Korea Korea

Korea, Korea oh sweet North Korea. North Korea is a country that the world needs to worry about. This communist regime has an aging leader who is not considered to have the safety of the world in mind, nuclear weapons, and does not provide appropriate aid to its people. In terms of these three negative aspects, I believe that the third is quite often overlooked. The population of Korea is near 24 million and over 1/3 of these people do not receive an adequate amount of food. What is piled on top of these negative proponents of the society is how the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has denied the food aid that the United States has tried to give to the region. Adding even more to the problems of this situation is that sanctions put on North Korea seem to be having no effect at persuading the leaders to change their policies.

The question is what should be the United States actions in this situation? Although the U.S. has given food aid to the country, it seems that the major concern with North Korea is their possession of weapons of mass destruction. This worldly concern presents an opportunity for the U.S. to lead other powerful nations into establishing a joint policy to change North Korea's actions.

Currently, the United States believes that Aid-for-Disarmament will be the most effective policy to cause North Korea to stray from their dangerous path. Theoretically, if the U.S. was capable of leading all nations to taking this policy in negotiations with Korea, there could be the possibility that this policy would be effective. At the same time, this action could also cause Korea to threaten the world with WMDs and make a costly decision that could affect the world. More importantly, I think the sad thing about this miserable situation is the fact that in no way does it seem that the North Korean's citizens suffering will lessen. I believe that hard work could cause North Korea to change its opinion on accepting U.S. food aid but I still question why a program like Aid-for-disarmament cannot be used to counter human suffering. Global powers of the world could establish programs that provide economic aid to third world countries in return for freedom for citizens. As the super power of the world, I believe that the United States could use its powers of persuasion to lead countries to follow this type of policy so that there will be less human suffering in the world.

Remember, Remember

Remember remember the fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot, I know of no reason, the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot. Yes, today is the fifth of November, and it is the celebration of Guy Fawkes Day. For those of you who do not know, Guy Fawkes Day is a holiday of sorts in the United Kingdom. This day is remembered because on November 5th in 1605, Guy Fawkes and a group planned to blow up parliament and King James I. This attempt was foiled but has come to be called the Gunpowder Plot. This date had come to be absorbed by the past in America until recently the film V for Vendetta rekindled the excitement surrounding this date.

The movie and the day relate to the United States role as a super power because of the messages both subjects send about standing up against totalitarian governments. V for Vendetta is inspirational in that although the character V is by no means pacifistic and there are riots in the country, the citizens are able to end the movie by standing up to the soldiers with no arms. I find that this action causes me to think about how a country could stand up to a totalitarian regime. Sadly, there are many parts to this movie that are fictionalized and are unlikely of happening, but it does cause one to think about it. I find that I myself dream that because the U.S. is the super power of the world, it could help people accomplishes these types of feats. Sadly, in the real world of today, it seems that the only thing that causes a country to change it's ways is military force, but we can always hope that someday this will be different.

Altogether there are around 50 countries in the world that are not considered free countries. Some examples of totalitarian governments in the world are Cambodia, Myanmar, China, Cuba, and Congo.

Great Blogs, Great Blogs

Throughout the unit I found myself visiting the blog of Cuba2Miami. I found this blog interesting because it spread light on the subject of illegal/legal immigration from a perspective that is not common. I found this blog gave insight on topics of immigration that are usually glanced over. Cuba2Miami was able to write in a way that promoted freedom and her use of rhetoric caused the blog to have a compelling argument.

Cuban Immigration to the South Florida Area

The blog Fluids and Flames of the Future, by NatureMan, discussed topics that I find very important to the future. When reading his posts, I constantly found that he had uncovered information about green technologies that I wanted to know, but was unable to find. I feel that Natureman did an excellent job of presenting information in an informative non-bias way. This captured my attention because of how much I was able to learn from his blog.
Fluids and Flames of the Future

I found myself always clicking on the link for the blog by Political_Blogger. Modern Problems with the United Nations was an interesting blog to me because of it's relation to my subject. I found that his blog, along with references he found, allowed me to deepen my knowledge concerning the United Nations global council. His blog also provided me with ideas to write my posts on. I also enjoyed his perspective on the situation because of his unique intellectual ideas.
Modern Problems with the United Nations

Implicated

There are numerous implications if my topic remains unresolved in the future. If the United States does not act in ways to lessen human suffering, types of aid will keep being ineffective, and most importantly, millions of people will continue to suffer. If current global policies continue to be implemented, most certainly another genocidal situation like Darfur will occur, and nothing will be done to stop it. The U.S. must take charge as the global super power to promote the rest of the world to follow it in the fight for human rights and freedom. I do not only mean that the U.S. should create new plans to start this, but also it should use its powerful influence in a positive manner to change current global organizations so that they are more effective. With this said, there will always be violence in the world, and even if in the future the U.S. resolves the faults in global policies, situations will continue to arise where suffering occurs. With this said, more effective steps taken by the U.S. would help prevent these situations from getting as out of hand as the Darfur genocide, and could lessen the amount of human suffering in poverty-stricken nations and countries where totalitarian groups are taking people's rights away.

Just Some Annotated Links

http://www.usaid.gov

This is the government website that portrays how the United States is interacting with the countries that require aid. It is an important tool because it discusses all the types of humanitarian aid that are being given to countries. It also provides information on how money from the U.S. budget is being used to not only provide shelter and food to under-privileged companies, but also how the money is being used to help countries be able to be more self-sustaining.

http://www.un.org/

Un.org is the United Nations home website. This is a useful website because of the overwhelming amount of information that it has about the United Nations. Information about the U.N.'s past actions; International Laws; humanitarian affairs; and its developmental programs can all be found here. This site also illustrates how countries of the world are working together to help out those who are suffering. It also provides information that allows one to see how the world is trying to change the ruling methods of leaders who do not make their decisions based on what is best for others.

www.nato.int

This is the official website of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This is an international organization that consists of the U.S.A., Canada, and European countries. It is dedicated to allowing the countries of America and Europe to work together to help the world and protect each other. This organization is concerned with protection and helping other countries in times of militaristic crisis. This website allows one to see the goals of the original North Atlantic Treaty, and how the organization is attempting to protect the people of the world.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/17/david-miliband-china-world-power

This is a website that illustrates how China has the ability to become a super power of the world in the near future. It illustrates the concerns that some people have about the differences between the United States and China. It illustrates the importance that China has in the world economy, and provides speculation about what will happen to the global political set-up because of China's rise to power.

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA

This is the official website of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The website provides information about the ways in which Israel is interacting with other countries. It is important because of the amount of aid that the U.S. government gives to this country. Israel is also an important topic because of the amount of human suffering that takes place because of the aggressive encounters that it has with countries in the Mid-East.

www.globalsecurity.org

This is a site that focuses on global issues that threaten the safety of the globe. Most of the information is centered on aggressive types of confrontations. It gives many different news articles from varying sources regarding subjects such as WMDs, the Military, Homeland Security, Intelligence, and the public eye.

The Irish?

Generally, when American citizens think of terrorism, certain stereotypes sadly come to mind. When talking about terrorism in America, it is quite uncommon to have the debate circulate around Ireland. The Provisional Irish Republican Army, commonly known as, "the IRA," is a group in Northern Ireland that has used forms of terrorism to make statements about their beliefs concerning the future of Ireland, specifically Northern Ireland, for the past 30 years.

One might ask, "What does this have to do with the United States role as a super power?" In terms of this question, it is interesting that in the past few years, the United States government has not done much to aid in this situation. I have done some research into the type of aid being provided by the United States, and frankly I cannot find much of anything about our role in creating peace in the country, other than words of encouragement. Luckily, it seems that lately the Irish have agreed on a treaty, but this is not to say that there was not any violence and killings before. The United States role as the super power of the world in this situation is interesting because of the fact that stopping terrorism is one of the main goals of the government's foreign policy, but in this situation, it seems that the United States gave the cold shoulder to helping Northern Ireland.

I am confused about my position on role of the U.S. in this affair because of what my beliefs are concerning the roles of the U.S. as a global power. Although there has been human suffering from this organization, I think that the U.S. government's actions portray the sad truth that the situation has not had a significant enough impact on the world to be deemed a priority. Luckily the situation has had resolve in the lately, but it is interesting to me that helping Northern Ireland would be much less troubling than taking on the issues of countries like Iraq, but nothing has really been done to help this country. This situation portrays the reality that as much as we want the U.S. to help in every situation that has unjustness for people it cannot. This strengthens my theory that the best solution to help the world is to make it a worldly goal of industrialized countries to end the conflict in these types of situations. As of now, this worldly attitude is only capable of happening through hard work by a country like the U.S. who has the ability to be a leader of all countries.