Cuban revolution Essay Example for Free

Cuban revolution Essay The dual personality of doctors has been observed since ancient times. Thousands of years ago, the mythological Dr. Imhotep of Egypt had a personality similar to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—two personalities in one person. Even more recently, this has been noticed in terrorists and extremists. In 2007, for instance, 45 Muslim doctors planned US terror attacks from Britain. And just five months ago, a Fort Hood medical doctor, a psychiatrist in fact, open fired on his fellow American soldiers in the military base where he treats other soldiers. Scientists have also been known for this type of bipolar madness, such as the mad CERN scientist who was arrested seven months ago for plotting terrorism. There are hundreds of similar cases, but sometimes, these people become larger-than-life heroes, especially for the people that they fight for. One of these bipolar idols is Dr. Ernesto â€Å"Che† Guevara, a physician who is a hero, a caring person and a martyr, yet also a brutal guerilla revolutionary who left behind a legacy. Mr. Che is a hero. He is a Marxist revolutionary from Argentina who played a leading role in the Cuban revolution of the late 1950s, second in command to Fidel Castro. He is an icon in Cuba because he fought against inequality. Latin America was plagued by socio-economic inequality caused by imperialist nations such as the United States through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Some American government officials, such as Secretary of State John Dulles, owned or worked for US corporations that exploited land and labor in Latin America. And Che felt strongly about the immorality of these dealings (Kellner 32). He strongly believed that in order to correct the inequity of the situation, only an armed struggle through a revolution could change the status quo (Sinclair 12). In a speech given in 1961, he attacked the United States, which hypocritically calls itself a â€Å"democracy† while discriminating against African Americans and other minorities, physically torturing them through the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), and controlling the financial system through a few well-to-do groups of white people. By 1964, after the successful Cuban Revolution, he became a diplomat to the United Nations (UN) in New York City (Kellner 60). And in a speech to the UN, he condemned South Africa for its â€Å"brutal† apartheid and challenged the UN to end the racist policy. He also attacked the United States in the UN for racial prejudice and injustice that allows whites who murder blacks to go free and prohibits African Americans from demanding their civil rights as human beings. Che was also an economic advisor to Castro, and he advised Cuba to follow the example of China to develop the Cuban industry, but Castro favored the practices of the Soviet Union and ignored Che, as asserted by John Riddell for the Centre for Research on Globalization. Had Castro followed the advice of Che, Cuba could have followed the economic success of China instead of the collapse of the Soviet Union. He also supported the communists in Vietnam and called for the development of â€Å"many Vietnams† throughout the world, in a letter written in 1967. This led him to aid communist uprisings in Congo and Bolivia. Dr. Ernesto Guevara is also a caring physician. He was asthmatic, and in 1954, he worked in the allergy department of Mexico City’s General Hospital. He also lectured about medical subjects in the National Autonomous University of Mexico. His wife, Hilda Gadea claims in her book, My Life with Che, that he wanted to work as a physician in Africa. She also mentions that he was always deeply troubled by the suffering surrounding him. One of his patients was an old laundry woman and Hilda recounts how Che was deeply saddened by her situation. He felt that she symbolized those who were exploited and neglected. He then wrote a poem and dedicated it to the elderly woman, stating that he will fight for victims of poverty and exploitation, leading to a better society. Even after the Cuban Revolution, he continued to care for the wounded and the sick. In 1960, he provided emergency medical assistance to blast victims at the Havana Harbor which killed more than 76 and injured hundreds. Moreover, Leonardo Tamayo, who fought alongside Che said that he was like a father to him. He was his teacher. But the â€Å"most beautiful thing† that Che taught him was â€Å"to be human† (Schweimler, BBC News). Also, when Che was fighting in the Congo, he needed an interpreter to translate Swahili and other local African dialects for him. The teenager, Freddy Ilanga, became his translator, and over time, Ilanga’s admiration for Che grew due to his hard-working nature and his equal respect for blacks and whites (Doyle, BBC World Affairs). And in preparation for his death, he wrote a farewell letter to his children, five all in all, which was to be read when he passes away. It taught them to be sensitive to the injustices committed against humanity around the globe. This sensitivity, he says, is the revolutionary’s â€Å"most beautiful† feature (Guevara 167). Mr. Che is also a martyr. His actions always suggested self-sacrifice, and he was a man who was always ready to die for his cause. For instance, he risked his own life to save Joel Iglesias, his lieutenant. With his gun tucked through his belt, he darted to the wounded Iglesias and carried him on his shoulders. The guards saw him, but they did not shoot him because they were so impressed with his act of martyrdom (Landau X01). Furthermore, after a frustrating ordeal fighting in the Congo, he wanted to send back his surviving Cuban companions back home and fight by himself, like the Lone Ranger, since some of his comrades already died. But Castro sent two representatives to convince him to come back since it was not yet his time to be a martyr. And since Che thought that there was â€Å"nothing† more to do in the Congo because the leaders were â€Å"corrupt† and had no passion to fight, he complied with Castro and retreated (Kellner 87). But he knew that one day, it will be over for him, so he already prepared for his coming death by writing his own epitaph. In it, he welcomes death, as long as someone else continues the fight against inequality and injustice (Bourne, The Guardian). He also believed that his death would become a type of â€Å"renaissance† that would bring forth â€Å"renewal† or â€Å"rebirth† (Nadle 42). Just before his enemies killed him, they asked Che if his own immortality was in his thoughts, but he said that he only reflected on the revolution’s â€Å"immortality,† as Time magazine reports. Eventually, he was executed. But when his corpse was displayed to the local public, many of them thought that his body seemed like Christ’s, so some of them clipped locks of Che’s hair as holy relics (Casey 179). Indeed, after John Berger, an art critic, saw photographs of his cadaver, he realized that it resembled Mantegna’s painting of Christ after he died (Casey 183). In the end, some Bolivian farm laborers consecrated Che and called him St. Ernesto. They pray to him for their daily needs (Schipani, The Observer). Mr. Che is also a brutal guerilla revolutionary. After joining, Fidel Castro’s July 26 Movement, he was trained by Colonel Alberto Bayo in guerilla warfare even though Che was planning to be a medic. He learned ambush-retreat techniques, running through rivers and jungles, and hiking up mountains. He graduated as the top guerilla of his class, and he made a great impression on the colonel (Kellner 37). But after their invasion of Cuba via a sea route from Mexico, the Cuban government under Batista attacked them heavily. When his comrades started running away, he dropped his medical supplies and started arming himself to fight. Eventually, Che would become a commandant second only to Fidel Castro. He did not tolerate cowardice, so anyone who wanted to run away to the enemy, or accept bribes in return for information, or simply pretended to work for their movement while actually working for the enemy, were all considered to be venomous traitors and were all brutally slaughtered at the command of Che. He would send squads to hunt down and kill traitors; summary executions were also not uncommon (Anderson 237). In one instance, when it became â€Å"uncomfortable† for the people to execute Eutimio Guerra, a convicted informant, Che himself shot him through the head in a detached manner, later writing about it as a sacrifice that was necessary for â€Å"redemption† (Anderson 237). He and his men were also outnumbered 10 to 1 in their battle for the control of Cuba, but in spite of this handicap, they were able to capture Havana and win Cuba, a â€Å"remarkable† feat, as told by some observers (Sandison 39). But to this day, many Cuban Americans and exiles hate him and consider him to be a â€Å"butcher† (Casey 325). However, even with his negative record, Dr. Ernesto â€Å"Che† Guevara has left behind a legacy. His name is on the list of Time magazine as one of the most influential personalities of the previous century. Nelson Mandela also calls him the freedom-lover’s inspiration (Guevarra, II), while Jean-Paul Sartre thinks of him as today’s intelligent and â€Å"complete human† personality (Moynihan, Stockholm Spectator). The Black Panthers also believe that Guevara lives on through his ideals (Sinclair 67). Truly, a bronze statue of Che’s likeness stands 12 feet high in Argentina, where many high schools and museums are named in memory of him and his principles (Popper, Reuters). Furthermore, Cuban children pledge to follow him every morning, while his face is immortalized on Cuban currency (Peoples Weekly World). A photo of him taken by Alberto Korda is a popular icon among counter-culture groups and modern merchandising (Lacey, The New York Times). It would not be unusual for someone nowadays to wear a hat, T-shirt, bikini or tattoo of this iconic photograph with Che gazing up to the left, like a saint, appearing Christ-like with a trimmed mustache and beard; his long wavy hair is covered by a beret bearing a five-pointed star at the center. Indeed, the five-pointed star or the Wu Xing, as the Chinese call it, is a very apt symbol for the justice and equality that Guevara stood for. As Rodney St. Michael states in Sync My World: Thief’s Honor GA SK, the five-pointed star is a universal political symbol that stands for the multi-polar conflict and harmony between the five basic Selves, races, genders, classes, organizations, nations and so forth. In the end, while Dr. Ernesto â€Å"Che† Guevara had five faces—a hero, a compassionate doctor, a saint, a vicious revolutionary and an iconic legend—his multi-faceted personality allowed him to become a very influential leader who still lives in the hearts and minds of millions of people around the world. He is truly a five-star icon. Works Cited Anderson, Jon Lee. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. New York: Grove Press, 1997. Bourne, Richard. Obituary: Che Guevara, Marxist Architect of Revolution. The Guardian, 11 Oct 1967. Casey, Michael. Ches Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image. Vintage, 2009. Dorfman, Ariel. â€Å"Time 100:   ple. † Time, 14 Jun 1999. Doyle, Mark. DR Congos Rebel-Turned-Brain Surgeon. BBC World Affairs, 13 Dec 2005. Gadea, Hilda. My Life with Che: The Making of a Revolutionary (reprint). Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Guevara, Ernesto. Che: The Diaries of Ernesto Che Guevara. Ocean Press, 2009. Guevara, Che. Colonialism is Doomed (UN speech on 11 Dec 1964). The Che Reader. Ocean Press, 2005. Guevara, Che. Economics Cannot be Separated from Politics. Our America — Kennedy and the Alliance for Progress. Ocean Press, 2005. Guevara, Che. Message to the Tricontinental in Havana. Bolivian jungle camp, Spring 1967. Kellner, Douglas. Ernesto â€Å"Che† Guevara (World Leaders Past Present). Chelsea House Publishers, 1989. Lacey, Mark. A Revolutionary Icon, and Now, a Bikini. The New York Times, 9 Oct 2007. Landau, Saul. Poster Boy of The Revolution. The Washington Post, 19 Oct 1997. Moynihan, Michael. Neutering Sartre at Dagens Nyheter. Stockholm Spectator. Nadle, Marlene. Regis Debray Speaks from Prison. Ramparts Magazine, 24 Aug 1968. Popper, Helen. Argentina pays belated homage to Che Guevara. Reuters, June 14, 2008. PWW Writer. Che Guevara remains a hero to Cubans. Peoples Weekly World, 2 Oct 2004. Riddell, John. Che Guevaras Final Verdict on the Soviet Economy. Centre for Research on Globalization, 13 Jun 2008. Sandison, David. The Life Times of Che Guevara. Paragon, 1996. Schipani, Andres. The Final Triumph of Saint Che. The Observer. 23 Sept 2007. Schweimler, Daniel. Latin Americas New Look at Che. BBC News, 9 Oct 2007. Sinclair, Andrew. Che Guevara. The Viking Press, 1970. Sinclair, Andrew. Viva Che! : The Strange Death and Life of Che Guevara. Sutton publishing, 1968. St. Michael, Rodney. Sync My World: Thief’s Honor GA SK. Raleigh: Lulu, 2009. Time Writer. Che: A Myth Embalmed in a Matrix of Ignorance. Time, 12 Oct 1970.

The Dangers of Living with an Eating Disorder Essay -- Health Eating D

The Dangers of Living with an Eating Disorder Imagine waking up every morning, struggling to get out of bed. The room spins. Stumbling over to the mirror, you study and criticize every last inch of your body as the words â€Å"fat, ugly, worthless† echo in your head. You then stagger to the bathroom, using the wall to hold you up. You don’t remember the last time you ate a â€Å"normal† meal. Stepping on the scale will determine your mood for the day. If it has decreased since yesterday, you have succeeded; if it has stayed the same, or worse, gone up, those voices inside your head become stronger, telling you how useless you are. Throughout your day, you skip meals and avoid food at all costs, or binge on whatever food is in sight and secretly purge in bathrooms where nobody can hear you. Or like many women in this country, you flip-flop between both of these behaviors. For approximately seven million American women, this is their reality. This is the life of a woman with an eating disorder. â€Å"I needed to lose weight†¦fast,† said 18-year-old Liss of Boston. â€Å"So I started counting calories, and then counting meals, and then counting pounds, and then inches. I had lost 20 pounds in one month. Not too shabby I thought to myself. The weight loss became an obsession and it took over.† Liss’s story is all too common. What begins as a diet to â€Å"lose a few pounds† becomes an obsession. Young women across the country become fixated with numbers on the scale, numbers of calories, fat, carbohydrates, inches, etc. The two most dangerous eating disorders are bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa. Bulimia is characterized as a disorder in which a person binges on large amounts of food, well past the point of fullness, and then purge... ...r because they feel as if their eating disorder defines them; they are nothing without it. â€Å"Ed wants you to think that he is your identity,† Schaefer said. â€Å"But that is a lie; you are not your eating disorder. You are [you]. He tells you that he is what makes you special.† Schaefer admits that she also believed that her eating disorder defined her at one point in her life as well. However, she then went on to learn that all it caused was â€Å"excruciating pain.† â€Å"Treating my eating disorder like relationship, not a condition or an illness, really worked for me,† Schaefer said. Schaefer also suggests journal writing and being surrounded with good supports. â€Å"In recovery, it was difficult to connect with Jenni at first,† Schaefer said. â€Å"But with lots of patience and persistence, I eventually found her, and I am thrilled to now be living a life without Ed.†

Hart & Dworkin Essay

H. L. A. Hart’s concept of legal positivism was heavily influenced by Austin. However, he breaks with Austinian positivism at three vital junctures. First, he believed that the sovereign law giver is defined by his office rather than being a person who has secured the habit of obedience. Second authority is vested in rule of recognition instead of through the threat sanctions. Finally, Hart believed that laws expand liberty rather than limit it. In a nutshell Hart’s Philosophy of Law builds upon the Command Law Theory established by Austin, corrects its errors and establishes its own doctrines. In his essay â€Å"Sovereign and Subject†, Hart proposed that the habit of obedience does not account for the relationship between subject and sovereign. This inclination to, or habit of obedience, propounded by Austin, asserts that there exists a relationship between a subject and his sovereign. Where this relationship exists we speak of a society. However, since the habit of obedience is a habit backed by threats, it differs little from the idea a gunman coercing a person to give him his purse. Hart opines that a law’s validity does not depend on the existence of social rules. Instead laws exist to promote social order. Hart contributes his conceptual analysis theory to jurisprudence of legal formalism. He postulates that jurisprudence aims to give analysis of the uses to which the concept of law is put in various social practices. Given that all rules have a penumbra of uncertainty, a judge must often choose between alternatives. Simply put, Hart takes legal thought beyond the simplistic Command Theory. To him a law can be valid despite its moral invalidity and sans any coercion backed by threats. Such views on the law can be seen today in the USA Patriot Act. This is morally reprehensible because of the many provisions that potentially violate citizens’ rights. However it is still a valid law promoting the security of American society at large. As a legal naturalist Ronald Dworkin rejects positivism. His chief objection is that moral principles can be binding by virtue of the fact that they express an appropriate dimension of justice and fairness. He espouses the belief that in interpreting the meaning of valid legal rules, it is often necessary to consult moral principles. Curiously, a posthumous edition of Hart’s seminal A Concept of Law gives space to Hart’s response to Dworkin’s criticism of Legal Positivism. In contrast to Hart, Dworkin believes that law is not simply a matter of rules. Moral principles are law even if they are not identified under the rule of recognition. Moral principles can also be said to be law because they have dimensions of justice. As opposed to Hart, Dworkin’s theory on jurisprudence is that judges appeal to binding legal standards that are more discretionary than hard and fast rules. An example is the gravamen of guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Instead of simply relying on their discretion, a judge uses jurisprudence to form a body of as yet unwritten legal standards to back up their decisions. To summarize, Dworkin champions the cause of Legal Naturalism: that laws must appeal to morality to have legal validity. Many of today’s penal laws can be said to espouse Legal Naturalism.

Quotes From Women Historians Women Writing About History

Some quotes from women known as historians: Gerda Lerner, considered to be the founding mother of the discipline of womens history wrote, Women have always made history as much as men have, not contributed to it, only they did not know what they had made and had no tools to interpret their own experience. Whats new at this time is that women are fully claiming their past and shaping the tools by means of which they can interpret it.More  Gerda Lerner Quotes Mary Ritter Beard, who wrote about womens history earlier in the 20th century before womens history was an accepted field, wrote: The dogma of womans complete historical subjection to men must be rated as one of the most fantastic myths ever created by the human mind.More  Mary Ritter Beard Quotes The first woman we know to have written a history was  Anna Comnena, a Byzantine princess who lived in the 11th and 12th centuries. She wrote the  Alexiad, a 15-volume history of her fathers accomplishments -- with some medicine and astronomy -- included as well -- and also including the accomplishments of a number of women. Alice Morse Earle  is an almost-forgotten 19th century writer about Puritan history; because she wrote for children and because her work is heavy with moral lessons, she is virtually forgotten today as an historian. Her focus on ordinary life foreshadows ideas later common in the discipline of womens history. In all the Puritan meetings, as then and now in Quaker meetings, the men sat on one side of the meeting-house and the women on the other; and they entered by separate doors. It was a great and much-contested change when men and women were ordered to sit together promiscuoslie. - Alice Morse Earle Aparna Basu, who studies womens history at the University of New Delhi, wrote: History is no longer just a chronicle of kings and statesmen, of people who wielded power, but of ordinary women and men engaged in manifold tasks. Womens history is an assertion that women have a history. There are today many women historians, academic and popular, who write about womens history and about history in general. Two of these women are: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, who founded the first academic Womens Studies department and later became a critic of feminism. Doris Kearns Goodwin  whose  Team of Rivals  has been credited with inspiring President Barack Obamas selection of cabinet members and whose book  No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt  brings Eleanor Roosevelt to life I realize that to be a historian is to discover the facts in context, to discover what things mean, to lay before the reader your reconstruction of time, place, mood, to empathize even when you disagree. You read all the relevant material, you synthesize all the books, you speak to all the people you can, and then you write down what you known about the period. You feel you own it.More  Doris Kearns Goodwin Quotes And some quotes about womens history from women who were not historians: There is no life that does not contribute to history. - Dorothy WestThe history of all times, and of today especially, teaches that ...women will be forgotten if they forget to think about themselves. - Louise OttoMore quotes by women - alphabetical by name: A  Ã‚   B  Ã‚   C  Ã‚   D  Ã‚   E  Ã‚   F  Ã‚   G  Ã‚   H  Ã‚   I  Ã‚   J  Ã‚   K  Ã‚   L  Ã‚   M  Ã‚   N  Ã‚   O  Ã‚   P  Ã‚   Q  Ã‚   R  Ã‚   S  Ã‚   T  Ã‚   U  Ã‚   V  Ã‚   W  Ã‚   XYZ