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Part 7 out of .7America and why are we such, wait who are we?
Right now this is awkward, because I’m talking about us, and unlike all of these other ancient civilizations, we actually care about us, and so actual names might have to be used opposed to an offensively dismissive one page summery (See Ottoman Empire). So instead we actually make a halfway effort to explain our complex and short culture, while neglecting older civilizations because this is IB, so we don’t care. Anyways, unto America. Now the image of America today is either brave heroic patriots of awesomeness who are constantly protecting the world from the evil forces, (I hate Michael Bay) or oppressive racist jerks who are oppressing the free world out of our addiction to oil and general bullet happiness (I hate James Cameron), but America of 1914 is a totally different animal. If any of you have ever seen the ABC show Mad Men, and I know none of you have, its about America during the early 60, shows how normal is a totally different, their aren’t any black people in any prominent positions, the two political parities aren’t as well established, women are oppressed and child beating is A-ok. This is even more apparent in 1914, where we see a lot of elements of modern day American culture, but its still strangely alien. For example, women don’t have any rights, and while slavery has ended, the Civil war is not as long ago as we think (the war ends in 1865) there are still veterans of that conflict, and many ex slaves and children of slaves still around, so segregation is still in full swing. Since this isn’t American history, I’ll try to keep this bulleted, but because America is the single most powerful nation in the entire world from 1945. First off, America in 1914 is still a major power, but not ‘the’ major power. Even people who hate America today cannot deny that we are the single most powerful nation in the entire world and that we can change the fate of whole continents with a single press statement, but in 1914, we were just another power the world wasn’t dictated by America’ whim. England was the most powerful nation in the world, and France, Russia and Germany had more international prestige than we did, we were more like a sideline power who tired to not get involved. We weren’t pushovers, nobody messed with us directly, our power was largely localized within our borders and so we weren’t really factored into the great power conflicts of Europe, they respected us enough to not mess with us but largely left us alone. When we rebelled, we didn’t rebel to become yet another European power, and didn’t want to get involved in all of the mainland’s constant backbiting and power struggles, we had a nation to rule, lands to settle and natives to systematically exterminate, in fact, George Washington’s final address was urging Americans to not get involved in European politics, we had a huge country to manage and we are blessed with enough resources that we don’t need any reliance upon another nation in order to thrive. Their were two exceptions to our isolationist policy, first, we were involved in overseas trading in Europe and Asia, through not in the same way as Europe was, but we were trading in our way, due to the massive profits to be made. We were sort of an international trader, working with every single side, but too far away and powerful to directly confront. Our second foray into international politics that is relevant to this discussion is the fairly recent Spanish American war in 1898, where we basically drove the Spanish out of the last colonies in America and the Pacific. The war was a massive experiment for America, because it was basically the first time we had expanded overseas against another major power on established colonies, we had taken British, French and Spanish land before, but that was all on the mainland, which we felt we had a legitimate claim to (manifest destiny). But with the Spanish American war, we basically were like “Um, yeah, we want all of those lands for ourselves” so nicked Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, and very importantly, the Philippines, which I will cover later. So we had overseas colonies, as well as some spheres of influence in China, and we had obtained Hawaii. So we were part of the international stage, but we didn’t really want to be, WWI really didn’t mean anything to us. Basically, we will go into America in more sickening detail later, but for now what is important is the basic social structure of our society. Its worth noting that we are the only true Republic that isn’t actually a constitutional monarchy (Britain) or corrupt/inept (France). We aren’t perfect, we are racist, sexist, and close minded, but we are at least a democracy and we, as we do today, really believe in our democracy, which alienates us from the monarchies across Europe, specifically Russia, while simultaneously making us afraid of making commitments that lasted more than 8 years, due to our constantly changing leadership. And even if the President favored an idea, his congress could shut him down if they weren’t onboard with the idea. Finally, making money is a huge importance to America. We have the two party system at this point, with our old friends, the Democrats and the Republicans, but I’ll go into them later, because America enters the war late (as usual), but basically along with Democracy, Capitalism, was our big founding ideal, and it was at its most powerful in the 1914s. Big Business was in full power, and we weren’t keen on letting the government manage things too directly, through Theodore Roosevelt had set the stage for change earlier. Ok, I’m done, because America is complex and I’ll cover us in more detail when we actually you know...join the war.

Mah WWI study guide part 1 What i've been doing all this time

Part one, who were the Germans and why were they such massive assholes?
The Germans-We know the Germans are the bad guys in every movie ever, but who are these guys? Why did they fight so well? What is the deal with the pointy hats and fancy boots? Why were they such massive assholes? Basically, Germany was for most if its history made up of a thirty to 500 small nation states. These countries were all of Germany ethnically, IE the people were German, but they didn't have much in common. Then about 40 years before WWI, they were united in a single nation, show below.

The region of Prussia, in northern Germany, being the largest and most technologically of the various German states was able to bring Germany together. The Prussians have a reputation for being very harsh, very militaristic, and very badass. They were ruled by an Emperor, and had a nobility called the Junkers (don't laugh). Germany nobility, in contrast to the more bohemian French, were encouraged to be out going. The ideal young noble would like classical music, dress in a military outfit, go riding and hunting in his spare time, served in the army and be physically fit. German people were from a military culture, bravery, patriotic spirit, and stoic badassness were expected of their people, combined with being generally conservative, anti Semitic and super harsh. Now its a stereotype to call them a bunch of barbarians, as German Opera is second only to Italy, and German composers include Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven, so they aren't brutes, but were regarded as crass brutes by the British and French, and culturally are much more “Gruff” to put it nicely. Ironically, the Germans greatly admired the British...less so the French. The newly formed nation of Germany was ruled by the Kaiser (German for Caesar, meaning Emperor), Kaiser William I (pronounced Will-ham its annoying) united Germany, but it was his second in command, Otto Von Bismarck who was the diplomatic genius who made Germany. Basically, he provoked Austria, Russia, and France into attacking Germany, forcing the small German states to unite into one country for defense. The Franco Prussian war, fought 40 years before WWI is important, as the Germans owned France, and Kaiser William I forced France’s Napoleon III to kiss his boots in public and declare him “The new sun king” (the sun king was the title awarded France’s greatest king Louis XIV). France was the greatest nation on mainland Europe until their defeat in 1870, and resented the German induced humiliation. Following the defeat of France, the various states united into the German Empire in 1871. While unified with a centralized government, Germany was still very much divided, apart from Prussians, you had Bavarians, Saxons, Hessians, and ethnic Germans living in other countries. While technically a constitutional monarchy, the German parliament could only dictate the control of war funds, the real power lay in the hands of the Kaiser, actually it lay in the hands of Otto Von Bismarck, who controlled the old and basically senile Kaiser Wilhelm I. Politically, the Germans admired the British, as they were very much alike. They were both into physical activity, they both wanted their nobility to actually run stuff rather then sit around being spoiled twats (france), and they were both militaristic racist humorless gits. The English Royal Family was German since George I, and ironically the last German/English king would die a little before WWI the new king George the V was purely English. Finally, Germany is the "emotionally abused child of Europe, who grows up to be 6’6 and really pissed off", as while Germany had been trying to unite for centuries, the rest of Europe didn’t want such a powerful country coming about, and kept dividing them for roughly 1500 years. So Germany is pissed at the rest of the world and eager to assert themselves, Germany wanted colonies, but they were only able to get some crappy colonies in Africa and China because everything else had been taken. As for the pointy hats...yeah I don't know. The ruler of Germany at the time of WWII was the mentally disable Kaiser Wilhelm II. Oh right racism. Now lest get something clear, all of the Europeans were racist pricks who hated Jews, the Germans at the time were just a little more direct about it, through in one of heir African colonies 1904-1907, the Germans wiped out two separate African tribes, the Herore and Namaque. I mean, we don’t care because you know, their Africans, but basically the Germans used camps and mass murder to eliminate 70% of the Herore (65 thousand) and 50% of the Namas (ten thousand) in what is modern day Namibia (West of South Africa). I’m not saying that Germans are addicted to wiping other people off of the planet, just interesting in hindsight.

Call of Duty 4 mordern warfare

Hey guys. Now college apps are draining my free time, so sparse posting for another say......three weeks? Then i'll be back in action. But this is my school newspaper review of COD 4 enjoy
from
EE

Call of Duty 4

Remember the days when playing video games would make you nerdy and unpopular. In those days, when a girl asked her friends what she should get her boyfriend, her friends would sarcastically suggest a football or a knife or something equally overly macho. Now its just “Call of duty 4’ cause pretending you’re Special Forces is the manly way to spend your time, and in the same way GI Joes aren’t dolls, CoD is apparently not a video game apparently. Call of Duty, for those of you who have been frozen for years and recently unearthed, is a video game series until recently about World War II. In contrast to its rival series, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty has pretentious to realism, and tries to avoid American jingoism, traditionally having you play as the allies during the WWII games, since Russia really won the war. But I digress. Call of Duty 4 is a departure from their normal format, and is about modern warfare. Now of course, this is a departure from pretentious to fact into near fiction, but you know what, that’s alright, they are trying something new. One of the reason why most video games like to show WWII however is because it avoids controversy, nobody objects to killing Nazis because they went so far out of their way to make themselves evil that even the Soviets come off as good guys. Not to say that the allies didn’t do horrible things in the war, its just easier to get away by showing the conflict in black and white terms, which is harder with modern warfare, because modern wars tend to not be far. America tends to have the best weapons, best training and most advanced tactics, while their enemies are people in small third war countries using outdated rifles and machetes and guns given to them by us, which isn’t good drama. You can’t exactly have a game where you walk around in an Iraqi city for weeks trying to figure out which civilian secretly wants to kill you before being killed by a car bomb. Also modern warfare is sticky, its full of awkwardness, like if invading a sovereign nation to install a puppet government is morally justified, or the tricky issue of civilians causalities. One of the advantages of video game warfare that your enemies have the good nature to never surrender and all of their bases/cities are fun by robots rather than people so you never have the problem of accidentally shooting a innocent laborer or dramatically breaking down a door to find a group of children looking at you with terrified expressions. Also, your enemies die in a very dignified manner, falling down babbling in some foreign language that only a few people playing the game could understanding. You never have to deal with men lying on the ground, crying out for their mothers, sobbing for mercy, and lamenting there families who will suffer without them. Modern Warfare makes this even more awkward because the Special Forces are renown for having a very loose understanding of morals. CoD4 tries to address some of these issues, by not having you fight in any wars but instead fighting rebels in Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Call of Duty 4 is a good game. The graphics are astounding, the guns are all accurate, the fighting is clever and the combat gives me the wonderful feeling of being awesome. But it doesn’t really invent anything, it just re-masters the First Person Shoot format (the games where you are basically a walking gun). I still can get shot three times, hid behind a table, and then be totally fine, I can still use my comrades as human shields and avoid any actual death, I can still use a machine gun without any throwback while running down a cliff. I’ll admit, this game does it better than most, people die fairly easily, and charging a tank or machine gun will cause you to die, but I’m still able to kill at least twenty guys with guns with a pistol, and I can shoot a man in the stomach only stuns him, so there still is a lot of silliness. Also my comrades make things too easy for me, at no point do I have any real feeling of “ok what do I do now” and have to use my own initiative. Now some of you are asking, “Um, why do you want such realism” and I respond, firstly it is so much more challenging. There is a level where I have to defend a village form a bunch of Eastern Europeans because they are...Russian and stuff, and I thought it would be cool, like the last scene from Saving Private Ryan, I’d have to be clever. But instead, my comrades essentially just escort me from house to house, preventing me from being hurt but also from actually feeling like I’m making a difference and the lack of actual dying makes it very unsatisfying. And secondly, realistic combat is what actual Special Forces have to go through.

Now the final issue of CoD4, what is it trying to say? You play as the US Marines fighting some generic Arab rebels, and the British SAS fighting generic Russian rebels, but both allies are show doing so many horrible things that I wonder if the game is trying to make a statement about our foreign policy. When you die in this game, little quotes appear about your death, and almost half of them are anti war quotes. So is it trying to make as statement about the irony of preventing war with guns? There are some pretty cool moments like when (Spoiler that has already been spoiled to you a million times) the American team is totally wiped out by a nuke that goes off, and you play your character as you crawl around in the ruble of a destroyed city before dying alone and forgotten (oh and Snap kills Mr. D). But despite that, at no point do I really feel like I’m fighting a real modern war and I have to face the consequences of that. Like you know, the actual implication of ordering an air strike on a city full of civilians? Or why these guys are rebelling other than “Duh, evil foreign people”. In short, it’s a good game, but doesn’t bring anything new to the industry.