Monday, May 26, 2014
Crimea - America has no business there
We all have been hearing on the news (a little less now the main wave has subsided) about Russian and Ukraine interactions over Crimea. This event has received a lot of coverage from all sides, with Russia and Ukraine seeking to solve the issue independently, the Ukrainian foreign minister requesting the withdrawal of foreign interferes. Why does America think it has a right to make threats and sanctions against Russia? Russia is coming to the defense of a densely populated Russian area, and not using military force or shedding blood. If anything Russia is being the more reasonable of the parties. On the other hand, America is being hypocritical and whining. Let's not forget the countless countries America "inducted" into its great empire. Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines. Areas which had NO American citizens or influence. Russia isn't half as drastic as that, simply giving comfort and order to Russian citizens in Crimea, evidenced by the huge reception held by citizens upon the arrival of Russian forces. While it can't be said that what Russia is doing is holy, or not crossing some lines, because it certainly is. But what we should be considering is that, is it really America's place to tell people how to live their lives, with the current imperialistic track record it has.
Friday, May 23, 2014
Today in Thailand...
As some of you may know, yesterday there was a military coup in
Thailand. Led by Thai army chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha, the army
declared martial law after months of protests that paralyzed the
government.
The military threw out the entire 2007 constitution except section II, which acknowledges the king as the head of state. Schools have been shut down nationwide, a curfew has been enforced, and all television providers are limited to only broadcasting the military line.
Throughout this all, many Bangkok residents see this as a normal, and hardly unprecedented, situation, as Thailand has seen its military take over 12 times already. "They just go home and don't go out after 10," Said one resident for whom this is his second coup. "... People just live their normal lives."
The situation has escalated today. Former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and more than 150 other politicians and activists were detained and banned from leaving the country. They had all been summoned to a military compound to submit to authorities, and were warned that if they did not comply, they would be arrested. The current military government claims this is for their own safety, as they close the Thailand-Laos border to keep redshirts, or supporters of the old government, from fleeing.
America, in addition to several other countries, has expressed its disapproval, and called for the reinstatement of democracy. However, no direct action has yet been taken.
What, if anything, do you think should be done by the international community?
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/22/world/asia/thailand-martial-law/index.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/23/yingluck-shinawatra-detained-thailand-coup-military
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/23/us-thailand-protest-idUSBREA4J0HN20140523
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/23/world/asia/thailand-coup/
http://cir.ca/news/thailand-anti-government-protests/125977
The military threw out the entire 2007 constitution except section II, which acknowledges the king as the head of state. Schools have been shut down nationwide, a curfew has been enforced, and all television providers are limited to only broadcasting the military line.
Throughout this all, many Bangkok residents see this as a normal, and hardly unprecedented, situation, as Thailand has seen its military take over 12 times already. "They just go home and don't go out after 10," Said one resident for whom this is his second coup. "... People just live their normal lives."
The situation has escalated today. Former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and more than 150 other politicians and activists were detained and banned from leaving the country. They had all been summoned to a military compound to submit to authorities, and were warned that if they did not comply, they would be arrested. The current military government claims this is for their own safety, as they close the Thailand-Laos border to keep redshirts, or supporters of the old government, from fleeing.
America, in addition to several other countries, has expressed its disapproval, and called for the reinstatement of democracy. However, no direct action has yet been taken.
What, if anything, do you think should be done by the international community?
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/22/world/asia/thailand-martial-law/index.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/23/yingluck-shinawatra-detained-thailand-coup-military
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/23/us-thailand-protest-idUSBREA4J0HN20140523
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/23/world/asia/thailand-coup/
http://cir.ca/news/thailand-anti-government-protests/125977
The Rise of the Teenager
The Roaring 20s were famous for many things. Gatsby, prohibition, speakeasies, flappers, radio, cars, and the rise of the teenager.
In the 1800s, people lived in a state of either "adult" or "child". There was no teenager.
As a child, you lived under your parents' strict rules, but did not have to worry about that which came with being an adult. As an adult, you had freedom, but all the responsibility that came with it. The teenager came with the creation of a middle ground.
Teenagers were granted a taste of the freedom of adult life, with only some of the responsibilities that came with it. A few of the events that most contributed to the advent of the teenager were the lengthening of a student's time in school, the pushing back of marriage, and the invention of the affordable car. All of these either gave children more time to develop or more freedom.
Schools, now further away from home, developed their own culture, separate from home life, and teens dated freely, instead of under the watchful eyes of their parents. They gained freedom, but not necessarily responsibility.
Since then, teenagers have become almost a being of their own. They are the hopes and future of the nation, the rebels and the untrustworthy and the alarming. "America created the teenager in its own image--brash, unfinished, ebullient, idealistic, crude, energetic, innocent, greedy, changing in all sorts of unsettling ways."
What do you think the teenager stands for today?
http://www.ushistory.org/us/46c.asp
http://www.thomashine.com/the_rise_and_fall_of_the_american_teenager_3432.htm
In the 1800s, people lived in a state of either "adult" or "child". There was no teenager.
As a child, you lived under your parents' strict rules, but did not have to worry about that which came with being an adult. As an adult, you had freedom, but all the responsibility that came with it. The teenager came with the creation of a middle ground.
Teenagers were granted a taste of the freedom of adult life, with only some of the responsibilities that came with it. A few of the events that most contributed to the advent of the teenager were the lengthening of a student's time in school, the pushing back of marriage, and the invention of the affordable car. All of these either gave children more time to develop or more freedom.
Schools, now further away from home, developed their own culture, separate from home life, and teens dated freely, instead of under the watchful eyes of their parents. They gained freedom, but not necessarily responsibility.
Since then, teenagers have become almost a being of their own. They are the hopes and future of the nation, the rebels and the untrustworthy and the alarming. "America created the teenager in its own image--brash, unfinished, ebullient, idealistic, crude, energetic, innocent, greedy, changing in all sorts of unsettling ways."
What do you think the teenager stands for today?
http://www.ushistory.org/us/46c.asp
http://www.thomashine.com/the_rise_and_fall_of_the_american_teenager_3432.htm
The Mao Regime and the United States
If you know what either the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution is, and are not from a Chinese family, I'm impressed.
For those of you who don't know, the Cultural Revolution was Mao Zedong's proletariat revolution, with the Great Leap Forward as it's precursor.
In China today, the government censors anything related to these events, and in 2006, the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, it told Chinese artists, academics, and journalists to simply ignore the topic. Time is not stopping the censor. In fact, its growing stricter, if anything.
Why are these events are so important that the Chinese government does not even want its youth to know about them?
First, it must be noted that Mao Zedong is known as the world's greatest mass murderer in human history. Hitler's already impressive 12 million kills is dwarfed by those of Mao, estimated to have taken anywhere between 49 to 78 million lives. Most, if not all, of these deaths were of mainland Chinese.
During Chairman Mao's reign, people were beaten to death, eaten alive, drowned. When peaceful protesters demonstrated in Tiananmen Square, they were chased out and killed by tanks. But most prominently, people were starved to death, whether deliberately or by simple lack of food.
In the United States, we learn extensively about Hitler's concentration camps, about Stalin's Gulags, and yet the events of Mao's rise to power are glossed over in American history books, as are his policies, if they are even mentioned at all. The one forced interaction we had with the Cultural Revolution was in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, where we learned about oppression of intellectuals in China, but not about how Principal Bian Zhongyun was brutally beaten by her students using wooden sticks spiked with nails and then left to die.
I asked my dad why this was, thinking that as he had lived through it, he would have some insight. The only possible reason he could think of was this: "There are no concrete numbers. Many government documents were destroyed. We will never know how many people died, and no one likes to teach what they don't know."
Perhaps China is ignoring it, but that doesn't mean we have to.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/maos-great-leap-forward-killed-45-million-in-four-years-2081630.html
http://www.economist.com/node/6951123
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-chinese-cultural-revolution-remembering-mao-s-victims-a-483023.html
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/06/world/a-tale-of-red-guards-and-cannibals.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/opinion/confessions-of-the-cultural-revolution.html
For those of you who don't know, the Cultural Revolution was Mao Zedong's proletariat revolution, with the Great Leap Forward as it's precursor.
In China today, the government censors anything related to these events, and in 2006, the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, it told Chinese artists, academics, and journalists to simply ignore the topic. Time is not stopping the censor. In fact, its growing stricter, if anything.
Why are these events are so important that the Chinese government does not even want its youth to know about them?
First, it must be noted that Mao Zedong is known as the world's greatest mass murderer in human history. Hitler's already impressive 12 million kills is dwarfed by those of Mao, estimated to have taken anywhere between 49 to 78 million lives. Most, if not all, of these deaths were of mainland Chinese.
During Chairman Mao's reign, people were beaten to death, eaten alive, drowned. When peaceful protesters demonstrated in Tiananmen Square, they were chased out and killed by tanks. But most prominently, people were starved to death, whether deliberately or by simple lack of food.
In the United States, we learn extensively about Hitler's concentration camps, about Stalin's Gulags, and yet the events of Mao's rise to power are glossed over in American history books, as are his policies, if they are even mentioned at all. The one forced interaction we had with the Cultural Revolution was in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, where we learned about oppression of intellectuals in China, but not about how Principal Bian Zhongyun was brutally beaten by her students using wooden sticks spiked with nails and then left to die.
I asked my dad why this was, thinking that as he had lived through it, he would have some insight. The only possible reason he could think of was this: "There are no concrete numbers. Many government documents were destroyed. We will never know how many people died, and no one likes to teach what they don't know."
Perhaps China is ignoring it, but that doesn't mean we have to.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/maos-great-leap-forward-killed-45-million-in-four-years-2081630.html
http://www.economist.com/node/6951123
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-chinese-cultural-revolution-remembering-mao-s-victims-a-483023.html
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/06/world/a-tale-of-red-guards-and-cannibals.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/opinion/confessions-of-the-cultural-revolution.html
The Stonewall Riots
The 1960s were known for all the different liberation movements in the United States, best known of course is the Civil Rights Movement and Women’s Rights Movements, however one minority’s history and fight for civil rights has been frequently glossed over. Many of you will remember a particular question on the AP Test, concerning the Stonewall Riots. The Stonewall Riots were a number of protests in the 1960s, which demonstrated the growing LGBT community in America. 
The riots began on June 28th, 1969, during a police raid of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village of New York City. The police seized alcohol, prompting the dissent of many patrons already in the bar. The police began to force many of the patrons who were dressed in drag to the bathrooms, to identify their gender and then make arrests. None of the patrons agreed to do so, prompting the first arrests. There have been numerous reports of police misconduct in these cases, as many of the gay women at the bar reported that the male police officers frisked them inappropriately, and verbally abused them with slurs such as dyke and bitch. As the arrested patrons were forced into the police cars, bystanders began to shout at the police officers, and several began to sing the well known song “We Shall Overcome.” The actual rioting did not begin until a woman was hit on the head with a baton, by a police officer. After several overturned police wagons, ten police officers barricaded themselves in the Inn, while patrons and bystanders broke the windows, threw rocks and lit fires.
The rioting continued for several days, and thirteen arrests were made before the fighting died out. Several members of the crowd and four police officers were hospitalized, however all survived. The riots are considered the single most important event in American gay rights history, as they prompted a wave of protest and movement for the rights of the LGBT community. This year, film director Roland Emmerich announced that he would be making a movie about the Stonewall Riots, however much controversy has surrounded who would be cast as actors. The transgender community has asked the director numerous times through social media to have the main actors be transgender, as many key leaders of the protests were transgender women or drag queens, such as Yvvonne Ritter and Martin Boyce. However, one of the most widely recognized leaders of the riots, as well as the subsequent protests, was a black transgender woman named Marsha P. Johnson. The transgender community, as well as the rest of the LGBT community has expressed hope that the film will not gloss over the contribution of black and transgendered men and women to the struggle for gay rights.
Sources:
Russian conflicts in Crimea
As many of you may know, the topic of Ukrainian and the occupation of Russian forces in Crimea has been in the news as of late. But how can we tell what is really the motives towards this forced intervention into Ukrainian politics? Well we can draw parallels from the past. In 2008, Russian forces did a similar strategy in Georgia when it annexed two of its territories. Ukraine's acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, explains when addressing his nation, " They are trying to provoke a military conflict and are creating a scenario identical to the Abkhaz one, when having provoked a conflict, they annexed territory". As seen, Turchynov does not want his country and its people to be taken advantage of just as Georgia had close to a decade ago. Turchynov later states "I am personally addressing President Putin to stop the provocation and call back the military from the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and work exclusively within the framework of the signed agreements". As seen Turchynov is fighting for a honorable end to this rather peculiar situation. Here's a great visual of the situation:
As you can infer by the image, Ukraine is vastly outnumbered if an armed conflict were to erupt. Much is at stake in Ukraine and the Kremlin believes that it is nothing that should be causing such a stir as it has been. For those who feel that NATO or the United States should intervene and take a stance against Russia, that would be rather very unwise in the course of the world. If you want US to supply Ukraine with arms or sanction troops within its borders, then you also would be advocating the start of WW3. The reality of Nuclear war is enough of a deterrent to not elevate the situation that has raised in Ukraine. Moscow has no intention of fully invading Ukraine because of the economic and political demands, but does Russia have the right to do such a thing to a democratic nation? tell me your ideas.
Violence Against Muslims and Sikhs Post-9/11
I wanted to write a short post on a topic that is highly personal and important to me. In light of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, there has been a wave of Islamophobia in the United States, stemming from fear, ignorance, and sometimes just plain racism. Muslims have been the targets of harassment, ridicule, and many times, violence. However, many Americans are so ignorant, that they cannot distinguish between members of Islam, and other turban wearing men, and as a result, members of the Sikh religion have also been victims of vigilante violence, stemming from Islamophobia.
Sikhism is a religion that was founded in northern India, in the late 17th century. Sikhism is most easily understood as a blend of Hinduism and Islam, as it is monotheistic, but does not recognize the anyone as special in the eyes of God, including Jesus and any prophets. It requires religious tolerance, social equality, and the holy text mandates complete gender equality. There are approximately 300,000 Sikhs in the United States, as of 2012. One of the tenants of the religion requires both men and women to grow their hair long, and therefore many men wear long beards, and keep their hair tucked in a turban. Because of their distinctive appearance, Sikh men are often the targets of ridicule, racist slurs, and so called “randomly selected searches” by the TSA. My dad recalls the 9/11 terrorist attacks with complete clarity, as the next day he was harassed by a group of bikers at a gas station, who told him to “go back to his country,” and “take off that filthy towel.”
In December of 2012, a young Indian immigrant was shoved onto the tracks of an oncoming New York subway, by a woman who later confessed to the crime. “I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims… Ever since 2001 when they put down the Twin Towers, I've been beating them up." The violence against anyone who looks remotely Middle Eastern is abundant, and sadly this is only one of many cases of individual attacks. Four days after the 9/11 attacks, Balbir Singh Sodhi was shot in Arizona, by a man who claimed patriotism as his reason for the attacks. Several years later, Sodhi’s brother would be shot in San Francisco for the same reason, by a completely different man. This past September, Colombia Professor Prabhjot Singh was attacked by a group of teenagers in New York City, who beat him while yelling that he was “Osama.” However, the most devastating attack yet, was August 5th, 2012, in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. An ex-military, neo-nazi entered the local “Gurdwara,” or temple, and opened fire during the Sunday prayer; six people were killed, and several others were wounded.
While it is horrifying that so many Americans do not understand the differences between Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims, it is far worse that such violence has been directed at the South Asian and Middle Eastern communities in the first place. Many Sikh activists become caught up in their disgust that many Americans are so ignorant of Sikhism, that they forget that it is equally terrible that Muslims are targeted at all.
I wish I could say that my dad, and other Sikh men, have only faced harassment from small town rednecks, however just on Wednesday this past week, a group of middle school boys shouted “Osama” at him, while he met with a colleague for breakfast at Brian’s Cafe in Rancho Shopping Plaza.
A list of hate crimes against Sikhs since 9/11:
Other sources:
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