As I’m doing my research for a term paper I have to do, I found this article called Sometimes in War, You Can Put A Price In A Life. The article talks about different ways and situations where prices are given to human life. If you would ask anyone rational the price of life they would say that it’s priceless. Apparently some people have thought of “great” ideas of giving price to life. In a certain case they considered $2,000 a reasonable price for Afghanistan’s life. This is a ridiculous low amount for a life, at least in my opinion. This price was given to people who got shot during the war but were innocent people. In the same scenario 50 other people got injured but received no money. It is true that war brings out the worse in people. Even people who die in airplane crashes get more money than this and those are really bad accidents. War is less than an accident. But this is just my opinion.
The topic for discussion in my Intro to International Relations class was the United Nations. Most people know the name but know little about the organization itself. The definition according to Wikipedia is:
The United Nations (UN) is an international organization whose stated aims are to facilitate cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress and human rights issues. The UN was founded in 1945 to replace the League of Nations, in the hope that it would intervene in conflicts between states and thereby avoid war.
So the common knowledge about the U.N. is that they prevent wars and help out other countries. The truth is that they don’t do a very good job at it. And if you don’t agree with that then why was there Apartheid in South Africa for such a long time? Why is the current situation in Darfur still going on? Pick an issue and you will see that the U.N. has done little or nothing to solve this issue. But the question is, why doesn’t the U.N. work? It is a bunch of countries that gather and try to solve problems that other countries have. The important meeting where all the states get together, or all the members, is called the General Assembly. There everyone discusses topics and vote on what should/shouldn’t be done to bring peace and solve problems. What most people don’t know is that there is also a Security Council composed by 5 permanent members: China, United States, France, Russia and the United Kingdom. There is also 10 non-permanent members that rotate every year.
These five permanent members come from World War II, which is what made the United Nations exist. These five dominating countries have a great power. These five states have the power to Veto any proposal. You don’t need all five of them to veto, just one. Thus, if a proposal is given that doesn’t benefit any of the permanent members, one of them will most likely veto it in their personal interest. Meaning… nothing will ever be passed that doesn’t benefit or affects one of these states. If the U.N. would work better then there would be no permanent members, they should rotate the entire Security Council every year. Because these five countries are in charge of making these decisions before they reach the General Assembly, they will never have any repercussion from the U.N. This is a monopoly on an international level. Why doesn’t someone challenge the U.N. on this?
I haven’t been following politics lately because I already feel informed of what is going on. As usual Mike Gravel is always excluded from talking and lately from participating in the Iowa Caucuses. Surprisingly, Hillary Clinton didn’t win at Iowa but it is no surprise that she is in the lead and to me it seems pretty obvious that no matter what happens she is the candidate that will run in 2008 for president. Not that she is the best, but it is the agenda. On the other hand Dennis Kucinich was also not allowed to participate in the Iowa Caucuses which is not quite fair. Here is a little view of what the future looks like: Hillary for President, John Edwards for VP and they will win the elections. But maybe things change from here until then.
The Australian government has agreed on filtering internet content from the people living in Australia. They join China who has been censoring their internet for a long time now and has created lots of controversy. The reason why Australia wants to censor its internet is because they had supplied Net Nanny to every consumer but were afraid that not everyone was using it correctly or using it at all. The content that they plan to censor are pornography, casino style internet gambling, hate speech and R rated computer games. The problem is that in the future they could add many other things to this filter and end up censoring a lot more, like unwanted media.
I’ve just found out about the rumor that Cuban president Fidel Castro might have died or is dying. Apparently the rumors started yesterday after people found out he had to go to the hospital and unusual movements were going on. A couple of blogs are also talking about this rumor. Even celebrity gossiper Perez Hilton has announced that he believes it’s true. Fidel Castro has been said to be dead previous times and were false. But this time the rumors came out of no where, not popular media. Even Forbes wrote an article about this. I don’t know how true this is but if anyone else has something to say about it, maybe some inside information than feel free to share because the truth will be found sooner or later.
Socialism is a great way of living. In it’s basic form, socialism means society has the power and rules, not the goverment. But people like Hugo Chavez give socialism a really bad name. Hugo Chavez just changed the law to allow a president to run 7 terms. He didn’t force this upon congress, they actually voted for this. Now every time people will think about Socialism they will think about Hugo Chavez. Now, he did do a couple of good things for the poorer society in Venezuela but now he’s taking too much power. It’s kind of the same way Fidel Castro gave a bad name to Capitalism. Capitalism doesn’t mean rule a country all by yourself and kill your opponents. It means that everyone gets equality treated and everything equally, which works great in theory but because of selfish people who believe they’re better than others they don’t like sharing equally. I hope that one day someone could make a good use of what Socialism and Capitalism really are all about, and take the best of them as many countries have done (universal health care).
I just read the news about the Iranian Unit to be labeled “terrorist”. For months now news has started to turn slowly and started making Iran look like not such a good country. It is no rumor that Bush-Cheney want to start a war with Iraq. Some people have already announced publicly that if it happens they will quit. Don’t believe these lies about Iran being so evil, apparently Bush-Cheney have this idea of invading Iran and I guess they’re still waiting for a good reason to do it. This is going to be a future step if Bush and his group aren’t stopped. Some people are already talking about a dictatorship by Bush and Cheney but I doubt that and hope it never happens. Bush is pretty disliked and I’m sure some crazy people would be glad to take him out. Follow the clues, do your research, Iran is next. I hope me and the rest of the people who believe this are wrong.
In case I disappear, I love you all. Joke, unless I do disappear.
Most people know about the Central Intelligence Agency being the opposite of what is supposed to be. In my history classes in Dominican Republic they taught us the ugly side of the United States of America, the side where they helped dictators stay in power and do nothing about it. The way they killed Che Guevara and many other things. People call Fidel Castro because he says the C.I.A. was/is trying to kill him and now that they released some “skeletons from the closet” everyone knows it is true. Same goes for Hugo Chavez who claims that the goverment is trying to kill him, I have no doubts about that either. What angers me is that most Americans believe anything the news feeds them. The C.I.A. is not so great, best example: they didn’t really know about 9/11 and they still can’t find Bin Laden but find all of his buddies.
I found this great article called The True — and Shocking — History of the CIA. It is based on a book called Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA written by someone who was part of the C.I.A. and knows all their dirty little secret. For years the C.I.A. has been supporting presidents, buying elections, trying to kill people, torture others, among many other things. Somehow they get over $40 billion on budget and they still can’t do their job right. It is a shame that the C.I.A. is still running, the NSA is probably doing a better job than them right now. The C.I.A. is considered a joke among intelligence groups, ask KGB members who knew the C.I.A. better than they did. I suggest for you to read the article and maybe the book so you could open your eyes and learn about what happens in politics and real life. Here is a part of the article:
The CIA’s incessant, almost always misguided, attempts to determine how other people should govern themselves; its secret support for fascists (e.g., Greece under George Papadopoulos), militarists (e.g., Chile under Gen. Augusto Pinochet), and murderers (e.g., the Congo under Joseph Mobutu); its uncritical support of death squads (El Salvador) and religious fanatics (Muslim fundamentalists in Afghanistan) — all these and more activities combined to pepper the world with blowback movements against the United States.
This has been a long discussion that I’ve had with many people: electronic voting machines suck. This was also one of our last topics in our Computer Science 3 class and me and some other kid were the only ones against it. These machines suck because they are extremely insecure. People can change votes in so many ways. Even Howard Dean told us about this, you can see it for yourself on YouTube. But still people don’t understand this. Ballots might be slower to count but they are a bit more secure. Voting Machines can be fixed and altered in so many ways. Now they did a research and cracked every certified voting machine. Computers aren’t smart or fast, they just work with what you give them. If the U.S. makes every state use electronic voting machines which are buggy (remember Florida?) the elections will be fixed (easier). Say no to electronic voting machines.
As I mentioned in my previous post, CNN had the power to censor videos. And I just read online what of been the most popular question. This popular question was about impeachment and president Bush and future presidents. This is a legit question and a very good one. This wasn’t the only video censored, as shown during the debate; a group of people posted the same question over and over again to get better chances of being asked and it was shown but not asked to the candidates. I believe that is a bit unfair. Here is that popular question posted on YouTube:
| DESIGN BY