Turkey!!!!!

First off not to do with Turkey at all but I watched the movie "A Mighty Heart" last night which is the story of Marianne Pearl and Daniel Pearl, Daniel was the New York times reporter that was beheaded in 2002 by Al Queda.   This movie is great it stars Angelina Jolie and is a wonderful movie that relates to many things that we are talking about in this class.

After looking up Turkey on Wikipedia and a couple of other sites, something that I found interesting was that turkey has a lot of really awesome architecture.  

Things like the Celsus Library which is seen below, also the Walls of Troy which is below that, and the Sultan Ahmed Mosque which is from the Ottoman Empire.

Wednesday Presentations

I believe that the Wednesday class was very interesting, although I found the first speaker to be a little bit boring all of his information was very informative.

But as for the second speakers, I found them to be very interesting and I enjoyed everything that they had to say. I was actually bummed out when the class was over because I could have heard their stories all day long. I found it very interesting to hear that, I forget what the guys name was but that he was in the middle east for so long and never was shot at even once. I also found it very interesting that the soldiers said that most middle eastern people are nice to them and know the reasons that they are there. I just thought that it was completely the opposite, but it is nice to hear that it is not all violence and shooting over there.

As for the Rough Draft that is due Monday, I believe that once I get a full start on it, it will turn out good. I have a very ROUGH draft done as of right now. As I work on it more I believe that it will become a lot better and not so ROUGH.

The Day the Leader was Killed / Adrift on the Nile

For my first reading I choose to read "The Day The Leader was Killed" by Naguib Mahfouz.  This is a rather short book that is looked at through the eyes of three different people a Grandson, the Grandsons girlfriend and fiancee and the grandfather.  The story revolves around the assassination of the leader of Egypt at the time.  

I would recommend this book to anyone that wants to read it, although it is a rather short story you do get to know the family pretty good throughout the story.  Therefore this makes it a pretty good story.

The second story that I decided to read was another story by Naguib Mahfouz.  I really liked the first story and after doing some research on the author I decided that I wanted to read another novel by the same author.

The book "Adrift on the Nile" is really a pointless story mainly about a large group of friends who go out onto the main characters (Anis) houseboat every night.  What they do when they get on the boat is smoke hashish out of a water pipe.  There also is another character in the book who comes in about half way through her name is Samara Bughat and she is a journalist.

  

Overall I would have to say that I liked the "The Day the Leader Was Killed" a lot better than "Adrift on the Nile".  

Although I liked the first book better I would have to say that neither of the books were a boring read, and I would recommend either.

 Also here is a short youtube video of a few pictures of Naguib Mahfouz with a middle eastern song playing in the background.

Iraq War

I found this post to be very interesting, I found so many awesome videos on youtube about the Iraq war so many that I could not only post one. To start off here is my favorite one, It is compiled of a bunch of scenes from the Iraq war and the song privledge by Incubus is playing in the background. I like this video because it shows both sides of the war, not saying that I agree with the war at all but the video shows soldiers picking up children and being nice, but it also shows some terrible things. Overall I think the video really shows how war is and what war is like Incubus - Privilege.

Here is another youtube video that I found kind of amazing.  It is a video of Dick Cheney in 1994 talking about it being a terrible idea to invade Iraq and that in his own words Cheney  says that invading Baghdad would be "Quagmire".  I found it funning that after saying this Cheney thought that it would be a good idea to invade Iraq eight years later.  Cheney in 1994.

Iraq War

I found this post to be very interesting, I found so many awesome videos on youtube about the Iraq war so many that I could not only post one. To start off here is my favorite one, It is compiled of a bunch of scenes from the Iraq war and the song privledge by Incubus is playing in the background. I like this video because it shows both sides of the war, not saying that I agree with the war at all but the video shows soldiers picking up children and being nice, but it also shows some terrible things. Overall I think the video really shows how war is and what war is like.

Jimmy Carter: Peace not Apartheid

Over the past week or so I have been reading the book Peace not Apartheid by President Carter. While reading the book I found some things throughout it very interesting, but after completing I found myself not bing able to remember any of the things that I had read minus a few.

The most intesting chapter I found in the book was the chapter on the wall. The wall is loacted mainly within the west bank and is a 8 meter high concrete wall that is being put up by Isreal. The wall is not expected to be completed until 2010 which is 10 years after the initial completion date. Isrealis refer to the wall as the "anti terrorist fence" and the Palastenians refer to the wall as the "racial segregation wall".

Here is some pictures of the wall I found while browsing the internet:

Men in the Sun

I believe that men in the sun was one of my favorite things that we read so far this semester. I like how it is not set so much in old times. The book men in th sun is about three male refugees from three different generations going through 3 different hardships. Their common goal is to escape poverty in their homelands and seek work in Kuwait.

The author of Men in the sun was Ghassan Kanafani, and after doing some research on him I found that in 1972 he was assassinated along with his young nice by a car bomb. Kanafani was born into a Sunni Muslim family. Kanafani had many enemies out there because of his stand against the government, because of this he relocated a lot during his entire life.