the politics thing – China

Last Thursday was the discussion of whether globalization affects politics or not. I say yay. Every democracy, for example, comes from Great Britain, communisits come from Marx and Lenin, totalitarian is taken from the tradition of monarchs and dictatorship. For the most part, the successful countries are the democracies. The biggest exception for this would be China. China is communist, but yet, is becoming quite successful, so successful, that there is fear of China dominating the rest of the world (my old high school principle actually had an assembly once, and lectured the school about how China was going to take over the world if we weren’t better students). Why is China so successful as a communist country? Well, it isn’t as if some people didn’t try to bring more democracy into the system. For years, China kept itself pretty much separated from the rest of the world, until after Mao dies and China joins the WTO. Joining the WTO was risky, it would mean bringing in Western ideas as the West started to trade with China. Sure enough, revolts started, such as Tiannaman Square. The students there wanted more democracy, as they saw the West had, such as freeom of press and speech. Well, the military was brought in, and it turned into a massacre. Today, the politics just are not questioned as much, due to acts like that. China has the highest legal execution rate in the world, at about 5,000-10,000 people a year, and 99% of all defendants are found guilty. China is able to keep this stability because the peasants are still rather uneducated, and do not take much of an interest in politics. A middle class is almost essential for democracy, but the growing middle class in China just isn’t strong enough yet. Things such as interest groups are simply lacking participants. It is Chinese tradition to be subordinate to leaders and elders, and as the saying goes, old habits are hard to break.

media

was on dial-up last week, so i just avoid the Internet altogether. so here’s my post from last week, now able to publish it and all…

News around the world changes from place to place. If any person believes globalization leads to a merging of the cultures, they should try watching news or channels from other countries. Personally, my roommate and I love watching the Russian channel, and I used to watch German news for my German class last year. There are such differences, it makes it seem impossible that all of these different cultures are going to be the same one day. Even in the States, the news is so different from each state. Media is a huge influence on many things, and i just found several diffences between the area I’m from in Pennsylvania, and Fredericksburg, Virginia. Fredericksburg is close to several cities, Washington and Richmond are only a step away. The news here really does horrify me, I do not even watch the news anymore. It is filled with not much more than murder and violence. At home, probably the most exciting thing on the news is about how Rocky Ridge will be opening their Annual Christmas Lights up soon. Trust me, the Christmas lights are not that exciting, they are actually left up all year round and just unplugged after January 1st. Even when something tragic happens, like when one of my friends slipped off a cliff and was killed, the coverage is minimum. I found out more about his death on myspace than from the television news and papers. The media seems to live on fear here, wheares opposed to lil’ old York and Lancaster, the media prefers to cover the crowd at Circut city this morning when the doors opened at 4am or how Tanger Outlets opened up at midnight (it’s now called red-eyed thursday instead of black Friday, apparently). Or up in Canada, the news is even more boring. Just found it odd that little distance made such a huge difference in the media news.

Islam and Europe

finally was able to log on! i haven’t been able to get to this page for about a week now, not really sure why, but now i can post up my other blog i did last week as well…

interesting little fact, the leonid meteor shower might be able to be seen Saturday, Nov. 18, at 11:45 pm; the US’s east coast is supposed to be able to catch it, but we might be a little far south…

The Muslims in Europe are not getting along too well with the rest of the Europeans. To me, this is proof that it is going to take a long time before the world is living in one community and one culture. in Europe, there have been several problems with the Islamic community interacting with everyone else. some of this is due to lack of tolerance for that religion. for example, in 2004, France ruled that it was illegal for Muslim girls to wear their headscarves in public schools. I was actually in Egypt at the time this happened, and got to see a true point of view from a Muslim woman. This woman was a devote Muslim, she wore the entire veil, but it was not like she was uneducated or anything. She was currently enrolled in college to become a doctor. She believed it was wrong for the government to make sure a decision, it is a sign of their devotion to Islam. Another issue is just a general fear of anyone involved in that religion, as seen in the USA as well. after 9/11, and the London bombings, people began to fear that relgion in particular, stereotyping the Muslims. Until people learn complete tolerance, there really is no need to worry about the world merging into one community.

pro-environment

i didn’t follow the midterm elections, but apparently more pro-enviroment members were elected into congress. environmental issues are among the biggest right now, with threats such as global warming. so i decided to see exactly how the environment is affected by globalization. found out some interesting things…just makes me think maybe we really should start thinking more about the environment and less about the money. many people buy products without thinking about how that product may have or does affect the environment, or what harm the company they are buying from does. take the tropical rainforest and the farming industry, for example. many forests are torn down to be used for farms. rainforests take years and years to create, and are torn down in matter of weeks. the trees are sold to make furniture, and the land sold to farmers. the soil from the rainforests are rather infertile for crops, and crops may only grow for a few years. After those few years, the soil is ruined, the farmer must go and tear down more trees for new land. Many corporations such as McDonalds are involved in this deforestation. For example, the soybeans grown in Brazil that are used to feed the chickens for McDonalds. These soybean farms cause some forest clearing directly, but create more deforestation by taking the cleared land and savanna, making other farmers and ranchers tear down more forest so they have land themselves, according to Philip Fearnside, a member of Brazil’s National Institute for Amazonian Research in Manaus. These soybean farms are also inhumane. In 2005, about 150 farms were raided, and some 4,000 slaves were found, and freed.

Arechicken nuggets really worth it? You don’t want to be supporting a slave system, and the loss of the rain forest would lead to huge problems. without vegetation, there would be no more oxygen. Kinda makes surviving tough…

wikipedia for spies…

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15503834/

the US government started a wiki of their very own! it’s called Intellipedia. it is much more secretive however, not open to public eyes. this wiki allows all the different gov’t officials to create their own pages and be able give access to the rest of the intelligence officers to compare and contrast information. i found this fascinating that the government is using the same technology the rest of us are. there are different levels that different users have access to, such as unclassified, sensitive, and secret.

this is a big risk for the government to take. if the system is hacked into, a ton of top-secret information may be taken a hold of. however, this allows for the whole intelligence community to see information, leading to less mistakes as in events like 9/11.

“untouchables”

i found these articles rather interesting. i sent the one about the organ company to my friend who plays the organ. turns out, she’s been there before. just thought that was cute.these 4 companies all had something in common that made them the best.

1. they are all located and all the products are manufactured in America
2. they have products that are harder to come by, or at least harder to come by with such high quality                                  3. everyone whom works for these companies actually knows about the product
4. most of the products produced are ones that Americans have a need for, like the artificial hips and farm equipment           5. most of the companies are in relatively isolated areas, making it easier for them to set up more buildings if needed or an established delivery line. little bit harder to do that in a city.

culture

SO last night i was talking on the phone with my friend who lives in Italy (he was an exchange student last year, that’s how i got to know him) and we got on the topic of education. At this, he was quick to remind me how last year not only did he know more about the American presidents than i did, but also more about world cultures in general. some of this was from experience, but it got me thinking alot about the education system in the states. in other countries, students are taught about the rest of the world, given in apparently great detail. Many start to learn another language at a young age, elementary schoo as opposed to high school. Here in the US, we are taught a very westernized view of everything, and barely brush on other cultures and countries. i’m absolutely fasinated with other cultures and religions, so i took my own time out to learn about them. when i reached senior year and we were required to take a class in world design, i knew more than my teacher did about other religions and cultures. hardly any of the other students really saw relevance for the course, they thought it was a little redundant to take since they weren’t going to ever see those countries. Americans seem to have the lack of adventure. Very few ever travel somewhere more unorthodox than a Carribean cruise. Maybe that’s the difference, Europe’s countries are so close to each other, they can easily see a totally different culture with a short drive. They aren’t quite as isolated as the US is. We have Canada, and Mexico, and the most interest taken in either seems to be fishing and hunting in Canada or Cancun. maybe children need to start learning about other cultures and appreciation for them at a younger age, might promote for a broader outlook on things.

library thing

For my expert study, I want to do the effects globalization has on cultures.

Redefining Culture : Perspectives Across the Discipline. ed. John R. Baldwin. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 2006.
1. Secondary, scholarly, it has a mix of fact and opinion.
2. This book gives many different persectives, but the main idea behind all of them are that cultures are one of the most important factors when it comes to dealing with society and it’s problems.

tourism

Ah, the tourism industry. For years land have been “privatized” for the tourist industry. over the last decades, private beaches, forests, and mountain areas for the construction of hotels, resorts, golf course, etc. The water from public reservoirs taken to fill hotel pools and water the golf courses has gone on for years as well. Recently, however, people’s land and resources are being stolen to make this tourist areas. For example, many natural parks are being changed so they bring more tourists, which mean more money. On the negative side, more people mean more litter, pollution, and destruction to the park, making a bit of an oxy-moron. Corporates are taking over some of these tourist spots in order to make more money. Remember the picture of the Coke can on the Great Wall of China? Or when you go camping, and the first thing you see at the campground is a bunch of Pepsi soda machines next to a vending machine filled with junk food?

Tourism is a major source of income for many countries and people. A lot of people working for the tourist industry put on a fake idea of what the natives of that area are supposed to be like, certainly helping that to create that stereotype. My favorite is when I was in Egypt, and went to visit the pyramids. It’s surrounded by people, usually students, selling tourists little Egyptian trinkets. “Cultural” things and “exotic” objects, like scarab beads and those sheets that the men supposedly wear on their head. For the sake of the tourists, they all act to their “culture” and such, camel rides, outfits, all of that. I talked to one of the students, and after a while he finally relaxed, and once he found out I was from America, the topic switched to the TV shows, proving the spread of cultures. Many Egyptians have picked up the American culture from movies and TV, and there is a lot of Italian influence there when it comes to fashion. Due to globalization and the tourist industry, the stereotypical image has truly disappeared at some of these places.

war

ok, had dial-up for awhile at home, so posting was basically out of question.

One of the questions from the list of topics was how war fit into the picture of globalization. This topic actually affects me directly, so i’ve decided to talk a little about it. For the last 20 odd some years, my dad works for a company, previously Olin and Primax, now General Dynamics. Basically, they make weapons, his branch makes tank artillery. As long as i can remember, he has always been traveling to other countries for his latest projects, whether it be Taiwan, Egypt, Sweden, or the latest, South Africa. In Taiwan and Egypt, general dynamics were building a factory there for our artillery to be made. right now the project he is involved with consists of recieving South Africa’s plans of their latest technology in weapons. They are actually one of the leading countries in advanced weapons, about five to ten years ahead of us. If the US had no need for the technology from South Africa, my dad would have a bit of a problem.

There are other ways war affects globalization. For example, the economy. War can either improve or kill the economy. The defense budget is almost automatically boosted for war, and if the rest of the budgets cannot cope with their losses, the rest of the economy is going to end up in trouble. Another factor that is usually forgetten as well, is the culture. Most of America’s culture reached these other countries when the soldiers ended up in another country, bringing with them ideas and taking some back to the States. War has always had a tendency to either bring countries together or tear them apart. The UN wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for WW2. China ceases their civil war to combine forces during Mao to fight off the Japanese. The fall of the Soviet Union helped to create the globalized world we have today. War and globablizaton go hand in hand.