9/11 and Its Political Aftermath
"You are either with us or against us."--President George W. Bush, November 6, 2001
The words of President Bush are in reference to the War on Terror, but could just as easliy be applied to the increasingly black-and-white mindset of politically opinionated individuals all across the spectrum. We must keep in mind that Democrat and Reupblican, Liberal and Conservative are self-assigned categorizations and do not define us as people.
Guy and Heidi Burgess, Co-Directors of the Conflict Research Consortium at the University of Colorado, have outlined steps to take to help ensure civility in public discourse here:
http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/civility.htm
Purple America: Robert J. Vanderbei has made a map of the county-by-county voting results of every Presidential election since 1960. The visualization goes a long way toward dispelling the Red State/Blue State myth.
Pearl Harbor and Japanese-American Internment
"I say it is of vital importance that we get rid of every Japanese, whether in Hawaii or on the mainland... Damn them; let's get rid of them now."--Congressman John Rankin, Congressional Record, Feb. 19, 1942.
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor over 110,000 Japanese-Americans were relocated to internment camps for the next few years until the end of the war. Many lost their homes and land.
For more information please visit the following links for overviews
http://www.sfmuseum.org/war/evactxt.html
http://www.usa-people-search.com/content-stories-and-images-of-japaneseamerican-internment.aspx
The Reichstag Fire and the Rise of Nazism
"The burning Reichstag building was the signal that brought every German to his senses."--"Der Schuldige," from Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer, #10, March 1933
The buring of the Reichstag (the German Parlliament) in 1933 was used by Hitler and the Nazi Party to all but eliminate the Communist Party's political influence and cement Hitler's postition of power. The Enabling Act was passed shortly after - it put strict limitations on German civil liberties and allowed Hitler to enact laws without the involvemnt of Parliament.
For more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm
The Genocide in Rwanda
"'You cockroaches must know that you are made of flesh,' a broadcaster gloated over RTLM. 'We won't let you kill. We will kill you.'"--from We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch
On April 6th 2004 Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane was shot down, killing all the passengers, shortly after a peace treaty with the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front had been signed.
In the following 100 days over 800,000 Tutsis were murdered by the Hutu majority as the Western World chose not to intervene. RTLM (Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines) was a Hutu Supremicist radio station that played a large role in mobilizing the genocide.
The roots of the Hutu-Tutsi animosity - like much of Rwandan history - is long and complicated. Many trace its roots to when the country was a Belgian colony and the forced ethnic identification the Belgians put upon Rwandans (while the Hutu and Tutsi classifications had already existed, the Belgians codified and exacerbated exactly what these classifications meant). For more background visit the links below and read Philip Gourevitch's account of the tragedy.
For more information:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/evil/
http://www.salon.com/books/sneaks/1998/09/22sneaks.html
Similar events are unfolding in Darfur right now. Find out what you can do: