Blog Post 10

In his article, “THE CHILDREN WILL KEEP COMING” published by Nation Company, author Oscar Martinez talks about how the violence in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico is causing the children to flee their countries into the United Sates. David was 11 years old. He walked home from school, and he didn’t come home. His family couldn’t find him and the next day he was found dead. He was stabbed several times. The police later made a decision that his cause of death was because of David’s refusal to join a gang. So many kids die from gang related violence and that’s why kids flee to the U.S.A. “The Obama administration initially sought to change the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act to allow the 52,000 or so child migrants who have arrived on US soil in the last nine months to be deported without going before an immigration judge.” In 2008, El Salvador had a murder to people rate of fifty-two murders for every 100,000 people. Also, thirty-eight percent of the people who were murdered every year were somewhere between the ages of 15 and 24. The 18^th street gang and the Mara Salvatrucha gang have over 60,000 people in their groups. The problem is, these gangs were made in the US and when the US started to deport as many as 4000 gang members back to their countries. They made gangs there. Kids who enter gangs re now at an age as low as 12. Many kids have plastic backpacks that you can see through to show the police that they aren’t carrying any weapons. The parents don’t see an end to the violence in these three countries so the only way to help their children is to buy a coyote. The US says that Coyotes are criminals Jose is an anonym’s coyote because Jose is not his real name. He used his own ads and put them in the newspaper to help the kids find out how they would get to the US. Jose brought children north using his connections with the people he knows and he coordinated it by phone. He used busses and bribed police officers. He thought this was safer instead of hopping on the trains. The US is not going to stop deporting immigrants, but the children are going to keep coming.

I was shocked after reading this article. I didn’t know that gangs were such a big problem in all these countries other than Mexico, and Mexico isn’t the worst one. I feel so bad for the kids because they were born in a bad place. It’s not fair to them to have no choice but to either join a gang or die trying to get to the US. Something that surprised me was that if a kid said no to join a gang, they would probably get killed. If I was in that situation I would probably say yes so I wouldn’t be killed. Then I would try to somehow escape. One question I have is will there ever be an end to the gangs in these countries? I think so, but the US doesn’t seem to care to stop it. 

Blog Post 9

In his article, “Watching Sony Slide” published from New York Times, author John Divorak explains why the company Sony has no idea what they are doing and if their new boss can’t fix what is happening to the company, it will be the end of Sony. Sony’s CEO is named Kazuo Hirari. He wants to help Sony put their name out as the best TV making company. This company is very strange. They make anything from cameras, laptop computers, phones, music, and even their own video game business. The video game business is keeping Sony going because that is their most successful business.  John Divorak says that it’s so bad that the company “Apple could buy Sony five times over with what it has in the bank.” The corporate culture at Sony is to blame because they keep making things that are more faced towards older media.  The only way Sony can figure out how to not run out of business is that Hirari needs to find a way to pick what business Sony is actually going to be. They can’t make everything.

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I also think that Sony needs to focus on fewer things. Their CEO said that they wanted to have really good TV’s so they should focus on that and their video game business because the video games are their most popular business. The other things like cameras, laptops, phones and whatever else they have should all go away because they are losing money. I personally like Sony. I have a PS4 and I think it’s really cool. I don’t want Sony to run out of business and I know a lot of people who would agree with me. Something that shocked me is that Apple could buy out Sony five times over. Something I didn’t know was that Sony had so much stuff and like it said in the article, it’s bad to have too many different things to sell. I always thought that Sony was really rich. I never thought that they could go out of business.

Blog Post 8

In her article,” My Marriage Was Arranged” published from New York Times, author Jyothi Sampat talks about how she thought that having an arranged marriage is just an Indians tradition and how hers worked out for her. She lived in a city called New Delhi. Her parents always told her that marriage is supposed to be with similar families and similar castes which divide Hindus into different classes. For example, they want to marry someone with the same religion. Her parents also told her that love is not supposed to happen before marriage, “Love happens after marriage. “Also, someone’s good looks are a bad reason for choosing a husband or a wife. Jyothi was not allowed to date in high school so she just had to work really hard in school. She eventually got a scholarship in speaking French and wanted to get her masters too. Her marriage was arranged when she was twenty four years old and she married a guy named Praveen. Before there weeding, they talked on the phone about once a week and she thought that he had a gentle voice and thought that he was very funny. After they were married, they always went out together. They went shopping and went out to eat. She found out that they had similar interests like Italian food and traveling places. Each day, they both felt more attracted to each other even though they didn’t even hold hands because they were in India. In the end, Jyothi found out that her mom was right that love does come after marriage.

 
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I do think there are benefits for getting an arranged marriage. Some are having the opportunity to fall in love together after your married and I’m pretty sure that is a unique experience and another is that you are setting up yourself to have a good life instead of hoping that someone is going to take care of you and have lots of money. With these arranged marriages, you don’t need to worry about money problems because you have the money. I personally wouldn’t want an arranged marriage because I want the freedom to choose who ever I want to marry. I don’t want my parents doing it, no matter what the benefits are. It just seems weird to me. One question I have is why Indian’s can’t hold hands together in public even though they are married? I don’t think it matters if it is arranged ornot, couples should be able to hold hands where ever they are.

Blog Post 7

In his article, “Rwanda’s Shrouded Nightmare.” Published in New York Times, author Michael Dobbs explains whether or not the Rwandan Genocide could have been prevented. Jean Pierre sent a warning called the genocide fax which told the UN officials about the upcoming massacre. However, the UN decided to ignore it. No one knows for sure if it could have been prevented based on the genocide fax. The UN is trying to figure out what they can learn from their mistake so this tragedy will never happen again. One reason why they didn’t listen to Jean-Pierre, who was working both sides of the war, was because they didn’t trust him. The reason why they didn’t trust him was because he could have been a spy on either side. Another reason the UN didn’t react to the fax was because he didn’t provide strong proof. It was only his instinct. No one will know the real story for sure because “Records that could shed light on whether it could have been prevented are still classified in Washington, New York, Paris, Brussels, Geneva, Arusha and Kigali—unavailable to the public despite pledges by international leaders to fully investigate the tragedy."

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After reading this, I think that somebody is still trying to hide something because the genocide was so horrible. How can someone just not react to the warning that was given ahead of time? Now, the UN has to answer why they didn’t do anything to help Rwanda and the records they have are all hidden. This makes it harder to prove that the UN was wrong. Something that shocked me was that records could still be kept secret twenty years after the incident. The only problem about reading this article was that there were a lot of terms that I didn’t understand. I had to look them up.

Blog Post 6

In the article, “TV Star’s Plastic-Surgery Disaster Tests Brazil” published by Time Magazine, the author who is anonymous talks about how a famous TV star named Urach was put into the hospital because of a mess up during her surgery and she is now debating whether or not getting plastic surgery is a risk or not for Brazilian women. At first, Urach was a single mom as a teenager and then she got plastic surgery and somehow became a famous TV star. After being hospitalized for two months, she went back on TV. The wounds from her surgery were so bad, that the people watching her could see the blood soak through her clothes. She said to them that ““I hope that these wounds at least serve as a warning to other woman.”” Brazil’s way of doing things has caused women to think that getting plastic surgery is not a bad thing, but in reality it can be very dangerous. One of the reasons why it can be dangerous is because they only have five thousand five hundred professional plastic surgeons. Another twelve thousand doctors are not even professionally trained to be doing those things. You can get infections from getting plastic surgery and one of the problems Brazil has is that most of the people only hear about the good things about getting plastic surgery and nobody talks about the downside to it or the bad things.

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I wasn’t surprised at all when I saw that some of these people in Brazil have accidents during their procedures because I knew that plastic surgery is dangerous and it can even make a person look less attractive. What did surprise me though is the number of unauthorized doctors. I was thinking to myself how they weren’t getting arrested? I guess the people who want plastic surgery really don’t care who they get it from. They just want to show their status and say they got it to their friends. I agree with what the author was saying. I think people should be cautious about plastic surgery and they should know that there are side effects and problems that could end up messing you up and you have to deal with those problems for a long time. Overall, I thought this article was good. I wasn’t confused by anything.

Blog Post 5

In the article “Stop Calling it a Tramp Stamp” published by Cosmopolitan, the author, Sara Stewart explains that just because a girl has a lower back tattoo, it doesn’t mean that it’s about sex. If someone thinks that, that’s their opinion and the girl who got the tattoo can have a completely different meaning to it. About twenty three percent of women have tattoos somewhere on their body. Women are usually more cautious then guys about their tattoos. They don’t want their tattoos to be shown because there are times and places where it is inappropriate to have them. Studies show that if you have a tramp stamp, you are more likely to be hit on by men. The problem is that calling it that name gives all the power to the men and the girls don’t ever get asked what their tattoo symbolizes.   Sara Stewart said that ““Mummified leaders found in burials in central Asia, from 500 B.C., reveal lower back tattoos. It’s not a general signal of availability, sexual promiscuity, or compromised morals.””

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I agree with what the author was saying. I didn’t know why women got tattoos there. I actually let the opinion of other men influence mine saying that it’s a tattoo for sex but now I know I am wrong. Something I thought was interesting was that a long time ago in Asia, mummified leaders had tattoos on their lower back. I didn’t even know that tattoos were used then. Some questions I have about the article is “Where is the most common place girls get tattoos? Because it never said that the lower back was the most popular spot to get a tattoo.

Blog Post 4

In the article “Sherman Indian High School” published from Native Peoples Magazine, the author, Colleen Fliedner talks about how even with all of the labor the kids had to do; Sherman institute was a very successful boarding school. The school was in California and the problems started right away. The kids were having trouble with the hot and dry air. They also had a hard time trying to find water. In Sherman’s early years, the Indian boys had to get haircuts when they came to the school because they wanted them to look more like a white person with short hair. This made the boys sad because their long hair was a sign of what they believed in and it was all gone in an instant. They also were not allowed to speak their own language and they had to go to church every Sunday even if that wasn’t part of their religion. The school didn’t have enough money to keep it going so they had students doing labor and working off the campus. The money they got went to the school. The author Colleen said that “The outing system was considered vocational training and provided cheap labor for those willing to have an Indian live in their homes.” Sherman institute also had a cemetery because some kids got really sick and died and they ended up burring them. Sherman institute was a school that tried to force natives in and teach them more American ways but it has actually evolved into a really good high school for young Indian kids.

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I was so shocked to find this out because I had no idea that Indians were going to boarding schools and were doing labor. At the end of this article I was glad to hear that this school was doing well because now it’s a high school that helps Indian kids and they can learn anything about their own culture. Something I thought was cool was the outing system. This helped the students get better jobs for the future. It is kind of like an elective for us. I was sad to hear that people were dying at this school from sickness or abuse because they came to the school to learn, even if it was by force. Something I found puzzling was that when the kids died, I was wondering if their parents knew about it?