kim'sblog:D

Sex, abused, tortured. Three common words you hear when you read about women’s rights violations. For this week article, I happened to read over these words too many times. And as I kept on reading, anger started to rise, and voices started to yell, inside of me. The articles talks about Sahar Gul, who was forced to marry an adult by her mother in-law at the age of 12. Gul was raped repeatedly by her husband with intentions to produce a child. Because she did not get pregnant, her adult husband locked her in a basement and tortured her with electric shocks, pulled out her nails and her hair. One time when she yelled while her husband and mother in-law put electric shock in her as she almost died, her neighbors called the police. And that was when she got rescued. That was when she started to live, not just exist.

What touched me most about this article was how Sahar Gul had managed to stand up and face the authorities to talk about what had happened after what she’d been through. She wanted the world to know about her story, about something that may happen to you, about a dirty truth, about a story some of us would be extremely surprised when we read about, because our lives are so fortunate, we don’t know what is happening on the other side of our world. To me, Gul is a very brave girl. I cannot imagine how can I stand straight up on my feet again if I go through what she had.  What can possibly be the reason why she is telling the world about her story? It can partly be because she wanted the attackers to be known for their bad things, and to be punished. But I also think that she wanted everyone to know and aware that there are women and girls out there suffering through what she had suffered through, or maybe worse. What I receive as a message is that, the fortunate people like us, should put a hand in and help our world to be a better place with women living and enjoying their lives, to prevent cases like Sahar Gul’s to happen.

Sahar Gul may be a strong girl. But she is still a broken person. I feel really sorry for a girl full with promises is now living in a life full of fears, instead. Wherever she goes, she will fear her attackers may kill her. And I ask you this, how can you live in a life full with fears? What can you possibly do? Her attackers had ruined her life. Their greed and cruelty destroy a young innocent girl. And 10 years in prison for punishment is not enough. It doesn’t give back the girl her promises in life, the innocent smile or remove her fears. Had they ever though of what she felt? Of course, no. She was treated as an item, because what kind of living thing would treat their same kind like that if they don’t look at their object in a different way? How can a human be treated as an item?

In conclusion, I think what best right now is for the government to educate everyone about human rights. Especially, women’s rights. Educate kids, adults, men, women, to respect these rights and pass stricter laws to harshly punish those who violate women’s rights.

Article of the week: BP Oil Spill Aftermath by Casey Chan.

This week’s article talks about how the BP oil spill had affected the sea life. The oil and the chemical that was used to clean the oil spill had created a chaos of deformities that fishermen, scientists and seafood processors had never seen before: shrimps with tumors on their heads, eyeless fishes, or crabs with holes on their shells, etc. Even the article itself seemed so unrealistic to me at first, but as I continued on reading it, I realized that a massive number of seafood are deforming is real and it’s happening in front of our eyes.

I was really surprised that BP company would use a kind of chemical that they knew could harm humans if it ever got into our bodies, to clean the oil spill. If it could harm us, then it’s obvious that it could harm any creatures, right? The consequences of this weren’t hard to interpret, was it just the carelessness of them to not think about the consequences or was it the cruelty of their hearts to not think about the future generations of sea animals who later would be deform? I am pretty much sure they knew the consequences because they had to know what was the harm and the benefits of the chemical in order to use it, but they just pour the chemical down, without considering how it would affect the sea creatures.  I wonder would it be worse if the solvents weren’t used and oil was not cleaned and dissolved?

As I said before, the consequences are not hard to interpret. For what I see right now, I do not think the further consequences will be any better. In fact, they can be worse, much worse. The later generations of these deformities may deform into different species, or as time goes by, their populations can decrease to an alarming number, not only in the gulf, but all over the world. Prices of seafood may increase since it will be harder to consume not mutated seafood. I really think we all must care about this situation and help to raise a fund in order for scientists to find a cure. Especially BP company, since they are the one who created this mess, but still in denial of the consequences they made. It is our world, where we live in, and we must start taking responsibilities for it.

Living for the weekend

Oh! I’ve been working this whole week

Too hard so they called me a freak

But tonight everything will be different,

‘Cause I’ll be living for the weekends.

Now I have some time

With money in the pocket

I’ll hit the street like it’s all for me

I’ll beat the heat, swim under the summer sun.

I don’t care if I spend too much

‘Cause it worth to make me work,

When the pressure becomes too much

I’ll be living for the rush.

My clothes aren’t counterfeit,

My kicks are Vans and Adidas,

I’ve some money so I spent it well,

I’m living for the weekends.

I’ll hit the party, I’ll hit the beach

I’ll hit everywhere I can reach

I’ll empty all of my pockets,

But next week, I’ll fill it back.

Oh! I’ve been working this whole week

Too hard so they called me a freak

But tonight everything will be different,

‘Cause I’ll be living for the weekends.

After reading this week article Dhaka Slum Dwellers Live under Threat of Eviction by Syed Zain Al-Mahmood about governments crashing slum people’s houses in order to take more land, I wasn’t surprised about how the government treated their people. They promised to clean the land only 10 feet  from the street, but they ended up cleaning 20 feet, destroyed poor people’s houses and properties, destroyed all they’ve worked for, all they had, destroyed their lives. I see homeless people walking down the street everyday in Ho Chi Minh city, and I saw scraps of metal and rocks from where houses used to stand but I’ve never wondered why. Guess now I knew.

Bangladesh is a developing country, which is now facing tons of problems such as widespread poverty, political and bureaucratic corruption, etc. And government are people who have the responsibilities to provide their citizens secure and prevent these problems to happen or try to stop them. But apparently, what they had done was increasing the alarming level of poverty instead of helping to stop poverty. Destroying houses is like destroying people’s lives. Now they have to live out in the open without adequate food, water or sanitation which can leads to deaths if the government won’t do anything to fix the situation. They said they’d provide  alternative housing, or at least that is what the citizens are hoping for. But look at their country right now, where can the government find the money to provide houses?

The most surprising thing to me was how stupid the government could be. If they just think about their country first, not yet to mention about how their citizens feel, can’t they realize that what they are trying to do is pulling their country down to a deeper depth of poverty? They made their city looked worse, and they also made their citizens life worse. That’s not the role of a government. In fact, that’s exactly the opposite of what a government should be doing. Did they think about how their citizens would feel, to suffer under a poor state then to lost everything even if everything they had are so little compare to what governors had? It is too selfish and cruel of the government to take away what lives depended on.

If I was one of the people whose homes were crushed by their own government, the first thing I would feel is being betrayed. I think it would be really hard for me to stand back up on the ground again with the hatred I would raise, since all I would feel is the world turning down on me. Because living in such a poor life, I’d know that there isn’t such a thing as immigrate to other countries, so my country would be my world. Even though, I have to move on with my life in order to live. However, I’m not sure I would be strong enough to climb back up again after falling in such a deep hole. But I hope that these people can, I hope that they will and I hope that one day the government will change.

 

 

Just a year ago, I thought there was no such thing as slavery in such modern days. But as the world develops and more people fall into more holes filled with ambitions, they become in need to abuse others to shortcut their path toward their wanting. And to abuse others labor, now they called it modern slavery. With-in just a year, issues of child laboring, violations of human rights and women rights, had became no longer strangers to me. I was converted from a person without any awareness into a person who interested in these issues. This week’s article, “In South Sudan, Girls Are Given Away to Settle Family Feuds” by Tom Rhodes, talks about a girl in South Sudan, Atia Odongi, who got traded by her own family to another by the age of eight because of a crime her brother committed. Ridiculously enough, it is a South Sudan’s tradition. Atia Odongi’s brother had killed a man over a cattle dispute, and she was chosen to pay the price. By sending her to the man’s family to replace his spot, both families believed now that they were equal, no one owed no one. She spent her life scrubbing and cleaning and was forced to marry one of the man in her new family at the age of nine. Not only that, she was raped repeatedly by different men in the house in hopes to give birth to a child that could replace the missing spot. She lives in a life full with mistreatment, “I tried to kill myself twice,” says Atia, while we live in a life full of joy and happiness.

The first thought came to my mind as I read this article was why isn’t the government doing anything to change this? This tradition may affected the society differently in the past, but now, the tradition is killing young, promising girls! It’s hard for me to even imagine my life living in a country where boundary lines of different genders are still so differ, not yet to mention about the tradition. Girls like Atia are treated like objects. I think it’s so cruel that non of the families had ever considered how she felt toward the situation or how will it affect her later in her life. She is seen as a gift, like a machine that can do whatever people ask her to, if she doesn’t, she will be beaten to death. But after all, it’s just a South Sudan’s tradition. Trading girls is what people are allowed to do, is what they’ve been doing in ages, is what makes girls objects, so nobody consider their feelings, nobody cares.

According to the article, “Amos Gudo, an elder chief who presides over a traditional court in an Eastern Equatoria village called Kiyala, says the practice of giving away girls must continue, as a way of solving conflicts between community members. He notes an absence of prisons in the state, inducing communities to keep relying on this tradition to resolve disputes.” I disagree with Amos Gudo. To solve conflicts between community members, there are many different ways. However, trading girls may be the easiest way, but it cannot continue because lives are been taking away, girls are suffering under the hatred of their ‘fake’ families, had the government ever consider this? The government’s job is to secure their citizens rights, but these girls aren’t having any of their rights. I wonder why there aren’t any prisons in the state? Is it because the government is fine with the situation right now, that the government themselves want to obtain the tradition so they don’t have to spend too much money on building a prison, or time to solve problems between citizens or what? If so then all this violation, this cruelty and deaths of young girls come from bad governors.

It’s hard to come up with a way to stop this violation. First of all, it had became a habit of the citizens. The tradition blows the citizens’ fear of committing a crime away. Instead, it helps the citizens to commit a crime with ease, after committing, all they have to do is give their daughters away. Even if the government makes a new law to stop this violation, girls are still seen as objects. Their families don’t give them enough love and cares. In fact, that lack of love had motivated them to give their girls away, to continue doing this cruel tradition after years and years. The tradition had transformed people into heartless animals who seek for satisfaction instead of love. And in my opinion, the government has to aware of this first before they can make any changes. They have to realize and care about human rights, about how those girls feel. Then after that, they can build prisons then educate their citizens to judge people not by their genders, but by their personalities, educate them and make them realize that no matter what genders we are born to be, we are still humans, the biggest common everyone in this world has got. But most important, they need to educate the citizens how to love. Love is what we all need.

 

 

For this week’s blog post, I decided to write about the case of Trayvon Martin. As readers, I’m pretty much sure most of us already knew about Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager who got shot on his way from a grocery back to his dad’s home by a neighborhood watch, George Zimmerman, who later claimed the fatal shooting was just an act of self-defense. There are lots of issues and confusions revolve around the case. Though none of us are yet sure what really happened that pushed George Zimmerman to pull out his gun and shoot, but most of us believe the it was racially motivated. People are asking for justice for Trayvon Martin, means they are asking the court to put charges on George Zimmerman. But how can they if George Zimmerman is still innocent? Because according to the Human Rights, all humans are innocent until proven guilty.

After reading the news, most of us will think George Zimmerman should go to jail, he killed a kid! However, he is still seen as an innocent man. Why so? Because ‘Stand your ground’ law, a law that allows people to use deadly force away from their homes if they have reasonable fear an assailant could seriously harm them or someone else, is protecting this man, who we believe is fulled with guilt. I think it’s ridiculous. How could Trayvon Martin, a normal kid casually walk by on a street in a hoodie, be a harmful person while both Zimmerman and Martin had never seen each other before?

According to the article “Florida shooting renews debate over ‘stand your ground’ laws” by Micheal Pearson, “in the five years before the law’s approval, Florida averaged 12 justifiable homicides a year, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. In the six years since, the average is 33.” People are taking advantage of the law, they walk around with guns, shoot first, then question later, not afraid that they will get in trouble. How can there be a law that allows people to shoot others? It’s like supporting people to use guns and arm every time they go out. Following to that, why in the world are guns legally sell in the U.S in the first place? The U.S is giving so many chances for the citizens to freely take people’s lives away. The law causes more harms than goods, and that’s stupid because a law supposes to help the community to be a better place. It’s been seven years since the law was given, why didn’t the government change it? Will they change it after this case of Trayvon Martin or will they just keep on ignoring?

In the article “Lawyers: Zimmerman whispered ‘punks’ before shooting Trayvon Martin” by the CNN Wire Staff, it says George Zimmerman whispered the word ‘punk’ following by a swear word in a police recording of Zimmerman’s call. Although George Zimmerman said it was not a racial slur, do you really think it’s true? I think he was just defending himself on court. It’d make more sense if Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman knew each other and had a conflict before. But no, they did not know each other, and they were not in a conflict with each other by the time Zimmerman talked on the phone with 911. Do you think it makes sense if Zimmerman just randomly call a kid ‘punk’ without any racist? No, there must be a reason. The hoodie Martin was wearing may left him some bad impressions, but why would an adult catch any attention on a boy and randomly call him a punk in the first place? At the corner of my eyes can see, I think it was the skin tone of Trayvon Martin that left George Zimmerman such a bad impressions and hatred that he had to use such words to describe an innocent boy and then shot Martin after Martin asked Zimmerman why he was following Martin. The shooting, I believe, was racially motivated.

In all of the articles I’ve read about this case, I’ve chosen to stand on Trayvon Martin’s side. Partly because there were evidences that prove Zimmerman’s words aren’t true – like Zimmerman claimed the voice that called for help in the background during a call was his, which later proven by audio experts was not – that I lost my trusts on him, and plus the involvement of the stand the ground law, I believe that Zimmerman is just a lucky man with guilt who is getting protection from a ridiculous law. So, like many other people, I’m asking justice for Trayvon Martin.

I believe as a writer, my strength are developing my ideas and including a strong voice when needed. However, I often use sentence structures or words at the wrong places which easily confuses or makes the readers misunderstand my ideas. To avoid these mistakes, I should have reread my writing piece out loud for myself to hear and judge before submitting it. By doing this, I can easily fix my mistakes when I hear odd phrases or parts that may confuse readers.

To be honest, I did not have anything in mind to write about declaring independence from school or parents. Because I like my school and my parents, I could not find any problems to write about. But after hearing friends talking about academies and how tired the homework from school and academies makes them feel, I thought I could use this as the main reason to declare independence from school and develop from it.

If I were to start this assignment over, I would change a lot of my sentence structures and simpler them so readers can easily understand my ideas. I would also make my sentences shorter or insert more commas to avoid running sentences.

PREAMBLE

When in the Course of Human events, the separation between two bands, which connected each other, becomes a necessity when a fellow band grow as equal as the other. There are no longer any reasons to be in need of any dependence. In this situation, we, students are the fellow band who is turning on a path that separates us from teachers, who are soon becoming obstacles that block us from becoming who we want to be in our lives.

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

We keep in ourselves these truths, in which stand as our evidences for the reasons we must be independent, that all students have their Rights to have a little of their time everyday to entertain and have fun other than studying. However, they also have the responsibility of their own homework, their grades, and their knowledge, in which they reach to a certain point when they are grown enough to know how to be responsible of themselves.

Mistreatment is what we receive from teachers. Blame is what we carry. With an infinite  number of homework, our brains do  not have enough rest in a day. When we get home after school, we have to start right away on our homework or else we will be staying up late. After an amount of time, we eat dinner then go to academies. That does not mean our homework is finished yet! After academy, we have to continue on our homework and we do not sleep until one or two AM. The next day, we have to be at school, wide awake and brain cleared. Even if we are one minute late, we still get tardies. We are late because of the homework that we are given, not because we party the whole night. We did nothing but study and study until after midnight; our goals are only about getting straight ‘A’s. We starting to get use to losing our Rights. However, losing our Rights not only affects our health but also affects our thinking, our schedule, our life. We do not have time to spend with our families and friends or play sports as we want to. We are losing our balance in life and following that, our sense of self. What we do everyday is just study; our social life is forgotten. Is our goal of the future good grades only? Is life all about studying and grades? No, life is more than that.

LIST OF GRIEVANCES

• “He gives me too much homework, I couldn’t sleep last night!”
• “I received a one-minute-late-for-class detention, while last night I had to stay up until two AM to finish up her homework! I’m only 13, what will high school be like?”
• “I have not gone out with my friends for weeks because I have so much homework to do in such a short amount of time!”

 

ATTEMPTS TO REDRESS GRIEVANCES:

We’ve been trying to get your attention, asking you to change and decrease the amount of homework you’ve been giving us through our petitions, but all we get in return are lower grades and looks full of hatred. So, we tried to report to the school council, but our petitions have never been answered or addressed.

DECLARE INDEPENDENCE:
Therefore, the only thing we can do is to declare a separation between students and teachers. Teachers teach us at school without being involved in our life out of school. By that, we mean teachers do not give us homework, even if we have to practice our skills and prepare for tests on our own, We are willing to take the responsibility to have our independence. If we don’t do good at home, our grades will drop and that is what we must take responsibilities for.

Open Your Eyes

Why, may I ask
Do we let ourselves
To indulge in the illusion of hope?

Having eyes, see not
Having ears, hear not,
The painful truth in front of us.

We gave up our pride
Kneed under the King’s throne
Asking for peace in our petitions.

Yet we got nothing in return
But the insidious smiles
And the betrayal kisses

Is it time to knee once more
To hope and wish
Or to escape the illusion?

We are not weak my friend
If we use proper of those means
Which the God had placed in us

The people of our country
Our neighbors, our friends
Together we are strong.

If we wish to be free
There is no longer room for hope
But to stand up and fight

Gentlemen may cry

Peace, but there is no peace

The war has begun

Why stand here we idle?
Being blinded by the illusion
Fight my friend, we are strong enough.

Open your eyes
Face the crisis and fight
For our own freedom and rights!

Summer started with

Beaches, sunglasses, swim suits,

I love the ocean.

The roaring water,

Hit my head at the tube’s edge

I got paranoid.

My heart raced too fast

Peeked an eye over my back

Strangers were chasing.

We’re young, wild and free

Splashing water, pools to pools,

Best of times we had.

The Faldo Series,

They said they would sponsor me

Hopes too high, they didn’t.