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Native american injustice

When Europeans first settled this continent we barely survived, the natives could have killed us off before we ever settled colonies. Instead, many chose peace and some even helped us giving rise to the holiday now known as thanksgiving. But we eventually grew in power until we overwhelmed them and we repaid their passive n pushed them out of their ancestral homelands that we claimed to be ours. As America grew the Native Americans were systematically destroyed and put reservations that were more like ghettos with small rations and poor living conditions. Many Indians were simply killed off and in some cases such as the massacre at Wounded Knee the American soldiers just slaughtered all the men women and children in the village just because they thought they were resisting. The Native Americans came to be so desperate in the 1800s that they tries to call upon the ancestors to help them fix their problems this gave them hope that things would improve but they never did. The numbers of natives living in the united states today is sad compared to the perfectly happy lives they lived before everything was taken from them and very little was given in return. The only way they could survive was adapting to our ways and assimilating in our culture and sadly abandoning the ways that they had lived for thousands of years. There is nothing we can do now to put things back to before the Europeans colonized and ruined a way of life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EdRT56WK7Q

andrewgrinchishin

The above is a photograph of what can be coined by the term “blood diamonds,” which I first learned about in Spanish class last year. What these workers (above^) are doing is mining for diamonds in gut wrenching, horrifying conditions. Companies abuse workers and force them into such a terrible state, a never ending cycle of work in order to get some food, where they spend their days digging and mining for diamonds that are then sold in the United States for remarkable markup. So think again the next time you get a diamond!

What are blood diamonds to be exact? They are also known as war diamonds or conflict diamonds. Diamonds are mined under deplorable conditions.

The areas where these diamonds are found are generally in high-conflict zones, particularly Africa. Liberia and South Africa, for instance, are full of diamonds. Governments and other various factions and businesses compete very heavily for these areas ignoring the pain that it brings to the people that live there. Crime is encouraged and corruption is rampant in many of these countries. Now is this diamond trade off worth it?

I encourage you all to think the next time you buy a diamond. Although for you students, rather spend that on your books and tuition and stuff of the like.

steveguyperson

its unfortunate that they take advantage of people who cant make a living any other way hopefully someday labor regulations will exist in these countries

child labor

In the United States large scale child labor has been outlawed since the thirties and this has been greatly beneficial for the economy, the education system, and our general moral standing. We have had these laws in place for over 80 years; but some countries that have only recently become industrialized that have large populations such as much of southeast Asia have fallen into the same set of moral and economic problems as America in the 1920s. When children work they don’t go to school when they don’t go to school they never get a better job so their kids have to work too. The rich however can afford to have their kids go to school so they can also afford to have their kids go to school. This way the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. India, Indonesia and other many other countries have this exact problem and they have not created any laws yet to counteract it. America and other countries that have regulated their industry have a responsibility to help these countries combat this. Poverty and child labor affects all countries in our modernized world and it is in all of our best interests if it is fixed. No child should have to work long hours for little pay with no hope of a better life. This is the only option available to avoid starvation. The people who they work for become so wealthy from their cheap labor that they can afford extravagant mansions and expensive cars this is a tremendous injustice.

http://www.childlineindia.org.in/child-labour-india.htm

savannahearitt

Harvard Sued Over Discriminatory Practices

Harvard has always been a prestigious university and also an expensive one. Historically Harvard is a college that only the wealthy were able to afford tuition for. With tuition, room and board costing $58,000 dollars for just one year over the course of four years families were looking at a total cost of $230,000 or more simply for undergraduate studies, so one can only imagine the total cost of tuition with a four year graduate school as well, this will easily raise the cost of an eight year education to more than $400,000 dollars and that is more than most families can afford. With Harvard being sued for its discriminatory practices, we can expect to see a raise in the amount of scholarships given to students, as the university will be forced to look into the economic background of the student and provide subsequent aid for students who qualify for aid regardless of economic status. Also the university has been cited for race discrimination as well, the university has been known to limit the amount of Asian American students it accepts and despite the increasing amount of qualified Asian American students there does not seem to be an increase in the amount of Asian American students present in the university population. Another issue is the “legacy student” in which the university chooses student’s whose relatives have attended the university previously over students who would be the first of their families to attend. These current policies are unfair and a university should choose its students based only upon their academic qualifications.

Read the entire article:

http://www.ibtimes.com/harvard-affirmative-action-lawsuit-2014-schools-sued-over-discriminatory-college-1725064

steveguyperson

I'm glad people are finally noticing these types of discriminatory practices in colleges. Maybe eventually the countries sending people to school here will found their own educational institutions so we can avoid this problem in the future.

andrewgrinchishin

Broken Windows Theory: Our environment affects us!

See the video above for a description on Broken Windows Theory.

Broken Windows theory states that a building with one broken window is much more likely to see another broken window than a building without any broken windows. Areas of vandalism, gluttony and drinking, open sex displays contribute to an attitude of “carelessness” seeing that the area looks uncontrolled with no moral authority.

Think about it. If you walk by a building that has a broken window and weeds growing around and it is seemingly uncontrolled, breaking a window there wouldn’t seem so immoral. The lack of control in these areas breed crime. Small vandalism leads to urban decay which eventually leads to crime. This shows how our environment plays a major role in shaping us as persons with character.

Tune in for next weeks blog on JERS

steveguyperson

I agree, its why i feel like i have to be quiet in a library even when no one cares the environment suggests that i am calm so i am calm

organ harvesting

In the United States and in many countries around the world the selling of organs is illegal. This is illegal because we don’t want wealthier patients to have priority over impoverished patients. If people could sell their organs the poorer people may have no choice but to sell their body parts for cash. Fortunately we try not to allow this to happen by imposing laws against this. Unfortunately there are a lot of very poor and helpless people in many of the poorer countries in the world. These people are either paid or simply kidnapped in order to harvest their organs for wealthy buyers who don’t care where the organ comes from and with doctors won’t ask questions. This is the basic concept of what has become the most evil and malevolent black market trading item. People in developing countries are ripped from their homes, operated on and dumped without their some of their organs. Often they simply murder the person so they can take everything they can sell. Less severe versions of this are actually legal in some parts of Asia. People are operated on and given 100 dollars and their organs are sold for 20,000 dollars to a wealthy buyer in the US or Europe. The poor person who only got 100 dollars when their organ was worth much more and they didn’t even know it. Demand for organs is huge in developed countries, and when the only way you can get an organ is by donation the black market starts to fill in the supply gap. This is costing us our humanity and it must stop. We cannot allow this practice to go on unchecked and unregulated. Unless we can find a scientific alternative we must completely crush the profit motive. We need to internationally enforce laws that destroy the black market completely. If we make it so they can’t sell organs, the trade will stop.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reading-between-the-headlines/201311/body-snatchers-organ-harvesting-profit

healthcare video response

The video our class watched this past week on the american healthcare system was painful to watch. I am quite disappointed that we would watch such biased videos for this class. This video was mostly just examples of all the people who have been cheated by healthcare companies or made to pay for expensive medical procedures out of pocket because they were uninsured. This is just simply propaganda i support of the new Obamacare law that has received so much scrutiny. This video is based more on raw emotion than actual fact. just because people are unsatisfied now, doesn't mean the alternative is better. They tried to use examples of other countries where universal healthcare has worked such as Canada and they just assume that it would work just as well here in the US. This is highly illogical. The United States has a huge population of urban poor compared to Canada that would be taking so much more money out of our government than would be putting in. this is going to drive our already massive deficit even higher. our government simply cannot afford universal healthcare. Yes it may work in smaller countries with lower unemployment and smaller populations, but it will not work here.The video we watched is completely ignorant of this fact and doesn't even consider the reasons for opposition. They just assume that its because people opposed to this law have some misplaced fear of socialism and communism. This is a form of socialism, but that is not why some people are opposed to it. It is just simply a bad idea given the circumstances of out country.

Injustice against more than just people

Despite the kinds of injustice that get the attention of our political leaders and news organizations, the worst kind of cruelty is that which is directed at animals, especially those animals that were meant to be friends to humankind such as cats, dogs and other pets. Everyday such animals are needlessly abused and neglected. Neglect is the most common and often the worst form of abuse. some people are not responsible pet owners and they don't feed or properly house their animals. Unfortunately the poor are the most guilty of this. Poverty hurts not only the poor person but everybody they are responsible for, including both children and animals alike. This is not something that is restricted to developing countries either. Plenty of neglect is occurring in the US today. People get evicted, or they move away and pets left behind without a caretaker and can often starve to death. No pet deserves to die in such a cruel way. These types of domestic animals don't survive well on their own because they were bred to be companions to people. Unlike livestock that are bred, grown, and raised to be slaughtered, pet animals are only meant to keep people happy and to help us. We cant let an animals that are meant to be companions suffer when we decide that we don't want them anymore. Fortunately there exist many organizations to help with this kind of problem. When abandoned animals are rescued they have a chance to find a new home, a new life, or at the very least if they cannot be helped, they may get the painless death they deserve.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d0B_hZTvmM

I'm glad our declaration allowed us to pick a topic of our choice. It is so much easier to write about a topic that we actually care about. I just hope that our next paper is as flexible.

I dislike how we discuss racism and inequality so much, because i am of the opinion that the best thing to help it is to stop talking about it, and Morgan Freeman seems to agree.

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