2. Khanna (Part 2) – SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) The SCO is the East Asian - Chinese, really – version of the American lead NATO. Members include the original Shanghai Five - China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan – with the addition of Uzbekistan. The SCO is primarily focused on its member nations' Central Asian security-related concerns. Aside from China, all SCO members are also part of the Eurasian Economic Community. India, Iran, Mongolia, and Pakistan are currently observers of the SCO, but have expressed interest in joining. Many believe one of the original goals of the SCO was to counterbalance the Western NATO.
3. Tibet and Xinjiang Chinas two western most provinces, Tibet and Xinjiang share a similar Chinese bound fate. In 1950, when the Communist Party of China took control of Tibet, the country began a somewhat tedious process into Chinese culture, contrary to Chinas claims. 1,800 miles west of Beijing, in these two Chinese “provinces”, all clocks are set to Beijing time, the idea being “one empire, one time zone”. In the 1950’s, the Production and Construction Corps, the equivalent of the U.S. Homestead Act, allowed massive Han resettlement into these two regions during the “Develop the West” campaign. China is turning these two regions into socialist communities who rely solely on their “protector” for most everything. Chinese police roam the streets in the major cities of Tibet and Xinjiang and Mandarin is taught in Chinese funded schools.
4. Russia & China Two giant empires, who share borders, interests, and histories, are either doomed to conflict or forced to cooperate in an ever globalizing world market based more on economic friendship than military flexing. As Russia’s population decreases some 600,000 heads each year, China’s ever growing population see’s 600,000 illegal immigrants cross into Russia’s scarcely populated Far East and Siberia regions. Without using military, and without showing aggression, China is in the process of taking over these Russian regions through economic “leasing” and population and cultural migration. Though Russia and China are supposed to be allies of Eastern Asia and Eurasia, a blind man could see just how mighty China is compared to the dwindling Russian Empire, and how China uses that might to reap the rewards of this “friendship” far more than that by their northern amigo. This quote describes the so-called Russia-China alliance: “Where Russia maneuvers work, they serve Chinese interests as well; and where they fail, Russia takes the heat while China’s image as a benevolent power grows,”
5. Kazakhstan A recent Soviet occupied territory, Kazakhstan rose from rags to riches with the discovery of around 200 billion barrels worth of oil reserves in the Caspian Sea. Kazakhstan, roughly translating to “Free Land”, intends to stay true to their name, and has been holding out on choosing a major Empirical ally. Kazakhstan is “as sophisticated at avoiding domination, as China is at exercising it.” Kazakhstan is weary of China after having observed that a yearning for expansion has tied the great empire together for the past 300 years. Has an economy larger than that of the rest of the Central Asian states combined. Kazakhstan's energy assets are already worth around $9 trillion, making it a power-house second world, if not borderline first world, country. A prime candidate for wooing attempts of the great world powers.
6. Starr(Chapters 10-11) – John Muir Was a Scottish-born American naturalist and author, credited for his early advocating of preservation of the wilderness in the U.S. Most famous for his letters, essays and books telling of his adventures in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Eastern California. His role as a wilderness activist helped initiate the preservation of Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and other wilderness areas, as well as bringing these areas to the attention of the public. He also founded the Sierra Club, which remains today as one of the most important conservation organizations in the U.S. In 1899 he petitioned the U.S. Congress for the National Park Bill, which passed. Muir’s efforts even caught the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt, who in May 1903 spent two nights in the Sequoias with Muir. Inspired such acclaimed naturalists as Ansel Adams (the photographer).
7. Yosemite and the Sequoias In 1864, Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant and gave control of the land to the state government, which was the first instance of park land being set aside solely for preservation. In 1906, Teddy Roosevelt signed a bill returning control Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove back to the federal government. In 1916, when the National Park Service was created, Yosemite was transferred to their jurisdiction. Yosemite, in the late 19th century, became an icon to the people of California as to the beauty and wonder that their state held, and the hope that it one day would become as prominent as any other state in the U.S. John Muir, Ansel Adams, Galen Clark and many other naturalists shaped their careers and lives around the preservation and documentation of the angelic valley hidden between the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada's. From San Francisco to Los Angeles, California and its people were experiencing the beauty, resources, and ever growing mystery the land radiated.
8. Aviation John Montgomery was born in Yuba City in 1958, and attended both Santa Clara College and St. Ignatius College, mastering in science. In 1883, after years of experimenting with his life long obsession of aviation, he and his brother James took part in the first heavier-than-air flight in human history just south of San Diego. With this record breaking experiment, aviation became a part of the California identity, shaping the state as the state shaped it. In 1910 Los Angeles held a 10 day air show that asserted the fact that aviation was, indeed, a part of California's DNA. T Claude Ryan, a big name in the aviation world at the time, established Ryan Airlines in San Diego, and in May 1927, after solving the problem of long distance flight, a young pilot working for Ryan by the name of Charles Lindbergh made the first flight across the Atlantic. Throughout the 1920’a four airline companies, Western Air Express, Maddux Air Lines, Pacific Air Transport, and Standard Airlines, offered regularly scheduled flights to major cities around the west. Californians took pride in their aviary enterprises and their technological advances in the field, adding it to the makeup and majesty of the state.
9. Astronomy and Science In 1879 a scientist named George Davison built the first astronomical observatory on the West Coast atop a hill in the San Francisco area, though with insufficient funds his instruments were far from impressive. When Davison called for support to make California astronomy’s home, a millionaire named James Lick was inspired, and upon his death in 1876, he left funds for a grand observatory to be built for the University of California. The Lick Observatory, atop Mount Hamilton in Santa Clara, was ready by 1887, boasting the worlds most powerful telescope. In 1892, during his first night on the telescope, an astronomer named Edward Emerson discovered the fifth satellite of Jupiter, which became one of the greatest astronomical discoveries of his century. A wealthy Chicago astronomer named George Ellery Hale led the founding of an observatory on Mount Wilson, just above Pasadena, and got it financed by the newly established Carnegie Institute in Washington. In the spring of 1910, the 500 students of Throop Polytechnic were asked to follow up their education elsewhere, and the ambitious Hale formed the California Institute of Technology in the schools place, allowing 31 selected students admittance. Over a decade later, a Mount Wilson based astronomer named Edwin Powell Hubble built upon the works of other major scientists and astronomers to document the expanding universe, researches that brought an ever-questioning Albert Einstein to Pasadena in 1931. Another Caltech chemistry professor named Linus Pauling was applying quantum theory to some calculations of molecular structure to increase his understand of the world of chemical bonding. He would receive the Nobel prize for this work in 1954
10. Film The first film studios in the U.S. were in New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Chicago, all being taxed for each piece of equipment used by the Jersey based Motion Picture Patent Company. When Chicago based Selig Studios director Francis Boggs traveled to Los Angeles to film in good weather, he liked it so much Selig opened the first studio there. In the Sultans Power, finished in 1908,was the first complete film to be made in Los Angeles. Cecile B. Demille arrived in L.A. in 1913 to film The Squaw Man, and liked it so much he never left. Throughout the first half of the decade many small time film studios began their transformation into the giants of the industry, including Universal (1915), United Artists (1919), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1924), RKO (1928), Warner Bros. (1929), 20th Century-Fox (1935) In the 1930’s, when the U.S. was in the midst of the Great Depression, films showed their worth during these “glory years” for the movie industry by delivering a fun escape from the harsh realities of the life. Los Angeles, more specifically Hollywood, became the world hotspot for film-making, and in turn, most media oriented entities including later TV broadcasting companies, record companies, radio stations, and recording studios.
11. Music As early as 1849, Rossini’s Stabat Mater was performed in the then frontier city of San Francisco. In 1922, the Hollywood Bowl was established by Lloyd Wright, son of Frank Lloyd Wright. Once sound came to motion pictures, a whole new musical occupation began in writing scores for films. When war broke out in 1939, immigration brought Igor Stravinsky to Los Angeles, where he found fame in the movies, starting with Walt Disney’s Fantasia in 1940. French jazz composer Darius Milhaud and his protégée Dave Brubeck moved jazz on the West Coast into “increasingly progressive realms”. The Beach Boys of Los Angeles County rose to fame in the early 1960’s, and created a genre of intricate falsetto vocal harmonies that came to embody the Southern California lifestyle of surfing, convertibles, and fun in the sun. Between Los Angeles based record companies – Capital Records, Hollywood Records, etc. – Southern California became one of the go to places to begin a career in the music industry. During Led Zeppelin’s reign of power, they always established their U.S. home base in L.A. All of this only further induced the ever persistent fact the California was growing in every area possible, and adding more and more individualizing make-up to its DNA and national identity.
12. Bibliography Starr, Kevin. California: A History. N.p.: Modern Library, 2007. Print. Khanna, Parag. The Second World: How Emerging Powers Are Redefining Global Competition in the Twenty-first Century. New York City: Random House, 2009. Print.
