Asia Conflict (WW1-2)

During World War 1, Japan allied itself with Britain and France and gained them much trust int he western world. Due to the support of Britain and France, Japan believed that they should expand their empire. After World War 1, French strengthened their holdings in Indo China which lead to anti french resistances, and the colonies that were promised political gain if they fought with the allies, actually saw more of their territory taken and much more colonization. This angered many of the groups and would eventually lead to political upheavals. The first of these was the invasion of china by Japan. In 1931 Japan placed dynamite on their own railroads and detonated them, and attempted to place blame on China. Days later a fullscale invasion of Manchuria by Japan ensued and lead to the Japanese involvement in world war 2. After Japan's invasion of China, they were excluded from most western groups and were kicked out of the League of Nations, while China received support from Britain and France against the Japanese. Japan's isolation lead them to be considered as a potential ally by the Germans who were equally despised in the west.

Hezbollah

Hezbollah is currently a Shia Muslim military/political group that supports Islamic socialism in Lebanon. Hezbollah's military branch is known as "The Islamic Resistance". Hezbollah has been named a terrorist organization by the US government since the assassination of the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. People are taking the streets against the Hezbollah party because they have remained a military power despite the demand that they disarm by multiple western and Middle Eastern powers. The Hezbollah party began as a military resistance against an invading Israeli force in 1980. Since then it has gained political and economic backing from Iran and Syria and have been funded from other countries. The problem the Lebanese people have been having is that Hezbollah has not disarmed despite the fact that they have named themselves a political group and not a military resistance anymore. The Lebanese army has been increased in power since the 1980s and view Hezbollah as a potential threat to a political overthrow of the government. The Lebanese fear that the Hezbollah group could potentially attempt to commit terrorist attacks that would endanger the Lebanese people and not just Hezbollah. In 2009 a Hezbollah terrorist plan was discovered in Egypt, since then Egypt has classified Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and has strained the political relationships that Lebanon has been trying to regain. In the 1980s Ronald Reagan was involved with a political scandal that revealed the Reagan administration had been secretly facilitating the sale of arms to Iran. Hezbollah's part was that, if the US sold arms to Iran, they would do everything they could to release 6 US hostages that were held by Hezbollah.

Newspaper Article

Reading each article from Al Jazeera, i find that they cover a large portion of world news and don't specify on any one country. Al Jazeera's front page had everything from Western Europe, where in Moscow a suicide bomber destroyed a large portion of the airport and killed 35 people and wounding many more, to a man charged in Arizona for attempted assassination, to the local but also very global palestine-israel conflict. Al Jazeera covers nearly every country that has a large impact or has a good story to tell.
The Times doesn't even remotely come close to the amount that any other international paper covers. While Al Jazeera and the Guardian make their front page all about international news, the New York times gives only one international story per front page. Anything that is not directly related to the United States tends to be pushed into the world section of the paper, which is extensive in itself, but not many people actually go to the World section unless they read it religiously.
I found the Guardian a bit interesting, because it had only a small portion of its front page directed at local news, and that was only really sports news, which can be considered international because the Barclays Premier league is the most internationally watched sports league of any kind. The Guardian format seemed very... British I suppose is the word. Clean, concise and extremely modest. where NY times and Al Jazeera have interesting flash bars that you can interact with to switch between viewing story snippets, they had nothing but a basic layout of what looked like a newspaper. There was even a home page article about the United States that didn't make it on the NY times front page, or even on the front page of the political section of the NY times.
One thing that every paper did agree on was news, was Obama's new popularity as he rose in the polls. I found it slightly funny that the only thing everyone could truly agree on was that the United States leader gaining in the poll was more significant than the political upheaval in Tunisia.
Well that's it for now, Ciao!

My First Entry

Well this is my first blog entry and I hope to keep it short and sweet. My name is Robert Hogan and i was born and raised in Houston Texas. I lived there my entire life and i truly enjoyed my little suburbia. However, moving to San Antonio really wasn't that a huge change for my surprisingly. During the summer I got used to relying on myself for a lot of things, so the only huge change was having to do my own laundry. That was an ordeal I have to say. Knowing what color clothes to put in with one another is truly mind-boggling and the cycle options! I have absolutely no idea sometimes, and I always end up hoping that I don't end up with all of my socks being pink.
My favorite past time is definitely watching movies. I love nearly every kind of movie, from historical documentaries to fool-hardy action flicks, i truly do love a good cinematic adventure. Movies aren't my only form of entertainment, as I do love music as well, but my tastes are queer. I think that may be because I listen to music depending on my moods or whatever it is that I'm doing.For instance, lately I've been listening to a ridiculous amount of Michael Buble, but less than a week ago I listened to nothing but The Mountain Goats. I know that change is a bit drastic, but I do like a bit of variety. I also read quite a bit. I tend to read fantasy novels like Brandon Sanderson's Elantris, or George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, but i do diversify with a bit of Science Fiction like Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, which apart from the three laws, had absolutely nothing in common with the Will Smith movie adaptation. I'm really having trouble trying to trim down the list here, but I think i absolutely have to include Ray Bradbury's Illustrated Man, just because of how much i enjoyed his style.
Well I think that just about sums me up in a nutshell. I dont know how to end this so... bye for now!