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.

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)

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.