scholarly journals Objection Sustained: Revolutionary Pedagogical Praxis as an Occupying Force

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 487-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter McLaren

On April 9, Condoleezza Rice delivered a talk in San Francisco. Or tried to. The former Secretary of State was interrupted repeatedly by cries from the audience of ‘war criminal’ and ‘torturer’. (For which we can thank our comrades in Code Pink and World Can't Wait.) As one of the protesters was being taken away by security guards, Rice made the kind of statement that has now become standard for high American officials under such circumstances: ‘Aren't you glad this lady lives in a democracy where she can express her opinion?’ She also threw in another line that's become de rigueur since the US overthrew Saddam Hussein, an argument that's used when all other arguments fail: ‘The children of Iraq are actually not living under Saddam Hussein, thank God.’ My response to such a line is this: If you went into surgery to correct a knee problem and the surgeon mistakenly amputated your entire leg, what would you think if someone then remarked to you how nice it was that ‘you actually no longer have a knee problem, thank God.’… The people of Iraq no longer have a Saddam problem. (Blum, 2011) Language is an invention that makes it possible for a person to deny what he is doing even as he does it. (Blum, 2012)

Author(s):  
Patrick Sze-lok Leung ◽  
Anthony Carty

Okinawa is now considered as Japanese territory, without challenge from most world powers. However, this is debatable from a historical viewpoint. The Ryukyu Kingdom which dominated the islands was integrated into Japan in 1879. The transformation is seen by Wang Hui as a process of modernization. This chapter argues the issue from an international law perspective. It shows that Ryukyu was an independent State as demonstrated by the 1854 Ryukyu–US Treaty, although it sent regular tributes to China. The Japanese integration by coercion is not justifiable. The people of Ryukyu were willing to continue being a tributary State rather than part of Japan. Britain, as the greatest colonial power, did not object. China and the US attempted to intervene in this affair, but no treaty has so far been concluded. Therefore, the status of Ryukyu/Okinawa remains unresolved and may need to be revisited, while putting the history context into consideration.


1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Skerry

In the countless conversations about U.S. immigration policy that I have had with Mexican Americans of varied backgrounds and political orientations, seldom have my interlocutors failed to remind me that “We were here first,” or that “This was our land and you stole it from us.” Even a moderate Mexican American politician like former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros sounds the same theme in a national news magazine:It is no accident that these regions have the names they do—Los Angeles, San Francisco, Colorado, Montana.…It is a rich history that Americans have been led to believe is an immigrant story when, in fact, the people who built this area in the first place were Hispanics.


1976 ◽  
Vol 6 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 16-26
Author(s):  
George M. Houser

In the early 1950s when the American Committee on Africa was formed, American interest in and knowledge about Africa was something of a joke. There was a Tarzan mentality in the US about the continent. Few books about Africa were known even by the reading public. Gunther’s Inside Africa, when it came out in 1956, served as a reference book for years for those Americans who wanted to get a perspective on the continent. I remember listening to Chester Bowles, who served as under secretary of state briefly in the Kennedy administration, speak about his own attempt to find relevant material about Africa in a Connecticut town. He told about his visit to the town public library, where he culled through the card catalogue. To find books on the Congo he said he had to search under “B” for “Belgium.” In searching for material on Ghana (then the Gold Coast) or Nigeria, he had to look under “Great Britain.” He found books about Liberia and Ethiopia under “Miscellaneous.” Knowledge of Africa was minimal, and the continent was on the whole looked upon as an extension of Europe.


Author(s):  
A. Borisova

The last five years defined an alternative course in the US foreign policy. Obama's reelection caused staff transfers which notably influenced the course. This comprehensive process is based on tremendous work conducted by the Administration of Barak Obama, in particular by John Kerry, who was appointed as a Secretary of State in 2013. His personality plays a significant role in American domestic and foreign policy interrelation. Adoption or rejection of the bills, which are well-known today, depended in large on a range of circumstances, such as personality, life journey and political leader career of the today's Secretary of State. John Kerry’s professional life is mainly associated with domestic policy; nevertheless, he has always been interested in foreign relations and national security issues. Those concerns generally included: non-proliferation, US security, ecological problems, fight against terrorism. The article is intended to highlight Kerry’s efforts in each of these fields, showing not only his actions, but also difficult process of adoption or banning bills in the USA. The author tried to display the whole complicated decision-making process among different parties, businessmen and politicians, law and money clashes. The results of many former endeavors can be seen today, in the modern US policy. Based on assumptions about Secretary of State’s beliefs, certain road map can be predicted. In conclusion, the article offers several courses, where the United States are likely to be most active during the next few years. It can be judged exactly which way some current political issues will develop, how the US foreign policy will be shaped by today's decision-makers in the White House.


2021 ◽  
Vol VI (III) ◽  
pp. 59-71
Author(s):  
Muhammad Nadeem Mirza ◽  
Lubna Abid Ali ◽  
Irfan Hasnain Qaisrani

This study intends to explore the rise of Donald Trump to the White House. Why was Donald Trump considered a populist leader, and how did his populist rhetoric and actions impact the contours of American domestic and foreign policies? The study adopted qualitative exploratory and explanatory research techniques. Specific methods utilised to conduct the study remained political personality profiling. It finds that the populist leaders construct the binaries in the society by dividing the nation into two groups: �us� the people, against �them� the corrupt elite or other groups presented as a threat to the lives and livelihood of the nation. Though populism as a unique brand of politics remained active through most of the US history, yet these were only two occasions that populists were successful in winning the American presidential elections � Andrew Jackson in 1828 and Donald Trump in 2016. Structural and historical reasons became the biggest cause behind the election of Donald Trump, who successfully brought a revolution in American domestic and foreign policies. And if structural issues in the United States are not addressed, there is a clear chance that Trump � who is not withering away � will come back to contest and challenge any competitors in the 2024 presidential elections.


2005 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-35
Author(s):  
Kalafi Moala

"The largest number of Tongans outside of Tonga lives in the United States. It is estimated to be more than 70,000; most live in the San Francisco Bay Area. On several occasions during two visits to the US by my wife and I during 2004, we met workers who operate the only daily Tongan language radio programmes in San Francisco. Our organisation supplies the daily news broadcast for their programmes. Our newspapers— in the Tongan and Samoan languages— also sell in the area. The question of what are the fundamental roles of the media came up in one of our discussions..."


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Maria Hagan ◽  
Ricardo Martinez-Schuldt ◽  
Alyssa Peavey ◽  
Deborah M. Weissman

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (INA) created an immigration system favoring the immigration of spouses, children, and parents of US citizens, thereby establishing family unity as the cornerstone of US immigration policy. Despite this historical emphasis on family unity, backlogs and limited visas for non-immediate relatives of US citizens and legal permanent residents, the militarization of the US-Mexico border, punitive measures for those who enter without inspection, such as the forced separation of children from their parents at the US border, and an aggressive policy of deportation have made it more difficult for members of Mexican binational families to unify. How do members of Mexican binational families manage the hardships that result from US immigration policies that prolong and force family separation? Immigrants and return migrants alike may not be aware of their rights and the legal remedies that exist to enforce them. Structural barriers such as poverty, legal status, fear of deportation, lack of proficiency in English, and lack of familiarity with government bureaucracies no doubt prevent many migrants in the United States and return migrants in Mexico from coming forward to request legal assistance and relief in the courts. Despite these barriers, when it comes to family matters, members of some Mexican binational families can and do assert their rights. In this article, we analyze an administrative database of the Department of Legal Protection of the Mexican consular network that documents migrant legal claims resulting from family separation, along with findings from 21 interviews with consular staff and community organizations in three consular jurisdictions — El Paso, Raleigh, and San Francisco — to investigate the sociolegal processes of claims. Our investigation centers on the mediating role the Mexican state — via its consular network — has developed to assist binational families as they attempt to assert their rights and resolve child support and child custody problems resulting from prolonged and forced family separation. We find that the resolution of binational family claims in part depends on the institutional infrastructure that has developed at local, state, and federal levels, along with the commitment and capacity of the receiving and sending states and the binational structures they establish. These binational structures transcend the limitations of national legal systems to achieve and implement family rights and obligations across borders.


Author(s):  
Alex Schafran

Silicon Valley as we know it emerged in part from encounters between the technology of the valley and the Bohemian culture of San Francisco. This San Francisco–Silicon Valley nexus would produce one of the most dynamic economic growth stories any region has ever seen. Over the course of the latter part of the twentieth century, this encounter eventually turned both San Francisco and Silicon Valley into massive jobs engines. This chapter examines the spaces where this engine was most powerful, the places that drove the economic cart which attracted so many new residents and so much investment. These are also the places that largely did either very little or not enough to house the people who held these jobs. They did even less for those who had suffered under the segregated conditions of the earlier era.


Tempting Fate ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 40-62
Author(s):  
Paul C. Avey

This chapter provides a background for Iraqi behavior during the period of American nuclear monopoly beginning in 1979 when Saddam Hussein was officially Iraqi president, focusing most heavily on events in 1989–1991. In an intense political dispute, Iraqi leadership took actions they believed would fall below the threshold of nuclear use. Most of the limitations that Iraq exhibited were due to its own weakness; it could do little more. For Iraq as a weak actor, war with the United States was possible precisely because it would pose such a low danger to the United States. Even then, Iraqi leadership incorporated the US nuclear arsenal into their decision making in 1990–1991. That confrontation is the most important to examine because it involved Iraqi military action that Iraqi leaders believed would invite some form of US response, and US compellent demands did not center on Iraqi regime change. In 1990, Saddam and his lieutenants held their own unconventional weapons in reserve and discounted an American nuclear strike because of the high strategic costs that such a strike would impose on the United States. They also undertook various civil defense measures to minimize losses from nuclear strikes. Fortunately, the Americans had little intention of using nuclear weapons and did not face a need to resort to nuclear use.


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