A brief history of Change:Barack Obama!
Well, he has done it,hasn’t he? Obama has created history! So I decided to get this piece on his life and and carrer and post it here so that people who aren’t sure about Obama can be clear. This is not something that I have written because I myself am not so clear about Obama’s early life. Hope this is useful to you all.Finally,’Change is what we need!’(Not just America).
EARLY YEARS
Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961. His father, Barack Obama Sr., was born and raised in a small village in Kenya, where he grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British.
Barack’s mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in small-town Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs during the Depression, and then signed up for World War II after Pearl Harbor, where he marched across Europe in Patton’s army. Her mother went to work on a bomber assembly line, and after the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and moved west to Hawaii.
It was there, at the University of Hawaii, where Barack’s parents met. His mother was a student there, and his father had won a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya and pursue his dreams in America.
Barack’s father eventually returned to Kenya, and Barack grew up with his mother in Hawaii, and for a few years in Indonesia. Later, he moved to New York, where he graduated from Columbia University in 1983.
The college years
Remembering the values of empathy and service that his mother taught him, Barack put law school and corporate life on hold after college and moved to Chicago in 1985, where he became a community organizer with a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment.
The group had some success, but Barack had come to realize that in order to truly improve the lives of people in that community and other communities, it would take not just a change at the local level, but a change in our laws and in our politics.
He went on to earn his law degree from Harvard in 1991, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Soon after, he returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law. Finally, his advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate, where he served for eight years. In 2004, he became the third African American since Reconstruction to be elected to the U.S. Senate.
POLITICAL CAREER
It has been the rich and varied experiences of Barack Obama’s life – growing up in different places with people who had differing ideas – that have animated his political journey. Amid the partisanship and bickering of today’s public debate, he still believes in the ability to unite people around a politics of purpose – a politics that puts solving the challenges of everyday Americans ahead of partisan calculation and political gain.
In the Illinois State Senate, this meant working with both Democrats and Republicans to help working families get ahead by creating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit, which in three years provided over $100 million in tax cuts to families across the state. He also pushed through an expansion of early childhood education, and after a number of inmates on death row were found innocent, Senator Obama worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.
In the U.S. Senate, he has focused on tackling the challenges of a globalized, 21st century world with fresh thinking and a politics that no longer settles for the lowest common denominator. His first law was passed with Republican Tom Coburn, a measure to rebuild trust in government by allowing every American to go online and see how and where every dime of their tax dollars is spent. He has also been the lead voice in championing ethics reform that would root out Jack Abramoff-style corruption in Congress.
As a member of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Senator Obama has fought to help Illinois veterans get the disability pay they were promised, while working to prepare the VA for the return of the thousands of veterans who will need care after Iraq and Afghanistan. Recognizing the terrorist threat posed by weapons of mass destruction, he traveled to Russia with Republican Dick Lugar to begin a new generation of non-proliferation efforts designed to find and secure deadly weapons around the world. And knowing the threat we face to our economy and our security from America’s addiction to oil, he’s working to bring auto companies, unions, farmers, businesses and politicians of both parties together to promote the greater use of alternative fuels and higher fuel standards in our cars.
Whether it’s the poverty exposed by Katrina, the genocide in Darfur, or the role of faith in our politics, Barack Obama continues to speak out on the issues that will define America in the 21st century. But above all his accomplishments and experiences, he is most proud and grateful for his family. His wife, Michelle, and his two daughters, Malia, 9, and Sasha, 6, live on Chicago’s South Side.
Facebook: Why such a fuss?
Facebook – You know it; don’t you? You have seen your son hang around it for hours (or made an account for yourself). I went through the list of articles in The New York Times recently and found about 200 articles related to facebook only! Not surprising, is it? Most of the articles were antagonistic and a few others were describing how we can use facebook to upload pictures and make innovative groups and blah, blah………So, why are we making so much fuss about Facebook? After all, it’s just the usual social networking tool, isn’t it? So why paying special attention to this one site? In the past few months, I have come across many write ups/articles and talked to many facebook fanatics to find the reason for its success and the reason for people making such a fuss. Why do you love or hate facebook? These are a few answers I was able to accumulate:
Here is a medical student from Thailand:
“I love fb because it’s the only form of entertainment in the boring world of medicine plus it keeps me connected to my friends.”
A debater from San Francisco says:
“facebook connects me to people around the world’s get to develop bonds with people I admire, and believe to be my role models-debate gurus, my seniors in college, scholars and different celebrities. Facebook is the new face of the youth and I like seeing my reflection in it.”
A literature teacher from Iran thinks:
“Facebook is a forum where people from all backgrounds can meet. With it there is a no longer geographical boundary. It gives a great opportunity to people to know each other and to make them known to other.”
Well, these answers give us a sense of the fact that people around the world with different religion, race, color, creed, gender and occupation use facebook. People want to use it to stay connected. In this fast paced world, staying connected with your loved ones using telephone or writing letter is not possible. You may well think that e-mail could be useful but as this friend of mine says, facebook is more users friendly:
“Living away from my friends and moving around a lot, facebook is the only close-to-real form of communication between me and my friends in different places around the world. E-mail is not as user-friendly as facebook and it’s absolutely impossible to be on msn at the same time when you’re halfway across the world from each other. Besides that crap fb is the best thing that happened to the world since sliced bread. It’s literally a life saver and essentially a part of the very core of our existence!”
A typical facebook profile.
Now let’s talk about the ‘fuss’. Who makes it? Is it the users or those few people who couldn’t fit on to this new cyber world? Young people certainly don’t go barracking around about facebook; its few people with preconceived notion think it as ‘rubbish’. And, why do they think that way? The answer is they might not adjust to or keep up with the fast pace of the cyber world. My father (who made an account for himself after my consistent persistence) is now able to connect with his friends from college or colleagues from his previous jobs. He was against me making an account and today he himself spends about 2 hours checking his friends and writing on their wall!
Finally, facebook is an interactive website where you can meet new people, making new friends and share your feelings without having to talk or face anyone. It’s got many facilities which we don’t find in any other sites (I am not advertising, I am not paid for that!).The Notes section is a new form of blog where you can write out your feelings. You can make groups for your school, college or even office. In this way, you can always stay connected with colleagues. You can use the photos to upload all the latest pictures so that relatives from around the world can see you even if you aren’t there with them. I don’t see a reason for people to accuse facebook.Yes, if you do misuse it then it’s your own fault. So, next time you see your sons and daughters hanging around facebook for hours, think about thousands of other who are using facebook for the good. I actually went through the list of Harvard and MIT students in Facebook and found lots of graduates who use facebook too, but they never misused. So, the next time you hear a person saying ‘Facebook is destroying my child’s life’, adduce them with the reasons I have given you (even your son might be a good student and at the same time uses the facebook!). But, be alert that he should not use it intermittently twenty four hours! Please do not lose your face while using the facebook! (if you lose the face, what remains is just the ‘book’!)That’s my noble advice.
