Palestine blocks Israeli goods

Palestinian authorities have blocked the sale of Israeli settlement made goods. The reason they are doing this is to end their dependency on on Israel's West Bank settlements. If a Palestinian is caught with a sale like this they can be fined and punished by law. They called this the 'cancer' to Palestine and they want to stop it by any means necessary. They estimated that the sale of settlements in West Bank account for 2 million dollars worth of sales.

This is globally bad and good I feel. It is bad because this is causing more separation between the two groups and this will only cause more conflict and war. It is good though because I don't think Palestine should be dependent on Israel. But they need to make peace and I believe the way to do this is not to stop the sale of goods between each other but to talk and negotiate. It will be interesting to see the outcome of this.

Savana Folklore

The story that I read was about a girl who came across a lizard giving birth on a rock. The decided to stay and try and held the lizard give birth. Later on she is brought to a djinn who was giving birth. The djinn had been the lizard earlier, only in a different form. The girl stayed with the djinn for days and helped it. When she got home she found a man who needed a wife and got him to mary a djinn. So everyone is a child of djinns and that explains why the women are so beautiful.

The wildlife element of African folklore was incorporated in the beginning with the djinn taking the form of a lizard. It has moral instruction because it teaches you to be caring and nice for animals because they are living creatures too and that you should be caring for all living things and accept them even if they are different. It is entertaining becuase it has cool creatures in it such as a lizard and a djinn.

What was entertaining about this myth was the fact that they girl was talking with a spirit the whole time. When humans interact with nonhuman life it makes it interesting and fun to read.
This taught me how African culture teaches people to respect and care for all aspects of life and their surrounding environment. It also teaches me that they have spirtual beliefs different than the West. I can apply this to my life because I have learned to respect my environment and living things. I wasn't taught it through folklore or a djinn but I learned this lesson through other stories is the West that teach moral values.

Wonders of Africa

The first wonder that I read about was Zanzibar. I heard this word many times before but never knew what or meant or what it was. I found that Zanzibar is an island in the East African Coast. The island has a lot of culture and history to go with it. It has been a main port to traders and was ruled by Europeans at one point. The island is familiar to Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans. It has done trade for weapons, wine, luxuries, and wheat.

The second wonder that I read about was the Tuareg people. They are in the Sahara and date back to 2000 BC. They have their own alphabet and writing script. They are believed to be the founder of Timbuktu. They have attacked many times and tried to gain control of the land and it still continues today. They attacked in the 90's in Mali and Niger.

The third wonder I read about was the pyramids at Giza. There are three great pyramids here. For a long time they were ranked as the highest structure on earth until skyscrapers began to be made. It is not sure how they were mad but the architecture is well advanced. It amazed how people could build such structures will limited technology and knowledge. They have about two million blocks of stone and each weighs over two tons.

I believe that I never heard or learned about these type of amazing and good things in Africa because they are overshadowed by the bad. All I ever hear about Africa is how bad it is and how there are so many conflicts. This made me picture Africa as poor and terrible but that's not true. This website shows a new perspective that allows us to escape all of the bad and appreciate the wonders of Africa.

South African baboons

Recently in South Africa baboons have been coming into a lot of human contact. They have been wondering into cities, towns, and villages looking for food. They usually leave a trail of wreckage behind them and are scaring many people. Also this is not a good environment for the baboons being surrounded by humans. Many people such as farmers are shooting and killing the baboons if they see one.
This connects to our current unit of Africa. It is another conflict and new thing I never knew about Africa. This is globally important because it adds on to the current conflicts and problems happening in Africa. This happens to be a conflict that is not on the media much. Also it shows how many animals are losing their habitat. If baboons are needing to go into villages for food this shows that they are losing their home and habitat and have no where else to go. Many animals are losing their homes.

Construction in Israel

There is new tension between the U.S and Israel relationship. Israel has been doing new construction in east Jerusalem and the U.S are criticizing them for it. They had harsh words to the Israeli government and asked that they halt or freeze the construction. Israel had stopped and some people believed that they were freezing but the prime minister says that it was true that some construction halted as the Israelites were shocked by the harsh criticism of the U.S. , but they are not freezing the construction plans.

This has huge global importance. We are Israel's main ally in and we supplied them with weapons and helped them become a power in the Middle East. If we stopped protecting them due to harsh threats such as this then it could hurt them. Also if we aren't allies with them, then we won't have an excuse to go into the Middle East to settle disputes.

Africa

Many thoughts come to mind when I first think about Africa. I think about geography, culture, conflicts, imperialism, and many other things. When I think of geography I think about the hot climate and little water. I picture Africa being very hot and dry and since I picture them being poor or having no money I imagine people without water in a hot area. I think of a very spiritual culture. I picture people in Africa being very religious and having many ceremonies and gatherings. I picture face painting and old instruments. I also think about poverty. I know Africa is an extremely poor continent and so I imagine everyone living poor lives. When I think of conflict I think about all of the wars and genocides going of in Africa today. There is Darfur, blood diamonds, Northern Uganda war, and many other conflicts. Such conflicts cause many deaths and cause people to live in fear. I watched the movie Blood Diamond and I saw how scary it can be to live in Africa. Of course this is just a movie and not all of it is real but I know that blood diamonds are real and I have learned about it in school. When I think of Imperialism I think of Africa because in 9th grade social studies we learned how many different European nations went into Africa. This causes large cultural diversity and many battles between Europeans and Africans. Also Europeans went to Africa to buy, sell, and trade slaves.

I think that these thoughts come to mind because it is what I see in our media. Also last year we learned a little about Africa when the Europeans went into Africa so that also effects what comes to mind when I think of Africa.

Obsession

Culture of Terror:
The culture of terror is very scary. Radical Islam uses terror against Western ideas, Christianity, Judaism, or anything that goes against what they believe in. This is a scary thought that people will use terror to kill or force people to have their beliefs.
Culture of Jihad:
Children are taught that Jihad is a religious holy war for Allah. They are taught that it is good to fight for the sake of Allah. They believe that the U.S is against them and that the U.S is trying to get the whole world against them and take away Islam. They believe the west needs to be defeated. It means self struggle with the Jews and the Western world.
The Culture of Hatred:
The view the U.S and Jews as Satan. They say that we are beasts and we drink elderly ones blood. They get people to believe and think this through a lot of anti west and Jew propaganda. I think this is ridiculous because the propaganda is ridiculous and not even close to the truth. The leader and people who make these videos must know how fake this is.
Media of Terrorism:
They use media to spread terrorism through TV, radio, internet, and any other type of media source. This makes me angry how people can just use propaganda through media and people will believe what they hear and support it greatly without actually knowing the truth.
Jihad in the West:
Many people do not know much about the Jihad and who are the extremist groups. There is a lot of deception between who is for terrorism and Jihad and who is not. Some people lie in public and have different thoughts at home. I think this is very scary because you can't always trust the officials and leaders you see on TV. It was really scary that the people who bombed the towers on 9/11 trained in the U.S. That is very frightening and unbelievable.
Culture of Denial
Some people are in denial that there is a threat. Many people do not alarm the people and inform people how they should be. This only hurts the people. I feel that this is not good and we are simply hiding the people from the truth because it is a scary thought.

Nazi

They use the same propaganda and the same ideas. They outright just lie about many ideologies of Jews. I can not believe that they believe the Jews use Christian blood to make Matzah. They even had a show where the Jews killed a boy for the Matzah. They both say the same things about Jews and this just proves that the regime needs to be stopped.

Can the U.S defeat the Taliban

I do not believe that the U.S will be able to defeat the Taliban and win the war in Afghanistan. They might be able to create some peace and weaken the Taliban forces but I do not think they can stop it all together. The Taliban has so many followers and they do not listen to the U.S. They have their own rules and do whatever they think is best. They will not stop fighting and the U.S army will not be able to find them and kill every single one of them. The only way to stop the Taliban would be if they stopped their way of life and extreme beliefs and believed a democracy was best and their is no way that is going to happen. Therefore I believe that the U.S can't win the war in Afghanistan.

U.S into Iraq

I disagree with Patrick Doherty's article on why Bush went into Iraq. All of the reason that he states are very interesting though. All three reasons are good reasons why the U.S would want to go into Iraq. They would help us with our oil crisis, help Israel, and military. Going into Iraq would definitely benefit these three reasons. But I do not believe that the U.S would go into Iraq for these reasons.

The U.S would not be willing to go behind its citizens backs and lie about why they went into Iraq. They also would not take advantage of such a serious event like 9/11. Doherty seems to believe that 9/11 made our government happy or was possibly planned by the U.S government so that we could go into Iraq. This is ridiculous and 9/11 did not have anything to do with the U.S government.
I believe that they went into Iraq because they had reasonable belief that Iraq had weapons and were a threat to the U.S. They would not be able to just make this up and pretend they think they have weapons.

Oil and water Middle East

After reading the article on the U.S's dependency on oil in the Middle East I believe that it needs to be stopped soon. The U.S can't rely of the Middle East so heavily because then they can just control us by raising oil prices. The U.S should find a reliable alternative source of energy so that we can make decisions not based on whether it would anger OPEC or not. Another solution could be to take oil that is in the U.S. Alaska has a lot of oil that the U.S could dig into and supply ourselves with so that we are not as reliant on the Middle East.

I believe that the U.S should be very worried about the water crisis in the Middle East. Water is very important because you can't make oil without having water. Therefore since they are running low on water, oil will become harder to make and more valuable. This will either raise the price of oil a lot of stop the production of oil.