Written Work over the Course of the Year

Hmmm. Last blog post. When looking back at all my other posts, and written work in general, it occurs to me what a tremendous amount of writing I did over the last nine months. Over the course of this year, I have written more than in another class, any other year. This has improved my writing; however, submitting my homework under the form of a blog has helped me even more.

Thanks to blogging, and perhaps even the very layout of the text box that I write in every night, I am able to see the sequence of my ideas more clearly. I am also able to seperate these different ideas into paragraphs, and make sure that each paragraph is coherent in itself, goes into enough depth about the idea that I want to talk about, and relates to my topic as a whole.

In addition, blogging has enabled me to start each homework with a stronger opening and closing than normal work would have. In blogs, I find it much easier to go back and correct sentences, straighten things that previously did not make any sense out, and add in more information than to do so on a sheet of paper. On paper, one has to constantly worry about running out of space, and making the document legible, when correcting ideas, but on a blog, this constraint is lifted, and freedom ensues.

Another convenient feature of the blog is my ability to see my work progress, and grow. This becomes easier as I can easily view all my previous posts at once, and identify their strengths and weaknesses, to help improve my newest posts. This feature of the blog has definitely helped accelerate my improvement as a writer over the year. 

It's funny to think that thanks to this blog, which I grew more and more familiar with over the last few months of MWH, I may be ever the more prepared for History next year. For all I know, I may even have possibly even gained skills that could be of use for the rest of my life. And on that note, I wish the blog farewell.

Pan-Islamism

I was browsing through the news on yahoo when I came across this article. I couldn't help to notice who closely it related to the idea of unification of African countries that we read about a few nights ago. It also fit in with the idea that the Islamic countries that are pushing for unification are the ones without oil - and if I remember correctly, Egypt doesn't have any.

In summary, the article, taken from the Wall Street Journal, explains how a secretive Islamic Organization, 'Muslim Brotherhood,' which had gained enormous political power in Egypt, becoming the country's largest opposition party, over the last few years, has just been significantly weakened by the Egyptian government. Because it may have rigged several elections, several of its main leaders have been jailed, its funds have been confiscated, and new laws have been drafted to make it harder for religious parties to be succesfull.

Is this backlash going a bit too far? Perhaps. But in an era when the extreme-Muslim Taliban have almost gained control of Pakistan, a country with nuclear weaponry, such precautions have to be taken.

Riots and Revolutions in China

In the 1950's, China underwent a series of land reforms to increase productivity, and quicken the process of industrialization in China. However, this process caused the peasants to feel like the state was robbing them of their goods, and this led to rioting and revolts in villages throughout China.

Later on, in the 1960's, Chairman Mao instated a process known as The Great Leap Forward. This included a cultural revolution, and the destruction of the remnants of 'old China' to make room for new, socialist and communist, ideas. High school students often took part in the Great Leap Forward by raiding and vandalizing homes and businesses in China.

Both the land reforms and the Great Leap Forward involved change, but in different directions. The land reforms were launched by the government in order to advance China on an international scale; the riots that were against it aimed to return China to how it was before the reforms. The Great Leap Forward, however, consisted of a domestic initiative which had a main goal of motivating Chinese youth to conform to Communist ideals. The riots that stemmed off of it, then, were in support of the government and not against it.

Clearly, then, the turmoil that took place in China in the '50's and the '60's was varied; early on, it was against the government, and later on, it supported the government. However, both cases can be considered similar because they both fought for change, and it was this fighting that made China as unstable, and constantly changing, as it was.

Life in France during the Cold War

For this blog post, I decided to interview my dad to find out what life in Europe was like during the Cold War. I asked him what the single event in the Cold War that he most remembered, and why. His answer was the Six-day War between Israel and Egypt that in fact was one of the "hot wars" that were the products of the Cold War.

He said that the war seemed to be a localized conflict in the Middle East, but was in fact a manifestation of the Cold War that was going on between the USA and the USSR. In the Six Day War, the USA sided with Israel, and the USSR, with Egypt. During the entirety of the war, my dad's parents wouldn't speak to him at all, not even at family meals, because they were constantly listening to the radio, trying to find out the latest news regarding the conflict.

One reason for this may be the fact that people in France were very paranoid about a Communist invasion, not such much in the government, like the USA, but in a military sense. There was a widespread and widely believed rumor that it would only take East German tanks a total of 24 hours to drive from the Berlin Wall to Paris. Coupled to this was the fact that my dad grew up in the French region of Alsace-Lorraine, a region that had been invaded half a dozen times in the last century.

In conclusion, the main emotion of the Six Days' War, and the Cold War in general, was a sense of paranoia, and imminent crisis, because of Western Europe's proximity to the USSR. This feeling was probably even worse than that in the USA because the USA at least was isolated from the rest of the world by the oceans.

Post-Colonial African Pop Culture

I have read several books that take place in modern-day Middle East and Africa:
- Things Fall Apart
- Kite Runner
- A Thousand Splendid Suns
- Shabanu, and Haveli (a series about the life of camel-herders that inhabit the desert in Western India)
- Habibi (set in Israel/Palestine)
- Poisonwood Bible (story of a pastor that moves to Congo in 1959, but that extends far into decolonization, too)
- Three Cups of Tea (story of a professional mountain climber who gives up climbing to found schools in Pakistan, starting with a school in the base camp village)

Coincidentally, this past quarter, my French class has been spent to watching and analyzing African films. Some films I've watched:

- Hotel Rwanda
- The Battle of Algiers
- Ali Zaoua (story of orphans who live on the streets in Casablanca)
- L'Enfant Endormi (story of the emigration of men from the Maghreb countryside to Europe, and the effect it has on those who stay)
- Yabba (one of the most interesting films I've ever seen; it depicts life in rural, rural, Burkina Faso)
- Moissons d'Acier (translation: Harvest of Steel; this movie, which I somehow downloaded off some obscure website for a project (it was once popular in the 1970's, but has since fallen into oblivion), describes the effect the mines left behind in Algeria by the French have on the people there)
- La Noirde (the story of a Senegalese woman who goes to France to work for a French family; she is so miserable there she ends up comitting suicide)
- Les Yeux Secs (the story of a certain village in the Moroccan countryside; perhaps the most touching of all the movies)

Oil and Geography

First of all, to clear up confusion regarding the topographical map linked to the blog, green does not indicate that a land is more fertile at all; it simply means that it's at a lower altitude than the brown areas. Also, Dana was correct in saying that oil doesn't have to do with fertility of soil (I think, but I'm not sure, that it comes from remains of plants and animals from millions of years ago - the soil simply had to sustain life a long time ago).

One interesting thing that I found in the maps was that there is a large amount of oil sitting under the Persian Gulf. Who "owns" this oil? Have any attempts to extract it been made yet? Are there any conflicts regarding it? Who discovered its existence in the first place?

Another interesting thing I noticed on the map is the large oil reserve in northern Iraq. This oil reserve, though, happens to be smack in the middle of the Kurdish part of Iraq. It would be interesting to find out more about the exploitation of that oil, and if the Kurdish inhabitants of the region benefited at all from its discovery.

Finally, one last point regarding the oil fields in the Middle East was that I noticed that all the countries that were for the pan-Islamic union in the textbook (Syria, Yemen, Egypt, etc.) don't have any oil at all. I wonder if their motives for such a union could have been driven by desires for something other than Islamic unity? In contrast, none of the oil-gifted countries wanted a union, not even amongst themselves. All they formed was OPEC, an economic treaty. This, then, clearly shows that the oil countries, at least, are motivated more by money than by religion.

Rural Life in Tanzania

After the Arusha Declaration of 1967, Tanzania became a socialist state. This resulted in stagnant economy, but helped cure corruption and political instability. However, Tanzania is faced with low rainfall and poor soil, worsening the life of people living in rural areas. This fits in to the larger African pattern of internal migration, where people move from rural areas to cities.

One factor that may explain the difficulty of rural life in Tanzania is the poor health services. The main health issue of Tanzania is, supposedly, the lack of outreach both in terms of medical supplies and equipment, and awareness of such diseases such as HIV/AIDS. 29% of all deaths in Tanzania are caused by AIDS. Also, malaria, the third leading cause of death in Tanzania, which mostly occurs in rural areas, accounts for 5.6% of all deaths in Tanzania.

However, urban life in Tanzania doesn't seem to be much better than rural life. The under-5 mortality rate for rural Tanzania is of 16.6%, whereas the same figure for urban Tanzania is still a whopping 14.2%. In addition, diarrhoeal diseases (4th leading cause of death in Tanzania) account for 3.6% of all deaths in Tanzania. Water quality, though, is equally poor all over the country.

Chemin des Dames

I have many questions regarding Chemin des Dames; most of them deal with its memorialization over time.

1 - Was anything built on the site right after World War I?

2 - If not, was there anything there until the current museum, which opened in the last decade?

3 - What became of the site during World War II?

4 - What's the issue with the memorialization of the mutiny that took place there in 1917?

5 - What's the controversy regarding Senegalese troops and Chemin des Dames about?

6 - If there wasn't anything on the site until now, why was the museum randomly commissioned?
7 - What does reading the memorial's websites & publications tell us about the way that they want us to portray the conflict?
8 - How do two leading French newspapers, one conservative, and one liberal, agree and differ about the issue?

Chemin Des Dames -- Commemoration and WW1

Chemin des Dames was once the road that the women of Louis XIV's court took to go to their summer homes, but more recently, it earned fame for the fact that it was the location of some of World War I's bloodiest battles. Because of its strategic location as the last ridge before the plains of Paris, lots of fighting occurred along it, and hundreds, if not thousands, of soldiers lived for months on end in an intricate network of caves dug into the hillside.

Even more interesting that this, though, are the soldiers who were used in the front lines of the battle during one of the main offensives when the French tried to reclaim the hill from the Germans: Confused, scared, and disoriented, the soldiers "mutinied" and refused to fight. Although they didn't harm any French, 27 of them were still shot, to set an example for any future mutineers.

It is only now, more than ninety years later, that the descendants of the mutineers were invited to see where their ancestors were shot. This is the first time, too, that they have even been acknowledged. How, in a democratic country, can such a thing happen? How, with the press, and lately, the internet, did these deaths go ignored? In a way, this re-surfacing of hidden events shows us that although we may get mad at other countries, such as Russia, for down-playing their histories, our allies, and ourselves, most definitely, have all done the same things.

However, not much other progress has been made regarding the process of memorializing these soldiers. Every town in France has a monument to soldiers who died in WWI, but the men still aren't put on them. Didn't they give their life to the war too? Don't they count as much as others? How can they be discriminated against because of their political opinion? They lived in a democratic country, right?

Maybe not. In 1998, France's prime minister, Lionel Jospin, said that it was time to re-integrate the mutineers into the country's collective historical memory. However, the president at the time, Jacques Chirac, immediately said that remembering them would be disgracing the soldiers that did die for their country in WWI. No matter your position on this issue, though, here are some relevant sites to look about this (unfortunately, some are in French, but shouldn't be too hard to understand if you're taking French):

This article talks about the mutineers, and commemoration.

This article, from 1917 (and in English!), talks about Chemin des Dames in general.

This pamphlet, published by the French government, talks about Senegalese soldiers' role in WWI, specifically mentions Chemin des Dames. If you don't understand French, it still has some cool pictures of the Senegalese battalions.

Franz Fanon

Frantz Fanon, one of the biggest intellectual supporters of de-colonization, sought to figure out how psychopathology affected - and was affected by - the process of colonization. What was interesting to me about this, was that I found that his mentor, and one of his life's greatest influences was Aime Cesaire.

Aime Cesaire, a descendant of African slaves who lived most of his life in Martinique, was both a Communist politician, and a re-knowned poet and writer. More impotantly, he, and others, founded the political and literary movement known as "negritude," which was the equivalent of the Harlem Renaissance that took place in the United States. Negritude is especially apparent in one of Aime Cesaire's plays, La Tempete, that is essentially a parody of Shakespeare's The Tempest. In it, Cesaire uses African culture to ridiculize and mock the sense of entitlement the Europeans had to the rest of the world.

The most interesting thing about negritude and Frantz Fanon, though, is that Fanon was able to use this idea of ethnocentrism on the European's part, and cultural retaliation on Africa's part, when dealing with patients in Algeria. Fanon eventually became a psychiatrist, and developed his own version of negritude: that human consciousness is based in racism and racial differences.

Using this idea, a translation of one of the principles of a literary movement to psychology, he was able to identify many "mental illness" as simply problems that arose due to racism, and repression. And this, in turn, definitely helped the cause of decolonization out, and was able to raise awareness of the bad effects decolonization had on peoples all over the world.

Rosie the Riveter

Although the image of Rosie the Riveter has gained international fame for symbolizing the beginning of the introduction of women to the workplace, this, in fact, was not a novelty at the time. Back in World War I, millions of women served as nurses, worked in munitions factories, or even sewed clothes for soldiers.

During World War II, women filled the same jobs as in World War I, but also a few new ones, due to the time, and progress in women's rights, that took place in between the wars. For example, women were even allowed to fight in World War II in special battalions. To me, that can be considered a point in history when they truly acquired the social status of women. Also, because the USA was much more involved in WWII than WWI, by the middle of WWII, it was said that 89% of all jobs were open and accessible to women, whereas at the beginning of the war, only 25% of all jobs were accessible to them.

Not only is this statistic interesting, but its circumstances are. Only when we, as a country, are faced with a common enemy (in WWII, Germany) do we allow gender equality in the workplace out of convenience. Later on, when international troubles are gone, and we're back to dealing with domestic issues, women are discouraged from working in factories. This says that total war really affects the home front to a point that all social norms are momentarily forgotten: total war can effectively change a nation.

Clearly, then, during WWII, great progress was made in terms of women's independence and rights in the workplace. This was spurred on by popular images such as that of Rosie the Riveter that encouraged - and normalized - women working in such places that were traditionally considered manly as factories.

Books Set in WWII

Here's a list of books (all of which I recommend) that I read, and that deal with WWII:

- Night, by Elie Wiesel

- I Have Lived A Thousand Years, by Ellen Bitten-Jackson

- The Journal of Ben Uchida, Citizen 33541, Mirror Lake Camp

- Torn Thread (Holocaust story)

- Maus

- The Sunflower

- My Name was Keoko (not really set in WWII; but rather in Korea during the Japanese occupation)

- Many AVI novels that I have either lost or thrown away or sold

- Horrible Histories, Woeful World War II (graphic novel that describes different events in history)

- A Seperate Peace

A few movies:

- The Sound of Music

- La Grande Vadrouille (an interesting French movie about smuggling Jewish people out of occupied France)

- The Pianist

Air Raid Sirens in WWII

As part of their Blitzkrieg warfare, the Germans launched nightly air raids on England during WWII. These air raids were performed by the Luftwaffe, and Air Raid Wardens were nominated to sound sirens when the Luftwaffe was arriving; another siren rang to signal the beginning of the raid; and yet another to announce the end of the raids.

People that were doing important war work were supposed to pay no heed to the first siren, and instead go to their shelters only when enemy aircraft was directly overhead, at the second siren.
This is because sometimes the planes would fly by, but not drop any bombs, so leaving the factories on the first siren would simply delay work. Also, most people weren't killed by the bombs themselves, but by flying bits of debris or shells of the bombs.

The sirens themselves were sounded in short blasts and long notes, and often were simply imporvised on the wardens' whistles. However, the siren announcing the end of an air raid was one long, continuous, two-minute note.

One factory worker, a woman, said: "Sometimes the Germans would drop their bombs before the second bell went. On one occasion a bomb hit the factory before we were given permission to go to the shelter. The paint department went up. I saw several people flying through the air and I just ran home. I was suffering from shock. I was suspended for six weeks without pay." She went on to say that she wished she didn't have to work, but that she knew it was essential for the war, and that it was as dangerous as being a soldier.

Often, movies, or other events, were interrupted because of the air raids. One woman said: "When they had turned on the cinema lights, it seemed not just to have severed the film sequence, but shattered a fantasy, an intrusion that made me feel irritable and angry. Through the endless yards of celluloid, reality had intruded - reminding us that outside, a war was still going on, and we must not forget it. Not even in the cinema could we dream, perchance to sleep."

Clearly, the Luftwaffe air raids, and the British governments' signaling and shelter policies scared some people, endangered others, and generally broke the morale of all who had to take part in them. I still believe, though, that this trauma was nothing compared to what the soldiers had to suffer through on the battlefield.

Nuclear Warfare: a Thing of the Past

The reason why the documentary on the nuclear bomb was released on NBC in 1995 not only is because of the anniversary of the deployment of the bomb, but to remind us of the horrors of nuclear warfare. After the dropping of the nuclear bomb in 1945 came the Cold War, with the constant threat of nuclear bombing. But the Cold War ended in 1989, and with it, the threat of nuclear attack on the United States.

Back during the Cold War, children at school took part in nuclear bomb drills, where they would hide under their desks until it was safe to come out. The trauma and fear of the nuclear was always near them. Since then, my generation has really no idea what it's like to be under nuclear threat.

Clearly, then, the NBC video not only reminds us about how horrible nuclear warfare truly is, but serves as a way to prevent it from happening all over again. It does this through warning all the people who haven't had to deal it how widespread the devastation of the bombs is, and how unfair they are to the civilians who perished due to them.

The terror of the NBC video, the hundreds of school kids killed by the bomb, people who lost their best friends in the blink of an eye - this we will never experience. But through videos like the one on NBC, we can at least be grateful that we haven't had to deal with this yet in our lives.

Textbook Organization

Because our Modern World History textbook deals with History from the 16th century to the the 21rst century, its section on World War II is organized by region rather than by chronological order to more fully deal with and explain the causes of the war. This works for most of the chapter; however, it leads to confusion in a few areas. Pages 696 to 703 deal with the war in Europe; pages 703 to 707 deal with the war in Asia. However, the end of the war is only described on page 703, and isn't even mentioned on 707. Pages 707 to 712 deal with the home front and other issues, and after 712, the effects of the war are described.

I would have included the home front section in the section describing the war in Europe, and the parts of that section dealing with Japan in the section regarding the war in Asia. Then, I would have put the section about Asia before the section regarding Europe. One other area where the textbook gets a little jumbled is the dates. It mentions many dates in the text and puts a few of them in random timelines scattered throughout the book. I would have compiled a timeline of every date mentioned in the reading and put this timeline at the end of the chapter, and then, I would have compiled a timeline of the important dates, and put this at the beginning of the chapter. I would have entitled the chapter "World War II: History Repeating Itself?"

My great-grandfather

I am perhaps one of the few people to have a relative who fought on both sides of the war.

My great-grandfather was living in eastern France, on the border with Germany, when war was declared. Because he had done his military service in the navy, he had to go join the navy down in Toulon, in southern France, when war was declared. The entire French navy was stationed there. Then, one day, the Germans staged a surprise attack against Toulon, and Admiral Darlan, the head of the navy, ordered that all the ships in the navy be sunk so that the Germans couldn't get them.

After that, France quickly surrendered to Germany, and northern/eastern France was annexed by Germany. Then, all the men in that part of France (including my great-grandfather) were drafted into the German army and whisked away to the Russian front. As soon as my great-grandfather got to the front, his section of the army lost a battle, and was taken as prisoners by the Russians. My great-grandfather spent the rest of the war in a prison camp, and was later returned to France in 1945.

Appeasement vs. Compromise

As we have seen in 1938 and 1939, and throughout history, for that matter, compromise is a much more just and efficient way of bargaining than appeasement. However, I find that appeasement is often much easier at the spur-of-the-moment that compromise. For example, my brother and I often squabble over who's turn it is to set the table. Often, I won't set it, even if it's my turn, forcing my brother to set it. To repay him, and to live with a clear conscience, I'll just repay him with some sort of snack (in my family, my parents only let us each have a certain amount of snacks per month, so we covet them), and then not set the table for the third day in a row. To prevent him from telling my parents, I usually only have to bribe him with one snack, which is a concession I am willing to make. Clearly, then, appeasement does have its advantages, even if it seems futile, or lazier than compromise. To relate this back to history, in 1938, I can imagine that the Brits and the French could have cared less if German invaded Sudetenland - the minuscule northwestern corner of Czechoslovakia. All they wanted is peace, and they achieved that (albeit momentarily).

(This post was edited at 6:25 on Thursday to clarify my ideas about appeasement.)

How did Hitler turn out the way he did?

As I navigated various sites searching around for Hitler's biography, it came to me how vastly they different on some points, but how they also agreed on others. All the sites basically talked about how Hitler, when he was a student, and later, when he was homeless in Vienna, formed his ideas about how Jews should be treated, and how to solve Germany's economic woes. However, how he came up with these ideas, two very different sites caught my eye. One site said that he was taught by an important political figure. Another claimed that while staying in Jewish-funded homeless shelters, his bitterness against them formed. Where these sites differed even more, though, was on Hitler's childhood. The first site said that he suffered through a miserable childhood, and was of a "moody, lazy, and unstable temperament." The other one, though, talks about how Hitler was a talented and motivated child who yearned to join a peaceful monastery as an adult. The fact that these sites vary so much on the issue of Hitler's youth intrigues me; it seems that the best way to figure out his mentality - and how to prevent it from re-surfacing in our youth - would be to find out what caused it, and no one clearly really knows what did. I think that it would benefit our world to a great extent to have the key to Hitlers' mind through his childhood, and I am surprised that more research has not been done into the topic.

A Lesson to Learn

At Menlo, and at other institutions around the world, History is not only studied to learn about our heritage, but to learn about the mistakes of the past, and how not to repeat them. Right now in the Swat Valley in Pakistan, people are being discriminated against, and their basic rights as humans - the rights to education, free speech, and buy goods, for example - are being taken away. This has happened so many times before in history, every time with bad consequences, yet little has been done right now by the outside world to stop this phenomenon.

While the situation in Swat is not as grave as it has been in the past (for example, when Jews were being discriminated against, and later put in concentration camps during the Holocaust), it is still noteworthy. Thousands of girls are now not able to go to school because of the Taliban; next to nothing has been done to ameliorate the situation. Yet, we know what is going on. In the video we watched, the family had a computer, and thus the means to let people know about their situation via the internet. Also, the New York Times, and other newspapers, I assume, have extensive coverage of the situation. However, just now is president Obama suggesting that we give Pakistan some military aid to combat the Taliban, and Congress, instead, is suggesting that we give them non-military aid. If the Pakistani government is unable to control a region 90 miles from its capital, it is obvious that what they require most is military aid. Then why are we so hesitant to provide it?

We need to dust the relative defeat in Iraq off, and get back on our feet to help these girls in Pakistan get to school without being violently attacked by Taliban fighters. We need to learn from past mistakes in history to avoid any more harm being done to Pakistan, and moreover, we need to realize that these girls are people, too, just like us, who want the brightest future possible, but who live in a world of violence and danger, and are unable to attain their hopes and dreams.