Olympic history FAIL!, or great PhotoShop

Ed Brayton found it.

Do you think the sign maker was jesting? Or do you think the sign maker genuinely didn’t know? (See: 1936 Olympics in Berlin)

While we wait to see whether someone will confess to PhotoShopping this picture, we teachers might consider using this photo as a hook for a lesson on the differences between the rising totalitarian state of Nazi Germany in 1936, and the rising, increasingly economically free state of the People’s Democratic Republic of China today.

One more lesson plan for this year — it’s reusable next fall, with the added bonus then that by then you’ll have the headlines of the actual Olympics to add to the discussion.

Update: The photo is said to have been was taken by Rowan Benum at a California site (see Mr. Benum’s comment). Since it’s all the rage on conservative sites, where the history ignorance is condemned but the conservative bloggers can’t quite bring themselves to endorse the Communist Chinese, I strongly suspect wondered about a PhotoShop origin. The torch was run through San Francisco; there are few palms in San Francisco (Californians: Can you identify the location?).

Update 5-13-2008: The photographer kindly dropped by comments to note the authenticity of the photo. I agree, the Tibetan prayer flags suggest authenticity; would a hoaxer think of such details?

Discussion questions for the classroom:

Students should look at the photo, and read coverage of the torch relay, such as CNN’s story about the San Francisco relay where Mr. Benum took the photo. Students should have access to information about the International Olympic Committee and its organization, especially the tradition of Olympic Truce. The Charter of the Olympics is probably too long for practical classroom use, but Paragraph 2 can be copied for the students, or perhaps the full page of the “Fundamental Principles of Olympism”:

“Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.”
Olympic Charter, Fundamental principles, paragraph 2

There is a wealth of information for classroom use at the website of the IOC. If you’re particularly adventurous, or deep into this topic, check out the podcasts of Olympic history from amateur historian Eli Hunt.

Students should also have some information about Tibet, and the Dalai Lama and Tibet’s government in exile, about the history of Tibet and China’s actions since World War II. Students should have some history of the 1936 Olympics, and they should be familiar with the stories of Jesse Owens’ accomplishments there and his return to a segregated U.S. You may want to provide an article about the U.S. protest of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, and the Soviet protest of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, and other Cold War moments of Olympic tension.

1. Since the International Olympics Committee (IOC) is an avowedly non-political international agency, is it fair or rational to protest the siting of an Olympics on political grounds?
2. What do the protesters ask the IOC to do? What do the protesters ask others to do?
3. Under international law, what are the rights and duties of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC)?
4. Did the IOC ask anything of the government of the Peoples Republic of China of a political nature? Would such requests be fair, or rational?
5. Other international organizations function in other nations where governments do not have good records on human rights, such as the Red Cross/Red Crescent, Scouting, UNICEF, and others (can you add to this list?). What considerations must such organizations give to local politics where human rights are at issue?
6. Compare and contrast the issues surrounding the Beijing Olympics with issues surrounding the Myanmar relief efforts after Cyclone Nargis (2008).
7. Look at other protests involving the Olympics, especially in 1980 and 1984. Did those protests achieve what the protesters had hoped? Does the success or failure of past protests augur well for current protests?
8. The creator of the protest sign in the photograph appears to have not known about the 1936 Olympics, which were hosted in Berlin, then under the control of the Nazi government of Germany. The Olympics were sited in Berlin prior to the rise of the Nazi government. Does the protester’s ignorance of history affect the message of the sign? Does it reflect well on the cause the protester advocates?
9. What other famous or notorious examples of ignorance of history can you find?
10. Do you ever get embarrassed for the people captured in Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking” segments?
11. Georges Santayana (1863-1952) famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Do you find that statement to be true? Does this affect the course of history? (Students may want to explore the history of invasions of Russia by Napoleon and Hitler, or the history of invasions of Afghanistan by Britain, the Soviet Union, and the U.S.)
    

Marriage rights and civil rights giant, Mildred Loving, 68

We learned today that Mildred Loving died Friday in Milford, Virginia.  She was 68.

2007 was the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court Decision in which she played a key role, Loving vs. Virginia.  In that decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state laws against interracial marriage are unconstitutional.

The romance and marriage of Mildred and Richard Loving demonstrate the real human reasons behind advances in civil rights laws.  They left Virginia to avoid facing prosecution for having gotten married; but when they wanted to be closer to family, they wrote to then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. He referred them to the American Civil Liberties Union, who financed the case to get the law changed.

See the post from last year on the anniversary of the decision.  The Associated Press wrote today:

Peggy Fortune [daughter] said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.

“I want (people) to remember her as being strong and brave yet humble — and believed in love,” Fortune told The Associated Press.

Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.

“There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause,” the court ruled in a unanimous decision.

Her husband died in 1975. Shy and soft-spoken, Loving shunned publicity and in a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, insisted she never wanted to be a hero — just a bride.

“It wasn’t my doing,” Loving said. “It was God’s work.”

Mildred Jeter was 11 when she and 17-year-old Richard began courting, according to Phyl Newbeck, a Vermont author who detailed the case in the 2004 book, “Virginia Hasn’t Always Been for Lovers.”

Richard died in 1975.

History loses another hero.

Update:  Just as one more showing of how things have changed, this is the headline of the story of Mrs. Loving’s death in the Fredericksburg, Virginia, Free Lance-Star, the local newspaper in Mrs. Loving’s home county, Caroline County:  “CAROLINE HEROINE DIES”

I’ll wager the Virginia headlines were quite not so glowing in 1967.

Heroes of the Underground Railroad

How much do you really know about the Underground Railroad, how it worked, and what it meant to slaves in the Americas?

Do you know who Thornton and Ruthie Blackburn were?  Did you know Canada played a key role in the life of the Underground Railroad?

The book is a year old now, and well worth a look: I’VE GOT A HOME IN GLORY LAND, A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad; Karolyn Smardz Frost, (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007).

Clear review from the New York Times, and the first chapter of the book so you can test drive it before you buy.

Two-fer:  The author is both an archaeologist (the one who did the dig at the Thorntons’ home in Toronto) and a historian.

This book would be a good one for an honors history course or AP history course for which students are required to read a book.

Dick Hussein Cheney. John Hussein McCain.

The Dallas Morning News bloggers reported from the Senate District 16 Democratic Convention (held yesterday):

Funniest thing I’ve seen all day:  Obama supporters wearing name tags co-opting Barack Obama’s middle name.

Things like:
“Bob Hussein Smith.”
“Janet Hussein Finklestein.”

Good Times.

– Karen Brooks, at Moody Coliseum at Southern Methodist University, the site of the convention.

As blog reports go, the newspaper’s reporters got some snark, but the blog reports are remarkably bare of information.  The stories this morning are a bit better, but missing much.

My reports in a bit — if I can figure out how to download the Pentax photos to this computer.

Clinton’s challenges at our district (Royce West’s Senate District 23) picked up 22 delegates for Clinton.  That’s about 1% of those still standing after 9 hours of credentials wrangling.

Not worth it in District 23.  The Obama people spent the day converting a few Clinton delegates, but mostly making hard plans to dominate the state convention.  It became an 8-hour planning session for Democrats to win Texas, sure, but mainly for Obama to beat Clinton.   This was not from the Obama campaign, mind you, but spontaneous work by mostly first-time delegates.

My recollection is that four years ago we had about 600 people at this convention, and 400 two years ago.  More than 5,000 this year.  An increase of roughly 10 times in participation.

Is John Cornyn scared yet?

Understanding trouble in Tibet

Tibet a “powderkeg?” How could that be?

Photo of Potala Palace by the late Galen Rowell, circa 1981; for Rowell’s famous photo of the Palace and Rainbow, click here. Read Sweeney’s post, note the difference between the two photos here.

Julia Sweeney discusses her trip there nine years ago. You’ll see things more clearly.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Pharyngula, again, and he tips to Stranger Fruit. Myers is about a lot more than just biology, and so are most other blogs by biologists.

Photo: Chinese MIG on display in front of Potala Palace, one of Tibetans’ most sacred landmarks. From WhereIsEven.com

James Madison’s birthday, March 16

Freedom of Conscience Day?

James Madison’s birth day is March 16, Sunday. He was born in 1751, in Conway, King George County, Virginia.

Father of the Constitution, fourth President of the U.S., Great Collaborator, and life-long champion for religious freedom and freedom of speech, press and thought: How should we mark his birthday?

Barbara Jordan

Rereading the Gettysburg Address and the Cooper Union speech of Lincoln, I wondered for a few moments whether there are others with similar gifts for words who might be on film or tape. It got me thinking about the vast gulf between religion on the one hand, and faith and justice on the other hand.

Then I got a notice of a link from this post about Barbara Jordan, at Firedoglake.

It’s a nice collection of links, a Barbara Jordan tribute all bundled up ready to unwrap. Sometimes truth does go marching on.

Who since Jordan?

(Thanks to Phoenix Woman at Firedoglake for the post, and for the link here.)

The Cooper Union speech of Lincoln was 148 years ago, on February 27.

More but not enough freedom of speech in Turkey

Turkey changed its laws that completely forbade criticism of the government. Recent changes promoting freedom of conscience and speech do not change the fact that this blog, and a million others on WordPress, are still blocked in Turkey.

Remember the old Radio Free Europe? We need a Blog Free Turkey; a Blog Free China; a Blog Free Duncanville Independent School District.

The Story of Stuff

How many different lesson plans can you get from this video? How about from this video with the add-ons?

from www.willbrehm.com

posted with vodpod
You can see a higher quality version at Will Brehm’s “Story of Stuff” website.

The site offers a lot. E-mail updates on issues, cheap DVDs of the movie ($10.00 each for the first 10, $9.00 each for the next 10 . . . you may want to get a copy for each social studies classroom), background stories to the movie, story of Annie Leonard, background sheets, lists of organizations working on the issues and reading lists and more. I found no lesson plans, but you can surely cobble one together for an hour class, with 20 minutes taken up by the film. Plus you can download the movie, for free.

Go noodle around the site: There are lots of possibilities for student projects, student discussions, in-class exercises, homework, and fun.

This movie details, quickly and with good humor, the economics of recycling, the economics of waste disposal, and the economics of production. This provides a great gateway to talk about civics and government, and how to make things happen like garbage collection and recycling; a gateway to talk about economics, especially the various flows of money and goods; a gateway to talk about geography and how we have used our land and rivers to bury and carry waste; and how we use natural resources generally.

This would also be a good video for Boy Scout merit badge classes for the Citizenship in the Community and Citizenship in the Nation badges.

Contrasted with most of the industrial grade video I’ve seen for economics classes, this is fantastic. It’s better than any of the sometimes ambitious, but ultimately dull productions from the Federal Reserve Banks (are you listening, Richard Fisher? Hire Will Brehm’s group). (No offense, Osgood — yours is the best of that lot.)

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., probably has political objections to the movie, claiming it leans left, which indicates it’s in the mainstream. If you’re using any other supplemental material in your classes, this just balances it out.

Founders online, great interactive site

Our friends and benefactors at the Bill of Rights Institute put up a great branch of their site, Founders Online. A grant from the Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation made the project possible.

Check it out:

• The truth about the signers of the Declaration of Independence (it’s more hopeful, and more inspiring, than the junk you’ve been give before from David Barton)
• On-line games about the Constitution: “Madison’s Notes are Missing,” Constitution Crossword, and What Did the Founders Say?
• A seven-minute video on the Constitution
• Features on twelve different founders:

John Adams | Samuel Adams | Alexander Hamilton | Patrick Henry
Thomas Jefferson | James Madison | GeorgeMason | Gouverneur Morris
James Otis | Thomas Paine | George Washington | John Witherspoon

This page should be a first stop for your students doing biographies on any of these people, and it should be a test review feature for your classes that they can do on the internet at home, or in class if you’re lucky enough to have access in your classroom.

Good on-line sources are still too rare. This is stuff you can trust to be accurate and appropriate for your students. Send a note of thanks to the Bill of Rights Institute, and send your students to the site.

Just in time for Bill of Rights Day, December 15 . . .

September 11 blogging

Three or four times I’ve started out to look at events of September 11, today.  Apart from my understanding that too much action was started in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, without understanding the history of the people involved, the nations involved, or the people to be involved in future action, the posts all dissolve into rant.

Anger makes it difficult to say anything erudite, or informative.  Maybe later.

I would like to hear from teachers who dealt with kids today.  It was six years ago — high school students, and perhaps 7th and 8th graders, have great interest in the World Trade Center bombings, and often those interests produce questions that go unanswered.  In one six-week period, I had a woman (now graduated) who complained that we didn’t spend enough time on the event — a week would have been appropriate, she thought, in a course that covered from 1900 to 2005 in six weeks.

What are your students’ concerns.  What do you do in class to commemorate the events, or to teach from the events, and what do you wish you could do?

Comments are open.

Non-violence in action, today

Your kids don’t quite get the point of non-violent protest? The “Scarface” t-shirts outnumber “I Have A Dream” t-shirts on August 28? Do you wish you had some current examples of non-violent protest for classroom discussion?

Nonviolent protest helped disrupt a rally of VNN Vanguard Nazi/KKK in Knoxville, Tennessee, last may — courtesy of the usual clowns. You know, the ARA (Anti-Racist Action) clown block. It’s a good example of using peace to combat violence and hate.

Ridicule and laughter proved tougher than hate. Cooler, too. From a story at Asheville Indymedia:

“White Power!” the Nazi’s shouted, “White Flour?” the clowns yelled back running in circles throwing flour in the air and raising separate letters which spelt “White Flour”.

“White Power!” the Nazi’s angrily shouted once more, “White flowers?” the clowns cheers and threw white flowers in the air and danced about merrily.

“White Power!” the Nazi’s tried once again in a doomed and somewhat funny attempt to clarify their message, “ohhhhhh!” the clowns yelled “Tight Shower!” and held a solar shower in the air and all tried to crowd under to get clean as per the Klan’s directions.

At this point several of the Nazi’s and Klan members began clutching their hearts as if they were about to have a heart attack. Their beady eyes bulged, and the veins in their tiny narrow foreheads beat in rage. One last time they screamed “White Power!”

The clown women thought they finally understood what the Klan was trying to say. “Ohhhhh…” the women clowns said. “Now we understand…”, “WIFE POWER!” they lifted the letters up in the air, grabbed the nearest male clowns and lifted them in their arms and ran about merrily chanting “WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER!”

Tip of the old scrub brush to Bug Girl’s Blog, and Neat-o-rama.

• Photo from Neat-o-rama, probably from Asheville Indymedia; otherwise uncredited.

Didn’t fool anybody: Liberty Bell

Yes, it’s the Liberty Bell, photographed from underneath, with the lights shining through the crack.

I guess it was a lot more obvious than I thought. No one guessed wrong.

This is the bell that resided in the bell tower of the Pennsylvania Statehouse, what we now call Independence Hall. It is the bell that was rung to proclaim the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The bell was cast with several flaws in 1752. It had to be recast shortly after it was delivered, and then cast a third time. It cracked in the early 19th century (legend has it cracking while pealing during the funeral of Chief Justice John Marshall — I won’t vouch for that story). It was last rung in 1846, on the anniversary of George Washington’s birth.

Enshrined in art and legend, the bell appeared on the reverse of the Franklin half-dollars (when was the last time you saw any 50-cent piece in circulation?). It was put on tour after the Civil War in an effort to get the nation reunited around old symbols (but, considering it was first called “the Liberty Bell” by early abolitionist groups, one might wonder how effective was the tour). When I visited it in the 1990s, the bell rested in its own pavilion about a half-block away from Independence Hall. Renovations of the historic site included construction of a new museum, which required the bell to be moved again.

Preservation and restoration experts wondered whether the bell would well survive the move. So the National Science Foundation (NSF) was called in to study the bell and determine whether it could take the stress of the move. NSF’s press release said the bell passed its “stress test.” The story of the measurement is well told, and may be interesting to students. The writer at NSF put in a lot of the history.

The photo is from the NSF team that did the study; it shows the inside of the bell and part of the “spider” support system that helps hold the bell together and support display.

My probably faulty recollection is that we studied the story of the Liberty Bell each year in grades 1 through 5, which in my case includes schools in the states of Idaho and Utah. My baseline U.S. history tests over the past four years show that about half the students I had, in grades 7, 10, 11 and 12, could not identify the bell or tell why it is revered in U.S. history.

Every reader here gets an “A.”

Other Liberty Bell information:

• The sister to the Liberty Bell now resides at Villanova University.
• The first “Forever Stamp” features the Liberty Bell.
  
• The bell rings E-flat.Just when the third cast bell cracked is disputed.
• The bell’s yoke is made of American elm, a tree that is threatened with extinction by Dutch elm disease.
• Replicas of the bell were cast in France and presented to each state in 1950 as part of a government bonds drive. Utah’s replica resides just outside the chamber of the Utah House of Representatives; according to Answers.com, New York’s replica bell “hangs in the lobby of the Kew Gardens Hills branch of the Queens County Savings Bank in New York City, a building that is a replica of Independence Hall.”
• Other famous replicas: In neon, at Citizens Bank Park, home of the Philadelphia Phillies; now gone, in plastic, twice life-size, at Ameriquest Field in Arlington, Texas, home of the Texas Rangers (Ameriquest became insolvent in 2006, and the park was renamed and the bell removed); in Liberty Square, Magic Kingdom, DisneyWorld Park in Buena Vista, Florida; in the Rotunda of the Academic Building at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, honoring A&M alumni who served in World War II (this is probably the state replica from 1950).
• Gus Grissom’s Mercury Project spacecraft was named the “Liberty Bell 7;” it sank upon Grissom’s return from orbit, but the capsule was recovered in 1999.
  
• The bell was originally cast by Whitechapel Bell Foundry in England, which also cast the bell in London famously known as Big Ben, which also is cracked. Whitechapel Hand Bells are used by handbell ringers around the world.
• In April 2001, Mitchell Guiliat broke through barriers and struck the bell several times with a hammer. He was trying to ring it, not damage it, he said later. He got a nine-month sentence in prison, 5-years probation, and a fine of $7,093.
• More “triviata.“
  

Turkish creationists censor 1 million WordPress blogs

It’s an act worthy of Nicolae Ceauşescu, or Idi Amin — but the Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar has taken legal action that effectively blocks more than a million weblogs from access in Turkey — all the blogs on WordPress, the host of this blog.

Here’s the general announcement to WordPress clients. This site has the text of the threats from Oktar’s lawyers to WordPress.

Here’s a link to Matt’s blog, which has more discussion.

Adnan Oktar is the guy who pays people to write under the name Harun Yahya. Under that name he has published dozens of anti-evolution screeds. You may recall that, in the past year, he has financed the publication of an 800-page book, handsomely bound with scores of pictures (many of them plagiarized), claiming evolution could not account for features of living things. The scientifically vacuous book was delivered to schools and libraries across Europe in 2006, and then to thousands of U.S. scientists, teachers and libraries earlier in 2007.  (Here’s a good summary of creationism and Islam, from Taner Edis.)

I suggested in comments that protests should be made to the European Union. Turkey is working to gain admittance to the EU, and childish, totalitarian eruptions such as Oktar’s getting a court to censor a million blogs, significantly detract from Turkey’s chances and case. There is high irony here, too — Oktar is one of those who has willingly spread false claims that evolution was a cause of the Holocaust (when he’s not busy denying the Holocaust happened; consistency and accuracy are not among his strong points) — heck, just a few months ago he was claiming evolution is the cause of terrorism.

Do you have better ideas about what to do?

I hope the few of you who read this blog will spread this word far and fast.

Such disruptions of communication over an entire nation are the dreams of terrorists. Are we to understand that Adnan Oktar does this because Darwin convinced him? Or are his actions direct denial of his earlier claims?

I have been a journalist for a long time, having joined the Society of Professional Journalists in 1974. I spent many years in Washington, slugging it out against people who wished they had the power of censorship, and some who actually did have that power in other nations. I do not recall any similarly stupid activity outside of totalitarian governments, most of which are now gone.

Nuts.

Berlin Wall’s 46th

Today is the 46th anniversary of the beginning of the Berlin Wall. The post I wrote last year on this topic continues to be popular, day in and day out, but especially when high school curricula get to the Cold War, the Berlin Airlift, the 1960s, and the collapse of the Soviet empire, best exemplified by the destruction of the Berlin Wall itself and the reunification of Germany.

Go read my post of last year, “Berlin Wall’s 45th.”

The photograph I used to illustrate that post has become one of the more popular photos of the Berlin Wall on the internet. It is from a small, too-little used collection posted by Corey Hatch at the University of Utah.

Here is another photo from his collection. It comes without caption; from the barbed wire and the uniform and helmet, I would say This is cropped version of a photo of an East German soldier,  Conrad Schumann , assigned to shoot people trying to breach the wall to escape to West Germany, who instead decided to leap to freedom himself, probably at Checkpoint Charlie, one of three gates between East and West Berlin. I regret I have no further credit information on the photo on August 15, 1961.  The photo is by West German photographer Peter Leibing, then working for Contiepress, in Hamburg.

German authorities announced the Wall was open for travel between the two entities of divided Germany on November 9, 1989. Jubilant Germans on both sides of the wall tore down sections, poked holes in the concrete barriers, and generally vandalized the wall over the next few weeks. Negotiations then led the way for the Reunification of Germany on October 3, 1990.