Invisible Children

After watching the original documentary for Invisible Children, I have become very interested in their cause. They are hoping for an end to the 17 years’ war in northern Uganda, in the meantime they provide aid for civilians affected by the LRA rebel’s activity. They help children who have to hide from the LRA for fear of being abducted, forced to kill their family, tortured, brainwashed, and trained to kill for the LRA. Below are some pictures of children who have survived encounters with the LRA with awful scars to remind them of the event. THEY ARE GRAPHIC!!!!!!!!

I apologize for the graphic nature of these photographs, but I am a supporter of the Invisible Children movement and I wanted to spread the word as well as get the point across about what is really happening to these children. Invisible Children has multiple aid plans in action. The most recent one, “Free Timmy”, was an attempt to make $2,000,000 to fund their new protection plan. Invisible Children wants to build new radio towers to increase their early warning broadcast system. The towers are monitored 24 hours a day and they are used to alert the civilians of any LRA activity as well as to send messages to child soldiers asking them to come home and providing them with a way to do so. The funds they raised are also going to be used to build a rehabilitation center for children who have escaped the LRA. Another goal of theirs is to provide money to rebuild the country after the devastation of the war. Lastly they are promoting the arrest of Joseph Kony, the leader of the LRA and the man responsible for the child soldiers. Recently, IC developed a system called the LRA Crisis Tracker. It is a live map of all LRA crimes in the country. It is a very good idea but it needs some work. I felt the only reason the dots with a one word description of the crime affected me is because I know what the dots actually mean. To someone unaware of the horrors these children experience, each rape, theft, abduction, murder, is just another dot on the map. If IC develops a way to make users more aware of what the dots really mean, I feel it will make the tool more useful. My school has decided to raise money to support invisible children. Our goal is to raise enough to have a radio tower built in our name. I think this is a great cause for us to be raising money for because for the first time, we have decided to donate to a cause that doesn’t affect us. I always felt that giving to charities that were likely to affect us one day is selfish. I am ecstatic that we have chosen to help an organization that will most likely never affect us. I feel much better about donating this year because of this. Also, I think it is a big step in the right direction towards a better world where every person helps the people around him, and they help him. If you are interested in learning more about the Invisible Children organization or even want to donate, the link to their website is as follows.            http://invisiblechildren.com/

Death Penalty Final

                I feel that getting rid of the death penalty in Illinois was unjust. Letting a man who has killed someone live the rest of his life in prison where he can watch television and live a simple life is wrong. Giving a murderer life in prison is a waste of space and money. He should not be allowed to live and, when we allow him to live, it costs money that comes from the general public including the family of the victim. Clearly it is cruel and unusual punishment to make the victim’s family pay for the life of the man who ruined their lives. Gov. Ryan said “Some inmates on death row don't want a sentence of life without parole.” The wants and needs of a killer should not matter. They give up their rights the second they take the life of another human. The governor says that the death penalty is only enforced on people who cannot defend themselves. This issue can be avoided by enforcing death on all non-accidental murder cases regardless of who the killer is. In his speech Gov. Ryan says, “And while many people believe Illinois never executed an innocent man, others disagree. The 1995 execution of Girvies Davis for a downstate murder was long controversial and relied heavily on a disputed confession, one the police got when they took him out of jail in the middle of the night and, according to Davis, threatened him. In fact, Davis confessed to numerous crimes that night and, authorities later acknowledged, many of the confessions were false, with other people later convicted of those crimes.” Even though this is true, the issue is not with the death penalty. The police made the mistake and convicted an innocent man. The law enforcement officers need to make sure they have the right man. This is not something the death penalty can do. It is just a punishment, when it is enforced it is assumed that the police caught the right person. Gov. Ryan believes that the death penalty doesn’t discourage murderers from acting. If we had a much harsher concept for punishment, more murders would be deterred. Anton Szandor LaVey states in the Satanic Bible, “If a man smites you on the cheek, smash him on the other!” Meaning we should do worse to the killer than what he has done to his victim. I feel it will strike fear into the minds of anyone plotting murder and haunt the murderers who have not yet been caught. I feel this will be a more active deterrent than just execution. There is nothing wrong with the death penalty or the people who enforce it, they are told to assume that the defendant is guilty. If anything, the problem is with the people who investigate and charge the wrong people with the crime.

Is the Death Penalty Humane?

In a trial involving the death penalty there are some things the defendant can do to prove their innocence. They are allowed to present evidence proving their innocence and if they are convicted of the crime, they can file for an appeal to show that a vital mistake was made in the trial. If there is any new evidence that surfaces after the trial, it can be presented, but there is a catch, some states only allow three weeks for new evidence to be submitted. It is true that there are a few things a man can do in court to defend himself, but I don’t think it is enough to ensure that only the guilty are convicted. States that limit new evidence up to three weeks after the trial seem to want to just put somebody to death to ease the people rather than find the true criminal. I have heard that often times a criminal’s appeal is denied, which means that there is no chance of proving the court made a mistake during the trial. If the evidence is somewhat incriminating and makes it possible for the defendant to have done the crime, then there is really no hope. I know that there are innocent people in jail, just recently a woman was released because it turns out she did not commit the murder she was charged for. I am sure that there are people who are innocent on death row this very second as well as innocent that have already been put to death.

There are many methods of executions. The first I will talk about is hanging. There is a specific method to ensure an instant death. However, “instantaneous death rarely occurs” (Weisberg, 1991). If there is the slightest mistake the victim will slowly asphyxiate and die. It is a gruesome sight, eyes pop, face bloats, tongue protrudes, the body defecates, and the body makes violent jerking action. Hanging is usually a slow death and making a person suffer like that regardless of what they have done is inhumane. Another method is death by firing squad. The inmate dies as result of blood loss from a direct shot to the heart. This is inhumane because it is a slow and painful death not to mention the agony the inmate must feel if one of the shooters misses. Death by electrocution is possibly one of the worst methods. The victim is strapped to a chair and literally shocked for thirty seconds; if he survives he receives another thirty. The body is burnt, hot enough to cause blisters if touched, and similar effects to those of hanging. Many states have declared it cruel and unusual punishment.

Drug Testing in Schools





The Supreme Court has declared more than once that drug testing students involved in competitive extracurricular activities is constitutional. However, I disagree. The Supreme Court case Petitioners v. Lindsay Earls was about a student who thought that drug testing students involved in extracurricular activities is an invasion of privacy and unconstitutional. The tests only look for illegal substances and any prescription medication the student is taking will not show up in the results. The school said it was trying to stop the drug problem they were experiencing and to hold students involved in extracurricular activities to a higher standard. The ruling was, “Because this policy reasonably serves the school district’s important interest in detecting and preventing drug use among its students, we hold that it is constitutional.” This ruling supports infringement on the basic American rights. It allows school officials to perform unruly searches of its students. Students’ rights in schools are being more and more limited every day, especially being protected against unruly searches. The school system is trying to remove any rights a student may have in order to have complete control over its students. The court believes “students who participate in competitive extracurricular activities voluntarily subject themselves to many of the same intrusions on their privacy as do athletes.” This is wrong because nonphysical activities have no possibility of drug related injury and the school should not be able to govern its students the way it tries to. I don’t understand how the school has a right to stick their noses in the students’ personal life. What a student does outside of the school, should not be the school’s responsibility. We attend school for one purpose only, to learn. The schools job is to teach, not govern the lives of those attending. I think extracurricular activities sponsored by schools should not be allowed because it takes away from the school teaching the students. We should go to school, learn, and then leave. Nothing more, nothing less. Schools should only be responsible for teaching, nothing else. The school has every right to inform students about the dangers of drugs, but they should go about teaching it a different way. Schools try to scare their students out of using drugs and risky activities, with little success. If they taught students about the medicinal uses and how to be responsible without bending the truth, they would have a lot more success. Although, the schools only job is to teach, the second the school tries to control the lives of its students, it is not doing its job. New laws allow school officials to share personal information with state officials and non-education records.  Third party test centers may be able to see this information. Some of it is necessary for schools to know about its students, but some of it is excessive such as pregnancy and prescription medications. This is absurd, our records are meant for the schools to use to better our education, but obviously they can’t even be trusted with our information. Schools think that they are always doing the right thing. They pay $500 a pop to have drug sniffing dogs come in to schools and search for drugs. The dogs had many false positives while sniffing lockers allowing the belongings of innocent students to be searched through sometimes exposing embarrassing object the student owns. The dogs have had only one bust; it was a miniscule amount of marijuana in a student’s car.  School officials also think that they possess the right to search anyone at any time, however they want. A middle school official strip searched a 14 year old girl making her expose every part of her body in an effort to find Advil! Who the hell do they think they are? They were looking for a drug that is nowhere near illegal. This is just another example of the school trying to flex their muscles and stick their nose where it doesn’t belong.

Free Reading Post 1

I am going to be reading the book The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell. It is about a young soldier’s tour in Afghanistan. It is his story of the horrors he faces while on tour. This book got me thinking. I want to join the army after college to fight in Afghanistan. I’ve seen the position of a soldier glorified in commercials and on television. I would like to have the honor of being a member of the armed forces very much. I would be a national hero. I would fight for America and all my friends and family. I know the things I would see there would be disturbing and awful, they might even haunt me forever. However, I do not fully understand the true weight of what I would see. I am told that it will change my life, but there is now real way for me to understand what they mean. The only way for me to truly understand the horror of war is to experience it for myself. I think that it will be easy and I will enjoy it. I have a feeling that I am wrong and my gut instinct tell me that I am, but because of the media glorifying war I cant. I want to be one of the men in the marine commercials, twirling my rifle on the crest of a mountain.  It is very unlike that I will ever be able to do that. Movies like Blackhawk Down showed disturbing images in combat scenes, but they never really sunk in. My thoughts were that it’s only a movie and if it was true it would never happen to me. I feel like I am invincible, like most people in America. Obviously, I am not, but I cannot help it. America has allowed me to grow up without the terror that others face daily. I think that fighting would be fun, that I can handle the boiling hot weather in the desert, sleepless nights would be easy. I know I’m wrong, but I cannot shake the ideas engraved in my head. The media is to blame for that. They glorify war as well as being a warrior. I hope that this book will help me truly understand what I want to get myself into.

Speech Codes

At Michigan State University, their handbook states that all students must be able to learn in an environment free from emotional stressors and any form of physical or emotional harassment will not be tolerated. They have strict codes about sexual harassment and what qualifies as such. Activities, even if they are legal, that create stress upon student will not be tolerated. Verbal and non-verbal harassment will cause a student to be closely monitored. Michigan State holds its student to rules that do not exist in the real world. These rules will impair my ability to express my views and feelings about the world. They say that they take pride in freedom of speech, but by enforcing their speech codes they contradict themselves. I do not view the school with such high thoughts as I did before researching their policies. I see them as another form of authority abusing their power and trying to find ways around the Constitution and Bill of Rights. I believe that the universities speech codes are unconstitutional and infringe on the basic rights given to the US citizen. In the real world we can express ourselves however we see fit as long as we don’t harm others. The school system is trying to change this and restrict free speech to anything that cannot be found as offensive to any specific group. I support their hopes of a stress free learning environment, but I do not support restricting free speech to do so.

9/11

I would like to start off by thanking everyone who helped during 9/11 and the weeks after. Also i would like to let everyone who lost somebody in the attacks and the wars following know that they are in my prayers and thoughts. I believe that on a political level, we are handling this situation completely wrong. Terrorism is not an act of war; it is a crime and therefore should be treated as one. It is true that the attacks on America were on a scale so large that it has never been seen before. America, stunned by the realization that we are not invincible declared war on Afghanistan ignoring the advice of its allies. We declared war on a country whose majority of people did not have anything to do with the attacks on America. We wanted to find the people responsible and in doing so we attacked and blew up their country. Isn’t that what they did to us? Are we terrorists on an even larger scale?  By declaring war on terrorists, we made them into warriors, glorified position in any culture. We were upset with a group of people so we destroy what they have as they did to us. Militias in Afghanistan fought with us because we are ruining their country just as we did when they attacked. Are we really that different from the cowards who kill innocent people to prove a point that America cannot and will not ever understand? England has lowered tensions with the IRA through diplomatic means. They were treated as criminals and as people with power and agreements were made. England did not declare war on the whole country because of the actions of a few people. They made resolutions through talk. America should learn from the past and see that we also need to try diplomatic means. The retired head of the counter-terrorism branch of MI-5 says that the war on terror is as productive as the war on drugs and will never be won through violence.

Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech among students in America is too restrictive. Americans are protected by the Constitution and it is not American to limit any freedom given by it. Students attend school to prepare to live in the real world. In school they are taught to be separate individuals. By restricting their ability to act as such, schools actually discourage individualism and free thinking. Schools ask children to turn their shirt inside out if it is “inappropriate”. For example, a student is wearing a shirt with their baseball team on it. The shirt contains the sponsors of the team and they include a beer company. There is a small patch on the back of the shirt with the company’s name. A school official sees the patch and asks the student to change his shirt. If school is preparing students to live in the real world then they should be able to dress like people in the real world.

Messages that are seen as going against the schools messages are also not allowed. For example, a student wears a shirt that says “Legalize Marijuana” and school officials ask the student to change his shirt and maybe even suspend the student because their shirt goes against the anti-drug message of the school. This is not constitutional because the student is displaying his opinion on a topic currently being debated in a peaceful way. Schools are upset because they engrave the idea that drugs are bad into students’ minds and anything that contradicts that is not allowed.

Schools limit the right to free speech to help further their goals and not for the better of the students. In the Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines (1989), students were going to wear black armbands to school to protest the war. The school found out their plan and outlawed armbands in school. I believe that their protest upset the school officials and they made a rule against it. The students wore their armbands anyways and were suspended. In court it was found that the school had no right to limit the students’ speech.

Restricting free speech seems to cause more trouble than having students held to the same standards as everyone else.

Peace,

Syotos

Hello

This is my first blog. I am going to write about issues in modern America and sometimes the world. My views are and thoughts are usually radical and I am slow to change my opinion unless i can clearly see that I am wrong. In the real world i am quite active. I sing and play guitar in multiple bands and I am starting to play the bass. I create electronic music on the computer and work with Photoshop to create and edit graphics and pictures I take. I am an avid photographer, it is one of my passions in life along with cars. I am currently studying collision repair and customization and I will study mechanical parts of the car in the near future. I want to hear your thoughts on what I write.
Peace,
Syotos