Russia posts Katyn massacre documents

In this article, Russia's state archive posted documents on the internet about the Soviet Union's massacre of 20,000 polish officers and citizens. Russia posted these articles to calm Poland in case they were still pissed from the massacre in WWII. This relates to our WWII unit because we studies the cold war and the tension between soviet union and eastern europe. These massacres were under the title "Joseph Stallin" and it seems that alot of europe is mad at the way the Soviet Union and Stallin ruled during the Cold War.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100428/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_poland_wwii_massacre;_ylt=Ar2RqQ6_J94jJhDKeU5GNWZvaA8F;_ylu=X3oDMTMzMmRraHV2BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwNDI4L2V1X3J1c3NpYV9wb2xhbmRfd3dpaV9tYXNzYWNyZQRwb3MDMQRzZWMDeW5fYXJ0aWNsZV9zdW1tYXJ5X2xpc3QEc2xrA3J1c3NpYXBvc3Rzaw--

Soviet Union + Japan

The Soviet Union, one of the 3 main countries that joined the war including Britain and France, suffered great losses in the year and a half they were in the war. They lost millions of soldiers and civilians that were necessary to even be in the war, so they dropped out. The country couldn't take the constant grinding of soldiers and supplies. Then came the overthrowing of the Czan during the Russian Rev. Around 1920, the communist party was established which lead to the Soviet Union. During the depression, Russia was not affected because of the foreign trade policies Lenin and Stallin instilled in the Russian gov't.

Japan during WWI didn't really make in impact. They were part of the alliance and were given orders by the British to take out ships near eastern Asia. They then were given part of China through the 21 demands later. During the depression, they were one of the countries that were not affected because of their Finance minister and his crafty ways of cushioning the blow from the depression.

Medic Littler

Thomas Fredrick Littler joined the Cheshire regiment at the early age of 17. He trained in Aberystwyth in 1914 before beginning work at Siddley Deasy in Coventry. When he turned 18, he signed for Foreign Service and left England for Rouen in March 1916. His diary explains his experience of WWI in northern France for 11 months however he sustained a leg injury which led to him returning to England. He returned to France in 1918 until the end of the war.

June 9th 1916
We fell in at 8-30p.m and entered "Wood Street communication trench" and passed the old fire trench and went up "New Wood Street" which was only about 2 ft deep, then got on the top, passed our front line which was being held by "The Rifle Rangers", through a gap in the barbed wire, we were paced out so many paces per man as a digging task, and told to dig ourselves in as quickly as possible.

We worked hard for about 2 an hour when the Germans opened heavy machine gun fire on us and swept us like a blanket, and being only 100 yds from the enemy lines it proved very trying, we carried on, off and on, for : of an hour when, when he got more machine guns sweeping that sector, by this time my part of the trench was about 18" deep so I could lie in it.

The machine guns keep on sweeping and the enemy opened out a "miniweffer" (trench mortar) barrage, four of our rifles were laying on the ground about 4 ft away and these got a direct hit, that was the last I saw of my rifle, also blew the trench away and left us as it were on the open ground.

The man in front of me called for help and on going to him I found he had a piece of shrapnel in the left shoulder blade, this was Private Joe (Hurnival of Runcorn), also he was hit on the lower middle part of the back, many men at this time were calling for help, out of our Platoon we had three casualties L/Cpl Fineflow who was hit in the back and the pieces had pierced the lungs he was vomiting a lot of blood, and Pte Edward Coalthorpe (of Chester) who was hit in ribs and left arm, one man in No10 Platoon was also hit, Stretcher Bearer Mostan, he was serious as he was hit in the lower part of the stomach and between the legs, after we had got the wounded away we returned to billets, it was 6a.m. 

During this time, Thomas Littler was a trained medic in the fight against the central powers. Medics had the same fears as rifleman because they had to man the front lines. In this passage, Littler had to run up with the soldiers, dig his own trench and also charge the other side. Not only did medics have to look for injured soldiers, they also had to look out for themselves as not to get killed.

Thomas Frederick Littler

June 9th 1916

We fell in at 8-30p.m and entered "Wood Street communication trench" and passed the old fire trench and went up "New Wood Street" which was only about 2 ft deep, then got on the top, passed our front line which was being held by "The Rifle Rangers", through a gap in the barbed wire, we were paced out so many paces per man as a digging task, and told to dig ourselves in as quickly as possible.

 

We worked hard for about 2 an hour when the Germans opened heavy machine gun fire on us and swept us like a blanket, and being only 100 yds from the enemy lines it proved very trying, we carried on, off and on, for : of an hour when, when he got more machine guns sweeping that sector, by this time my part of the trench was about 18" deep so I could lie in it.

 

The machine guns keep on sweeping and the enemy opened out a "miniweffer" (trench mortar) barrage, four of our rifles were laying on the ground about 4 ft away and these got a direct hit, that was the last I saw of my rifle, also blew the trench away and left us as it were on the open ground.

 

The man in front of me called for help and on going to him I found he had a piece of shrapnel in the left shoulder blade, this was Private Joe (Hurnival of Runcorn), also he was hit on the lower middle part of the back, many men at this time were calling for help, out of our Platoon we had three casualties L/Cpl Fineflow who was hit in the back and the pieces had pierced the lungs he was vomiting a lot of blood, and Pte Edward Coalthorpe (of Chester) who was hit in ribs and left arm, one man in No10 Platoon was also hit, Stretcher Bearer Mostan, he was serious as he was hit in the lower part of the stomach and between the legs, after we had got the wounded away we returned to billets, it was 6a.m.

 

Thomas Fredrick Littler joined the Cheshire regiment at the early age of 17. He trained in Aberystwyth in 1914 before beginning work at Siddley Deasy in Coventry. When he turned 18, he signed for Foreign Service and left England for Rouen in March 1916. His diary explains his experience of WWI in northern France for 11 months however he sustained a leg injury which led to him returning to England. He returned to France in 1918 until the end of the war.

The Na'vi

Na'vi flag of Ewya

The four stars on the right side represent the four clans of the Na'vi. The blue background represents the color of our skin. The tree in the middle is what we call home tree and it is where we live and where our culture is based. The red triangles make it look kinda cool and serve no purpose whatsoever. The black and white circles represent our peace with between the good and bad in nature and our unity with nature and our home tree.

National Anthem:

O land of the Na'vi, of rivers and plains;
Made rich by the sunshine, and lush by the rains,
Set gem like and fair, between mountains and sea,
Your children salute you, dear land of the free!

Green land of Pandora, our heroes of yore,
Both bondsmen and free, laid their bones on your shore.
This soil so they hallowed, and from them are we,
All sons of one Mother, Pandora the free!!

Great land of Earth, diverse though our strains,
We are born of their sacrifice, heirs of their pains,
And ours is the glory their eyes did not see,
One land of two peoples, united and free!

Dear land of Earth, to you will we give,
Our homage, our service, each day that we live;
We guard you, great Eywa, and make us to be
More worthy our heritage, land of the free!

http://naviblue.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=122&start=10

National History:
We are known as the Na’vi. Our nation is located on the eastern coast of what is know Brazil, but we are spread out all across South America. There are 4 major tribes that fall under our nation, each one having its own unique dynamic that makes the Na’vi so powerful and diverse. The first tribe is known as the Omaticaya. The capital of the Na’vi empire is located in the center of the Omaticaya tribe in the dense forests of Brazil. We live in what we call the Hometree were everyone in the tribe is located. We all live in this tree because it enables us to connect with the one thing we value most, and this is our bond with nature. We feel that all beings including animals, plants, and humans are all connected and share one common bond. We feel that you should try and differ yourself from your common being but try and be with them. Some ways we try and make ourselves one with our planet is we wear minimal clothes. This helps be as much part as the Earth as the animals we live with. The only time we use accessories is when we go into battle, which has only been one time in our history. This is when the British came over to our homeland and tried to change our ways. They wanted to bring us new technology that would diversify ourselves from nature. They insisted on bringing new technology and even diseases to us, we resisted. We then summoned all 4 tribes of the Na’vi to fight off the evil Englishmen and were able to defeat them fairly easily. This truly send a message to the rest of the world that our land was not going to be taken over and we were not open to this outside influences that wanted to change our ways. We then broke back into our four tribes and went on with living our way of life.

One thing that is very unique to our people that no other nation obtains is our special bond we have with nature. We strongly believe in a secret bond that we share with all organisms and this helps us be that much more with our Mother Earth. This is a special ritual we do and accomplish this ritual by putting our feet in the roots of the plants. These plants then give us the nutrients that help them survive and let us be even more one with the world. We do this with animals by taming them completely and being able to rid the animals across the plains of Nagat. When we able to accomplish this, we are accepted into manhood because our Mother has accepted us as part of her. Our Mother is also called Ewya by our people and it is what we value most in We believe that all creatures on Earth’s fate is controlled by the sentient intelligence Ewya. We have no choice but to live in harmony and natural equilibrium with their surroundings. If we become too numerous, Eywa will devise a way to limit their numbers before they cause an ecological imbalance. Over the years of our existence as a nation, we have a healthy respect for their surrounding environment. In return, the environment has provided them with sufficient food and shelter, creatures to ride for ground and air transportation, and an ambient, comfortable temperature throughout one creature, but only for the balance of nature.

At first we were willing to interact with humans, but after concluding that humans had nothing of value to offer to them, they break off contact and start engaging in guerrilla warfare to resist the human's mining operations. The Na'vi have no far-reaching political structures on the scale of nation-states, but are organized into relatively structured clans. Occasionally different clans from far-reaching areas will cooperate in times of great crisis.

sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na'vi_language

http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Na'vi

Alliances and Connections:

Causes for the Taiping rebellion

I personally believe that the Taiping uprising was completely directed towards the Opium war. After the British and the Chinese gov’t reached the agreements, the British basically gained 100% control of the Chinese gov’t. For the next 10-15 years, the Chinese gov’t stood by as the British called all the shots. After finally paying off all their debts, the Chinese gov’t gained control back. However, they were not prepared to have all the power back in their hands and were not ready to run the nation. The Chinese people knew this and noticed that they had to take action. This is where the Taiping uprising started and they knew they had to throw off the poor and weak gov’t that was in charge at the time.

Sepoy Rebellion

I personally believe that the Sepoy rebellion was a nationalist effort. They took pride in their nation and wanted to overthrow the evil grasp that the British had over their gov't and their homeland. They noticed the horrible things that the British were doing to the citizens and knew they had to take action. They even went back to their old Mughal leader and asked them to lead the rebellion. During the Mughal Empire they had a lot of national pride and the Sepoy wanted to re-embrace their mug Hal heritage. 

Napoleon, the conquerer not the pastry

Napoleon Bonaparte was a military and political leader of France in the 1800's. He was a military genius and a brilliant politician that help to shape European politics. In the first decade of the 19th Century, The French Empire under Nepoleon, engaged in a series of wars against every European power. It was only his defeat in Russia, where he lost 600,000 men, that stopped him from dominating Europe. What would the world be like now if he would have defeated the Russians. Would France be the France of today?

Population explosion

During the 1800's, the industrial revolution saw the advancement of both the railroad and the steam ship. Both inventions lead to exploration and settlement, thus leading to a population growth. Advanced transportation allowed people to travel further distances and discover new lands for settlements. The mass transportation also allowed for the movement of goods such as food, building materials and machinery. During this same time, there were great advancements in medicine and vaccines. What played a bigger part in the population growth, advancement in transportation or medicine.

Education in the Colonial Era

In the Colonial Era, education was vital for awareness of the world and its surroundings. Education was not only to learn about the world around them, but also an escape from manual labor. It also gave the opportunity to be placed in better paying jobs. There were also cases where education was used for power control. As the Europeans went through Africa, they installed beliefs and ideas that helped them maintain power through education. Others were embracing European culture as well. Some would speak the language of France and also dress like them, and have weddings like them. This helped the development of Africa because of the fact that they ca “blend” in with the white people. By blending in, it would open up doors for the Africans, which would allow them to access European technology and philosophies. 

Japanese Shogun

Im going to go into detail about the shogun because they seemed interesting. The shogun or the shogunate was referred to a military leader of the Japanese armed forces. At one point in time, they had more power than the emperor and had control of the Samurai.  The Shogun rules as a dictator that rules all of Japan.Today, retired shogun that still have power and give advice to others is called a "Shadow shogun. A shadow shogun in Japanese is called yami shogun. Some shadow shogun are former prime minister Kakuei Tanaka and politician Ichiro Ozawa.

Paul Frank and my wife Anne

My name is Paul and me and my wife, Anne, just moved into Manchester. We just moved from Japan because of the great rice fields in Manchester so we thought we could hit it big there. We definitely arent poor, but we arent rich either. We moved to Manchester because life in Japan was a little tougher than it is here. We lived in the mountains and fed off of the local indigenous creatures. We were also samurais. My wife Anne Frank is a skilled blade smith that specializes in assassination samurai swords.

Adam Smith

Adam Smith was a philosopher that wrote the wealth of the nations. He contained many beliefs that I'm going to investigate in this blog. One of the things that I want to talk about is the idea that people should be divided into 3 classes. These classes were those who have land, those who have money, and those who have labor. I don't think this was a proper way for society to be divided in two because of the fact that some people could be in all 3 of these classes. This would create tension and inequality between the citizens of this government. For example, a wealthy farmer that owned his own land and worked his own land.

Miguel Gregori Antonio Ignacio Hidalgo y costilla y galaaga Mondarte Villasenor

Miguel Gregori Antonio Ignacio Hidalgo y Costilla y Galaaga Mondarte Villasenor also known as Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla or simply Miguel Hidalgo was a Mexican priest. His nickname was the Father of the Nation of Mexico. He was also a leader of the Mexican War of Independence. In 1810, he led a revolt against the peninsulares for the Virgin of Guadalupe. They disbanded after encounters with the criollos and Mexican townspeople. Hidalgo was captured on March 21, 1811 and executed on July 30^th. His rebellion was the beginning of the Mexican war of Independence. After his death, many others took up his footsteps that brought down the colonial governments of Spain of Mexico.

Re: Carson

Well Carson, touché.

I now see your point and I do agree with that the AR was a trendsetter for the FR. one point I would like to argue is that the Americans had help from multiple different countries like the French, Spain, and Holland. All three of these countries gave the Americans weapons, money and technology to fuel their victory. I think without the help of these 3 countries, the Americans would have never been able to defeat the British. On the other hand, France didn’t have any help form any other countries and had multiple armies take advantage of the fact that France was in a revolution. I think that with the aid of some of Frances allies, this transition of governments would have been more cleaner, and smoother. Using bloodshed and violence was the only way that the French could send a message to the hierarchy of France that they were not going to tolerate being bossed around any more. They were able to get their point across through extreme violence, they were able to successfully remove the hierarchy form France and clean out the class system that kept millions of French people under poor circumstances. This was shown when the French people began to call each other citizen instead of monsieur and master.

Re: Carson

This is a response to Carsons blog about the FR and AR

I, Cal Maruyama, personally believe that the FR was more of a patriotic triumph than the AR. the people were able to fully liberate themselves form more than 500 years of tyranny, whereas America faced 200 years of cruel ruling. The French were able to send a message to the world that they were not going to tolerate being treated like doody. The poor citizens of France were revolting the statuses that controlled almost the whole society of France. Overall I thought the french rev was of more importance than the AR even thought the AR came first.

Jean-Jacques Rosseau

Jean-Jacques Roussuau was born in Jeneva, on June 28, 1712. Roussuau was a philosopher, writer, and composer of the eighteenth century enlightenment. He influenced the French revolution and the development of modern political and educational thought. He wrote a novel that he was particularly interested in which was called "Emile: or, On Education." this novel was a seminal treatise on the education of the whole person for citizenship.

The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.

This quote is showing the personal beliefs of Roussuau. from this quote, we can depict that most of mankinds misfortunes have been brought upon by our own stupidity. we can tell this because Roussuau said, "If only man picked that stick." He also believed that man goes under influence fairly easily if given the right opportunity. Roussuau's philosophy was very different from Hobbes because Roussuau believes in a different role of government in society and a very different view on human nature.

Baron de Montesqui

Charles de Secondat, also known as Baron de Montesquieu was a French social commentator and political thinker who lived during the Enlightenment Era. He’s famous for his theory of democracy. Our constitution now is based of his theory. His theory was that there should be “Checks and Balances” which basically means that there can’t be someone higher than the rest. In this case, there are 3 branches that all watch over each others power. In the United States of America, there are 3 branches, the executive, the judicial, and the legislative that all have specific jobs to do in the government.

science Galileo

After doing the reading in the science section of the ways of the world, I came across Galileo Galilei. I was really interested on his scientific acheivement of making the telescope and discovering more about the solar system. So I decided to do some extensive research on the topic to answer some questions that were wandering in my head.

Galileo developed a more advanced telescope, which he saw sunspots with. With that, he discovered new stars such as Jupiter.

His discoery lead to the findings that all planets revolved around the sun and that there was a gravitational force because some of the planets seemed to dissapear from him when they actually revolved somewhere else.

Empires

The aspect that drew my empire close to the Portuguese, was the heavy focus on trading with other empires. We were able to successfully bring our empire to power through trade with various African tribes, which in total, advanced our culture and technology. We also established tribute systems such as the Ming empire. Like the Moghuls, we unitied people who share common beliefs. The Moghuls united the Hindus, who all shared the same religion. We united the African tribes, who all shared the common lifestyle and beliefs.