Gold War

A few months ago, I put out my worst blog post ever (yes, all you 2 die-hard fans who even know about the failure fail blogs "Freedom of Speech" and "Bethlehem Steel", which I didn't even spell right, this was worse than the one blog post on each of them.) "Diamonds aren't forever (James Bond lied, I know)". This was about "Blood Diamonds" and it was horrible. I want to delete it, but I sometimes use it as a benchmark to do better than. This one is about something very similar to the idea of "Diamonds aren't forever (James Bond lied, I know)" (I hesitate to even write that out) but I hope to God that it is better than... that. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, perhaps known better as Zaire as it was called Zaire under former president Mobutu Sese Seko, there is a war that has killed up to 4 million people and this war is about gold.

Okay, so let's break this thing down. In the DR Congo, there's a lot of gold, and in the U.S. and all around the world, (don't yell at me about this one Jake, I was all-inclusive this time) there's a huge demand for gold, but for stupidity purposes, let's just refer to DR Congo as "Country A" and the U.S. and all around the world as "Country B". Country A is on the poorest continent in the world, and if Country A is rich with gold which is worth up to 1000 dollars per ounce. If Country B needs gold for things like money and jewelry (and yes, he went to Jared), the citizens of Country A will try and mine the gold so much that they will risk their lives, work in mountains that are at high elevation and at constant threat for landslides.

How this war was started is nine countries that border or are close to DR Congo invaded "Country A" in effort to get the gold resources of the DR Congo, eventually this invasion ended, but ever since, rebel militias have been trying to take over various mines so that they can control certain mines and get all of the profits of that mine, and these militias will take these $1000 and ounce mines, including killing innocent civilians to create terror and keep the conflict going. The last thing that these militia leaders want is a sudden resolution to this conflict, in fact, they want to keep the conflict going as long as they possibly can. But we the people of the United States need to find a resolution of a conflict.

Now my opinion. I think that this war needs to be ended and the only way to legally end it is by banning all gold that comes from the DR Congo, but even then, there would be jewelry companies who will import these diamonds instead of ones found in mines here in the US because they're cheaper than the ones where there is not a conflict so the US needs to talk with government officials from "Country A" and possibly spread out our industry to the DR Congo so that there are not still people being killed with the entire world turning it's back on this conflict.
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Sam

The Left Side of Hispañola

"In Haiti, there was a devastating earthquake. Up to half a million people have died. Please donate whatever possible" reads the sign that was created by me and this kid named Trevor Mcky at my school. It's all true and we've raised over 200 dollars for Haiti.

This earthquake all happened about three weeks ago, and this breaking news story has almost disappeared from news networks across the world. I guess even though there are still people dying under the rubble with absolutely no news support.

It was bad enough that it was a 7.0 magnitude, but let me explain further how the earthquake victims were so vulnerable to this earthquake.

First of all it was France. France colonized Haiti some time in the late 1600s or in the early 1700s and they were using Haiti as a port for African slaves. This lasted until the year 1791 when Haitian salves created a revolt lead by Francois Toussaint L'overture which ended in 1804 when Haiti finally defeated the French Military and Haiti became only the second free country in the Americas. However, then France pledged freedom to Haiti only if Haiti gave France a settlement, putting the newly developed Haitian in a great debt. Also, since these people were slaves, they had absolutely no training in running a government at all, and since the slaves had not gotten the right of an education, almost the entire country was illiterate. More than 100 years later, Haiti had a string of bad rulers, which made Haiti even worse.

Then, it was the United States who colonized Haiti from 1915 to 1934. Do you know what's weird to me, the United States Constitution was created because we hated our own English colonization, but then we go off 200 some years later and colonize other countries like Hawai'i, in which we completely eliminated as a country. Haiti is one of these sad examples. We ourselves collected taxes and set some of our affairs in Haiti. During this colonization, we collected billions of dollars from the Haitian people.

Then it was "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" who messed up Haiti even more. "Papa Doc" (Francois Duvalier) started the whole thing when he arranged the "Tontons Macoutes" ("Bogymen"), a secret force of men who would execute or assassinate all of the opponents of "Papa Doc" and whoever he saw as a threat to his power, he would drain all of their power. And he would use corruption to get what he wanted. And then, there was "Baby Doc" (Jean-Claude Duvalier), he did pretty much exactly what his dad did and not in a good way.

And then, it was the United States again. When Haiti finally started to get back up on it's feet again and started exporting it's goods, the U.S. started sending "aid" to Haiti, creating it's dependence on importing goods. This is because of this: when farmers went to the markets to sell their produce, they used to be able to sell their produce, but when the U.S. sent "aid", the farmers could not sell their produce, and so they had to shut down their farm entirely, and since they had no source of income, they could no longer export their goods. These farmers all had to move into Port-au-Prince which created a huge increase in population of Port-au-Prince which is where the earthquake struck.

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Sam

Election Fraud (Yes) in Afganistan

A few weeks ago, Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced that he had not won his re-election cleanly, meaning that there had been some kind of fraud, meaning that Abdullah Abdullah, his main opponent, had probably won the election.
A few months ago, I had my first new post in a while called "Election Fraud (?) in Iran" about another controversial election in the middle east, but there it was between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir-Hossein Mosavi.
The Iran election was similar and different to the Afghan election.
It was similar because they were both suspected to have election fraud and both of them were extremely shady.
It was different because Hamid Karzai actually admitted that there was some kind of Election Fraud going on in the election.
Now, some might argue that that means that there wasn't any fraud in Iran. They'll say that the election in Iran was older than the Afghan election, and if Ahmadinejad hasn't said that he didn't win cleanly, then he probably did win cleanly.
This is exactly what Ahmadinejad wants you to think. Karzai coming out and saying that there was corruption in the Afghani election was probably the best thing for Ahmadinejad's corrupt win.

But anyway, back to Afghanistan, Abdullah Abdullah is against everyone in the Afghan government right now since, right now, everyone in the Afghan government works for Hamid Karzai. Although Abdullah is probably supported by most of the country, he has to get through the government before he becomes the next President of Afghanistan.
Since Afghanistan is still a developing democracy, it isn't exactly where the U.S. is since we've had a democracy for more than 200 years.
Now, we do know from 2000 and 2004 that we don't have a perfect democracy either.
This is a bad thing for us and for the rest of the world.
For us, we don't win clean elections and we get the wrong guy to run our country for 4 years.
For the rest of the world, we set an example for democracy worldwide, and if we don't have clean elections, the rest of the world doesn't have clean elections

What do I think? Well, as I said earlier, since Hamid Karzai has come out and said that the race had fraud in it, Karzai has said without saying that Abdullah Abdullah won the Afghan election.
But now, according to nytimes.com, Abdullah has quit the race, and according to CNN Newsroom, it's because he feared that there would be even more fraud the second time around.
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Sam

Happily Married

In the 1960's, Homo-Sexuality was far from accepted.
Now, in the 2000's, it is more accepted, but not to the point where it should be. And there, comes the Gay Marriage laws.
In the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama said that he didn't think it was the president's duty to make a law for the whole country to approve or dis-approve Gay Marriage, and thought that it should be up to states to decide weather or not to allow Gay Marriage.
John McCain, however, didn't like it at all.
No big surprises.
During the Presidential Campaign, however, Gay Marriage was being tossed around in the state of California, and Obama has said, publicly, that he is against Proposition 8, which later passed, and banned Gay Marriage in California. Although, he has also stated that he believes Marriage is between a man and a woman.
Is this believable?
Not especially.
It wasn't until his campaign that he has even been shy about this issue. When he was a Illinois state Senator, he was for it. When he was a U.S. Senator from Illinois he was for it. But when he was running for President, probably in an effort to get more votes, he was shy, and now that he's President, he's against it.
Also, explain this to me: he's against both Proposition 8, which would ban gay marriage, and Gay Marriage.
What do I think?
I think that Gay Marriage is absolutely needed in this country.
First off, no one just decides to be Gay, weather they're Gay or Straight is something that you are born with.
And secondly, according to many surveys from many sources, about 1 out of 10 people in America are Homo-Sexuals.
So if you are against Gay Marriage, that means that you are against giving 10 percent of the people in America the right to be Married.
Ten Percent of the people in this country are the work of the Devil.
10% of people in this country are not going to Heaven.
Will we ever change this?
A special thanks to huffingtonpost.com for additional information
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Sam

Congratulations: President Barack Obama

On October 9, 2009, something historic happened.
President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."
He was not a front-runner, in fact, people were surprised that he had won, yesterday, the front-runner, they said, was Colombian senator Piedad Cordoba, who's most famous act was to find and free 16 prisoners.
All applications had to be sent in only 12 days after he had taken office, and there was already talk about who it was going to be 2 months before he was even elected.
The committee said, just after they had announced that it would go to Obama, "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given it's hope for a better future".
According to Thorbjorn Jagland, the leader of the committee, the decision to give Obama the prize was "Unanimous" and that it came with ease to pick the President.
During Obama's speech, he said that he didn't deserve to "be in the company" of all the other winners of the prize, but that he would accept it, because he did think that he was trying to do a lot of things, like his attempt to find a resolution to Nuclear Weapons, the Global Economic Downturn, and finding the resolution to the Arab-Isreali conflict.
He also mentioned that he, as the President of the United States, was responsible with ending the useless Iraq war to premote a higher level of peace, and that he will donate about 1.4 million to charity and charitable causes.

As well as Barack Obama, other winners of the Nobel Prizes include Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider, and Jack W. Szostack for Medicine and Physiology, Herta Müller for Literature, and many others.
A special thanks to cnn.com and other various sources for additional information
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Sam

North Korea's Iran

North Korea, like Iran, supposedly has Nuclear weapons. North Korea, like Iran, is feared by the U.S. North Korea, like Iran, are places that, out of fear, Republicans feel like we need to bomb.
God, has anybody learned anything from Pearl Harbor? Or even our Atom Bomb droppings on Japan?
Bombing just keeps everything going, in fact it makes the feud between those countries worse.
If we bomb them, they are more likely to bomb us.
If we bomb them, they see us as cowards.
Also, let me explain the physics of this, we think that they have Nuclear Weapons, so we get Nuclear Weapons, and we bomb them. Makes perfect sense, right?
Wrong.
If we drop a few Nukes on them, and let me just point out, that we don't know if they have Nuclear Weapons, and we're just assuming, 'cause, y'know, all Muslims are Terrorists.
Right now, there is about an 100% chance that no, they don't have Nuclear Weapons. But just to be sure, we should assume that that 0% is right, and go in, spend 10 billion dollars a month (and they wonder why our debt is so large), realize that there aren't any, but they'll still stay in Iran, to make sure that they aren't making non-existing Nuclear Weapons (and yes, "Iraqi Road" still wasn't enough).
But back to the point, if we bomb them, we are imposing a threat that is doesn't exist, we need to have Iran see us as a good country. Charitable, forgiving, and genuine.
If we bomb them, we are bad people.
To them, to the world, and to me.
How do we do this?
We give aid.
Iran has a lot of people in need of Aid, and if Ahmadinejad sees that we are supplying aid, it will change our image, slightly at first, but later, by a significant margin.
Also, we half to do it sincerely.
If we don't do it sincerely, and Ahmadinejad knows that, he'll just think that we are trying to suck up.
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Sam

Close it now.

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is, by a Republican's standard, the only good thing in all of Cuba.
But, in reality it is the worst thing in that entire country.

The U.S.'s first encounter on Guantanamo Bay was during the Spanish-American war, when a Marine force camped there on June 10, 1898. The next day, two Marines were killed in the same area.
Five years later, in 1903, former President Theodore Roosevelt signed an agreement with the new Cuban government, where they would lease the Bay for 2,000 golden coins a year. But this was not something that they did voluntarily, it was something that was in the "Platt Amendment" that, more likely then not, the new government was forced to sign.
I think that they were probably forced to sign this, because it does not seem like something anyone would want. Basically, it gave the U.S. permission to interfere with Cuban affairs, and the Cuban government could not have any say in where or when they interfered.
This agreement was signed on February 16, 1903, and in the agreement, it said that "...for use as coaling or naval stations only, and no other purpose..."
Then, on July 2, 1906, another agreement was signed in Havana to re-buy Guantanamo with another property, Bahia Honda, and for both of these, they would pay $2,000.

The U.S., ever since has been dis-honoring the Platt Amendment, and it has not been for naval purposes only.
Now Guantanamo Bay is, well, Guantanamo Bay, the main torture center for America.
And, if they find someone in associated with Al-Qaeda, if they don't kill them, they'll ship them out to Guantanamo, tie their arms to the back of a board, shove water down their nose and mouths, ask 'em where Bin Laden is, they'll lie, and put them in a small room with 10 other former Al-Qaeda members.
I will never understand the use of torture.

And now, Robert Gates is saying that it might be harder then he originally expected to close Guantanamo, and John McCain has said "Apparently, we are not going to make the deadline, but we should work towards the closure of Guantanamo Bay because of the image it has on the world, of brutality, [which] harms our image very badly"
For once in my life, I can say that I agree with Senator John McCain of Arizona. That's true, completely. If you tie people's hands to a board, and shove water down your throat, it ruins your image.
And no one, unless their Hitler, deserves to die.
A special thanks to cnn.com and historyofcuba.com for additional information
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Sam