HW 32- Kellogg, brown and root

KBR and other foreign contractors in Iraq is what I chose to summarize. KBR stands for Kellogg, brown and root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. “They handle construction and engineering services or the energy community.” KBR was founded in 1919, and in 1997 KBR was sued for 6 million dollars because they charged the American army too much for plywood. This is the second largest provider compared to oil and gas. Dick Chaney served as the CEO until 2000, but he left to run for office, and he had over 33 million dollars in stocks until he sold them for 30 million because of the pressure of the people. $709,320 of Halliburtons money went to political contributes and 95% of the money went to republicans. Some of the contracts in Iraq were to put out oil fires and to help pump and distribute oil. Also, another one to get rid of chemical weapons in the region.

HW 30 Symposium

The second symposium, on Thursday,I went to was spoken by a man who survived the holocaust and was the only survivor to be elected for congress. His name was Congressman Tom Lantos. I didn’t catch the title of this, because he mainly spoke about his life and different situation that happened throughout. Tom came to American at the age of 19 and attended the University of Washington in Seattle. Before he came to speak with us, I found it very interesting that he was JUST speaking with the president of France. At one point Tom states “America did not teach men the idea of freedom, she taught them how to protect it.” The theme was Citizenship and a quote Tom stated by Mark Twain was “Citizenship is what makes a Republic.” Tom believes that that country and congress are divided and that there are two goals for the new president: To domestically bring the country back together, and to internationally rebuild the status and respect for the U.S. I found this symposium much more interesting and I thought Tom was a good speaker.

HW 30: Tuesdays Symposium

I attended a symposium for the first time on Tuesday, and the title of the symposium was “Citizens Gone Wild, Taking Control of our Democracy.” Nancy Tobi introduced this topic to us and mostly talked about the government and how she felt. She presented us with a power point, slideshow and talked about black box voting. New Hampshire uses two different techniques to count the votes for presidency, Diebold and Hand counting. She explained that the Diebold is a machine that counts the votes for us, but she went on to explain that it is not always correct, and it can mess up the vote counting. Nancy, herself, believes that votes should just be counted by hand because she wants to “help prevent unwanted presidency.” As soon as she started talking about politics and our president, I got aggravated because I don’t like when people discuss politics and he’s clearly our president for a reason, so it bothers me when people bash him. Anyway, I won’t talk about my feelings toward President Bush, that’s a person issue. But to finish up, she talked about how NH is a free and open election, and how she wants voting to change in American.

HW 35- My Blogging Experience.

I can’t believe we have been blogging for 13 weeks now. I feel that there is so much I have learned. I’ve learned the meaning of blogging and how it is a way to express how I feel via online text. It gives people a way to read what I have to say about a certain topic, situation or event and gives them the opportunity to agree or disagree, as well as leave a comment. I’ve learned that maintaining my blog can be a hard thing. I felt “on-top of things” at the beginning of the semester, and then I lost it. I have a lot of catching up to do, but I learned that blogging can actually be really fun. I hope that when people read my blogs from this past semester, they found them interesting and I hope that in the future if I keep blogging they will find my topics interesting and they will hopefully agree with what I have to say. Maybe one of my topics will change the way people view controversial issues, for the better. I feel best about the way my blogs have improved; this has convinced me to keep blogging. When this class is over I don’t think I would necessarily keep blogging about text we have been reading in class, but about thing I find interesting. I won’t delete the posts I already have going, but maybe adding to what I have already, is what I will do. At this point I feel like the class went really well, and I got a chance to figure out what blogging is. Now, when anyone asks me what it is, I’ll be able to tell them, because “what is blogging?” is a very popular question. Overall, blogging has been a good experience for me, and I have been able to express my voice for people to read.