In the 1920s, flappers were rebellious young women that shifted away from the norm. They would smoke, drink, go out to clubs and do other things that would not be expected of women at the time. They also played a big role in fashion at the time. They would wear short skirts and would wear a bobbed haircut. These women liberated themselves from any limits society had put on them. They achieved a sense of personal freedom, even if they did not have political rights.

In the 1950s, women were expected to be great housewives. They seldom went outside the house or had freedoms. The commercial represents the average lady of the decade. She may have gained some freedoms such as her own car, but she didn’t even have anywhere to go other than the grocery store or to PTA meetings. She would not even be able to have earned a car without her husband buying it for her. Women did not have any high status jobs at the time.

Today, women’s rights movements have made very big strides. The image of the 50s has gone and women are now very independent. Women have freedom to vote, get jobs, and do whatever they please. In most aspects, women are viewed as equals to men, although some might argue that women make less money than men do. Regardless, women have achieved a lot to get the rights they have today. It’s a shame that it took so long, but at least it’s finally here.

March on Washington 1963

“Gay Liberation” in the sixties. The 1969 police raid on the Stonewall Bar in New York’s Greenwich Village was one of the beginning points of this movement. According to Foner, “Rather than bowing to police harrassment, as in the past, gays fought back.” This event just like Philip Randolph’s “March on Washington” was a movement for social equality. It is also safe to assume that motivation and inspiration was given to this movement by Philip Randolph’s movement in the past which caused the beginning of the civil rights movement. (CH 24 – The Sixties)

The American Indian Movement was also a chain effect of the social changes of the 1960s. Like the other two movements, this was also a social movement but targets another cultural group – the Native Americans. This movement however rather than fighting for literal equality (as in equality laws and rights), is more for compensation for past deeds. All three events are linked because they are fighting for social issues, rights and equality. After the first successful social right movement, others copied and replicated their success. The first movement started a domino effect which causes all future equal right movements to be interlinked. (CH 27 – Globalization and Its Discontents)

History tells us that Nixon won the election in 1968, on the grounds of promising to put an end to the Vietnam War. However, shortly after the exact opposite proved to be true. It appeared that despite several efforts to keep an incident of such high magnitude out of the public eye, word of what became known as the My Lai Massacre  (approximately 504 unarmed citizens in South Vietnam being killed by a U.S. army unit) got out. The public was furious and immediately opposition to the war soared to its peak. Revolts and protests began taking place all over. Slowly but surely, Nixon was begin to loose all of the public and voters support. The peak of protests and riots took place May 4th at the university of Kent State. Protests were taking place against the invasion of Cambodia by American troops. The Ohio National Guard was called in and began firing shots at students and those who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. The Kent State shootings resulted in the death of 4 people and injury of several more. The Kent State shootings just further set fuel to the fire that was already blazing hot. To this day the lasting impact of the Kent shootings can be seen.

This belief continued on to project that these spirit never dies. For example, in order to protect democracy and stop the spreading of the communism, the United States fought in Vietnam and the Korean Peninsula where the democratic rule and communistic rule were clashing. U.S fought against the North Vietnamese and the North Korean in Vietnam War and the Korean War, respectively. Although in both cases, the U.S failed to unite the two countries under democratic rule, it did manage to preserve the democracy in South  Korea.  Also, these two wars showed that the U.S would fight to protect their belief and the democratic freedom.

Another recent event that shows U.S would fight to protect themselves and even protect its friends is shown through the Gulf War. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, U.S feared that Iraq would next attack Saudi Arabia, U.S’ long time ally. As a result, U.S went on war with  Iraq to protect its ally nation liberate Kuwait and for its own  freedom; since Saudi Arabia provided U.S with oil, if Saudi Arabia went down by Iraq, U.S would loss its major oil provider.

There are probably much more events that reveal such spirit.  However, just from these three events: Vietnam War, Korea  War, and the Gulf  War, we can see that U.S will fight in order to protect themselves, their beliefs, and their freedom.

Education in the United States has been a battle for many groups of people, focusing here on African Americans and women. A battle to gain the right to an American education that for a long time in history was not equally available to all citizens. During the Reconstruction period, 1865-1877, blacks took a leap towards receiving their own education, understanding that it was a step further towards their own freedom. Schools had previously not been available to the majority of blacks and so they took it into their own hands to create schooling for themselves. During this time, there was the creation of the first black colleges such as Howard University and Fisk University. Although this was a step, schools were still extremely openly segregated and not available to all. When blacks started fighting for their own education during this time period, people in America began to fight against segregation within the education system. In 1954 there was the Brown v. Board of Education, in which the U.S Supreme Court declared segregation unconstitutional. It was during this time that blacks fought against the inequalities that occurred daily within the school system. They stated that groups of people should not be separated from one another and that “separate but equal” was unjust because there wasn’t equality at all. The fight and success that occurred in the Brown v. Board of Education event, and many others during the Civil Rights movement gave way to women fighting for their own rights to education also. During the 1960s, universities limited the percentage of women that they accepted each year. During the 50s women were encouraged to stay at home, raise families and many did not see education as an option. After seeing these other cases challenge the laws, women were given the drive to fight for their own education also. Proven successful, women in the year 2000 were responsible for 60% of the college degrees, and also continued to raise families at the same time.

It is typical of Americans to blame president for anything that goes run, especially when it comes to nationwide financial troubles. From George Washington to Barack Obama, nearly every president has been blamed for some kind of miscalculated fiscal, spending or monetary policy. Yet when you examine the nature of our system, especially so since 1913 (advent of the federal reserve system) the presidents have hardly had any real command of fiscal and monetary policy. In fact, the federal reserve is so separated from the command of the president (really as a protection built into the system) that his only real decision making is in deciding who should run the federal reserve during his administration. In the case of Obama, he actually kept the same federal reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, as Bush appointed; the person who, in many Americans point of view, is responsible for steps leading up to the crash of 2008. But federal financial policy leading to recessions and depressions is as old as the republic itself. In 1932 Andrew Jackson started to take measures to destroy the second bank of the United States of America, the equivalent to the federal reserve in the early 19^th century. In 1936 he succeeded in revoking its charter and by 1937 the country was in deep financial turmoil because credit dried up when the job of the bank of the US was dumped on a number of smaller banks. This credit crunch was coupled by a monetary crisis; many banks wouldn’t accept paper money for loan repayment and many people became out of luck in this department. The crisis was blamed on Jackson, especially so by the whigs (the other party in the two party system of the time). Van Buren (D) was president for only 6 weeks when things took a turn for the worst but even he was blamed. In the case of the panic of 1837, the president’s reckless fiscal/bank/monetary policies were largely to blame with regards to Andrew Jackson. He conducted a ‘war on the bank’, blaming it for all the troubles, but, when finally abolished, no new system was even thought of and thus Jackson’s action and inaction directly caused the panic of 1827.  Flash to October 1929. Hoover, the 4^th president to work within the framework of the Federal Reserve system, is taken by surprise to find that the federal reserve was lending millions of tax payers dollars to support a system of call-market trading and buying and selling of securities on margin, or with lent out money. Essentially, the federal reserve was loaning at 4% to banks like JPMorgan who would in turn loan to brokerage houses at 6-9% who would then loan money to individuals looking to buy stock on margin for 12-20% (using the stock the people bought with the lent money as collateral in the transaction). Again, Hoover wasn’t even aware of the magnitude of this financial disease, nor of the Federal reserves very key role in getting the ball rolling, until a few weeks before Black Thursday. Thus, by the time he started to take control of things, the stage was already set for a titanic rupture in the financial system. Hoover, hand-cuffed by circumstances, actually decreased the federal reserve interest rate, which caused even more money to flood the call market and even more speculative buying and selling (on one of the days the volume of trading was so great that the meter in the NYSE broke down for 15 minutes causing huge panic on the floor). Thus, all things considered, even though Hoover shouldn’t have appointed ex-bankers to run the Fed and even though he should have paid more attention to the importance of the call-market and buying stock on margin he really can’t be completely blamed. The crisis of 1929 was primarily a crisis of a flawed private financial system and less so a crisis of fiscal/lending/monetary policy of Herbert Hoover. And yet, as the cartoon above shows, he was blamed as if he was the one forcing people to buy stock portfolios with money that they never had in the first place. Fast forward to 2008. Suddenly, in the same week, Lehman Brothers (a bank worth over 100 billion dollars) goes bankrupt, AIG, the second biggest insurance company in the world, is purchased by we the people, and the government leverages a by-out of Merryl Lynch, another multi-billion dollar bank/investment firm on wall street, by Bank of America. What exactly happened in September 2008 is still being sorted out but the Wall Street Journal was spot on when they said that the events would change capitalism forever. Essentially, every major bank and was purchasing and selling billions upon billions in securities pegged to the housing market in the United States of America. One of the culprits, mortgage backed securities, were packages of sometimes million and millions of dollars worth of mortgages were traded by hegdefunds and investment banks. How they figured out how to make money off of rapidly buying and selling what is essentially debt, or owed money, is beyond my understanding of economics. The insurance companies, like AIG, sold credit default swaps, insurance against people defaulting on their loans, to the banks trading MBSs. Thus, when the housing market reached its maxmum (supply in US became higher than demand), everything came crashing down as people defaulted on their loans. This was followed by a credit crunch, trillion dollar stimulus spending, rescuing of the entire private financial infrastructure by us tax-payers and the rest of the story everyone knows. So, who do you blame. Of course you blame that guy George for everything. Surely he cooked up this whole mess as a get rich quick scheme. But wait? Again, George didn’t have anything to do with the day to day of the Fed. So, besides appointing half of the former board of directors of Goldman Sachs to the Federal Reserve board, did Bush really cause this financial crisis? As for the recession, we blame Comrade Barak Obama for forcing us to live under a Stalinist regime as he pumped trillions into the economy with his stimulus plan, which was really a scheme to transfer money from the rich to the poor. But is the stimulus spending to blame for the slow growth rate of businesses in America, or can we blame the banks that are still overly cautious about lending? Again, it still remains to be seen. All three of these events are similar, not only in that they triggered recessions, but also that presidents seemed to be the scapegoats for all of them. This tells us that the American people are quick to blame their executive when things go wrong for them. Instead of realizing that the capitalist system is inherently flawed in that it has recessions and growth periods built right in, the people look to blame the government. That’s the American mentality and that’s what has happened from 1787-present.

These three presidents were the commanders of war on countries three times less the size  and power of ours.  All three of these wars were disguised with reasons of liberation, where they were truly wars of tactical greed and positioning.  All three created and lied about  some of the worst war crimes.

Even though the WWII was a just war to stop an evil dictator, the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima killed most of Japan’s population.  Truman dropped two atomic bombs in 1945,  without knowing the effects.  There are some that speculate that the Japanese already surrendered before they were dropped.  Even so, the bombing of pearl harbor, gave US the chance to go into Japan and conquer, allowing them to write Japan’s constitution, leaving Japan with no Army and America with bases to watch all of Asia.

Next on our criminal presidents, is our lovely Nixon.    In 1969, Nixon spent 14 months carpet bombing rural areas of Cambodia, a country we were not at war with, and then lied about it.  This was all in the approach of holding onto South Vietnam, and extending the American Empire.

How can we forget about Bush and his “Weapons of Mass Destruction.”  In 2003, Bush invaded Iraq in cause to search  for these infamous weapons.  Even though Iraq was not responsible for the terrorist attacks,  Bush bombed and invaded Iraq, even though the world was protesting him to not.  A few years later, two CIA agents came out, and told the public that they informed Bush that there were no WMDs.

It is crazy how time creates the same puppets.

This first image is of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 6 1945. This one of the biggest events in recent history. America has become infamous because of the use of this atomic weapon. It had positive short term effects and negative long term effects on our country. The dropping of the atomic bomb led to alot of different events in America immediately and in the long term.

The use of the atomic bomb almost immediately gave the US victory in Japan. On August 14, 1945 Japan surrendered and the US had officially won the war. This day quickly became known as V-J Day. This famous photograph was taken in Time Square on that day. In the photo a sailor is seen kissing his girlfriend in celebration of victory in Japan. The photo graph shows the emotion of joy and happiness that the war was over. The joy and celebration of V-J Day would not have been possible, for a very long time at least if the US had not used atomic weapons on Japan.

The next event spanned over 30 years of America’s history. This event was the cold war. The use of atomic weapons on Japan sent a message to the Soviet Union that the US had dangerous weapons and were a force to be reckoned with. This along with other factors sent the Soviet Union and the US into a all out arms race. The point of this arms race was to generate more nuclear and atomic power than the opposite country. This cartoon shows Kennedy and  Khrushchev arm wresting while sitting on atomic weapons. This represents how the two countries fought with one another and how they both had atomic weapons. The use of atomic weapons on Nagasaki, as well as Hiroshima was one of the key causes of the cold war.

]]> http://blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu/his1005fall2010/2010/12/07/atomic-bomb-brings-change-both-good-and-bad/feed/ 0 http://blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu/his1005fall2010/2010/12/07/womans-rights/ http://blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu/his1005fall2010/2010/12/07/womans-rights/#comments Tue, 07 Dec 2010 18:37:11 +0000 Thomas L http://blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu/his1005fall2010/?p=4666 Continue reading →]]>

Throughout this course we have seen woman gaining power and presence in the United States.  Above is an image of a woman casting a vote.  Woman’s suffrage lead to the 19th Amendment which declared that no state or federal government can deny a citizen to vote base on sex.  Although many woman didn’t believe their say would amount to much this would slowly change throughout history as woman had more presence and dominance in society, government, and the workforce.

Above is the famous piece propaganda from WWII.  As you know it is to encourage the female involvement in the workforce.  WWII was a time where woman were leaving the household and picking up jobs that males had to leave behind when heading overseas.  This was the spark of woman in the workforce which gave woman a sense of fulfillment and presence.

I chose this graph to show the percentage of woman making up the workforce from 1964 to 2009.  There has been a steady increase in the percentage of the workforce made up by woman in the United States.  In 2009 woman made up for 49.8% and today after the economic downturn woman have now become the majority in the workforce, becoming in many cases the top earner, or “breadwinner.”