World at war

I found this chapter to be a bit scary because let's face it our world has gone through and has seen some major tragedies.  So far in history we have had two major World Wars which had a drastic effect on the people of the world and the world itself.
This chapter just went to show people that people with power can both cause great destruction and positive attributes.  For example Adolf Hitler was able to convince and control an entire country to do whatever he wanted them to do.  He was able to take over their government and become their ultimate leader, leading them into doing many horrible deeds.  His goal was to create a world were there was only the race that he thought was the "superior" race, which was the Arian race.  Adolf Hitler would target anyone who was not of this race and put them into camps of kill them.  Everyone has herd or learned about Adolf Hitler trying to eliminate the Jewish population because he had so much hatred for them, he would target them as his main target and try to get rid of every single one of them.  He would make all of Jewish people wear the Star of David to distinguish them from everyone else, this was very degrading to the Jewish community.  Yes there was two different points to view Hitler as, the ones that followed him and the ones that were against him.  I personally am very against Adolf Hitler and his beliefs because I feel that there is no such thing as a superior race, and that who is he to decide who should live and who should die?  Just to try and eliminate an entire race, let alone anything thing in my eyes is very unacceptable.  But yes there were the ones who would agree with Hitler and follow him, some people even look to Hitler as an influence because he had so much power and was able to take control of an entire country.  Hitler was a very powerful man but the way that he thought about things were just so negative, and to some people thought that the way that he did things was just so influential.  I mean sure he was a great leader and very intelligent, but the way that he used those attributes was just towards such a negative way.
World War II was just such an important part of history to everyone, and even more to me because it was such a monumental point in history.  I personally was affected greatly because I am of Japanese nationality, Live in Hawaii near Pearl Harbor, and I am american.  This has affected me so much because I have been to the USS Arizona memorial and learned about this War so much in past classes, not just about the war itself, but also about the other affects of it.  Many people were affected not just by the war and the death tolls, but also the after affects were tremendous, from the radiation from the nuclear bombs to the racism that Japanese Americans faced.  I mean Americans even turned on their own kind, just because they were of Japanese decent, and America was supposed to be home of the free, where people of all different types of nationalities could be.
This chapter had a very deep feeling to it because there was so many people lost in the process of these two major destructions of history.  I hope that there is never anything ever like this ever again because as humans we need to learn from these situations and not do the same stupid mistakes.

Chapter 20!

After reading chapter 20 it really showed me how nasty that humans can be to other humans.  From the 1750s to the 1900s the Europeans were on the surge for power so they sent out to conquer other places and expand their empire.  One spot in particular that they tried to take over was Africa because Africa was so rich in many recourses and even the people were used as slaves and apart of the work force.  This is just so hard to even see the picture of the damages that the regimes would do because when they were trying to take over, they didn't just try to take over the older population, but also the young children.  You can see from the picture in the book little innocent children with were harmed greatly from the conquest of the Europeans trying to take over.  Children's hands were taken off, and I cannot even begin to imagine the pain that they felt from just the physical and mental aspects of the horrific events that took place in their own homeland.
I personally don't have much respect for the European's surge for power because it was mainly the bigger and more technologically advanced societies overtaking the smaller societies.  Which is basically the story of life, but I just can't seem to go with that and just seeing that, that is just how things went.  I don't get how people could just go to little innocent village and harm the innocent people including the women and children.  For example the British soldiers in East Africa would go to village and take everything and by that I mean everything.  "every soul was either shot or bayoneted.... We burned all the huts and razed the banana plantations to the ground." pg 549  That is just so inhumane and disgusting that I can barley read that with out feeling some sort of anger towards those soldiers.  I don't understand how people can do that to other people and not feel and sympathy, I mean yeah you are trying to express your power by taking over other places, but have some care in your heart at least for the young women and children.

something to think about

After reading the article on "Collapse" it really made me start to think about how we as humans are protecting the earth and it's recourses.  I mean come on lets face it, at the rate that we are using our planets recourses, they are not going to be around forever.  The article really made me start to think about the things that our societies consume, from food and oil, all the way to just our surrounding environments.  I mean let's really start to take a look at our planets natural recourses, they are being depleted at a very rapid paste and if we keep this up then we are going to be left with nothing.  For example the fish that we eat and use for our protein, it's really starting to scare me because me being from Hawaii, I grew up with fish, and it is a really big part of my diet.  If the world's fish population were to vanish, then I don't know how I would be able to stand it.  Even the aquacultures that we are trying to control are also starting to work against us because we are still trying to control the balance of nature.  We are taking these creatures out of their natural habitats and making them live and eat how and what we want them to do.  It's not a very good way to try and stop the decline of these populations, just for our selfish greed, we need to realize that many things that we do are starting to affect the flow of our planet.  Not only are we killing the population of the animals that we consume, but we are also killing their habitat and natural habitats.  As people, we have to realize this and start to do something about it, we are being way to greedy and this has to stop.  At the rate that we are terrorizing everything, it is just so shocking that we can continue to do this as we have even been starting to see the results of our actions.  I really don't hope that one day earth just comes back to get us, and all of the things that we have so much greed for and don't care about vanishes.

Strong women

I find it very inspiring that women were able to become stronger and more recognized from the early times up until now.  Before women were always looked down upon and nobody every respected them, which was very wrong and if people did that now days, they would surely get punished.  I could not even begin to imagine that women used to be set into organized conferences that trained the women to run day-care centers and medical clinics.  It is almost like that all that people thought they were good for and nothing else.  People even went as far as to disrespect peoples cultures, for example the Muslim women would be forced to remove their veils which as we all know is very disrespectful.  Women were also forced into marriages back in the days, and maybe even still today.  But the women all soon started to realize that they were just as equal and that they were also human beings so they eventually started to stand up for themselves.  Lets just look at how far women have came, now we have women bosses and even a woman almost won the election of presidency, which would be unheard of before.  Women have came a far way from the early times and it is just very inspiration to me.