Archive for August, 2011
The Changing Political Landscape of the Lone Star State
The urbanization of Texas has had a major impact on politics in the state over the last fifty years (p. 21). Urbanization is a process wherein populations trend toward larger metropolitan areas (and their surrounding suburban areas). This process occurred on a national scale beginning around the turn of the 20th century as industrialization began to take shape in America. That Texas lagged behind much of the nation in this regard, a fact shared by many states in the south, is according to most historians a result of post-Civil War resentments of the defeated south toward the victorious north. The move from rural and agricultural toward urban and industrial began in earnest in this state after World War II. Although Texas has the second largest rural population of any state in America, it’s only a quarter of its total population, ranking it thirty-seventh nationally. Texas’ population more than quadrupled during the 20th Century and is expected to grow by another thirty-one percent between 1990 and 2025 (p. 22)—by all indications, the trend towards urbanization is permanent.
These significant population shifts have equally significant political implications. The most obvious implication is that agricultural issues that once dominated Texas politics, for example, have declined in significance; issues previously not as significant have risen. Crime, for example, is a much more important issue than it had been previously. Suburban growth, an increase in population in outlying urban areas, has also impacted politics in the state as suburban populations tend to be more affluent and Anglo than city dwellers. This trend favors the Republican Party and helps explain the party’s rise in popularity the last thirty years.
Tags: agricultural issues, last thirty years, lone star state, oil industries, political landscape, population shifts, post civil war, suburban growth, texas population, world war ii
Terrorism, Politics, and Counter-insurgency in Northern Nigeria
Terrorism is largely viewed to mean the threat or use of physical coercion, primarily against non combatants especially civilians, to create fear in order to achieve various political objectives. Be it by individuals, groups, or States, definitions of the term will continue to be controversial and ambiguous. Nevertheless, Since World War Two, guerrilla warfare (highly mobile hit-and-run attacks by lightly to moderately armed groups that seek to harass mainly government forces and gradually erode his will and capability) together with terrorism by diverse insurgent (i.e. a rebel in a group involved in an uprising against authority or leadership) groups have spread greatly. Between 1969 and 1985 for instance, the number of major international terrorist incidents alone jumped from just two hundred to over eight hundred per year, leaving more and more people afraid and polarized in their opinions. Throughout the world, terrorism reinvents itself in new and more dangerous forms. As older groups are defeated or exhausted, more radical and more violent successors often take their place. According to military historians, the scenario of insurgencies over the years have usually followed this pattern: first the building up of cells; subversive operations such as strikes, demonstrations and riots; insurgency, with attacks by bombs and guns on persons and property; as more sympathizers are gained, groups take control of parts of the country; finally outright civil war followed by the collapse of the government, or the governments fall without civil war.
Hypocritically, nobody wants to admit that his or her group, or the group he or she supports, engages in terrorism. As a result, groups that carry out terrorist acts rather call themselves freedom fighters. But the contradiction between terrorist and freedom fighter is a false one because the term freedom fighter has to do with ends (e.g. the rebels goal of freeing his people from control by another’s perceived exploitative political system), while terrorism connotes the means of achieving this goal. Hence, one can be a freedom fighter who uses terrorism to achieve his purposes.
Tags: bombs and guns, counter insurgency, freedom fighter, guerrilla warfare, international terrorist incidents, leadership groups, military historians, northern nigeria, physical coercion, world terrorism