Thoughts after Maus II Disucssion

An image that emotionally shocked me is the bottom block on pg. 72 of Maus II. Spiegelman depicts the Jews burning in either one of the crematoriums or a cremation pit. The caption above says, "Prisoners what worked there poured gasoline over the live ones and the dead ones". This terrifies me because the prisoners were forced to help on, or essentially kill the other prisoners. They were forced to pour gasoline on them! When really those prisoners that were pouring the gasoline would be the next to die. It is unthinkable what the prisoners were forced to do. The lower text box says, "And the fat from the burning bodies they scooped and poured again so everyone could burn better". This is really shows the frankness Speigelman writes with. It is almost as if he is being sarcastic about the way they would re-use the fat to help the other bodies burn more easily. Perhaps Speigelman is not using sarcasm, but more along the lines of complete and utter truth and therefore it comes out in a way that one is not sure to take it so seriously.

Reflection on Human Rights Activity

A statement that where I noticed my thinking changed was: It is wrong to torture another person. I feel like before I really thought about this statement, I felt that if someone committed a horrible crime, they deserved to be tortured for it. But once I heard Kelly say that out loud, it did not make sense. It seemed a bit silly actually. That actually led me to realize that, in my opinion, in most cases it is wrong to torture another person. When Olen and Sarah were talking about how a life is still a life, what is torturing going to accomplish? People will say anything to make the pain stop. Also, torturing someone will not cause them to realize the extreme, horrific nature of their crime. This also swayed me toward my opinion. However I did start to lean toward it is always wrong to torture another person because like Olen pointed out: a person will say anything to get the pain to stop. So if the CIA, for example, is torturing someone for information, the person could give them fake information to make the torturing stop, but then the CIA will have achieved nothing and received no important, helpful information. I am not quite sure what this reflects about the type of person I am.

Current Events in the Democratic Republic of Congo

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/world/africa/04congo.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&sq=the%20democratic%20republic%20of%20congo&st=cse&scp=1

This article is from the New York Times, written by Jeffrey Gettlemen. The title is Frenzy of Rape in Congo Reveals U.N. Weakness. Gettlemen discusses the raid which took place on October 3 by rebel forces. They came into a village and raped at least 200 women. There were dozens of UN peace keepers stationed up the rode, but failed to respond. The peace keepers said the responsibility to respond was left to the Congolese Army. The questions this article brought up for me were: If the UN has invested so much money in the Congo, why are they struggling so much to keep peace? With over 1,500 peace keepers in the Congo, why can they not protect the citizens? It is very disturbing to me that with so much outside influence from the UN, the Congo is still very unsafe and the citizens are in terror. I do not know how the UN should continue or pursue a course of action in order to take the Congo in the right direction.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11469140

This article is from the BBC, there was no author. The article is title DR Congo: Joseph Kabila critic's 'suicide' doubted. The article addresses the man that threw a stone a President Joseph Kabila's convoy had committed suicide in prison. It was said that he was arrested and then taken to prison. In the prison, he killed himself by using a pillow case. Jacob Baluish of the Congolese Observatory of Human Rights told the AFP news agency suspects fowl play! How could he have committed suicide by a pillowcase when we all know there was no pillowcase!? This article brought up the questions: Why are the Congolese officials trying to cover up this instance? Why are they trying to make it seem like the man committed suicide? Did they kill him just because he threw the rock or was there more involved? This is makes me think, if a man is killed for simply throwing a rock in the Congo, what other simple things are people being punished for?