Thursday, November 15, 2007

HW 34: Iraq's family Values

As I was reading Riverbend’s “Baghdad Burning”, October 9th through 29th, I came across of the tea tradition in Iraq. The tea is served to the entire family at once while sitting in the living room together. The making of the tea is something different though, who the tea is served to and the serving time is not. Tea is served in many ways depending on the family but there is a basic 3-step process that tea is made. The water is boiled then tealeaves are added and then finally it is all put in to a different kettle and heated until the leaves rise to the surface of the kettle and allowed to settle again (Riverbend 108-109). Tea is never served by a tea bag. Which I thought it was very interesting because a lot of the people I know, including myself, use tea bags. But in fact, in Iraq, it is considered an insult to Iraqi’s due to their expertise of tea and the way it is served. The drinking of tea together is their family’s way to have conversation and enjoy each other’s company. In my house when I was little we did that when we sat down for dinner. The conversations they have range from the current political situation of Iraq to what each of their days consisted of, they do this but free will and often look forward to their evening tea as a family. Then when Riverbend went on to say “Unlike the typical family conversation around the world ‘How was your day dear?’ doesn’t get at typical answer in Iraq.”(Riverbend 109), I thought was very interesting because that is a typical in the US.

HW 33 Podcast and Iraqi Children

I watched the podcast “Iraqi Teens Work to Help Their Families” which was part of the Alive in Baghdad series. The link to it is http://aliveinbaghdad.org/2007/10/15/iraqi-teens-work-to-help-their-families/. This podcast was published on October 15th, 2007. After watching it, it is quite obvious that the message that’s trying to get a crossed was simply that most teens in Iraq must help their families with the work because the unemployment rate in Iraq is over half of the population. There is only a handful who could help there families. Throughout the podcast three children are shown talking about their lives in helping out their families. The first is Hussein Kamal who is only fifteen years old. He says that he helps his father with carpentry during the holidays. He states that his brother taught him how to paint furniture. The next child is only fourteen and is in sixth grade. His name is Mustafa Malek Fathullah Ali. He informs us that he has worked with his father in carpentry since he was a child. He says that the security situation is difficult and no one can protect themselves. He is currently helping his uncle at his house. The final child that they show us is named Yousif. Yousif does not help his family with work. He is enrolled in the College of Agriculture in Abu Ghraib. Yousif is currently unemployed. He also suffers from a birth defect. He lets us know that a habit he has developed is just sitting at the computer. Anyone who watches this podcast might feel a sense of pity towards the Iraqi people who were once able to live normal lives, but since the war are forced to be more cautious with their daily. The most memorable thing I find about this podcast are the boys ending statements to the Arab people telling them to stop supporting terrorism because we obviously are trying to stop terrorism too.

HW 32: Summarizing Aquila Al-Hashimi

I thought I would summarize Aquila Al-Hashimi. Saturday September 27, Aqila Al-Hashimi was buried in the south of Iraq after being murdered by an unknown attacker. There are suspicions as to who was behind it, nothing is official. One of the accused is Al-Chalabi, who was also accused of the attack on the Jordanian Embassy; however Al-Chalabi rerouted his accusation to Saddam. Riverbend believes this is sort of a cop out. Al-Hashimi was said to be made an ambassadress to the UN for Iraq. It is now kind of ironic. Since her death the UN is pulling out its staff to do “security reasons” (Riverbend pages 84-85). “…the UN is pulling out…we’re getting bombed” (Riverbend page 85). This is how she tells everyone about the political situations in Iraq, if the UN is in its going good, and if their out it’s going badly.

HW 31. Helping Moja

After reading the post “Turning Tables” by Riverbend in Baghdad Burning, The story that really stood out to me, having family members who fought over seas, was that of “Moja” a soldier fighting in Iraq. I had to go online and look up something interesting about her. The URL address for the blog “Turning Tables” is http://turningtables.blogspot.com. The blog is written by a soldier that is fighting in Iraq. Her blog made me emotional and it made me angry. After reading the blog, I realized how hard life is for the soldiers over there and I felt horrible for anyone who has to go over and deal with it. They go through so much in just trying to help the people over there. Reading this blog gave me the urge to want to help the soldiers over there anyway I could. I obviously want all of our solders to come back home to their families and friends, but I don’t think that its time yet. I feel that the Iraqis need to start stepping up so we can start bringing our troops home.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

30 B Very offended!

After attending the lectures of Jiwan Ahn, Sander Lee and Mark Timney’s “Animations as Political and Social Constructions” a lecture from the Citizenship Symposium done by Keene State College, I was greatly offended! Thursday, the day of the lecture and also that of kristelnacht or holocaust remembrance day, I feel that Jiwans was not only very inappropriate but also I didn't understand what it had to do with blogging or technology at all. I feel that she was a good speaker but I just didn’t like her topic. Mr. Timney’s was not only offence to people but also he needed to take consideration that it was kristelnacht. I had one of my friends come with me to keep me company, she also was greatly offended. Showing a video of “Hitler” and “the Nazis” was not only rude but I had to leave. I feel that he needed to change for the day. If it was another day, I think is presentation would work. Not on holocaust remembrance day.

HW 30 Voting and blogging??

After attending the lecture by Dr. Vincent Ferlini who has a BS in math from Notre Dame, MS in math from the University of Oregon, Prof at Keene State College, I have learned a great deal about different voting systems. “The earliest voting system came from Greece in 509 BCD” states Ferlini. His lecture entitled “Get Out the Vote” i have learned many ideas such as to educate people on voting, opportunities educate people on voting my select groups, educate people on the many voting systems such as plurality, Borda, Plurality with elimination, Pair wise comparison, and to Educate people on fairness conditions such as majority criterion, Condorcet criterion and independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA). The interesting information I found was that of Approval voting which only list candidates approved of. Also of run off which involves more then one election. I thought his lecture was very interesting but I didn’t understand what it has to do with blogging.

Thursday, November 1, 2007

HW: 27 Annotated Baghdad

Riverbend, “Baghdad Burning: girl blog from Iraq”. New York, NY: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2005. This blog is a diary of a twenty four year old, Iraqi, girl who needs a place to rant about the war. She talks about political issues, what everyday life is when there is a war going on in country, and information that Americans do not know about what is going on in Iraq. The twenty four year old girl doesn’t go by here real name but she goes by Riverbend and she talks about issues of the war that she is tired of. It is nice to have a first hand view of what is really going on in the war. People like reading her blog because she gives more information that the government doesn’t want the American citizen to know. Riverbend needs to be careful because she is telling bloggers and or people who like to read this information, that her government or the United States government probably would not want to be disclosed. This is a great resource for anyone who wants to know what really is going on in the war.