Information about Al Qaeda

Here's the Newsround page about Al Qaeda.

When you're writing about the terrorist attacks that have taken place, Wikipedia is a good place to start. The pages on each of the attacks are quite detailed, and on the left of each one is an information box which lists key facts, like the number of people who died.

Art & History Homework

Here is the video with all the Lowry paintings in it.

Enjoy watching it! I hope you'll have learned all the song words by next lesson :)

Terrorism Coursework Help

The GCSE coursework question, "Why do Islamic terrorists attack western targets?" has a very complicated answer. It goes back for hundreds of years, if you want to look back that far, and it's also very difficult to find non-biased resources to help you get your facts straight.

This is because it's difficult to write a text book about it - the situation is changing all the time - and people can write what they like on the Internet, so a lot of stuff you might come across will give just the view of the person who wrote it. It can be useful to read that stuff, because it gives you the view of, say, a Palestinian living in Israel; but it's important to make sure you read with your eyes open, if you see what I mean. Well, of course you have to have your eyes open to read - dur! - but be thoughtful about who wrote what you're reading and how it might have affected what they're saying.

The BBC Newsround website has some very helpful and simple guides to each of the countries we're going to be looking at. Here's their guide to the conflict in Israel. Here's one about Afghanisatan. And finally, here's one about Iraq. They also have this clear explanation of what Islam is and what Muslims believe.

Cold War - Chapter 3

Stalin and the Soviets really made it obvious that they intended to set up Europe exactly as they pleased, and the Americans obviously noticed. Moreover, it appeared that Stalin was actively encouraging further war among his enemies. In a speech he made in February 1946, Stalin told the Supreme Soviet that, in order to survive, capitalist countries had to be constantly fighting with each other, or they couldn't grow and increase their strength.

America didn't like the sound of this. These weren't the words of an ally, who was interested in keeping the peace. Washington requested a report from George Kennan, who was the American ambassador in Moscow at the time. They wanted to know what Kennan thought the Russians were up to and what they were trying to achieve with their foreign policy.

Kennan minced his words. He REALLY went to town on his report and had it transmitted back to Washington as a telegram. This was known as the Long Telegram, and it was sent on 22nd February 1946 - all 8000 words of it. In it, Kennan said that the combination of Marxist-Leninist theory (which is the bit that says capitalism makes war inevitable) and Russian fears of being invaded again had made them incredibly hostile towards the capitalist world. They used this hostility to force an authoritarian regime on their citizens. He advised Truman that he had better give up turning a blind eye to the Soviets taking control of Europe, and instead take steps to limit their power and influence, or there would be an almighty smackdown between Communism and democracy. "Stand up to those bullies in the Kremlin!" he might well have written - except that he would have made that one sentence last for two pages, knowing him.

Tuman was worried. He hadn't really grasped that there was going to be such an issue. He probably thought that the atomic bomb would be enough to scare the Russians into submission, but it quickly became obvious that the Russians were not going to take that submissive role, especially when Stalin refused to remove his troops from Northern Iran. They'd been stationed there during WW2 to protect the oil supplies from Hitler, but there was no need for their continued occupation. Perhaps Stalin thought the world would just forget he was surrounding some of the world's biggest oil reserves.

Truman hadn't forgotten, though. Well, it's hard to forget that 30,000 troops are positioned such that they could overthrow the Iranian government, or attack Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Moreover, Stalin used his troops to partition Iran and create a couple of "people's democratic republics" within the country. You can read more about the Iranian Crisis here.

Truman chucked his toys right out of the pram. He had previously said that he was "tired of babying the Soviets" and would henceforth "treat them with an iron fist and strong language". This was the first time his words had really been tested. America roared, and the Russians backed down. The troops were withdrawn from Iran.

This association of iron and the Soviets was strengthened when Winston Churchill gave a lecture in Missouri, echoing what Kennan had written. It was to become one of the most famous lectures ever, because in it, he said, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent." Churchill had coined the phrase that would be used to describe the Soviet regime for the next 50 years.

Cold War - chapter 2

When we left our Big Three, they were all pretty unhappy with each other, following the Potsdam conference. They retired to their respective corners....er, I mean countries, and did their best to regroup following the second world war. America were still feeling quite smug because they had the atomic bomb; Russia were busy building a buffer zone.

Each country in eastern Europe that bordered Russia eventually had a Soviet-sympathising, communist government. Remember how Russia promised they'd allow free elections everywhere? Yeah, well...right now Russia was scuffing its feet along the ground and refusing to meet anybody's eye, because they totally reneged on that promise.

The Russians had several methods for getting their people into the governments of other countries..

In Poland (which never stood a chance really, did it?), once the Soviets had helped the communist government into power, they then helped them to remove members from all the other parties from the government, and then banned all the other parties anyway, just to make doubly sure.

In Romania, they relied on the good old policy of rigging the elections (perhaps George W Bush took his inspiration from here) to make sure they were in power by 1946, and then forced the King to abdicate so there was no threat to their authority.

In Hungary, they employed the tasty-sounding "salami technique", by encouraging splits and divisions between the political parties that made up the coalition government, so that it was severely weakened and couldn't hang on to power for very long. In 1947, the Soviets accused the Hungarian government of offending the Red Army and banned their party.

In Albania, they didn't have to do much at all - the Albanians happily copied the Russian model of government and had red leadership in 1945.

In Bulgaria, the Soviets made friends with the existing party and formed a coalition with them. Awww! Friendly Soviets, how sweet! Except that, once they were nice and cosy, they accused the leader of the other party of plotting a coup, hanged him, and purged all his supporters.

A similar thing happened in East Germany, where the Soviets merged with the ruling Socialist party and then purged all its members.

That just leave Czechoslovakia. This country proved a bit more difficult. They hadn't been a country for very long, having been founded in 1919 by Tomas Masaryk. This probably made them less willing to give in to Soviet demands. Although the communists were strong in the government in 1946, the foreign minister, Jan Masaryk, was keen to maintain the country's independence, and applied for Marshall Aid (more on that later). He was horrified when the communist members of the government rejected the application, and most of the non-communists ministers resigned in 1948, hoping to force an election.

It was the chance the communists had been waiting for. Instead of holding elections, they just filled the empty positions with their own people. Then Jan Masaryk appeared to commit suicide (hmmmm....) and the Czech government were Soviets through and through. Most of the world called this "the Czech coup", but the Russians and their mates called it "Victorious February."

Cold War - the first chapter

After several years of pretending to be friends during the second world war, by the end of it, relations between America and the USSR were beginning to get a bit strained. Thanks to massive ideological differences, the ongoing feud between Russia and Poland - evidenced by the refusal of Stalin to send troops to help the Poles overthrow their Nazi occupiers - and the vast number of war casualties suffered by Russia (an estimated 90 times more than those of the USA), a post-war friendship was never really on the cards.

Was this because they had completely different aims? Well, the Americans were all about self-determination for the peoples of Europe. They wanted to see freely elected governments taking control after years of oppression by the Nazis. Perhaps they wanted this so that they would have a strong, healthy market in Europe in which to sell American goods.

Meanwhile, Stalin was more interested in keeping Russia safe from attack. He believed that capitalists must fight in order to remain capitalists, and since Russia had been invaded several times from the west, he wanted to keep his country safe and secure by installing friendly governments along his western borders. And don't forget those warm water ports! Throughout Russian history, they've struggled to control some of those.

To start with, everyone played nice. Here was the situation at Yalta.

(If you click on the picture, it should get bigger).

As you can see, everyone is smiling and happy. The end of the second world war was in sight - Hitler was about 2 months away from killing himself and it was time to party and divide up the spoils (and debts) of war.

Stalin was happy, because he thought he was soon going to get his hands of $10 billion in reparations, paid by Germany after the war. The USA were happy, because the USSR had agreed to free elections for the peoples of eastern Europe. Germany had been portioned up between Russia, America, Britain and France - this wasn't ideal, but they couldn't agree on anything else at this time, so they created the boundaries as a sort of stop-gap.

However, by the time the Potsdam conference came around in July, things had changed significantly. For a start, there was a new American president. Roosevelt had kicked the bucket shortly after Yalta and his replacement, Truman, was nowhere near as pragmatic as his predecessor. He was suspicious of Stalin and the Soviets, and not willing to give them an inch.

And he didn't really have to, thanks to a huge event which had just taken place in the New Mexico desert. The first atomic bomb had been successfully tested, and the Americans were now the proud owners of the world's most destructive weapon. Like a man driving around on his new motorised lawnmower while his neighbour struggles with a rusty old mechanical one, Truman smugly hinted that Stalin no longer held all the cards, all through the conference.

Stalin knew exactly what had happened, thanks to his excellent network of spies, and instantly upped funding to the USSR's own atomic bomb project.

A third thing that changed was the Polish government. Stalin had ignored his previous promise and not allowe democratic elections, possibly fearing that a Russia-friendly government would not be popular with the Polish people and he would lose control. It became clear that he was not about to allow free elections anywhere else in Europe, either.

Finally, America now flatly refused to whack Germany with enormous reparations payments, probably remembering the Treaty of Versailles and how the enormous fines spelled out in that had led to financial ruin for German and, eventually, the second world war. Stalin, expecting $10 billion, was now left with nothing. I bet he'd already spent some of it, too. Don't you hate it when that happens?

By the end of the Potsdam conference, this was the rough situation.


Relations had cooled considerably. But it was only going to get colder.

An answer to the mysteries of Stonehenge?

A couple of archaelogists from London reckon they've finally figured out why Stonehenge exists.

Stonehenge was built so long ago that we don't really have any concrete evidence of the reason for its consturction, but we can certainly take a look at all the evidence and make an educated guess. Do you think they've got it right?