HW 32: Akila Al-Hashimi's Assassination Attempt from Riverbend's point of view

Riverbend talks about how Akila Al-Hashimi had an assassination attempt on her. She was attacked on her way to work by two trucks who surrounded her vehicle which also had her two brothers, who are her body guards. Once they surrounded the car they opened fire onto the car that Akila was in and injured her. Once the neighboring people heard the gunshots, they acquired weapons from their homes and started attacking the attackers of Akila. Akila had her stomach operated on before being escorted by American soldiers to what Riverbend believes to be the Hospital at the Baghdad Airport that the Americans set up. The total amount of damage that happened to Akila included gunshot wounds to the foot, the shoulder, and the stomach. She had been in bad shape, and her condition included that she was in critical condition, but she was also stable. I like the quote that Riverbend gives at the end of this post because she talks about how the people who did this need to be punished, “I really hope they find whoever did this, and I hope the punishment is severe(Baghdad Burning, 76)”.

HW30: Being the Citizen Journalist

The presentation I went to out of the Keene State College Citizenship Symposium was with Scott Ritter and the title of his speech was Citizen Soldier, Global Warrior. The main point that Mr. Ritter was getting across was that the united states citizens should become part of the choices that are made by this country. He used examples of how this government isn’t really a democracy in the sense that we really don’t have a choice on who we vote for. He explained that we didn’t get to choose who was on the ballad, and how they get this is how rich they are and how much they can put into a campaign. This speech really had me paying attention because he was talking about things that I never even considered. He made me realize that the united satates is basically trying to run the world when we don’t have the right. I believe his views and I was happy I went to this. A quote I remember him saying that struck me was “Consumerism is the antithesis of citizenship”, which basically means that buying things to “keep the economy” going, isn’t going to make the country better. Citizens need to respond to what they believe is wrong and voice their opinions more so the government can’t feel like they have all of the power.

An Open Letter to Riverbend (HW28)

Dear Riverbend,

I agree with a lot of what you say about the “occupation” as you so call it. I really do think that this war has been a deception to the world with the way things have been handled. I have never seen so many he said she said types of things in politics, and to hear what it’s like from the other side of the war. I knew that the soldiers weren’t nice to the iraqi’s, but the way that you describe how they are to you it seems terrible. But I do understand where they’re coming from, because anyone can be the enemy especially if the soldiers are in enemy territory. It just isn’t fair that the few that are against the soldiers and will act upon it ruin the trust between Iraqis and US troops. It also isn’t fair that no one can do their own jobs there, it all has to be done by foreign companies. I agree that if Iraq rebuilt after the first gulf war, Iraq can rebuild itself now without all the help of foreign countries. The Iraqis should be able to figure out who’s rebuilding and use all of the people who did those jobs before the invasion to help rebuild so the Iraqi population can earn money and rebuild the country’s economy.

HW 27: Baghdad Burning Relevance to ITW-101

Riverbend. Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog From Iraq. The Feminist Press, 2005.

This book was written by an anonymous blogger named Riverbend. She talks about what her life is like while living in Iraq during the war in Iraq that started with the invasion in 2003. This book has a lot of information about the war in Iraq but it also shows how people really live in Baghdad and what they have to suffer through. The benefits that are relevant in this book are things like the way she writes. It’s a lot more interesting and easy to follow as well as being informative and showing you what it would be like trying to live in a country that has been invaded and overrun. The challenges seem to be living in Iraq during this time and having to deal with the general knowledge about Iraq and how it may be frustrating. An example would be when she talks about how she doesn’t like that some people don’t believe she’s Iraqi because they’re so close minded that they think that Iraqis have no technology and don’t have the internet. These things are interesting to read about and this book seems like it will be an informative and intense read.

A Room Of My Own (HW 24)

I believe that I do have a room of my own. I have worked very hard to get the respect from my teachers in my major and have received a lot of kudos for the work I have done. Where I did all of this work is in my room, a place where I can be myself and let myself work at any pace I want. I can also do things to keep my mind going and keep me thinking about what I have to do, which makes me more relaxed. But I feel I have the same advantages as women, because now women also have the opportunities men have. Like Woolf says “there are almost as many books written by women now as by men” (Woolf, 86), which was written in 1928, so it’s even more fair now than it was back then.

Woolf and the Democrats (HW23)

With Apologies to Virginia Woolf

After reading this interesting thing that people these days call a “blog”, I realized that the government in the United States is not going well. George Bush seems to be irritating a lot of people on the Democratic National Committee Blog. From what I’ve read, he vetoed a bill that would help for Children’s Health Coverage so he could spend more money on the failing war in Iraq. This is probably the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. To think that war is more important than your own people, including the children who will someday be running the country is preposterous. The amount of children that could be covered by the bill was roughly ten million children while continuing its coverage of 6.6 million more children already covered by the Children's Health Insurance Program. It seems that I’m not the only one on this snazzy blog who thinks that is a stupid decision.

HW18

The blog that I read that upset me the most was on Daily Kos. It didn’t really bother me to what the blogger said on the post, but what actually happened. During a speech to the National Rifle Association, Rudy Giuliani answered a cell phone call from his wife which completely stopped the speech. Of course people got upset and had complained about it and his response had to do with the only thing that he was important in, 9/11. That just irritates me that one would use something like that as an excuse to answer a phone during a huge speech. For someone who’s supposed to be running for president that doesn’t seem like a very good move to pull during a speech. What if he did that during a campaign speech? It just seems stupid that someone would do something like that. Not only that, but during an interview he was quoted saying for another excuse to his phone call incident, “I've been married three times. I can't afford to lose another one. I'm sure you understand. (To Bear Sterns executives)”. Completely ridiculous is all I have to say about that.

Take a look

Daily Kos HW17B

I think that the Daily Kos blog would influence me more in an upcoming election just for the fact that Zuniga actually talks about politics that doesn’t deal with scandal. Wonkette is a blog that just puts out information about candidates that only make them human. People make mistakes, and Wonkette makes sure that the entire world knows about it. On Daily Kos, it’s what the blogger feels about an upcoming election or the candidates that are in the race. It would probably give more of a political background of the candidates rather the sex scandals or things that the candidates may have done in their past that has nothing to do with politics. Daily Kos also seems to have a blogger who’s more devoted to his cause than Wonkette. After reading the interview of both people, Zuniga is more serious about his blog and what he puts on it, where Cox doesn’t really care at all what she says on her blog. She actually thinks its fun to “ruin people’s days”. So if I were really trying to find some information about a candidate or party for the political race that is happening at that time, I would choose Daily Kos.

HW14 Response to Denton's Interview

In short, after reading the Nick Denton interview, it makes more sense now that blogs aren’t really going to take over the media in the sense of providing new information or information that people can’t get from the media. Actually, it’s going to just take what is reported in the media and show what is more important than the other stories that have been reported on. As a result, the media won’t really become something to not trust, but it will be a place where the real information is kept, blogs will just be a place to show what “should” be on the front page of a newspaper or magazine. Also blogs tend to not have the resources that news media has. For example if someone writing a blog wanted to report on news in Baghdad, he or she wouldn’t really have the resources to do so, but the news media would be able to send a journalist there to get all the information they need right from the source.

Businesses aren’t really important in the blogging world (HW13)

I believe that blogging doesn’t really put much of a huge impact on businesses. It doesn’t’ really seem like the business world would really need blogging because it’s not really as professional as other things that businesses can use. I believe this because every time I look at blogs or hear about blogs, it’s mostly either about politics or just about someone’s life. It never really talks about a certain business or tries to sell products on blogs, because people who use blogs don’t like it when there are advertisements. If I were a blogger, I wouldn’t like it if there were advertisements all over my blog because people would be more focused on the advertisements instead of what I had to say. But even if business blogs seem to be taking off, in the reading from Kine and Burstein, it says that “According to a Pew Research Center Survey, only 27% of Internet Users in America now bother to read them.” So basically since blogs aren’t even read that much, it can’t do much for businesses to use them.

HW 11: Applying Graff, Chapter 6 to “Making Global Voices Heard”

The blog I chose to look up and view was the Kenyan Pundit Blog. The theme of the blog is actually quite interesting and fun to look at, though the writing is kind of bland and boring. From what I read, the blog postings are mostly about the blogger’s life. Nothing really about politics, mostly about things that have been going on in the blogger’s life. Ory likes to talk about how her daughter’s feet are really cute. She also likes to talk about watching Big Brother Africa. But when it comes to talking about Kenyan politics, Ory isn’t really succeeding. MacKinnon’s statements don’t really match up to what I’ve read, since MacKinnon said that Ory was talking a lot about politics in Kenya when she’s not. Of course, many will probably disagree with this assertion that she doesn’t talk much about Kenyan politics. But as of right now, she hasn’t been.

HW 9: Applying Graff, Chapter 4 to Huffington

After reading this interview, I do agree with a lot of her ideas. I agree that the media is suffering from “attention deficit disorder”, since most of their news broadcasts are about one thing, a point that needs emphasizing since so many people believe that media covers everything they need to know. I also agree that it’s much easier to create a blog and post on a blog than it is to actually sit down and write an entire thought out, sending it to an editor, and hopefully getting it posted in a newspaper or on the news. The things I don’t agree with are things like how just because someone messes up on a blog, doesn’t mean that someone is going to fix it. She says, regarding the chances of being corrected on a false blog, “the chances of it being corrected are very great.” I don’t think that just because one can put false information on a blog means it’s better than the news just because it was corrected by someone else. People on the news can’t afford to get things wrong because it’s illegal first of all, and the people who give the false information can get fired.

HW 7: Applying Graff, Chapter 3 to "My So-Called Blog"

I believe that the statement “Parents should not monitor everything that their middle-school children write online” is true, in a sense. Every kid wants their privacy, but writing blogs and “livejournals” online isn’t really privacy. It’s mostly only privacy from their parents. Parents should respect their children’s privacy but also should be aware of what their writing about. If a parent notices that their child isn’t behaving like they usually do, a quick check on their blog could probably contain the reason. This also means that the answer isn’t what the parent wants to hear, but it’s important to know what’s going on in one’s child’s life. A good example of things where children put too much information in their blogs is from Emily Nussbaum’s article “My So-Called Blog”, where she asked some teens about privacy:

“With so much confessional drama, I began to wonder if interactions ever swung out of control. Does anyone ever post anything that seems like too much information? I asked. They all nodded intently, tossing nervous eye contact back and forth.”

This is the reason why blogging can become dangerous, putting out too much information. This can be dangerous on many levels. There could be too much personal information given out, so a predator could possibly find the writer of the blog. Something could be said about a friend or a friend of a friend, therefore starting a fight within the group and possibly hurting someone’s feelings. Things like this can happen all the time, and from personal experience, it’s not fun.

HW 6: Interest Statement for Semester-Long Project

When I looked through the list of things for my semester-long project, there were three that really caught my eye. One of them is learning about instant messaging, and learning about the affects it has on people. Another is social networking services like facebook or myspace; things that young adults and teens use a lot and enjoy very much. The last thing is massive multiplayer online games, like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars. These things all seem to have major affects on the younger population, with problems like addiction, predators, and bad grammar just to name a few. I want to research these to figure out why people are so addicted or never can get away from it. Types of empowerment I’d like to research is overcoming ageism, where people can’t get things because they’re too young or too old. Also I’d like to learn about overcoming religious intolerance. The last one I’d like to learn about and research is overcoming racism. The areas I’d like to start looking at are the US and Asia, two of the most interesting cultures on the planet.

HW 5b: Bloggers are more trusted than Big Media

After finishing the reading “I Blog, Therefore I Am”, I came to a part in the essay that I disagreed with when the authors claim that the reason why the Big Media has lost so much trust in their readers, being biased, was actually welcomed in the world of blogging. He emphasizes on the fact that “Big Media’s biases are often convert, hidden by a screen of presumed ‘objectivity’, whereas bloggers’ biases are usually openly and proudly stated.” I disagree with this belief because if I were to read a blog about politics where the writer was completely biased, I wouldn’t trust or believe anything the writer was talking about. Even if the Big Media has a hidden bias, their talking more about the event that is happening, not their own opinions on it. When I read the news, I want to know what exactly is going on, not what people think about it. The author also argues that bloggers also relieve the resources openly and freely to people who want to know where they got their ideas and information, and say that reporters for the Big Media don’t always show where their resources are. If one were to really think about it they’d realize that some people don’t want to be mentioned when they give out information to the media. Maybe because they don’t want to be hurt, or they don’t want the publicity. Either way I believe it’s wrong to think the Media has such a bad reputation just because they don’t say all of their resources.

HW4: Responding to "The Voice of the Customer" Choice 2

The promise that the Xbox 360 gives is to provide family entertainment and the most advanced gaming system in the world. They put so much into the system that it can almost become a complete household entertainment system. The website shows that you can put music, movies, and pictures on it as well as games and demos that you can download off of Xbox Live. It also shows that the Xbox 360 can be plugged into a computer and use Windows Media Center Edition, therefore making it something like a TiVo where you can download recorded television or on demand videos. You could also plug in your iPod into the Xbox 360 and listen to music while playing videogames. That brings me to the actual purpose of the system, the games. The website shows that the games on this system are the most advanced games on the planet. The graphics are intense and the game-play is ridiculous. These things are vital to show to the consumer, because they are the reason why someone would need to buy this system and get rid of their old Xbox. I am one of these consumers who trusted this company, and for the most part they have succeeded. The only thing I ran into, which was what a lot of customers ran into, was the “red circle of death” which basically means a hardware failure. I had to send my Xbox 360 in for repair, which they did for free, and got it back within 3 weeks. They apologized and sent free things with my repaired Xbox 360 so they really want the customer to trust them, and I think they did a really good job.

HW3: Political blogs on the rise?

An essay called “Toward a More Participatory Democracy”, written by David Kline, is about how political blogs are important in the world today. It explains that throughout the mid 2000’s the American population have slowly become less and less attracted towards media news like newspapers and news broadcasts and more attracted to political blogs. The reason being all of the commotion that has happened since the War in Iraq has begun. Things like when the news said that the government had intelligence saying Iraq had weapons of mass destruction then said they didn’t find weapons of mass destruction. At the same time I believe that political blogs are as informative if not more as media, I also believe that not all blogs can be trusted either. In his essay he never really explains or goes on the other side of how some blogs can be biased as well as untrue. Just because the media has bad wraps for giving false information doesn’t mean blogs don’t as well. Anyone can write a blog, so someone who’s completely insane and paranoid could say something along the lines of the government is spying on its people. News reports never could go that far without losing a lot of ratings, so somehow they need to make sure they can at least give some sort of truth. Blogs can be completely false if the person who wrote it wants it to be.

HW2: is MySpace blogging slowly not being used as much?

When I first read the 12 key ideas in “From Cave Painting to Wonkette”, I really thought that the author believed that blogging was the next generation in communication on the web. He definitely had some wise ideas and thoughts to back him up, but it seems that now blogging isn’t really the largest thing on the web. In my opinion social networks like MySpace and facebook have completely overrun the internet and have many followers. You never really hear much about blogs now, like a few years ago when people would write in their livejournals and tell everyone to go read them. Now it’s more along the lines of meeting people on MySpace and facebook and talking about who sent who a certain comment or who’s dating who on MySpace. A lot of movie and bands also use these networks because since there is such a large population using them, they can get a lot more of a fan base and make more money on their albums or films. It’s also a nice way for people to keep in touch with each other and be able to contact them faster since more people look at their facebook or MySpace a lot more.