Ordinary Men Or Willing Executioners Essays - Human Rights Abuses

Ordinary Men Or Willing Executioners The arguments of Christopher Browning and Daniel John Goldhagen contrast greatly based on the underlining meaning of the Holocaust to ordinary Germans. Why did ordinary citizens participate in the process of mass murder? Christopher Browning examines the history of a battalion of the Order Police who participated in mass shootings and deportations. He debunks the idea that these ordinary men were simply coerced to kill but stops short of Goldhagen's simplistic thesis. Browning uncovers the fact that Major Trapp offered at one time to excuse anyone from the task of killing who was not up to it. Despite this offer, most of the men chose to kill anyway. Browning's traces how these murderers gradually became less squeamish about the killing process and delves into explanations of how and why people could behave in such a manner. Goldhagen's book however, has the merit of opening up a new perspective on ways of viewing the Holocaust, and it is the first to raise crucial questions about the extent to which eliminationist anti-Semitism was present among the German population as a whole. Using extensive testimonies from the perpetrators themselves, it offers a chilling insight into the mental and cognitive structures of hundreds of Germans directly involved in the killing operations. Anti-Semitism plays a primary factor in the argument from Goldhagen, as it is within his belief that anti-Semitism more or less governed the ideational life of civil society in pre-Nazi Germany . Goldhagen stated that a Demonological anti-Semitism, of the virulent racial variety, was the common structure of the perpetrators cognition of the German society in general. The German perpetrators were assenting mass executioners, men and women who, true to their own eliminationist anti-Semitic beliefs, faithful to their cultural anti-Semitic credo, considered the slaughter to be just. Though his statements seem quite harsh in content, they are not completely unjust for there is no obvious reason why a culture cannot be fanatically consumed by hatred. Goldhagen argues that for centuries, nearly every German was possessed of a homicidal animus towards Jews and thus 80 to 90 percent of Germans would have relished in the occasion to eliminate Jews. (Goldhagen dissents from Christopher Browning's estimates that 10-20 percent of the German police battalions refused to kill Jews as 'stretching the evidence ). It is one of Goldhagen's central arguments that the police battalions were prototypical of the murderous German mind-set. Goldhagens true distinction from Browning is to argue that German anti- Semitism was not only a significant but rather it was the sufficient condition for perpetrating the extermination of the Jews. Goldhagen observes that if it was not for Hitlers moral authority, the vast majority of Germans never would have contemplated the genocide against th e Jews. He also argues that by the time Hitler came to power, the model of Jews that was the basis of his anti-Semitism was shared by the vast majority of Germans. To rebuttal his claim I must ask that if anti-Semitism was true to not only the Germans but also the other European countries then why didnt a massive scale anti-Semitism movement come into play elsewhere? It is true that Goldhagen believes Had there not been an economic depression in Germany, then the Nazis, in all likelihood, would never have to come to power. However, this statement simply requires a question that if the Germans were fanatically anti-Semitists then why did they have to wait an economic depression to attain power and act out their anti-Semitist beliefs? Anti-Semitism, according to Goldhagen, was symptomatic of a much deeper German dissatisfaction. It served the Germans as a moral rationale for releasing destructive and ferocious passions that are usually tamed and curbed by civilization. Goldhagen uses the testimonies from the Reserve Battalion 101 as evidence to assert his claims on the anti-Semitic nature of the Germans. He tends to use much of the same evidence that Browning used but he, in trying to prove his point, neglected to use some the vital information that Browning used to assert his own claims, thus selecting only the relevant information. Goldhagen uses numbers to give an idea of the make-up of the men, there age, status, and participation in the Nazi regime. While pointing

Free Essays on Tyler Perry

You may not know Tyler Perry yet, but you will soon. He is a man who can do it all. The writer, actor and producer of urban gospel plays has just signed a deal with CBS to develop and star in a comedy series targeted for this fall. His trademark role is Madea, who totes a pistol full of blanks, smokes her glaucoma medicine, and can’t imagine how her daughter "got saved growing up in my house." Perry’s hybrid format mixes hilarious street comedy with spiritual messages and exuberant gospel songs. It’s a winning combination. This is Perry’s fourth play featuring Madea, a widowed grandma with a trouble seeking mouth and a bosom so enormous it grazes her chin when she jumps around excitedly, which she does a lot. Madea’s class reunion of 1953 is just an excuse for an outrageous cast of characters to share stories that are rich with opportunities for forgiveness. Christian themes and biblical phrases are a definitive part of the production. But the preaching is kept in balance by high quality acting, raucous dialogue, and voices that can steal your heart and make you dare to dream. Before he makes his appearance as Madea in Act 2, Perry plays Doctor Willie Leroy, who works as a bellboy who won’t carry bags, and a bartender who can only make rum and cokes, at a fancy hotel where all the action takes place. Leroy isn’t a real doctor. "My mama just named me that because she knew I was never going to amount to nothing." Leroy is a character who can’t get over how funny he is, and neither can the audience. I suspect a healthy chunk of the dialogue was successfully ad-libbed. Peter Wolfs’ two story set design is detailed and effective. The hotel lobby occupies the first floor, while the second floor bedrooms provide a setting for personal scenes between couples seeking truth and redemption. Supporting performances by David Mann as Mr. Brown and Chandra Young as Emma are two hi... Free Essays on Tyler Perry Free Essays on Tyler Perry You may not know Tyler Perry yet, but you will soon. He is a man who can do it all. The writer, actor and producer of urban gospel plays has just signed a deal with CBS to develop and star in a comedy series targeted for this fall. His trademark role is Madea, who totes a pistol full of blanks, smokes her glaucoma medicine, and can’t imagine how her daughter "got saved growing up in my house." Perry’s hybrid format mixes hilarious street comedy with spiritual messages and exuberant gospel songs. It’s a winning combination. This is Perry’s fourth play featuring Madea, a widowed grandma with a trouble seeking mouth and a bosom so enormous it grazes her chin when she jumps around excitedly, which she does a lot. Madea’s class reunion of 1953 is just an excuse for an outrageous cast of characters to share stories that are rich with opportunities for forgiveness. Christian themes and biblical phrases are a definitive part of the production. But the preaching is kept in balance by high quality acting, raucous dialogue, and voices that can steal your heart and make you dare to dream. Before he makes his appearance as Madea in Act 2, Perry plays Doctor Willie Leroy, who works as a bellboy who won’t carry bags, and a bartender who can only make rum and cokes, at a fancy hotel where all the action takes place. Leroy isn’t a real doctor. "My mama just named me that because she knew I was never going to amount to nothing." Leroy is a character who can’t get over how funny he is, and neither can the audience. I suspect a healthy chunk of the dialogue was successfully ad-libbed. Peter Wolfs’ two story set design is detailed and effective. The hotel lobby occupies the first floor, while the second floor bedrooms provide a setting for personal scenes between couples seeking truth and redemption. Supporting performances by David Mann as Mr. Brown and Chandra Young as Emma are two hi...

Bones of the Buddha - Excavating the Piprahwa Stupa

Bones of the Buddha - Excavating the Piprahwa Stupa 2013. Secrets of the Dead: Bones of the Buddha. Directed and written by Steven Clarke. Executive producers Steve Burns and Harry Marshall. Produced by Icon Films for Thirteen and WNET. Featuring Charles Allen, Neil Peppe, Harry Falk, Bhante Piyapala Chakmar, and Mridula Srivastava. Special thanks to the Archaeological Survey of India, the Indian Museum of Kolkata, the Mahabodhi Temple committee, Dr. S. K. Mittra, the Srivastava Family and Ram Singh Ji. 54 minutes; DVD and BluRay The Bones of the Buddha is an historical entry in the PBS series Secrets of the Dead, published in 2013 and touching on the politically dicey discussion of religion and history in India. Centered around the ongoing research of historian Charles Allen, Bones of the Buddha tells the story of the stupa at Piprahwa, a Buddhist sacred structure in the Basti district of Uttar Pradesh in India. Piprahwa is believed by some scholars to be near the site of Kapilavastu, the capital of the Shakyan state, and the Shakyas were the family of the man who would become the historical Buddha [Siddhartha Gautama or Shakyamuni, 500-410 BC], the center of the Buddhist religion. But more than that: Piprahwa is, or rather was, the family burial place of some of the Buddhas ashes. Historical and Archaeological Investigations Bones of the Buddha details the investigations by amateur archaeologist William Claxton Peppe, professional archaeologist Dr. K.M. Srivastava, and historian Charles Allen to identify one of the most important of the several burial places of the ashes of the Buddha: that belonging to the Buddhas family. After his death, so the legend goes, the Buddhas ashes were divided into eight parts, one part of which was given to the Buddhas clan. Evidence of the Shakya family burial place of the Buddhas ashes was ignored for nearly 100 years due to the damage inflicted by a corrupt archaeologist: Dr. Alois Anton FÃ ¼hrer. FÃ ¼hrer was the head of the British colonial archaeological center for northern India, a German archaeologist who was at the center of a scandal concerning faked and looted artifacts, attributed falsely to the Buddha. But when the excavations at Piprahwa were being undertaken by W.C. Peppe in the late 19th century, the scandal was yet a few months away: but near enough in time to cast doubt on the authenticity of the finds. The Buddhas Cache What Peppe found buried deeply within the enormous stupa was a stone reliquary, within which were five small jars. In the jars were hundreds of tiny jewels in the shapes of flowers. More were scattered within the reliquary, intermingled with burned bone fragments of the Buddha himself: this burial is believed to have been placed here by Buddhas disciple, King Ashoka, 250 years after the Buddhas death. In the 1970s, archaeologist K. M. Srivastava reexcavated at Piprahwa and found, beneath Ashokas elaborate burial, a simpler burial place, believed to have been the original site where the Buddhas family placed the remains. Indian History The story brought forward by Bones of the Buddha is a fascinating one: one of the British Raj in India, when the amateur archaeologist W.C. Peppe plowed a trench through an enormous stupa and found the 4th century BC burial remains. The story continues in the 1970s, with K. M. Srivastava, a young Indian archaeologist who was convinced that Piprahwa was Kapilavastu, the capital of the Sakyan state. And finally it concludes with modern historian Charles Allen, who wanders suburban England and northern India in search of the artifacts, the language and the history behind the stupa at Piprahwa. Most of the all, the video (and the sites investigations for that matter) is excellent as an introduction to the archaeology and history of Buddhism. The Buddhas life, where he was born, how he came to become enlightened, where he died and what happened to his cremated remains are addressed. Also involved in the story is the leader Ashoka, Buddhas disciple, who 250 years after Buddhas death promulgated the religious teachings of the holy man. Ashoka was responsible, say the scholars, for the placing the Buddhas ashes here in a stupa fit for royalty. And finally, Bones of the Buddha provides the viewer with an introduction to the broadening of Buddhism, how it came to be that 2,500 years after the Buddha died, 400 million people world wide are following his teachings. Bottom Line I very much enjoyed this video, and I learned a lot. I dont know much at all about Buddhist archaeology or history, and it was good to have a bit of a starting point. I was surprised to see, or rather not see, any Indian archaeologists interviewed during the filming: although S. K. Mittra and the Archaeological Survey of India are credited at the end, and Allen visits the sites and museums where the relics are deposited. That circumstance led me to do a bit more investigation on my own; more of that later. We cant really ask more of a video: to pique the viewers interest into the past. Bones of the Buddha is a fascinating video, and well worth added to your viewing choices. Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.

Contemporary artist, designer or filmmaker - Austen Pinkerton Essay

Contemporary artist, designer or filmmaker - Austen Pinkerton - Essay Example The essay "Contemporary artist, designer or filmmaker - Austen Pinkerton" explores the one of the contemporary artist, Austen Pinkerton. One of the notable characteristic of contemporary art was that the theme was normally an issue that affected the present-day world: cloning, politics, economics, issues of gender, race, class, human rights, ethnicity, etc . Contemporary art was also not limited by the materials used or the methodology. The art was vividly emotional, hence the accusation of ‘sensationalism’. By going for the jugular, these artists made main-stream British culture pay attention. Emphasis on the tangible, rather than a vague conceptualism, distinguished British art of the past fifteen years. Austen Pinkerton was the British contemporary artist I selected, for discussing three of his works. He had specialized in acrylic and water colours. Austen said that he took inspiration from the world around him. He used representational elements as the starting point for his compositions. With the help of his memory and imagination, he created a whole new environment, full of narrative and emotion: â€Å"Sometimes I just want to express my feelings, about something or the other in my life or in the world around me.† The main reason for my selecting Austen Pinkerton was that his works were full of aesthetic appeal. I have selected three of his works which can be identified with historical art, having the qualities of aesthetics like beauty, purity and transcendence . The online gallery of his paintings.

Cultural diversity Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Cultural diversity - Research Paper Example The countries/regions included in this paper are the United States, Great Britain, Middle East, India, Pakistan and Philippines. The paper further examines how Islam differs from Christianity and Judaism, and how these understanding affect the Muslim to non-Muslim relations. Finally, the paper proposes ways in which these relations can be improved. In order to have an idea about the teachings of Islam, this section briefly discusses the five Pillars of Islam. The first is the Declaration of Faith (Shahada), which is the belief in one God and Prophet Muhammad. Prayer (Salat) is the second pillar which emphasizes that observant Muslims have to pray five times in a day (Arab American National Museum (AANM), 2011). Prayers should be conducted at dawn, mid-day, mid-afternoon, at sunset and nightfall. These prayers can either be performed individually or in groups. The third tenet is Fasting (Soum). Ramadan is considered to be a holy month by Muslims. They believe that Prophet Muhammad got his first revelation during this month. Therefore, Muslims use this period to reflect and pray, and at the same time trying to correct their mistakes. Therefore, during this period, all Muslims are expected to fast and pray (AANM, 2011). Fourth, there is the pillar of Charity (Zakat) which requires that all Muslims have to give to charity every ye ar. This giving is usually done during the month of Ramadan, and the specific amount to give depends on the financial capabilities of the individual. The final pillar is Pilgrimage (Hajj). According to this pillar, all Muslims who have the financial and personal capability must perform the hajj once during their lifetime (AANM, 2011). All pilgrims wear white garments to in order to create a sense of equality before God. Currently, it is estimated that more than three millions pilgrims arrive in Mecca every year for the hajj. In a research conducted by the Pew Research Center (2011) on Muslim Americans, the results show

Fahrenheit 451 Essay Example for Free

Fahrenheit 451 Essay Fahrenheit 451 is a book that was published by Ray Bradbury in 1953. This book tells the story in which intellectual thought and books are illegal. According to the book, the futuristic firemen have the responsibility of setting fire to the books and any place that they reside. Numerous significant symbols occur in this book. In my opinion, fire, the Hearth and the Salamander, and the Phoenix are three of the most important symbols. The title of the book is an important symbol in and of itself. Ray Bradbury titled the book Fahrenheit 451 because 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which paper burns. Fire is a symbol of destruction. It’s significant because the main character, Guy Montag, and the rest of the firemen burn books because they are illegal. When seventeen-year-old Clarisse McClellan asks if Montag ever reads any of the books he burns, he laughs and replies â€Å"That’s against the law!† When Clarisse and Montag begin to talk more, Montag is taken aback by the different knowledge that Clarisse expresses to him. She tells him that firemen used to be sent out to stop fires, not start them. Montag couldn’t fight the sudden burning curiosity that over took all of his past beliefs. He began to collect books from each book burning and read them. The Hearth and the Salamander is the title of the first section of the book. Hearths are fireplaces that are traditionally placed in the center of the home and are a source of warmth. They represent the constructive use of fire, which Clarisse unintentionally shows Montag. After walking and talking with Clarisse, he realizes that he is not happy. The book states, â€Å"He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over and down on itself like a tallow skin, like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing and now blown out. Darkness. He was not happy.† The salamander on the other hand was once believed to be able to live in fire without being consumed by it. This represents the destructive side of fire. Salamanders are the names given to the fire trucks and are the official symbols of the firemen. When Clarisse meets Montag for the first time the book describes her as being, â€Å"hypnotized by the salamander on his arm.† The Phoenix is a huge symbol that is mentioned in the novel. Toward the end of the story, the city is completely destroyed. The Phoenix was a mystical bird that would burn itself up and then rise again. Granger explains the legend of the Phoenix to Montag when they are watching the fire. It’s used to symbolize the renewal of mankind. Like the Phoenix, they have the ability to rise from the ashes, and rebuild their society. These extremely significant symbols are what make the novel a fantastic story. Fire, the Hearth and the Salamander, and the Phoenix are three symbols that I chose to go into detail about. They each express a different meaning of the book. The thought of firemen starting fires is something that could possibly change when rebuilding the city. At the end of the book they have one thing in mind and that is to change people’s minds about books.

GEOLOGY - Earths Interior :: essays research papers fc

INTRODUCTION For millennia mankind has inhabited the third planet from the sun; the planet that supports life and is know to us as Earth. Although there has been life on Earth for quite sometime, it is only in the past few centuries that man has come to learn about what makes up the interior of this planet. The English scientist, Isaac Newton, can be seen as a pioneer in regards to learning about the Earth’s interior, as he calculated from his studies of planets and the force of gravity, that the average density of the Earth is twice that of surface rocks and therefore that the Earth's interior must be composed of a much denser material ¹. Our knowledge of what's inside the Earth has improved immensely since Newton's time, but his estimate of the density remains essentially unchanged. So what is this new knowledge of the Earth’s interior? PRESENT KNOWLEDGE ‘A round sphere with many layers, all varying in thickness, each having it’s own colour and taste†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ this is a description of a gob-stopper and also bares a close resemblance to the internal structure of the Earth; a sphere divided into three layers, differing in density, composition, strength, and state. The densest of these layers is the core, which is composed largely of metallic iron, with small amounts of nickel and other elements ². The less dense mantle then covers this layer, being composed of magnesium and iron silicates. The outermost layer is that of the crust, it has the lowest density of all the layers and can be separated further as its thickness varies greatly from place to place, with the difference being distinguished by land and sea and also its composition. For this reason the core is subdivided into the continental crust (average thickness 45km with a granitic composition) and the oceanic crust (average thickness 8km with a basaltic composition) ¹. Similarly the core can also be subdivided, but the difference is not one between compositions but one by physical state. The inner core of the Earth is solid iron; this is because it is under such high pressure, so high that temperature has no bearing on its state. The outer core has a balance between temperature and pressure so it’s iron composition is in the molten state. Rock strength can also add further categorisation to the Earths interior, bringing in the sphere layers: the mesosphere, asthenosphere, and lithosphere.