This week, our class was given a project about a dictator of our choice who ordered a mass genocide. Suprisingly, there are many dictators that did this. We chose our groups and chose our dictator. We were given a Cambodian dictator named Pol Pot. At first I had no idea who he was, but as I researched more about him, I learned more about the horrible things he had done. At first, Cambodia had a stable government. But when Pol Pot overthrew the leader of Cambodia, hell broke loose. He started ordering attacks on the neighboring Vietnamese. This proved helpful to the Americans who were currently battling Vietnam. But as time progressed, Cambodia proved to be ruthless as well. Pol Pot, ordered mass graves to be dug by the prisoners themselves, literally digging their own grave. This was similar to Hitler's ideals. However, Pot hated educated people, especially those who could fluently speak other languages. This was extremely hypocritical, because Pol Pot himself earned a Masters degree and could even speak fluent French. Over 20,000 mass graves have been discovered in Cambodia. Pol Pot surrendered to the Vietnamese after thet took over Cambodia's capital. After the end of the Khmer Rogue and the mass genocide, elite members of the Khmer Rouge were tracked down by the UN. They were prosecuted and some even faced the death penalty. The Cambodia Genocide caused the death of over 2,000,000 people. It killed 25% of Cambodia's population. We are currently reading a novel by Elie Wiesel in which Elie is forced into a concentration camp. Adolf Hitler, an infamous dictator, was the one that ordered for these camps.
http://www.history.com/topics/pol-pot
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This week has been filled with questions and anxiety. Last week North Korea launched a nuclear missle for testing. The UN contacted North Korea, telling them to not launch another missle as it could lead to arguments or conflict. To test our nerves, Kim Jong Un launched another missle. Of course the UN argued with North Korea for doing the exact thing they told them not to do. Now Russia is stepping in to defend North Korea for some reason. Ther is literally no explanation for Russia to be siding with North Korea. I don't even know if Putin knows what Kim Jong Un looks like. Anyway, Russia is siding with North Korea and Russia is pissing the UN off too. So if this continues long enough, the UN might interfere with North Korea's trouble making which will lead Kim Jong Un to get butthurt and order a missle strike on either America or England. Of course Kim Jong Un's missles are tiny compared to ours and will probably get shot out of the sky before they hit the ground. North Korea will then go to their bigger and more powerful friends; Russia and China. This will lead to these guys attacking all the countries they hate. The UN will either step in or get dragged in by one of the countries. Then World War III will happen. Ryan and I did our research in the library (not on books of course but on Ryan's IPad) and WWIII could happen in a matter of weeks. That's pretty scary. Trump would love to get in a war with North Korea and has said so many times. If he has the chance he will nuke them. Noth Korea really wants us to get on our nerves. They have totally disregarded the UN's advice and might result in another world war.
For the past two weeks I have been reading "Night" by Elie Wiesel, with my class. The book is about Elie, who is Jewish, surviving the Holocaust with his father in Auchwitz. The story starts off with Elie living his normal life as a pre-teen when his poor friend comes back from the woods and tells him his story. He was sent in a cattlecar by Hungarian police and sent in the middle of the forest to dg large holes. The Hungarian police would shoot people in the head and make them fall into the graves that they dug. Elie's friend escaped by faking his death when he was wounded. Ellie and his family were later forced to stay in their houses along with the whole neighborhood. All of the Jews were then taken on cattlecars. They couldn't eat or drink anything for days. One of the ladies in the cattlecar went crazy due to the loss of her family and from all of the starvation. She started seeing fires in the distance. She screamed every time she saw a fire. The Jews in the car were angry and hit her until she was quiet. They later stopped at Auschwitz where they saw large fires from large furnaces where bodies were being burned. Ellie was seperated from his mother and sisters. He was able to stay with his father with the help of another prisoner. Elie and his father were forced to march around the concentration camps to different barracks that kept different types of people that the Nazis despised. One barracks held Gypsies. Ellie's father asked the leader of the barracks who was also a gypsie for the directions to the bathroom. The gypsy slapped him on the face. The conditions of the prisoners was awful. It must have been very brave of Ellie to go through such a horrible event. The book is very thrilling and is very descriptive on the things Ellie describes in the novel.
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/n/night/book-summary This week, a pregnancy counselor named Helen Rossi came to St. John Eudes to teach the eighth grade boys and girls about safe sex and the problems that unsafe sex can cause. She started off by saying the basic facts of sex. Then she showed us videos of embryos and cute pictures of babies in their mother's womb. But then, Mrs. Rossi showed us a depressing video about women talking about their abortion fifteen years after they had it. The women vividly describe the process. It made me feel sad for the women and their unborn children. The video was supposed to make abortion seem bad. And it certainly is bad. Next, she showed us a video about a boy named Jeremy who got his girlfriend pregnant. It completely ruined his life. Jeremy was a Senior in high school, but due to his complete devotion to his son, he never graduated. Jeremy did not want to be like his father, who left him when he was a baby. So he kept the baby and stayed with him. His girlfriend however, did not. She left Jeremy and he was left to care for his child with no money, no time, no education. It was very sad to see a nice man and his dreams get totally ruined because of unsafe sex. We learned that condoms frequently fail, and that birth control is pretty risky. A fun activity that we did was with a couple of plastic fruits. Helen Rossi tossed a couple of the fruits in the audience and we started passing it around. When it all ended, Mrs. Rossi announced that everyone that touched he pear, metaphorically caught aids. Everyone who touched the peach got Gonorrhea. The orange, Herpes. The exercise was supposed to explain how easy it was to spread STDs.
http://www.undercovercondoms.com/go.asp?MID=95&kw=comp+AGroup Poverty is a huge issue that affects many different countries, including the United States of America. There are many people who are poor. According to Povery USA, 1 in 6 people in the USA are poor or live in poverty. That is more than 42 million people who are poor. And that is just in the United States. There are nearly 1.6 billion people in the world who are poor. I believe that it is very sad that our world is full of people who suffer because of their lack of food and money. They should not have to go through all of this pain. 1 out of 7 American households wer food insecure. That means that one in seven households lacked enough food. That is not okay. Every single person in the world should have enough food to live right. Children all around the world suffer. 1.6 million children had to stay in emergency homes or shelter. The website, Poverty USA shows multiple ways we can stop poverty, and I think that it is very important that we know how to stop poverty and actually strive to completely end it. I believe that Poverty USA is doing a very great thing.because I know this will help people realize that they should help the poor and donate to them. Donating money, food and supplies is another great way to help the poor. Not only do they get food and the supplies that they need most, but they also get clothing and other nessacary things for survival. I believe that it is very sad that our world is full of people who suffer because of their lack of food and money. Although, the poor can suffer, the whole country, the continent, and even the world suffers because of the lack of food, money, and supplies. We need to stop this from happening. We need to end poverty.
http://www.povertyusa.org This week, the eighth grade class read the short story, "Lamb to the Slaughter". I thought it was pretty funny for multiple reasons. For one thing, the main character murders her husband with a lamb chop. She then proceeds to feed the murder weapon to the police. Also it was written by the same guy who wrote "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "James and the Giant Peach". The short story, “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl, takes place in a humble house during the mid-1900s. It tells the story of Mary Maloney, a petite, pregnant woman, who wants to murder her husband with lamb meat and get away with it. She must fight against Patrick Maloney, Mary’s husband, who want to divorce Mary and not get murdered with lamb chops. She must also fight the police, who arrive at the scene of the crime and desperately want to find and arrest the murderer. First, Mary Maloney waits for her husband, Patrick, in her home. When he arrives, she tries to give him some food after a long day’s work. Then, Patrick tells her that he wants to divorce Mary, which causes her great sadness. After that, Mary goes to the fridge, pulls out a lamb chop, and whacks Patrick in the head, instantly killing him. Next, Mary goes to the store to buy some vegetables. When she gets home she cries over Patrick’s dead body, even though she just killed him. Finally, Mary calls the police. When they arrive, the police investigate the scene. As the story ends, Mary cooks the lamb chops and feeds it to the police, ultimately getting rid of the murder weapon.
http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/lamb.html Pewdiepie, who is a YouTuber with over 45 million subscribers, was beaten down with many allegations of him coming from huge news sites. These news sites included the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Sun. The allegations consisted of lies and poor opinions stating that Pewdiepie was a Jew-hating Nazi. These were of course were not true. The allegations were made because of a couple of jokes that Pewdiepie made in some of his videos, making fun of Nazis. The news, who has no humor, took this seriously and immediately labeled Pewdiepie as a Nazi. Many major followers of some news sites criticized him, even if they had not seen the videos. Fake news like this can be critical on anyone, especially people with many followers like Pewdiepie. After the allegations, Pewdiepie made a response video talking about all the lies that the news said about him. In the video he is clearly upset and even cries in the video. Why did he cry? Because the allegations caused Disney to drop their million dollar sponsorship. The allegations also caused millions of hate comments in Pewdiepie's next videos. Fortunately many fellow YouTubers defended Pewdiepie including, Pyrocinical, H3H3 Productions, and GradeAUnderA. They defended Pewdiepie in their videos saying that Pewdiepie did not mean for the jokes to be taken seriously. In one of Pewdiepie's videos he actually plays a game where he is a sniper in WWII and kills Hitler.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thesun.co.uk/news/2882881/pewdiepie-fights-back-tears-as-he-responds-to-criticism-of-anti-semitic-videos-featuring-nazi-imagery/amp/ This Tuesday, we did a mock trial about the Tell Tale heart by Edgar Allan Poe. The story is about a psychopath who kills an old man because he thinks his eye is evil. The man throws a bed on top of the old man and kills him. However when police arrive, the psychopath hears the old man's voice and admits that he killed the man. I was the killer in the mock trial. I had many attorneys helping me including, Emily, Ela and Xavier. They helped defend me and eventually helped me win the case, technically. While the prosecution side was talking, my attorneys made a lot of objections. Towards the end of the trial they called me up to the stand. I answered questions about the murder towards the defense. Then the prosecution side asked me questions. It got super tense as Jeanette started asking me her questions. I started acting crazy and everyone liked my acting skills. When the jury went outside, everyone got up and talked to me. When the jury went back inside, none of them looked at me. Which was bad because I knew that the jury never looks at a man that they convict. However, the jury said that I was not guilty. This made me very happy. Adi for some reason said that I was guilty, but everyone else said that I wasnt. But by the time she said this, Mr. Jones already hit his gavel. So that means that I won, technically. I felt pretty good after the trial. I had fun and so did my class.
xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/poe/telltale.html This week we finished the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. This is the second part of my review. Make sure to check out Part 1. Towards the end of the story, Scout
Lately in ELA class we have been reading a lot of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird. Scout is a little girl who lives in sleepy Macomb, Alabama with her brother and her father, Atticus. Scout is also friends with Dill who comes to Macomb in the summer. Boo Radley is a mysterious neighbor of Scout who everyone thinks he is dead. Atticus who is a lawyer is called to defend a black man named Tom Robbinson who allegedly raped a poor nineteen year old girl who has no friends. The courthouse is packed when Jem, Dill, and Scout sneak away from their aunt and arrive at the courthouse. The judge has a weird habit of eating cigars. Jem and Scout go up to the black balcony where they sit in the front with Reverand Sykes who is a black pastor at the church that Calpurnia goes to church. Atticus asks the girl's father to write his name and finds out that he is left handed. This means that Mr. Ewell could have beaten up her daughter because all of her bruises and scrapes are on the right side of her body. The girl explains that Mr. Robbinson came into her house and raped her. When Tom stands up he shows that his left arm is crippled due to a farming accident. This shows that Mr. Robbinson couldn't have raped her because he was crippled. Tom explains that he came inside of her house because he called her in to grab a box from the top of the cabinet. When he did this the girl hugged him and kissed him. The father saw this and yelled at the girl. But while this was happening, Tom ran away. Even though everyone thought he would win, Atticus somehow lost the case and Atticus was sent to anothe jail. This upset me because he was obviously innocent.
www.sparknotes.com/lit/mocking/ |
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May 2017
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