Brainstorming Presentations topics. From Mike Lohre

Please put your three best ideas for Presentations in the Comments feature of this post, so we can see them all here on the same post.

Thanks,

Mike

Journal 7

Damien Rodrigues

English 1109 Monday, Wednesday 10:30

October 18, 2016

Journal Seven: Charles Taylor

Charles Taylor was a former Liberian politician. He was also the twenty-second president of Liberia.  After college in the America Charles went back to Liberia. In 1989 and was trained as a  guerrilla fighter and in charge of the Libyan-backed rebel group. He had wanted to help overthrow the Doe government thus starting the first Liberia war. After the death of Doe Charles had become a war lord also controlling a large portion of land. He had threatened the population to resume the war if they did not elect him to be president. He was in Office from August 97 to August 03 with his resignation.

            Charles Taylor had done many horrible things in life. Actually before he came back to Liberia he had embezzled one million dollars from the Liberian Government. He fought extradition from the US back to Liberia and won. After his Presidency Charles was put on trial for his crimes. He was indicted on 17 counts for war crime like crimes against humanity, rape, and murder. On April 26 2012 the verdict had come in Charles was guilty of only eleven counts of war crimes and was to serve 50 years in prison. The Presiding Judge  Richard Lussick  had said “The accused has been found responsible for aiding and abetting as well as planning some of the most heinous and brutal crimes recorded in human history.”. Charles Taylor was sentenced to fifty years in jail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Taylor_(Liberian_politician)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/10/former-liberian-president-charles-taylor-british-prison

Conference Sign Up Times for Monday with Mike

10:30 Tierra
10:37 Raeann
10:44 Clay
10:51 Timmy
10:58 Logan
11:05 Alex
11:12 Nick


11:30 Carrie
11:37 James
11:44 Tyler
11:51 Kyle
11:58 Dominique
12:05 Kian
12:12 Damien

jounal 7 Clay

Clay Gerfen
English 1109
10/19/16

Leymah Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist that helped bring an end to the Second Liberian Civil War. She organized the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace movement to respond to the conflict. Gbowee and other women staged nonviolent protests to help demand peace talks to put an end to the civil war. The protests helped end the war and push the then ruthless President Charles Taylor into exile. This opened the door for Gbowee to organize and lead many other women peace organizations.

Leymah Gbowee’s story is told in the 2008 documentary film Pray the Devil Back to Hell and her 2011 memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers, plus she has done many discussions with different groups and she has done Ted talks too.

In 2011 she was awarded the nobel peace prize.

Peace talks were the goal of Gbowee's protests.

Nobel prize bio

Dominique Sandusky

English 1109 Monday/ Wednesday

18 October 2016

Journal Seven: Major tribes and ethnic groups in Sierra Leone

            In Sierra Leone there are three major tribes, Temne, Mende, and Limba. After reading A Long Way Gone I was interested in the different ethnic groups and tribes, and learning about their differences.

            The largest ethnic group or tribe is Temne at about thirty-five percent of Sierra Leones population. 1.6 million people speak the language, Temne. They live in the Northern part of Sierra Leone and around the capital, Freetown. The majority of Temne’s are Muslims with a small Christian minority. While doing my research I found that Temne’s are mostly famers which include rice, supplemented by groundnuts, cotton, cassava, and millet.

            The second largest tribe in Sierra Leone is Mende which is actually Ishmael Beah’s tribe. It has thirty-one percent of their population. Mende refers to the people and the language. They live in the Southern-Eastern part of Sierra Leone and are made of mostly Muslims as well as Temne. In many ways Temne and Mende are very similar. They are both farmers of a lot of the same crops, the same ethnicity, and their name also refers to their language.

 The Limba people is the third major ethnic group, about 8.5% of Sierra Leone's total population (about 566,529 members). They speak many different languages including Limba, Sierra Leone English, Krio. They were mainly rice farmers, hunters and traders.

                                  These are some people from the Mende tribe.

                                      The same tribe Ishmael Beah belonged to. 

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=13&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiOl6eckefPAhVrw4MKHSkHBNsQFghWMAw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.encyclopedia.com%2Fplaces%2Fbritain-ireland-france-and-low-countries%2Ffrench-political-geography%2Fmende&usg=AFQjCNERIFsgwZ2Letqi3BgL3AZFDqhQUg&sig2=dMEQjHBaZoCzZzXSc0YWgw&bvm=bv.135974163,d.amc 

Journal 7

Tyler Beers
English1109 MW
October 19, 2016

Food In Sierra Leone

In Sierra Leone their food is alot different than our everyday food in America.  Our traditional food is normal to us but to them it will seem different to them.  In Sierra Leone they have their own beer and no set drinking age.

 Some of their foods include ground stew which is a mixture of peanuts, meat, tomatoes, and onions.  Cassava bread is flour from the starchy roots of cassava plants.  Okra stew is made from different varieties of vegetables.  If you ask me it would be like pot roast to me.  Krinkrinand fish balls is served in the beach areas along the coast.  Yebe is a stew of cassava, yams, onions, chicken, stock, chili and other spices.  This dish is usually around the Mende tribe.  Benny cakhttp://www.worldtravelguide.net/sierra-leone/food-and-drinkes which is sesame seed and sugar biscuit.  Coconut cake is made from fresh coconut, flour, and sugar.  Plantain chips are crisp that are eaten like chips.  This is made of deep fried plantain slices deep fried.  Pepper soup is a hot chili peppers, tomato paste, onions, and garlic.  Joliof rice which is rice, beans and a spicy onion sauce.  Fufu which is yams, cassava root, and corn.  

Sierra Leone has their own draft beer.  They have star beer, poyo, and ginger beer.  Star beer which is a local made beer.  Pypo is made from sap of a palm tree.  And finally ginger beer is a non alcoholic beer

http://www.worldtravelguide.net/sierra-leone/food-and-drink

This is caurel steak which is on banana island, Sierra Leone

James Guinther 7

James W.B. Guinther

Mike Lohre

English 1109.01

October 19, 2016

Graydon Carter said, “We admire elephants in part because they demonstrate what we consider the finest human traits: empathy, self-awareness, and social intelligence. But the way we treat them puts on display the very worst of human behavior” (what is). This is important because elephants are almost being taken for granted as their population is plummeting in size drastically. The value of Ivory is about 700 U.S. dollars per pound, and as countries across the globe are banning the sale of ivory and cracking down on the murder of ivory bearing animals the price is being pushed through the roof. This is very important to notice because, although the ban is with good intentions in the end it is just driving the demand for ivory up and killing off the what's left of the elephants.

When thinking about the ivory trade elephants are often times the first animal to come to mind but in reality the ivory trade is killing many other animals too. Rhinoviruses are also being butchered for their prickles horns at 65,000 per 2.2 pounds making it worth more in weight than gold or diamonds (what is). Hippopotamus can't even escape the deadly target their precious tusks have become, putting them on a poacher's hit list as well. Animals are being hunted to extinction in order to harvest their ivory, leaving their corpses behind to cover Africa. A new approach must be taken in order to stop this mass genocide and save these poor creatures.

Works Cited

What is ivory and why does it belong on elephants? (n.d.). Retrieved October 19, 2016

                     Ending the ivory trade. (n.d.). Retrieved October 19, 2016, from http://www.ifaw.org/united-states/our-work/elephants/ending-ivory-trade

Journal 7

Nick Price

English 1109 MW

10/19/16

Weapons

There were many weapons used in the Sierra Leone Civil War. Some of the weapons used included the H&K G3, AK 47, and the RPG-7. Also known as Heckler & Koch G3, Automatic Kalashnikov 1947, and the Rocket Propelled Grenade. All three of these weapons are very very destructive and very powerful.

The Heckler & Koch developed the G3 in 1956. The origin of the rifle can be traced back to the end of World War II. The weapon is a selective fire automatic. This means the weapon can be switched to a semi-automatic weapon if need be to use less ammunition. The G3 consists of a two piece bolt assembly. The breech and the bold carrier are the two parts.

The Automatic Kalashnikov 1947 was as you can see developed in 1947. The operation of this gun began the last year of World War II (1945). The gun began military trials in 1946. The gun wasn't presented in active service until the ending of 1948. The gun was created to be produced cheaply and quickly. It uses long stroke gas system to have great reliability in even the worse condition like below 0 temperatures.

The Rocket Propelled Grenade 7 was developed in 1961. It was originally designed as a shoulder fired anti-tank grenade. This weapon was first deployed in the soviet union in 1961. It replaced the RPG-2, because in testing it was outperformed by the RPG-7. It consists of two parts. The rocket that is fired and the base. The rockets can be detached from the base to make it more easily mobile.

All three of these weapons were very dangerous and highly effective in the war. The weapons caused mass destruction all over. These very powerful weapons were used to kill many people in the Sierra Leone Civil War. Not only kill but annihilate villages and completely destroy them.

http://www.militaryfactory.com/smallarms/detail.asp?smallarms_id=19

Kyle Blanton

English 1109 MW

10/18/16

Blood Diamonds

            A blood diamond if you didn’t know already is a diamond that is sold for any type of weapon or is a diamond found in a war zone. Blood diamonds aren’t any different than other diamonds it’s just how they are sold or used that’s what makes them different. So how does this have to relate to Sierra Leone well in Africa the diamond was really found until 1866 when a young boy found one in his dad’s field. After people heard of this they started looking and they found more and more and it was their main source of money. After rebels started to rebel they used diamonds to buy weapons for they war and that’s where they made the name up for.

            The reason this war started was for supply and money, so a group of people called themselves rebels and that group became a full army years later. As the rebellion went on the main thing people wanted were diamonds to sell for more weapons and more goods. I thought about were any of this took place in the book A Long Way Gone but I remembered see some of the soldiers in the movie Beast of No Nation and in the scene where Agu is walking through the trench and walks out to talk to the commandant you can see solders is the water with pans looking for things and I believe they are looking for diamonds. This was my best source  http://web.stanford.edu/class/e297a/Conflict%20in%20Sierra%20Leone.htm

This is how most kids spent their days

Carrie Crilow

English 1101 M-W 10:30

19 October 2016

Sierra Leone Geography and Climate

Sierra Leone is a small town located on the Atlantic ocean in west Africa. It's about half the size of Illinois. Mangrove swamps surround the coast around the village, including wooded hills and very mountainous. Sierra Leone is approximately 27,653 sq miles large. Sierra Leone is boarded on the north and east by Guinea and boarded on the south by Liberia. There are nine major river surrounding this region that allows the drainage system. There are numerous amounts of mountain regions surrounding the land from the Guinea area down to the liberia area. The climate is a very hot and humid temperature, characterized by the rainy and dry seasons. The rainy season is from May to October humid air masses from the Atlantic domaine, and the Dry season lies from November to April, dry winds and hot air that comes from the Sahara desert. The inland region can get 200in of rain yearly from the rainy season, participation is greater in in the coast then the inland.

This picture shows the climate and geography changes between the inland and coastal regions of Sierra Leone. 

This pictures shows a larger over view of where Sierra Leone is located and all the small villages that are part of Sierra Leone. 

Websites of research:

http://www.newstimeafrica.com/archives/category/west-africa/sierra-leone

http://www.infoplease.com/country/sierra-leone.html

https://www.britannica.com/place/Sierra-Leone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Sierra_Leone

Journal Seven

Timmy Le

English 1109

19 October 2016

Journal Seven: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf

            Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was born in 1938 in Liberia. She was exiled two times in the 1980s for speaking against the Liberian’s government. In 2005, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf won the presidential election in 2005 and became the first female president in Liberia. Later in 2011, Ellen was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has multiple degrees in accounting, economics, and a public administration.

            When Ellen won the presidential election, she promises an economic development and to end the civil war in Liberia. Later on, Ellen was known as the “Iron Lady” because she became the world’s first black female president and Africa’s first female president. When Ellen became president, the country was facing over eighty percent of unemployment. Later on in 2010, Ellen had stop almost all of the country’s debt and unemployment. Ellen also created a Truth and Reconciliation Committee or the TRC in 2006 to stop corruptions and protect ethnic tensions.

            Ellen also changed the Liberian’s constitution. Before 2011, Liberian’s presidents were only allowed to run for one term. The court in Liberia decides to change the one term condition because they realized that when the constitution was made, it could not have predicted the future and the state it was in before Ellen was elected for president. By the end of 2011, Ellen won her reelection.

Ellen giving a speech for her second term in office.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ellen-Johnson-Sirleaf