The Spread Of Communism - Socorro Independent School ...



The Spread Of Communism

In the 1950s, the Soviet Union was perceived to be the center of a worldwide Communist web that menaced the developing world. The American government developed a strategy of "containment" designed to limit the spread of communism. The first major test for containment came in 1959 when Fidel Castro led a Communist-inspired revolt in Cuba. The new revolutionary regime was supported by the Soviet Union. When it became clear in 1962 that Castro was being supplied with Soviet Union missiles, Washington issued an ultimatum to the Soviet Union to remove them, and ordered a naval blockade of Cuba.

The confrontation was one of the most dramatic episodes of the postwar period. At the final moment, Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev ordered Soviet Union vessels bound for Cuba to turn back. U.S. president John F. Kennedy was saved from having to make a final decision for military action. The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest the Cold War came to direct conflict between the two superpowers. The conflict was played out thereafter by proxy: one side or the other lending support to third-party states, engaging in espionage and covert operations. In 1964 the United States, led by President Lyndon Johnson, made the decision to commit troops and aircraft to the civil war in South Vietnam, and for 10 years the U.S. fought to contain the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union. In 1975, following prolonged antiwar protests in the United States and Europe; the last American forces were withdrawn.

Four years later, the Soviet Union sent troops to fight in Afghanistan in support of the Communist regime, an intervention that lasted 10 years and cost the lives of thousands of Soviet Union soldiers. The United States provided aid and arms for the anti-Communist movement. In 1989 the Soviet Union withdrew its forces. Both the Vietnam and Afghan wars were the longest periods of active fighting for both states since World War II. Both involved high casualties, considerable cost, and eventual defeat.

The Spread Of Democracy



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The Columbian Exchange

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The Columbian Exchange was a dramatically widespread exchange of animals, plants, culture, human populations (including slaves), communicable disease, and ideas between the Eastern and Western hemispheres (Old World and New World). It was one of the most significant events concerning ecology, agriculture, and culture in all of human history. Christopher Columbus' first voyage to the Americas in 1492 launched the era of large-scale contact between the Old and the New Worlds that resulted in this ecological revolution, hence the name "Columbian" Exchange.

The Columbian Exchange greatly affected almost every society on Earth. New diseases introduced by Europeans, to which the indigenous peoples of the Americas had no immunity, depopulated many cultures. Data for the pre-Columbian population in the Americas is uncertain, but estimates of its disease-induced population losses between 1500 and 1650 range between 50 and 90 percent.

The Heritage of Starbucks

Every day, we go to work hoping to do two things: share great coffee with our friends and help make the world a little better. It was true when the first Starbucks opened in 1971, and it’s just as true today.

Back then, the company was a single store in Seattle’s historic Pike Place Market. From just a narrow storefront, Starbucks offered some of the world’s finest fresh-roasted whole bean coffees. The name, inspired by Moby Dick, evoked the romance of the high seas and the seafaring tradition of the early coffee traders.

In 1981, Howard Schultz (Starbucks chairman, president and chief executive officer) had first walked into a Starbucks store. From his first cup of Sumatra, Howard was drawn into Starbucks and joined a year later.

A year later, in 1983, Howard traveled to Italy and became captivated with Italian coffee bars and the romance of the coffee experience. He had a vision to bring the Italian coffeehouse tradition back to the United States. A place for conversation and a sense of community. A third place between work and home. He left Starbucks for a short period of time to start his own Il Giornale coffeehouses and returned in August 1987 to purchase Starbucks with the help of local investors.

From the beginning, Starbucks set out to be a different kind of company. One that not only celebrated coffee and the rich tradition, but that also brought a feeling of connection.

Our mission to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.

Today, with more than 15,000 stores in 50 countries, Starbucks is the premier roaster and retailer of specialty coffee in the world. And with every cup, we strive we bring both our heritage and an exceptional experience to life.

Bollywood

Bollywood is the popular term used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Maharashtra, India. The name "Bollywood" is derived from Bombay and Hollywood, the center of the American film industry. However, unlike Hollywood, Bollywood is not an actual place. Some resent the name because they believe that it makes the industry look like the ugly step child of Hollywood. The term "Bollywood" has origins in the 1970s, when India overtook America as the world's largest film producer.

Influences on Bollywood:

o Hollywood, where musicals were popular from the 1920s to the 1950s, though Indian filmmakers departed from their Hollywood counterparts in several ways. "For example, the Hollywood musicals had as their plot the world of entertainment itself. Indian filmmakers, while enhancing the elements of fantasy so pervasive in Indian popular films, used song and music as a natural mode of articulation in a given situation in their films. There is a strong Indian tradition of narrating mythology, history, fairy stories and so on through song and dance." In addition, "whereas Hollywood filmmakers strove to conceal the constructed nature of their work so that the realistic narrative was wholly dominant, Indian filmmakers made no attempt to conceal the fact that what was shown on the screen was a creation, an illusion, a fiction. However, they demonstrated how this creation intersected with people's day to day lives in complex and interesting ways."(Gokulsing & Dissanayake, Indian Popular Cinema: A Narrative of Cultural Change)

o Western musical television, particularly MTV, which has had an increasing influence since the 1990s, as can be seen in the pace, camera angles, dance sequences and music of 2000s Indian films. An early example of this approach was in Mani Ratnam's Bombay (1995).

The Masai of Kenya



The Masai group of semi-nomadic people located in Kenya and northern Tanzania. They are among the best known of African ethnic groups, due to their distinctive customs and dress and residence near the many game parks of East Africa. They speak Maa, a member of the Nilo-Saharan language family, and are also educated in the official languages of Kenya and Tanzania: Swahili and English. The Tanzanian and Kenyan governments have instituted programs to encourage the Masai to abandon their traditional semi-nomadic lifestyle, but the people have continued their age-old customs.

Traditional Masai lifestyle centers around their cattle which constitute their primary source of food. The measure of a man's wealth is in terms of cattle and children. A herd of 50 cattle is respectable, and the more children the better. A man who has plenty of one but not the other is considered to be poor. A Masai religious belief states that God gave them all the cattle on earth, leading to the belief that rustling cattle from other tribes is a matter of taking back what is rightfully theirs, a practice that has become much less common.

A high infant mortality rate among the Masai has led to babies not truly being recognized until they reach an age of 3 moons. For Masai living a traditional life, the end of life is virtually without ceremony, and the dead are left out for scavengers. A corpse rejected by scavengers is seen as having something wrong with it, and liable to cause social disgrace; therefore, it is not uncommon for bodies to be covered in fat and blood from a slaughtered ox. Burial has in the past been reserved for great chiefs, since it is believed to be harmful to the soil.

The Amish

The Amish are a group of Christian church fellowships that form a subgroup of the Mennonite churches. The Amish are known for simple living, plain dress, and reluctance to adopt many conveniences of modern technology. The history of the Amish church began with a schism in Switzerland within a group of Swiss and Alsatian Anabaptists in 1693 led by Jakob Ammann. Those who followed Ammann became known as Amish. In the early 18th century, many Amish and Mennonites immigrated to Pennsylvania for a variety of reasons.

Amish church membership begins with baptism, usually between the ages of 16 and 25. It is a requirement for marriage, and once a person has affiliated with the church, he or she may only marry within the faith. Church districts average between 20 and 40 families, and worship services are held every other Sunday in a member's home. The district is led by a bishop and several ministers and deacons. The rules of the church, the Ordnung, must be observed by every member. These rules cover most aspects of day-to-day living, and include prohibitions or limitations on the use of power-line electricity, telephones, and automobiles, as well as regulations on clothing. Many Amish church members may not buy insurance or accept government assistance such as Social Security. As Anabaptists, Amish church members practice nonresistance and will not perform any type of military service.

Members who do not conform to these expectations and who cannot be convinced to repent are excommunicated. In addition to excommunication, members may be shunned, a practice that limits social contacts to shame the wayward member into returning to the church. During adolescence rumspringa ("running around") in some communities, nonconforming behavior that would result in the shunning of an adult who had made the permanent commitment of baptism, may meet with a degree of forbearance. Amish church groups seek to maintain a degree of separation from the non-Amish world. There is generally a heavy emphasis on church and family relationships. They typically operate their own one-room schools and discontinue formal education at grade eight. They value rural life, manual labor and humility.

The Taliban

The Taliban is an Islamist militant and political group that ruled large parts of Afghanistan and its capital, Kabul, as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan from September 1996 until October 2001. While in power, the Taliban enforced one of the strictest interpretations of Sharia law ever seen in the Muslim world, and leading Muslims have been highly critical of the Taliban interpretations of Islamic law. Under the Taliban regime, Sharia law was interpreted to forbid a wide variety of previously lawful activities in Afghanistan. One Taliban list of prohibitions included: pork, pig, pig oil, anything made from human hair, satellite dishes, cinematography, and equipment that produces the joy of music, pool tables, chess, masks, alcohol, tapes, computers, VCRs, television, anything that propagates sex and is full of music, wine, lobster, nail polish, firecrackers, statues, sewing catalogs, pictures, Christmas cards. They also got rid of employment, education, and sports for all women, dancing, clapping during sports events, kite flying, and characterizations of living things, no matter if they were drawings, paintings, photographs, stuffed animals, or dolls. Men had to have a fist size beard at the bottom of their chin. Conversely, they had to wear their head hair short. Men had to wear a head covering. The Taliban were condemned internationally for their brutal repression of women. Women who wished to leave their home to go shopping had to be accompanied by a male relative, and were required to wear the burqa, a traditional dress covering the entire body except for a small screen to see out of. Those who appeared to disobey were publicly beaten.

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