Official Question for my Human Rights Research Paper

What is the reasoning behind Australia's destruction of aboriginal culture?
I am gong to focus on why Australia would go through the trouble of making reservations for the aboriginal people to keep their culture alive when they were just going to take away their children, and not allow them to have a future.
I am going to use a powerpoint presentation to show my visuals which will be lots of pictures of the aboriginal children.
SO... there is my game plan... now i am going to start.
on your marks... get set... GOOO!!!

My Thoughts on the documentary Made in India

brainstorm!

The Stolen Generation
http://articles.cnn.com/2008-06-25/entertainment/aborigine.cinema_1_aboriginal-people-indigenous-people-richard-frankland?_s=PM:SHOWBIZ

Rabbit Proof Fence – movie – based on the true story of the "Stolen Generation" of Aboriginal children, who were forcibly removed from their families and placed with white foster parents.

http://articles.cnn.com/2008-02-12/world/australia.aborgines_1_aborigines-stolen-generations-apology?_s=PM:WORLD
→ Australia apologizes for the mistreatment of aborigines
→ For 60 years, until 1970, the Australian government took mixed-race Aboriginal children from their families and put them in dormitories or industrial schools, claiming it was protecting them.

http://www.librarything.com/work/7455724
documentary on the stolen generation
and another
http://www.librarything.com/work/6849373

novel from a survivor → http://www.librarything.com/work/4298856/reviews

http://www.librarything.com/work/3213047
→ book – author coined the term “the stolen generation”

article discussing → http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/ASA12/002/2010/en
and another → http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/good-news/australia-apologises-abuses-indigenous-20080213

Separate thing to look at...
→ Why countries make apologizes such as Australia to the aboriginal people and the us to Japanese-Americans
→ why are these reparations given? What is the purpose?

USE THESE SITES!!!!
United Nations
Library Thing
Rights Readers
Human Rights Watch
Amnesty International

DEVELOPING A RESEARCH QUESTIOIN
What led to the Australian Government taking these children away?
Was there conflict occurring?
What were their reasons to be doing this? Was it for the benefit of Australia as a whole?
Why would the children be "better off" being raised in a more modern day family instead of with their aboriginal parents?
Why does Australia consider aboriginal people to be "less" than the modern day people down under?
Have there been any direct conflicts involving aboriginal people and Australia?
How has the involvement of the Australian government affected the aboriginal people?
-> not allowing them to modernize them? are they the ones keeping them in this aboriginal state? if they were free from the meddling of the Ajavascript:void(0)ustralian government, would they eventually modernize themselves?
Did this affect that people of Australia's view of the Australian Government? Cause people to stop trusting them?
What is the significance of preserving the ways of life of aboriginal people?
Why does the government assist to keep their civilization alive but took away their children to modernize them? was it some kind of a cruel social experiment to see if aboriginal people could be like modern day Americans if they are raised that way?
Would it be beneficial for the Australian government to in a sense "exterminate" the aborignal people?

Possible Ideas for Human Rights Presentation

Tyler Hariz and Joe

My first idea is to research the stolen generation. The "stolen generation" were Australian Aboriginal children who were taken away from their families by the Australian Federal and State government agencies and taken to be raised in an "American" fashion to "save them from themselves". I'm interested in researching this because I know very little about Australia besides the fact that there are lots of cute furry animals like Kangaroos and Koala Bears there.
On CNN there is an entire section devoted to stories about this
http://articles.cnn.com/keyword/aboriginal-people

I'm also interested in looking into the memoir "Dancing with Cuba" and how the ABT helped connect Cuba and America for the first time in many years.

I'm also interested in Russian sleeper spies and will be uploading more links when I get home!

Opinions based off of a packet with information on Post-Genocide Rwanda

Review Questions
1. In what ways did genocide impact the development of this “developing” country?
It made the United Nations and other foreign governments more concerned with Rwanda because they felt guilty after basically abandoning the country in its time of need.
It stunted the growth of their country because it caused them to take a few steps back. Due to the mass killings and halted government system, Rwanda's progress has been halted and the focus is to return the country to where it was Pre-Genocide before they can move forward and advance.

2. Where does the rebuilding of a country shattered by genocide begin? What can the people do? What can the government do? What can the international community do?
It begins with the people who had been somehow been hurt by the Genocide (whether they had friends/family who died or were injured themselves) obtaining closure. Next the Government should focus on making Rwanda a better place for the people living there and to also repopulate it. During the genocide many people fled from Rwanda, and now the government's job is to help the people realize that they know what happened before and that they will try their hardest to insure that it won't happen again. The people of the country can help to rebuild by re-instilling their confidence in their country and supporting their government as they try to recover from such a terrible event. The government can help by taking action and showing people that they are changing things for the better. The international community should be there, willing to help other countries at the first sign of genocide.
3. How can justice be found in post-genocide Rwanda? By processing all of the trials of those being in held in prison in Rwanda. They have been waiting for over ten years, and instead of just leaving them there to rot, they should be tried and sentenced.
4. Which can bring justice to the people of Rwanda more effectively – international courts or
community courts? Explain.
A mix between both international and community courts would bring about effective justice because community courts would bring a more personal aspect, while international would be able to provide a wider range of punishments/sentences etc.

Milgram Experiment Reflection

I have decided that I'm going to start entering my free writes into this blog so I won't lose them as easily. After watching this video I was a bit surprised more than anything. I thought it was remarkable how all of the men protested against giving out a shock at one point... This doesn't seem to add up to the Nazi's though. It makes me wonder if any of them refused to harm any of the Jews. In this video it made it look like all of the "testers" challenged authority at one point, but in the story of the Holocaust you never really hear of any officers in the camps all fighting back and saying no. Would I stop? Would I be afraid to stop? Would that drive me to keep going just to save myself?
The tester that kept going to 450 was probably the worst to me. You could obviously tell that the man was very emotional and upset about what he was doing.

Spiegelman

close analysis of one image
where's your head at after the discussion and what's one idea you want to explore


After the discussion, I find myself emotionally... jumbled. Since I was younger I have heard stories of the Holocaust. Of the brutal genocide that murdered thousands of people, but it always seemed very far away. A story that was so far in the past that it in no way would affect the society in which I lived in. I think this was because whenever someone would talk to me about this they made it seemed very official and complicated, but Spiegelman discussed it in a way that I can look at it on a different level. He stripped away many of the strenuous details and just left the facts that were needed to convey the pain inflicted upon the people in concentration camps... While I was reading the story, I was grateful for the easy read, but during the discussion I got kind of angry that Spiegelman was talking about the Holocaust so nonchalantly. It was nice to have the bare necessities of the story because it definitely helped me view it in an easier way, but I don't think it really did the story of the Holocaust justice. During the discussion I felt like i just couldn't word what I was trying to say because I am not sure how I feel about the style of Spiegelman's writing. None of the wording was very difficult, and sometimes i think that the pictures were more affective than the words.

Sweartshops

Things Noticed by the Class
- sweatshops considered positive
- boycotting could be harmful
- most workers are women
- $2/9 hours = decent pay
- pollution considered biggest problem
- workers want long hours
- parents are pleased kids have jobs
- creating middle class
- higher wages = fewer people have jobs but if you keep the low wages, then more people can have a little
- $1-2 a day keeps people out of poverty
- 1/4 of world's economy

Questions thought of through the reading of the article and thinking of some of the statements from UDHR article 23
- Do environmental questions outweigh personal gain?
- How can conditions be improved?
- Will this ultimately lead to better working conditions?
- Will exposure to U.S. lifestyle change how Asians perceive sweatshops?
- How does governing body affect fair labor standards?

15 year old girl -> father prefers her to have a job instead of going to school... how this differs from the things that 15 year old Americans do

First Thoughts
I was surprised to get a different view points on such a popular topic. In the U.S. you always hear about how awful sweatshops are and that they should be shut down, but this article provided me with a more positive outlook on the factories.
Although the $1-$2 a day wage is extremely low, it still can help some people out of the deepest parts of poverty. If people stop buying things from sweatshops, it is actually just going to hurt the CHinese people in the end. Less incoming profit = less jobs available = more women without jobs...
higher wages-> less jobs for women -> more women in poverty
lower wages-> more jobs-> although no one has a lot, they have enough

Modern day congo article 2

I got very lucky and was interested in the first two articles that were on the NY Times web page. What really caught my eye on this one was the picture of the young child who is so malnourished that his ribs are protruding from his sides. This article was entitled "Congo’s Death Rate Unchanged Since War Ended" and the author is Lydia Polgreen. This article highlights the fact that even after billions of dollars have been put into rebuilding the Congo, nearly 45,000 people die every month from disease and sickness alone. Although the violence from the war has decreased, the total deaths in some places, such as in Central Congo, have actually increased. It discusses how it takes a country much longer than would would assume to recover from such a destructive event such as a war. Less than half of the deaths were caused by violence, showing that sometimes "the after math of war is sometimes more deadly that combat itself". Were the diseases that these people are dying from caused from the "invaders" from different countries? Were they the ones brining it in, kind of like the Europeans bringing in the disease when Leopold was in charge? Have those diseases been destroyed or were these new ones just adding to the old ones that were never taken care of? The Congolese government spends a measly $15 a year on health care for each citizen, and obviously this has hindered them. Maybe the government should have been focusing more on the health of the people instead of purely on the physical violence being presented by the invaders. If disease is taking out more people than violence, then this obviously a sign that the death tolls are rising due to the face that the government is ignoring the state in which their people are in. SHould the government have spent more time/money attempting to give people immunizations and antibiotics instead of focusing purely on force WOuld this help the death total and decrease the number of lives that are being lost in the congo every month due to the peoples poor health?

The Congo - Modern Day - Article 1

I found my article on The New York Times website. It is titled "Frenzy of Rape in Congo Reveals U.N. Weakness" and is by Jeffrey Gettleman. This article discusses how the Congo has ultimately become both the U.N.'s greatest investment and greatest failure. Although they have spent much time attempting to improve the lives of the people in the Congo, they have still failed to achieve their main goal which is to protect the civilians. The beginning of this article tells of a story in which a 70 year old woman is raped by four armed men while U.N. peace keeping officials were stationed right up the road. The area of the Congo still continues to be rich in goods to this day, and that causes for large amounts of rebel groups attempting to take control over the mining of such materials as gold, tin and ore. The government claims to be in control, and attempts to flush out these groups by shutting down mines and halting the production of the goods in hopes of leading these groups away from the Congo, but most of the mines aren't even run by the government, thus they have little control at all. Although the U.N. has been working towards improving the lives of the civilians, women are still being raped and the people are still in danger. The officials are getting a little too wrapped up in the production of some goods instead of really focusing on keeping the people of the Congo safe from rebel forces. Why are the U.N. officials staying outside of the town? Why are they not staying in the heart of these villages so that they could stop these atrocities (the raping of women) before they even begin? It seems that the officials aren't focusing enough on the safety of the people and instead worrying about the bigger picture. Although that is a good thing, and will help the people in the long run, right now the main issue is the safety of the people of the Congo so that there will indeed be a future.

King Leopold: Bad Father or just blinded by power?

Something that really stuck with me was Leopold's ignorance towards the needs of his family.
Question number 14, How did Leopold's failing family life affect his actions in the Congo, really made me think more about the sacrifices that Leopold made in order to get further. Although Leopold liked about being a Humanitarian I still semi-respect him because he put the Congo as number one on his priority list. His dedication was amazing. He put his family on the back burner to focus all of his efforts on the Congo. He in a way did use the Congo as an escape from his family. He had many issues at home with his daughters and when he would fail as a father things in the Congo would progress.

DIALOGUE
me → Why would you ever choose to stay in a place like this?
Louise → I had put up with so much for so long and I was sick of following the rules. I dealt with the expectations of my family for so long and I was about to crack. The mask I had been wearing began to fall away and I realized that I could not let my family ruin my life. I knew that I had to finally stand up for myself and get what I wanted:love. I took a risk by having an affair, but I don't regret it. In a way it freed me of my chains as a daughter of King Leopold. I chose the asylum because in here you don't have to hide a thing. You don't have to wear a mask. They accept you, even if what you are is merely a loon.

DESCRIBING THE INDIVIDUALS LIFE
If Louise hadn't attempted to elope with her lover, she would have never been sent to an asylum. If she hadn't had the courage to attempt to leave she would have been stuck unhappily in her marriage forever. Louise matured as she aged

Questions
Why were people quick to believe Leopold was a good humanitarian? Did anyone suspect him of putting up a front and not having pure intentions?
How did Leopold's family past affect his idea of family when he was older?
Did Leopold's trouble at home push him to succeed in other aspects of his life (The Congo).

Questions in Class 1

Was it a good decision for Stanley to explore with men who had no experience as travelers? Why or why not?
Stanley's decision to explore without experienced companions was not a very wise idea, but he knew exactly what he was doing. "Out of the twelve hundred men who applied to join the expedition, some of them highly experienced travelers, he chose three unsuitable companions: a pair of sailor-fishermen, the brothers Drank and Eward Pocock, and a young hotel clerk named Frederick Barker"(Hochschild 49). "None of three had had any experience exploring" (49). "Stanley was always uncomfortable with anyone whose talents might outshine his own" and that is why he chose people that would have no chance of making him look bad or doing/finding something significant on their own. He planned it out so that he would be the star and that people wouldn't even remember the names of the other men. Stanley was practically exploring alone. If something would have went wrong, he would have had only himself to rely on. A hotel clerk, a bugle player... he didn't go out with a group schooled in the ways of the exploration. It was not a good idea at all, but he knew of the risk that came with taking incompetent companions on a trip where nothing was unexpected.

Quotes!

quotes that i found interesting...

“Leopold's letters and memos, forever badgering someone about acquiring a colony, seem to be in the voice of a person starved for love as a child and now filled with an obsessive desire for an emotional substitute, the way someone become embroiled in an endless dispute with a brother or sister over an inheritance, or with a neighbor over a property boundary. The urge for more can become insatiable, and its apparent fulfillment seems only to exacerbate that early sense of deprivation and to stimulate the need to acquire still more” (Hochschild 38).

“He has a script: the dream of a colony that had been through his head since he was a teenager. But he has as yet no stage, no cast” but “one day in September 1877,” the “Stage and star have appeared, and the play can begin” (Hochschild 46).

Stanley -> "The thin-skinned Stanley was remarkably frank about his tendency to take any show of hostility as a deadly insult. It is almost as if vengeance were the force driving him across the continent" (Hochschild 49).

"Stanley was always uncomfortable with anyone whose talents might outshine his own" (Hochschild 49). -> Even though this quote is short, I think it is important to realize that Stanley was a very proud man who loved the fame of being an explorer as much as the next person

1st Reading of King Leopold's Ghost

      For homework in my advanced world history class, I was instructed to read the first 35 pages of the book King Leopold's Ghost. The first part I read was the introduction. It talked about the background of a man that would alter history, Edmund Dene Moral. Moral was a very common man who didn't seem like "the sort of person likely to get caught up in an idealistic cause", but when he discovered the slave trade in Africa, he "almost single-handedly" "put the subject on the world's front page for more than a decade" (Hochschild 1, 2). As the introduction goes on, the author, Adam Hochschild, admits that he himself had heard of this great genocide in Africa and yet had filed it in his mind not as fact, but as fiction. The prologue talks of a time 500 years prior when people first began to go south towards Africa. They had many reasons. Some were drawn to the supposed riches, some to the source of the nile and some to the Legend of Prester John, a king who lived in Africa and would welcome strangers into his extravagant castle. This part of the reading caught my attention because it discusses how the people first got interested in moving south and how slowly but surely their curiousity began to get the better of them. They had wandered for so long that eventually the anticipation became to much and they started to attempt to go further and further into Africa. Most went on boats in the dangerous Congo River and the brave few would attempt to walk. I also found the section on how the priests were even betraying their promise to god and began to take slaves. It helped me to better understand how popular slave trade had become and how it was affecting more and more people. Another section that highly interested me was the beginning life of John Rowlands. He was a bastard child who spent most of his life wandering around. He lived with his grandpa, his uncles, a foster family and soon to St. Asaph Union Workhouse. John would go on to to be known as Henry Morton Stanley, the man who became a permanent roving foreign correspondent for the Herald at twenty-seven years old.

     One part that I found myself getting a bit disinterested in the reading was when Hochschild began to discusss Mbanza Kongo and how he changed things. I don't know why, I just found myself struggling to pull myself back in on this part, but it only laster the few pages discussing him and his rule. 

    Overall I found the reading very interesting and am already asking myself some questions such as...

1.) How was the story of such a mass genocide forgotten in history? It seems like a pretty hard event to forget.

2.) WHy do you think Europeans were willing to risk their lives traveling south down into Africa because of a silly fairytale? Was it purely curiosity or something more?

Which newsworthy events do you remember from your lifetime?

The question I asked was "Which Newsworthy events do you remember from your lifetime?"

Bill (aka my dad!): "Well I remember a lot but the ones that I recall most clearly were... well the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I was in Omaha, Nebraska at Offut Air force base in the base exchange when I heard. My youngest memory was when President Truman fired General McArthur, that probably makes me really old but I don't care. Oh! I remember when the astronauts landed on the moon. I heard it on the radio in my car and I rushed home to watch it on tv. I can remember a lot of stuff about when I was in the Vietnam war, but I don't want to get into that. The only memory I will mention is when I was in a helicopter with a bunch people shooting at us, and a piece of shrapnel hit me in the chest and burned the hell out of me. A more recent event that I remember really well would have to be 9/11. I recall hearing on my way to work just before 8 a witness saying that a plane had flown into the first tower, and a few minutes later the witness confirmed that a second plane had hit the second tower. The witness was a man staring out of his window with his wife watching everything happen and he was yelling "I can't believe it! Another plane just hit the other tower!"It was pretty surreal. I remember when John Lennon died. I was in New York... I had gone to dinner and when I got back to the hotel everyone was talking about it. I remember when Reagan got shot. I remember when that plane landed in the river in New York a few years ago. I remember the first American appearance of the Beatles... they were on the Ed Sullivan Show. I remember when I got black and white tv. I actually remember our first tv. It was an 8 inch screen. It seemed big back then... I remember party lines. Five houses would all be on the same line and have the same phone number. So you'd go to pick up the phone and someone else would be having a conversation so you would hang up and wait your turn. I remember the first computers. I remember 78 records.

Renee (aka my mom!): "Oh gosh. Well, I remember when President Carter pardoned the draft dodgers who had went to Canada to escape the Vietnam War. My mom was SO mad. I will never forget that coming off the news. I was really little, but my parents were so upset that it will always stick in my mind. I was really young but I vaguely remember when JFK died. I really remember when the space shuttle exploded with the school teacher on it. Of course I remember 9/11. I was dropping Sydney off at pre-school and I was in my car. I turned on the news on the radio and heard. I remember when the pope came to Des Moines! My mom went to the living history farm to see him. She rode a bus and had to walk... she was excited. I remember during the Vietnam War when one of my best friend's brothers was killed. Oh gosh I remember when Nixon got pardoned? What was happening? I remember he was in a bunch of trouble... OH! They were trying to impeach him, that's what it was. I remember that being a whole big mess. I remember when Reagan died, we were in California for a wedding. I also remember when the iron curtain was taken down in Russia! I REALLY remember when Princess Diana died. We had come home from a company anniversary thing and your grandma was sitting at the tv crying. She never bought another smut magazine. She was so mad at the paparazzi. She used to go to Medicine More every week for a magazine and some cigarettes and she was so upset that she never bought another trashy magazine. I remember when Elvis died! OH! I stayed up all night to watch the wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles. It was like at 4 or 5 in the morning, it was crazy, but I saw the whole thing! I remember Hurricane Katrina...  I remember when the Staten Island Ferry ran into the dock in New York. I remember being stuck in Des Moines during the floods of '93. We were driving across a bridge and the water was level with the car. I remember when John F. Kennedy Jr. died. I remember when the Beatles were out. My sister LOVED them. I remember Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show. They only showed him from the waist up because rock and roll was evil. I remember getting touch tone telephones! Oh, party lines! I would never hang up, I would listen to my neighbors conversations. I remember when they were going to change the whole world to the metric system. I remember when they went albums to a-track players to cassette players to cd players to ipods now.

Now my turn! 

When Mrs. Knechel asked me to think about this I started to freak out a little inside. I thought, A"Alright Madison, you don't know that many so you should either heavily explain the one you do know or just start to look stuff up and pretend like you remembered it", but after interviewing my parents I realized that I knew way more than I thought I did. The "newsworthy events"didn't have to be specifically conflicts in different countries, but could be about anything that I had remembered.

I, of course, remember 9/11. I was sitting in my babysitter Mrs. Jeanne's kitchen after she had come and picked me up from school. The ever popular tv show "Big Wolf on Campus" was cancelled and I was of course extremely dissapointed, but Mrs. Jeanne made me keep on the news report that had replaced it. I remember seeing pictures of the world trade center and although I didn't fully understand what was happening I was afraid. I remember when Anna Nicole Smith died! I though people were kidding when they first told me. I remember when Michael Jackson held his baby out of a hotel room window to "say hello to fans" and people freaked out thinking that he was crazy and was trying to kill his child. I remember when Princess Diana died because I got the beanie baby created for her after her death from my babysitter. I remember when Osama Bin Laden was captured. I was prepping to sing the national anthem at the ram's game when it came on the tv. Right before I sang they announced it and I remember the stadium going crazy. I remember when J. Lo and Ben Affleck cancelled their wedding. I remember when Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake broke up. That was awful. I remember when George Busch won the presidential election over John Kerry. I remember when the blonde harp playing girl was found after being abducted from her home and was kidnapped for many years. I remember when Janet Jackson had her nipple incident at the Super Bowl with Justin Timberlake. I remember when Heath Ledger died. I remember the tsunami in Sri Lanka and Hurricane Katrina. I remember when Friends went off of the air. I remember when Mark McGuire was found to have been using steroids. I remember the shooting at Columbine Highschool. I remember when the pope was very sick. I was in Chicago at a dance competition and I sat at the tv with my mom and saw all of the people with candles, crying and praying. I also remember soon after when he passed away. I remember when the Amish school girls were murdered. I remember when scientists decided Pluto was not a planet... and then decided it was again. I remember when the space shuttle exploded. I remember watching former President Reagan's funeral and watching his wife cry on his coffin. I think that if I sat here for a few hours i would remember more and more stories. It doesn't hit you how much you absorb by just listening to the radio or having aol as your homepage on your computer... When i started this I thought I knew nothing, but now I think I might know a little more than I thought!