Wednesday, 31 July 2013

HOW CUBA BECAME INVOLVED IN IN THE COLD WAR AS THE NEW SPHERE OF INLFLUENCE TO BE CONTESTED BY U.S.A AND U.S.S.R.



After the Spanish rule in Cuba from 1898 Cuba was under American influence. It became American colony for a very long time until Fulguncieo Batista was a president of Cuba. Batista was very friendly to the West. He was tyrannical ruler as well as a firm anti-capitalist president. He was a Catholic and he brutally persecuted Buddhist majority. His regime was of a dictatorship style. Many of the Cubans during Batista’s rule were peasants and Batista did nothing to help them own the land, as a result they remained peasants for a long time and lived in poverty while lands were in a small group of land owners.

Subsequently, his dictatorship type of government supported the U.S.A; this prompted the anti-Americans in Cuba due to his actions. Fidel Castro was the leader of anti-Americans because Batista was also involved in organised crimes that were lucrative in hotels situated in cities of Cuba like Havana.

Batista did not care about Cuba’s poverty and harsh living experienced by citizens. His friendliness to the west rest-assured the trade with U.S.A. West invested heavily in Cuba’s sugar production and exports. U.S.A owned Cuba’s key economic factors and had control over Cuba’s economy. Under the rule of Batista in 1950’s, Cuba was economically dependent on the West.

In January 1959, Fidel Castro overthrown Batista and became the president of the country. His primary aim was to liberate Cuba from the U.S.A. He gained a lot of support from peasants, Buddhists and anti-Americans civilians. He was of a communism favour because those who were against him were for America’s favour. He was not fully committed to the communism; just that desperate time’s calls for desperate measures as such he only wanted help to be able to drive out the occupying forces in Cuba by the time.

America was fully aware that communism spread in Asia is now becoming a major concern because by 1949 China, North Korea and North Vietnam were communist’s states. America was determined to do whatever it takes to prevent further communism spread.

Soviet Union also wanted to aid Castro in any way to defeat American colonisation. In 1959 America under the reign of John Frederick Kennedy refused to buy Cuba’s sugar that had vicious complication upon Cuba’s economy and almost led to its very best economic decline of all times.

Fidel Castro responded by taking America’s based companies in Cuba and did not allow America to keep its naval bases in Cuba in 1960. He showed his determination of driving out America by signing a trade agreement with the Soviet Union. By this time many Batista’s troops were in American exile for a military training in order to return on a later stage and take down Castro’s regime.

In 1961, America sanctioned trade with Cuba stating that it can’t trade with its “sphere of influence” while it is an ally to its worst enemy. In October 1962, Kennedy appointed political and military experts to give him advice on what to do with Soviet Union in Cuba and they decided to pull off. A letter was written was written to Nikita Khrushchev asking him to pull off his missile bases in Cuba and he agreed then Kennedy also pulled off his missiles as well in April and thus leading to an end of Cuban Missile Crises.

Tuesday, 19 February 2013

Online News Sites

What is online Journalism?
It could be defined as the reporting of news produced and distributed via the internet, be it blog, website or the newly highly emerging social networks.
Print newspaper circulation is declining and consumers are increasing accessing news online. Amongst other reasons why people shift to online news rather than print newspapers is that it’s easy to access news online without leaving the comfort of your home.
I’m going to start with Sowetan online site.
http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/
First of all, the site has a teaser panel that contains same features every day. The features consist of leading “shwashwi” story, leading political story and a daily cartoon lined at the top of the site. Beneath the teaser is a line of paper sections which don’t change as well.
The sections include home, news, business, sport, entertainment, columns, goodlife, help line, “shwashwi”, and jobs. This line is imperative because the story of your choice is just a click away. It does have a variety of interesting sections and stories as it’s a tabloid. The only monotonous problem with it is that it doesn’t have multimedia platforms like videos and audios. This means that the only available material is text that is boring at times.
The second news site for my tour is ewn
The appearance of ewn site is not appealing because of the black and white colours used in the site. As a result it looks very dull.
On top of this site there is a teaser panel that contains sections of the whole site. The sections include latest, news, local, world, sport, politics, opinion, features, business, multimedia, traffic, iWitness, RSS, feeds and contact. This site is more focused on news content and not design.
 That is the reason why its design is so monotonous but its sections are mind-blowing. It also has the section of multimedia that many other news sites do not have. The multimedia section has audios and videos that are ideal for taking break from text reading. Below the site it’s the social networks that the site is using which audience can use to voice out their opinions regarding the published stories.
 This site is more convenient because RSS feeds, iPhone/iPad supporting feature which is iWitness and podcasts are also available.
The third news site for my tour is News24.
http://www.news24.com/
This site is more interesting because besides having a teaser panel of leading stories that all other sites has, it has quite varying features. The first feature that makes this site unique from others is that it has weather information of the day at corner of the far right hand side. Next to the weather feature again it a search box that enables one to search for desired stories with ease. Dominantly it used blue colour in and around the site because it is their main colour. With this site, one is spoiled for choice as under every section there are sub-topics. It also includes property section that all above mentioned sites do not have.