Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

The capital of Afghanistan, Kabul was suddenly occupied by Taliburn regime, managed by Islamic foundamentalists in the middle of August 2021 when the US forces were withdrawing from the country. 

A lot of Afghans are fleeing their homeland including the former President of the state, Ghani. The scenes of fleeing reminds me of what happened in Saigon, Vietnam, April 1975. 

A lot of Vietnamese who corporated with the South Vietnam and the US rushed into the US embassy. Helicoptors took off to carry then Ho Chi Minh's enemies to the sea outside Vietnam. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally helicoptors to carry refugees were dumped into the sea after landing on military ships due to lack of space to store them inside the ships. 

It seems like America failed again or America's mission in Afghanistan is over just like America's involvement in Vietnam. 

I recently watched the documentary programs that featured the Vietnam war. 

In early 1960's, wife of the South Vietnam dictator's brother said a terrible thing to those whom they oppressed. They were Catholics and they oppressed Buddhist monks. Then some of the monks burned their bodies in public in protest of the dictatorship. 

"What have Buddhist monks done? The only thing they have done is barbeque one of their monks whom they intoxicated and abused confidence. Even that barbequing is for self-sufficient mean, using imported gasoline." 

Then people in the South Vietnam stood up to fight for unification of Vietnam. 

North Vietnam force were attacking South Vietnam jointly with Viet Cong warriers within the South. 

To block weapon supply transport route called "Ho Chi Minh route" between Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam, US military utilized Hmong tribe who felt Communism was threat to them. Their village lifestyle was depicted in the film "Apocalypse Now."

After the fall of Saigon, Hmong people became refugees from Vietnam and settled down in Minesota State. Their community was featured in the film "Grand Torino." 

What a history! Vietnam and Afghanistan. What are the commonality between the two! 

It’s been thought women are not good at mathematics and not suitable for engineering jobs. But that kind of notions were proved to be nonsense a long time ago. The film “Hidden Figures” described three Afro-American women working for NASA rocket engineering department as mathematicians, in Jim-Crow era, 1950’s to 1960’s.

 

I learnt about the film by Voice of America article on NASA’s International Space Station program. NASA named the supply ship to the ISS Katherine Johnson after one of mathematicians in the biopic film.

 

They were not only being woman but Black women, who had to sit down on back seats in public bus and could not share the same bathroom with their white co-workers. But they did contribute to the very difficult space programs by calculating the orbit and designing rockets.

 

If they were white male, this story cannot be a film.

 

Breaking stereotype is the most important factor to counter racism or other type of discrimination such as gender, and sexual orientation. Stereotype is the origin of discrimination. Prejudice is biased view on others using stereotype images. Then people discriminate others based on prejudice.

 

Stereotype is baseless information about others. Like all Japanese can do Karate, which I don’t. You cannot generalize others based on such stereotype. The sad thing is people judge others by these stereotypes and then sometimes treat them badly.

 

In the film, NASA officials found the women very useful to the organization’s projects so they accepted them equally. If they hadn’t accepted them as legitimate staff, NASA would have lost such great assets and wouldn’t have succeeded in historic space missions in those days.

 

Stereotype, prejudice, and discrimination undermine progress of our society.

 

Let’s get rid of such things from our world.

I bought a DVD of it last year. But I had seen the film many times before I bought that. 

The story of an Austrian woman who became a governess for seven children in von-Trappe family and was married to father of the children, Georg von-Trappe and the family became a singing group in 1938. But in the end, they decided to escape from Nazi-Occupied Austria. 

The story is based on the true family history. 

Songs in the film are all great and became famous. It seemed that is all about music. But the film described what happened in Austria during that time. Annexation of Austria by Nazi-Germany. Annexation was done peacefully and there were many local sympathisers like Rolfe, a boyfriend to the oldest daughter. 

Because recent movement in the world is becoming similar to that period, I watch this film from different angle. 

Why did people favor such authoritarian regime? What kind of atmosphere was that? 

Actually, people were less cautious than they should have been. 

That is what you can learn from the film. Good history lesson. 

Japanese pacifists sing praises for Costa Rica’s disarmament. 

According to the documentary “A Bold Peace,” the nation abolished national army in 1948, the same period Japan announced current constitution which states disarmament.

Japan was actually forced to do so by US occupational force. But Costa Rica did that internally.

This was a way to counter US imperialism in the region. US used military forces of Central American nations to remove anti-America regimes by provoking coups. 

In that sense having military is a huge risk for the small nation. 

Even if the nation tries to counter US by arming itself as much as possible, it can never compete with America ‘s gigantic military force. 

That was a strategy for them. Thing in common with Japan.

Because Japan officially does not have a military force, Japan has actually never sent combat forces to overseas since the end of Second World War, only supply or monitoring staff. 

If we had one like South Korea, we might have gotten involved in Vietnam war and massacred civilians. 

The common issue is how we deal with the US. 

Conclusion of the film describes how US undermines peace, environment, social welfare and prosperity of the world although they often claim themselves to be the leader of free world.

Let’s think about how we deal with the US!