For All Victims by Antjie Krog

The article “Don't Blame The Eater,” written by David Zinczenko evokes readers the crucial impact that fast food restaurants have in today's nation's youth causing them to be over weight and have type 2ndiabetes. Throughout Zinczenko's argument he makes the reader view the consumer as a victim yet on the other hand, what he is trying to persuade us to believe by using logos,pathos,and ethos in his argument is that the food industry is the one making the nation's youth to increase obesity. The capacity of impressive questions and personal experience, he composed in the text he is able to comprehensively argue against the fast food industry. The author persuades us right away by starting of with a question: “Kids taking on McDonald's this

United Nations members, and fellow concerned citizens, the world must discuss with the consequences of the initiation of apartheid. Apartheid, the separation of races completely, has become a horrible era in South African history, and has killed many innocent victims. However, the blacks of South Africa brought death upon themselves. Therefore, please pledge your support to the whites of South Africa in an attempt to save as many lives as possible in as short a time as we have. One must acknowledge that

“What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger” (p. 28). In the scientific novel Survival of the Sickest by Sharon Moalem with Jonathan Prince, self-acclaimed “Medical Maverick” Dr. Moalem makes in-depth analyses of current human diseases that, ironically, may have led to the survival of mankind in the past. He presents a novel concept that greatly contradicts what have been universally accepted beliefs surrounding biology and the process of human evolution for a long time. With the use of myriad scientific studies and research, he formulates surprising theories about a positive correlation between disease and humanity. Moalem narrates the scientific world’s findings that strongly exemplify his assertions, however arbitrary they may seem at first. Three of the diseases that he examines, hemochromatosis, Type 1 diabetes, and favism, could have been particularly useful for resistance against other illnesses and survival in a historically harsh environment.

The short book Victims by Phillip Shaw Paludan highlights the killings of fifteen individuals during the Civil War in a remote Appalachian area in North Carolina. This area, called Shelton Laurel, was home to many families and most of them were poor. What Paludan writes is how the Civil War gave way for revenge. Because of the location of Shelton Laurel, the Confederates often tried to take control of the area and recruit many people for their war efforts. Unionist also wanted recruits from this area as well.

In this essay I intend to explore the narrative conventions and values, which Oliver Smithfield presents in the short story Victim. The short story positions the reader to have negative and sympathetic opinion on the issues presented. Such as power, identity and bullying. For example Mickey the young boy is having issues facing his identity. It could be argued that finding your identity may have the individual stuck trying to fit in with upon two groups.

America’s answer for dealing with crime prevention is locking up adult offenders in correctional facilities with little rehabilitation for reentry into society. American response for crime prevention for juvenile’s offenders is the same strategy used against adult offenders taken juvenile offenders miles away from their environment and placed in adult like prisons.

To kill a man is to take away everything he has, and ever will have; and in War, death is inescapable. Vietnam War veteran Tim O’Brien was drafted to fight in the War in 1969 and states in the book as his “character/narrator” self that he attempted an escape to Canada out of fear. But the stronger fear of people being ashamed of him took over and had him turning back to home to enlist in the U.S. Army. O’Brien published The Things They Carried in 1990 and explored the physical and mental realms of war-time combat with stories. These stories are based on his own experiences, but they include a fictionalized version of himself as “the narrator” and are said to only be what felt like the truth rather than being the actual truth. Despite this, the intention of these stories are to give readers the understanding of what it was like to be a soldier fighting for their life and country overseas. In the chapter “The Man I Killed”, the narrator tells the story of a man he killed outside the village of My Khe who was “a citizen and a soldier” of Vietnam (119). Although this man was the enemy, O’Brien’s character displays how ending another’s life in battle is not an easy pill to swallow. O’Brien, the narrator, uses repetitive descriptions, vivid and gory details, and his glum emotional response to the fatality he caused in the chapter to illustrate how feeling responsible for another man’s death can have traumatic effects on the mind.

Everything is a lie. Every spoken word is false, every written text is fallacious, and every form of media is erroneous. The speed and ease of information sharing has allowed people to submit anything they want into the mass jumble of online data called the Web. In his article, “Truth Lies Here,” Michael Hirschorn argues that the Web has become a place of fabricated facts and because of the massive amount of false information on the internet, nobody believes anything. “[D]isturbances in politics and media feel like symptoms of a larger epistemological, even civilizational, rot” (Hirschorn 64). Though this article may support Hirschorn’s argument, it is not strong, to say the least. This article lacks originality nor is it informative, it does little in addressing the opposition, and it contains numerous logical fallacies. All in all, this article is not persuasive.

“No one possesses a magic wand which the architects of the new dispensation could wave and, ‘Hey presto!’ things will be transformed overnight into a promised land flowing with milk and honey” (Tutu 3). After the apartheid, South Africa needed a way to reconcile the wrong that had taken place throughout the country. Instead of modeling the Nuremberg Trials from World War II, South Africa implemented Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC). This process “guarantees pardon for any confess crime ‘associated with a political objective’” (Ruden 2). Desmond Tutu, the archbishop of the Anglican Church in South Africa, praises and advocates the TRC; whereas, Sarah Ruden, an American living in South Africa, criticizes the RTC process based on two main objective points. Ruden sees the RTC process as not enforcing the laws as well as not giving victims enough reparations. While Ruden does present logistical evidence in her negative assessment of the TRC process, Tutu presents a more convincing assessment of the TRC process since he disputes using a trial system, while also explaining why economically and socially the TRC process was a successful solution to the post-apartheid society in South Africa.

Through the process of truth finding the true nature of South Africa’s apartheid system became a national memory. As a result, it was no longer possible for anyone in South Africa to pretend that the abuses perpetrated under apartheid did not happen. In almost all of the studies on truth commissions, the importance of hearing the truth is described as critical to the country’s ability to move forward. It is noted that reconciliation is impossible if a society wants to remain ignorant about its past. According to Hamber, “when countries are attempting to overcome a violent past, it is better to deal with the past through investigations, truth recovery, justice, and support for victims and survivors of violence than to ignore it.” Furthermore, all the literature on reconciliation says that if the truth is ignored it can breed resentment and create violence. In addition, the power of telling the truth allows victims to gain back the psychological control the perpetrators held over them. As Hamber notes,

As part of the beginning of the post-apartheid era, Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which “promoted reconciliation as an ideal, not only for nation-building, but also for individual healing” (Muiu 137). This idea for a safe environment in which both victims and perpetrators could vent and share their stories without judgement gave the commission it’s power. All participants were guided toward reconciliation and some were

Disgrace is a novel by the Nobel prize-winning writer Coetzee set in the post-apartheid period in South Africa, a period when people were trying their best to learn to forgive the past wrong done by the oppressive, ethnic government. The question of what it means to forgive is raised in the novel. Forgiveness is seen in the South African society as something conditional, the wrongdoers have to do something so that they can be forgiven. The Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act 34 of 1995 established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to help those victims who were uncomfortable to forgive. It forged a new relationship among amnesty, trust, and forgiveness- in forgiving, people are not being asked to forget, but to remember, so that such atrocities will not happen again. In this essay, I will first talk about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission so as to criticise its presumption of the significance of truth revelation. I will support my notion with reference to some scenes in the novel Disgrace and point out some characteristics of forgiveness. Then I will put forward what I think it means to forgive a past wrong and finally question the necessity of the existence of the Commission.

The degree of success achieved by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa is a topic of great debate. Following the end of apartheid in 1994, the TRC came into operation in South Africa on the 19th of July 1995 (Stanley 2001). After an era of repression and human rights abuses there was a significant need for a form of transitional justice that not only addressed the torment endured by much of the population but also ensured that the structural inequalities of the past were properly dealt with. It was essential that South Africa 's new political strategy encompassed the key aspects of social justice, the rule of law and reconciliation (Stanley 2001). A major aspect of TRCs is the promotion of truth to instigate a process of healing and result in successful reconciliation (Wilson 2003). However there are strong arguments that the TRC did not adequately address these issues and was therefore not successful in achieving the objectives set out in its mandate. This paper will discuss the main strengths and weaknesses of the TRC in South Africa as well as querying whether other forms of transitional justice would have been more appropriate for this situation. Furthermore it will discuss the use of the International Criminal Court around the world and whether this is a more appropriate form of transitional justice.

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission highly distinguished, controversial and also the most innovative mechanisms used by a state deprecative to provide a form of reverence for past perpetrators of human rights abuse.* This article will provide an extensive outlook on the perspective of victims of repression, this document will analyse and article all the advantages it will critically analyse all the advantages and disadvantages in relation to the TRC's main primary process: the amnesty inquiries, the victims’ hearings and the formulation of its policies on restoration and recovery. This interpretation will also provide beneficial notes on the past and pinpoint some important and necessary recommendations for how the

“Black Consciousness and the defeat of the inferiority complex instilled by apartheid institutions is a necessary precondition for progress in South Africa”. (Crais, 361) The South African Reader and Apartheid, 1948 - 1994 provide an abundant amount of first hand accounts that depict the clear differences in life experience and lifestyles of the white and black South Africans. Both texts give prime examples of what life was like under the apartheid regime from the precursors of apartheid all the way to the end of a very divided era. Throughout apartheid, the difference between was black and white South Africans was very apparent. Whites lived in better conditions, had better access to resources and education as well as higher quality resources, while blacks were continually mistreated and discriminated against.