Vietnam leaders await confidence vote as congress opensIn the south-eastern part of the Asian continent is the country of Vietnam. This country is an almost all communist and that is the only party running for government. Just a year ago, the Vietnam Parliament decided that they would have a confidence vote to see who the people thought were good enough for the Vietnamese government. The members of the government sent in reports on their work performance, life style, adherence to the law, and ethics. The idea was to use these things to see who the people thought was good enough and if the got less than a 50% in the poll would either be faced with a vote of no confidence or asked to resign. Many people believed that at the time, this was only to get the prime minister to resign because of his bad decisions in the economy. During these polls the government also discusses draft laws and resolutions, covering anti-terrorism and land laws.
These types of things remind me of the Latin America unit when the United States of America kept interfering in the governments of many smaller countries in South America. When Theodore Roosevelt was in office for the United States of America in the time of the Cold War, He and the rest of the government assigned a leader to the countries. Sometimes even if the countries didn't want them they got new leaders, especially in Cuba. The Ideas in Vietnam are kind of the same as in the Americas. The government want to keep the officials that it trusts and in this case in Vietnam, they want one of the most powerful leaders, the prime minister, out of office. Usually the people there would have no say, but now they are given some opportunities to speak their minds. |
Japan Primary Source:Tsunami DevastationIn Japan there have always been natural disasters, however nothing came close to the destructive tsunami that followed a massive 7.3 magnitude earthquake and at least six other aftershocks. On the BBC world news page that describes the earthquake and the tsunami is a perfect source to see how many deaths, how much devastation, and the procedures taken by the citizens who survived, happened during this well known natural disaster.
With this knowledge, you could be led into deeper research including how the tsunamis and the earthquakes work and why they cause so much destruction. You could also find out how to take safety measures against earthquakes and against tsunamis that could possibly affect you. Using this primary source, surveying groups could further understand how the earthquakes and tsunamis work to possibly be able to predict when they will happen so they can warn the people. |