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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