Blog #8 & #9

My topic for final essay:

The 'War on Terror', is that what we call going into other countries and killing innocent civilians in the name of the War on Terror? We went into Afghanistan to locate Bin laden, Al Qaida, the Taliban, or whatever we are calling it. During our quest to locate these terrorist, there has been just as many civilian deaths as we had in the World Trade Center. There has been news reports of people,civilians, in Afghanistan moving to one place to be safe and then getting there only to lose their families due to the war.
Also, it seems almost every time I look up the war on terror or the war on terrorism on the internet it seems that the U.S. and Iraq pop up. I am wanting to look into this a little more because I wasn't really aware that the war in Iraq was considered war on Terrorism. I thought it was said to be about WMD that Saddam alegedly had. This has been an unfounded claim. Although I did find a websites that insinuates that the real reason for us going to Iraq had something to do with Israel. Since I have not really done a lot of research on this that is just something insinuated and I am not stating that it is fact.
I feel this whole episode has also taken a toll on American citizens. We are unsure who to trust or what to believe. It seems that depending on who is talking and telling the story, we may here 2 totally different accounts about the same story or situation. We have been told that the government has been given special privileges under the patriot Act in which they can now do things like listen to your conversations or see what books you have been reading or even what you are looking at on the internet all without what use to be probable cause. I actually often wondered how many time while doing my research did I get 'flagged' because the of types of things I was trying to look up on the internet. It's kind of scary to me thinking that anything I say or do that 'Big Brother' may be watching and listening.

International Issues

I have to honestly say I am unsure of what international issues I am most concerned about. I guess, the few that I think about most are the free trade agreements we have. I work in a packaging factory and I see ,almost daily, product come through our doors already packaged from overseas. These are items that in my plant, until recently, we use to package. Another concern is the homeland security or "the war on terrorism'. I am not real familiar with it but I have been trying to do a little research on this topic. I am curious about this topic because I have people talk about the things that the government is now allowed to do in the name of 'homeland security'.
I know this is only two topics and they may very well not be considered international issues but they are two issues that come to mind for me. Maybe when we discuss other issues a light will come on in my head and trigger some other concerns.

blog #6 part 2

7 terms I associate with Hotel Rwanda or genocide in general are....

Revenge
Economics
Majority / Minority
Youth
politics
ethnic Cleansing
Supremacy

Peer Review #2

In reviewing Omar's essay, I found him to give good support to his topic.
But, you may want to check the last paragraph 4th sentence.
-It probably could much more than it was doing, but for unknown reasons it was not being implemented.-
You may want to think about rewriting this sentence.
It kind of sounded off to me, but that could just be me.

Peer Review # 1


In reviewing Frank's essay I found that it was worded great and he offered excellent arguments.