Victoria Olayiwola Blog #6: Must salvation come at such a high price? PT2

Even though the Americans and Filipinos began getting to know each other better and began to eat and drink together when the leader of the operation appeared he was successful in planting seeds of discord and disrupting the harmony that was beginning to form, “the imagined community”. The Colonel changes the men’s hearts and minds of the troops towards the Filipinos and thus by doing this reasserts the power structure and the hegemonic paradigm that existed at the very beginning but, as the Americans came to understand the Filipino people, began to wane significantly. 

 

Filipinos NOT IMPRESSED with Americans during the American-Filipino war and even now. But they no longer will be under the thumb.

Anderson mentions in “Imagined Communities” Seton-Watson goes as far to say that the Russian Revolution of 1905 was ‘as much a revolution of non-Russians against Russification as it was a revolution of workers, peasants, and radical intellectuals against autocracy.” In its day, the Revolution can be described as an anticipatory strategy, one taken to stop the proliferation of Russification and Russian nationalism. For Alexander III attempted to make Russia a sphere of influence and reestablish its hegemonic potency.  In 1887, in the Baltic provinces, Russian was made compulsory as the language of instruction in all state schools above the lowest primary classes, a measure later extended to probate schools as well. In 1893, the University of Dorpat, one of the most distinguished colleges in the imperial domains, was closed down because it used German in the lecture-rooms.  

In recent times, every day the Palestinians, living with the fear that their community would be marginalized, that they would be wiped off the face of the earth and their land snatched off them, fight the Israeli. Problems around who owns the Gaza Strip and the expansion of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem further angers and stirs up fears amongst the Palestinians. Their strategy to fight against this territorial hegemon has mostly surrounded around terrorist groups and individuals bombing Israeli shops, and property and civilians. There have been many suicide attempts and many have died over the dispute over land. There are several military groups such as Hamas’ military wing, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. And several terrorist groups still survive till this day such as:

 

Palestine Islamic Jihad

       

and

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade

 

 

Hamas suicide bomber Izz al-Din Shuheil al-Masri, the perpetrator of the Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing.

 

Overall, anybody and everybody is afraid of being overpowered by a raging hegemon, so we all search ways to put an end to that overpowering entity on top of us, suppressing us. For Diouana the best way to rid herself of her oppressors was to kill herself. For the non-Russians it was a Revolution. For the Filipinos it was the creation of the military wing led by Rafael’s brother. And for the Palestinians it is the suicide bombers and martyrs the oppressed look up for liberation. But must salvation come at such a high price?

Who do you look to for your liberation? For your Salvation? I know I look to my faith, Christianity for my problems, which are countless, I will have you know. But where do you look? That, I wonder.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owMoT1MKXDQ