One More Assassination Plot

Read the documents assigned to you. For your assigned document, complete the following three tasks: 1. Summarize the document.


Cuban exiles are trying to assassinate Fidel Castro any way that they possibly can. It's intense. They said "The plan was to kill him any way we could - explosives on the road, grenades in a meeting, shots on the street. We would have strangled him if we had to."


Article mainly addresses the different assassination plots on Castro organized by a man named Pasado. Apparently, he's organized a ton of different attempts but is always in the wrong place at the wrong time.
2. Explain what issues in the Special Period this document deals with.
It provided issues to Castro, obviously. Because, I mean, this guy is trying to kill him. It addresses the extreme dislike of the country's leader (at least by some people) and frequently accentuates the CIA involvement on many of his planned attacks.
3. Answer: In what way(s) does this document help us better understand Cuba during this time period?


It gives us (the reader) a better understanding of the US's involvement in cuba at the time. It makes the reader realize how many times Fidel Castro has almost died -- all of them from attempted assassinations. Interestingly, Fidel didn't/doesn't seem too worried about it. I would be, that's for sure.

People Leaving Cuba (Real)

Sorry about that. Anyway, it all started on accident when two Peruvian guards shot each other. It caused a major commotion and Fidel Castro was basically like "they can handle it themselves" and didn't even send police over. People then flooded the embassy asking for asylum. Fidel then said that anybody who wanted to leave could leave. The Cubans in key west took advantage of this and sent a huge number of boats over to the coast near Havana. An insane number of people left over the course of around 6 months (I don't remember the exact number but it was around 125,000 which was like 2% of their population at the time). That's a lot.

People Leaving Cuba

Today in class, we talked about an event in Cuba in ____ that was very interesting. It all started basically on accident when a guard of a very manly super soldier came over and punched Socrates in the face. He totally had it coming, too. Do you think that sometimes I eat fifteen apples in one sitting? Trick question. I did it standing up. Love, Willem. PS) Ian shouldn't let other people write his blog posts.

Character Bio Reflection

As you may remember from my most recent blog, In class we've been doing an activity in which we are assigned a character who has their own views and opinions.  We read a document on the ideas of Reza Shah and formed opinions about it based on our character's economic status, governmental views, and religious influence.  I was a 40 year old woman who was very poor.  I was also recently introduced to the works of Ayatollah Khomeini.

But it was only one half of the class who was assigned a character.  The other half was assigned a governmental position -- either Socialist, Democratic, or Religious.  Their job was to give an initial speech stating their opinions as the leaders of the parties, then to walk around the class trying to influence individuals to vote for their party.  Being a different character was very fun.  It allowed me to interpret my own views and to make logical decisions based on them.  For me, democracy was out of question right from the start because of my economic situation.  Switching to a democracy wouldn't give me the money that I needed.  And even if it DID, that wasn't their first priority as a government.  It was then up between socialist and religious.  I weighed the options and listened to both parties' representatives speeches.  They both had very good reasons for me to vote for them.  Religious promised a good, fruitful life and an even better afterlife.  But I was a bit skeptical.  I wasn't fully religious, just interested.  The socialist group promised me equal wealth and the same life as everybody else.  It wasn't as good a life as the religious party promised, but at least it was tangible.  After weighing them for quite a while, I decided to go with the socialist group.

I thought that this was a really fun activity that incorporated our own interpretations of history and its effect on every day people.  We're too young to vote right now, but this exercise made me realize how fuzzy the line is between different parties and how there are good and bad parts to every argument.

Character Bio

I am a thirty-nine-year-old woman who moved to Tehran a while back because my husband was a farmer and he couldn't make a profit on what he was doing so we had to sell the farm and move into the city.  We have to live in the slums because his income is too low for us to live in a nice part of town.  Even so, I like the city better than I do the countryside.  My husband occasionally brings me recordings of sermons by Ayatollah Khomeini and other anti-government people.  I presume that I have turned anti-government because of these and because of my economic status versus other people in the country.  Naturally, If I am poor, I am going to blame it on somebody else -- most likely the country's leader.  The government affects me in a number of ways.

1.  I am poor -- this is probably because of something that the government did.
2.  I am a woman -- society (and therefore the government) prevent me from doing anything substantial with my life.
3.  I don't/can't have a job.  This might be because all of the jobs are taken away to put more people into the oil industry and away from the other thing that our country naturally provides (which isn't much)
4.  I am probably constantly harassed by the SAVAK because of my economic status.  They probably take a bunch of my stuff and mess it up.

Operation Carlota

In the early 60's, cuba had an interesting foreign policy which angered the United States.  It was to  "promote socialist revolutions around the world."  Basically, wherever there was a country in need, Cuba would be there to help them up and guide them on the road to communism.  Cuban communism, that is -- which is different from other types of communism like USSR communism.  Cuban communism focused more on the rural aspects of life rather than the urban ones.  I don't really know any more details on that subject though.

Anyway, in class we focused on one aspect of this in the early 60's called Operation Carlota that was particularly prominent  in history.  Operation Carlota took place in Angola, a country in Africa.  They had just overcome been granted their independence and had absolutely no government left behind.  Cuba saw this as the perfect opportunity to take Angola "under its wing".  Cuba's main goal in invading Angola was to have the country follow in the footsteps of Cuba's government and to continue to spread communism throughout the world.  They thought that Africa would be a good place to start, I guess.

Cuban Missile Crisis Part 2

Although we didn't have history class today, I still wanted to continue my blog on the Cuban missile crisis. Or, more specifically, other things that I'd like to discuss in class related to this event. First off, I'd like to get a better understanding of the overall picture of what happened in the Cuban missile crisis. We've been reading very specific things related to very specific events within the entire crisis. But that doesn't give us the big picture. We tried to get a big picture by combining all of our events into a timeline, but even then we were missing a few big events that completed the picture. The only reason that I know this is because I've learned about the Cuban missile crisis before this class. For example, we still don't know about the motivation behind some of the actions that were taken. We don't know what caused the ship with missiles to turn around, We don't really know what sparked this in the first place unless I missed something in class. I know this is a short blog. I have a lot of other homework to do. I'll write an extra long one tomorrow.

Cuban Missile Crisis

The past few days in class, we've been investigating specific aspects of the Cuban missile crisis.  We've each read individual letters from people like Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro.  My letter was from Castro to Khrushchev explaining Castro's thoughts on a possible US invasion on the island.  It was thanking the USSR for their past help and asking for more assistance as the situation played out.  It was really cool to ask around to different people in the classroom and talk about the connections between your two articles.  First, we would look at the date and how far apart they were -- usually under a week.  Next, who it was to and from -- most of them had at least one person in common (Castro, Kennedy, or Khrushchev).

Today, we made a timeline so that it was easier to visualize the events as they happened instead of just talking to people.  It was so cool to look, chronologically, and see which events triggered which other events and how they were all intertwined.  Which letters were sent to whom and when they were responded to.  In addition, each of the little summaries told a small part of the story which, when combined, gave a pretty good outline of the whole situation.  I think it is important to get every major event, and there are some that are not covered by the letters read in class -- so I think that we should, as a class, go over the timeline to see if anything appears to be "missing".  If we do spot something, Mr. Moran could let us know if there was actually an important event there or not.

I really like activities like this that we do in class.  It provides us with a lot of knowledge while making it fun at the same time.  Keep it up!

Class Discussion on Fidel Castro

Today, we had a very interesting class discussion on Fidel Castro's rise to power.  We discussed every aspect of it - his motives, his potential, and what he did versus his intention.  We came into class prepared with a list of "reasons the rebels were fighting".  Many people had the same things, but we ended up not really using them.  The conversation went on pretty well on its own.  As we were discussing the lists, we realized that a lot of them were things that Castro used to appear a better candidate for a Batista replacement.  Things that he might have used as reasons that he was the best person for the position.  My favorite thing that we talked about was how we viewed Castro - politician or army leader?  He seemed to have an agenda when he was overthrowing Batista which made him appear as more of a politician, but he also organized the entire rebel forces to overthrow Batista.  We also talked about how it seemed to be OK for politicians to make promises for what they're going to do but completely ignore them once in office.  Fidel made a lot of promises that he didn't keep - about half of the things he said he was going to do in the reading.  When we were talking, I'm sure that you noticed that Max and I were talking on our own for a section of it. We were actually having a serious discussion comparing Castro to Obama.  And every time a new element was brought up, we would discuss its connection to our current day government.  It all started with the things that Castro said that he was going to do and did, then what he said he was going to do but didn't, then what he didn't say he was going to do but did anyway.  We discussed the possibility of our own country's government going askew, and how it might come about.  I really enjoyed this discussion as well as the group discussion.

WHY WE FIGHT

Come to class with a list of the reasons the rebels are fighting, according to Castro. WRITE IT DOWN, BRING IT TO CLASS. You will NOT be allowed to participate in the discussion if you do not have this list.

Dictatorship

Ignorance

Military Rule

Police Oppression

Lack of Liberty

Batista's Imprisonment of Soldiers

Limited Information and Communication Media

Dysfunctional Government Officials (Cheating, Stealing)

Lack of Political Stability

Misunderstanding from the US Government?

Unemployment Rates (1/6)

Voice of America

Its mission is "to promote freedom and democracy and to enhance understanding through multimedia communication of accurate, objective, and balanced news, information and other programming about America and the world to audiences overseas."  VOA will "serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news."

These are just a few quotes stating what the VOA's missions are.

After reading up on exactly what the VOA is and what it does, it blows my mind that I've never heard of it before.  It's a WORLDWIDE broadcast through satellite, cable, FM, AM, shortwave radio, the internet, phones, and on TV.  It's accessible by every means people use to get information from.  And obviously, this news is intended for the rest of the world so that they know what is going on in America.  But why have I never listened to it?  Wouldn't it be a viable news source for those of us inside the country as well?
And it's been around for so long, one would think I'd have heard my parents mention it - or even my grandparents mention it.  But no, nothing.  I even asked my mom and dad if they knew anything about it. Nope.  And apparently, it goes by different names in different countries, but they're all under the umbrella of the VOA.  Also, in America, it's called VOA so there's no excuse.

In addition to being broadcasted all over the world in tons of languages, it also sounds incredibly reliable. Everything they broadcast must be backed up by two independent sources before it is aired.  So basically, it has almost no bias at all.  Obviously, everything has a little bit of bias - but the intention of the VOA is not to impose its political view on anybody, to make anybody thing that the US is better than it is, or to push down any other country.

I think that this will be a REALLY interesting thing to talk about in class and I hope to write another blog post about it once I get more details.

Neo-Colonialism

Today in class, we talked about a lot of different topics, but one that came up a lot was the idea of neo-colonialism, or current day colonialism.  Basically, colonialism is when one country is in control of another country.  NEO-COLONIALISM however is very different.  Neo-colonialism is based on the idea that "we're not colonizing you, you just completely depend on us for your economy".

So basically, a country can be completely in control of another country without "technically" being in control of them.  This avoids the hypocriticalness that our country would have had when taking over Cuba after the Spanish American War.  Because we hadn't "colonized" them, we weren't going against our own morals, since we were a colony of Britain for quite a while before we gained our independence.

Pull up your socks and get going

I really like "All the Shah's Men" for a few reasons.  First off,  it's not just about the Shah and his men.  It has a bunch of other stuff in it too.  Second, it gives real stories, told in story form whereas most books would just give a very historical standpoint with no feel.  It also does a good job of giving the book feel without implementing a huge bias into the stories.

Anyway, about the reading.  I thought that this was a really interesting reading because it provided not only the facts, but also the opinions of many of the people involved in the reading.  For example, I loved the part where it talks about Eisenhower's opinions on replacing the leader of Iran and how his view is shaped and molded.  (Not only by the Iranians and the British, but also by his fellow advisors.  It's amusing to me that the Eisenhower administration was all for one thing while Eisenhower himself thought exactly the opposite.  But eventually, and only through lots of people's gentle inputs, subtle words, and small lies, he changed his mind and allowed the CIA to replace Mossadegh.  Also, a bunch of people kind of spoke on Eisenhower's behalf, twisting and bending his words to sound more... more like what the other person wanted to hear.  I think its funny how the president really didn't have much control over even his own people, let alone what the rest of the world was doing.

Honestly, I really enjoyed the reading but didn't think that the questions were all that interesting.  I was more fascinated by what was actually going on in the story than how it related to what we were doing in class.  Kinda unusual.

Unseen Enemies Everywhere

Feel free to address these questions in your blog post(s).

1. Describe the relationship between the United States and Iran during the years between 1945 and 1950. They had kind of a love-hate relationship but instead of hate, it was just ignorance. America, at least from a governmental standpoint, was completely uninterested in what was happening in Iran at the time (the appointment of a new prime minister). While Iran's issues don't appear to have been quite as serious as those of the United States, they were still pertinent to the Iranian people. The book takes an interesting stand on this, saying that it was wrong of the United States to be blind to all of Iran's issues. And maybe it was. But from my own interpretation of the reading, it didn't seem unreasonable that the United States wanted to pay more attention to THE WAR THAT THEY WERE FIGHTING (indirectly, i guess. but still). The US had much bigger issues to pay attention to than the new prime minister of Iran, a country that wasn't even on their radar until much later in history.
On the other hand, the Iranian people had a different view of America. According to the book, they were completely obsessed. They loved not only America, but the American people. There had been individual americans that had gone over to Iran to help out their economic situation and many of them were very grateful. The iranians were also very grateful that the US helped them out with their oil issue with GB. Basically, when GB stopped splitting the profits with Iran on the oil, Iran could've revolted and gone communist so america stepped in to help them. 2. What were the attitudes of the United States and Britain not only towards Iran, but towards each other during this time period? 3. What circumstances caused Averell Harriman to be called into the situation in Iran?

Effects of the Platt Amendment

Of the reading that I just did, one part really stood out to me as being important, but also strange and ironic.  The section was titled "What were the early years of Cuban independence like and how did the Platt Amendment impact Cuba's political culture?" so it basically explained what the Platt Amendment did to the country of Cuba.

From this and previous readings, I know that the Platt Amendment was initially instated to place limits on Cuba's sovereignty, but also to help guide Cuba in its first steps as its own independent country.  The effect was not the same as the intention.  A few years after gaining their independence, Cuba had turned into a giant political war between the Liberals and the Moderates.  And people IN Cuba were so set on their opinion that they would do anything to get it across.  In fact, both sides asked for American intervention on the other side.  America was basically running the whole country of Cuba, with the political parties as puppets.

The Platt Amendment also gave America the right to control ALL of Cuba's economic things.  Cuba couldn't export or import from another country without the US's approval.

The Platt Amendment REALLY limited Cuba's independence, making their "independence from spain" not quite so exciting.

In addition, it seems that the United States was being kind of hypocritical.  In the US, in order to be president, you have to be BORN in the country.  This is to protect the interests of the people of the country and so that other people from other countries can't tell us what we think.  We then proceed to go into Cuba and completely control their government by appointing somebody that shares the interests of OUR country instead of that of the Cuban People.

Occupy Cuba

Today in class, we talked a lot about how to ask good questions to prompt more interesting blog posts.  After the reading that I just did, I can think of a few questions that I could write a lot about.  The reading was a brief history of the United State's involvement in Cuba over the past 100 years or so.  And my #1 question is... Based on our past interactions with Cuba, what would happen if we dropped all travel restrictions and bad feelings about the country and its people?

First, I want to talk about a few things from the reading.  I didn't realize how quickly our relationship with Cuba changed from really good to really bad.  We first went into Cuba to HELP them fight against the Spanish.  Then, when we beat the Spanish, we were like

"Oh by the way, we're staying here."

And we MADE them put the Platt amendment in their constitution which basically said that we could have three military bases and a few ports IN Cuba and they couldn't do anything about it.  In fact, we still have one of them left called Guantanamo Bay.  In fact, I'd love to spend a whole class period talking about Guantanamo Bay, why we have it, what we do there, and things like that.  It's a really interesting topic.  Anyway, from a little extra research that I did, I found out the Las Vegas was basically created because Americans couldn't go to Cuba anymore to do their gambling and partying.  So I've brainstormed a few things that might happen if we WERE to open Cuba back up the the United States.

• HUGE development all over the country by wealthy Americans
• Minor decrease in visitors to Las Vegas
• Major decrease in visitors to other surrounding caribbean countries and islands
• Lots of job opportunities for the people of Cuba in the field of tourism and hospitality
• Big update in Cuban supplies (like cars and other materials)

These are just a few things.  I think it'd be really fun to have this as a class activity, and we could put all of our lists together and discuss which ones really belong and why.

P.A.P.E.R

Throughout this semester, we've been using a system called PAPER to analyse all of the primary sources that we find for the class.  PAPER is an acronym that stands for

Purpose of the author writing it
Argument or strategy of the paper
Presuppositions (in the text and our own)
Epistemology (evaluating the truth)
Relate to other papers

I really like this way of analyzing a primary source because it causes you to look at it in multiple ways, sometimes in ways that you wouldn't think of normally.  I thought it was really interesting to try to think of the biases or presuppositions that both the author and I would have had in reading this.  Normally I think of just the writers bias (the point of view that they have, what information they included, etc.) but i've never thought about my own bias - what presuppositions I have when going into reading this piece.  For example, our values may be different today than they were when the piece was written.  This is especially pertinent when dealing with things like slavery that have gone from completely acceptable to completely unacceptable in a very short amount of time.

Also, looking at the author's purpose is really interesting.  Why did this person write this?  Usually, people don't just write things down because.  They write things down that are interesting or important, and it can be really fun to try to find what exactly that important thing is.

Lastly, the epistemology of the source.  How truthful does this person's writing sound?  This can be really hard to judge, especially with pieces from a long time ago, but it can be really interesting.  So far, all of the pieces have sounded very truthful.  I think it'd be really fun to have a reading that was completely false and see if my classmates and I catch onto it.  It'd have to sound really legitimate, though.

The Cuba Reader 1 - Autobiography of a Slave

Today, we were assigned to read the "Autobiography of a Slave" which was one of the only kept pieces of writing from a slave in Cuba.  It was written from the point of view of a slave named Juan Francisco Manzano and told the story of his experience on a sugar plantation in Cuba.  It was a very personal story that focused on many detailes of his life that a person wouldn't normally know just my meeting someone.  Honestly, the names were really hard to follow so I don't really know who is who, but I got the gist of the story and what happened to the main character.

I haven't read too many autobiographies of slaves in my years of school, but of the ones that i have read, this is by far the worst.  (Not worst as in most boring or something, but the slave was treated the worst).  In fact, the writer often skipped parts of the story because they were too violent or unpleasant.  

Now I know that I'm supposed to read this with the mind of a person reading this a long time ago, but the more personal a story is, the harder that is to do.  When I read this, I make a connection with the writer that you don't get in most readings, especially in history class.  It is almost impossible for me to comprehend what it is like to be kept against my will, purposefully hurt, and forced to do things like the things that this man had to.  Part of that, im sure, is attributed to my sheltered life in Lincoln Park and Francis Parker; but also to living in a country where things like this are no longer acceptable.  The writer may tell about how he was hurt, but those things don't mean anything to me because I have nothing to compare it to.  The concept of being beaten for what are truly petty things is so... so inconceivable.  I wanted to talk about that too.  Why are they punished for things like picking a leaf or letting a lantern go out?  What is the significance of this lantern that he keep talking about?  I mean, it's obviously a real lantern and not a metaphor, but why is so much importance placed in it?  I hope we can talk about some of these in class tomorrow.  I'll try to bring them up.

All the Shah's Men Reading/Questions 2

So far, I've really enjoyed reading All the Shah's Men.  I've found it to be more readable than most other books that we read for history class.  It actually reads like a story rather than like a textbook and it isn't crammed to the brim with facts.  It allows the reader to go more than a page without having to stop to think about what happened in what he/she just read.  I just read the fourth chapter titled "A Wave of Oil" and was amazed by some of the things that I learned from it.  For instance, APOC (now BP) owned MOST of the country of Iran for a significant period of time (that time being not too long ago).  BP was basically its own country with a different name slapped on the front.

As a side note, it's always weird studying things that happened really recently for me.  Because it makes me realize how much has changed in not a lot of time.  It also makes me wonder if things like that can happen again or ARE happening and I just don't know about it.  It's a scary thing to think about as a kid.

Anyway, back to the reading.  I found it interesting that England basically forced Reza Shah into selling them iranian land by helping him when he was in trouble so that he would have to repay them somehow.  It's like something right out of the Godfather.  I hope we talk about this more in class...

Obama's View on Cuba

On my desktop, CNN.com is my homepage for my web browser.  This gives me the opportunity to learn about things that are happening RIGHT NOW in the world as they are developing.  It also expands my knowledge of total global functionality and the ways that different people and countries interact with each other.  I can usually spend hours just clicking on the stories on the side of the story that I'm currently looking at and seeing where it takes me.  Usually, I end up in a dead end but sometimes it takes me somewhere relevant to what we are talking about in history class.  Recently, I found an article about a conversation between Fidel Castro and Barack Obama.  Well, it wasn't really a conversation so much as it was public announcements about the other person.  Childish public announcements.  Basically, Obama suggested that Cuba make changes in order to "improve bilateral relations" and Fidel responded by calling him stupid.  Just, stupid.  Obama responded by saying that they would be willing to make changes once cuba started actually caring about foreign issues and about its people.  Castro then responded with a quote in a Cuban news paper "How nice!  How intelligent!  So much generosity has failed to let him understand that after 50 years of blockade and crimes against our country, they haven't been able to bow our people."  Which basically means that Fidel thinks that even though America is attacking and secluding Cuba, the people are completely fine.  Neither part of that statement is true.  America has not been attacking Cuba and the Cuban people are NOT fine.  Something needs to happen soon or that whole country is going to fall into an even worse economic depression.  One that they can't get themselves out of.

This argument sounds like something that two ten-year-olds would be fighting about.  It sounds like something that "mom" would have to get in the middle of.  But in reality, there is no "mom" to settle arguments between countries, especially two countries as mature as the USA and Cuba.  And to be honest, I've never seen a political leader make a publicly sarcastic statement about another politician, especially the President of the United States.  I think that, as long as we are on the topic of Cuba, this should definitely be something to be raised in our future conversations.

Historical Interventions of Iran

Today in class, we did a fun activity revolving around a reading that we did in Iran:  Through the Looking Glass.  The activity was to write as many "overtakings" of Iran as we could using only the reading from the previous night.  We had to have the date of the new rule, the foreign powers involved, the type of intervention (military, religious, etc.), the incentive for the foreign power to overtake Iran, the role of the Iranian government in the overtaking, and the reactions of the Iranian people for each one.  Zoë and I found six different instances in which this happened.  We then discussed in class some of the major ones that we all should have had.  As a homework question / blog prompt, Mr. Moran asked us this question.

What is the cumulative effect of all of these events and how does it affect the people of Iran.  Why does this lead to a constitutional revolt?

Which got me thinking for the rest of the day about what the right answer should be.  What I've finally worked it down to is that because the people of Iran have had so many leaders with so many different cultural inputs and separate rules, nobody really knows what to think anymore.  So they revolt.  This is natural human nature even within a single person.  If the brain receives conflicting messages from different parts of the body, it doesn't know what to do so it reverts to PAIN.  If you dunk one hand in ice water and one hand in hot water, your hands both HURT REALLY BADLY.  Same thing is happening with the people of Iran.  If their constitution is so messed up from so many different people's inputs, then nobody can know what is OK and not OK.  It'd be like if every year growing up, children got a new set of parents with different rules and punishments.  The child would eventually flip out. 

     Those examples may seem a bit extreme, but in reality the people who controlled Iran were such a wide range of rulers from Native Tribes to the British and the Russians at the same time.  That'd just be crazy to try to deal with.  Hopefully, we'll continue on this subject tomorrow (today, technically)

Today in our History class, we had a long discussion about why the country of Iran is so different from the other countries surrounding it.  I made a list of ways that it was different along with my other notes, all of which are at school - unusable.  So I'll do my best to recall things from memory.  (I understand why you wanted us to use paper and pencils instead of computers, but I'm not very good at holding onto papers - especially when I don't have a binder for that class.  Anyway, I found some of the differences very interesting - things that I never knew or at least didn't remember.  Iranians are NOT ARAB.  Iran is NOT AN ARAB COUNTRY.  This is a really important fact, since there seems to be a certain negative connotation with the word Arab, at least in our part of the world.  Arabs came from Arabia, now known as Saudi Arabia (Arabia run by the Sauds).  We talked a lot about the differences in religion and how 90% of the country is Shia Muslim as opposed to Sunni Muslim (90% everywhere else in the world).  I don't know if we discussed this or not, but I really wonder WHY this country's religion is so skewed from the rest of the Middle East.  Also, we're not supposed to group the "Middle East" into one clump because it is comprised of so many different religions and countries and beliefs.  I understand that, I guess.  It'd be like if people said "The Americas" as a generalization since there are so many different cultures represented even within North America, let alone South America.  We also talked about the difference in who they think should follow up as the next Khalif - somebody chosen from a specific group of people or somebody related to the current Khalif.  Again, I don't know WHY these opinions differ, but they do. There was one more thing that I would like to look farther into the history of, and that is the origin of the word "Aryan".  Because apparently, before World War II, Aryan meant something completely different.  Maybe I'll bring it up in class again this week.

Cuban Currency

This week, we watched a video/had a discussion on communism in Cuba.  One of the main points of both of these that I forgot to mention was the monetary situation.  Cuba has two currencies - the Peso and the CUC.  The CUC is currently 1:1 with the US dollar, but it fluctuates slightly back and forth.  The Peso is considerably less than the dollar or the CUC.  The problem is that there is a double standard, where anybody that works with the government gets paid in Pesos while anybody that works with tourists gets paid in CUC.  So basically, the jobs that would be regarded as crappy here in America are considered some of the best jobs in Cuba.  Another one of the misleading things about Cuba is the free education.  All education is free starting in kindergarden through grad school - meaning that ANYBODY can get a good education.  But the thing is, that education gets you NOWHERE.  Because professors, teachers, scientists, etc. are all paid by the government, they get paid in Pesos.  So basically, people working in cabs or on the street selling things are getting paid close to 100 times more than a professor or some other government worker.  And when people aren't motivated to go to school and become smart people, the whole country loses... intelligence?

This whole situation means that almost all of cuba's economy is based off of tourism - which is fine.  There are lots of places in the world with their main focus on tourism.  But with cuba, their BIGGEST POSSIBLE CUSTOMER is not allowed to go to their country.  Because American's can't go to Cuba, it cuts off a huge possibility for income from tourism.  That and the fact that only recently can people own private businesses specializing in things that they want instead of what the government wants.  Who wants to go to a place where there are no interesting stores or restaurants or fun things to do?  Nobody.  So Cuba is really in kind of a lose-lose situation here.  They don't have an export so they rely on tourism, but they don't have anything worth touring and their largest tourism contendor isn't going.  I think that SOMETHING should be changed in our relationship in order to help not the GOVERNMENT of Cuba but the PEOPLE of Cuba.  Which is hard considering most of the people ARE the government.  Apparently, Obama made a speech regarding the USA's view on Cuba really recently.  I'm going to research that and write another article soon.

Cuba Video Notes/Thoughts/Questions

Yesterday, we watched a documentary on the situation in Cuba.  It appeared to be one or two guys with a small, handheld video camera asking people on the streets questions.  Many of the responses were a surprise and weren't what I was expecting.  For example, he asked many people what they thought about certain political things and almost everybody said that they didn't want to talk about politics.  At first, I didn't know why, but then I realized that in a country without freedom of speech people have to be very cautious about what they say on film.  They don't know what is OK to say so they just don't say anything.  The video spent some time talking about the economic crisis that was happening in Cuba and the effects it was having on most of the people.  Then it said that, in order to combat the economic crisis, Cuba was selling 1 million licensees to open up private businesses in their homes.  This would hopefully stimulate the economy enough to keep the country alive.  The documenters also interviewed people who owned private businesses who said that they were really enjoying being in control of their own money and sales; especially since they were making significantly more money than they were making working for the government.

I had a few questions about the video but mostly about the choices that people made.  When Che Guevera died, Fidel Castro completely changed around the economic system of cuba to match that of the Soviet Union and of Communist China.  This is understandable, since the USSR and China were trying to spread communism to as many parts of the world as possible.  But didn't Cuba realize that these systems were failing and that switching to this economic type would only ruin the country?  Or were they left out of all of the russian secrets until the very end?  Who knows.

Questions about Iran

I was told that we could do a blog about some of the questions that we had regarding the topic of Iran.

1)  If it was pretty widely known that the elections were rigged, then why didn't anybody (or country) do anything?  Couldn't we have the UN supervise their elections to make sure that they were fair?

2)  What effect did the events in Iran have on the rest of the world?  I know that there were many other uprisings against governments in the middle east right around and after this happened, but was this the spark that caused all of the others?

3)  Were there other solutions to killing protestors that wouldn't have caused such a big riot?

4)  What is the deal with the Basiji?  Who are they, who pays them, and what is their exact job?

5)  What would Iran be like if the other guy had won the election?  How much would it have changed?

I'll try to answer some of these later on in the year or bring them up in class discussions because I actually would like them answered.

Iran Video Comments

Yesterday we watched a video/documentary on what happend a few years ago in Iran.  The main focus of the documentary was on the death of a 26 year old girl named Neda who was killed in a peaceful protest by the makeshift police force, the Basiji, who were present in Iran at the time of the protests.  Following the story of Neda's day, we saw exactly what was happening at the time of the protests - much of which was pretty gruesome.  The video itself showed multiple deaths straight up - no blurring or anything.  I had to look away for those parts.  But the more interesting parts of the video were the ones relating to the government and what it did to cause the protesting and what it did to stop it.  The part that most grabbed my attention was learning about the voting and the results.  It appeared that everybody who could possibly vote wanted to and tried to.  People were so incredibly excited to have a new president that they even brought their own pens in case of a pen scandal.  But then when the votes were counted, Ahmedinejad's votes towered over the other two candidates'.  And the results were released even before some of the voting booths had closed, making EVERYBODY very suspicious of how exactly the counting process happened or if it happened at all.  The entire possibility of a government deceiving its citizens is completely foreign to me since we live in a country were something like that would never happen.  I think that, at this point, it becomes the responsibility of the rest of the world to intervine and make things right in this country.  They don't really have a good excuse since Iran didn't do a very good job of keeping information inside the country.  And if this country is stuck in an unfair government, they at least need a new leader to sort things out.  If that doesn't happen, they may be stuck in repeat on bad leaders

Sorry if these blogs don't follow a very linear pattern - It's just my thoughts as they come out of my mouth and I don't think it's necessary to go back and edit them.  Unless you would like me to  - just let me know.

Our Troops in Iraq

I recently read an article in The Week about how many troops the USA has in Iraq and how many it should have. The Week is a pretty unbiased magazine (as unbiased as you're going to get, at least) since they clearly show the opinions of both sides in every story, regardless the topic, and show the pros and cons for each.  This article, interestingly, did not show the opinions of the liberals and conservatives, but instead the opinions of Obama (representing the USA) and the Iraqi President (representing Iraq).  For years, the Iraqi president wanted US troops out of the country, but now that things are actually being implemented, he may have changed his mind.  There are currently around 48,000 troops stationed in Iraq and Obama proposes to drop it down to 3,000, a huge drop.  Now the article does say that there are people in the US that are opposed to this action, but the main opposition is Iraq.  They are now saying that Iraq is not ready to lose so many American troops so quickly, seeing that their issues haven't yet been solved.

All stories about or relating to war have a strong connection to the topic of globalization.  And the story may be pro globalization or against globalization, depending on who's writing and what they're writing about.  For example, in this article, it seems that Iraq is being pro globalization by wanting American troops to stay in the country, while the US is pulling out - essentially recreating the border between the US and Iraq.  However, if we keep our relationship with Iraq in good standing, then the border will not be quite so apparent.  I like to imagine it as a map with different opacity for different border lines.  For the US, the border between us and Canada would be just a ghostly shadow, while the border with Mexico would be a really thick, really dark line.  It would also have a "One Way" sign crudely photoshopped onto the map pointing towards Mexico.  Hey, maybe i'll make it for class one day.  Then I could expand onto the rest of the WORLD!  That'd be a fun class project.  We could do research on each country's relationship with its bordering countries and draw them based on that.

#iranelection

For this blog, I was instructed to find a linked article from a twitter post marked with #iranelection.  Although the real Iran election is long gone, the tag is still popular for marking things going on in Iran that may seem unfair or unjust.  Now, foolish me didn't realize that there was a difference between #iranelection and #iranelections, so I spent quite a while looking for decent links on a barely-used tag.  But now that I realize that we're supposed to be using #iranelection, i've found plenty of useful, recent links that I could talk about.  The most interesting (and posted about) issue is on the two American hikers that were captured in Iran. Here is the link to the article that I read-

http://t.co/KzNSQV6

Apparently, Iran is pardoning the two hikers and dropping all of the "required bail" and things like that that were initially imparted.  Originally, there was a $500,000 bail for each of the two men; that or eight years in prison in Iran.  But now, due to "unknown" reasons, Iran is dropping all charges of espionage and illegal entry and letting the hikers go free.

This story is yet another example of what can happen in a dysfunctional country with dysfunctional governmental agencies.

Globalization

Over the summer, we had to do a project about 10 world events related to certain topics.  Each topic focused on a major world issue or topic that could be focused down to almost all countries.  This allowed for lots of freedom in choosing articles to write about.  In class, we did an activity where we linked articles together in a chain based on the countries that it focuses on and the countries that it is related to.  For example, I found an article on Libya and the situation there.  The article also talked about how China may be selling weapons to the government forces in Libya, therefore the next article would have to do with China.

     I learned a lot about current world issues and about how countries interact with each other.  Much of the time, it is like a classroom of little kids.  They get in fights, they start throwing things, other kids get involved, some kid is in the corner trading his sandwich for some cookies he's not supposed to have, etc.  Honestly, it's really quite childish.  The problem is, there's no real world leader (that's not exactly a problem, I suppose) but that means that there's no way to settle arguments between countries other than war or the threat of war.  It's completely impractical to have a world leader (although there have been people who have tried and almost succeeded) but it leaves us relying on each other for support and to be honest to one another.  And yes, if everybody decides on something together, then so be it - but that rarely happens.

     Globalization and International conflict are topics that are so immensely huge that it would be impossible for even our whole grade to cover every issue.   And almost all of our exposure to such issues comes through television and the Internet through news sources.  So news stations have a lot of influence over what topics people are aware of and which ones they aren't.  It's especially interesting when countries try to contain information within their country like what happened/is happening in Egypt where they lost all outside communication except for the occasional Twitter post.  I'd like to write more about that issue regarding basic human rights and how much control is too much.

Iran's First Nuclear Plant

The article I found discussed the current situation in iran regarding their first nuclear power plant.  It talked about the money it would save the country and their plans for expansion.  The main goal of building the power plant was to create a peaceful way to reduce consumption of fossil fuels, but this construction may raise issues with the rest of the world.  Even though the people in charge of the power plant may have good intentions, some people may not.  And with an unstable government and minimal police control, the possibilities of materials falling into the wrong hands is very possible.  In order to better understand the situation, I would need more information regarding the safety precautions being taken to ensure a secure workplace.  Hopefully everything goes well, but its against the world's better judgement to give this country any access to nuclear power.

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