I was not the least bit surprised by Basum’s answers or his appearance. I am a former Marine and I have served 3 tours in Iraq. He reminds me of a lot of middle aged Iraqi’s that I met while I was serving over there. Most of the Iraqi’s that I knew were really proud to be Iraqi’s. Nationalism is and being a Iraqi is a badge of honor for them, for the Shiites and the Sunni’s. They all want peace and security just like the rest of us. When I would ask Iraqi’s what they wanted most and they said they just wanted a chance to raise their families and live in peace. I think that would be a common answer for most Americans too. Now I know most students were probably caught off guard by Basum’s dress attire but I knew better. My first time I was in Iraq I was surprised too. The typical image one will get of an Arab is that they would wear what we call in America man dresses. In Iraq they called it a dish dada. But to the contrary in the urban areas like Ramadi a lot of the men just wore American style clothing. A lot of business people and politicians wore very nice suits. All of the suits were handmade too. Now to get to his responses about the war I was a little weary about his response that most Iraqi’s were happy that Sadaam was gone. I know he said he was a Sunni and my impression from the Sunni’s was that there were a lot of them who were not happy that Sadaam was gone. Sadaam himself was a Sunni and he took care of the Sunni majority. Now I am not arguing that Sadaam wasn’t a ruthless dictator and that he committed horrible atrocities against his people. But a lot of former Iraqi police I lived with were very loyal to Sadaam and they were definitely not too pleased when he was captured or executed. A big concern for them was that they loose their power since the Sunni’s were the minority. Hopefully the government can find some way to square away this potential catastrophe. Now I was very pleased with his responses to the war. No population of humans wants war. It is very devastating and costly. I was glad he mentioned that Iraqi’s need electricity. At night time there it is completely pitch black. The only thing for light is the moon. Well maybe not the only source for electricity but it is definitely the strongest source. If any house had electricity it ran on a generator. Imagine trying to sleep through that at night. Some Americans have no idea how good they have it.

Don’t drink from the water was a very moving and emotional video. Everybody in the U.S. for the most part has some sense of the history of our country and the role of Native Americans in it. But the atrocities, war crimes and genocide that has been committed against this people is nothing short of evil. It is always good to see videos like this and very important to show them to large groups of people so that you can spark up the memories and get them to think about it more often. I truly believe that the native Americans have a beautiful culture and something to offer to the world and it is so sad to see how they have been demonized and stereotyped. In the movies it is always the evil savages vs. the good and pure cowboys. What a shame! I think any American who is not completely a sociopath or psychopath has to have some kind of remorse or guilt feeling for the native peoples of the land. The image of America has been transformed so much by American culture. One would always think that this continent is white but you have to remember that this is a brown peoples land. I like that Sam mentioned that this needs to be in the public discourse more. Whenever you listen to a lecture given about American history it barely ever mentions the slaughter of Native Americans. I would like to see a discussion of this on American news channels. It would be very interesting to see a panel discussion about this on Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly. There seems to be a feeling in the air that if you mention the genocide against Native Americans than you are not patriotic. America is a great country for opportunities but it has a lot of blood on it’s hands. Another reason that I think the slaughter of Native Americans needs to be discussed is that other ethnic groups in the U.S. bitch too much. Or the bitching doesn’t match the crime would be more fitting to say. Blacks, Asians, etc. all that their justifications for complaining about the horrific crimes done to them in this country but nobody holds a candle to the native peoples of this land. As I am sitting and writing this blog I am probably sitting on the land of natives who it has been stolen from. In that case when is the last time you have ever seen a Native American. The last time I can remember when I have seen a native American was at my sister’s high school graduation . That was back in 2004. What a tragedy. I am very glad Sam showed the video.

I am a Iraq veteran so I have always had a different view of middle easterners, especially Iraqis. Even when I was in high school I was semi emerged in middle eastern culture. I am from Michigan which has a high middle eastern population. When I joined the Marines you were always fed stereotypes of middle eastern culture by some knuckleheads but for the most part the chain of command made sure to instill in us to respect their culture. The videos of soldiers crushing cars was very disturbing to me. That is just the worst way to win a war. That would make anybody upset even if they didn’t like you because of religious or political ideologies. It was always my aim to be as nice and helpful as I could so we didn’t make any unnecessary enemies. It is easy to get caught up in stereotypes of middle easterners when you watch television but it is very different when you meet them in person. You realize they are people just like you. They have the same basic needs that you do. To provide for their family and things of that nature. Even when the government or the news tries to paint a picture of a whole society or group of people as evil or barbaric that hate America I think anybody with common sense will understand that is not everybody. When I was in Iraq I was deeply emerged in the food culture. I was really surprised that whenever Iraqi policemen would see me with my laptop they would asked to see the porn on my computer. In a Muslim culture that was very surprising to me or at least it was the last thing I expected. Another thing was that the Iraqis loved to play basketball with the Marines which was sort of odd because the stereotype was that they only like to play football (soccer). Now to the really important point of how I view Iraqis. What did I learn from the war. First of all war is bad and it causes a horrible strain on the population including the military fighting it. Now of course there were insurgents who were fighting just because they wanted to keep in power a ruthless regime. Other’s were fighting because they had religious ideologies. Another group was fighting because they wanted to earn money. Actually the majority of the Iraqi police I lived with were former insurgents who said the only reason they were fighting was because they were trying to feed their families. Then there was that group who felt bullied and invaded. So it is a very complex situation which is not easy to sum up. But I will always view the middle easterners as people and never hold any stereotypes and I definitely don’t look at the war like other people.

I think multiculturalism can be positive in many ways. For one the most clear cut example is that I think it forwards societies to produce more and achieve more. The United States is the most diverse country and we are also the most advanced. One can argue that our poverty ratio is poor and things of that nature but the case is clear cut dry on who is the top dog in the world. If there is only one culture in a country than it can be cursed with dogmatism. If there is only one opinion out there than that is going to be the rule of the law. It is the easiest way for society to become a theocracy. If there are competing opinions about things then the argument is put forth so the entire county can hear it and decide for themselves. There will always be problems with different cultures trying to dissimilate into the society and culture but the positives far outweigh the negatives. I like to live in a country with different cultures because I can take a little from each one. I think that is one of my favorite things about the United States. We have everything from Spanish culture, to Italian culture, to hip hop, it is a very interesting to see all of this. When it comes to art, and music the United States is one of the leaders in the world and a big part of that is the multiculturalism. I could not imagine living anywhere else in the world. It also helps to advance freedom too. There are some religions and ideologies in the United States that are against free speech but the majority of people are for it and I think a big part of that is because of the multiculturalism. I know that Muslims are against free speech and there are a lot of Muslims living in the United States. They may or may not practice it in their mother countries but in here they could never get Shari law passed. Another positive for multiculturalism is that because there are different cultures it allows different cultures to practice their traditions. For example if I was living in Saudi Arabia and wanted to go party at a night club and meet women I couldn’t do it because it is not a part of the culture. But here in the United States I can do such things because it is part of my culture as a young adult. There may be religious people who don’t like it but there is nothing they can do about it. Now the religious people can practice their customs because they do it.

I am a product of a interracial marriage so you already know that I love interracial relationships. I think it is one of the great tragedies of our society that interracial relationships are still stereotyped and looked down upon. In my opinion mix babies are the most beautiful babies in the world. Having a interracial relationship can sometimes be strenuous on the children because they notice race right away. As far back as I can remember I never had a pre awakening stage. I always knew about race because I always knew that my parents were different from everybody else’s parents. The peer pressure was great growing up to because black people would always ask me if I considered myself more black and white people would always ask me if I considered myself more white. It was like I always had to choose. Or another question would be if I had to choose a race which one would it be. So peer pressure and other social factors can be quite strenuous on bi racial children but I made it through. Another one that I can’t stand is when people always say that their parents would disown them. If you’re an adult you should be able to love and date whoever you want. That is the kind of simple minded thinking that makes people just look plain retarded. People always say I think for myself and I can do what I want but they don’t. There was a little turmoil on my moms side of the family when she dated my father but they soon came around. We were the cutest children and my dad was my mom’s parents favorite son in law. So it seems that they had to eat crow. My favorite interracial relationships is when I see a white guy with a black girl. The stereotype is always that black guys will always have a white girl. You rarely ever see a white guy with a black girl but hen I do see it, it makes my day. I always think to myself that white dude has some swag on him. All in all though I think the inter racial relationships are becoming more frequent and people are going to have to become more use to them. I think the prejudice is steeped real deep in the culture of the older generations but for us I see hope. There are still some simple minded folks out there but their days are numbered.

I hate to sound like I am beating a dead horse but I think the rights of gays to get married is an essential privilege that human beings should have. I never use the name human rights because a right is something that cannot be taken away. We have seen across this country and this world the so called rights of gays being taken away and abused. The orator makes a very convincing and emotionally charged speech on how banning gays from getting married could harm his family and rank his loving parents to second class citizenship. I do view the privileges of gays as the new civil rights movement. Hopefully one day our descendants can look back at us see how absurd our behavior is just like how we look at generations before us and condemn them for having slavery and Jim Crowe. I personally do not see anything wrong with gays being married, especially when the objection comes in that they would be able to raise a respectable and functioning family. Zach Wahls seems like a very respectable and well-spoken man. I think the chief concern is that people who have a prejudice against gays think that children who are raised by gays are somehow going to have a bigger chance of becoming gay. I would like to see some empirical data that backs up this claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Human beings are a progressive being and the traditional family unit is not always going to stay intact. Humans did not always stay in family units but instead in hunter and gatherer groups. The Family tradition we are used to is a new phenomenon in the human species. So there is no guarantee that it will always be the same. I am not advocating that all families will someday be run by gay couples or anything of that nature, but I am defending the notion that gay couples can make good parents. Anybody who has a gay friend or a gay relative can easily see how gay couples could make loving, caring and probably more sensitive parents that a regular heterosexual couple. I also believe the rights of gays to get married is another classic example of the wrong doings and preaching’s of the church and people who think they have god on their side. No one with a sane mind would argue that this is a secular movement to ban gays from being married. Evidence shows overwhelmingly that this is a faith base obstruction of human privileges. It also shows how faith gets a free pass in our society. If I tell you that I don’t think the earth is round or that I don’t believe the holocaust happened I would instantly be shunned by public opinion as a nut. But if I tell you that I know that the creator of the universe is against gay marriage because I read a book that was written some 2,000 years ago, then I get a free pass and I believe our society is paying a terrible price for this.

I was never really conscious about my seat in Soc 119. I didn’t even get into the class until the second week. The only reason I did that was because my best friend was already in the class. Earlier I had just dropped out of one of my classes and I needed one more to take. My friend had heard about Sam earlier from other people who had taken the course and he wholeheartedly convinced me to add the class after the first week of taking it. He already told me that he was sitting in the back. Row so that is where I decided to sit. I never have a problem of choosing where to sit depending on the subject. If it is a foreign language or math which are not my strongest subjects then I always sit in the front so I can pay attention better. But if it is a large class like soc 119 then I can sit in the back. In soc 119 I would prefer to sit more towards the middle so I an feel like I am part of the crowd but my best friend likes sitting in the front. So after that I have never given too much thought into it about where I sit. Actually the seat I sit in has actually grown on me and there have been instances when people have sit in my seat and I was not to pleased. That’s why I actually make an effort to get to class early to get my seat otherwise people would sit in it. And now some faces that I sit by are becoming familiar to me. So now hopefully I can make some new friends. The back row is pretty diverse too. I have noticed other sections in the class where it seems that predominantly black people sit and where predominantly Asians sit, etc. Me being biracial, it does not matter what races I sit next to. But I do believe that is on some peoples conscious when they choose what seat they are going to sit down in. The only thing that does bother me consciously is that there isn’t a lot of hot girls that sit in the back row. I wish that was the case. But all in all I do not put much effort into thinking about my seat in class. As long as I can hear and see the teacher it does not matter. I hope more people feel the same way that I do but a lot of things go into effect like, where are the people who look like me are sitting, where are the hot girls sitting and where are the cool people sitting etc.

I found the video about education very informative and creative. As a kid who was diagnosed with adhd and medicated most of my elementary and junior high school years I can totally agree about how un stimulating and drawn out you feel. I never understood it because I thought I was just a kid who was a little too hyper but wasn’t every kid. I am definitely in agreement on how school trains kids just for the economy like little toy soldiers on an assembly line. The whole education system is based on how you can contribute to society and be of value. This coincides with a capitalistic society because the market always has to keep producing and creating new markets to stay afloat. There is no high demand on cultivating and embracing kids creative powers. It is all about going along to get along. Kids aren’t even encouraged to question everything. That is why I feel like science education which in my opinion is the most important one is in steady decline. As Carl Sagan paraphrased brilliantly one time; he said if a little kids asks the question why is the sky blue or the moon round, the answer the child would probably get is what did you expect the sky to be, the color red? Or what shape did you expect the moon to be, squared? It would be healthy for the human species to be more in tune with science and less discouragement of questions. Also I never liked the standardized test that the narrator was criticizing in the video. I think it does a great harm to a child’s confidence when they do not perform well on a test. Most kids have different learning capabilities. Like in the video when it said some kids learn better in groups and some kids learn better by themselves. I was very interested in the point the narrator made by how when kids are younger, their creative capacity is higher then when they move up the ranks in public education. This goes back to the point I was making about how children are discouraged to ask questions. Another thing I think public education sucks is that it does take out the aesthetic value of learning. Science is the most beautiful and wonderful discipline our species has come up with in understanding reality but the system sucks at displaying it to the children. If I heard that all the atoms that construct and make up not just me but of all life and this planet were cooked inside high mass stars that blew themselves up billions of years ago, I would have been hooked. But the classes are just so boring. The education system needs to change from producing obedient workers ready for the workforce into creative and critical thinking individuals. That is a big step in human emancipation.

It should bother anybody with some sort of conscience on how America lives compare to the rest of the world. It startled me in class when Sam said that 97% of Americans live better than anybody else in the world. It is easy to be incurious about poverty when you are living at home in the U.S. Sometimes a commercial would come on showing kids digging through the trash and small babies with flies crawling on their cheeks. But as soon as the commercial is over with it is easy to forget about it. I had the same attitude. But when you actually see it in person it changes everything. I served 3 combat tours in Iraq and let me tell you to actually see it, feel it and breathe it gives you a whole new outlook on life. I am actually disgusted on how much I have it better than so many people around the world. It is enough to strain your heart even if your as cynical as me. Life seems very miserable on this planet. Over 55,000 kids die a die because of disease and malnutrition in the third world. Anybody with any kind of sense can see that something is terribly wrong. We are all brothers and sisters and we need to look out for each other. I think because of horrible social constructions like race, politics and government ideology, it has made it easier for people to turn a blind eye. But when you view our precious planet from space, race and nationalism are a little hard to support when you see are planet as a blue dot. We are all one and once we realize that I think we can start making trends to make things right. One of the remedies I think to cure this is to do away or make some major changes to our capitalistic brutal consumerism culture. 99% of us in the U.S. buy shit we don’t need. Nobody wants to sacrifice but everybody can wear name brand clothes, expensive cars and the works though. Our whole system of consumerism is obsessed with profit. Nothing has any value anymore unless you can put a price tag on it. So the first step is to put at ease our consumerism driven culture. I think it takes away at what really makes us human and what really counts in our life. Like love, friendship, being social, helping out others is just a few examples. Hell, our culture even wants to put price tags on them too. We have a long way to go but I also recommend to people to visit these areas that are suffering from abject poverty and slavery. It is a lot different that watching it on the television. When I become a lawyer I am going to do everything I can by helping people from all around the world. Just like Sam said, one person at a time.

Free will and determinism have played a very intricate role in my life. My ups and downs and highs and lows are closely linked to these two concepts. When I was born until the age of fourteen I lived in a very deterministic environment. I grew up in Pontiac Michigan which is a city about 45 miles north of Detroit. It has the same story as most cities. People say it used to be a wonderful city until all the blacks moved in. I grew up on the north side which isn’t to bad of an area. The schools were very poor and not kept up well. Pontiac was surrounded by predominantly white suburbs with a very good education system. We would always come in last in everything academic but would always be first when it came to sports. Throughout my adolescence I hung around the wrong crowd and got into trouble. It was socially beneficial to do good in school. Everybody viewed you as a nerd. It was better to have a few suspensions under your belt than to have a couple of A’s on your report card. So I followed this trend. My parents stressed to me how important school was but you know how it is when you’re kid. You have to learn everything the hard way. My dad received a promotion and I moved to Waterford which is a very nice and expensive place to live. I went from a school where every bodies parents were earning minimum wage to where students parent s were doctors and lawyers. The curriculum was a lot more difficult to. Everybody was college bound because their parents went to college. But I was still stuck in my ways. I was the bad kid who was too good for school. I did just enough to get by. I eventually joined the Marines right after high school because I did not want to go to college. But because of the environment and discipline I received in my training I finally learned to see the aesthetics in education. One thing that I did notice was my friends who I left behind in were all in prison, on their way to prison, or were just being released. Two kids who I played basketball with were in prison for life for murdering people. It struck me how everything was turning out so negative for them. I mean literally everybody who I hung grew up with in Pontiac were criminals and did not go to college. On the reverse everybody in Waterford did go to college. This fact cannot be ignored that our material life’s play a big role in who we are and how we view things. There are always exceptions though. I was still doing bad in Waterford. It wasn’t until I joined the military that I decided to change my ways. So I think free will and determinism played a huge part in shaping the man I am today.