Ch 23 and 24 funny faces, exports and great visionaries

Wow, time files when your having fun!

Anyway my final blog entry includes both 23 and 24.  There were a few points in the chapters that caught my eye.

Chapter 23 dealt with decolonization and the chapter have major sections devoted to both India and Africa.  What I noticed was that in both places there was a great visionary leader who helped and was really in their moment.  Of course I'm referring to Mandela in Africa and Gandhi in India.  Both brought unity, spirituality and suffered very difficult battles in their struggles.  They also didn't seem to want to take the helm, but rather became the helm because the people knew they were the right leaders.  I have huge leadership discussions at work.  One faction feels that militaristic hierarchy is leadership where I feel that when an employee says "if you ever leave, will you take me with you, I'll go anywhere with you around" the person has demonstrated leadership.  Both Gandhi and Mandela demonstrated this type of leadership.  How many people do you know that you'd like to follow into a new career?  These are the greats....

My favorite part of chapter 24 was the picture of the Indian call center voice training course where they all were pulling their mouths with fingers creating huge smiles.  Another and more important part of the chapter dealt with trade surplus and deficit countries.  While most feel that if you import more than you export you are in bad shape, but might it not actually work in reverse?  Don't the export surplus countries depend on our economies much more than we depend on their products.  If a huge nationalism revolt strikes and we decide to buy American, a very large part of the world could be in trouble.  It also feels like there is a huge upside, sort of like a PE ratio, when it is low one may be looking at opportunity.  This relates directly to the topic of the American Empire.  Where we haven't so much dominated via take over we have inserted friendlies in politics and pushed massive economic control in many places which may lead to a more sustained control as compared to stripping a country of resources.

Anyway, ciao, it was a please being in class with you all!

Die you commie pig! ch 22

Well all I'm getting a bit punchy with all of the reading.  Ch 22 is on communism, the rise and fall.  As a personal note, being 41 I remember the days of Gorbachev.  I graduated high school in 87 and truely remember a feeling of nervousness in general.  It sort of felt like the current economic tide which hopefully will wash away.  I remember listening to John Lydon and Afrika Bombata's "World Destruction" and Sting's song about Killing Children.  The cold war hit home, my home and being a kid and not really understanding what was going on, but understanding enough to know that both the USA and USSR could blow up the world many times over wasn't fun.

Anyway the commies fell and are continuing to fall.  Being completely goverment run left them without much advancement, no competition, lately and the population a bit pissed.  Hero leaders Stalin and his buddy Mao fell and their successors were soft.  These new guys decollectivized farming, allowed foreign investment and had a population that could finally see what the rest of the world was doing.  Hopefully things will continue to change globally for the better.

Ch 21 - TMI

So where to start...

Triple alliance east or west?
WWI and US getting involved as shipping lanes were jammed by The Fatherland?
Facism?
Fall of Europe?
Marshall New Deal?
Germany having to pay reparations for war and pissed off because of it bringing on a new Socialist party...Sig Heil anyone?
Japan returning to the Japanese way?
WWII deliberate and planned Japan angry with US over trade and racial issues Germany just psycho?

Oh, ha that kind of just sums it up!

Ch 20 - Cooperation

One item I found noteworthy in chapter 20 related to cooperation, might also be footnoted a bit as greed...

As the Europeans we colonizing the world one who sought domncance in his country might enlist them to help him out, this help spread the pervasive colonization.  Another subsection of this were some countries who were better negotiators who knew their time would be soon up and so began to negotiate with the future colonizers.  Siam and Ethiopia were mentioned specifically.  By doing so the rulars may essentially stay in power.

One benefit the countries received was jobs.  When the colonization took place the Eu countries didn't resource completely and so many people found good paying and even presitgious jobs working for the new rulers.  an Example is French West AFrica where only 385 French adminstrators were in place and 50,000 tribal chiefs had the opportunity to help out.

Unfortunately form everything else I've seen or read the Europeans did little to help and really stirpped Africa of its resources and left it in ruins.

Ch 18 - Unions

I've always wondered where unions originated from.  Chapter 18 describes what might be the answer. 

Early British industrialization in agriculture in forms of rotating crops, higher yielding seeds, etc allowed for more people to become aritsans rather than agricultural workers.  These artisans solowing started forming groups of like crafts.  These groups began to collect dues that would help cover their community in case of illness and funeral costs.  This essentially was the beginning stages of the unions.

As these unions grew they began to have wage bargaining power protecting the workers from oppressive bosses.

Chapter 17 needs to go to a 12 step program (on and on and on)

Does anyone feel the same way I do when I read the chapters?  They seem to be very interesting have a very nice start then climax.  The chapter appears to be coming to an end and then drags out for about 10 more pages.  Now this guy Strayer is a much better writer than I and it is easy to be a critic, but this chapter in particular caught a case of on and on and on.  I think the chapters should be split up.  The revolutions described included the American, French, Haitian and Spanish American the part the is of course related but drug on for me was the feminist movement, abolition of slavery and nationalism.  Whatever...

Anyway one piece of the puzzzle that came clear to me in the chapter was that while the American Revolution was insturmental in others it just didn't quite work out the same way.  Some of the major differences between American and French were the in fighting.  The American revolution seemed to have a purpose stop the Brits from taxing us the French Revolution was a class fight so they were all fighting each other.  Rich trying to keep their power and the poor for equal rights.  The Haitian revolutions was a success for them but moved slavery to Cuba and the South.  The Spanish American was really a rularless fight with infighting.  After Napolean had conquered Spain and Portugal the South Americans didn't have an oppressive leadership anymore and were really forced into a revolution.

Interesting how a similar idea with different circumstances resulted in such varied results.  Remember "nothing but freedom"