AcharyaChanakya/simple-wikipedia huggingface dataset:
The problem is that recently, the greenhouse effect has become stronger. This is because humans have been using large amounts of fossil fuels, which release carbon dioxide when they are burned. Since carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, it has caused the planet to warm over the past 150 years.
About 10,000 years ago, before people started burning large amounts of fossil fuels, there were 260 to 280 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, but now there is over 400 ppm. Most scientists say that having 350 ppm or less is safe for the environment and that species on the planet can adapt to this level. Higher levels can make severe problems for animal and marine life that are already being seen today, such as ocean acidification.
The greenhouse effect was first proposed by Joseph Fourier in 1824. Mars, Venus and other planets with atmospheres also have greenhouse effects. The effect on Venus is especially strong because Venus has so much CO. This is why Venus is hotter than Mercury, even though Mercury is closer to the sun. The first person to predict that carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels (and other combustion processes) could cause global warming was Svante Arrhenius.
A World War is a war in which most of the countries in the world fight or help.
There have been two World Wars so far, World War I and World War II. Several wars such as the Seven Years' War were fought in many places around the world, but they were wars among European countries.
After World War II, many people were scared that a World War III might start, probably between the United States and the countries of Europe, on one side, and the Soviet Union, and maybe China, on the other side. After World War II, countries had many powerful weapons, including jet bomber airplanes that could carry many powerful bombs fast and far, nuclear weapons (or atomic bombs) which could destroy many buildings and kill many people instantly, and missiles which could carry nuclear weapons to other countries very fast.
This time when many people were afraid that World War III might start was called the Cold War. After the dawn of the Soviet Union, people were not as afraid that World War III might begin. However, many countries still have powerful weapons, and still could use them.
Albert Einstein said, "I don't know what weapons countries might use to fight World War III, but wars after that will be fought with sticks and stones" -- because a third world war would probably be so big that it would destroy civilization.
European
European may mean:
Ionizing radiation is a process in physics where something sends out particles or waves that can ionize an atom or molecule through atomic interactions.
The strength of ionizing radiation depends on the energy of the individual particles or waves, and not a function of the number of particles or waves present. The material that the radiation can ionize depends on the ionization energy of the material.
Ionizing radiation can be electromagnetic radiation or subatomic particles.
Electromagnetic:
Subatomic particle radiation includes:
Some radiation can go through the human body and other objects. Usually when people use the term radiation, they are talking specifically about potentially harmful types of ionizing radiation. If something produces this sort of radiation, we can say it is radioactive.
There is a little radiation all around us all the time, which people's bodies are used to, but larger amounts of radiation can make people sick or kill them. Natural ionizing radiation is produced by radioactive decay of some chemical elements, such as uranium. Stars and other things in outer space also make radiation. "See cosmic ray". Some isotopes that are radioactive only stay radioactive for much less than a second. Other things can stay radioactive for thousands of years.
People and anything that lives gives off radiation naturally, because of the potassium and Carbon-14 inside.
Some of the machines that make radiation are called particle accelerators. Scientists use these machines to make radiation so they can study it.
X-ray machines also make radiation, so doctors can see the inside of the human body and help people. Nuclear weapons (atomic weapons) use a nuclear reaction to produce massive amounts of energy, in the form of heat, light, and radiation. This radiation is spread by the dust, ash, and smoke produced by the blast.
Nuclear reactors are used to make electricity. They make a lot of radiation, but the reactors are built carefully to keep the radiation inside the reactor. But many people are afraid that if there were a problem with the reactor, radioactive material could escape into the environment, harming or killing many animals and people. Also, the parts of the reactor stay radioactive, and can kill people, for hundreds or thousands of years, so people are not sure where they can keep parts of old reactors safely away from people.
X-ray machines also make radiation, so doctors can see the inside of the human body and help people. Nuclear weapons (atomic weapons) use a nuclear reaction to produce massive amounts of energy, in the form of heat, light, and radiation.
Nuclear reactors are used to make electricity. They make a lot of radiation, but the reactors are built carefully to keep the radiation inside the reactor.
Alpha radiation is used in static eliminators and smoke detectors. Ionizing radiation are used to sterilize medical instruments. It is also used in food irradiation and the sterile insect technique.
Click is an onomatopoeia. It is sometimes used to indicate pressing the button on a computer mouse.
Buzz Aldrin
Dr. Edwin Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin, Jr., retired Colonel (born January 20, 1930) is an American pilot and astronaut. He was one of the Apollo 11 astronauts and the second person to have ever walked on the moon.
Aldrin was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. He earned a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from the military academy West Point in 1951. After graduate and postgraduate studies, he received a ScD in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1963.From his earlier activity as a fighter pilot in the Korean War he won several medals, including the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal.
Aldrin was the second person in history to set foot on the Moon (after Neil Armstrong, during the Apollo 11 mission).
The Lunar Lander Module landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969.
He was 39 when he set foot on the moon.
He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the NASA Exceptional Service Medal. After the death of Michael Collins in 2021, Aldrin became the last surviving member of the Apollo 11 crew.
Aldrin left NASA in March 1972. He has been married three times: to Joan Archer, to Beverly Zile, and to his current wife, Lois Driggs Cannon. He had three children with Joan, named James, Janice and Andrew. He married Cannon on Valentine's Day, 1988. He is the oldest contestant on the television series "Dancing with the Stars". He competed in 2010.
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease caused by bacteria. In the past, people called it consumption.
TB is caused by several types of mycobacteria, usually "Mycobacterium tuberculosis". The disease usually attacks the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body.
The bacteria can travel through the air and spread from one person to the next. This happens when infected people cough, sneeze, or spit.
Of every 100 people with TB, between five and ten people show symptoms. In these people, the disease is called "active". Tuberculosis kills more than half of the people who are infected if they do not get treatment.
Diagnosis of active TB relies on radiology. Doctors often look at an X-ray of the chest. In addition, they check body fluids. These fluids have microbes in them, which are grown in cell cultures. The cell cultures are then analysed to see if the person is infected with TB.
If the patient has TB, but does not show symptoms, the disease is 'latent'. Doctors use a skin test, called the Mantoux test, to detect latent TB. They often do blood tests too.
There is a vaccine against some forms of tuberculosis. It is called bacillus Calmette–Guérin vaccine.
TB used to be easily treated and cured with antibiotics. However, the bacterium is now highly resistant to most antibiotics. This resistance makes treatment difficult. Many different kinds of antibiotics need to be given over a long period of time. There is a form of tuberculosis that is resistant to "all" drugs.
Tuberculosis can have many symptoms. The most common include:
Experts believe that one third of the world population is infected with "M. tuberculosis". New infections occur at a rate of one per second. In 2007, about 13.7 million chronic cases were active globally. In 2010, about 8.8 million new cases developed and nearly 1.5 million people died from the disease, most of them in developing countries. The number of tuberculosis cases has been decreasing since 2006, and new cases have decreased since 2002.
Tuberculosis does not happen at the same rate around the world. About eighty percent of the population in many Asian and African countries test positive for TB, but only five to ten percent of people in the United States do.
People usually get tuberculosis because of a weakened immune system. Many people with HIV and AIDS can also get tuberculosis.
American (word)
The word American is used to mean a person or a thing from the United States or any country in the Americas - North America, Central America, or South America. In English, the most common use of this word is to mean a person or a thing from the United States.
Even though the islands in the Caribbean Sea are close to the Americas, people who speak English do not usually use the word "American" for people or things from these islands.
A Native American is someone who is mostly descended from the people who lived in the Americas before the Europeans arrived. Native Americans are also called First Nations and "Indians".
There is no language "American." Some important languages used in the Americas are English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. Some people still use Native American languages. Quechua is the largest.
Grain is the seeds of some special kinds of grass. The main types of commercial grain crops are cereals. People grow different kinds of grain as food. The different kinds of grain are perhaps one of the most important foods in the world.
Some kinds of grain are:
87% of all grain grown by farmers around the world is maize. Grains contain carbohydrates that people can eat. In poorer countries, grains are a large part of the food supply. In richer countries, they are still important as food, but not as important as in poorer countries. Growing grain uses a lot of water. About 1,000 tons of water is needed to grow one ton of grain.
Many different foods are made from different types of grain. Grain is often ground into a powder called flour. Flour can be made into breads, cakes, or noodles.
Different kinds of beer are made from barley malt, wheat, and other grains.
Tortillas are made from a special flour of dried maize (corn) called "masa".
A clause is a part of a sentence. Each clause is made up of a subject (who or what the sentence is about) and a predicate (what happens in a sentence). Each predicate has only one main verb. "I love you" is a sentence which has only one clause. "I love you and I will always love you" is a sentence which has two clauses. The two clauses are "I love you" and "I will always love you". These clauses are joined together by the word "and", which is a conjunction). Clauses may be independent or dependent.
Two clauses can be joined with a pronoun. For example: "I live in London, which is in England". Here, "I live in London" is the first clause, and "which is in England" is the second clause. The word "which" is a pronoun which takes the place of "London". It joins the two clauses. A sentence can contain many clauses. But sentences with fewer clauses are easier to understand.
A simple sentence may also be called an independent clause. It may be a part of a compound or complex sentence, but it can also stand on its own as a simple sentence (or independent clause).
A subordinate clause also called a dependent clause is one which cannot stand by itself. This is because it does not express a complete thought. It contains both a subject and a verb. A subordinate clause always depends on a main clause. The main clause is almost always an independent clause, therefore the main clause by itself makes sense and can stand on its own. However, the subordinating clause does not. For example, "I love you" makes perfect sense left on its own. However, "and always will", does not. The only time a sentence can be made up of only dependent clauses is when they are joined by correlative conjunctions: conjunction pairs like "either/or", "neither/nor", and "not only/but also".
Marxism is the name for a set of political and economic ideas.
The basic ideas are that:
These ideas come from the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their most notable work is The Communist Manifesto. They have had a lot of influence in many countries. Marxism influenced other political views, such as social democracy and reformist socialism. Both believe that the ideas of Marx and Engels can be achieved through what Marx called 'bourgeois democracy'.
People disagree a lot on how a Marxist society should be organized: "Marxist political economists differ over their definitions of capitalism, socialism and communism. These differences are so fundamental, the arguments among... Marxist political economists have sometimes been as intense as their oppositions to capitalism".
Marxism says that people in the world are organized into different groups, or classes, based on what they do for work.
Most people are called "workers" because they work in factories, offices, or farms for money. They belong to the "working class" (or "proletariat"). These people do not own the factories they work in or the materials they need for their work.
Another group, who are not as big as the working class, are "capitalists" (or "bourgeoisie"). They own the factories, land, and buildings that the workers work in. They also own some of the tools the workers have to use. Marx calls capitalists the "Ruling Class" because they live off of the work of all the workers. He also says that the capitalists own the government, army, and courts.
In Marxist views, capital is the "means of production" and money which the capitalist can invest in different places of business, so that they can "profit" or gain more capital.
Most workers work for companies owned by capitalists or "petit-bourgeois" (small business owners). The capitalist pays the worker in exchange for the worker's time. The capitalist has bought a period of time from the worker, which the worker must then use to labor for the capitalist. According to Marxist thinking, this is the only way that a capitalist can create extra money from a commodity (a piece of merchandise). The capitalist exploits the worker's time as much as they can. The capitalist receives a certain price for the commodity the worker made. The capitalist builds up capital by paying the worker less than that price. In this way, the capitalist exploits the worker's labor by:
Here is an example of exploitation of labor. Jane is a shoemaker. She works for Michael, who owns a shoe factory that can make 60 pairs of shoes in a day. Jane makes 60 pairs of shoes every day. Michael pays Jane $20 a day. However, Michael sells each pair of shoes for $2 each. This means he makes $120 in a day. After he pays Jane her $20 wage, Michael has $100 left over. However he then has to pay for materials which cost $1 for each pair, so that's $60 each day. Then running expenses of the factory cost him $10 a day. So he only gets $30 at the end of the day for managing the business. This remaining wealth is called "Profit" or "Surplus [extra] Value." In other words, even though Jane makes 60 shoes every day, she only gets paid the value of 10 pairs of shoes. The rest of the day, while she is making the other 50 shoes, she is creating money for her boss. Her labor is making him richer and helping him earn money.
It is this Surplus Value, or Profit, which Marxism thinks as an exploitation of labor. This exploitation allows the smaller class (capitalists) to live without working while making a profit, while the bigger class (the workers) have to work for the capitalists to survive under usually poor working conditions.
Marxism says that factories, tools, and work places cannot create new value on their own. They are like a blueberry bush: it has no value on its own. People have to create that value by laboring. For example, someone spends a day picking blueberries. Those blueberries can now be traded or eaten because of the labor that was put in to pick them.
Marxist thinking claims that capitalists and workers are constantly struggling. They call this "Dialectical Materialism." This is the idea that the history of humans is the history of conflict between classes. Different classes with different interests argue or fight each other. Social change (or in its absence, social stagnation) is the result.
Marxism says that capitalists want to exploit the workers as much as possible and make their pay as low as they can. The capitalists do this to create as much profit for themselves as possible, as quickly as possible. Workers, on the other hand, have to struggle to keep their wages up and to keep the "rate of exploitation" low, so that they can live more peaceful lives. This is what Marxism calls "class struggle": where workers and their bosses fight against each other to gain for themselves.
Marxists think that all of written human history has been divided by economic classes. One example is feudal society (a medieval society controlled by feudal lords and nobles). The ruling class got their power and wealth from the labor of peasants (farmers). But as peasants demanded more and more for themselves, small shopkeepers and tradespeople began to appear. Many of these people formed guilds and eventually began to employ workers. These workers were able to gain wealth for themselves at these jobs. These historical events created capitalism.
In this way, Marxists think that history has been pushed forward by class struggle. They think that change will be born from this struggle, just like capitalism was. However, they also think that capitalism will give way to communism; as the exploitation of workers becomes worse it will lead workers to revolt against their capitalist rulers.
The core of Marxist thinking is called Materialism. Materialism is a philosophical view that says that communities develop from the "ground up". It says that the "higher" qualities of culture (like art, manners, customs, and religions) are actually founded on the "lower" or simpler qualities of life. These qualities include having enough of what people need to survive, like food and shelter; who has money and what they have to do to get it; who is allowed to work, and who is forced to work.
Changes in the higher qualities of culture (sometimes called the "Superstructure") are often linked to changes in the lower qualities of life (sometimes called the "Base"). One example is that in medieval times, people thought "honor" or duty to people with more power than them was very important. Today, in Western countries, many people see ambition (being someone who works hard for their own goals) as more important. This is because in medieval times, people worked their entire lives under lords who depended on them not only for work but for war. Today, people work for themselves more, and our society lets some people move up from being poor to being rich. In this case, what people see as good and important depends on how the rulers get value out of their workers.
Marxism recognizes that in earlier time periods, we lived first under rulers who owned everything. Then we lived under lords who owned land with workers who lived and worked on that land. In Marx's time, people lived under governments that allowed many people to own property. Eventually, Marxists believe that we will move to a society where everyone owns everything in common. This will be called communism.
In other words, human society has always been based on the economic forces that human beings can control. For Marxism, this means that each society would take its form based on its "mode of production."
Marxists believe that humans' ability to produce goods and services today means people can move beyond the conflicts of a society that is divided into classes. Many Marxists believe that there will always be revolts and with the right conditions revolutions. In these revolutions, the workers will fight the capitalists. If they win, they will set up a socialist "workers' state" (a form of government where the workers are the rulers of society). This workers' state will only be temporary. Its job will be to take power away from the capitalists, until all the capitalist countries in the world are defeated, and social classes no longer exist.
Marxists believe that if the working class makes itself the ruling class, and destroys the basis for class society (private property, or what Marx called "Bourgeois Property"), there will be a "classless society." In a Marxist society, no social classes are in conflict, and there is no government anymore. The state will no longer be needed. There would be no countries. The world will have no borders. There will be communes around the world. Workers will organize production of goods and services based on what people need, not based on profits.
Some Marxists say that modern "communism" is not communism at all. They say that "communist" countries like the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, Cuba, and Vietnam are really using different forms of capitalism, often with heavily "nationalized" industries. A thinker named Tony Cliff was one of the biggest supporters of these ideas. He wrote that states like the Soviet Union and Communist China (before 1980) were "State-Capitalist."
Not all communists, socialists, or Marxists agree on this question. However, many strong supporters of Marxism agree that:
People use these terms interchangeably but this is incorrect. These concepts have different meanings:
The words sacred or holy are sometimes used interchangeably and are often misunderstood to mean "important" or "special" instead of "set apart" and "pure."
According to Websters 1828 Dictionary (the more accurate definition given the spiritual context- Christian and beyond), sacred means "...separated from that which is common, vulgar, polluted, or open... or Holy." Holy, means "Properly, whole, entire or perfect, in a moral sense. Hence, pure in heart, temper or dispositions; free from sin and sinful affections. Applied to the Supreme Being, holy signifies perfectly pure, immaculate and complete in moral character..."
Most religions have sacred books that provide teachings or doctrines associated with the religion. These books are "set apart," from other books published and associated with the religion. There is a deeper connection to these books over the others.
For Christians this book is called the Bible. Muslim peoples have another book, they call the Qur'an. Jews call their book the Torah. Similarly, the Book of Mormon is also considered as a sacred book in Mormonism.
Some religious people deem specific places sacred because of their mention in the sacred books. Jerusalem is seen as sacred by Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Mecca is sacred in Islam, and Ise Grand Shrine in Mie Prefecture is sacred in Japanese Shinto. In Hinduism the river Ganges is seen as holy.
Zürich or Zurich ( ; Swiss German: "Züri" ]) is a city in Switzerland. Zürich is the capital city of the Canton of Zürich. About 415,000 people live in the city and over 1.5 million live in the metropolitan area. This makes Zürich the biggest city in Switzerland.
Zürich is located in the north of Switzerland. It is at the northern end of Lake Zürich and is surrounded by hills. The rivers Limmat and Sihl flow through the city. The city is divided into twelve districts (known as Kreis in German), numbered 1 to 12.
The city was first built by the Romans. The Canton joined Switzerland in 1351.
In the city of Zürich, most of the people work in the commerce part of the economy. Zürich is one of the largest financial centres in the world. Many famous banks and insurance companies are located here, for example UBS, Credit Suisse, Swiss Life and Swiss Re.
The airport of Zürich is located about to the north, in a town called Kloten. Zürich Airport ("Flughafen Zürich", IATA:ZRH) is the biggest airport in Switzerland. Zürich Main Station is the busiest train station in Switzerland with many national and international connections.
The headquarters of FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) is also in Zürich.
Zurich has two universities. ETH Zürich is ranked among the top universities in the world. Over 20 Nobel Prize winners have studied or worked there, for example Albert Einstein. The other university is the University of Zürich. It is the largest university in Switzerland.
Translation means to copy writing or speech from one language into a different language.
The people who do translation are called translators. A translator who is copying a book into another language may use a language dictionary to find out how a word is written in another language. A translator who works with the spoken word is also called an interpreter. Translators can work independently as freelancers or by being hired by translation agencies. People translate poetry, novels, drama, or short stories are called literary translators.
In computer technology, translation from a programming language to a machine language is called compiling.
There are free translators on the internet.
Useful resources related to the subject:
An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person who goes into outer space. The Soviet Union and countries that it was friends with used the word cosmonaut. Western countries including the United States said astronaut. Astronauts are also called "taikonauts" in China or "spationaute" in France.
The first person to go into space was a Russian from the Soviet Union. His name was Yuri Gagarin. This happened on April 12, 1961. The first and second people to walk on the Moon were the Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. This happened on July 20, 1969. No astronauts have gone to the moon since 1972. No people have visited any other planets yet.
Astronauts used to go into space using many different ways, but now they only go on the American SpaceX Crew-1, the Russian Soyuz, or the Chinese Shenzhou. Several countries have worked together to build an International Space Station where people stay and work in space for long periods of time.
A few countries and companies are trying to make more ways to get people into space. The United States is building a very big rocket called the Space Launch System. Some American companies, for example Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and SpaceX, are being paid by the United States to make ways for people to go to space.
A hacker originally meant someone who likes to do new things with computers. Now "hacker" is used to mean "someone who tries to get into another person's computer using computer software such as Trojan horse programs, computer viruses, and worms that can hurt other people computers". The correct name for a person doing these illegal things was "cracker", but many news stories used the word "hacker" even though it was in error. Another meaning of "hacker" is someone who can change or program something, like how people can change or program a Furby to say something insulting or humorous.
A person doing something illegal with a computer belonging to someone else without asking for permission from the owner is also called a hacker.
In the recent years computers were becoming increasingly more complex. This also means that people with bad intentions have more opportunities to use them for criminal purposes. Computer engineers aren't always able to find vulnerable places in the computer code. Hackers find such places, and use them.
There are also hackers who use the same skills for good purposes. Such hackers are called "white hat" hackers. They help computer engineers to find vulnerable places and correct problems.
A lot of skills are often required to be a hacker. A hacker should be able to find problems or solutions that most other people cannot find.
In communications, such as radio and television, broadcasting means sending information such as television shows or music electronically to a large audience. The information is sent through the air in radio waves, through a wire, or by a communications satellite, and then the television viewers or radio listeners pick up the signal using their television sets and radio receivers. Gugliemo Marconi invented wireless telegraphy, in December 1901 he transmitted first radio signals across the Atlantic Ocean. This was point to point. Experiments with voice broadcasting began a few years later, and it grew rapidly in the 1920s.
Different broadcasters use different radio waves and different modulating methods. amplitude modulation on medium waves was the first to be much used.
Some television networks are said to be broadcasting, even if they are only or mainly on cable TV rather than by radio waves.
Many countries have Public broadcasting, using money from the government to broadcast television shows and radio programs. Examples include the BBC in Britain, NHK in Japan, and the CBC in Canada.
In the United States, most public broadcast radio and television stations are run by educational groups (such as colleges or universities) or by a state's educational department. Public broadcasters, by law, cannot accept or display commercial advertising. However, businesses can make donations to a public broadcaster. Most are part of the Public Broadcasting System.
PBS is different than the other public broadcasters such as BBC, NHK and CBC, because the PBS gets a lot of its funding (money) from donations by viewers and listeners. Public broadcasters make programs that the private companies are not interested in making, such as educational children's shows, documentaries, and public affairs shows about current issues.
As well, there are private broadcasting companies. These are companies that broadcast television and radio programs. To make money, private broadcasting companies sell advertisements called commercials.
A third type of broadcaster is community broadcasters. There are community television stations and community radio stations.
Community television stations are often provided on cable networks. Community television stations usually have shows about local issues and community events. Some community television stations film and broadcast community cultural activities, such as musical performances or town hall meetings.
Community radio stations play music and have public affairs shows about community issues. Community radio stations are usually small organizations that are run by volunteers. Community radio stations often get their funding (money) from local governments, local universities, and from donations by listeners. Some community radio stations also have poetry readings by local poets, or performances by local musicians or singers.
Broadcasting can also mean sending a message to many users on a computer network at exactly the same time, or sending a message from one computer to many other computers, giving information about itself, such as its name and location.
Sending information to a small selected group is called "narrowcasting".
Socialism is an economic and political system where the state owns the means of production (i. e. farms, factories, tools, and raw materials.) This is different from capitalism, where the means of production are privately owned.
Socialists believe that everything in society is made by the cooperative efforts of the people and citizens.
There are many kinds of socialism. In all types, at least in principle, "the workers own the means of production". The major differences between the different varieties are the role of the free market (market planning), how the means of production are controlled, the role of management of workers, and the government's role in the economy.
Another kind of socialism is "collectivization." In this system, money and goods are shared more equally among the people, with the government in control. In theory, this system results in the gap between classes getting smaller, with the state helping the nation's poorest people, while the richest agree to higher taxes and economic restrictions.
Some socialists believe that socialism will evolve into what they see as a more advanced system: communism, with no state, money, or social classes. In Marxist theory, socialism is a temporary social state between capitalism and communism, although some socialists have no intention of transitioning to communism.
Many label these economic theories into one as "communism" when they mean the Marxist and Leninist ideas and beliefs of Russia's Bolshevik party. Marx believed that capitalism followed the economic and political system of feudalism. He also believed that capitalism would unfairly treat many people and that those people would eventually revolt and switch to socialism. He also thought that socialism could be another bridge on a path to communism. However, many people incorrectly use the term "Communist" to refer to a socialist state as a pejorative insult. Others call this 'State Socialism,' to distinguish it from the communist goal that does not need a state or any form of government. To non-communists, the word 'socialism' is now used mostly for attempts to come close to this goal in a democratic state.
Democratic socialism is a belief that both the economy and society should be run democratically—to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few. To achieve a more just society, many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed through greater economic and social democracy so that ordinary people can participate in the many decisions that affect their lives.
Social democracy is a kind of capitalism that tries to mix parts of socialism with capitalism. It is not a form of socialism, but shares some ideas with it. In this system, despite there still being private property, the government takes money from the rich and gives it to the poor to reduce inequality, usually in the form of social programs. While the intentions of social democracy and socialism can be similar or shared, social democracy keeps the capitalist system intact, and slightly reforms it. Socialism would mean completely getting rid of the capitalist system. Social democracy is often confused with democratic socialism due to the similar names and having the same short term goals. The biggest difference is social democrats want to stop reforming capitalism when they think their reforms are good enough, but democratic socialists will not stop until capitalism is gone. Some examples of social democracies are the Scandinavian countries.
In social democracies, some services and industries are subsidized (given money to help them run), or partly controlled by the government, or both. For example, education, health care, housing, utility companies and public transportation are some industries that might be owned/supported by the government in a social democracy. For the most part, people working in these industries are paid by the government, with money paid by the people as taxes. A strong Welfare system is key to social democracy.
Many people and countries see socialism differently. The Socialist International is an organization dedicated to the cause of promoting socialist ideals, and has ties with many socialist parties, especially Social Democratic parties.
The followers of a Welshman, Robert Owen, began calling themselves socialists in 1841. Owen is seen as a founder of the Co-operative Movement in Britain. He said that workers should own the companies they worked for. The workers would then share the profits among themselves. He set up a new model factory in New Lanark, Scotland.
Karl Marx is the most well-known creator of the theory of socialism, and of communism. He wrote a book about capitalism, socialism, and communism, called "A critique of the social economy". Friedrich Engels co-wrote the book, and paid for much of Marx's work and research.
Many socialist political parties were formed during the 19th century and early part of the 20th century. During the decolonization movement in the 20th century, many armies fighting for independence planned to establish socialist countries.
Leninism
Leninism is a way of thinking about how the communist party should be organized. It says it should be a dictatorship of the proletariat (the working class holds the power). It is thought to be one of the first steps towards socialism (where the workers own the factories, etc.). It is one part of Marxism–Leninism, which emphasizes the transition from capitalism to socialism.
Vladimir Lenin was a Russian Marxist. He had a set of ideas based on Marxism. Lenin's development of Marxism has become known as Leninism. These ideas include:
Bolshevik
A Bolshevik was a Russian Communist. They are also called the Bolshevik Communists. The majority of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party was a Marxist political party.
In 1903 at the Party Congress members disagreed with each other. The Party ended up dividing into two groups, the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. They were called Bolsheviks because it means "those who are more." Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was the leader of the Bolshevik group. The more moderate group, the Mensheviks (meaning "those of the minority") were led by Julius Martov. Although the Bolsheviks were called "those who are more", before 1917 there were more Mensheviks. Many of Lenin's opponents were afraid that he liked to control things too much.
In 1905 the Bolshevik group became a separate political party, the RSDLP(B) the 'b' in brackets standing for 'Bolshevik'.
After the February Revolution, some of the Mensheviks took positions in the Russian Provisional Government. Lenin said socialists must oppose the Provisional Government. The government began to falter and Lenin started to have more authority. Because of this, many Mensheviks joined the Bolsheviks.
The Bolsheviks led the October Revolution in Russia in 1917. They said they created the world's first Workers' State. The Mensheviks opposed the government led by the Bolsheviks. Many ended up in prison or were killed. After that, they opposed the Bolsheviks from outside Russia, in exile.
After the Revolution, the Bolshevik Party was called the Russian Communist Party.
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Revinathan (28 April 1937 - 30 December 2006) was the President of Iraq, from July 16, 1979 to April 9, 2003, when he was removed from his position during the War in Iraq led by the United States. During his time as President, he might have killed more than a million people through war and genocide, which he denied.
Saddam Hussein was born in the village of Al-Awja, in the Tikrit in Iraq. He never knew his father, Hussein 'Abd al-Majid, who disappeared five months before Saddam was born. Shortly before Saddam was born, Saddam's twelve-year-old brother died of cancer, leaving his mother very depressed in the final months of the pregnancy. She tried to kill herself near the end of the pregnancy and did not want to care for Saddam when he was born. Saddam was sent to the family of an uncle, Khairallah Tulfah, until he was three.
At 10, Saddam ran away from the family to return to live with his uncle, who was a devout Sunni Muslim, in Baghdad. According to Saddam, in 1957, at the age of 20, Saddam became part of the Ba'ath Party. The Ba'ath party is an Arab political party that supports socialism.
In 1958, Hussein was arrested for killing his brother-in-law because he was a communist activist. He spent six months in prison.
A year after Saddam had joined the Ba'ath party, army officers led by General Abdul Karim Qassim got rid of Faisal II of Iraq. The Baathists were against the new regime, and in 1959, Saddam was involved in the attempted murder of Prime Minister Qassim. Saddam was shot in the leg, but managed to get away to Syria. Later, he moved to Egypt. He was sentenced to death. In exile, he attended the University of Cairo law school.
Army officers, including some with the Ba'ath party, came to power in Iraq in a military coup in 1963. However, the new regime was kicked out quickly. Saddam returned to Iraq, but was imprisoned in 1964 when an anti-Ba'ath group led by Abdul Rahman Arif took power. He escaped from jail in 1967 and became one of the leading members of the party.
In 1976, Saddam was made a general in the Iraqi army. He quickly became the most important person of the regime. He slowly began to gain more power over Iraq's government and the Ba'ath party. As Iraq's weak, old President, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, became more unable to do the duties of his office, Saddam began to take on an more important role as the head of the Iraqi government. He soon became the creator of Iraq's foreign policy and represented the nation in all diplomatic situations.
In 1979, Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown by the Islamic Revolution, giving way to an Islamic republic led by the Ayatollah Khomeini. The influence of revolutionary Shi'ite Islam grew in the region, particularly in countries with large Shi'ite populations, especially Iraq. Saddam was afraid that radical Islamic ideas were quickly spreading inside his country among most of the Shi'ite people. He worried that these ideas would go against his leadership.
There had also been a rivalry between Saddam and Khomeini since the 1970s. Khomeini was exiled from Iran in 1964. He began living in Iraq, at the Shi'ite holy city of An Najaf. There, he became involved with Iraqi Shi'ites and gained many religious and political followers throughout the world. Under pressure from the Shah, who had agreed to a rapprochement between Iraq and Iran in 1975, Saddam agreed to kick Khomeini out in 1978. After the Islamic Revolution, Khomeini thought defeating Saddam's government may have been the second most important thing to do, only behind keeping his power in Iran.
After Khomeini gained power, small battles between Iraq and revolutionary Iran happened for ten months. The two countries were fighting over who controlled the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which divides Iran and Iraq.
Iraq and Iran officially went to war with each other on September 22, 1980. Saddam used the disagreement over the waterway as an excuse to go to war with Iran. However, the war was more likely an attempt by Saddam - supported by both the United States and the Soviet Union - to have Iraq stop radical revolutions like the one in Iran from spreading any further.
In the first days of the war, there was heavy ground fighting around major ports as Iraq launched an attack on Iran's oil-rich, Arab-populated province of Khuzestan. After making some gains, Iraq's troops began to suffer losses from human-wave attacks by Iran. By 1982, Iraq was looking to end the war.
During the war, Iraq used chemical warfare against Iranian forces and Kurdish separatists. On March 16, 1988, Saddam ordered Iraqi troops to stop a Kurdish uprising. Iraq attacked the Kurdish town of Halabjah with a mix of poison gas and nerve agents, killing 5000 people, mostly women and children.
Saddam reached out to other Arab governments for cash and political help. The Iranians, hoping to bring down Saddam's non-religious government and start a Shi'ite rebellion in Iraq, refused a cease-fire until 1988.
The eight-year war ended in a tie. There were hundreds of thousands of casualties. Perhaps 1.7 million died on both sides. Both economies, previously healthy and growing, were left in ruins.
Saddam was also stuck with a debt of roughly $75 billion. Borrowing money from the U.S. was making Iraq into its client state, embarrassing a strongman who had sought to define and dominate Arab nationalism. Saddam also borrowed a large amount of money from other Arab states during the 1980s to fight Iran. Faced with rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, Saddam desperately sought out cash once again, this time for postwar reconstruction.
Saddam was pressuring Kuwait to forgive its share of his debt, some $30 billion. (This would mean Iraq would not have to pay back Kuwait's $30 million.) Saddam argued that the struggle with Iran had been fought for the benefit of the other Persian Gulf Arab states as much as for Iraq. Because of this, he said, a share of Iraqi debt should be forgiven.
Saddam had pushed oil-exporting countries to raise oil prices and cut back production. Not only did Kuwait refuse to do this; they also helped support OPEC's opposition to the production cuts that Saddam had requested. Kuwait was pumping large amounts of oil, and keeping prices low, when Iraq needed to sell high-priced oil from its wells to pay off a huge debt.
The fact that Kuwait had so much oil made the region even more tense. Even though Kuwait had fewer people, it had about as much oil in reserve as Iraq. Together, Iraq and Kuwait had 20 percent of the world's known oil reserves.
The Kuwaiti monarchy made Saddam even angrier by drilling oil out of Iraqi wells. At the time, Saddam's regime was not disliked by most of the world. Saddam complained about the drilling to the United States State Department. Although this had gone on for years, Saddam now needed oil money to get rid of a looming economic crisis. Saddam still had an experienced and well-equipped army, which he used to influence regional affairs. He later ordered troops to the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border.
As Iraqi-Kuwaiti relations rapidly grew worse, Saddam was getting different information about how the United States would respond to an invasion. The United States had been working on starting a good relationship with Iraq for roughly a decade. The Reagan administration gave Saddam roughly $40 billion worth of arms in the 1980s to fight Iran, nearly all of it on credit. The U.S. also sent billions of dollars of food and arms to Saddam to keep him from forming a strong alliance with the Soviets.
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, met with Saddam in a meeting on July 25. Saddam said he wanted to keep talks going. U.S. officials tried to take a calm, relaxing tone with Iraq. They explained that neither President George H.W. Bush or Secretary of State James Baker wanted military force to be used. However, they also said that they would not take any position on the Iraqi-Kuwaiti dispute and did not want to become involved.
Later, Iraq and Kuwait met for a final negotiation session, which failed. Saddam then sent his troops into Kuwait.
In August 2, 1990, Saddam invaded Kuwait, causing an international crisis. The invasion of Kuwait gave Iraq, with its own substantial oil fields, control of 20 percent of the Persian Gulf oil. The U.S. helped Saddam Hussein in the war with Iran, but with Iraq's take over of the oil-rich emirate of Kuwait in August of 1990, the United States led a United Nations force that drove Saddam from Kuwait in February 1991.
Because the United States and the Soviet Union were cooperating in the United Nations Security Council, the Security Council was able to pass resolutions. These resolutions gave Iraq a deadline to leave Kuwait.
Saddam ignored the Security Council deadline. On January 16, 1991, coalition of U.S. and Security Council troops launched missile attacks on Iraq. The United States and a group of allies it had quickly gathered, including Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, made Saddam's army move from Kuwait in January 1991.
Israel, though Saddam attacked it with Iraqi missiles, did not fight back. It did not want to anger Arab states into leaving the coalition. But Saddam had focused attention on the Palestinian problem by promising to make his forces leave from Kuwait if Israel would leave the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Gaza Strip. Saddam's proposal further split the Arab world, pitting U.S. and Western-supported Arab states against the Palestinians.
175,000 Iraqis were taken prisoner and about 85,000 died. As part of the cease-fire agreement, Iraq agreed to get rid of all poison gas and germ weapons, and to allow UN observers to inspect the sites.