Wednesday, November 14, 2007

HW 34 Respond to Riverbend

Although tea is very common in many of Americans life’s today, it is much more common in an Iraqi’s life. Americans mostly drink tea with their breakfast or to try and heal a sick throat. Whereas an Iraqi has tea with breakfast, lunch, and dinner (Riverbend, 100). Also tea is made completely different, in Iraq there is no such things as tea bags and they find them as a disgrace. They use tea leaves along with boiled water. But like Americans they discuss their day and what is going on the world over a glass of tea. The palm trees, besides being lovely, are highly useful to Iraqi’s (Riverbend pg. 103). To many families they see their palm trees as part of their families and when they die or troops cut them down it is tragic. Families use their trees to produce fruits and mostly every part of the tree can but sold for some amount of money. For example, the ponds and leaves are dried up and used to make furniture or other supplies, the date pits are used to feed the animals or to make beads ( Riverbend pg.104). So as you can see the Iraqi’s cherish their tea and palm trees in different ways than Americans do.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

HW 35 Letter to your blog Readers

Over the 13 weeks of class I have learned many things from maintaining my blog and completing all the homework assignments. For example, I learned how to become a better writer and how to respond and reflect on certain readings. It also allowed me to see how the internet could be used for people all over the world to see peoples responds to all different types of work. After people read my blog I hope they are able to learn how I feel about the respond that I give and why that I may feel that way. Once this class is over I believe that I will still blog just not as often. I also believe that I will blog on a things that may affect my everyday life and that I have interests in such as sports or different articles. Also I think that everyone at one point in there live should blog. It not only allows someone to see your opinion but it also teaches you a lot not only about what’s going on in the United States but also the surrounding countries.

HW 33 Respond to a Podcast

“Iraqi Teens Work to Help Their Families” 10/15/07
http://aliveinbaghdad.org/2007/10/15/iraqi-teens-work-to-help-their-families
The general topic that this pod cast is about is children that are working at young ages to try and help support themselves and their families. There are three different kids in this pod cast , two of them work with their fathers and cousins and the other one goes to college and was born with a birth defect. Mustafa Malek Fathullah Ali he is fourteen years old and is in sixth grade. He works with is father in carpentry making tables and bedrooms. But he now works at his uncles’ house because of the dangers there are with traveling. The scenery in the background does not look very good to be living in. To me it looks like they are in their backyards, which has a cement walk as a fence and there is no grass its all just dirt. A viewer may learn the terrible conditions that not only these children have to live in but also their families and how unsafe they really are. Although I have not seen many videos on Iraq, this one looks similar to the few that I have seen. What I find most memorable about this pod cast is the child who is suffering because he was born with a birth defect which was caused by the war. The child had not done anything and does not deserve to have to suffer the rest of his life in pain.

HW 32 Responding to Riverbend

After reading from September 19 to October 5, 2003 in “Baghdad Burning” I found shopping for school supplies quite interesting. Riverbend talks about how shopping for school supplies at a young is a one of the many highlights of going to school. But this year her cousins two kids can’t go along with their parents to pick out their own supplies because of the dangers the war has brought. It is not even safe to bring children out on the streets because you never know if someone will try and abduct them or they may even be shot at. Because of this, Riverbend her cousin his husband and E had to go pick out the supplies while the children stayed home with Riverbends mother and father. When they had returned home from shopping the ten year old had loved the Barbie notebooks that Riverbend had picked out for but the seven year old was not a big fan of Winnie the pooh and had claimed she had out grown it. Also school had started late because of the war and so the children were happy to finally be able to get out of the house and see all of their friends. Usually each year children wake up early and walk themselves to school but because of the danger children must be escorted by several adults along with the school. The parents had meetings about how they would guard the school so that they knew the children and teachers would be safe. They also had a meeting about who was going to bring what because the school was in such need of supplies. For example, each week a new kid had to bring in two new pieces of chalk so the teachers would have something to write with on the chalk board.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

HW 30 You're the Citizen Journalist

Tuesday Bob Steele “ The Media Mosh Pit: Journalists, Bloggers, and Citizens in the Dialogue vs. Diatribe Dance”
This citizenship symposium was about election and the election in Keene State. Bob Steele had talked about the different voting methods which were Plurality, Borda Count, P-W-E, and Pairwise comparisons. He had also talked about the fairness conditions, majority, Condorcet, and II A. Some of the important points he had stated about these voting and fairness methods where that different methods produce different results and methods exhibits’ characteristics associated with fairness and unfairness.
The room was very warm, there weren’t to many people they were scattered everywhere, a lot of people had gotten up in the middle and left and he had used many examples in his slideshow to explain his reasoning’s.
Thursday “Animation as Political and Social Constructions” Jiwon Ahn, Sander Lee, Mark Timney
This citizenship symposium was about politics and citizens. One speaker used a cartoon with Donald duck dressed up being controlled by the Nazis and Germans. He stated that he thought it was odd that they used Donald duck who is known as an angry character, and made him calm and obedient in the cartoon. He says Hale Hitler 33 and a half times in a eight minute cartoon. Another speaker had explained how south park shows how a model citizen should be. In there episodes they have vulgarity, attack religions, and use sexual content. Also 55 percent of the episodes have moral lessons and many of the lessons are from a huge variety. From a lesson about race to a lesson about helping others.
Today there was a lot more people than Tuesday, and there was a table this time with a white table clothe over it. Also there was three speakers today not just one. I had class so I was late and only got to see two of them

HW 31 Responding to Riverbend

After reading from August 31 to September 16, 2003 in “Baghdad Burning” bye Riverbend many new people and places were mention. But there was one that I thought I would like to learn more about, Al-Hakim. I wanted to learn more about him because they talked about how he had been assassinated and how he was important, but had not given much detail as to how or who assassinated him. He was killed at the age of sixty three in Najaf , where he spend most of his time trying to rebuild the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was after his sermon which was about the need for Iraqi unity and as he was leaving the gold-domed shrine of Iman Ali, he along with about seventy five other people were hit by a massive car-bomb explosion. Many believe that Al-Hakim should have known he was at risk because he represented radicalized urban Shiites who had dwelled in Sadr City (Saddam City) in Baghdad.


Lawrence Joffe, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1032018,00.html

Monday, November 5, 2007

HW 28 "An open letter to Riverbend"

After reading the first 50 pages of “Baghdad Burning” by Riverbend it gave me a better understanding of what is going on in Iraq today. I’m not going to lie I’m one of those Americans who is safe behind there computers and was completely oblivious to what these people where going through. I watch the news and only see what they chose to show, but I realized that they don’t show what truly is going on there. They don’t let us know that American soldiers are raiding houses, that many Iraqi’s are living most of their life without electricity and many of them are losing their jobs. For example, they are in the process of “rebuilding” Iraq and there are many Iraqi’s that are capable of rebuilding the damaged buildings and bridges. But instead they Americans completing these jobs for and on top of that they are overpricing everything. I also found ridiculous how E had to go out with a pistol at night when someone was calling his name because he didn’t know what could happen to him. They is wrong when someone has to take a pistol with them just to see who’s in there backyard, no one should have to live in these conditions. After reading the beginning of these book it gave me a better understanding of what is happening and how these Iraqis are suffering. I give them a lot of credit for what they have to put up with and I wish them all the best of luck with each new day.