Kim Kardashian & Recognition of the Armenian Genocide

In October, Congress passed a bipartisan bill recognizing the Armenian genocide. As Kim Kardashian has recently become active in the political spotlight, speaking on prison reform and studying to become a lawyer, she is someone who has used her platform to speak up for what she believes in. Recognizing the Armenian Genocide is an example of this. 

Kim raised awareness of the bill by sharing information with over 60 million followers, who liked and shared the tweet thousands of times. She approaches this by explaining that the issue is personal to her and her family as Armenians and those who descended from the victims of the genocide. She also provided information to contact Congress to act on the issue so that her followers could take action. 

Since the bill was passed, I can’t help but wonder how big Kim Kardashian’s role was. Sharing her views would prompt millions of American followers to act on the issue, who may not have done something otherwise. How do you think social media will shift activism and celebrity influence in the future? Is it already happening?

Sources

https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/news-opinion/kim-kardashian-pushed-congress-to-pass-armenian-genocide-bill

what are the ranks in the Nazi party

in the Nazi group, people have jobs.

some of these jobs are considers a higher rank than others. 

Blockleiter- they are in charge of a block they have been assigned to. such as an area in a town. 

Zellenleiter- they are the leader of jail and prison cells. so any people who go to jail, they control the inmates and the workers. 

Ortsgruppenleiter- they are a Local Group Leader, they are a leader of a small town or city. 

Kreisleiter- they are a County Leader, they are in charge of country. 

Gauleiter- they are a Regional Leader, they are in charge of certain regional areas in country's.

Landesinspekteur- they are a State Inspector, they are in control of inspecting each state to see if everything is going alright in that area. 

Reichsinspekteur- they are a National Inspector, they have a job of inspecting problems, houses, people, and other things that could cause a problem. 

all the ranks above are only given to the highly educated and loyal Germans. 

Katherine Johnson

Last Monday, at 101 years old, Katherine Johnson passed away. She was one of the history making, barrier-breaking NASA mathmeticians that you might have recognized from “Hidden Figures”. Johnson was revolutionary in that she opened doors for women and people of color through her immense successes in helping the U.S. space program explore the new frontiers. In the film “Hidden Figures”, depicting the trailblazing black women who were integral to the space race, Johnson was played by Taraji P. Henson. Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan died in 2005 and 2008, some of the other original “Hidden Figures”.

Johnson started working at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1953 in Virginia, which eventually evolved into NASA. Johnson said that her greatest contribution to space exploration was making "the calculations that helped sync Project Apollo's Lunar Lander with the moon-orbiting Command and Service Module." In other words, helping to put men on the moon in 1969. She was the first woman in the Flight Research Division to get credit as an author of a research report for her work that explained the equations necessary for an orbital spaceflight. She did trajectory analysis for the 1961 Freedom 7, the first human spaceflight, and was known for her work on the first American orbital spaceflight. She worked for NASA for more than three decades before retiring in 1986. Katherine Johnson had immense courage throughout her life, and accomplished milestones in the space progress that wouldn’t have been reached without her. To quote NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, “her story and her grace continue to inspire the world”.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/katherine-johnson-nasa-mathematician-depicted-hidden-figures-dead-101-n1141566

Harvey Weinstein Guilty of Rape

Harvey Weinstein is a 67 year old man that was convicted of third degree rape of Jessica Mann and criminal sexual act in the first degree against Mimi Haley. There have been 80 other women that stood up and announced that Weinstein had sexually assaulted or harassed them previously.

Third degree rape:

1. A person engages in sexual intercourse with another person who is incapable of consent by reason of some factor other than being under 17 years old.
2. Someone who is older than 21, engages in a sexual intercourse with another person who is younger than 17 years old.
3. A person engages in sexual intercourse with another person without consent where such lack of consent is by reason of some factor other than incapacity to consent.

Criminal sexual act in the first degree: 

When a person engages in oral sexual conduct or anal sexual conduct with another person:
1. By forcible compulsion
2. Someone incapable of consent by reason of being physically helpless
3. Younger than 11 years old
4. Younger than 13 years old and the actor is older than 18

Of course, when the verdict was read, Weinstein had no emotion and denied all allegations of nonconsensual sexual intercourse. According to NBC News, he will be sentenced on March 11 and will face up to 25 years in prison. He deserves to be in prison for longer because he was charged with multiple convictions, not just one. Although, he is finally getting accounted for the crimes he has committed and gotten away with in the past.

https://apple.news/AqUJm8RpaS56knZ6m_y7fmg

Nazi's

Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, the National Socialist German Workers party or the Nazi party grew into a mass movement and ruled Germany through totalitarian means from 1933 to 1945. In 1919 army veteran  Adolf Hitler frustrated by Germanys defeat in world war, which had left the nation economically depressed and politically unstable joined a fledgling political organization called the german Workers Party. Which was earlier that same year by a small group of men including locksmith Anton Drexler and journalist Karl Harrer the party promoted German nationalism and anti-semitism and felt that the treaty of versailles the peace settlement that ended the war was extremely unjust to German burdening it with reparations it could never pay. Hitler soon emerged as a charismatic public speaker and began attracting new members with speeches blaming Jews and Marxists for Germanys problems and espousing extreme nationalism and the concept of Aryan master race. In July 1921, he assumed leadership of the organization which by then had been renamed the Nationalist Socialist German workers.

The Kochs: Partners in Sadistic Crimes

Ilse and Karl Koch both committed atrocities while they were at Buchenwald.  Before their marriage, both worked in Sachsenhausen. They married in 1937 and moved to Buchenwald when the husband became the camp's commandant. There they lived with their children, making their fortune off the misery of prisoners.

While her husband was commandant at Buchenwald, Ilse Koch became an SS Aufseherin, a position which she fully exploited for her violent pursuits. Throughout her reign, she tortured and beat prisoners whilst riding through the camp on her horse. Even more shocking was what she did to prisoners with intricate tattoos (this did not include the number tattoos given to prisoners in the camp). These people were collected, brought to the dispensary and killed. Once they were dead, she would have sections of skin with the desired tattoos removed and preserved. The skin was then used to make seemingly mundane items -- lampshades, book covers, and gloves. The pride and joy of her collection was her human-skin handbag.

When the camps were liberated, Ilse Koch was arrested and put on trial at Nuremberg. She was sentenced to life in prison for her actions, but only served two years (her sentence had been reduced due to the "lack of evidence" of her crimes), only to be rearrested and sentenced to life again in prison (this time not by an international court but by Germany). She eventually committed suicide in prison in 1967.

Her husband, Karl Koch, met his demise at the hands of the SS for overstepping his position as commandant. After transitioning from an SS desk job to a concentration camp administrator, the man had already gained a reputation for immense cruelty, even among the other SS commandants. While he was undoubtedly sinister, it was his avarice that angered the SS. Not only did he obtain most of the gold extracted from gassing victim's teeth, but he also exploited camp prisoners for his own financial gain to the point where he was collecting profits meant to be collected by the SS. The Kochs were subsequently investigated by the SS, which eventually lead to Karl Koch's relocation to Majdanek as punishment. During his time there, the SS found evidence of his schemes at Buchenwald, and he ended up in SS prison in Weimar. In 1945 he was executed by the SS (ironically?) at Buchenwald and his body put in the crematorium.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ilse-Koch#ref1237632
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-witch-of-buchenwald-is-sentenced-to-prison
http://marcuse.faculty.history.ucsb.edu/classes/33d/projects/naziwomen/ilse.htm
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Karl-Otto-Koch
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/karl-otto-koch

The Holocaust

The word Holocaust that is a Greek word that can stand or "holos"(whole) and  "Kaustos"(burned) was historically used to describe a sacrificial offering burned on an altar. Since 1945, the word has taken on a new and horrible meaning the ideological and systematic state-sponsored prosecution and mass murder of millions of European Jews as well as millions of others, including Gypsies, the intellectually disabled, dissidents  and homosexuals by the German Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945. The anti-Semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, and alien threat to German racial purity and community. After years of Nazi rule in Germany, during which Jews were consistently persecuted, Hitlers final solution now known as the Holocaust came to fruition under the cover of World War 2, with mass killing centers constructed in the concentration camps of occupied  Poland. Approximately six million Jews and millions of others, targeted for racial, political, ideological and behavioral reasons, died in the Holocaust. More than one million of those who perished were children. Anti-Semitism in Europe did not begin with Adolf Hitlers. Though use of the term itself only to  the 1870s, there is evidence of hostillity towards Jews long before the Holocaust even as far back as the ancient world, when Roman authorities destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem and forced Jews to leave Palestine. The Enlightenment, during the 17th and 18th centuries, emphasized religious toleration, and in the 19th century Napoleon and other European rulers enacted legislation that ended long-standing restrictions on Jews. Anti Semitic feeling endured, however in many cases taking on a racial character rather than a religious one. 

Oscar Schindler

"Oscar Schindler is a man who outwitted Hitler and the Nazis to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other during World War 2. Schindler surfaced from the chaos of madness, spent millions bribing and paying off the SS and eventually risked his life to rescue and the Schindler Jews. Schindler rose to the highest level of humanity walked through the bloody mud off the Holocaust without soiling his soul, his compassion, his respect for human life and gave his Jews a second chance at life. He miraculously managed to do it and pulled it off by using the very same talents that made him a war profiteer his flair for presentation, bribery, and grand gestures. In those years millions of Jews died in the Nazi death camps like Auschwitz, but Schindler miraculously survived. To more than 1200 Jews Oscar Schindler was all that stood between them and death at the hands of the Nazi. A man full of flaws like the rest of us- unlikeliest of all role models who started by earning millions as a war profiteer and ended by spending his las pfennig and risking his life to save his Jews. He was a man who even in the worst circumstances did extraordinary things, matched by no one. He remained true to his Jews the workers he referred to as my children. Schindler had also been very emotionally with kids and women."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Goethe was born on August 28, 1749 and he died on March 22, 1832.  Goethe is the on German literary. figure whose range and international standing equal those of Germanys supreme philosophers he had often drawn on his works and ideas and composers. In the literary culture of the German- speaking countries, he has had so dominant a position that, since the end of the 18th century, his writings have been described as classical. In the 1749-69 Goethe was one of the very few figures of Germanys 18th century literary renaissance who were, in full sense of the term, "bourgeois." Unlike most of his contemporaries, he had no need, at least in the first half of his life, to seek princely patronage of his writing or employment as an official or an academic. The Frankfurt in which he was born and in which his social attitudes were formed was, as it is now, a wealthy commercial and financial centre, but it was also virtually a self governing republic, a city-state within the Holy Roman Empire. The nobility and the grand and petty sovereigns who figured so much in Goethes later life had no apart in his early experiences he was a town child from a rich family in an essentially middle class world. " https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=goeth&form=HDRSC2&first=1&cw=1117&ch=729

Amon Goeth

As we know from watching Schindler's list, Amon Goeth was the commander of the Plaszow concentration camp in Krakow, Poland. He told his prisoners, "I am your god." We learned from the reading of Auschwitz that prisoners didn't believe that God was real because nothing good happened to them. Slowly, they began to believe that the only function was death. Through this we can see that because they had no hope for anything, they were willing to believe whatever they were told. Since Goeth had so much power and authority, people were forced to believe what he told them.

Furthermore, he was in charge of the liquidation of the ghetto at Tarnow. However to him, most of the survivors were unsuitable for slave labor, so they were murdered. During the liquidation, Goeth personally shot 30-90 women and children. This just proved that he had no sympathy, no heart for anyone, no matter their race, gender, sex, or age.

On September 13, 1944 he was charged by the SS with theft of Jewish property, failure to provide adequate food to the prisoners, violation of concentration camp regulations regarding the treatment and punishment of prisoners, and allowing unauthorized access to camp personnel records by prisoners and non-commissioned officers.

He was tried by the Supreme National Tribunal of Poland and found guilty. Of course, he was convicted of homicide, for personally killing, maiming and torturing a substantial, unidentified number of people. Finally, exactly two years later, he was hanged at the Montelupich prison in Krakow. After his death, he was cremated and his ashes were thrown into the Vistula River.

As Stewart had told us in class, Goeth acted much worse than the movie portrayed. Even in the movie, I could barely watch how he treated his prisoners. Thinking that he did much worse, he deserved the punishment that he received. He had no heart and no respect for others, so no one should have any respect for him. By hanging him, it is showing the rest of the world that these crimes are inexcusable.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amon_G%C3%B6th

Med School Accepts 364 Students By Accident

The Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine sent 364 letters of acceptance in error Thursday to students looking for admission. "Soon after the emails were sent, a technical error was discovered and the letters of acceptance were withdrawing by email," according to a statement on the Minnesota based school's website.

About three hours after the admissions letter was sent in error, Admissions Dean Dr. J. Michael Bostwick told CNN, applicants were contacted by phone to let them know what had happened. Bostwick said the school makes offers to just 46 students and those initial offers are always over the phone.

"It's awful," he said. "We're still not clear how this happened and we're so upset for these folks."A vendor's glitch sent the letter to everyone who interviewed, Bostwick said. "We deeply regret having caused disappointment and stress to these applicants, and we are continuing to investigate the issue," the school's apology on its website read.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/15/us/mayo-clinic-school-error-trnd/index.html

Nadia Falk's Story

A 6-year-old Florida girl was committed for two days to a mental health facility without her mother's consent after allegedly throwing a temper tantrum at school, an attorney for the family said. The child was allegedly given anti-psychotic medications at the center, also without the permission of her mother, Martina Falk.

The mother is now demanding answers from officials at Love Grove Elementary School in Jacksonville for their handling of the Feb. 4 incident. Falk's lawyer, Reganel Reeves, said that a mental health counselor was called to the school because Nadia was reportedly having a tantrum and throwing chairs.

The counselor evaluated Nadia, who has ADHD and has been diagnosed with a mood disorder, and determined that she needed to be committed under the Florida Mental Health Act of 1971, commonly known as the Baker Act. This gives social workers the power to initiate involuntary holds on children as young as 2 without the need for parental permission.

Parents were not called or informed about the incident until after Nadia had been committed to the facility. Nadia is also unable to communicate what happened to her mother because of her disability. All she has been able to say was "Mommy, they locked the door. They wouldn't let me out. Mommy, they gave me a shot."

Deputies with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office were called to the school to assist and take Nadia to the facility. Police body-camera footage shows the girl calmly walking out of the school.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/6-year-old-girl-was-committed-mental-health-facility-without-n1137376

Anti police atmosphere in NYC

Coving the news that dates recently of Feb 9th, Robert Williams after an incident with an officer was convicted. The overall atmosphere of New York, the city of which it took place; received complaints and acts of protests. Only a week later did Robert march out and shoot a police van with an officer inside. What many believe was motivated when activists of criminal Justice and the public lashed out, verbally presented to motivate a change in a demanding and aggressive manner. During rush hours, did the police force find that there was an engagement of illegal activity around subways. Arrests were made, from there those that felt like they were being selected, or were tired of daily harassment, situated direct aggression. This random act of violence the officers were presented with was soon taken care of in a professional manner. Robert Williams faces charges of attempted murder. From what came about in the article and other news outlets little key information is to be found about the causes.

Kaminski Brigade

Also known as the S.S. Sturmbrigade R.O.N.A (Russian Army of National Liberation), the Kaminski brigade was lead by Bronislav Kaminski. Initially the deputy commander of the group, Kaminski took over once the founder Voskoboinikov was killed in a battle in 1942. Voskoboinikov established the militia in 1941 by a few hundred citizens in Lokot who wanted to prevent the Bolsheviks and Soviet partisans from reoccupying their land by arming themselves. Primarily self-governed, the group was tolerated and even assisted by the Germans who occupied nearby areas. As the militia grew, they became more and more involved in helping the Germans-- by assisting with the SD-Einsatzgruppe and security operations.


Kaminski was half German and half Jewish, with a degree in chemical engineering. He had previously spent time in the Gulag for his ideology. This gave him ample motive to go against the Soviet government, and he joined the group as soon as he arrived back in Lokot. In order to appease the Germans, he had locals produce crops to be used by the German Army. In return, he was able to expand the militia into the thousands. Furthermore, he received guns and tanks seized by the German Army to bolster his regiments. They added ex-convicts to the groups and had the militia contribute to the scorched earth policy.

Once the Soviets started pushing the Germans back, the Lokot district was no longer safe and the Kaminski Brigade retreated with the Germans, bringing with them their families (some 10,000 people) to Galicia and then Ratibor. In 1944, the Kaminski Brigade became part of the German army as an SS-Sturmbrigade. Kaminski worked under Himmler's command. Only a handful of the group's members were sent to deal with the Warsaw uprising, committing horrible acts in the process (the Germans used the Brigade to do most of their dirty work). Eventually, Kaminski and his officers were executed by Bach Zelewski (an SS general) in order to merge them under German General Vlassov's Army.



https://www.feldgrau.com/WW2-German-RONA-Kaminski-Brigade

Controversy in The Drone War

Drones, also known as unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV), carry weapons that can be used in drone strikes. In theory, drone strikes sound like the ideal way to carry out combat. They’re intended to minimize U.S. casualties and have the precision to eliminate terrorist targets with minimal effect on the surrounding communities, but that isn’t usually how they play out.
There’s a great deal of controversy over the civilian casualties surrounding drone strikes, as well as some moral and ethical dilemmas associated with the process. In March 2009, Israeli UAVs armed with missiles killed 48 Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, including two small children in a field and a group of women and girls in an otherwise empty street. In June, Human Rights Watch investigated six drone attacks that were reported to have resulted in civilian casualties, and said that Israeli forces failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians and properly identify potential threats.
The U.S. has used drones extensively in wars in the past two decades. The U.S. drone program in Pakistan has killed several dozen civilians accidentally. In 2009, the Brookings Institution reported that in the US-led drone attacks in Pakistan, ten civilians died for every militant killed. A Pakistani website reported 1,065 civilian deaths between 2004 and 2010, and according to American sources around 550-850 of the thousand estimated killed were militants.
There’s a lot of debate over whether drone strikes weigh more or less heavily on the consciences of pilots than on-the-ground combat. Some drone pilots experience PTSD, usually because of the stark detail they witness as a result of their actions. The pilots watch their victims for days before and after, and usually watch the carnage in graphic detail. The intense training that US drone operators undergo "works to dehumanise the ‘enemy’ people below whilst glorifying and celebrating the killing process." Others argue that pilots may experience the opposite effect. Keith Shurtleff, an army chaplain at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, worries "that as war becomes safer and easier, as soldiers are removed from the horrors of war and see the enemy not as humans but as blips on a screen, there is very real danger of losing the deterrent that such horrors provide." Human empathy and hesitation is something that leaders usually try and eliminate in war, and drones allow soldiers to move even farther from it.
In terms of citizens on the ground, the presence of drones takes a high toll on people. In Yemen, 92% of the population sampled suffered from PTSD, and children were most significantly affected. There’s a whole generation of Gazan children with deep psychological trauma because of the continual exposure to the buzzing sounds of drones high above that threaten their and their families’ lives. Civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan are reluctant to help those hit by the first strikes because rescuers themselves have often been killed by follow-on drone strikes. Beyond the psychological and physical effects on these communities, socially things come to a halt as citizens are forced to constantly stay indoors: children aren’t going to school, and no one gathers in visible places.
It’s under debate whether or not these drone strikes are eliminating legitimate threats. With Osama bin Laden dead and al-Qaeda on the run, many question whether the terrorists now killed by drones can really be linked to those original attacks. The administration justifies today's strikes by interpreting the AUMF to include "associated forces," though that phrase doesn't actually appear in the resolution that was set to justify the attacks in the first place. In order to keep the U.S. “safe” from these terrorist threats, the U.S. has become a serious terrorist threat to powerless communities. Is it just to use our extensive military power in this way? Are these measures necessary?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_combat_aerial_vehicle

https://science.howstuffworks.com/drone-strikes.htm

https://money.howstuffworks.com/drone-pilot1.htm