Palestinian Authority blocks sale of goods made at Israeli settlements

This article is about plans by the Palestinians to end their dependence on Israel on everything, including goods. Although they think they really need to become independent, it will be hard for them because not many Palestinians are sellers of goods. But they have seen how much money selling these goods has given the Israeli's, and they want that profit to go towards them to give them more legitimacy. Overall there a lot of problems with this plan, like 20,000 palestinians work in Jewish settlement in the WestBank, and now that would be considered illegal.
I think this plan could be either very good or very bad. If it ends up only causing conflict and doesn't actually help the Palestinians gain so independency, then it would really just be bad. It hard to imagine something like this working because how so many of the people producing the good in the West Bank are Israeli's, so I don't really believe that Palestinians could just pick up the trade and start raking in the profits like they expect to. Overall, I just think that it will be something that will end up failing, and they will probably believe that it is the Israeli's fault, so it will just add to the animosity. Good effort though, ya never know what could happen.

Belgium's lower house votes to ban burqa

This article is about a new law passed in Belgium that bans the use of Burkas by muslim women. The vote was unanimous in favor of the law. They say that everyone must show their faces in public, especially women because they say they have to protect their values, which they say is women rights. They also say that only 10% of muslim women wear the burka, and they are "radical". Amnesty International condemned the vote right away, and Muslim Rights activists warn that it may cause more muslim women to wear the burka.

This article is of global importance because its show how ridiculous and ethnocentric European nations, and nations all over the world are becoming. They say that they are doing this to support women's rights, but aren't they taking away their right to wear what ever they want. Why don't they just admit that they feel uncomfortable because of stereo typical views of muslims. Just the fact that the man who voted for it said that only the radical muslims wear burkas show how uneducated they really are about muslim tradition and culture. This is really a shame.

Clinton blasts Iran, Syria in appearance before Jewish group (Current Event)

This article is about Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama's recent opinions on some different issues going on in the Middle East, such as Iran, Syria, and the current status of Israel. The Iranian Prime Minister, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be coming to New York on Monday to talk with Obama's staff. In a speech, Hillary made it clear that the actions of Iran are caused instability all over the Middle East and the United States will not stand for it. Also she talked about the side that Syria has to take in this matter to be able to keep the peace. They have to stop suppling Hezbollah.
Obama talks about the rule of other nation's who don't support Iran's nuclear program, and asks them to please vote for sanctions on Iran.
This article is of global importance because it is about the most unstable region in the whole world. Any time that we try to make it better, and especially when Ahmadinejad comes to the United States, its a big deal. Anytime we talk to him we have to hope for the best. If any strides can be made to help stop nuclear weapons and any problems going on in the Middle East, it is a big deal. Its is good that the US is making there position clear in the matters going on in Iran and Syria. The only problem is that if we put sanctions on Iran, they can make us suffer. And guess why, Oil. Iran is a member of OPEC, and I think we could soon see a major jump in gas prices if we keep on pushing countries to go against Iran's nuclear program.

Tale of Takfaka

I think that this folklore is about learning to adapt to new things, and to except people even if they are different. Because they can end up helping you and making you better people. I think is to teach the people of the Sahara that they should except people no matter how different they are. This is a valuable lesson no matter you live, and there are many stories that resemble this same lesson. There is a short story called "one small blue bead" that teaches a similar lesson. I think this story shows also about an important part of all African folklore. It shows that we as human should be one with nature, cause it will benefit us in the long run.

Wonders of Africa

The first wonder I looked at was the Black Pharaohs. This first struck my eye because I thought it was an interesting topic, and I never really thought of Pharaohs as being black, so I know I could learn something interesting by reading it. I turns of that a black pharaoh did rule of not only Nubia, but Egypt as well because they had conquered it. He built marvelous temples and promoted renaissance in Egypt. He also started up the old tradition of using pyramids, which is why there are more in areas of Sudan then there are in Egypt. Nubia I am assuming is present day Sudan.
The second wonder I looked at was the island of Zanzibar. I knew that I recognized the name but I couldn't remember from what so I wanted to take a look to see what this island was all about. It turns out that this island was pretty important and influenced by a lot of other cultures, including those from asia, europe and the middle east. It was used as a port for Africa, and was a major exporter back in the day of one crop economies. Today Zanzibar is once again trying to compete as a major exporter, but are trying to adjust to a world where one-crop economies are obsolete.
The last wonder I read about was the Vodou religion. I thought it was funny when I started reading because I thought it was going to be about those dolls that people stick pins into, but as made clear in the article, this had nothing to do with the western fad of voodoo. This religion is about human trying to become more at one with spirits and nature. A big part of the religion is possession, but still nothing with controlling other people or putting hexes on people. It is a very peaceful religion that has been going strong in africa for hundreds of year. To bad though, I would have liked to read about voodoo.

Africa

When someone asks me what I think about africa some of the first things to come into my mind are poverty, aids, dessert, disease, and british influence. Another thing that I think about that doesn't relate to its people are all the different ecosystems that are there. I know there is the biggest river, the biggest desert, and huge rain forests. Its amazing how all the different climate types there are . But through schooling I have been trained to think that the british caused lots of problems in Africa, and are still influencing them today. Maybe some of the problems between villages and stuff wouldn't be around. But I am not sure how I really feel about that because schools seem to have a common theme of blaming things either on the US or Europe, sometimes for a good reason, but I feel like the people that the british encountered weren't so well off before the Europeans got there. Im not really sure how I feel but I hope to be able to get a better understanding after this unit.

Obsession-- Movie Thoughts

Overall I felt surprised by a lot of things and a lot of what I already thought was backed up. Some of the stuff that I was most surprised about was the correlation between Nazi Germany and the Jihad of radical muslims. I was also surprised about how many people I saw in some of the clips where the people were shouting death to America. The rap song especially surprised me because they were making jokes of it. At least most the time the people doing to radical acts seriously thought they were doing it for Allah and they were very serious about it. It scares me more to think they are just doing it for laughs or something of that nature. Another things that surprised me was that they were also focusing a lot of their terrorist propaganda towards Britain as well as the United States. I thought that it was almost all towards the United States. So of my prior thoughts that were backed up were that Michael Moore really has no idea what he is talking about, and that a lot of what Jihadist use to gain support is false advertising about the "evil " America. They can't even be honest with there reasons of hate, so how legitimate can they think there ideals really are? If they actually thought what they were doing was right, then why not show Amercica for what it really is? I also knew that there was a lot of similarities between the Nazis and the Radical Muslims, but I never knew they actually team up when Hitler and the Mufti agreed that they had a common goal to destroy all the jews, or extermination. It is a little bit scary how similar they are to Nazi Germany they Radicals Ismamic people are, because there are so many Islamic people, that if that became the way of most of the Islamic people, it would be a terribly hard task to try and defeat them. They are still gaining support and spreading their ideas of islam, which is also scary. Something needs to be done before their support grows to a level where it might be impossible to defeat them. I never thought that maybe one thing we can do instead of judge the muslims in our country, we should empower them so that they feel more comfortable in speaking about there peaceful view of islam.

War in Afghanistan and the Taliban

I think that we can win the war in Afghanistan against the taliban. But we have to be committed as a country to our plan. I think that the biggest enemy to our military right now is the people in our own country who don't want to use it. If we went in the Afghanistan and just said we not ever leaving, would the Taliban just sit back and hope that we are bluffing. The people in our country just think that we are fighting a war for nothing. But if we were able to set up a stable democracy in Afghanistan, or Iraq, it would enable us to reap major rewards. I don't think winning the war means killing all the Taliban, winning the war would really be having the Taliban be a non factor in Afghanistan by giving the people power, and confidence that they are in control. But in saying this I would have to say we can't win because the people in our country wont allow us to. They only look at how many American's have been killed, not what they were trying to accomplish and why. Even during WWII the people kept count of american deaths, but they also kept count of Enemy deaths. Now we keep track of American deaths, and also Afghanistan deaths. But do you know the Afghanistan deaths we keep track of? the civilians. Everything we do that has to do with our military is wrong, or at least thats what the majority of our people think.

Bush and Iraq article response

I think that although there are many raticles out there that think that we went into Iraq for a number of strange reason, Doherty I think is mostly correct in his arguments. Out of the three things that we mentioned for reasons of going into Iraq, I think that the most important one is oil. Oil drives almost everything we do in this country so why would it not be true for this case. It definitely has some influence on what we are doing in the Middle East, or why why else would we continue to stay there. Other countries like in Africa would like our help even more.
I agree with what he says about oil, but some of his other points i don't really understand.

US dependency on Oil

I think that the best option for the united states is to lose its dependency gradually over time, and eventually have no dependency what so ever. Of course it would cost a lot of money to work on alternative fuel sources, but it would save billions in the long run. Not only is it not economically beneficial for the US to get oil from the Middle East, but its not safe. If we are dependent on the Middle East for anything, they can control us. We shouldn't have to second guess ourselves when going into a middle eastern country, but instead we not only have to second guess ourselves, we actually don't because our fear of gas prices rising. Really i am wondering is it possible to win a war on terror while we are dependent on oil. Any time we are making progress they could shoot up oil prices. This is a scary thought if you ask me, which is why we need to become fully independent of oil and energy. As for the water situation, it would be devastating if the prices of water went up, because all that it would effect. The article said basically water is used to make everything we have and eat. But I think that water is less important because we aren't dependant on any other nation for our water, so if water prices go up, its not a result of our country trying to defeat terrorism in the middle east. It is just because of a shortage of water. And maybe if the world would stop being so dependant on the oil that the middle east produces, it wouldn't have to use all the water that it is usign now because the demand would be lowered by so much. Even if the US was the only country who became independent, that is still a huge chunk of OPEC's profit.

True Life Response

The person that most stuck out to me while watching this video was definitely Hajeeb. He stuck out to me the most because he seemed to be the least dramatic person in thevideo. He and te jewish teacher were the most accepting of the problem, and just did all that they could to get a better life, or the life that they wanted. I liked Hajeeb because he seemed to be the only person who realized that the real way out of the problems was to leave the country. And it wasn't easy but he fought for his family and himself to get them out. I felt really good for him when they showed him living in south caroline cause i thought he deserved to get out of the West Bank and Israel altogether. When they showed all the peoples everyday lives it almost uncomparable to ours. Most of the people there were having trouble just trying to get a to a certain destination. While here we complain if the ride is going to be kinda long. And also here it doesn't even enter our minds that we get the opportunity of education no matter where we live, and its free. For them, the whole education process is a struggle in itself, and they really want to go to school to learn, while we take advantage of our opportunity, instead of making the best out of it. The person i least liked was Hiba because it didn't seem like she was making any effort to make things better for her self. Yes she was going to college but it seemed to me that she was acting a lot and complaining. And she also was totally not understanding of the Jews. While most of the others could understand both sides of the situation.