperate shape and ready to surrender. New York Times military analyst Hanson Baldwin wrote, shortly after the war:

The enemy, in a military sense, was in a hopeless strategic position by the time the Potsdam demand for unconditional surrender was made on July 26.
       Such then, was the situation when we wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 
       Need we have done it? No one can, of course, be positive, but the answer is almost certainly negative.

       The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, set up by the War Department in 1944 to study the results of aerial attacks in the war, interviewed hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, and reported just after the war:

Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.

       But could American leaders have known this in August 1945? The answer is, clearly, yes. The Japanese code had been broken, and Japan's messages were being intercepted. It was known the Japanese had instructed their ambassador in Moscow to work on peace negotiations with the Allies.  Japanese leaders had begun talking of surrender a year before this, and the Emperor himself had begun to suggest, in June 1945, that alternatives to fighting to the end be considered. they may have considered surrendering but they hadn't yet. Also they killed Americans when they bombed us so they needed to be bombed back. -Braleyboy1 4/8/09 6:58 AM On July 13, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wired his ambassador in Moscow: "Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace.. .." Martin Sherwin, after an exhaustive study of the relevant historical documents, concludes: "Having broken the Japanese code before the war, American Intelligence was able to-and did-relay this message to the President, but it had no effect whatever on efforts to bring the war to a conclusion."
       If only the Americans had not insisted on unconditional surrender- that is, if they were willing to accept one condition to the surrender, that the Emperor, a holy figure to the Japanese, remain in place-the Japanese would have agreed to stop the war.
       Why did the United States not take that small step to save both American and Japanese lives? Was it because too much money and effort had been invested in the atomic bomb not to drop it? General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, described Truman as a man on a toboggan, the momentum too great to stop it. Or was it, as British scientist P. M. S. Blackett suggested (Fear, War, and the Bomb), that the United States was anxious to drop the bomb before the Russians entered the war against Japan?
       The Russians had secretly agreed (they were officially not at war with Japan) they would come into the war ninety days after the end of the European war. That turned out to be May 8, and so, on August 8, the Russians were due to declare war on Japan, But by then the big bomb had been dropped, and the next day a second one would be dropped on Nagasaki; the Japanese would surrender to the United States, not the Russians, and the United States would be the occupier of postwar Japan. In other words, Blackett says, the dropping of the bomb was "the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia.. .." Blackett is supported by American historian Gar Alperovitz (Atomic Diplomacy), who notes a diary entry for July 28, 1945, by Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, describing Secretary of State James F. Byrnes as "most anxious to get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians got in."
       Truman had said, "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians." It was a preposterous statement. Those 100,000 killed in Hiroshima were almost all civilians. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey said in its official report: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population."
       The dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki seems to have been scheduled in advance, and no one has ever been able to explain why it was dropped. Was it because this was a plutonium bomb whereas the Hiroshima bomb was a uranium bomb? Were the dead and irradiated of Nagasaki victims of a scientific experiment? Martin Shenvin says that among the Nagasaki dead were probably American prisoners of war. He notes a message of July 31 from Headquarters, U.S. Army Strategic Air Forces, Guam, to the War Department:

Reports prisoner of war sources, not verified by photos, give location of Allied prisoner of war camp one mile north of center of city of Nagasaki. Does this influence the choice of this target for initial Centerboard operation? Request immediate reply.

The reply: "Targets previously assigned for Centerboard remain unchanged."
       True, the war then ended quickly. Italy had been defeated a year earlier. Germany had recently surrendered, crushed primarily by the armies of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, aided by the Allied armies on the West. Now Japan surrendered.

 

JoshB - American Empire

American Empire

Theodore Roosevelt wrote to a friend in the year 1897: "In strict confidence . . . I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one."....

There was heated argument in the United States about whether or not to take the Philippines. As one story has it, President McKinley told a group of ministers visiting the White House how he came to his decision:

Before you go I would like to say just a word about the Philippine business. . . . The truth is I didn't want the Philippines, and when they came to us as a gift from the gods, I did not know what to do with them He didn't want them but after the "Gods" just gave it to him he had to take it and do what he wanted. -Braleyboy1 4/14/09 9:39 AM. . . . I sought counsel from all sides -- Democrats as well as Republicans -- but got little help.
       I thought first we would only take Manila; then Luzon, then other islands, perhaps, also.
       I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me this way -- I don't know how it was, but it came:
       1) That we could not give them back to Spain -- that would be cowardly and dishonorable. I agree, you can't give something that you've already taken -Braleyboy1 4/14/09 9:41 AM 
       2) That we could not turn them over to France or Germany, our commercial rivals in the Orient -- that would be bad business and discreditable.
       3) That we could not leave them to themselves -- they were unfit for self-government -- and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was; and
       4) That there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed and went to sleep and slept soundly.

       The Filipinos did not get the same message from God. In February 1899, they rose in revolt against American rule, as they had rebelled several times against the Spanish. Emilio Aguinaldo, a Filipino leader, who had earlier been brought back from China by U.S. warships to lead soldiers against Spain, now became leader of the insurrectos fighting the United States. He proposed Filipino independence within a U.S. protectorate, but this was rejected.
       It took the United States three years to crush the rebellion, using seventy thousand troops -- four times as many as were landed in Cuba i am suprised that it took that many Americans to defeat them. -Braleyboy1 4/15/09 11:44 AM -- and thousands of battle casualties, many times more than in Cuba. It was a harsh war. For the Filipinos the death rate was enormous from battle casualties and from disease.
       The taste of empire was on the lips of politicians and business interests throughout the country now. Racism, paternalism, and talk of money mingled with talk of destiny and civilization. In the Senate, Albert Beveridge spoke, January 9, 1900, for the dominant economic and political interests of the country:

Mr. President, the times call for candor. The Philippines are ours forever. . . . And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. . . . We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world. . . .
       The Pacific is our ocean. . . . Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus? Geography answers the question. China is our natural customer. . . . The Philippines give us a base at the door of all the East. . . .
       No land in America surpasses in fertility the plains and valleys of Luzon. Rice and coffee, sugar and cocoanuts, hemp and tobacco. . . . The wood of the Philippines can supply the furniture of the world for a century to come. At Cebu the best informed man on the island told me that 40 miles of Cebu's mountain chain are practically mountains of coal. . . .
       I have a nugget of pure gold picked up in its present form on the banks of a Philippine creek. . . .
       My own belief is that there are not 100 men among them who comprehend what Anglo-Saxon self-government even means, and there are over 5,000,000 people to be governed.
       It has been charged that our conduct of the war has been cruel. Senators, it has been the reverse. . . . Senators must remember that we are not dealing with Americans or Europeans. We are dealing with Orientals.

       The fighting with the rebels began, McKinley said, when the insurgents attacked American forces. But later, American soldiers testified that the United States had fired the first shot. After the war, an army officer speaking in Boston's Faneuil Hall said his colonel had given him orders to provoke a conflict with the insurgents.
       In February 1899, a banquet took place in Boston to celebrate the Senate's ratification of the peace treaty with Spain. President McKinley himself had been invited by the wealthy textile manufacturer W. B. Plunkett to speak. It was the biggest banquet in the nation's history: two thousand diners, four hundred waiters. McKinley said that "no imperial designs lurk in the American mind," and at the same banquet, to the same diners, his Postmaster General, Charles Emory Smith, said that "what we want is a market for our surplus."
       William James, the Harvard philosopher, wrote a letter to the Boston Transcript about "the cold pot grease of McKinley's cant at the recent Boston banquet" and said the Philippine operation "reeked of the infernal adroitness of the great department store, which has reached perfect expertness in the art of killing silently, and with no public squalling or commotion, the neighboring small concerns."
       James was part of a movement of prominent American businessmen, politicians, and intellectuals who formed the Anti-Imperialist League in 1898 and carried on a long campaign to educate the American public about the horrors of the Philippine war and the evils of imperialism. It was an odd group (Andrew Carnegie belonged), including antilabor aristocrats and scholars, united in a common moral outrage at what was being done to the Filipinos in the name of freedom. Whatever their differences on other matters, they would all agree with William James's angry statement: "God damn the U.S. for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles."
       The Anti-Imperialist League published the letters of soldiers doing duty in the Philippines. A captain from Kansas wrote: "Caloocan was supposed to contain 17,000 inhabitants. The Twentieth Kansas swept through it, and now Caloocan contains not one living native." A private from the same outfit said he had "with my own hand set fire to over fifty houses of Filipinos after the victory at Caloocan. Women and children were wounded by our fire."
       A volunteer from the state of Washington wrote: "Our fighting blood was up, and we all wanted to kill 'niggers.' . . . This shooting human beings beats rabbit hunting all to pieces."
       It was a time of intense racism in the United States. In the years between 1889 and 1903, on the average, every week, two Negroes were lynched by mobs -- hanged, burned, mutilated. The Filipinos were brown-skinned, physically identifiable, strange-speaking and strange-looking to Americans. To the usual indiscriminate brutality of war was thus added the factor of racial hostility.
       In November 1901, the Manila correspondent of the Philadelphia Ledger reported:

The present war is no bloodless, opera bouffe engagement; our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of ten up, the idea prevailing that the Filipino as such was little better than a dog. . . . Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to make them talk, and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later, without an atom of evidence to show that they were even insurrectos, stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses.

       Early in 1901 an American general returning to the United States from southern Luzon, said:

One-sixth of the natives of Luzon have either been killed or have died of the dengue fever in the last few years. The loss of life by killing alone has been very great, but I think not one man has been slain except where his death has served the legitimate purposes of war. It has been necessary to adopt what in other countries would probably be thought harsh measures.

       Secretary of War Elihu Root responded to the charges of brutality: "The war in the Philippines has been conducted by the American army with scrupulous regard for the rules of civilized warfare. . . . with self-restraint and with humanity never surpassed."
       In Manila, a Marine named Littletown Waller, a major, was accused of shooting eleven defenseless Filipinos, without trial, on the island of Samar. Other marine officers described his testimony:

The major said that General Smith instructed him to kill and burn, and said that the more he killed and burned the better pleased he would be; that it was no time to take prisoners, and that he was to make Samar a howling wilderness. Major Waller asked General Smith to define the age limit for killing, and he replied "Everything over ten."

In the province of Batangas, the secretary of the province estimated that of the population of 300,000, one-third had been killed by combat, famine, or disease.
       Mark Twain commented on the Philippine war:

We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag.
       And so, by these Providences of God -- and the phrase is the government's, not mine -- we are a World Power.

       American firepower was overwhelmingly superior to anything the Filipino rebels could put together. In the very first battle, Admiral Dewey steamed up the Pasig River and fired 500-pound shells into the Filipino trenches. Dead Filipinos were piled so high that the Americans used their bodies for breastworks. A British witness said: "This is not war; it is simply massacre and murderous butchery." He was wrong; it was war.
       For the rebels to hold out against such odds for years meant that they had the support of the population. General Arthur MacArthur, commander of the Filipino war, said: " . . . I believed that Aguinaldo's troops represented only a faction. I did not like to believe that the whole population of Luzon -- the native population, that is -- was opposed to us." But he said he was "reluctantly compelled" to believe this because the guerrilla tactics of the Filipino army "depended upon almost complete unity of action of the entire native population."

Weekly Post 3

This week I liked watching all of the videos, it really gave me a good idea of what it was like in the war.  Videos really do a good job of showing all the details of war and how they did things.  I thinik that we should watch a full movie some class so that we can get a better idea of what went on.

Book Portfolio 3

    Stand Firm Ye Boys From Maine
Book portfolio
Josh Braley

    "Stand Firm Ye Boys From Maine" by Thomas A. Desjardin is about the truth of the 20th Maine Regiment and of the entire battle of Gettysburg during the civil war in 1863.  The theme in this book is stand together in a time of crisis.  On July 2nd 1863 the boys from Maine stood strong and had a powerful impact on the war, if they had fell apart then the war may have had a different outcome.  The role of perspective in the book is historical.

    The title of this book is pretty much the theme for it as well.  "Stand Firm Ye Boys From Maine" is fairly close to the theme, stand together in a time of crisis.  In the battle, the 20th Maine Regiment had a group of musicians, when times got rough and men got thin some of the players fought and some of them acted almost as a medic, carrying stretchers with wounded men on them.  The men in the army were not all people who wanted to be there, but they decided that they would and they were needed so they went along and helped the cause.  Without those men sticking together and standing strong
    The twentieth Maine regiment took part in the Battle for Little Round Top and in this battle they came together as a unit and kicked ass and won.  The soldiers took part in a great down hill bayonet charge to become one of the most famous thing happening there in the battle of Gettysburg.  All of the men in each regiment came together to fight as one army.  By doing so they came out victorious because they stood strong.  This was very important because if this had not have happened then we (north) may have lost the civil war and Gettysburg.
    Standing strong in a time of crisis is a very good thing, good things can happen during bad times.  At the beginning of World War II everyone came together and went to war whether they wanted to or not.  The women went to work making tanks and guns and all of the necessities needed for war.  This was a good thing because it ended the depression by lowering the unemployment rate that before this was at 25%.  In this world people need to stand together and come as one more often, the world would be a much better place to live because one person is weak but billions of people together as one is very strong.
    Stand strong in a time of crisis.  In a time of crisis like the civil war the 20th Maine Regiment stood strong as one and overcame the task at hand.  If people never came together in life then nothing good would ever come.  It is important for coming together as one because we are stronger that way.

Weekly post 2

This week i missed Mondays class, but Wednesday and Fridays classes went well.  I liked the debate between the teachers.  I think that helps me to learn about something because I get two perspectives instead of just one. 

Class post 1

The first class this week i did like the way it was done, i didn't mind the whole sit in circle discussion thing, even though i hate talking in front of people, but i do like to have a visual as well as sound.  I think it is hard to just listen to a recording with nothing to look at.
Today's class was good.  The slide show and having you talk about it is a good way to teach, because then we have what you say about it and then a hard copy to go look at for studying.

Qt. 3 Exam Essays

Essay # 1

    Ending the Cold War was a good thing.  It was a sign that the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union was coming to an end.  Also it was a telling who had the better government, communism was taken down by Ronald Reagan.  He was able to do something that the other presidents before him could not do.
    To end the Cold War Ronald Reagan boosted our military, he made sure everyone would know that we were not to be messed with.  The conservative republican president spent money on something that was vital to our Nations success from the beginning, our armed forces.  We as a country had a very strong national defense so this made the Soviet Union back down.
    In the above paragraph I stated that Reagan did this and that to end the war, though this is not all that ended the war.  The Soviet Union had troops in Afghanistan, the cost of having them in this country was not that cheap.  They were being effected by the spoils of war.  The economy factor of the Cold War is where America wins and the Union loses because they could not afford it.

Reagan Video ? Answers

1. What are the problems America faces?

 Unemplyment, taxes for the people that work.  Getting out of the Nations debt.  Government is the problem.

 

2. What are Reagan's solutions? 

Over time we the people will overcome the problems.

 

3. What makes Regan effective here?
He is laughing and joking around.

 

4. What does this reveal about Regan? (Consider the saying: "Wit has truth in it.")
This reveals that Reagans personality is good, and that he used to be a democrat.

 

5. What policy decisions might Reagan make according to this?

He might make policies that involve keeping peace with other nations, but in doing so he wants them to know that we are strong and will kick ass if he needs to.  We are confident as a country.

 

6.  How did this event effect Reagan's role with the American public?

It made them want him more as president

 

7.  Who is the audience for this speech?

The people, the young people.

 

8.  What is the argument Reagan makes here?

Communism should not be tolereated and that it is evil.

 

9.  What do you think Reagan's agenda is in this speech?
That communism is no good as a government.

 

10.  What is the message here?
With Reagan as president there will be a new start to America.

 

11.  How does the ad use Carter?
Carters term was a bad time for America.

 

12.  What does the ad suggest about the character/morals of the country?

That they were not very good but he knows that it can be turned around.

 

13.  What is the criticism of Communism being offered here?
With communism you have no freedom. You can't make your own choices.

 

14.  Do you think this was an effective speech?

Yes he did a good job persuading.

 

15.  Who is the audience for this broadcast?
The public, he wants to make people think it is a good idea to attack.

16.  What do you think the American people thought of this action and Reagan's explanation of it?
I think they liked Reagan's explanation.  They wanted to stand up and be strong.

17.  What was the foreign response, do you think?
I think they didn't like it very much but they learned their lesson.

 

All in the Family video

In this video Archie gets mugged. They asked him who did it and he said surprisingly it was a white guy, not a black one. Also at the end he makes a remark about the police man that comes to his door, he calls him a flatfoot or something like that.

Nixon Watergate Scandal

What was the watergate scandal all about?

 

    Watergate is a term used to describe the scandals that took place between 1972 and 1974.  Watergate is now used to describe the following:

-political burglary

-bribery

-extortion

-phonetapping

-conspiracy

-obstruction of justice

-destruction of evidence

-tax fraud

-illegal use of government agencies such as the CIA and the FBI

-illegal campaign contributions

-use of public money for private purposes.

 

 

Nixon's watergate scandal was about him ordering his team to go into the Democratic party's establishment and vandalized it.  His team went in and broke stuff, stole stuff and also tapped the place so that Nixon could know what they were talking about.  The scandals began with the arrest of five men for breaking and entering into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Office complex in Washington, D.C. on June 17, 1972.  Nixon and his staff conspired to cover up the break-in as early as six days after it occurred.  After two years of mounting evidence against the President and his staff, which included former staff members testifying against them in a Senate investigation, it was revealed that Nixon had a tape recording system in his offices and that he had recorded many conversations.  Nixon later resigned from his Presidency.

Book Portfolio Q2

Josh Braley
Period 1
Viles

Flags Of Our Fathers

"Flags of Our Fathers" by James Bradley is a book about James Bradley digging up information on the Battle of Iwo Jima. James is John Bradley's son. His father was one of the six flag raisers at Iwo Jima, but his dad never talked about the war so this made James curious. After the death of his seventy year old father he begins to go through some of his old man's stuff and discovers letters and documents and picture from the battle. He starts going through the things and decides he wants to learn more about his father and the other 5 men. The theme of this book is, you can be a hero and not be alive.

In this book, John Bradley, the father of James, only said one thing about the battle of Iwo Jima. He told his son that the real hero's of Iwo Jima were the ones left on the island. The two men that died over there and were left there are the hero's. Three other men died but were brought back to the United States and nominated hero's. John Bradley survived the battle and died of natural causes and he was named a hero. The two men that died and were left did not get the recognition they deserved.
Today in life this theme relates to many people who are dead or not even real people. Superman is a fictional character but he is a hero, he inspires young people to do good things and not to grow up to be bank robbers or criminals. The six men that went to the battle of Iwo Jima and raised that American Flag did not always want to grow up and go into the military, they all had regular lives like all young men. Little did they know that most of them were going to die in a battle against the Japanese.
The battle of Iwo Jima is said to be one of the most famous moments in the U.S. Military. The men went into this battle knowing that they were out numbered, out of position and that most of them were probably going to die. The Japanese were ready, as soon as the troops landed on the beach they underwent immense machine gun fire and still somehow made it to the highest peak on the island and raised the flag. It was incredible feat and will never be forgotten.

LBJ Law Review

LBJ Major Legislative Accomplishment

Josh Braley
Gun Control Act of 1968

The Gun Control Act of 1968 was a federal law that controls the United States gun industry and the gun owners. This made it so you, the gun buyer, could not purchase a firearm without having a background check. They did this to make sure a psycho or a terrorist couldn't get a gun and go crazy kill everyone. You weren't able to get a firearm if you had convicted any big crime, if you're a fugitive, illegal alien, or if you had been dishonorably discharged from the military.

The Gun Control Act of 1968 was a smart move. It has probably prevented many murders from then to now. I think that under some circumstances if a person had been convicted of a crime then they might be able to get pardoned and purchase a firearm. It is also good that it doesn't allow you to trade and make your own deals with importers, only licensed dealers can sell, this is a good thing.

Essays 1-3 Exam 1960s

Josh Braley

12/19/08

period 1

Essay # 1

    Technology is changing rapidly now, there's television, Internet, radio, and cell phones.  If something happens then minutes later everyone can know about it.  When the Twin Towers were hit, it was on the news fast, not everyone really knew what was going on but it gave people an idea of what was happening.  Before you had to wait to know something, but now when anything happens someone is online blogging.

    In the 50'sand 60's television was coming around, and color too.  It brought out some very gross and disturbing images that really changed peoples outlook on things.  They had the Buddhist monk guy that lit himself on fire and just sat there calm until he died, this was caught on camera.  Murder of Emmit Till was broadcasted, and his mother wanted everyone to see that her son had been  brutally murdered so she had an open casket.  When J.F.K. was shot and killed a man got it on video, this changed history, because we can now view it and see what happened that day.  With being able to see events it makes them more real, we tend to care more about something that we can see rather than just reading it from paper.

 

 

Essay # 2

    Martin Luther King was a non violent civil rights movement leader.  He believed that the violence was not helping African Americans get equal rights.  He wanted to do it through religion and loving each other and not by hurting.  King used events like the bombing of the church where the young black girls were killed.  He was a very good public speaker and knew how to persuade people without using violence.

    Huey Newton was a very violent civil rights activists.  Newton talked about killing police officers, though he called them pigs.  His goals were to kill everyone that opposed the Black Panthers.  He said very graphic nasty things.  Some hated him, but some loved him.  Compared to Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, Huey Newton was the most violent by far.
    Malcolm X was an African American that changed his name to, "Malcolm X."  He was a violent man but also a very sensible man.  Unlike Newton he thought before he spoke, and didn't say crazy, wild, unorthodox things.  His words were wise, they came from the heart and they were used in a way to persuade people.  X got people to think the way that he thought, therefore he got them to do the things that he did.  He was a combination of King and Newton together.

Essay # 3

    The early competition between the United States and the Soviet Union was the space race.  It started out being a race to see who could get something into outer space first.  The U.S. was about to get to an early lead until out shuttle failed, and then the Union got up there.  The states and the union went back in forth for a good time, then The United States were the first on the moon.  The first people on the moon came from the U.S. and this kind of sealed the deal that the U.S. was way in the lead.

    There was also the cold war.  This was not actually a war but more of just a confrontation.  It was kind of like a, "Mines bigger than yours" deal.  It was how many nuclear weapons do you have, 5? Well we have 10.  This went back and forth for a good chunk of time as well.  It never got to the stages where the bombs were set on one another.  What ended it was when the U.S. set off a baby nuclear bomb just to test it, and it did more damage then thought, this scared both sides and things quieted down.
    To sum it all up the United States and the Soviet Union were the big dogs, so to speak, in the world and they both wanted to be "the big dog."  The two countries had different outlooks on everything so this obviously made for clashing of heads.  The relationship between the two was not friendly.