Response 8

            The Occupy Wall Street protest honestly has actually grown way more then I first had expected. The movement has spread across the entire world anywhere from Italy, which was the largest, Amsterdam, Greece, Japan, and even all over in cities all around the United States. It has been going on for two months now and has gone much further then I imagined in this short of time. There are hundreds of thousands if not more just in New York, including some actors, writers, professors, and other successful working people.

            The protests have been peaceful in all areas except a very minor few, one being in the United States and the couple others, which did not get too bad. The people of the world are speaking out and standing up for what they believe and what needs to be done, honestly the sooner the better. The corporations do not want to change because they are too concerned about money and power and not the general welfare for mother Earth. Rome's protest had over two hundred thousand people and one small group of guys got violent but were apprehended shortly afterwards.

            In the United States hundreds were actually arrested, some at the Grant Park, where President Obama held election victory night rally. Some were arrested for not leaving a capital ground, others were arrested at a bank including some people just trying to go to their bank and make a transaction. There was even an undercover cop at the bank who man handled a helpless women just trying to get in her bank to make a transaction into the bank and arrested her. Some people were even arrested at the steps of the supreme court for not leaving the area.

            The movement has grown on an epic scale and I believe if they keep it up, eventually they will make themselves heard and something will have to be done. I actually really hope something becomes of these protests, I don't want the winter to come and everyone slowly give up hope. I doubt this will be the case, when people finally have a strong cause to protest and they actually do it, I bet they are willing to see this thing through all the way to the end. At least I hope that they are going to make something of this protest in the long run, I don't want all this effort to be wasted and forgotten.

            President Obama at his rally mentioned the protest at the new Martin Luther King statue. He said basically that Martin Luther King accomplished his goals by enduring violent attacks, much hate, spending time in prisons, etc.. In other words the Occupy Wall Street protest is not going to just fix things over night, it is going to take months or possibly even years to get the point across and to make something happen. More than one thousand cities and over eighty countries, hundreds of thousands if not more people are now involved in this protest. Why the corporations don't see the flaw in their methods by now, we will never know until something becomes of this brilliant movement.

Occupy Wall Street Response

            Occupy Wall Street, a name that I have heard many times already. Either the next big reform or just another failed attempt to change. This protest has grown phenomenally since day one, it started September 17th, 2011. On an article I found on a website called adbusters.org it says that the protest has now moved into its twenty seventh day and was inspired by the Egyptian Tahrir Square uprising and the Spanish acampadas.

            At the beginning the protest was kept out of the media for some reasons I'm not exactly sure of and there was much police brutality as well as many pointless unprovoked arrests. The movement has grown so much that there are actually protests around the world joining in protesting for the same thing just in a different area. The protesters meet every day and even have a assembly at a certain time each day to discuss their meaning and other protest related objectives. There are websites all over the internet discussing the matter and revealing information the media will not.

            The Wall Street protesters have even come up with a list of seven demands that they want and vowed to stay even through the cold harsh weather. I honestly hope the movement continues to grow and eventually topples our power hungry, money sucking investors of Wall Street. Our government and our economy are failing terribly the past president or so and I am actually happy that people are finally standing up for it and making this movement actually happen. I would join them if I was willing to fail school and waste my money, I would go to the one in New York though.

            The seven demands that the protesters have come up with are, one, to end the collusion between government and large corporation/banks, so that our elected leaders are actually representing the interests of the people (the 99%) and not just their rich donors (the 1%). Two, Investigate Wall Street and hold senior executives accountable for the destruction in wealth that has devastated millions of people. Three, to return the power of coining money to the U.S. Treasury and return to sound money. Four, limit the size, scope and power of banks so that none are ever again "Too Big to Fail" and in need to taxpayer bailouts.

            Five, to eliminate "personhodd" legal status for corporations, six, repeal the patriot act, end the war on drugs and protect civil liberties. Finally seven, end all imperial wars of aggression, bring the troops home from all countries, cut the military budget and limit the military role to protection of the homeland. I actually agree with just about all the demands that they have and would love to see them followed through with. The only demands I can't agree with  are the ones I don't completely understand what they are going to accomplish if passed which is due to my ignorance of the matter not the fact that I wouldn't want those few demands passed, because I am sure once I learn about what it is I would want it passed as much as the protestors. Again, this could be the next major reform of America or just another failed attempt of change that was just ignored.

First Paper Proposal

             In today's world disasters strike everywhere without any warning. Disasters come in many forms wither it is a simple robbery or a tornado terrorizing thousands of homes. Honestly, I would say that natural disasters are probably the worst of all. Natural disasters cause millions if not billions of dollars in damage in a as little as a day or so.

            They come in all sizes and every element, however what I want to talk about tsunami's and earthquakes. First off lets figure out what exactly an earthquake is, according to Kathy Blaustein "An earthquake is the shaking of the earth that occurs after pieces of the crust of the Earth suddenly shift. The term earthquake describes the sudden slip on a fault and include the ground shaking and radiating seismic energy that is caused by the slip" (Blaustein). Earthquakes can be caused by numerous things such as a volcano eruption, they can also occur anywhere in the world at any time during any sort of weather conditions which make them almost impossible to predict. The best option we have at the moment is to calculate the probability of one happening in the future.

            The Earth is divided up into tectonic plates, eight major ones and many minor ones. These plates are what cause most major earthquakes. There are also three distinct types of earthquakes and they are Subduction Zone Earthquakes, Deep Earthquakes, and Shallow earthquakes. Subduction Zone Earthquakes happen according to Kathy Blaustein "When an oceanic plate gets pushed underneath a continental plate it will often stick instead of sliding smoothly. A large amount of stress builds up over time and may be released suddenly as a large earthquake" (Blaustein).

            Deep Earthquakes occur within the Juan De Fuca Plate as it apparently sinks into the mantle. Since these types of earthquakes are usually so deep within the Earth their aftershocks are not felt. There is also the Shallow Earthquakes which occur within the North American Plate according to Kathy. These earthquakes are believed to occur due to stress transferred from the Cascadia Subduction Zone into the inside of the North American Plate.

            However tsunami's on the other hand are "a series of sea waves that can be caused by earthquakes or landslides at or beneath the sea floor. The displacement of the sea floor that occurs during certain large submarine earthquakes and landslides causes displacement of large volumes of sea water above it producing large, fast moving waves" (Blaustein). Due to tsunami's being caused by earthquakes I would consider earthquakes to be just about the worst natural disaster possible.

            Japan has experienced this disaster on an epic scale and has been demolished in certain areas causing all kinds of havoc and it has even destroyed part of their nuclear facility Fukushima. Resulting in the Nuclear Disaster of Japan, this is something we have all heard about but honestly in the past few weeks we have heard less and less about it. With the magnitude of this crisis I feel as if we should all be informed on what is going on from when it happened to the moment it is considered resolved which seems to be something we have forgotten about already. So I thought I would research it and find out myself since we haven't heard much of it lately.

The Diplomat. "Japan Nuclear Crisis Update" the-diplomat.com. 12 Sept. 2011

            < http://the-diplomat.com/tokyo-notes/2011/03/18/japan-nuclear-crisis-update/>

Kathy Blaustein. "Earthquakes and Tsunamis: For Educators and Students" seps.mgd-colo.peak.org. 12 Sept. 2011

            <http://seps.mgd-colo.peak.org/earthquakes_and_tsunamis.htm>

"Japan's Killer Quake" NOVA. topdocumentaryfilms.com 13 Sept. 2011

            <http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/japans-killer-quake/>

"NHK Special - Japan's Nuclear Crisis Part 1, 2 & 3" nippon-sekai.com 13 Sept. 2011

            <http://www.nippon-sekai.com/main/>

Response 5

          The article "Education and the crisis of capital" is an extremely long boring article basically about the reasons behind how our "reform" of education should be looked at. I am not going to lie, I half understood the first few paragraphs and only know their talking about reforming school and the fact that the economy and instability of our capitalist society. which marks the beginning of where I lost interest and comprehension by John Bellamy Foster's use of complex words to make his reasons and story seem better, even though he could of simplified it a bit and everyone would understand.

            Anyway on another note, Foster talks about all kinds of things in relation to our school systems and capitalism and radicals. He mentions two other guys, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis who made a well thought up "political-economic framework for the analysis of elementary and secondary education" (Foster). I cannot really tell if he is saying this is a good thing or not but he also says "schooling under capitalism- if not countered by powerful democratic resistance movements-tends to evolve in the direction of capitalist-class imperatives, which subordinate it to the needs of production and accumulation" (Foster). From what I understand Foster is saying that elementary and secondary schooling is not really teaching us it is more or less preparing us for the workforce and not really our future education.

            I was right, the couple paragraphs after basically say "Working-class students and those destined for working-class occupations are taught rule-following behavior, while those arising from the upper middle class and/or destined for the professional-managerial stratum are taught to internalize the values of the society" (Foster). Now that I have got into reading this article, it really isn't bad. I actually agree with him almost one hundred percent. Elementary and secondary school honestly you do not do a whole lot of learning. I would say basically after 5th grade it is all just about repetition and maybe going slightly more in depth, but mostly just busy work.

            Foster talks about capitalism in big corporations and how they are monopolies in a way. How we strive to make money and only that instead of caring about our long-term future and our future educators. Foster did his research, he has facts dating back to the early nineteen hundreds to present and he names plenty of them. Late in Foster's article he states that "At the core of this process was the centralization of the labor process of teaching, so that all conception of how pedagogy was to be carried out would be removed from educators and controlled by higher authorities, in line with classic scientific management." (Foster).

            Overall I would say that this article is actually a really good thought out article with tons of information on it regarding our use of the education system and how we think about it in the society we live in today as well as how we need to change it to fit into the society we have made today. Rather than like the "Changing the Education Paradigms" video says the education system we use was made during the Enlightenment and Industrial ages.

Foster, John. "Education and the Structural Crisis of Capital" MonthlyReview.org. 2 Sept. 2011
           http://monthlyreview.org/2011/07/01/education-and-the-structural-crisis-of-capital.

Response #4

            I honestly liked Ken Robinson's "Changing Education Paradigms," we watched in class. I feel like he just about nailed it and completely agree with him except for a few minor details. He talks about how we as a society need to rethink our education system and how we think about teaching as a whole. It also helps keep your attention because the link takes you to a YouTube video of Sir Ken Robinson's speech with an animated cartoon to go with it so it keeps your attention better than just him talking.

            He begins talking about "reforming" education and that everywhere in the world we are trying to find out how to come about educating our children for two reasons. The economy, even though the economy fluctuates constantly and how to educate them while having a sense of cultural identity all while trying to globalize. He says that our problem is "they're trying to meet the future by doing what they did in the past" and in the process of doing that we are alienating kids who don't seem to grasp what the point of it all is. He states that having a college degree it is better but you do not need one to obtain a job (Robinson).

            I honestly agree 100% so far into the video and that we need to raise our school systems standards. He then begins to talk about our current education system was designed for a different age, which was around the "intellectual culture of the enlightenment" and "in the economic circumstances of the industrial revolution" (Robinson). He explains some history of our education systems and dabbles in the concept of academic ability. Robinson brings up a very valid point when he mentions that "academic ability is deep in the gene pool of public education that there are two types of people academic and non-academic the consequence of that he says is many brilliant people think they're not because they have been judged at this particular view of the mind" (Robinson). He explains his view of the model we have made over the years and goes on a rant about ADHD for a while.

            This is only about half the video and I still agree one hundred percent the ADHD rant is followed by him going on to talk about how our education system thinks of students as products on an assembly line in a factory and how we still put kids into categories according to age which basically says how smart they are. The last few minutes of his video he talks about divergent thinking and the difference between that and creativity and that great learning happens in groups. I really enjoyed the animated video both times we watched it in class and even the couple times I watched it outside of class. I feel that Ken Robinson literally hit the nail on the head on this one, I couldn't begin to say how much I agree with this man.

Robinson, Ken. "RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms" YouTube.com. 30 Aug. 2011             <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=player_embedded>.

Response #3

            The story, "Some Place Like America" I read I am assuming just a part or chapter of it was actually really interesting. When I first picked it up I honestly didn't care or want to read it. However, once I began reading I found myself completely focused on this book. It is a good source of information on; I guess I would say the average American citizen, it shows the United States history through the average American or someone in worse condition than the average American.

            It begins by giving you some background information on the author Dale Maharidge and photographer Michael Williamson who have gone around the United States and lived with or at least just interviewed people all over to get their stories. The way he puts it in his book is "People who all their lives have played by the rules, done the right thing, and had come up empty, men and women whose work and sacrifice had built this country, who'd given their sons to its wars and then whose lives were marginalized or discarded."

            Throughout this book he lives with some hobo's who live in California and whose friend Kenneth Burr was murdered for literally no reason. They live with these homeless people for a while and come to find out that they are struggling to survive and get chased out of the parks where they make attempts to sleep. After living with them dale and Michael move on and run into a women who had fallen from upper-class all the way down to standing in charity food lines, she is a waitress in her sixties and believes she'll work until she falls dead.

            The book than goes into great detail on how Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson met, got involved in what they are doing now, what inspired them, and the other books they have published involving similar topics. I on the other hand am really surprised by what they had come across and never honestly would have pictured America to be like this. America is a great country, land of opportunity, but don't let the opportunity take control and send your life spiraling downward into oblivion. These two, Dale and Michael I feel have done something almost no other American would have tried or wanted for that matter.

            America's economy is in jeopardy at this point in time and without the unnoticed American in society the America as we know it today would crumble into pieces. We are all hoping our economy will partially fix itself, but what I believe is we need to get most of the old farts out of congress so we can get some new fresh minds in there that are not afraid of change and are willing to put forth action for the good of the people and not for the good of their wallets.

Response #2

            I read an article under crime called "The Kill Team" it was on Rolling Stones website. The article was posted on March 27, 2011 and is about two American soldiers who in Afghanistan decided to murder an innocent Afghan native. To sum it up, early last year after about six months there a group of soldiers from the Bravo Company had multiple conversations and debates on wither or not to follow this notion through and the probability of being caught.

            There were some soldiers willing from the beginning and other who despised the idea. Although shortly after New Years they decided they would stop talking and actually follow this idea through. The Bravo Company had actually been there since the summer and were struggling with success. According to the Rolling Stone article "On the morning of January 15th, the company's 3rd Platoon – part of the 5th Stryker Brigade, based out of Tacoma, Washington – left the mini-metropolis of tents and trailers at Forward Operating Base Ramrod in a convoy of armored Stryker troop carriers" (Boal).

            The soldiers set up a perimeter for security reasons parking on the outskirts of the settlement. Then the soldiers set out walking into the local village, the villagers were suspected of supporting the Taliban and providing a safe haven for them. As the soldiers walked through the village they didn't see any suspicious activity. They were greeted by Afghan farmers just trying to get by without electricity or running water.

            The officers of the third platoon went to speak with the village elder inside when two soldiers walked away from the unit until they reached the far edge of the village. Once out there in the poppy field, they started to look for someone to kill. Again according to the Rolling Stone article says "The general consensus was, if we are going to do something that fucking crazy, no one wanted anybody around to witness it," one of the men later told Army investigators" (Boal).

            The two soldiers Col. Jeremy Morlock and Pfc. Andrew Holmes, saw a young farmer who was working nearby in the field. A few other soldiers stood close by keeping guard. With no one around as witness' they decided that now was the best time as any and just like that they chose him for execution. The young Afghan they murdered was about fifteen years old and had nothing in his hand that could be interpreted as a weapon.

            They shot him multiple times and planted a grenade saying he was about to throw it. The other soldiers came in to investigate and knew something was off the moment they began investigating. The boy ended up being the village elders son and he accused the soldiers of murder. They ended up doing this a few times and got caught shortly down the road, March 23rd is when one of the soldiers Morlock decided to testify after confessing to some of the murders.

            As I was reading this article I was honestly kind of pissed off at the fact that our soldiers would actually attempt to pull this off. I am glad that these worthless soldiers were caught and thrown in prison. I would not have wanted to murder and innocent human or even if I did I wouldn't due to the fact that I would probably couldn't bring myself around to actually do it. I just don't see how they could just take an innocent life like that and end it so easily with no remorse. Surely they knew they couldn't get away with it forever.

            If I had read this article only to see that they got away with it my response would be completely different but it does us all good to know that these soldiers are rotting in prisons for the things they have done.

Sources:

            Boal, Mark. "The Kill Team" RollingStone.com. 23 Aug. 2011

                        <http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327>