narielee

The article ‘Joseph Kony on the Move as Manhunt Steps Up, UN Envoy Says’ written by Louis Charbonneau has taught me not to be pessimistic. This might seem very random and out of topic, I know. But this article discusses how the manhunt for the infamous Joseph Kony is moving up a level, stepping up closer to capturing Kony with each and every achievement they make. The infamous Kony who is willing to kill and enslave hundreds of thousands of children only to stay in power.

I first heard of Joseph Kony and his LRA when I watched the YouTube video ‘KONY 2012’. This video had touched me in many different ways. It made so much sympathy grow inside of me. Sympathy towards all the boy soldiers who are forced to kill their parents, kidnap other children and kill their parents, girl sex slaves who are forced into sexual abuse caused by the ‘generals’ of the LRA. It made me feel sympathetic but it also made me feel disgusted. I was horrified by the fact that a man could possibly greed so much power that he was willing to abduct, abuse and kill children. Not just any children, but hundreds of thousands of them. The video also made me want to participate in this cause in any way I could. That’s how bad I felt for the children suffering because of Kony’s greed towards power.

This article somewhat made me feel glad, though. The article states how Kony now moves his camp almost every other day, unlike a few weeks before when he only moved in a month or two. The fact that he did this made me assume that he was feeling pressured and anxious that the manhunt for him is expanding, becoming stronger every time. This shows me that the Ugandan soldiers are doing a great job, great enough for Kony to feel insecure and move camps ever other day.

Joseph Kony has terrified me with many reasons. One of them was passing on very young girls onto other people to use the young girls as sex slaves. Kony horrified me and scared me tons of times, but this article made me see hope. Kony is out there, but he is actually scared. He feels insecure and not as powerful as he used to be. If the Ugandan army makes a little bit more progress, I am certain that capturing this man will be more possible than now. Just by telling how Kony is running away, we can definitely tell how much the Ugandan soldiers have improved and is getting better at this manhunt. To be honest, when I first heard about Joseph Kony, I didn’t really know what I believed. If this man gets captured, great! But it almost seemed impossible. But just as we are losing hope, this article comes into our hands, explaining that with just a little more progress, the level of possibility of capturing Joseph Kony will rapidly increase. All we’ve got to do is become a little less pessimistic and hope for the best that we will be able to capture Joseph Kony.

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Reading the article ‘Baby’s Death in India Blamed on Father’s Anger She was Born a Girl’ written by Harmeet Shah Singh was a complete shock to me. It explained to me how a father was blamed for his daughter’s death, her body with severe head injuries, a fractured arm and human bite marks. The father wasn’t able to control his anger for her to be born a girl. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this. How little respect could he have towards someone who was created by a part of his body? How little respect could he have towards someone who doesn’t even have a choice? What was the point of killing her anyway? Why did he want a son so bad? While reading this, I realized that not only does he refuse to show the slightest bit of respect towards his daughter but also towards women. His murdered daughter was judged by her gender. This happened because she was born to be a woman and he wanted her to born to be a man. This fact really got me to think but I realized that I was missing another important part of this big picture.

See, what did the wife do about this? Could she do anything? Did she have the power to? Did she let him kill her daughter just like this? From what I assume, with that little amount of respect he has towards women, there is no way he would’ve showed respect towards his wife. This is an opinion, I know, but if he did have respect towards his wife and women, none of this would ever have happened. Again, this is an opinionated assumption but I don’t think this marriage happened through will. I don’t think any women would want to marry someone with this little respect towards women. My point I’m trying to get across here is that yes, the baby’s death is terrible, but who is his wife and why is she married to him? If my assumptions are correct, I think that marrying a man without willing to is a bigger violation of women’s rights.

I strongly believe that citizens need to be more aware of these issues. The government has a responsibility to protect women’s rights. No one has the right to choose other people’s spouses for them and if my estimations are correct, this woman probably didn’t want to marry this man. With how much respect this man seems to have towards women just about shows how many women will actually be able to fall in love with him. A man who will cover his own daughter with bite marks because she wasn’t born the gender he wanted her to? If I think of the situation with myself in the position of the woman, I would’ve been able to feel every injury my daughter would’ve felt, every inch of the burning of skin my daughter would’ve felt when my so called husband pressed down his teeth on her skin.
These
people
are
all
our
own
kind.
It doesn’t matter if they’re a monster like this man and it doesn’t matter if they’re unalienable rights are taken away like this little girl or this woman. We are all human and we are responsible for what happens to each other. We are the ones who have created this society. Caring and being more aware of our and other people’s unalienable rights is the least we can do.

 Some rights reserved by quinn.anya

The article ‘BP Oil Spill Aftermath: Eyeless Shrimp, Clawless Crabs and Fish Oozing Sores’ written by Al Jazeera tells us the effects brought by the BP Oil Spill to the sea and the creatures living underneath. Well, it tells us more about the effects of the chemicals used to clean up this spill. The article states that the chemicals may not have been worse than the actual oil spill but it was almost just as bad.

The part which confuses me so much is that the chemicals are so bad for the humans, causing things such as headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pains, chest pains, respiratory system damage, skin sensitization, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, cardiac arrhythmia, cardiovascular damage and even worse, it can disturb the growth and development of a fetus. As I am copying this down from the article, I can’t deny how stupid this sounds. Isn’t the whole point of cleaning up the oil spill for us, the humans? How does it help when the chemical is so bad for humans?

The whole reason to clean up the environment is for us. Ourselves. Humans. So we can breathe fresh air and drink clean water. A lot of people tend to say that protecting our environment is our responsibility. Again, it is our responsibility because our lives rely on our environment. It is almost like another way of saying that we are responsible for our own lives. And we are. We need to be able to be responsible of our own lives and if it takes to protect our environment, we should be willing to be responsible.  We worry about the oil spill because it will impact our lives. We try to clean it up because it will affect our lives. But honestly, trying to avoid something impacting our lives by making the impact worse just seems so stupid. To me, this sound like trying to wipe up a puddle of sugar water with a washcloth damp of water mixed with dirt. Sure, the sugar water is gone and the stickiness is gone too, but the remaining is even dirtier than what we started with, what we tried to clean. To me, this seems like we’re trying to cure a bad situation, trying to get rid of this situation by making it worse.The article ‘BP Oil Spill Aftermath: Eyeless Shrimp, Clawless Crabs and Fish Oozing Sores’ written by Al Jazeera tells us the effects brought by the BP Oil Spill to the sea and the creatures living underneath. Well, it tells us more about the effects of the chemicals used to clean up this spill. The article states that the chemicals may not have been worse than the actual oil spill but it was almost just as bad.

The part which confuses me so much is that the chemicals are so bad for the humans, causing things such as headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pains, chest pains, respiratory system damage, skin sensitization, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, cardiac arrhythmia, cardiovascular damage and even worse, it can disturb the growth and development of a fetus. As I am copying this down from the article, I can’t deny how stupid this sounds. Isn’t the whole point of cleaning up the oil spill for us, the humans? How does it help when the chemical is so bad for humans?

The whole reason to clean up the environment is for us. Ourselves. Humans. So we can breathe fresh air and drink clean water. A lot of people tend to say that protecting our environment is our responsibility. Again, it is our responsibility because our lives rely on our environment. It is almost like another way of saying that we are responsible for our own lives. And we are. We need to be able to be responsible of our own lives and if it takes to protect our environment, we should be willing to be responsible.  We worry about the oil spill because it will impact our lives. We try to clean it up because it will affect our lives. But honestly, trying to avoid something impacting our lives by making the impact worse just seems so stupid. To me, this sound like trying to wipe up a puddle of sugar water with a washcloth damp of water mixed with dirt. Sure, the sugar water is gone and the stickiness is gone too, but the remaining is even dirtier than what we started with, what we tried to clean. To me, this seems like we’re trying to cure a bad situation and trying to get rid of it by making it worse.

 NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center님이 일부 권리를 보유함

In the article ‘Dhaka Slum Dwellers Live Under Threat of Eviction’ by Syed Zain Al-mahmood, it briefly explains us what the government in Dhaka had committed towards their citizens. The government has failed to keep their own promise which, if I was part of the government, I would be most embarrassed of. They have also violated the basic human rights of these people. These people live on the land and they own it. They have the right to keep their belongings in the area without watching them being crushed. Stories about human rights violations by the government break my heart because in my point of view, I think it’s the government who really should motivate the unalienable human rights their people own.

The government of Bangladesh has confused me in many ways. First of all, I just don’t understand how they would benefit themselves by lying to their citizens. Why couldn’t they honestly tell them how many feet the villagers had to move in order to be safe? Is this how much they care about their country and their people? The biggest concern I had while reading this article was how the people actually did what the government told them to do whilst the government didn’t even try to listen to the villagers. If the citizens didn’t move, sure, it’s their fault! The government told them to be safe and they decided not to be safe but that’s not the case. The government expects the villagers to listen to them and obey what they say whilst they don’t even try to listen to their people.

All these articles about violations of human rights come to me as if they’re history but as much as I can’t believe they are happening, they are and I need to realize that these devastating issues are true. Promising someone is a really big, important action. Promises are there to keep. Especially if it might involve physical abuse if it is not kept. A quote by Faustina Pereira states, “However technically legal the form of the eviction may have been, nothing can justify the manner and spirit in which it was carried out.” And I can’t agree more to this statement. However legal these actions were according Dhaka’s laws, these actions were not legal at all according to the laws of human rights. The villagers are now left with nothing and how little they had of property- it’s all gone. I know I’m stressing this so much but I strongly believe that promises are so important to keep unbroken. I can’t possibly imagine a world without promises and the government of Bangladesh shouldn’t either because they need to start considering what promises actually are. Promises are made to keep.

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I turn off the tap as I finish washing the dishes. I am so relieved that my husband isn’t coming home tonight. Or my so-called husband. I wish I loved him, I really did. That would’ve had made my life so much more easier and happier. But how am I supposed to love someone with 3 wives already, married before me? How am I supposed to love someone who beats me up everyday, for not having his food prepared on time? How am I supposed to love someone who made my family give me away, so that this man could take care of them? How am I supposed to love someone who made me realize how little my family loves me? How am I supposed to love this man when I am this relieved that I won’t be seeing him tonight?

My grandmother told me that I may not love him in the beginning, but as I live with him and as time goes by, I’ll learn to love him. She told me that it’s for my own benefits, and so did my mom. Little did I know they were just selling me away, for their own advantages, not mine.

I was only 14 when I married this man. He was 45. All my life, I’ve been waiting for this amazing Prince Charming, coming to rescue me. I guess my Mr. Charming was defeated by this 45 year old man because now this man is the one who owns me. My body. Like some kind of property. Some kind of property to rape every night, to beat up when he wants to. He doesn’t even need my love. I would want to say that I have nightmares every night, but I hardly ever sleep in the night. Constatnly being raped and repeated violence has never been great lullabies for me.

International Women’s Rights Day is on the 8th of March.

“NO! How could you do this to me?! I thought we were a family. Family, who we stick together no matter what.” I thought. But what I really could make come out of my mouth was ‘But…’. My mom was strong. She did not let her opinion bend or even curve the slightest way. My dad, on the other side, wouldn’t even let me consider arguing with him. I felt so betrayed. I know they never really loved me, but I thought we were at least a family and that I was at least able to trust them.

As much as I thought I could trust my parents, I’ve always hated my brother and still do. Last week, he apparently got into a fight. I don’t know how a knife got into his pocket, but the fight resulted a bloody mess, where my brother guiltily won. I don’t even know why they fought. I don’t understand how big of a fight it had to be, when the only way of stopping it was killing someone. But that concluded me being given away to the family of the boy my brother has killed. I still don’t understand. I still don’t have the slightest clue why I need to be punished because of what my brother did. But I knew I had no choice and my footsteps eventually lead me to my new family.

It was horrible. It was terrible. It was unbearable. Disgusting. Painful. Horrific. Words can’t describe how badly the new family welcomed me. I was passed around the men in the family, as a wife. I was continuously raped by all the men in the family. My body became dirty. I was embarrassed of myself. I tried to resist, but all it did was make it worse. They beat me up even more. I’ve tried to kill myself twice. I remember the first time i was in the kitchen. The mother of the new family was making me do chores. Gigantic amount of chores. Amounts which i couldn’t handle. I was all alone in the kitchen and I saw a knife. What else was I supposed to think? How could I find the slightest amount of hope when this was happening to me? I wasn’t a human being anymore. To anyone’s eyes. Not even to my parents. Or, even if I was, I was never treated that way. I slid the knife across my wrist. I was afraid, of course I was, but it didn’t work anyway. The mother came back, saw what I was trying to do and beat me up even more. A similar occasion happened afterwards, but I’m still alive right now, right?

After that happened, I gained my sense of self. I knew I could go through this. God would never give me anything I couldn’t handle. I just wished he wouldn’t trust me too much. But he did. And I was not going to let him down. Nevertheless, I had to trust myself. I knew that one day, articles about me not being able to be educated would turn into articles praising my school grades. I knew that one day, articles about me being abused would turn into articles talking about me helping abused children. I knew that one day, articles about me being raped would turn into articles about me protecting other girls. I was holding onto the thinnest thread possible right at the edge of the cliff, but i knew I needed to hold on. If I let go everything would be over.

This article was a complete shock to me. I had no idea such things were happening in the very planet I live in. I couldn’t believe how much these girls were mistreated. These so-called ‘traditions’ in South Sudan did nothing but completely destroy, insult and violate the basic, unalienable rights of a human being. I wasn’t able to control my anger while I was reading this article. I instantly knew that we needed to do something about it. Create a prison system in Sudan, develop it. I don’t know, I don’t care, but hurting these innocent girls should never happen. Ever.

Imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for.
You may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will be as one.

Bitter accusations,

Deluded perception,

Of calculated deception…

Suspicion.

(From Suspicion by Blue Sleighty)

7 pm, Sunday night. 17 year old, African-American kid, walking home from the store. In his hands? Skittles and Iced Tea. Random stranger appears. Suspicion creeps up this 26 year old man. Shoots the unarmed teenager. Boom. Down he goes. Boom. Dead he goes…

As we have read in the article, an innocent, teenager was shot killed supposedly due to self-defense of a 26 year old man. In Florida, with the special law of self defence they have, the police claimed that they couldn’t do much about Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon. According to the law in Florida, if Zimmerman’s stories were true, none of Zimmerman’s actions were illegal.

As I read through this article, a vivid, meaningful word crawled into my mind. Suspicion. This incident was all lead through suspicion. My instant reaction to that word was shame. Has the world become so crimeful to the point where a man had to actually suspect something unusual from someone just walking in the rain with a hoodie on? This question made me think back to the law of Florida. The law of self defence tells us that the use of force towards other people is acceptable if it is due to self defence. Has the world become such a dangerous place to the point where laws actually enabled violence to people, legally?

My point here which I’m trying to say is that suspicion is not very fun to have creeping up into your minds. We need to stop it. Couldn’t we possibly change this world for it to become a place without suspicion? Where everybody wouldn’t suspect each other of anything? I think this idea leads us to thinking about crime. Previously committed crimes gives us ideas of criminals might look like, resulting suspicion. That one word I hate very much.

I strongly believe that the law of self defence in Florida should be repealed. This basically lets people be suspicious. Suspicious can be a good thing one way or the other, but nothing is good when it is overdone. In the end, suspicion of a crime led to another crime. Maybe not a crime to the law of Florida, but a crime to the law of unalienable human rights.

Suspicion.

Bitter accusations,
Deluded perception,
Of calculated deception…

The first thing I would like to start off with is myself. To be more specific, my writing skills. I have a lot of things to develop and practice in my writing. However, one of my greatest strengths in writing is writing for an audience. I am able to write in a tone where the audience could understand my point, and sometimes maybe even agree to it. I do have some confusing parts in my writing, which I need to work on, but overall, I think my writings are usually noticeably towards the audience.

I had a few problems as I wrote this declaration. I must admit that coming up with the complaints had been a big problem for me. As much as I had to be passionate about writing, I couldn’t think of complaints for paragraph 3. To be honest, the ideas in the third paragraph weren’t entirely mine. Since I struggled with coming up with ideas, I asked friends around me and I also asked my parents. I was actually able to come up with quite an amount of complaints (through the help around me) but I only put 3 of them in, since I thought those three were most convincing. I must also admit that the ‘quite a lot of complaints’ I came up with were not very convincing, including the three I decided to put in my Declaration of Independence. I had to exaggerate the complaints and that was also a little struggle for me. When I saw the thinnest connection between something bad about the school and one of my complaints, I grabbed onto it, tried to make the connection more obvious. For example, I tried to link lack of individuality with requirements to wear the school uniform. I was able to do that by subtly exaggerating my complains.

I have some improvements I would love to make in my Declaration of Independence. One of them would be editing the piece a little more carefully. I thought I proof-read my writing carefully enough but when I saw it today, I had little confusing parts in my writing. If I could start this assignment over, proof-reading more carefully would definitely be one of my improvements to make this a better piece of writing. Overall, I am happy with what I wrote. I think I was able to convince the audience that the school was wrong and the students were right.

When in the Course of human events, it is necessary for students to be independent from their school. Therefore, we need to be able to receive a decent respect towards our unalienable rights to become independent.

It is rather self-explanatory that all students are created equal, that they are gifted by their Creator with the basic human rights, that among these are life, freedom and the hunt of freedom. And to secure these rights, we must face the fact that the students are the biggest body of the school of SSIS. Hence, if this school fails to acknowledge the independence of the students, it is the granted right and duty of us, students, to take down the school. When thought through carefully,
the rules and laws of schools which have been in place for a long time shouldn’t be ignored as long as their reason of unhappiness towards the students are light or temporary. However, if the school’s disregarding of the student’s rights has been constantly repeated, the students need to separate from the school. For decades, students have suffered through not having a voice, which is listened. And now, us, students, we simply can’t take it anymore.

Here are not even half of the injuries which the school has committed:
They have taken away our individuality by not allowing us to wear clothing other than the school uniform.
They have stressed us with unnecessary work to be done at places outside of the school, such as home.
They have taken so much of our time, requiring us to attend school for 5 days in a week of 7 days.
And let me tell all of you, that these are only the tip of the iceberg.

The school has provided us with the student council body but the student representative body actually are more of helpers of what the school plans over what the students plan. We suffered through all types of torture of being stressed and yes, we tried to tell them. Oh, yes we did. We tried to express our stressed emotions and feelings but we were ignored. The school once again needs to be reminded that a school is a building created in order to educate students. Therefore, the school needs to know, in their very basic knowledge, that it is the right of students to be educated in forms and ways which they wish to be. We understand that the school was created by the administration and the teaching staff are the ones educating us. We tried to approach the staff of the school as our educators and administration but our opinions and desires were turned down and ignored. Furthermore, we need to gain our independence as much as we need to. I hope one day, the students and SSIS will be able to happily hold hands and laugh about the days when the school had tortured the students but that day certainly won’t be today.

We have now come to a conclusion that in our ages, independence and individuality are one of the most important things we need to accomplish in order to be successful in our future lives. The school has been stopping us from accomplishing these important keys to life and we have had enough of it. We declare independence in order to gain back those irreplaceable needs in our lives and be able to embrace the basic human rights gifted by our Creator: life, freedom and the hunt of freedom.

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I have a couple of goals I would like to accomplish during the 4th quarter. One of my academic goals would be to ask more questions. To be more specific, I should make sure that I understand everything taught within a class before I move on to the next. If I need to set this goal in a more quantitative way, I will make sure I revise the all the contents (or most) which were covered in the classes I had that day. Furthermore, I will make sure to absolutely finish all of my homework in time. If possible, before the deadline. If I fail to do that, I will make sure I plan the amount of homework done everyday so that I don’t cram the whole project the day before it’s due.

As a personal goal, I would like to stop my procrastination. In order to do that, I will prioritize my actions to make sure that important work is done before anything else. Another goal I would like to set myself is to read more books. To be honest, I haven’t been reading as many books as I have before. As much as I love reading, I don’t want to lack the amount of books I read. I have been blaming all the homework I was assigned but I honestly think I should be blaming my procrastination, which brings out my first personal goal. I would like to set a light, achievable goal for now so I am going to set a goal that I read at least 2 books in 3 weeks which may seem like such a little compared to the time I have. But if I count all of my homework, academy lessons, church, academy homework, I think it will be reasonable.

 Some rights reserved by henry…

This is the last quarter in middle school, and I really need to start pushing myself to achieve goals.

LET’S GO NARIE, LET’S GO!  John Park can’t be that far away… can he?