DH

Dolores Huerta Speech:
It was wonderful to see Dolores Huerta speaking at Notre Dame de Namur. She is someone who is not only a role model for farm workers  women leaders and people involved in social justice but a person my own family has known for many years. My father first met her when he was a college student picking strawberries on one of the first farms organized by the United Farm Workers. Dolores Huerta was always a leader of the movement to empower agricultural workers through unionization. She worked hand in hand with Cesar Chavez to fight for the rights of some of the poorest and badly treated workers in our country. She was never held back by some of the prejudices against women in the labor movement or Latino culture. To this day Dolores Huerta is a fighter of social justice and speaks of the themes of the importance of education and fairness to immigrants. She unites many of the different parts of the social justice movement. Woman's rights, access to education, immigrant rights, freedom of speech and unionization. It was amazing to see someone who I had met in person at many democratic party meetings with my father move the crowd at NDNU. She was so passionate about her beliefs and the power of people to make change that she had the entire crowd cheering. After the speech my father and I were able to talk to her one on one. Seeing such a proud and strong Latina provided me with a powerful role model as a young Latina myself.

11

Sweet Nexus: Sugar and the Origins of the Modern World:
Sugar was known in ancient history but it only became globally important with the expansion of Islam after the 7th century and the growth of the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean trades. Sugar was introduced to western Asia and Europe in the late middle ages. Plantations were established around the Persian Gulf and Meditteranean Islands. Sugar really took off however with the European colonization of the new world. The Spanish and Portuguese explorers were familiar with growing of cane sugar and they found particularly in the Caribbean the perfect climate for sugar production. The Europeans developed a greater and greater taste for sugar and it spread from the nobility to the middle classes. Use to sweeten tea and coffee which had become a popular import from Latin America and Asia. There were two triangles involved in the Atlantic Trade. In the first one African slaves were sent to the new world plantations. Sugar and tobacco went from the Americas to Europe and finished products like iron and cloth went from Europe to Africa. The second triangle sent rum from New England to Africa slaves from Africa to the West Indies and molasses back to New England to make more rum. Plantations were at the heart of the sugar economy. African slaves planted and weeded and harvested the cane. It was terribly hard work. The first steps of processing the cane had to be done near the plantations. Crushed into juice and some what refined. The final step in producing white sugar was done in Europe of North America and that's where the big money was made.

10

Collapse by Jared Diamond Chapter 16:
This is one chapter in a book that examines how societies chose to fail or to succeed. The author discusses the serious environmental problems that face us now and in the past. The fall into twelve groups. In the present we face problems that are increasingly serious. One is that we are losing natural habitats or making them human habitats such as cities and villages. Forests are disappearing at a fast rate in places not only in the amazon but places like Montana. When other habitats such as wetlands, ocean fisheries, and coral reefs are damaged it leads to the second problem which is the loss of wild foods. Especially fish and shellfish. Farmed fish are not the answer to the decline of wild fisheries. I did not know this before this chapter but farmed fish are actually fed wild fish so they are hurting the supply of wild fish. Aqua culture causes pollution and fish that have high toxin levels. Problem three is that genetic diversity and bio diversity are being lost as many small species become extinct. What people don't understand if you lose many small species it adds up to a big problem for humans. For example even a reduction in earth worms harms the ability of the soil to support crops. I have been reading about the disappearance of bees this may not seem serious but if bees decline flowers, fruits, vegetables and other important plants are not pollinated. For every loss of a species there is some effect up and down not only the food chain but in the environment such as the soil. Problem four the author describes as the erosion and loss of soil used for farm land. Other issues affecting our environment now and therefore the future of our societies is that we are running out of major resources. For example the easy to get at oil and gas fields are being depleted. Fresh water for drinking and irrigation and industry are shrinking in supply. Over a billion people today lack access to safe drinking water. Human beings are also using too much energy from the sun with not enough left over to support natural plants and forests. In addition to shrinking supplies of essential parts of our world we are also creating harmful things that impact the environment. On of the worst is the chemicals produced by industry that are toxic and go everywhere into our bodies, the air, the plants and other animals. They can cause birth defects and hormonal changes. Many chemicals are broken down only slowly and once released they are incredibly difficult to clean up. The developing nations such as China are some of the worst polluters to the point that their air in their larger cities is toxic. We are also transferring around alien species from places they are native to places where they are not natural where they can cause terrible damage. Lampreys have devastated the commercial fisheries of the great lakes. Air pollution of course is one of the massive problems directly causing global warming. Over population is another major threat and populations are growing often in places that are considered developing nations that are trying to reach a higher standing of living that consumes more resources. All these problems are interrelated and combined together and will cause catastrophes is certain actions are not taken. This article makes me pessimistic about the future.

9

Travels in Siberia: In this chapter the author looks at the Mongols of Central Asia. One of the greatest leader was Genghis Khang. In 1220 he asked a Taoist monk to come to him from Beijing in China to the Mongol encampment far to the West. His journey took about a year and a half. The monk was honest with Genghis Khang and told him that there was no medicine of immortality. The travel of the monk to the Mongols is one of those journeys of exploration that happened much earlier than the more famous European voyages in the 1400's. Christian monks traveled to visit the Mongols from the East and Marco Polo went to the core court of Kublai Khan in 1271-75. His book described these trips and many learned about the Mongols for the first time. The conquest of the Mongols had opened up Central Asia and made it a place people could travel to. Under the leadership of Genghis Khang the mongols attacked civilizations from Beijing to Persia. The mongols were expert horseman and fierce warriors. They were basically a nomadic people use to living outdoors. By 1227 the mongols had conquered Northern China, Middle Asia, the Crimea and the Northern Caucasus. In taking over this land they killed tens of millions of people. They were heartless towards the people they captured including the women who they sent to different harems. Genghis grandson Batu led a campaign against Russia and continued to attack them year after year. They were called Tartars by the Russians meaning Asianatic horsemen.They even conquered the city of Kiev. The mongols forced the Russian population to move into the forests and towards the North. The mongols turned the attention of Russia to the East and Russians began to make journeys into Asia. In 1380 the Russians won an important battle against the mongols although the mongols still continued to attack. Over time the mongols became part of the many peoples they had overrun and the mongol empire shrank. Many mongols converted to the Tibetan version of Buddhism. The Russians sometimes boast that they saved Western Europe from the mongols by ultimately defeating them.

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Living Justice: Part of the Catholic religion is its social teaching. These come from religious texts and the Catholic experience in the world. There are nine key themes in Catholic social teaching. The first is the dignity of every person and human rights. Catholics believed that all humans reflect the image of God in their minds and bodies. Because of this all humans should be treated with respect and dignity. God does not want humans to be enslaved or exploited. Even humans that commit crimes or are out of work, ill or disabled must be treated with respect of children of God. Because of the sanctity of life modern Catholics oppose abortion euthanasia and capitol punishment. The Catholic teachings have not always been in agreement in opposing these. You only have to think of the Spanish Inquisition where the Catholic Church put to death Jews and other non-catholics to see that Catholics have not always practiced this principle of equal dignity. The Catholics also have a distinctive view of human rights because it is based in Catholic theology in which God is the source of our rights. Unlike theories of secular rights the treatment of rights of Catholic social teaching is based on a particular view on the unity which respects the sanctity of creation and God its creative. Other themes are respect for the common good, the value of family life, the proper role of government, the rights and responsibilities of property ownership, the dignity of work and rights of workers, fairness in economic development, working for peace and providing help for the poor and vulnerable. For example, the family has a special place in Catholic social teaching. Church documents sometimes refer to the family as the "domestic church". This is where people first learn about God and the need of justice and charity. Inside the family people have to engage in self sacrifice and generosity in order to help one another. The family is like a port in a storm. Another theme the dignity of work and workers rights have led modern Catholics to support labor unions and to work against the exploitation of laborers. Labor is considered to be good for all people when it is not carried out under conditions of exploitation.

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Chapter 22: Communism was a powerful force in the world of the 20th century. Modern communism which was based on the teachings of Karl Marx and later with Lennon and Stalin led to communist nations around the world including the Soviet Union and China, Cuba and many African nations. In the decades after World War II communist countries came together in the Warsaw pact which brought together  the Soviet Union and Eastern European communist states such as East Germany in a military alliance. The Western capital countries formed the NATO alliance. The Soviet Union and China signed a treaty of friendship in 1950. In Russia the communist took power in a single year 1917, when they brought down the government of Tsar Nicholas II. Everything in Russia changed as the large land holder estates were seized and became the property "people" and under the power of the state. The aristocracy was out and the common people such as the peasants and workers came into power under the leaders of the Bolshevkis led by Lennon. The Bolshevkis were able to keep Russia out of World War I by signing a peace treaty with Germany. When the communists took over there was a civil war that put down nationalists rebellions. The communists formed a huge army called the red army and also transformed the economy by industrialization. Even though the communists were hostile to the democratic western countries the Soviet Union made huge sacrifices to help defeat the Nazis. Communism did not win in China until 1949. China did not have a socialists tradition and the Chinese communists party was not founded until 1921 with sixty people. Under the leadership of Maozedong the CCP struggled against the Japanese and defeated the nationalist party which had been governing China. This party was led by Chiang Kai-shek. The CCP gained support when Japan invaded China. The CCP brought in many reforms teaching literacy, mobilizing women and reducing rents and taxes for the poor. The nationalists called the Guomindang were forced to Taiwan and Maozedong was in complete power. Chinese communism faced large tasks to make a modern society. The communism there focused on organizing peasants, promoting the equality of women and spreading literacy. In both China and the Soviet Union industrialization came through state development of heavy industry. Over time the Russian leader Stalin became more nationalistic and power was concentrated in the communist party leadership. In China, the communist party tried to bring about industrialization on a smaller scale in rural areas and its set goals in the Great :Leap Forward. China was stricken by a massive famine that killed or injured 20 million people between 1959-1962. In the period after World War II the world was divided between the communist countries and the western democracies. Communism reached into the developing world and Marxism was taken up by many of the new nations that were throwing off their colonial rulers. A "Cold War" grew between the west (NATO) and the Soviet Union (Warsaw pact). Both the United States and the Soviet Union began an arms race to build nuclear weapons. The fact that a single nuclear bomb could destroy an entire major city was one of the reason that the cold war did not become a third world war in terms of actual fighting. There were crises such as the Cuban missle crisis where the Soviets tried to deploy missles in communist Cuba. The United States became the super power of the west with a huge military and an enormous multi national economy. The US dollar was king. The Soviet Union was the communist super power but it had to control many of the other countries it had taken over such as Hungary and Poland and these started to rebel against its control. The Soviets actually invaded Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush the independence movements. In the last two decades of the 20th century communism basically came to an end. The Soviet Union broke apart in 1991 and the former Soviet republics formed their own nations. In China communists thinking changed greatly at the end of the 20th century as the CCP remained in power but there were huge economic reforms that led to private property, massive urban construction and the production of huge amounts of goods that were exported to the west and the US in particular. In part this change in the goals of the party were in reaction to Maos' cultural revolution which challenged all the priviledges of the communist leadership and forced educated Chinese teachers, doctors, artists and others into reeducation camps.

6.5

The second World War the world conflict I probably have heard about the most. This is because my grandfather was in the battle of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific and as a Jew I have studied a great deal about the Holocaust. World War II actually began in Asia with the rise of Chinese nationalism. This threatened Japans influence in Manchuria. The Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931 and then Japan withdrew from the league of nations. It began to get closer to Germany and Italy and it made a large attack on China in 1937. The western governments such as Britain has tried to control Japan and Japan had become dependent on American sources of goods such as iron, oil and tools. Japan did not like being treated as a second rate power and it began to have military operations in colonies that belonged to the French, British, Dutch and America in Indochina, Malaya, Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines to get resources.  Japan was the dissatisfied nation in Asia. In Europe it was Nazi Germany. When Hitler and the Nazis took control Germany prepared for war. In 1938 Germany took over Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia. At the Munich conference the British and the French did not stand up to Hitler. Now Munich has the meaning of appeasement or giving in. Germany went on to attack Poland and the second World War broke out in Europe. The Germans quickly conquered France and then attacked Britain and the Soviet Union. Germany was joined by its ally Italy. The United States entered World War II when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and this began a long struggle against the Japanese all over Southeast Asia and parts of China. This part of the war only ended   when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The British were able to keep the Nazis from invading England. In the Soviet Union the Germans were finally defeated after millions were killed. One of the worst aspects of World War II was the Holocaust. Jews were rounded up in Germany and later in Poland and Hungary and other territories had conquered. The Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews and other people they saw as inferior such as gypsies, the handicapped and homosexuals. Some Jews were able to flee to Palestine where they tried to establish the state of Israel displacing many Arabs and leading to the Arab Israeli conflict that continues today. The United States came out of World War II as the strongest power. With US aid Europe did recover economically very quickly and to the United States the Soviet Union and communism became the enemy that replaced the Nazis.