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?

Thoughts After Class

1. Today in class I learned more about President Obama's decision to end the war and pull American troops back into the US at a gradual pace. I learned a lot about colonizing and imperialism and why different countries wanted to colonize different areas and what the advantages of doing that were.

2. n/a

3. I am interested in which countries which countries and why and if other countries colonize other countries just for greed? 

Memorable Events in History

What I remember:

The first event that I remember was the Virginia Tech Massacre (April 16, 2007). The shooting were a HUGE shock for not only Americans but also for the people of South Asia considering that the shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, was Korean. I think it came as a huge shock for individuals because no one was expecting a school shooting of that size to occur. I also think that it was a shocking event in history because everything was being shown every where, you could just flip on the news and see the video of Seung-Hui Cho talking about killing fellow students and showing the murdering weapons. It was proven that Cho had some mental disability but it made me question the protection of schools and the security of people who have mental disabilities and what can be done for their safety.



9/11 was a huge m as well as the rest of America and individuals around the world. No one could come to the realization that America had been attacked by terrorist. It was also a major event because people could see the attack live, with one flick o the television you could see the twin towers crumbling down and people jumping out of the windows for survival.  Although all of the negatives were involved with this even, it also showed a positive side of the attacks. America had come together as a country to support each other.

Hurricane Katrina was the last major event I thought of. I think that Hurricane Katrina was a major event because the hurricane was being announced for weeks and people were told to evacuate, but many people did not think that the hurricane was going to be as tremendous as it really was. This event opened my eyes on the government and how it chooses to respond to different situations depending on what they are.

What my parents remembered

The assassination of  JFK was the first event that was remembered because one of the most popular and beloved presidents of there time was killed.

The next event that was remembered was the Vietnam War. The war was a memorable event because he(my father) was almost drafted into the war. It was also memorable because a lot of close family members and friends were in the war and lost their lives in the war.

The last event that my parents remember was the assassination on MLK. It was a sad time for African Americans because they lost a powerful and influential leader that they felt held the future for them.

Taliban poison attack or mass hysteria?

1. What's being discussed in this article?
2. When did the event happen? (Is this breaking news or something that's been analyzed and discussed for a while?)
3. What questions do you have that would help make this article make more sense to you? What more do you need to learn about to be able to report on this event?

 This article discuses the evacuation of Tortia high school. Tortia high school is a school in Afghanistan that teachers young women. The girls were rushed out of the school due to a possible position attacked believed to be conducted by the enemies of women's education, specifically the Taliban. Some girls even leapt out of the window for the chance to get fresh air. The smell was nauseating and apparently smelt like human sewage. A total of 46 students and nine teachers were treated in the hospital. The thought of hysteria was brought into the picture but many believe that the Talban was behind the attack.

This specific attack took place earlier this week but this is not the first time that a womens school has been attacked. These attacks have been discussed and analyzed from as early as January 2006 when a male teacher was dragged into a courtyard and decapitated by a suspected member of the Taliban.

I think that there should have been stories by some of the girls that were actually in the school and I would also like to know how they got the gases into the building.