I need you to read 2 issue proposal documents i posted and answer the question on the instruction document.I need you to make two peer review one from each issue proposal documents
Benjamin 2 Preethi I. Benjamin Professor Diane Pearman ENGL 1302 Section – 0042 30 September 2020 Issue Proposal: Effects of Capitalism on War Over the past few decades, businesses are becoming more involved with government and policymaking. The role that corporations play in foreign policy, especially war, is even more outstanding, but not surprising: money must come from someone so who else better to fund war than those personally invested in it? The Defense sector cash in over $200 million for political contributions, trying to secure “government defense contracts and earmarks and influencing the defense budget to make those contracts more likely,”, meaning companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing who manufacturing military-grade weapons and advanced technologies influence bills regarding the budget of the Department of Defense (Novak). Meanwhile, the Energy/Natural Resources sector contributes over $300 million in lobbying, with the oil and gas industry leading in its spending (“Energy/ Natural Resources: Lobbying, 2020.”). One of the reasons is due to the U.S. military being the world's single largest institutional consumer of petroleum (McCarthy). If its budget is kept high, the military can spend more on oil and that profit would then be pulled back into the cycle of PAC money and lobbying to support candidates that keep these companies in their heads while they write bills that benefit them. A prime example of this situation is Rep. Buck McKeon, who was the chairman of the House of Armed Services Committee. Much of his campaign contribution came from the defense sector alone: $711,000 out of a whopping $1.98 million was raised to win his 2012 re-election which he then used to introduce a new section of the National Defense Authorization Act that would “authorize the military to pursue virtually anyone suspected of terrorism, anywhere on earth,” and more importantly, has implications to “make the war on terror a permanent and limitless aspect of life,” (“Rep. Buck McKeon - California District 25.”; “A Conflict Without End” ). His top eight defense contributors, including but not limited to: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and BAE systems all lobbied in favor of this bill (“Top Spenders”). At layman’s terms, companies invested in this man’s bill and values of because it makes it easier for the president to justify war with insufficient means because where there is an opportunity for war, there is an opportunity for profiting from it. Companies that benefit from war in any way, slip into the government, and influence policymakers so they can keep cashing in money while the deaths of innocent lives rack up because of their greed. These companies sign bills and lobby policies that suggest and incentivize aggressive tactics in foreign policy, that require higher military spending, that would give any reason for the government to employ them. In times of peace, they talk about the “inevitable” war between U.S. and China, and Russia, and North Korea and to keep preparing, just in case. And so, the preparations are kept up, from weapon of mass destruction to weapon of mass destruction—fiction or real. This constant state of paranoia and readily combatant forces, with nuclear weapons at our disposal creates a climate in which war and climate thrive—was it not the U.S that invaded Iraq for this very reason, and overthrew its leader, who nationalized oil so his country can thrive off its revenue, and replaced him to privatize oil production for its own means? All of this planning, and dare I say, conniving, leads to my claim that capitalism, the desire to privatize a means of production or resource, promotes more war and even causes it in some cases. This sequence of events was no mistake—it was premeditated. At the end of the day, the real winners of war are not the Americans that are supposedly protected, nor the American government for tracking down enemies of the state. It is the corporations that profit off war because the land they win over contain precious resources. In the case of privatization of oil after the end of the Iraq War, where foreign companies now dominate the oil production there. It is because they created a whole industry centralized around war and death and making millions of it: “70% of Lockheed’s $53.8 billion net sales in 2018 came from the U.S. government” when it employed Lockheed Martin to manufacture the aircrafts, missiles, and fighter jets probably used to bomb the tens of thousands of civilian deaths in the Iraq War (Frohlich and Brynes). Without hi-tech weapons there is no war, and without war there is no need for hi-tech weapons, much less the corporations that produce them. Due to this, corporations that call for a stronger defense only do so because they are the ones benefitting from it in the end—they make the money, they pay for the leaders they want in the government to have control over war through them, and they get to keep the change, too, when the government employs them for the job they asked for: creating weapons. This is the capitalism that I deem a problem in the U.S: the one that so readily hands over the lives of innocents, of families, of the poor and the sickly, to fill its pockets. It is a problem when investors were waving handfuls of cash to throw at defense and oil companies because of the chance of war the beginning of this very year (Klebnikov). The blatant disrespect of life when it comes to money is so vile and sinister, but it predominates our society greatly with the rise of capitalism. We value monetization over peace and that is the most disgraceful sin we commit as a first world country with the responsibility to share our resources and wealth—not steal it from other countries. I want to take pride in my country for helping the unfortunate rather than be ashamed of its war crimes. And frankly, I do not want to build a community where we cannot empathize with people because they are halfway across the world and are viewed as an obstacle to modern U.S. capitalism. That is why this issue is important: it is a question to how humane we are to our own species. Because of the intricacies and complexity of political matters, especially ones regarding war and mishandling of foreign policy, I picked only a select number of examples in which my claim that capitalism promotes war or conflict is proven true: Indonesia filing a lawsuit against Exxon Mobil for violation of human rights, Halliburton profiting off the oil after the Iraq war (I want a more in depth research in how the Iraq war started to understand the magnitude of the issue), which companies practice war profiteering, the IPC conflict resulting 5 year war in Oman, and the Brent Roger Wilkes scandal. I plan to research each of these examples thoroughly to see which ones best fit my essay. I also look forward to researching the opposing perspective of my claim. While I know this debate is sensitive and incredibly complex in ways that I am sure I will never fully understand by the end of this paper, I chose this topic because I live in an incredibly powerful country. I am not saying it out of pride, or narcissism, but because it is true and terrifyingly so. Yet as a country, we lack the sense of accountability of our actions; there is no finesse in our handling of conflict, and many see us as a brutish force with no consideration for others. We can blame it on the government, but I believe that the people themselves should be held responsible. I do not want to be naïve and ignorant of my country’s sins, and neither should the people that will read this. These are wars. We take for granted that its heavy casualties are just statistics of another country to us, but they were once people—tens of thousands of mothers, fathers, and children. And I cannot forget that it was our money that killed them. Works Cited “A Conflict Without End.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 May 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/opinion/17tue1.html. “Energy/ Natural Resources: Lobbying, 2020.” OpenSecrets.org, The Center for Responsive Politics, 2020, www.opensecrets.org/industries/lobbying.php?cycle=2010. Frohlich, Thomas C., and Hristina Byrnes. “20 Companies Profiting the Most From War.” 247 Wall St, 24/7 Wall St., 20 Mar. 2020, 247wallst.com/special-report/2019/12/29/20-companies-profiting-the-most-from-war-3/5/. Klebnikov, Sergei. “War Stocks Rise Amid U.S. Tensions With Iran, Lockheed And Northrop Shares Jump.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 6 Jan. 2020, www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/01/06/war-stocks-rise-amid-us-tensions-with-iran-lockheed-and-northrop-shares-jump/. McCarthy, Niall. “Report: The U.S. Military Emits More CO2 Than Many Industrialized Nations [Infographic].” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 13 June 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/06/13/report-the-u-s-military-emits-more-co2-than-many-industrialized-nations-infographic/. Novak, Viveca. “Defense: Background.” OpenSecrets.org, The Center for Responsive Politics, Aug. 2013, www.opensecrets.org/industries/background.php?cycle=2004. “Rep. Buck McKeon - California District 25.” OpenSecrets, The Center for Responsive Politics, www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/buck-mckeon/industries?cid=N00006882. “Top Spenders.” OpenSecrets, The Center for Responsive Politics, 2013, www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/bills/summary?cycle=2020. 1 Mijares Castaneda Fernando Mijares Castaneda Professor Diane Pearman 30 September 2020 ENGL 1302 Section – 0042 Issue Proposal: Can Architecture fix social and material issues With growing inequality, racial issues, increase suicide rates, stagnate wages just as a sample of the social and material ills present in the USA architecture historical present and power over people being lessened can architecture really fix social and material issues if not just alleviate them. Architecture in the past was a place of morning, knowledge, and power with cathedrals teaching people about God just with its glass pains, chateau towering over the peasantry showing the power the nobility had over them. New and innovative designs marking historical revolutions; industrial brought steel, Romans had concrete, etc. Architecture in our time has some blame for these issues seen in that “18% of licensed practitioners are women” and “2% of licensed architects in the United States are African American” (Cite 3). How can architecture fix any racial issue socially in the US if it has not done so in its own firms? Why not put our resources on other ways to try to fix these ills? I say that architecture is capable of molding and forming memories, desires, and ways of thinking with the society you live in. The international architecture, first creator of malls, Le Corbusier’s’ Park Hill Flats. There is a great movement of past and present for pushing architecture to design for the common person and improve him. To design suburbs and community seen with Voisin’s plan which was to redesign destroyed Paris after ww2 as an unseparated city where economic segregation would not exist and city slums would be no more