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According to Edward Abbey, (who I will quote a lot in this essay) every individual should be involved, share in their responsibility, and be committed to speak the truth, especially the unpopular truth. “Communism has been viewed as a gross evil, the Soviet Union a dangerous enemy, that in certain mediums. America and its Allies appear as continents of light, exploding with human happiness…Furthermore we exist in a state of ideological war with the powers of totalitarianism--the “present danger”--which makes it not merely heretical but treasonous to question our own government’s policies, to doubt the glory of planetary capitalism, to object to the religion of endless economic growth” (Abbey 169).
Upon visiting the International Space Station program outside of Moscow, in a secretive place called Star City, my group from Albuquerque was invited on a guided tour through the cosmonaut and military base. My feelings were--that as an American--I would be targeted as a capitalist and possibly mugged, or worse yet, killed. But much to my disbelief, I was proven wrong. The NASA people and Russians we had met were working together in the lab, sharing their common interests in MIR, and the International Space Station (ISS). I felt fortunate to have walked through the base as a guest, and treated with dignity by the Russian military. The amazing amount of respect that Russians had displayed for our culture was unbelievable considering the political hatred that has existed towards Americans since well before my birth. They answered all of our questions very thoughtfully and with sincerity.
Any visitor can see is a great deal of conformity for both cultures to labour together side by side; such as learning the Russian or English language to know how to put a craft in space. Star City is in very poor shape but you don’t hear NASA complaining. The buildings were once top of the line- in the 1950’s. There are many other problems with the base, but besides that, those recent space missions (such as ISS) have brought two very different cultures together without political or social strife. Ten years ago it would have been different, gratefully, much has changed between the relations of the US and Russia. They have accepted each other (to a degree) in space missions.
We don’t need to slaughter each other because someone has had a different life than us, or the other person is a smelly hippie, or perhaps we don’t like someone else worshiping a god named Bob.
1) What is the relationship between federal debt and national defence?
Military spending is not a normal economic activity according to Columbia University’s, Seymour Melman. The reason federal debt is so large in the U.S. is to support a massive defence budget. The record deficit this year (for the U.S.) is at $521 billion, but Bush requested Congress to boost military spending by 7.1 percent to $402 billion and increase homeland security funding 9.7 percent to $30 billion. And the Senate approved this plan in March, 2004 . April, 04.
Since 1945, the United States has spent cumulatively $4.2 trillion dollars on its military account. What problems would this cause? As quoted in One Life at a Time, Please, Ed Abbey restated the words of Wilson from Patriotic Gore (1962): "We Americans, whose public officials keep telling us we live in the “Free World,”…are expected to pay staggering taxes of which…70 percent goes not only for nuclear weapons capable of depopulating whole countries but also for bacteriological and biological ones which make it possible for us to poison the enemy with every abominable disease from pneumonia and encephalitis to anthrax, cholera, diphtheria and typhoid…If we refuse to contribute to these researches we can be fined and clapped into jail…We are, furthermore, like the Russians…And while all this expenditure is going on for the purpose of sustaining the United States as a more and more unpopular world power, as few funds as possible are supplied to educate and civilize the Americans themselves, who at worst live a life of gang warfare…in the buried slum streets of cities outside of which they can imagine no other world" (Abbey 171).About 52 million people in our country are suffering with inadequate housing and health care while our arms continue to build mountains around us. This structural arrangement defends capitalist principles, and strengthens the misuse of our resources-as well as other countries water supplies, oil reserves, and the list goes on. The Moscow Times reports, “this wider deficit suggests that the U.S. is living beyond its means, borrowing from abroad to pay for consumption at home…we need $1.5 billion or $2 billion a day coming into this country to finance this deficit.” Gravely there is a concern that the deficit will drive up the cost of borrowing, undermine the already dropping value of the dollar, and threaten the world economy. There is an expected 10 year deficit, which will bring unknown problems if not corrected immediately.
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melanie mae
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Ebuenyi Ikenna D. | May 12th, 2004
Is just about truths,our theirs and that of the guys on top at the moment.
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