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Here Your Go :D

Reflection:
This project was very enlightening and I was very surprised with some of the researched I found. I decided to look at Kazakhstan because when I typed it into to google.com, it provided a lot of information I could work with unlike the other countries in Central Asia. My decision to compare it with North Korea was mainly because of my huge interest on how their country is ran, knowing that it is very hostile. My process was basically to look up the country regarding to the 5 point frame work and provide a nice overview. It was a tad difficult because in certain topics like the response, because I had to dig around the web for a good piece of information. Other than small difficulties of that sort, the project itself was, to my belief, successful.  I'm quite proud of the finishing product and the one thing I would add , not change, is the inclusiveness of live videos of both countries current state.

Thus far, I have a pretty solid outline for my project. I have mapped out the events that will happen and when they will happen on the designated social networking tool. I struggled with how I should go about presenting the story because a lot of the story consists of flash backs and considering social networking is all in the present tense, I didn't know how I should relay the information. 

​Click to view the Benchmark.

Reflection:
The countries that I selected for this benchmark are Australia and Madagascar.
My process was ok. I feel like I have more than should actually have on the benchmark. The frameworks were straightforward. The only 5 point framework that I thought was difficult was "hostile neighbors." It was kind of hard to research this particular framework because I wasn't exactly aware of where to go to find information. The other 4 frameworks weren't hard to research. The problem was choosing the best source to use information from. If I could change one thing about my product, I would lessen the amount of words that I have. I think that I wrote a lot. Overall this benchmark was not difficult, but I didn't really enjoy doing it. It took me a while to actually start the benchmark, but I hope that my finish product doesn't reflect that. Putting my project together of a Pages application was simple. I just had to make sure it was organized and the layout had to be nice. 

The two countries I chose were, The District Republic of the Congo and New Zealand.They are both located fairly far away from one another but still have warm tropical climates. New Zealand is located in Oceania, and The DR Congo is in Africa. They both have extremely different economic histories, so it was very interesting comparing the two countries.
My process consist of a lot of research! It was really hard finding good sources in order to make my project accurate. The first thing that I did was write a script for everything I wanted to say. Of coarse I followed the 5 point framework for each country so it took quite a bit of time. After I found out what I wanted to so say I began to design my presentation using pictures, and graphs to make the my research understandable. Using the framework was a little difficult at times but it was helpful, because it gave me a good structure to work with. The only one that I thought might not have been the most unnecessary was "The Societies Response to Environmental Damage", the reason I say this is because this could have been clumped together with "Environmental Damage". I felt like I was writing the same things for both points in a way.
If I could change one thing about the project I would have done a website, instead of a PDF. I say this because I think the website organized the information much better, and it looked a lot better. In the end though I am very satisfied with my project . I worked extremely hard and I hope that it is shown through my final presentation. I think that if Ms. Laufenberg were to assign this benchmark next year, she should only make it one country so that students could be thorough about what they say about the countries they choose. I felt as though I was rushing with the Congo because I spent so much time on New Zealand.

Summary-​I chose Cuba a Caribbean island south of Florida, It is currently in an embargo with the united states. My other country was Great Britain which is to the west of Europe and is the third most populated island on earth.
Overview-I looked up my countries and used the benchmark description to pull information out on slides.
Reflect-The 5 point framework was straightforward, there were some that required some thinking but it wasn't to bad.
Change-I would make it more appealing with pictures
Other-Nothing really(my computer is about to die so ill edit this later)

Benchmark:
View here.




Reflection:
For my benchmark I chose to research North Korea, East Asia, and the Philippines, Southeast Asia. When I started this project I chose my countries and then, starting with the Philippines, I went into the CIA Factbook. I started up a document where I took notes and kept links that I used for information. I then began researching the two countries, again with the Philippines first, based on the "five-point framework" from Collapse. I went through articles from trusted news sources, articles from big organizations, and sifted through everything. As I went I took down information that I thought would help my process and kept track of the links I used to find the information. After I repeated the process for North Korea, I went through each of the five points and considered all of the information on my document and I rated them based on the countries' issues and how well they were able to handle it, for example the Philippines got a low rating for climate change because climate change could devastate their environment and ability to maintain food sources but they weren't at the bottom because they're making efforts to solve this situation. When using the five-point framework I found myself having a little bit of trouble. I didn't want to rate too high or too low and I wanted to make sure I was honestly taking different parts of each topic into consideration and not just surface level knowledge, like that North Korea has a high rate of water pollution; I also considered the effects and the weight of those effects on things like survival, economy and trade. So, rating took a little bit of time. If I could change one thing about my product I would add more diagrams, not just information and pictures of things that are being done, but statistics, diagrams and charts because they get a lot of information out in a tiny bit of space which would have saved me some writing.

 My Website

In this project I portrayed myself as a blogger who interviews officials from other countries over the internet about whether or not they will collapse.

Reflection:
        The two countries I've chosen was Cambodia and Pakistan. Cambodia, located in south east asia, I've always been interested in however knew very little of them and Pakistan I've always seen in the news however didn't know why, so I wanted to see if they were on the brinks of collapse. Originally I was going to do a "Hard Ball" type presentation, however last minute I due to lighting situations, and me being very tired lately I've decided to do the "Sleepy kid" who skypes with officials from other countries.
        My process of my project was simple, look up the information needed and rate it. Since I did an online blogger video I was able to make a script as I went to give it more of a "live" vibe to it. At first I used to the CIA factbook and that was no help to me in the beginning. Then I later went back to look at it again and it was a more than enough help for me when I had more patience to actually go through it, so it gave me more of a better ground for what I was looking for. It was like Ms.Laufenberg said "It's where you can start but it's not where you are going to end."
       For this project we went through the five point framework related to collapse, which made it all the more simpler. Knowing what I was looking for in 5 easy steps made this benchmark a lot less complicated and easier to present. Thinking back now on this project I would change one thing, and the only mistakes I made and that was doing the wrong country. Instead of Cambodia I was suppose to do the country of Columbia from my current South American region. I am confident I was still able to portray everything correctly, however that is my only flaw.

Fiji and Zambia collapsibility 

The two countries I chose were Fiji and Zambia. Fiji is in Oceania, a very beautiful area were a lot of people tend to go on vacation at. Clear waters and very little environmental issues, Fiji overall is a place most people would dream of. Than Zambia, in Sub Saharan Africa suffers from dry season over occurring burn fires and many environmental issues. Zambia has issues with its neighbors and there are some issues going on inside of Zambia it self.

 I knew how I wanted to present the information; I didn’t want anything too extravagant, I just wanted a simple display of the information reason behind the ratings that I gave each place. I just needed to know the information that I was presenting, which is moderately easy. I typed in what I wanted to find and the answers seemed to just be there for me so I just needed to put this information into my own words.

Although I didn’t want the most exciting project in the world, after I was done I thought that I could have put all this info into imovie and made a simple movie but other than that im pretty happy with my project. 

Panama & Japan

Japan is a huge potential country and I think that it is interesting and embracing to study the collapsing probabilities of such country. One of my regions was East Asia; at first I thought about choosing China but the media is now all over Japan and I thought that it would be much easier to find information about Japan. The other reason of why I decided to analyze the collapsing possibilities of Japan is because, I was really interesting in learning and comprehending the reaction of society (not only in Japan but the entire world). In this kind of situations is when you really see how the world can come together or separate.
Panama is a small country in North America. I’m concern about the way that their system works when it comes to preserving their forest. It was difficult to find information about Panama, because of all the other events that are occurring now.

I think that my five point framework was fine. Sometimes I had way too much information about something and some other things were just too difficult to find. I think that if I had a little bit more time I could have done a better job in terms of research.  If I could change one thing about my product it would be the design of the website. I think that it would have had help a lot more if I had some pictures for each category.

 

Op Ed

 

In today’s world the standard for protection is completely laid upon the police. Police are supposed to serve and protect so that people don’t take any matters into their own hands. As a result, civilians are not expected to engage in any violent behavior.  A person will be arrested and prosecuted for harming another person even though they may not have been the aggressor. However, the law states that anyone can use non-lethal non-deadly force to defend him self or her self when another person tries to unlawfully harm him or her, deadly force if needed. This should mean that any person who is in danger should have the right to kill if needed. However there is a strong double standard.

 

There was a case in England when a martial artist killed two men and seriously wounded a third. The three men broke into the victim’s house and threatened his family with knives. The victim defended him self and the two women killing two men and putting one in the hospital.  The law says this act should have defended this man’s rights, but because he was a martial artist he “should have” used non-deadly force to defend his family as the police say- Even though the attackers threatened to rape and kill the two women if he did not tell them where the money was.

 

The act of this prosecution is very wrong. How can you hold someone responsible for defending people he cares fore? The 28-year-old Asian was arrested for deadly force even though very hurt. It is very understandable that he would be taken in for his actions as should all people if they kill, it is for the purpose of investigation. However, once the police found out what really happened he should have been set free by law, but since he was a martial artist a few charges were brought up against him. This is because he simply knew what he was doing more than someone who has not practiced a form of self-defense. The press didn’t help the situation by saying “The butchery worthy of a Quentin Tarantino film”.

 

In a similar story, a woman in Maryland shot and killed her husband in an act of self-defense.  Even though the man was shot and killed the women was arrested but never charged. The police said it appears to be an act of self-defense. Witnesses say that the man was always in a bad mood. From the report it sounds like the women was right to defend her self, if she felt like her life was in danger. She was released from custody a few hours later. She went home and continued to live her life.

 

I fail to see a major difference in the situation the two were in. One man protected two women and him self. One woman defended her self because she felt like her life was in danger. The man was charged with using excessive and unneeded force. Even though the threat to his life was clear and other victims said that they were about to be killed, the martial artist was still arrested and charged. The women, on the other hand had, no witnesses in the room with her. Therefore no one could fully verify her story. The police only had her voice and the people who knew the man’s opinion to go on. This double standard needs to stop it is highly unfair to all martial artiest. Just because someone is more skilled than another, does not mean they should be treated any different.

 

 

 

Boy: You’re a punk

Girl: uuummm, why can’t you leave me alone?

Boy : Why are you so ugly?

Girl: (Starts to cry)

Boy: See your nothing but A Punk!!

Girl: (Gets up and….)

 

 

            Yes , this might seem as a simple teasing method that most kids go through. But just because it is simple doesn’t mean that it can become something that is serious. Some parents may think it’s phase that their kids will grow out of it when they are older. Just because they are young, does it mean that it is okay for it to continue happening?

 

            According to research carried out by the National Education Association, it was projected that around 160,000 children skip schooling every day due to anxiety about violence or bullying.

 

            You may believe that bullying is more common in schools that are public. Well that’s not true. According to the Bullying and Civility, in Public and Private Schools forum, Josephson Institute Center for Youth Ethics indicates a more positive result for private schools than for public schools.

 

            Lately, in the news there has been a video recording of a pre-teen punching the older teenager in the face. Casey Heynes is the victims’ name and is known for being a hero for his self -defense. Richard is the young bully. Both where suspended for both of there actions. A lot of the Americans who have heard this story does not believe that Casey should have been suspended for sticking up for his self.

 

            Bullying is a violent movement that if it’s not handle properly the child could grow up wanting to bully other adults when older. It can become more of a illness then a evil way.  Check out this fact: "Say, you visited a school with a population of 800. It is also yet another bullying fact that one out of 7 is either a bully or a target. Say, we opt for the initial one. You will find 114 sets of 7 out of 800. Which means, it may very easily be believed that out of 800 people in school, 16 of these can easily turn out to obtain a criminal history by age 30." 16 might seem as a low number, but if we think about every school in our nation and added it up it could be a thousand to a billion.

 

            Adults need to realize that children need them growing up. Having a kid is not easy it takes a lot of time and patience to take care of a baby. When they grow up they need guidance and love to make the right decisions.  If you can’t then handle the hard work due to being a parent then maybe you should get knocked up as a mother or caught up as father.

 

            According to the Bullying Statistics 2009, Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people, resulting in about 4400 deaths per year, according to the CDC. For every suicide among young people, there are at least 100 suicide attempts. Over 14 percent of high school students have considered suicide, and almost 7 percent have attempted it.

 

 

So I ask you again do we stop it where it first starts or do like it go through a “Phase”?

Hey you guys want to go to the circus, how about to your neighborhood video game store and pick up the latest ‘Pokémon’ game? Hey you know what, this is just like asking someone do you want to go see a cock-fight or maybe a dog fight, wrong right?

Everyday in the United States animals are being beat, set on fire, and killed because of something someone needs such as food, shelter or someone to take their anger off. Most animals do not live to see the day of light before someone is taking them away from their mothers, habitats, etc.  When you think about animal abuse where do you see it happening? The basement of some unknown man, children, people who abuse their families. Animal abuse comes in different forms from everywhere, any zoo that took the animal out of its habitat to put it in a cage and watch it, the circus, practically if there is a animal in a show or anything such as these things, and their not being used for what they should be used for it is animal abuse.  

Most people do not understand that animal abuse is like someone abusing a child. Animals are living beings just like you and I, and they have feelings too, and they also can do things that would help us if we were ever in any type of horrid situation.

People who abuse animals are not taken through the consequences of people who abuse other people. In Belmont County there is this man named Jeffery Nally who tortured a lot of animals. When he was sentenced he had only gotten trialed for signs of a serial killer., not only is this event more then signs of a serial killer he should’ve been given 30-life in jail. He killed all of those animals like it was nothing, then he saved their skin, teeth, and bones for souvenirs. Nally was booked into the Northern Regional Jail on 29 counts of animal cruelty, one count of domestic battery and one count of kidnapping. Bail in his case has been set at $450,000, with a bail like that most people say he won’t be bailed out, but what if he breaks out, he shouldn’t have bail; murders don’t have bail nether should he.

            Some people who look at animal abuse are also just blinded by the good things. Circuses, everyone loves a circus. All the animals are happy a joyful and love their jobs right, WRONG. Most circuses put their animals through tortured to get them to do that famous stand up trick you guys like. What about jumping through that flaming hoop you love that. In an investigation of a Ringling’s Circus you saw things that most people would say, oh that was an act or something like that to save their points that circuses are filled with good people, but most are not. Circuses train animals as if they are not living, they take things like whips, belts, sticks and repeat hit them with it. When you think of this what would you label it as, simple horseplay, some animals need more force to learn then others. This is not labeled as a simple case of animal abuse.

            Animal Abuse is labeled by two things, what is and what isn’t animal abuse. Any torture or harmful acts towards animals is, and always will be animal abuse. When people treat their animals like it’s their child that is not animal abuse.

  Nuclear power, sure, it has it's pros to it - It's a powerful source for electricity, which is also very reliable and affordable. There have only been two accidents, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. While there are benefits to this form of energy, there are also many cons to it as well.

  The Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant is a prime example of the irresponsibility's of people when it comes to building the Plants. Wikileaks, a website that's controversial for it's amount of leaked Govt. documents has information stating that these Nuclear power plants were incapable of taking hits from an Earthquake. This was disregarded during the placement of the Nuclear plants. Because of this, Japan has been facing a server pandemic of Nuclear contamination from their drinking water to dairy products, the results of this disregarded concern are still growing in effect.

  Belarus, a country that shares a border with Russia has recently invested their time into creating a Nuclear plant. Belarus is going to use Russian contractors for the creation of their Nuclear Plant. This plant is going to cost 9 billion dollars, which Belarus has gotten on loan from Russia. Belarus will most likely also have nuclear fuel supplied from Russia, and have their nuclear waste will have to be sent to Russia. This makes Belarus dependent on Russia for power, instead of becoming more independent. Their thrive to gain Nuclear Power has put them into a situtation where they’re relying on Russia for an essential, energy. 

    Nuclear Power Plants have the potential for causing massive amounts of destruction. The Chernobyl disaster was a Nuclear Power plant failure that happened in Russia back in the mid 80’s. At this plant, they were testing to see if the turbines in the plant were capable of producing energy. An unexpected incident happened where the plants power went down to less than 1% power. Afterwards, a surge of power came on, and the reactor’s emergency shutdown failed to work. The death tool from this incident is somewhere around 985,000, many suffering from cancer and various defects that were caused after the meltdown. Sudden changes like what happened with Chernobyl’s power, can drastically disrupt a Nuclear Power Plant. The city where Chernobyl Power Plant existed is abandoned now, with no one living there. Currently, it’s a tourist attraction to see the now abandoned city.

  Even though Chernobyl happened over twenty years ago, anything is possible. In France, they have fifty-eight operating nuclear power plants, and they get OVER SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT of their countries power from Nuclear power. If a Nuclear Plant were to face operating issues, or even a meltdown, the results would be critical for the country.  There are many health issues with contact to nuclear radiation, from cancer to birth defects, such as excessive bone growth, organ failure, and the growth of ligaments.

  There are many other options for power, other than Nuclear. For instance, there’s Solar energy, which has become more affordable in recent years. Wind Power,  which works incredibly well in windy areas.  Hydrop-ower, which is powered by damns. Nuclear Power isn’t the only source of energy, and it surely isn’t the safest. We, as people need to use safe sources of energy to not only protect ourselves, but our environment.

The shootings at Columbine high school were blamed on many things. Among drugs, alcohol and mental disorders was the first person shooter video game called Doom. Many people blamed the video game because there was not a lot of drugs or alcohol that showed up on the tests. Bill Manville on NY daily news said “"Doesn’t that sound like they were trying to rack up a record score in some video arcade?" This isn’t a very realistic idea, there is no way that a violent video game can make you think that on your own.

 

Many studies say that when testing violent video games on kids, they test whether the games made kids more violent. Almost all of the studies concluded that the kids who played violent video games became more aggressive after playing them. Many people who play violent video games become more aggressive, but they don’t make you act on these emotions.

 

The reality is that millions of people play violent video games, and there are not millions of school shootings or violent crimes every year, so it cannot be affecting people so much that they want to act on their emotions. Recently, video games have become more popular.  As an article on PBS says, “According to federal crime statistics, the rate of juvenile violent crime in the United States is at a 30-year low." This combined with the fact that many of the other studies only said that the people playing violent video games only became more aggressive supports the idea that it makes people more aggressive, but they don’t act.

 

Violent video games do make people more aggressive, but they don’t act on these emotions. If the violent video games were having such an impact so that they made the kids to things like the columbine shootings, then there would be a lot more juvenile violent crimes. The study was only for the United States, but these statistics could be different for other parts of the world. A lot of these studies are not 100% accurate because they don’t account for everything in the game players life. This is almost impossible to do, so the data will never be completely correct for these kinds of studies.

 

The shootings at Columbine or any other school shootings are not majorly caused by the kids playing video games. Many people try to blame video games because they are something that many people can easily put the blame on, even though according to PBS 83% of video games that kids shouldn’t be playing are bought by their parents. Less of the blame should be put on video games, and more on other factors like illegal substances, or mental problems.

 

Overall many people find that violent video games are something easy to blame problems on. In fact the video games do make the players more aggressive, but not as violent. Although violent video games do hold some blame in violence today, there are many other factors such as drugs, alcohol, or mental problems that contribute to this violence more than violent video games.

​ Is the U.S. a helping hand?

 Does the U.S. actually help when it says its helping? Or do they do what ever they can to help? Let me explain. In the recent news the revolution in Libya has received some help from the United States and the United Nations.  Lately, they bombed government factories and government hangers hoping to stop Qadaffi’s reign of terror.  They hoped to give the rebels an edge on the government forces since they are barley making any headway. Many think this is going way to far to try to help the people of Libya.  Many more think this is exactly what is needed to stop him.  Is the U.S. helping the people Libya? Or are they helping their suffering?

 

The U.S. in particular has been in question of whether or not its actually helping when it says its “helping”.  Foreign Aid’s objective is to benefit countries by volunteering goods and services.  According to globalissues.org, in 1970 “the world’s richest countries agreed to give 0.7% of their gross national income as official international development aid, annually”.  Many of the countries in this agreement do not meet with this criterion.  As of 2009 the U.S. has been giving 0.2% of their gross income. Although, this does not meet the requirements the U.S is ahead 15 million dollars on other countries. 

 

In January 2010 a devastating 7M earthquake hit Haiti. Of course being the kind country that we are we sent 10,000 troops in the next few days following the earthquake.  Our Military leaders were too interested in securing the island to send groups like the Red Cross overseas first.  According to Slate, a news website, “Aid flights from Mexico Russia and France were refused to land” on the 18^th of January.  It took convincing from the U.N. to let airdropped aid reach Haitian soil.  Lt. General of the U.S. southern command told Associated Press “It is calm at this time”.  If it was calm couldn’t the forces be more directed toward giving aid to people?

 

Three weeks ago a 9M earthquake hit Japan followed by a ruinous wall of water that crippled the entire coastline up to 6 miles inward.  Since Japan is an important ally to the U.S., a relief effort was made to help the people of Japan bounce back from this two part natural disaster.  20,000 troops were sent to Japan.  Some of the 20,000 Marines cleared the Sendai airport, the biggest regional city hit by these calamities.  Now airplanes with supplies can land and deliver aid. "But I still have reservations about having U.S. troops in Japan. ... I'm happy today, and I appreciate their help, but it doesn't fundamentally change the way I feel", says Yoko Hiraoka from STL today.  Even though the U.S is making a good effort to get supplies there, their presence holds tensions of conflict.

 

            With all this evidence before us can we make a definitive judgment? The U.S. feels obligated to help other countries even if the ties with them are bad.  The U.S. makes mistakes by over estimating the problems, like what happened in Haiti, and tries to not show them. All in all, this help is great for countries that need support in times of need.  It shows decency to help Japan even though the ties are bad.  Just sometimes the U.S. goes about this wrongly but never the less it is help and it is needed.  Even though it doesn’t seem beneficial it actually is helping a lot, more than we know or think. 

​Here it is!

My old region was South America and my current region is Southeast Asia. The countries that I chose to work on in this project were Peru and Thailand. I picked these because they are both in very different parts of the world, but they have a few similarities. My process could have been better. I pretty much started working on this project on Sunday night. I completed my research on Monday, I wrote what I had to say last night, and then this morning I put it all together. I thought that this was a pretty straightforward project that wasn't too hard to do. There were some things that were harder to find information about than others. For example, it was not very hard to find information on Climate Change and Environmental Damage, but it was kind of hard to find information about Hostile Neighbors. If I could change one thing about it, I think I would make it into something more interesting like a movie. The information I have on my keynote is good I think, but it isn't very exciting and it could be a little bit more so.

​        Every morning I wake up at 6:30 a.m. and get ready for school. I am in tenth grade and everyday I dread this activity so much. But these feeling for an American teenager are normal. I have heard every kid in my class talk about how they much rather be home then be in school. Honestly, doesn’t everyone feel this way? Would you pick writing a paper or going to school over watching cartoons or a baseball game? Americans are lucky though, yet they don’t act like it. Do they understand that they seriously have it made?

 

            Look at the facts, In South America on average a child has fourteen years of formal education, but in Africa on average a child has four years of formal education. Ten years. Kids go to school for ten years less in Africa then they do in South America. Think, how much less would you know if you took away ten years of your education? In Africa they spend on average $48 US dollars annually per child where globally there is on average $629 US dollars spent per child for education annually. India spends 3.3% of its GDP on education while on average developed countries spent 5.8%.

 

            Since America spends the most on education, you would think they have the best students because of the amount of possible opportunities, right? In reality, the national drop out rate is 31%, 31 students out of every 100 drop out and never even get a high school diploma. That averages out to about 7,000 students that drop out of school each year in the United States. Our country spends so much money on education that other countries don’t have and our kids are just deciding not to attend?

 

            In China before 1949, the literacy rate was 20% of its people, but today they have a rate of 99% of their youth can read and write. In about 60 years China has increased their literacy rate by almost 70% and yet America can’t even seem to keep more then 75% of their kids in school until the end of senior year.

 

            In Afghanistan less then one third of the people are literate, but just this past month President Hamid Karzai, tried working things out with the Taliban. He and his men are having talks with them about creating peace for the schools in the war torn country. One of the people quoted in the recent articles said, "We are not afraid of guns and bombs, but don't burn the schools of your sons. Don't burn the schools of your daughters." Afghanistan is in a war state and yet the death of their selves is not the first thing on their mind, their ability to be educated is.

 

            We have countries struggling and can barely put out money for education, others that are fighting as hard as possible with their life on the line to maybe get education for their children, and some lucky countries that have climbed the mountain of hard ache and are still trailing along strong, and yet the one country that has it easy, can’t even have the honor of giving 80% of the country a high school education. Now explain it to me, to the whole world, how does that make sense? Why can’t we mange to make kids want have an education? There are kids dying to go to school and America has kids that decide not to go. The honor of education is placed in front of them and yet they aren’t able to look at it and be grateful enough to accept it and treasure it with their hearts. 

“Cannabis, what is that?” some people ask. Okay, how about Marijuana? Are the first things that come to your mind images of hippies and giggling potheads? If it is, then you need to turn your view around. The Marijuana Cannabis Hemp plant may just be the miracle that this world needs.

 “The War on Drugs.” This “war” started in 1969, and since then has cost the government (and American tax payers) more than 2.5 trillion dollars. Last year they spent over 15 billion dollars on the “war.” A little over 400,000 people have been arrested for drugs offenses this year. Half of them were arrested for Cannabis.

 Around the 1950’s marijuana laws were set into effect targeting the Mexican-Americans and other minorities. The media campaign that followed it was full of twisted truths and a plethora of lies. Movies like “Reefer Madness” were part of this campaign and delivered a false message that using marijuana would drive people crazy. The attack on Cannabis was full of racial hate and greed. Harry J. Anslinger, head of the DEA, made multiple racial and inappropriate comments. He used scare tactics by telling the public that “you would become violent and attack white women,” and “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.”

 Drugs are put into different schedules. Each schedule is how helpful the drug is medicinally. The first schedule means there is no medical help from the drug and the higher the schedule the more it does help. Cocaine is in schedule two. It used to be used to numb gums at the dentist and in liquid form would stimulate your eyes at the optometrist. Marijuana is in schedule one meaning no good uses have been found for it by the Federal Government (yet). This means they are obviously ignoring the fact that many people self medicate with marijuana every day to calm pain arthritis, nerve damage, chemotherapy, etc. Tests have been done proving that it slows cancer, lowers blood pressure, and for some patients, it’s very much needed. A patient with Multiple Schlerosis who would shake so much he could not talk, after self-medicating, he was able to calm down and have a full conversation without shaking.

 The Declaration of Independence, something you learn about in grade school, was drafted on hemp paper as most paper during this time was written on hemp. There are many products that hemp can make and the materials that it makes are ten times better then the competing products such as paper, cloth, pasta, milk, lip balm, and all types of oil. Hemp is a different type of cannabis then marijuana and you cannot get high off of it because there is no THC (Tetra Hydra Cannibunal) in the plant. Hemp was grouped in with cannabis because it is 99% the same plant except that it does not produce THC. This coupled with the fact that paper and fuel companies were losing money to the products that could be generated from the hemp plant.

 I could go on for pages about the Marijuana Cannabis Hemp plant. This plant is powerful and helpful. Yet we label it with terror and hate. The main thing is that this plant is getting a hard time because of ignorance and non-acceptance. 

​Prostitution goes on throughout the world. In some cultures and countries it is considered to be okay, however in the majority of the United States it is considered to be “not okay” and there for is illegal. It is still done however; it is done because people need jobs and if a person is really that in need of a job they will go to the lengths of selling themselves for sex in order to live. I don’t feel as though this should be kept from a person when it could be the only way they can survive.

            Cigarettes are a suicidal tool, nothing different then a razor against your skin. Yet, currently in the United States there are 3.4 million high school students smoking their lives away. Cigarette smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke result in approximately 443,000 premature deaths per year. This is something that is killing millions of people and yet it is legal? Why? Because the amount of taxes that the country gets off of tobacco is overwhelming. The state with the highest tax on cigarettes is New York. As of 2009 it was 4.35 dollars. Mix that with all the smokers and you have an immense amount of money. The total annual public and private health care expenditures caused by smoking is 96 billion dollars. That is insane. Cigarettes are a hole in wallets and lungs. Yet prostitution that doesn’t cause any harm is illegal. 

            Alcohol is another razor to the skin. It is an infestation of the liver and has caused a ton of deaths over the years. On October 5^th 2010 the state representative, Brad Bennet, from Delaware was charged for a DUI. This means that he was driving while drunk. A state representative drinking you might ask? Yes, it has not been the first incident like this. People of the law drink, and they drink because it is something they want to do. Brad went on to say, “ The past few months have been very trying for both me and my family dealing with personal issues.” I guess because he is having some problems with his family that everything is just okay. However in a case where Gordon Hintz, a Democrat, paid a $2,032.50 fine because he went to a massage parlor offering prostitution. He wasn’t even accused of using the service yet he got the fine.

Gay marriages have been a huge controversy for years. It is against religions and there for religion is running the government. The government is not allowing to have gays to marry because of “God’s rules.” People that are gay do not cause any harm to people. They do not cause problems and being in a marriage with someone of the same sex does not cause any disturbances. I was once told that a marriage should be between two people that love each other and that will do anything for each other. People who find love in the same sex are not wrong. They have just found something that has made them complete. Something that is hard to come by and taking that away from them because of a religion is absurd. Prostitution is also against religions for having sex before marriage would make you a whore.

            Prostitution is illegal because; you can’t tax it, want triumphs over need, there for the people running the government don’t want it, and finally religious aspects. These things run the government and make something that causes no harm to be illegal.

 

This is my project. Enjoy
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/593217/lbruce_globalization_benchmark.pdf