Sunday, October 28, 2012

Thinking About You



Does the repetition in this poem help deliver the message? Did you fi nd it effective?


This poem is more lighthearted than the others we have watched. What are some things in the poem that you can relate to?

Spoken Word Poetry



Poetry Evaluation Form

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Monday, October 8, 2012

War Child

Past Genocides


Past Genocides and Mass Atrocities

credit: Johan van Elk (c)
In the past 150 years, tens of millions of men, women and children have lost their lives in genocide or mass atrocities. Millions have been tortured, raped or forced from their homes.
The mass atrocities described below represent just some of the historic examples that serve to remind us what’s at stake if we let genocide happen again. We must learn, remember and take action to end genocide once and for all.

Armenia

Beginning in 1915, ethnic Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were rounded up, deported and executed on orders of the government. The combination of massacres, forced deportation marches and deaths due to disease in concentration camps is estimated to have killed more than 1 million ethnic Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks between 1915 and 1923.

The Holocaust

After coming to power in 1933, the Nazi Party implemented a highly organized strategy of persecution and murder. Their targets were the so-called “undesirables”: Jews, Slavs, Roma, the disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals, as well as political and religious dissidents.
The Nazis began with stripping citizenship from German Jews on the basis of their religious identity. Shortly thereafter, in November 1938, the organized pogrom of Kristallnacht marked the beginning of mass deportations of German Jews to concentration camps. As the Nazis conquered large areas of Europe, Jews and others in Nazi-controlled areas were also deported to camps. When the German Army invaded the Soviet Union, it soon gave rise to mobile killing squads operating throughout Eastern Europe and Russia, which killed more than one million Jews and tens of thousands of other civilians. The construction of extermination camps at Auschwitz-Birkanau, Treblinka, Belzec, Chelmno and Sobibor led to the Nazis’ killing of 2.7 million Jews and others through the use of cyanide gas, summary executions and medical experimentation. Poor living conditions in non-extermination camps led to the deaths of millions more. It is estimated that six million Jews, two out of every three living in Europe, and another 5 million people had been killed by 1945.

Cambodia

When the Khmer Rouge took control of the Cambodian government in 1975, they declared the beginning of a new age dedicated to a peasant-oriented society. Instead, after outlawing education, religion, healthcare and technology, the Khmer Rouge ordered the evacuation of Cambodia’s cities and forced these residents to labor without adequate food or rest. Those who were unable to keep up were often summarily executed. At the same time, the Khmer Rouge began to target suspected political dissidents. These citizens, including doctors, teachers and those suspected of being educated were singled out for torture at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison. In four years, between 1.7 and 2 million Cambodians died in the Khmer Rouge’s ‘Killing Fields.’

Bosnia

Beginning in 1991, Yugoslavia began to break up along ethnic lines as political leaders such as Slobodan Milosevic began to use nationalist sentiment as a political tool. While Slovenian independence was relatively bloodless, Croatia’s declaration sparked a civil war between the province and the Yugoslav government. Troops from the mostly Serb Yugoslav army entered Croatian territory and committed widespread human rights abuses, including the siege of Vukovar and the shelling of Dubrovnik.
In 1992, the republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia) also declared independence and the region quickly became the central theater of fighting between Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims). During the wars in the former Yugoslavia, all belligerents committed abuses against the civilians.  Soldiers and paramilitaries used rape, torture, forcible displacement, and summary executions to “ethnically cleanse” areas under their control. The actions of Serbian units, including the Bosnian Serb army and paramilitaries, were particularly notorious for committing atrocities, including the massacres at Foca, Tuzla, Visegrad, and Srebrenica. At Srebrenica, Bosnian Serb forces under General Radko Mladic overran a U.N. safe-area and executed at least 7,500 Bosniak men and boys who were sheltering with Dutch peacekeeping troops.
Due to the nature of the attacks on civilians during the Bosnian and Croatian wars, the United Nations created the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in 1993. This tribunal is tasked with prosecuting offenders who contributed to the deaths of at least 96,000 people.

Rwanda

Civil war broke out in Rwanda in 1990, further exacerbating tensions between the Tutsi minority and Hutu majority. Although a peace agreement was reached in 1992, political negotiations continued. In 1994, as he returned from the latest round of talks in neighboring Tanzania, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was killed when his plane was shot down outside of the country’s capital, Kigali. Habyarimana’s death provided the spark for an organized campaign of violence against Tutsi and moderate Hutu civilians across the country. Despite the efforts of United Nations peacekeepers, extremist Hutu groups killed between 800,000 and 1 million people across the country in only 100 days. In 1994, the United Nations created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), dedicated to bringing those responsible for the genocide to justice. While slow-moving, the ICTR has determined that the widespread rapes committed during the Rwandan genocide may also be considered an act of torture and genocide on their own.




 

Darfur

Since 2003, an estimated 300,000 people have died as a result of the conflict in Darfur and as many as 2.7 million people have been displaced within Darfur, with several hundred thousand more fleeing into neighboring countries such as Chad, the Central African Republic and Egypt. In September 2004, President George W. Bush declared the crisis in Darfur “genocide” — the first time a sitting American president had made such a declaration regarding an ongoing conflict. Despite the world’s growing outcry, the violence continued in Darfur and the number of dead and displaced increased considerably.
The conflict in Darfur began in the spring of 2003 when two Darfuri rebel movements — the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) — launched attacks against government military installations as part of a campaign to fight against the historic political and economic marginalization of Darfur.
The Sudanese government, engaged in tense negotiations with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) to end a two decade long civil war between North and South Sudan, responded swiftly and viciously to extinguish the insurgency. Through coordinated military raids with government-armed militia (collectively known as the janjaweed), the Sudanese military specifically targeted ethnic groups from which the rebels received much of their support, systematically destroying the livelihoods of Darfuris by bombing and burning villages, looting economic resources, and murdering, raping and torturing non-combatant civilians.
In March 2009, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for two counts of war crimes and five counts of crimes against humanity. The following summer, the ICC added genocide to the charges against al-Bashir. The ICC has also issued arrest warrants for Ali Kushayb and Ahmad Haroun for a combined 92 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against civilians in Darfur. In March 2012, the ICC added Sudan’s current Minister of Defense Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein to the list issuing an arrest warrant for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur.
The United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force (UNAMID) in Darfur replaced an underfunded and underequipped African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur in January 2008. UNAMID to this day remains without the necessary resources to protect the 1.9 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) who live in large camps across Darfur. The government has increasingly obstructed UNAMID and humanitarian organizations by restricting access, often leaving the most vulnerable civilians cut off from outside aid. There are also an estimated 263,000 Darfuri refugees living across the Sudanese border in neighboring Chad. Overall, the UN estimates that more than 4.7 million people in Darfur (out of a total population of roughly 7.5 million) are still affected by the conflict.
Women living in IDP camps risk rape or harassment if they leave the camp to access water, collect firewood, or plant crops; however, due to the limited access of aid, they often do not have a choice. Gender based violence (GBV) has been used as a tool to oppress women throughout the crisis and those who target women do so with impunity. Due to cultural and religious taboos, GBV often goes unreported and perpetrators are rarely held accountable for their crimes.

What are we watching for?

Prolonged international peace talks resulted in a Doha Peace Agreement that left out the major rebel groups and failed to gain acceptance by a large part of the Darfuri population. Further progress will depend heavily on the ability and willingness of the Government of Sudan to establish an “enabling environment” for Darfuri participation.
Today, fighting between the rebel movements and the government continues and since 2010, the UN has reported over 200 attacks in Darfur. The Government of Sudan has manipulated ethnic tensions leading to inter-ethnic fighting between Arab tribes that has also added to instability in Darfur. Despite the presence of the UNAMID peacekeeping force, Darfuris remain vulnerable to attacks and human rights violations from both sides, including sexual violence which continues both outside and inside IDP camps across Darfur.
Despite this chaotic environment, the Sudanese government remains the most responsible for the violence in Darfur. President al-Bashir and others in his government created the anarchic conditions presiding in Darfur today through their violent counterinsurgency campaign targeting innocent men, women and children. Furthermore, the Sudanese government has obstructed the UNAMID peacekeeping force, refused to prosecute any individuals responsible for crimes against humanity committed in Darfur, and has intimidated and expelled numerous international humanitarian aid groups. These actions continue to leave many civilians in Darfur unprotected and dispossessed of their basic human rights.


What Would You Do?

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Graphic Novel Prezi


Sonnet 116

Compound Sentences

Justin Bieber's "Baby" 

Compound Sentence Worksheet 1

Compound Sentence Worksheet 2






Iris by Goo-Goo Dolls



ANNOTATION - a way to actively read using note taking to help comprehension. The old VH1 pop-up  style of videos is a very simplistic way of looking at annotation.

As you watch write down:

Any words that are defined
Background information about the song, the band or the movie
Facts or information presented


How To Do A Close Reading

Prezi for Night Discussion

Friday, October 5, 2012

Night Introduction

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in the camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever…Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never." — "Night "

Night By Elie Wiesel