Hitlers Rise to Power

As I was writing my position paper I began to think more and more about the topic we have been discussing at great length in class. How did Hitler come to gain such immense power in Germany in the years leading up to World War II. As we now know, Adolf Hitler was an ambitious man to say the least. The perfect rock for Germany to grab hold of after years of turmoil and depression following the collapse of the global economy. It is within this that we see the kind of desperation that a man like Hitler feeds off of. So the gaining of power was not as difficult as it may of been had Germany still been relatively functional, but the question I pose to everyone is how easy would it be, for this to happen again. As we have been seeing in Episode Five of the Nazi video's, people got behind Hitler, helped him commit his atrocities against humanity in some cases, and as Mr. Stewart pointed out, Nazi's were at the end of the day just people being a part of extraordinary circumstances. So fearful of their leader that they would slaughter millions just to save their own head. So is it possible for this type of fear to become plentiful again, to the point where people would turn in their own neighbors and even family to save their own heads? I personally think it is all too easy, especially in today's technological age. I would like to know all of your opinions on the question.

Smoking Crack: Not a Fireable Offense?

For those of you haven't heard, Toronto mayor Rob Ford has been under extreme fire after being accused of smoking crack. He eventually admitted to using the illegal drug, but by then allegations and videos had surfaced ranging from alcoholism to assault. Yet he refuses to step down from office. One might think, "Don't worry, he admitted to breaking the law and doing drugs, surely he'll get fired." Well think again. No matter how immoral we might find his actions, according to Toronto Law he can't be fired unless he is convicted for a crime, which he has yet to be.

Now, this being said, he is a politician. Which means he relies on the vote of the people to stay in power. So while he might not be able to be fired at the moment, it is doubtful his public image will survive these scandals enough to allow him to be reelected.

Here's my sources but with any google search you can find more:
http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2013/11/19/rob-ford-cockroach-leaders/
http://www.torontosun.com/2013/10/31/province-cant-removed-from-mayor-rob-ford-from-office-unless-convicted

"illegal immigrants" game...

Today in AVID, my teacher brought up a recent event that I thought would be good to share with you all. In the University of Texas, "The Young Conservatives of Texas at the university in Austin planned to stage a fake raid, where players rounded up other players wearing T-shirts labeled "illegal immigrant" and were rewarded with a $25 gift certificate for each person caught." The chairman of the group, Lorenzo Garcia, claimed that the event was only to send awareness about the problem of immigration. Garcia's claim doesn't make sense. Why would you make an event like this when there are so many other ways of giving information to people about being aware of immigration. Lorenzo and the club might have taken this game as a "joke" but what they didn't realize was that they were touching a sensitive subject. I've notice that in our generation today, people tend to make comments as "jokes" before thinking about how it could affect other people. People tend to just make comments about different ethnicities and laugh about it like it doesn't effect someone else's feeling. It's like it is becoming a norm for people to do things like an "illegal immigrant" game without thinking it would bring harm towards others because they find that it's normal. Please share your thoughts about the article. Just thought I would share this since I thought it was interesting. 

Here are two articles that talk about the incident:
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/11/19/21537743-texas-young-conservatives-group-cancels-catch-an-illegal-immigrant-game

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/11/texas-student-group-offers-25-reward-in-catch-an-illegal-immigrant-game/

Nazi Connections Part 1: Helped into Power

While the final reflection on the Nazis currently rests far beyond the horizon, I think it is a good idea to start drawing parallels between Nazi Germany and previously discussed topics in class.  And while I will try to cover as many of these topics on my merits, I am bound to miss a lot, for I am only one drop in this greater bucket of Global Connections (A and B).  Thus, if you, the reader, have valuable knowledge of your own that has not been either sufficiently addressed or mentioned at all, then I urge you to share it.  So, without further ado, I present to you the first of (some of) the Nazi Connections:

• moderation and extremism: The documentary showed how hard times push people towards extremism.  In 1928, after the German economy had significantly recovered after the hyperinflation crisis, the NSDAP received only 2.6% of the popular vote in the federal election.  However, in 1932 after the Great Depression and the failure of Germany’s 5 major banks, the Nazis won 37% of the popular vote.  The Nazis, however, did not change their agenda or become more moderate within those 4 years.  It was merely the huge economic stress put upon the German people, and said peoples’ subsequent anger, that made the Nazis’ point of view more appealing.  For the record, this same reasoning applied to the KPD (the Communist Party), although to a lesser extent.
• anti-semitism and prejudice: Anti-semitism bloomed in Germany after World War I.  Many German soldiers coming back from the front lines felt that Germany could have kept on fighting.  To explain this, they believed that the Jews and Communists had coerced the German government into surrendering.  They spread their anti-semitic beliefs to the rest of Germany, mostly the southern regions like Bavaria.  Coincidentally, at this time there was a short-lived Communist takeover Bavaria, perpetrated by mostly Jewish communists.  This incident led to greater skepticism of and prejudice towards Jews, creating an environment ideal for the formation of the NSDAP.  The NSDAP, mostly because of Hitler, made extreme anti-semitism a fundamental part of their ideology.  The Nazis’ rise to power in 1932 spread these heightened sentiments across all of Germany.  Expressions of them soon followed.  They were initially mild; just labels on Jewish businesses as well a one day boycott of them.  However, such gestures of anti-Semitism were the first ones expressed to a national level.  
• scapegoating: This concept hasn’t yet been fully elaborated on in the documentaries, so I will keep this fairly short.  The documentary did make note of the NSDAP’s three core principles, one of which was that the Jews are behind everything.  This belief, which forms the foundation of the Jewish Conspiracy, uses Jews as a scapegoat to explain why a certain people (Germans in this case) are experiencing whatever problems in their lives.  The belief redirects the peoples’ anger and criticism away from the actual groups behind their misery.  Such was the case in Nazi Germany as it is now throughout much of the Middle East, as well in small enclaves scattered throughout the Western world.

• power: Another topic not fully discussed in the documentaries.  Anyhow, the Nazi Party controlled all four main forms of power: ideological, political, military, and economic.  In other words, the Nazi Party created a totalitarian state; a society where the government controls all aspects of society.  In quickly examining the list of theories presented in the Power Notes! handout, I do not see any one theory that perfectly encapsulates totalitarianism.  I suppose the Power/State Autonomy Theory comes close, but there are key differences between the two.  The Power Theory claims that the federal government is the most powerful center because of its control of the military.  This would imply that the federal government is above other independent, power-holding bodies like big corporations and other such organizations.  Such was really not the case in Nazi Germany.  The government controlled not just the military, but everything, meaning there were no separate power-holding organizations.  I suppose this actually means the Nazi’s government was an extreme form of the Power Theory, as in it was so superior to the other sources of power that it ultimately engulfed them.
  

Sympathy for O.J

There was a lot of evidence in the criminal case that was convincing that O.J could have murdered his wife. He had really good lawyers that defended him and did their job. The prosecutors on the other hand had all the evidence yet failed to present them in a winnable way. I feel like the prosecutors towards the end of the trials gave up easily because their hopes of winning the case were going down. Another thing that got me thinking was the civil court battle between the victims families and O.J. If the Browns and Goldmans were suing O.J for justice and claimed in the video that it wasn't about the money then why take the money that was offered. Couldn't the family just deny the money and be happy that they did get what they want. I also think taking O.Js trophies and jersey's were useless. Obviously it wasn't going to make a lot of money and a few people would not even take that in as something honorable after what just happened. That's taking O.J's personal stuff which I think is wrong. Also, O.J will have to live with being labeled for the rest of his life and if he really did commit the murder then he would have to live with that guilt too. Making O.J pay a huge amount of money to these families that he didn't have just didn't make sense. Personally I feel like the juries on the Civil Case were more bias and didn't really think things through. With all of these points added up, I feel like it's cruel punishment BUT that's just MY opinion.

Zablon Simintov

Perhaps I am rehashing last week’s content on Zionism, and perhaps I am trying too hard to make a post out of the irrelevant.  Still, I do believe this presentation offers a new perspective on anti-Semitism, mainly through acknowledging the forces that hinder its spread.

This post summarizes the life of Zablon Simintov, a middle-aged Afghan carpet trader who also happens to be, as of 2010, the last Jew within the country’s borders.  What was in times past a Jewish Kabul-based community of around 5,000 was dramatically reduced in 1948, in the creation of the state of Israel, as well the late 1970s, in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  Eventually it came to a point where only two remained: the aforementioned Simintov and a fortune teller named Ishaq Levin.  These two lived together through the Taliban’s reign, which for them meant a certain amount of harassment.  This amount I unfortunately cannot specify, mainly because of the lack of clarity in the available sources.  The Washington Post, for one, reported in 2005 that, “On many occasions, [Simintov and Levin] were beaten with electric cables and rifle butts for days” in the Taliban’s prisons, only to realize after finally being released that “the Taliban had ransacked [their] synagogue”.  However, CNN’s report, released in 2010, portrayed the Taliban’s treatment as much less severe.  They reported that Simintov was merely “arrested four times under Taliban rule and… beaten while in custody.”  

Regardless of how much the Taliban harassed them, it seemed they were too preoccupied in hating each other to appropriately respond.  The two bickered over Levin’s business of fortune telling and selling amulets, something Simintov claimed strictly forbidden by their religion, as well caretaking of their synagogue’s sole Torah.  After Simintov tried to move it to Israel, Levin actually went to the Taliban to have them arrest Simintov (apparently on the grounds that he was somehow a spy).  Ultimately the Taliban just arrested both men and confiscated the Torah, something Simintov held against Levin until Levin’s death in 2005.  Simintov has spent time since trying to relocate that Torah, as well “bemoan[ing] the loss of his carpet business—the Taliban had apparently stolen his collection of rugs.”

Anyhow, I find this whole story to really capture the power of the indomitable factor of a human face.  Simintov insisted that his Muslim neighbors never harassed him, and rather said that they treated him like a brother.  Even the Taliban’s treatment Simintov downplayed.  In one interview he recalled how some Taliban officials offered him “$20,000 to convert to Islam.”, to whom Simintov jokingly “offered them $80,000 to become Jews.”  Let us keep in mind that this playful banter Simintov kept up was with the group behind an ethnic cleansing campaign against the predominantly Shia Hazaras of central Afghanistan, as well continual feuds with the fellow-Sunni Tajiks and Uzbeks of the north (see source 1).  While I have yet to find anything cementing the Taliban to, say, the Protocols, I do not think it is rash of me to assume that this same Taliban had some anti-Semitic sentiments.  So then, why did the Taliban fail to express them against the single Jew in the entire area, living literally down the street from them?  Well, perhaps the answer is quite simple: in Simintov giving Judaism a human face, some of the anti-Semitic myth held by the Taliban, and the rest of the Afghan peoples was lost.  In other words, to the people of Afghanistan, ‘the Jew’ hasn’t been an evil, reptilian money-grubber conspiring to take over the world, but instead just that silly old man on the corner.  And because of that, they are that much more willing to live side by side with him. 

Sources:
1) http://www.history-map.com/picture/000/pictures/Afghanistan-groups-Ethnic-in.jpg
2) http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/132099/a-congregation-of-one/2
3) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39702-2005Jan26.html
4) http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/05/09/afghanistan.last.jew/ 
5) http://www.hewad.com/news2.htm

Kendrick Johnson

Hi guys! I was searching the web today and I came across an article that was about a young 17 year old boy, Kendrick Johnson, who was found dead at his high school in Georgia. I didn't know what happened so I decided to research and here is one of the articles I read:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/07/justice/georgia-gym-mat-death/index.html?iref=allsearch

I think that the police aren't doing everything in their power to figure out what happened to Johnson. Is this because of his race? His neighborhood? I'm just a little confused as to why nothing has been figured out! Plus, when Johnson's body was sent in for another autopsy, the organs were missing...what..? 

Anyways, just thought I should let you guys know about this case because it was astonishing to me.If you read this, please post your thoughts below :)

How far can you stretch a label?

In class we've talked a lot about how labels such as calling something/someone racist can be powerful tools and stur up powerful emotions. But there are some things that are put under a label at such a stretched justification that it seems ridiculous. Now dressing your kid up as a KKK member, yeah this can easily fall under this label of racist. But in this article it talks of how a school has deemed Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches to be "racially charged". Personally I think there argument is wrong, and that PP&J Sandwiches are not racist (it seems ridiculous to even have to type this), but it does show something. When someone calls something racist- think about whether or not this is a valid accusation.

Here's the article if you want to read more.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/11/is-peanut-butter-and-jelly-racist_n_1874905.html