Comparative methodological critique Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Comparative methodological critique - Essay Example apply the principles of scientific research and avoid proceeding to any initiative that will affect the study’s credibility, for instance the failure in appropriately citing the texts quoted from another study, the failure to inform the participants on the study’s scopes and its ethics – a fact that can lead even to the rejection of a particular study. This paper explores the various aspects of two studies that are based on different research methods: a qualitative and a quantitative one. As a sample of quantitative research, the study of Krishnan et al. (2005) under the title ‘A few good women – on top management teams’ has been chosen; the context of the qualitative research has been also examined through the study of Liff et al. (2001) under the title ‘Distorted views through the glass ceiling: the construction of women’s understandings of promotion and senior management positions’; it is proved that the two studies have been developed in the context of scientific research and therefore they’ve managed to meet their scope despite the delays caused because of failures in different phases of research in the context described below. Krishnan et al. (2005) have tried to examine the potential influence of gender diversity on organizational performance; a series of additional issues have been examined in the context of the study, like the level of gender diversity in modern organization, the environmental characteristics (which in this case refer to the demographic characteristics of the participants) and the role of women managers in changing the internal organizational environment. The reasons that Krishnan et al. (2005) chose the specific subject is the fact that gender has been proved in the literature to influence the performance of employees – as a result of the organization; the aspects of this problem need to be highlighted; despite the development of social and cultural values worldwide there are still factors, like the gender, that

Performance Enhancing Drugs Should Be Legalized Essay Example for Free

Performance Enhancing Drugs Should Be Legalized Essay The illegal use of anabolic steroids by professional athletes is often a hot button topic in the news. Steroids were banned due to the negative side effects associated with its use. Despite the ban, many athletes are suspected of illicit steroid use to enhance their performance. There is great cost associated with random testing to determine if such athletes use steroids. Anne Whitaker and Rosalyn Carson-Dewitt, in the article, â€Å"Point: Performance Enhancing Drugs Should Be Legalized†, make a somewhat effective argument as to why it should be legalized. This article provides an argument for the legalization of anabolic steroid use by athletes. The authors parallel the use of cosmetic surgery and unhealthy diet regimens by models and actresses and the use of steroids by professional athletes to stay at the top of their games. The authors provide factual information regarding steroids and the effects its use has on the body, followed by their opinion as to how legalization would benefit not only the sports world, but also society as a whole. Whitaker and Carson-Dewitt provide a number of facts regarding the characteristics of steroids, the effects of their use, and the history of its illegalization. They describe different methods for use: cycling (on and off use of a particular dose), stacking (taking multiple steroids simultaneously), and pyramiding (increasing and decreasing the dosage over time) (Whitaker and Carson-Dewitt, 2011). The authors go on to describe the physical effects of steroid use such as organ damage, stroke, cancer and high blood pressure (Whitaker and Carson-Dewitt, 2011). The authors then provide a timeline as to the banning of steroid use in various professional sports organizations followed by a national ban. It is the opinion of Carson-Dewitt and Whitaker that steroids should be legalized. They opined that legalization would have manifold benefits: increased safety and regulation of steroid use, decreased access and use of steroids by teenaged children; and reduction in the costs associated with testing. While, on the surface, these opinions seem to be logical, the arguments are not all supported by facts. The claim that legalization of steroids would reduce its use by teenagers, simply because they would be prescribed by doctors, is baseless. Teenagers would likely continue to access steroids through the same methods currently used. The cost of testing may or may not be reduced as regulation would still limit the amount of steroids to be safely used. Testing would still occur to verify that legal safe limits were observed. The factual information contained in the article is sufficient to provide a perspective from which to understand the authors’ argument. The authors fail, however to provide factual information to support their claims. This results in an argument that sounds plausible on the surface, but falls flat with any amount of critical thinking. For this reason, I believe the authors failed to make a compelling argument. References Carson-Dewitt, Rosalyn, and Whitaker, Ann. â€Å"Point: Performance Enhancing Drugs Should Be Legalized.† By: Points of View: Steroids, 2011.

E-Commerce Makes Life Better ! Essay -- E-Commerce Internet

E-Commerce Makes Life Better ! E-commerce means that the company runs their business online, not like the traditional business way. We have to go the shopping mall or store to get goods that we need, E-Business is the enabling of electronic communication between any two or more participants in a business relationship. It helps companies capture abroad business field, cost saving, and market opportunity. E-commerce is an important factor that is making people’s lives more efficient. This is the report according to the survey I did in IUP. Seven out of ten people say they prefer to buy goods from e-commerce. The reason is they said that it is convenient and time saving. According to the survey most of them agree that the service is fast. For an example, the delivery is fast. If you purchase something from e-commerce you will get the stuff within two weeks time. Beside that, the price is slightly cheaper than those goods in the shopping mall. But it depends on season, if you buy goods during the clearance season, such as New Year sale, summer sale or winter sales goods in the shopping mall probably will be cheaper than goods that offer in the e-commerce. Seven out of ten people prefer market form, which mean that you know the price and information. You can buy it on the spot. So it saves time compared to bid form. If you choose bid form to buy things, most of the time you can get it cheaper but it take a longer time. And you can’t confirm that you will get the product. So that the reason why most of them choose market form. In addition, the product quality more or less the same as the product in the shopping center. For the security aspect. I had to interview a girl. He... ...sides that, you also can learn other things from e-commerce. Such as we can learn more about the business cycle, and what consumer needs. So you know what kind of product that is suitable in that period of time. For an example, remote-control car and cameras are the best product to sell during the summer, because most of the people like to do outdoor activities, so that kind of product is easy to sell. In conclusion, e-commerce makes our life much more easier, because it saves time, we can get our goods with in a short period of time, other than that it connects to businesses around the world, we can buy goods that we can’t get from the local market. The last thing we also can get goods that are not available in the shopping mall and with the cheaper price. As I know, using e-commerce to shop online is the right choice for because it is so convenient.

Othello †It Ranks High or Low? :: Othello essays

Othello – It Ranks High or Low?  Ã‚        Ã‚   William Shakespeare’s tragic drama Othello has been given high marks by some critics and low marks by others. Let us elaborate on this problem in this essay.    In the volume Shakespeare and Tragedy John Bayley explains why the modern audience feels so exasperated when viewing this play:    But Othello is not freed by this sense of his own situation: he has been caught in it as if in a snare. And instead of being freed by the hero’s consciousness of things, and sharing it with him, we are forced to stand outside Othello’s delusion. The play grips us in its own artifice of incomprehension. And for most onlookers, nowadays, the sensation seems to be more exasperating than it is either thrilling or painful. (200-201)    The feeling of exasperation on the part of the audience is not universal. Lily B. Campbell in Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroes explains the factor that made Othello significant among the tragedies of its time:    The Moor goes to the task of killing his wife in the name of justice;    Thy bed, lust-stain’d, shall with lust’s blood be spotted.    And in the second scene, the scene of the murder, he cries again as he looks upon the sleeping Desdemona and kisses her:    Oh, balmy breath, thou dost almost persuade Justice to break her sword!    It is this insistence upon the passion which makes men try to take the place of God, and by private revenge execute the laws of God that makes Othello significant in the tragedy of its time. Othello sees his acts as the expression of justice, worked out in the most perfect balance of deed and punishment. (172)    If the justice aspect of private revenge gave the play popularity then, what gives it fame today? Othello would appear to have a beauty about it which is hard to match – thus ranking the play high. Helen Gardner in â€Å"Othello: A Tragedy of Beauty and Fortune† touches on this beauty which enables this play to stand above the other tragedies of the Bard:    Among the tragedies of Shakespeare Othello is supreme in one quality: beauty. Much of its poetry, in imagery, perfection of phrase, and steadiness of rhythm, soaring yet firm, enchants the sensuous imagination. This kind of beauty Othello shares with Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra; it is a corollary of the theme which it shares with them.

Nazi Germany’s discrimination against the Jews throughout World War II Essay

As a result of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, a system of violent suppression and control emerged that ultimately took the lives of an estimated 6 million Jewish people Anti-Semitism is an opposition to, prejudice against, or intolerance of Semitic people, most commonly Jews. Anti-Semitism has existed throughout history, since Israel’s dispersion in 70 AD. In every land in which the Jews have lived, they have been threatened, violated and murdered, century after century. After Germany’s defeat in World War I, many Germans found it hard to accept their defeat. These Germans connived a theory that the citizens at home had betrayed them, â€Å"especially laying blame on Jews and Marxists in Germany for undermining the war effort† (http://www. historyplace. com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/ends. htm). This is the main reason that led to the extreme discrimination and removal of basic rights of Jewish people in Germany during the 1930’s and 1940’s, however, there were many other reasons including Christianity’s general hatred for Jewry. Jews were often the victims of Nazism. The first Jewish victims of the Nazi era were 8 innocent people who were killed in the streets on 1 January 1930 by Brownshirts. Soon after that, violence against Jews in the streets became common. Violence was an integral part of the Nazi programme†¦ Jews were molested in cafes and theatres, synagogue services were disrupted and anti-Jewish slogans became the daily calling card of Nazi thugs. (Gilbert,2001:31) One particular night of violence, known as Kristallnacht, is remembered with fear. During the night of November 9-10, 1938 thousands of windows were smashed out of Jewish businesses and homes, hundreds of synagogues were burnt to the ground, and more than ninety Jews were murdered. On March 9, 1933 the first Nazi concentration camp was opened at Dachau. On April 1, a boycott of all Jewish shops was put in place. It only lasted a day, because of threats of a counter-boycott in the USA of all German made goods. However, the expulsion of all Jewish people from Germany’s Universities and then the ‘Burning of the Books’ quickly followed the one-day boycott. The ‘Burning of the Books’ consisted of 20 000 books burned in a massive bonfire in front of the Berlin Opera House, and opposite the University of Berlin. The books that were destroyed were judged to be ‘degenerate’ and ‘intellectual filth’ by the Nazis, many being written by Jewish authors. Also during this time, Jewish scientists and intellectuals were dismissed from their positions, and Hitler was quoted as saying â€Å"If the dismissal of Jewish scientists means the annihilation of contemporary German science, we shall do without science for a few years†. In late 1939, the first ghettos were created in Poland. All Jews were forced to move into a designated area of a city or town, which was surrounded by brick walls topped with barbed wire, and guarded by armed men. SS General Heydrich ordered that the ghettos were to be located on railway junctions, or along a railway ‘so that future measures may be accomplished more easily’. Large numbers of people had to share small living quarters, and medical supplies and food were limited. The Jews could only bring into the ghettos what they could carry, and their luggage was searched and pillaged on their arrival. Life in the ghettos was hard, and death rates were high. Most of the deaths in the ghettos were by starvation or disease. In the two largest ghettos in Poland, Warsaw and Lodz, the death toll from starvation alone in the first twelve months after the creation of the ghettos reached approximately 42 000. In most of Western Poland, there were no ghettos. This was because General Heydrich had ordered Western Poland to be ‘cleared completely of the Jews’. Immediately after the Germans invaded a town, they rounded up all the Jewish people, made them dig large pits, then shot and buried them just outside the town. The ghettos were also referred to as concentration camps and slave labour camps. This was because while the Jews resided in the ghettos, they could be forced to work up to fourteen hours a day in some circumstances. Some were deported to separate concentration camps where they would work on farms in the country to maintain a food supply for the German war machine. Others who stayed in the ghettos worked for the Nazis in munitions factories making armaments, or for local businessmen who paid the government for the use of slave labour to work their factories. These Jews were mostly considered totally expendable, and were subject to minimal food rations, a lack of medical attention, and violent beatings. At least half a million Jews died as slave labourers. The extermination camps, or death camps were the sites for hundreds of mass murders. Men, women and children were deported from ghettos and concentration camps to these death camps and usually taken straight from the train to a gas chamber where they were gassed to death. A few hundred people were kept alive as slave labour to sort through the clothing and luggage of the victims. A small part of this labour force was known as the Death Jews. These Jews performed the task of removing bodies from the gas chambers and stripping them of anything of value. They then dragged the corpses to a crematorium where the naked bodies were burnt. Most of the labour forces were killed and replaced whenever a new group of deportees arrived. The most infamous death camp was Auschwitz, where mostly deportees from Western Europe and southwest Poland were taken. Lilli Kopecky, a deportee from Slovakia recalls arriving at Auschwitz: When we came to Auschwitz, we smelt the sweet smell. They said to us: ‘There the people are gassed, three kilometers over there. ‘ We didn’t believe it. (Gilbert,2001:77) More than a million Jews were murdered at Auschwitz alone. The Holocaust is probably the most infamous instance of anti-Semitism in History. The oppressive tactics of Nazi Germany took away all the rights of the Jews, and wiped out almost the entire race of Jewish people in Europe. If the Nazis had succeeded in what they came so close to doing, there would not be a trace of Jewry remaining in Europe today.

Police Brutality Essay Example

Police Brutality Essay Example Police Brutality Essay Police Brutality Essay Over the past five centuries, black people have endured violence in many different ways. Today, police officers use deadly, excessive force that leads to inexcusable assaults, beatings and shootings. This demonstrates the governmentÐ ¢s role in initiating and prolonging racial suppression and provides the explanation for police brutality to become a federal crime(Black Radical Congress, 3). In history, racist violence, police brutality, has been used to suppress the racial blacks and to preserve power and privileges for the white race. This was done for five primary purposes. First, it has forced black people into slavery or low wage situations. Secondly, to steal land and other resources. A 3-rd was to maintain social control. A fourth purpose was to eliminate conflict in politics, social life, and employment. Lastly, the fifth purpose was to unite white people across the ethnic, class, and gender boundaries. However, after the Emancipation, lynching became a prominent form of violence used against the blacks. The use of lynching was a means of controlling and putting fear into the blacks, making them afraid to go against anything the white man said or authorized. In the mid 1900’s, race riots and lawful executions began to replace the practice of lynching. This became the new method of social control and white supremacy could be controlled through racial discrimination. Harassment and discrimination are two other forms of violence, they have been practiced for many centuries and are still being practiced today as a means of control. The practice of police brutality has a strong affect on a main segment of the American population. Those affected are minorities and the elderly causing them to have strong hatred towards the whites in America. Police Brutality is abuse by law enforcement, where a police officer feels that because he/ she has a badge and a gun therefore it puts them above the law and they can use unnecessary force against another individual. Police Brutality is not a new issue; it has become more focused on recently due to some cases that have occurred in the past few years that have been highly publicized. The abuse used by police officers is a serious offense that violates a persons human and civil rights. These violations are seen nationwide to the inority community and are committed by various police officers that fail to receive punishment for their action. The Civil Rights Act â€Å"provides protection to those persons wronged by the misuse of power, possessed by the virtue of state law and made [it] possible only because the wrongdoer is clothed with the authority of state law†. There is a violation of the fourth amendment when innocent people become victims of police brutality. Many minoritie s are stopped because they are driving a luxury car. They are assumed to be either drug dealers or a criminal. The protection of the fourth amendment, however, is shrinking; it can only be used with the presence of a warrant (Meeks, 9). The presence of the warrant keeps from unlawful police searches and abuse to occur. Racial profiling is the more common form of police brutality. This is the most frequent violation of the fourth amendment. It is the tactic of stopping someone because of his or her skin color. Racial profiling mainly targets young Black and Latino men and is believed to be a justified form of law enforcement. In other words, it is a form of legal prejudice that occurs daily nationwide. Although, there are many questionable areas in racial profiling that cannot be avoided nor proven. First, it is difficult to prove, in a majority of cases there is no evidence and the police officers can claim the stop to be a routine traffic stop. An example of this is when a black person is pulled over for a traffic violation the type of vehicle is first determined and then their skin color. A majority of Blacks and Latinos drive either flashy or historical vehicles, this determines the ethnicityof the driver. Harassment takes place and no one can prove this but the victim and the police officer. Secondly, the courts have to acknowledge that racial profiling occurred and in most cases this is hard to prove. There are also other forms of racial profiling. In many professions, this type of profiling is used as a form as security. Taxi drivers and security personnel engage in profiling when they feel fearful or threatened. Taxi drivers use this type of judgment when refusing to pick up a customer at night and security guards use it to find suspects while working. Racial profiling is considered to be a profile used by police officers to identify suspicious criminal or violators of the law. A typical profile used is the CARD system. CARD is an acronym for class, age, race, and dress. This system is used to fit individuals into categories for means of identification. The problem with the CARD system is that many minorities fall into this category. This makes them primary targets and poses a problem for some of the white people that also fall into this category. Nevertheless, there are a few positive sides to profiling. For one, it can be considered to be a survival skill, allowing one to see if people are doing justice. Secondly, it puts people on an innate level. Profiling shows signs about people and certain criteria. Lastly, it is not considered to be racism. Police officers who use profiling use it as a tool because they think that they are color blind in certain situations. Police brutality also occurs in prisons where the prisoners are mistreated because it becomes a simple case of authority. Humans have their freedom to express their rights and police brutality violates their human rights. The main targets of police brutality are two third African American or Latino and the majority of the time the officer is white. There are five stages through which force can progress and lead to brutality: Verbal persuasion, unarmed physical force, force using non-lethal weapons, force using impact weapons and deadly force. Enforcement personnel should use the deadly force stage only when an officer’s life or another person’s life is in danger. By having the deadly force stage, the law permits someone to commit a murder, and justifies its use. Many law enforcement officials appear to have a tough exterior towards crime, but are very sensitive to crime on the inside. Police officers build up negative feelings towards certain races, sexes, or religions. Officers tend to get the impression that if one or a few people treat them with disrespect, than other people of that same sex, race, or religion will treat the officer in the same way. Another cause of police brutality and misconduct is the amount of stress that is put upon the law enforcement official. Law enforcement officials who are accused of police brutality are required to attend a civil court hearing with a judge and a jury present. Most of the time the jury will find the officers not guilty, or guilty of a lesser rime. This is true in the case of the officer who used an illegal chokehold on Anthony Bees, a twenty eight-year old Puerto Rican, after Baez’s football hit the patrol car. Baez was killed due to the force of the chokehold, but the officer was found not guilty. However, due to racism and society, the demand of tough treatment towards criminals will encourage police officer s to remain violent. The extent of police brutality can be improved through the training of police officers and racially integrated departments resulting in the decline of police violence. Many ways to correct police misconduct have evolved. Such corrections include sufficient training, recruitment, and integration. In recruitment, tighter screening and background checks could be used to avoid violence and racism to enter into the police force. By means of integration, the presence of more minorities can help to dissolve the hatred towards minorities in the society, giving affirmative action an opportunity to take precedence. Police officers should also be required to go to a class that re-teaches them how to act appropriate in an arrest and other situations. A majority of these police officers also feel as though they did not commit a wrongdoing and that they are innocent. One of the ways to curb police brutality is to implement new laws, to punish the wrong doers that may bring about the decrease in police brutality. Today, officers know that there are laws dealing with etiquette during an arrest, but many do not attempt to apply what they know, and let physical strength, and force overcomes them. Also, severe or reasonable consequences should be given to police officers who participate in police brutality. Suspension, verbal reprimands, an investigation, anger management classes, or the loss of their jobs are some consequences that should be given to violating officers. Although there has been some progress and education, training and integration with of the law enforcement population, the are still incidents of racial profiling and police brutality. With continued efforts and corrections of racial injustices, this type of abuse and punishment will lessen when the law moves more towards the justice for minorities.

Biography of Ho Chi Minh, President of North Vietnam

Biography of Ho Chi Minh, President of North Vietnam Ho Chi Minh (born  Nguyen Sinh Cung; May 19, 1890–September 2, 1969) was a revolutionary who commanded the communist North Vietnamese forces during the Vietnam War. Ho Chi Minh also served as the prime minister and president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. He is still admired in Vietnam today; Saigon, the citys capital, was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in his honor. Fast Facts: Ho Chi Minh Known For: Ho Chi Minh was a revolutionary who led the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War.Also Known As: Nguyen Sinh Cung, Nguyen Tat Thanh, Bac HoBorn: May 19, 1890 in Kim Lien, French IndochinaDied: September 2, 1969 in Hanoi, North VietnamSpouse: Zeng Xueming (m. 1926–1969) Early Life Ho Chi Minh was born in Hoang Tru Village, French Indochina (now Vietnam) on May 19, 1890. His birth name was Nguyen Sinh Cung; he went by many pseudonyms throughout his life, including Ho Chi Minh, or Bringer of Light. Indeed, he may have used more than 50 different names during his lifetime. When the boy was little, his father Nguyen Sinh Sac prepared to take the Confucian civil service exams in order to become a local government official. Meanwhile, Ho Chi Minhs mother Loan raised her two sons and daughter and was in charge of producing the rice crop. In her spare time, Loan regaled the children with stories from traditional Vietnamese literature and folk tales. Although Nguyen Sinh Sac did not pass the exam on his first attempt, he did relatively well. As a result, he became a tutor for village children, and the curious, smart little Cung absorbed many of the older kids lessons. When the child was 4, his father passed the exam and received a grant of land, which improved the familys financial situation. The following year, the family moved to Hue; 5-year-old Cung had to walk through the mountains with his family for a month. As he grew older, the child had the opportunity to go to school in Hue and learn the Confucian classics and the Chinese language. When the future Ho Chi Minh was 10, his father renamed him Nguyen Tat Thanh, meaning Nguyen the Accomplished. Life in the United States and England In 1911, Nguyen Tat Thanh took a job as a cooks helper aboard a ship. His exact movements over the next several years are unclear, but he seems to have seen many port cities in Asia, Africa, and France. His observations gave him a poor opinion of French colonials. At some point, Nguyen stopped in the United States for a few years. He apparently worked as a bakers assistant at the Omni Parker House in Boston  and also spent time in New York City. In the United States, the young Vietnamese man observed that Asian immigrants had a chance to make a better life in a much freer atmosphere than those living under colonial rule in Asia. Introduction to Communism As World War I drew to a close in 1918, leaders of the European powers decided to meet and hash out an armistice in Paris. The 1919 Paris Peace Conference attracted uninvited guests as well- subjects of the colonial powers who called for self-determination in Asia and Africa. Among them was a previously unknown Vietnamese man who had entered France without leaving any record at immigration and signed his letters Nguyen Ai Quoc- Nguyen who loves his country. He repeatedly attempted to present a petition calling for independence in Indochina to the French representatives and their allies but was rebuffed. Although the political powers of the day in the western world were uninterested in giving the colonies in Asia and Africa their independence, communist and socialist parties in Western countries more sympathetic to their demands. After all, Karl Marx had identified imperialism as the last stage of capitalism. Nguyen the Patriot, who would become Ho Chi Minh, found common cause with the French Communist Party and began to read about Marxism. Training in the Soviet Union and China After his introduction to communism in Paris, Ho Chi Minh went to Moscow in 1923 and began to work for the Comintern (the Third Communist International). Despite suffering frostbite to his fingers and nose, Ho Chi Minh quickly learned the basics of organizing a revolution, while carefully steering clear of the developing dispute between Trotsky and Stalin. He was much more interested in practicalities than in the competing communist theories of the day. In November 1924, Ho Chi Minh made his way to Canton, China (now Guangzhou). For almost two and a half years he lived in China, training about 100 Indochinese operatives and gathering funds for a strike against French colonial control of Southeast Asia. He also helped organize the peasants of Guangdong Province, teaching them the basic principles of communism. In April 1927, however, Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek began a bloody purge of communists. His Kuomintang (KMT) massacred 12,000 real or suspected communists in Shanghai  and would go on to kill an estimated 300,000 across the nation over the following year. While Chinese communists fled to the countryside, Ho Chi Minh and other Comintern agents left China entirely. On the Move Ho Chi Minh had gone overseas 13 years earlier as a naive and idealistic young man. He now wished to return and lead his people to independence, but the French were well aware of his activities and would not willingly allow him back into Indochina. Under the name Ly Thuy, he went to the British colony of Hong Kong, but the authorities suspected that his visa was forged and gave him 24 hours to leave. He then made his way to Moscow, where he appealed to the Comintern for funding to launch a movement in Indochina. He planned to base himself in neighboring Siam (Thailand). While Moscow debated, Ho Chi Minh went to a Black Sea resort town to recover from an illness- probably tuberculosis. Declaration of Independence Finally, in 1941, the revolutionary who called himself Ho Chi Minh- Bringer of Light- returned to his home country of Vietnam. The outbreak of World War II and the Nazi invasion of France created a powerful distraction, allowing Ho Chi Minh to evade French security and reenter Indochina. The Nazis allies, the Empire of Japan, seized control of northern Vietnam in September 1940 to prevent the Vietnamese from supplying goods to the Chinese resistance. Ho Chi Minh led his guerrilla movement, known as the Viet Minh, in opposition to the Japanese occupation. The United States, which would formally align itself with the Soviet Union once it entered the war in December 1941, provided support for the Viet Minh in their struggle against Japan through the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA. When the Japanese left Indochina in 1945 following their defeat in World War II, they handed over control of the country not to France- which wanted to reassert its right to its Southeast Asian colonies- but to Ho Chi Minhs Viet Minh and the Indochinese Communist Party. Japans puppet emperor in Vietnam, Bao Dai, was set aside under pressure from Japan and the Vietnamese communists. On September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, with himself as president. As specified by the Potsdam Conference, however, northern Vietnam was under the stewardship of Nationalist Chinese forces, while the south was under the control of the British. In theory, the Allied forces were there simply to disarm and repatriate remaining Japanese troops. However, when France- their fellow Allied Power- demanded Indochina back, the British acquiesced. In the spring of 1946, the French returned to Indochina. Ho Chi Minh refused to relinquish his presidency  and was forced back into the role of guerrilla leader. First Indochina War Ho Chi Minhs first priority was to expel the Chinese Nationalists from northern Vietnam, and in February 1946 Chiang Kai-shek withdrew his troops. Although Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese Communists had been united with the French in their desire to get rid of the Chinese, relations between the parties broke down rapidly. In November 1946, the French fleet opened fire on the port city of Haiphong in a dispute over customs duties, killing more than 6,000 Vietnamese civilians. On December 19, Ho Chi Minh declared war on France. For almost eight years, Ho Chi Minhs Viet Minh fought against the French colonial forces. They received support from the Soviets and from the Peoples Republic of China under Mao Zedong after the Chinese Communists victory over the Nationalists in 1949. The Viet Minh used hit-and-run tactics and their superior knowledge of the terrain to keep the French at a disadvantage. Ho Chi Minhs guerrilla army scored its final victory at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, a masterpiece of anti-colonial warfare that inspired the Algerians to rise against France later that same year. In the end, France and its local allies lost about 90,000 troops, while the Viet Minh suffered almost 500,000 fatalities. Between 200,000 and 300,000 Vietnamese civilians were also killed. France pulled out of Indochina completely. Under the terms of the Geneva Convention, Ho Chi Minh became the leader of northern Vietnam, while U.S.-backed capitalist leader Ngo Dinh Diem took power in the south. Vietnam War At this time, the United States subscribed to domino theory, the idea that the fall of one country in a region to communism would cause the neighboring states to topple like dominoes as well. In order to prevent Vietnam from following in the steps of China, the United States decided to support Ngo Dinh Diems cancellation of the 1956 nationwide elections, which would very likely have unified Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh responded by activating the Viet Minh cadres in South Vietnam, who began to wage small-scale attacks on the Southern government. Gradually, U.S. involvement increased, until the country and other U.N. members were involved in all-out combat against Ho Chi Minhs soldiers. In 1959, Ho Chi Minh appointed Le Duan the political leader of North Vietnam, while he focused on rallying support from the Politburo and other communist powers. Ho Chi Minh remained the power behind the president, however. Although Ho Chi Minh had promised the people of Vietnam a quick victory over the Southern government and its foreign allies, the Second Indochina War, also known as the Vietnam War, dragged on. In 1968, he approved the Tet Offensive, which was meant to break the stalemate. Although it proved a military fiasco for the North and the allied Viet Cong, it was a propaganda coup for Ho Chi Minh and the communists. With U.S. public opinion turning against the war, Ho Chi Minh realized that he only had to hold out until the Americans got tired of fighting and withdrew. Death Ho Chi Minh would not live to see the end of the war. On September 2, 1969, the 79-year-old leader of North Vietnam died in Hanoi of heart failure, and he did not get to see his prediction about American war fatigue play out. Legacy Ho Chi Minhs influence on North Vietnam was so great that when the Southern capital of Saigon fell in April 1975, many of the North Vietnamese soldiers carried posters of him into the city. Saigon was officially renamed Ho Chi Minh City in 1976. Ho Chi Minh is still revered in Vietnam today; his image appears on the nations currency and in classrooms and public buildings. Sources Brocheux, Pierre. Ho Chi Minh: A Biography, trans. Claire Duiker. Cambridge University Press, 2007.Duiker, William J. Ho Chi Minh. Hyperion, 2001.Gettleman, Marvin E., Jane Franklin, et al. Vietnam and America: The Most Comprehensive Documented History of the Vietnam War. Grove Press, 1995.