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.

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.

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.