Final Blog Entry

-It is my belief that I am an ethical mind. This blog clearly shows this. My passion for social justice issues shows my care for other people around the world. My poll and entries illustrate this side of me very well.
-I also believe that exemplify curiosity, asking provocative questions, and reading works with awareness of self and others. My blog shows this well. I was originally curious; that was the point of this blog. I wanted to learn more about this topic regardless of the fact that I was completely ignorant of the issues surrounding it. I also found myself asking provocative questions. It often makes people uncomfortable when an issue such as genocide is brought into the light. Most people would rather pretend that it is not happening. I also found in my research that I am very aware of other people. My heart goes out to those in Darfur even though I have never met them.

The most surprising this I learned in the process of making this blog was the brutallity of genocide and the commonality of it. While its not ridiculously common, it is ridiculous that so many people are ignorant to it or misunderstand it.

Genocide

I was interested in the occurence of genocide in general so I decided to research how common this form of violence is. I was shocked by what I found.
I googled 'current genocides around the world'. Many of the first websites were actually about Darfur. However, the very first site was called Genocide Watch. It seemed promising so I clicked on the link to discover more. It had a list of current genocides or situations that looked like they could turn into genocide. The first case was Sudan, where Darfur is located. A couple down from that was Chad, a region bordering Darfur. I skimmed the rest of the list and was appalled to find that most of the other areas were also African regions. Some of these included Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and Kenya. Many others were in the Middle East including both Afganistan and Iraq. I was very surprised to learn that so many cases of this violence or the potential for it are going unoticed by other areas. There were dozens of countries on the list. Why is this so common?

Hmmmm

My poll has only been up a few days but I am very interested in the response that it has had thus far. The majority of people appear to share my opinion that the U.S. should take an interest in its fellow man's troubles. However, there is a small number of those who disagree and believe that the U.S. should stay out of the issues. I am interested to see how other viewers respond.