Author Archives: dianliang.jiang

05/18/11

September 11 Archive

I think the September 11 Archive is a good place for finding information about September 11. When I first time entered the website, overall the site was simplicity and brevity. I think this is the strengths of the website. Also, this website provides diverse information about September 11, and everyone can contribute the source, which I think to be the weakness because we do not know which is true or false, but we still can get a lot of public voices about the topic. During the experience, I was like the special collections. There are some links really useful and having huge information in the special collections.

For the future historian, the website had a lot of primary sources and secondary sources about the event, so this will help the future historian gather information which includes stories, images, emails, documents, sounds, and videos of September 11. Overall, this website is useful and recommended for researching the event of September 11.

05/15/11

Financial regulation


Since Great Depression, there was the worse economic crisis on the Wall Street at 2008. However, Obama administration gave five Financial Regulation Proposals to recover the crisis. First, Obama wanted to “promote robust supervision and regulation of financial firm”. The Second point is to deconcentrate financial markets. Third is to pretest consumers from financial abuse. Fourth is “reforms must address operational issues that tie regulators hands”. Fifth is regulating international financial institutions.
source: http://seekingalpha.com/article/143774-obamas-financial-regulation-proposal-the-devil-is-in-the-details

During Clinton presidency, Clinton established fiscal discipline to reduce the Government spending, pay off national debt and extent Medicare solvency. Also, he opened foreign market; he had 300 free and fair trade agreements with other countries. Especially, he ratified the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993 and Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China in 2000. This created 22 million new jobs due to export goods aboard.
source:http://clinton5.nara.gov/WH/Accomplishments/eightyears-03.html

05/10/11

the crisis of communism


Based on Foner’s description, the crisis of communism started on Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. During the event about one million Chinese students, workers, and teachers joined together to demonstrated in Tiananmen Square, and demanded democracy in China. Unfortunately, the Chinese government sent troop to stop the protest and kill thousand people. In the fall of the year, the pro-democracy demonstration had spread to Eastern Europe. On November East Germany’s people crossed the Berlin wall. This means communism was collapsed in Eastern Europe.
In 1990, Gorbachev tried to start economic reform and an open policy in the Soviet Union. However, the conservatism group seized power to overturn Gorbachev government. Later, Russian president Boris Yeltsin mobilized crowds, restored Gorbachev to office and declared Russian was independent from the Soviet Union. And then the Soviet Union collapsed and fifteen independent countries created in its place in 1991.

04/30/11

protest songs



The first song is “Masters of War”, written by Bob Dylan at 1962. The second song is “Let’s Impeach the President” written by Neil Young. Both of the songs are shared the idea of anti-war. However, the first song is to describe what war matters did. The war matters did nothing good for our society. They killed people, destroyed people house, and created fear to the next generation. In the end, Dylan starts to ask war masters that “Is your money that good will it buy you forgiveness” and also show how people feeling of wars and war masters. In contrast, the second song is to blame on the president Bush who started war on Afghanistan and Iraq which cause people lose their money and privacy. Young also blame Bush that he did not solves the problem of Katrina hurricane on New Orleans and his second term.

04/25/11

Cuban missiles Crisis


At 1962 there was a biggest crisis between the two superpowers. In October American spy planes found out that the Soviet Union installed missiles in Cuba with nuclear weapons because U.S. installed missies on Turkey. The Cuban missiles were capable of reaching the United States which caused a great atmosphere of fear that the nuclear weapons would directly attack U.S., so it became the most difficulty for the Kennedy administration. President Kennedy rejected to attack Cuba instead of to block Cuba and demand that Soviet Union remove missiles from Cube. However, Kennedy started to negotiate with the Soviet Union’s premier Nikita Khrushchev. After thirteen days both of them agreed to withdraw missiles on Cuba and Turkey, also Kennedy promised that would not invade Cuba. Kennedy foreign police successfully ease the most dangerous crisis between the two superpowers in the cold war.

04/10/11

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka


Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka is a part of civil right movement during 1954. Brown is an African American girl. She wanted to study in a white school where is close from her home . Because of Segretation, she could not go to the school and went to a black school ,and she suited against board of education that separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. Brown case raise racial concerns in the social.However, Brown won the case in the supreme court and judge said that “segregated black and white schools were of equal quality in facilities and teachers, segregation by itself was harmful to black students and unconstitutional” because of the fourteenth amenement.

04/3/11

McCarthyism


McCarthyism is practicing the accusation of disloyalty without any reason against alleged communists during 1940 to 1950. During the time, the senator, McCarthy and House Committee on Un-American Activities accused over thousand American people without any proper evidences. And the agencies primarily suspected governmental employees, actors, scientists, and educators. This suspicion created a kind of threat. People feared being accused and most of them lost their job and even imprisoned.

03/20/11

The Court-Packing Plan

Political cartoon with the caption 'Do We Want A Ventriloquist Act In The Supreme Court?' The cartoon, a criticism of FDR's New Deal, depicts President Franklin D. Roosevelt with six new judges likely to be FDR puppets. USA, 14 February 1937.


This political cartoon was posted on February 1937 and photoed by Fotosearch. The political cartoon is talking about “court-packing plan” during the new deal. This plan is to give the President power to appoint an additional Justice of maximum six to the U.S. Supreme Court because during Roosevelt’s first term the Supreme Court struck down several his new deal and he felt a threat from the Supreme Court. Therefore, he appointed six justices who were pro to him. However, public and house’s reaction became opposite about his new deal and they thought that FDR was too communist and wanted to gain his power.

03/13/11

Having no choices

A jobseeker adopts the same strategy in New York during the Great Depression

A shanty town within Central Park, New York. The huts were designed with the idea that they'd been built out of everyday objects


After the stock market crash of October 1929 in New York, million people lost their jobs. Jobseekers started to stand on street with a cardboard which depicts the basic information of them. However, the unemployment rate was increasing and those jobseekers could not still afford their renting and housing. As a result, they used some trash to build huts and settled the huts to form a town, called “Hooverville” because they believed President Hoover’s policies lead the nation into depression.

03/9/11

Hawley-Smoot Tariff


This video is a Yellow Hat Production. They made this for History class and tried to make it as entertaining as possible.
At 1930 the president Hoover passed the Hawley-Smoot Tariff which is increasing tax on foreign products in order to help domestic products win the competition. However, this act made the economy getting worse, because other countries also increased tax on American products. As a result, American reduced the international trade and raised the unemployment rate.

03/5/11

Franco-Prussian War


The other reason that causes World War I is Franco-Prussian War. The war was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia wanted to unify Germany Empire and started to expend its power in Europe. On the other hand, the Second French Empire restored its power in Europe and Prussia became a barrier of France. However, the north German and south German joined together and defeated the Second French Empire. As a result, French lost land on the north of French and paid for German 5 billion francs. This increased the conflict between European countries and lead to the War World I.

03/1/11

women suffrage


Women suffrage movement had fought for a long time. However, after World War I, the U.S. government had ratified the 19th amendment which gives women right to vote at 1920. The reason why the government passed the 19th amendment on the time is women be educated and involved patriotic service. During the World War I women served in the army as war nurses in Europe, and they also went to work in war production jobs. In addition, many educated women adopted strategies of British suffrage movement and started denounce the male political system and struck. However, this power was increasing. Finally, they gained their right to vote.

02/27/11

Woodrow Wilson


Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States, passed a series of laws to reform the nation. He increased the tax on rich people in order to restore the economy. Also, he passed laws to improve employee working condition, such as the Keating Owen Act and Adamson Act. These two acts prohibit child labor and started a limited working hours on railroad workers. In addition, he created two federal systems, The Federal Reverse System and Federal Trade Commission, which expanded government power to interfere in the economy. The first one is to issue currency and aid bank. The other one is an antitrust instruction to prohibit unfair business activities.

02/21/11

Chinese Immigrants

A Chinese immigrant in in San Francisco Chinatown at 1911
A Chinese immigrant in in San Francisco Chinatown at 1911
Xingzhonghui established by Sun Yat-sen in Honolulu at 1894
Xingzhonghui established by Sun Yat-sen in Honolulu at 1894
When Chinese immigrants came to America, most of them still kept their own culture and wore as them in china with a queue to show their loyalty to the Manchu Qing emperor. However, the first Chinese revolutionary group, XinZhongHui was founded in Honolulu at 1894. One year later, This anti-Manchu fraternity start to rebel in canton. Unfortunately, this rebel was failed.

02/12/11

BLack code

source:http://www.education.miami.edu/ep/paris/html/black_code.htm
Black code is a series laws passed by the new south government to discriminate against African American. These laws give some basic right to the former slaves, such as legalized marriage, property and limited access to the courts, but they don’t have rights to against whites, such as, voting, serving on juries and in state militias (Foner, 535)
Post the civil war, American government passed 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to protest African Americans and give them civil right to live in United State. However, the new south government used state power to pass law in order to limit African American rights. For instance, African American must sign a year labor contract with their employer. If not, they would be arrested. Black code violated African American’s civil right and their right still is limited as slaves. Therefore, reconstruction became failed.

02/8/11

Franklin Delano Roosevelt


Franklin D. Roosevelt was one of most important presidents in American history. His New Deak saved American people from the great depression in 1940, because of that he became the only one president who had three presidency in American history.

02/7/11

which is the truth

After reading the review of “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory”, the book sounds interesting to me. Author, David Blight mentions that there are different memories about Civil War caused by the political motivation. For instance, in “emancipationist view, the war is bringing a rebirth of the republic in the name of freedom and equality, but reconciliationist memory is to emphasize what the two sides shared in common”. He says that “race” is an important fact for politician to modify the truth of Civil war in American memories and illuminate that the history we learned is a bias made of the ‘winer’. Therefore, I think reading the book will benefit to everyone.
The other example is Nanjing Massacre. This is a sad memory for everyone. 18 September 1937, Japanese invaded Nanjing. Japanese soldiers raped and killed 300,000 Chinese civilians during one week. Those soldiers played a game that is who kill most Chinese people and treat Chinese people lower than animals. As a result, Chinese government makes Nanjing Massacre as national disgrace and every Chinese people learn the history when they were kids. However, this unhumanized action of Nanjing Massacre was denied by the Japanese government. They stop teaching the history and eliminate the truth on textbook. Additionally, Japanese officials worship the war murders as heroes. Now, Nanjing Massacre still is a controversy between Chinese and Japanese governments.

02/2/11

tools for future

Since people invented computer, the speed of gathering information have go beyond people’s conceivability. It becomes easier for historians to gather information of historical evidence from internet and database than before. The article, Archiving Tweets by Lauren says that the library of congress digitally archive every public tweets. I think it is a good ways to historian search online. People may concern that is huge among of data need to process every day. However, it is not a problem because each piece of tweets can be valuable historical evidences for future. Therefore, Twitter leaves a valuable property for our future generation.
The other article is talking about Wiki Leak. Wiki Leaks dumps a lot of documents which have hidden by political interest. I personally believe that it is not right to hide things that happen around us. History is belong to human, so everyone should have right to know it. Wiki Leaks not only exposes historical documents to us, but also illuminate there are incalculable documents that we need to explore. As a result, Wiki Leaks can be alarm to prevent government hiding history.