Is Black Friday its own Holiday Now?

Original Articles:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/18/opinion/greene-black-friday/index.html?hpt=us_c2

Is Black Friday its own holiday now? Its a good question. Its not like an amazing day of shopping and sales just goes with Thanksgiving. I mean, when you think about it, its really quite silly. Thanksgiving is all about being thankful and happy with what you have, so of course the obvious thing to do is spend tons of money to get more possessions, right? Well, apparently. Black Friday is a modern addition to an old tradition.

Black Friday has become this monster that can control people. Its such a materialistic holiday, if you can actually call it a holiday. "It is an annual festival of the cash register." says the writer of this article, Bob Greene. Thanksgiving is not the only holiday with a day like Black Friday attached to it. Christmas has Boxing Day, and most holidays are in themselves days to buy. Most holidays, like Christmas and Halloween have companies drooling at the opportunities to sell their merchandise. Holidays in general are merchandising advertisements now. Is quite sad...

Holidays are very materialistic now, and while its good for the economy, is it really good?

Ireland Considers Changes in Abortion Laws

Original Article:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/14/world/europe/ireland-abortion-controversy/index.html?hpt=wo_c2

A woman in Ireland died recently due to a blood infection caused by her pregnancy which was miscarrying. Savita went to hospital with back pain, and was told that she was going to have a miscarriage. She was 17 weeks pregnant when she was told. Despite her increasing agony and the knowledge that she was almost 100% going to lose the child, they refused to "terminate" the pregnancy. The law in Ireland with regards to abortion says that abortion is legal if the pregnancy risks the mother's life. It has to put her in serious risk of death. If they feel it will damage her, but not kill her, they cannot perform the abortion.

This case has led to some serious debate in Ireland and Great Britain as a whole about the abortion laws in Ireland. There was many protests throughout the nation, the biggest being help outside of the Irish Embassy in England. I am openly pro-choice (supportive of abortion). I believe its disgusting for anyone to tell a woman what to do with her body, especially in such a personal case like pregnancy. So when a nation outlaws abortion, I see the nation in a whole new light, and I can't help but think of them as sexist. This woman's death was avoidable. They would not let her get the abortion. That means one of two things. Either the doctors broke their own law and refused to give the abortion to her despite her risk of death. Or, they didn't think she had a risk of death, which considering how quickly she dies, says something bad about their doctors. Either way, this is a monstrosity.

High Mortality Rates in Southern States

Original Article:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/13/health/infant-mortality-mississippi/index.html?hpt=us_c2

This article talks in brief about the tragedy of the Dykes family: a family living Mississippi who lost their their prematurely born child in 2008. Mississippi ranks 50th out of 50 in all the states for highest mortality rate. We all know that the southern states of America have a bad reputation, and the truth is, its all true. They have the worst mortality rate, a high rate of obesity, a low annual income, etc. A question this articles asks is "What role does race play?". This is a good question because the south is thought to be still quite racist and 40% of infants are born to black women in Mississippi. Some people speculate that the reason the mortality rate is so high can be caused by high rates of obesity. If the mother is not healthy, that can easily lead to a risky birth. Another factor that can lead to unhealthy births would be drug and/or alcohol use.

Mortality rate is the rate of how many children survive to see their first birthday. Mississippi has a mortality rate of 9.4, which means that on average, out of 1,000 babies born, 9.4 will die before their first birthday. This is an appalling statistic. Especially for such a huge country like America. This mortality rate is more on par with countries like Sri Lanka and Botswana.

The south has a lot of problems. These are fixable problems, but the sheer size of them make them difficult to overcome. Death is always tragic but especially so when it comes to infants. America needs to work to fix this major problem.

Syrian Amputee's Amazing Journey

Original Article:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/01/world/damon-syria-amputee/index.html?hpt=wo_c2

This tells the powerful story of Syrian brothers Omar and Abdulrahman, and their amazing journey. Abdulrahman was injured in the violence that plagues Syria and lost his leg. Omar found him in a hospital and wept at his brothers injury. Omar made the promise to his brother that he would walk again. So Omar set his mind to raising money for a prosthetic. After realizing that it would take too long, he contacted the Global Medical Relief Fund to see if they could help. They responded and said if they were going to help, Omar would have to get his brother to Turkey. A driver was able to take them relatively close to the border, but he could not take them all the way. Omar had to carry Abdulrahman across many muddy fields, but he was able to get to Turkey. They did not have passports, but they were able to get in and they are now waiting for further treatment.

This is an amazing story. It is both heart wrenching and heart warming. This story shows the destructive nature of war zones, and simultaneously shows the good in man kind. The perseverance and will power of Omar and Abdulrahman is amazing. The hell that these two boys went through is something no one should experience, yet these boys fought through and made it. I certainly hope that Abdulrahman can get a new leg, and I hope they can make a better life, because they came from an awful and violent situation. 

Donation to Human Rights Campaign

Original Article: http://www.hlntv.com/article/2012/10/31/brad-pitt-contribution-human-rights-campaign?hpt=us_c2
CNN talked about this article.

This article us about how celebrity Brad Pitt donated $100,000 to the Human Rights Campaign, to support gay marriage. Although this article talks about celebrity participation in the HMC, I'm going to mainly talk about the issue itself. While homosexuality is legal nation wide in America, gay marriage is legal in very few states. While LGBT rights in America have taken some large leaps forward in the past few years, there is still a long way to go.  A donation of $100,000 is an amazing thing, no matter who its from. Although the fact that an extremely famous celebrity did it certainly helps publicly.

Barack Obama and his team are the first in the White House to openly support gay marriage. Its a huge step for America. Its hard for a country to move forward with an issue when the leader of the country is against it. When Barack Obama announced he supported gay rights, it split the country's opinion on him. The people who like him, liked him even more. The people who didn't like, now disliked him even more.

Once again, its a great thing that Brad Pitt did this, because not only does the money help, but the publicity helps immensely. Anyone can and should support gay rights, but the fame just helped.

Romney Reacts to Debate

Original Article:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/17/romney-reacts-to-frenzy-over-binders-comment/?hpt=po_c2

After the most recent Presidential Debate, there has been a lot of back lash about a comment that Mitt Romney made that stated he has binders full of women. As soon as he made this comment, it took to the internet like a wild fire and hindered his image even more.

During the debate, Romney was talking about women in the work force. He has had a bad track record with female's in the poles and has always come off inconsiderate. In the debate he was talking about how he feels strongly about female's in the work force. This was going OK, but then it went into awkward territory. He started talking about how he had many women working on his cabinet, and that they were recruited from various searches. He would send people out to look for women who could work for him, and their profiles were kept in binders. That's not that bad, but he went on and on and it became very awkward. His cabinet is full of women he found from binders he had with many women. The entire debate was not very good for Romney. Coming from his surprising victory in the first debate, he did not do well in this debate. He came off as rude, telling the President that he would get his chance to speak, and silencing him when he was going to refute something Romney said. And he also said a lot of plain false pieces of information. All in all, not a great debate for Romney. Team Obama: 2       Team Romney: 1

Whats the next big stunt?

Original Article:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/15/world/next-big-stunt/index.html?npt=NP1

After this recent free fall experiment with Felix Baumgartner, people are asking 'whats next?'

This article briefly talks about the jump from the edge of space performed by Felix, and then goes into whats next. They sent out the question to the readers, and the answers shown in this article are: 

Journey to the center of the Earth

Walk on Mars

Individual atmosphere re-entry

Politicians cooperate

These were the four answers that CNN is looking at. Lets talk about the first...

Journey to the center of the Earth: This is a huge task. There was a film made a few years ago named The Core, and it told the story of how the core of the Earth stopped spinning and a team of people had to go down to the core and fix it. Obviously its a large dramatization, but its an interesting idea nonetheless. There is a new plan with $1 billion backing it, that plans to drill 3.7 miles beneath the sea floor. Its a large task,but also a very interesting one.

The second idea was to walk on Mars: This has been on a lot of people's minds for quite a while, probably since the first man walked on the moon in 1969. The red planet has been the next big landing on everyone's mind, since its the nearest planet to us, and the most habitable. A very cool idea, which is being planned by NASA, and has a bright future.

The third idea was Individual atmosphere re-entry: This is an interesting idea as well, and the jump with Felix was a huge step toward this goal. They need to build a suit that could withstand the pressure and the heat of re-entry, which is quite a feat. As we saw with Felix, he broke the sound barrier, which shows just how fast he was going. Imagine the same fall, except you start higher, much higher. An interesting idea, which we are one step closer to.

The final idea, to have politicians cooperate: When I saw this on the list I couldn't help but chuckle a bit. It is funny to see something like this on this, but when you think about it, it would be quite a feat. While not a major stunt or spectacle, it would be amazing nonetheless. Politicians are usually at each other's throat and making bad publicity for each other, it would be interesting, and probably extremely productive to have politicians work together on a common goal.

Horrific Bullying Ends in Death

A Canadian teenage girl, Amanda Todd, was found dead in her house on Wednesday. She took her own life after intense bullying for a very long time. She posted a video on YouTube that is black and white, and it simply shows her holding up cards to the camera that tell her story. She had started doing webcam shows, and eventually showed herself topless to one man. That man had taken a picture and had shared it with 'everyone'. She was bullied excessively and she moved from school to school. She eventually became friendly with one boy and he invited her to his house while his girlfriend was on vacation. The girlfriend was told about this and attacker her at school. She was beaten and made fun of in front of a large crowd. When she went home, she was so upset and distraught, she drank bleach. It severally hurt her insides and she was rushed to hospital to get the bleach out of her system. People started sending her pictures of bleach, and posting on Facebook saying that she should die. Eventually, Amanda posted this dramatic video on YouTube. As I said earlier, it tells her story through cards that she holds to the camera. Then, on Wednesday, she was found dead in her house after committing suicide.

This is one of the most horrible and terribly tragic stories I've heard in recent years. Bullying is an evil thing, and it has never died out. Despite countless campaigns to end it, and great response's to the problem, it is still here and going strong. I believe everyone has experienced bullying in one way or another. Either they were being bullied, they were the bullying, or they have seen it and either done nothing to stop it or maybe they stepped in. I have experienced bullying and depression, again, most people have in their lives. This problem is not going away, and it needs to. This is obviously not the first time bullying has ended in suicide. There have been countless situations where people have killed themselves due to bullying. And people are being bullied for the most stupid things, such as their race, their sexuality, the way they dress or act. Its stupid.

Original Article:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/12/world/americas/canada-teen-bullying/index.html?hpt=wo_c2

Russian Punk Band Member freed

A few months back,members of a Russian punk band named "Pussy Riot" were sent to prison for performing a song that criticized the Russian president Vladimir Putin. This is great that she is being released, and it shows a small step forward, I think. But its still awful because the other members are still in jail. Mr. Putin has squandered their free speech and has punished them with such an unreasonable punishment. Its extreme to say the least. This woman was only released because she didn;t actually perform the song. She is a member of the band, but a guard stopped her from playing while the other band members performed, so he was let out on a silly technicality caused by a silly punishment in the first case. They should have never went to jail, and Mr. Putin, who is notorious for his use of the Russian government so he could stay in power for as long as he can. He was the president from 1999-2008, then he served as the Prime Minister, and now is President again. Three members were originally sentenced to jail for hooliganism, now one if free, and two other members fled Russia. The lawyers of the girls have tried to take it to the European Court of Human Rights. And above all, the Church that they performed the song at wants them to 'repent', for they feel it will help the souls of the band members. All in all, this is stupid. Vladimir Putin has violated their human rights, and the should be set free immediately.

Facebook Hits 1 Billion Users

The revolutionary social networking site Facebook has now reached 1 billion users. Wow, that is a lot of people. So, what is Facebook? Facebook is the most popular and used social networking site out there right now. It was created in February 2004, and as of December '04, they had 1 million users. It was created mainly by Mark Zuckerberg, although it was thought that he stole the idea from fellow students at Harvard. As I said, at the end of 2004 Facebook had 1 million users, 8 years later it has 1 billion users. That is an awe inspiring jump. This site is everywhere, and used by 'everyone'. And seeing this number, its hard not to be amazed. Basically, like other social networking site's, you can post pictures and status's and your 'friends' can see it. It lets you connect with people all over the world.

So, as I said, its amazing thinking that 1 billion people are now connecting with other people across the world regularly. This poll was taken this month, and its basically states that 1 billion separate users are using this on a regular monthly basis.This is awesome! As a user of Facebook myself, I can talk about how good this. On Facebook, you can talk and connect with people all over the world, people can come together in groups, there are chat boxes for personal conversations. Facebook was a good idea that really took of, and good for it.

Ultimate Victimization of Woman in Tunisia

Tunisia's streets are filled with protests against two officers who horribly victimized an innocent woman. In September, a woman in Tunisia was raped by police officers, then when she filed a complaint, she was charged in indecency. She was in her car with her fiance when the three officers approached. One of the officers took the man to an ATM to extort money from him, while the others officer raped the woman. As I said at the beginning, the streets are filled with protests against these men, who abused their power with regards the law to hurt this woman. The woman then filed a report about this and the police officer's were being charged with rape and extortion, it was then that the officers stated that they first found the couple in an "immoral position". Although it was never stated clearly what the officers meant by "immoral position", but the couple is facing up to six months in jail...Some protests have been so intense, one man even set himself on fire in protest, and that act really set a whole new wave of riots on their path. 

So, this is absolutely pathetic. The fact that these 'police officers' did such an awful thing as raping this woman while extorting the man, is disgusting. But its as if these men attacked her twice, once physically, and then with the law. These three men decided to abuse their power and hide behind the law and turn it around on the woman. Now, that's bad enough, but the really disgusting part, is that its working. When the police officers said they found the couple in an 'immoral position', it actually worked and the couple are undergoing trial, that could send them to jail for six months. Shame on those men, and shame on their judicial system for allowing such vile nonsense. 

Original Article:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/02/world/africa/tunisia-rape-protest/index.html?hpt=wo_c2

Bath Salt ingredient banned

There is a drug that has only really been discovered quite recently. This drug is known as bath salts. A few months back, Rudy Eugene had taken this drug and eventually started biting and eating a mans face off in Miami. This was the first big incident with the drug 'bath salts'. This article talks about how the key ingredient in the drug (commonly known as MDPV) is now banned in Canada. The drug has become more common lately and Canada has decided to step up and take immediate action. Effective immediately, this law bans any dealings with MDPV, owning, selling, buying, anything. This drug is able to cause hallucinations, paranoia      and occasionally violent behavior.

So, I totally agree with Canada's decision of banning MDPV. Here is another article talking about the incident in Miami: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/30/bath-salts-health-cannibal-rudy-eugene_n_1555493.html

This can be a very dangerous drug when taken in big enough doses and banning it I think was the right decision. It has been spreading from the US into Canada and now police have warnings against it. As I said earlier, any dealings with the white, powdery substance is now illegal. So, yes, I think this is a good thing.

The original article: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/09/25/bath-salts-ingredient-mdpv-banned.html

Bounty for Anti-Islam filmmaker's life

A few weeks ago a man made a film that supposedly mocked Islam, and more specifically the prophet Muhammad. This film caused outrage in Islam countries and the filmmaker went into to hiding. A Pakistani minister, Ghulam Ahmad Bilour, has just stated that he is offering a bounty of $100,000 American to kill the filmmaker. He even openly invited the Taliban and members of al Qaeda to join in and find this man. Bilour has stated that he is a Muslim first, and a government official second. It has also been stated that this bounty is not the governments official stance, but its still active.

This is absolutely ridiculous to me. I am of course slightly biased because of my feelings towards religion. There is a thing known as separation of church and state. It basically implies that you should not make political decisions because of religious feelings. This didn`t happen here and its causing an already huge issue into an even larger one. Bilour placing a bounty one someone`s head because he insulted his own religion is stupid. And declaring that religion is more important to him than his country's' government is ludicrous. All in all, Bilour just made a bad situation much, much worse.

No More Protests for Westboro Baptist Church

This article was written by Melissa Jeltsen.
The article talks about how there is a new law in California stopping people from protesting funerals. This bill was targeted at the group known as the Westboro Baptist Church. I won`t talk about them much right now, I`ll get to them later. This new law takes effect on January 1st. So while still inactive, it still has a positive feeling to go with it right now. The Westboro Baptist Church is a religious organization which breeds hate and for years has protested the funerals of dead soldiers claiming that it was God's will because he hates homosexuals. The Westboro Baptist Church has stated that this legislation won`t stop their message, it will however stint their message, unless they find a more extreme way of communication. Gov. Jerry Brown signed this legislation, one year after vetoing another bill that was quite similar, due to issue's regarding free speech. The original bill was proposed by Sen. Ted Lieu but was not passed by the Supreme Court.

Now, lets get this out there right away, the Westboro Baptist Church is an evil, hate-breeding organization that are full of ignorance. As I said earlier, they have been protesting the funerals of soldiers stating that God killed them because America likes homosexuals. They don`t even have modesty of saying "homosexual". Their website is called "godhatesfags". They are famous for their infamous signs that they make and carry stating their God's hatred of homosexuals. The irony of it is that they actually say that they love gay people more than anybody else. They say they love them so much they are able to tell them to repent or else. A great documentary to watch is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOrz5k0jWdU
At times you can laugh at these people, at times you just cry. They are such an ironic bunch as well. After this rant of mine, I guess I can boil it down to this: The Westboro Baptist Church is evil, and this law is good...

Original Article:
http://wwrn.org/articles/38104/?&place=north-america

Nuclear Threat in Iran?

The original headline of his article is "White House: Obama talks with Netanyahu on Iran, no meeting sought", and written by staff at CNN. This article describes the sensitive situation between Iran and America with regards to Iran's nuclear power. Benjamin Netanyahu allegedly requested a personal meeting with Obama to discuss the Iran situation, but the White House declined, it was then said by the White House that no request was ever put forward. Obama has a set of "red lines", a set of guidelines essentially for Iran regarding their nuclear tests, and Iran has claimed to not know these guidelines. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told CNN that America has their eyes on Iran and they have good "intelligence"  on Iran.

I think that this is a delicate situation, partly because of the lack of good communication. Reading this article, it is clear that Iran, Israel, and America are all confused by each other`s wants and opinions. The US is playing a dangerous game here, unless they are pretty certain that there is a threat to Homeland Security, they should keep out of Iran`s nuclear progress. Although it wasn`t just America who started this, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was worried and contacted Obama, or at least allegedly contacted Obama. But he was clearly worried about the situation with Iran. I believe that America and Israel should relax slightly about Iran, but still keep them under quiet surveillance...

The original article:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/11/politics/obama-netanyahu-iran/index.html?hpt=wo_c2

U.N. and Syria

This article was published by the CNN Wire Staff and published on Monday September 10th, 2012. The article is titled "U.N.: Time to stop waiting for Syria to end war", and is obviously about the U.N.`s thoughts about the situation in Syria now and plans to end it. This article starts with talking about what has become of Syria through these last months of fighting, the 'norm' of society has become rape and murder. Listed in this article are many separate reports detailing the violent crimes taking place in Syria. These include bombings, hundreds of death`s, non stop violence. The article also posts video`s within it, which are news reports about the violence, even one video where Senator John McCain criticizes Barack Obama over the Syria situation. Syria has also even attacked people outside their country. They launched an attack on Iraq, killing dozens.

The situation in Syria is a deeply troubling one. This conflict has been going on since March 2011, and sprouted from the Arab Spring, which was a wave of protests throughout Arab countries. The U.N. has not stepped in and done enough work to end the Syrian conflict, in my opinion. This has been a brutal civil war that has caused the death of thousands of people, and the U.N. has not stopped it. I`m not saying that they can just walk into Syria and end it, the article talks about how hard their job is, but they need to do a better job. I agree with this article, and am happy that the U.N. has decided to step up their effort.

The original article:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/10/world/meast/syria-civil-war/index.html?hpt=wo_c2