Brainstorming

The three issues facing individuals and groups in the St.Louis region that interest me are

*Domestic Abuse
*Drug Abuse
*HIV/AIDS

I think that all three of these topics are interesting and are problems that are in St.Louis but aren't really focused on and talked about on a deeper spectrum. I would like to not only do research on the people that are effected by these issues but also on the children that are effected also. I don't think that the children are really focused on.

Multimedia Presentation

Research Question

*1. If marriage before the age of 16 is illegal according to the Afghan Constitution why does the Afghanistan government not convict the men that marry these girls, beat them, and even kill them?

2.Husbands are not the sole abusers in families: mother-in-laws were identified as the main abuser by almost a quarter of the women in Afghanistan. Knowing what the women in a forced marriage have to go through why would another women take part in the abuse?

3. Many people believe that majority of the men that inflict abuse on the Afghan women are part of the Taliban, many are just ordinary men. If their is no force behind them to force them to do these acts why do they continue to do so?

Tentative Research Proposal

1. What you're interested in researching and why?
I'm interesting in researching and learning about the women in Afghanistan and the horrors that they are faced to deal with in their marriages. These women are married off at such young ages and are forced to serve their husbands and the husbands family while enduring abuse from them. Even though the marriages are cultural should they still continue to do them since they cause the women to be placed in a physical dangerous state? They are afraid to ask for help and tell the flaws in their marriages because they do not want to humiliate themselves or their families.

2. Links to articles
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/world/asia/08burn.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

TIMES article (sorry I don't have the article to cite it)


3.   Are these marriages based off of their religion as well as their culture?
Why is the government not getting involved in these homicides and the drastic increase in suicides?

DRC current events

Since King Leopold's reign in the Congo the people have been in a constant struggle because of the rebellions against the government. Due to the conflicts going on in the DRC many are no longer safe, especially women. I watched a video on BBC News that talks about the women of the DRC and the horrific struggles that they are up against. Women and children have been kidnapped, raped, mutilated and tortured by soldiers from both foreign militias and the Congolese army.Many people know nothing about these women and have not heard their stories. Why haven't these womens stories been told? Why is the government not doing anything to stop then soldiers from doing these actions? These women are forced to suffer for the rest of there lives without there stories being heard.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7740948.stm


The second article that I read about had to do with the killings of the Hutu people and how the murders could be argued as a genocide. More than one million Hutu people fled Rwanda for DR Congo during the fighting.
The report says several incidents in 1996 and 1997 pointed to circumstances and facts from which a court could infer the intention to destroy the Hutu ethnic group in the DRC in part.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11450093

Chapter 8 Small Group disscussion

After our small group discussion that topic that stood out to me the most was the 10 commandments topic and the discussion and the punishment with the chicotte and why  the Europeans forced the Africans to punish their own for the Europeans own amusement and gain.



For it to be a small group discussion I thought our group did really well. We hit all of the main points and elaborated on them thoroughly. All then questions were pretty repetitive so our discussions ended up in the same place we started.

King Leopold's Ghost

I was shocked when I first began to read this book. Surprisingly I did not even recall knowing about all of the horrific events that took place in Congo. Reading the intro for this opened my eyes to the horrific and greed that took place in Congo. Even though we discussed this in class I still couldn't wrap my fingers around the fact that the Europeans thought that they were going over to Africa to help them and bring "civilisation". Also while reading this book it made me thing about how close all of these events were to home (even though I wasn't born yet). When it was talking about Stanley being and writing to St.Louis it really caught my attention.

Why did Stanley feel the need to lie about his childhood and make up events?
What made Stanley want to travel to Africa?