Immigration Detention Of Children in Australia

There has become a big problem in Australia having to do with Immigration Detention. A report, The Forgotten Children, has just been released stating that detention is dangerous for children. They have evidence that detention can have a negative effect on a child’s mental and emotional health as well and their physical development.  The average time that someone is in detention is aver a year and right now there is close to 300 children in immigration detention Nauru and more than 100 children held on Christmas Island. In the report it says “It is the fact of detention, particularly the deprivation of liberty and high numbers of mentally unwell adults that is causing emotional and developmental disorders amongst children”. These children are confined in small quarters with adults who are mentally ill. Not to mention the fact that having children crammed in a small place with hundreds of adults they do not know puts them at risk for sexual and physical abuses. These children resort to hurting or starving themselves because of what they conditions they are living in are doing to them.

There is no other place in the world that detains all of it non – citizens, Australia not only does this but also detains children if there is an ASIO finding against their parents. A minor should only be detained as a measure of last support but even then I don’t think a child who has not done anything should be detained and put into such bad conditions. Another issue with detainment is that not only are a bunch of children still detained there are also some who are released and end up on the streets unaccompanied. These children who are detained do not get the proper care and education that they need. It is known globally that detention is not good for children and the Australian government need to fix the conditions in which these children are put in.  

Eliana Berger

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/feb/11/children-in-detention-scathing-criticism-in-human-rights-commission-report

Blog 2: Kabul attack on female actors leaves survivors facing more 'punishment'

Global inequality goes much further than just poverty or ethnic strife it also includes gender inequality. Looking at a story coming from Kabul, Afghanistan we see how gender inequality and the use of "religion" as a shield for personal agendas has ended up in the death of an Afghan actress. After appearing on T.V. and supposedly wearing what many men in Afghanistan viewed as "immodest" clothing a young actress named Benafsha was stabbed to death by a group of men outside of a mosque. The two other actresses who were with her were also injured but escaped with their lives. However this did not mean they escaped with their dignity. The two actresses were then brought to a hospital and after being treated they were taken to prison where they had virginity tests conducted. While at the prison they were also investigated with potential charges of prostitution as well as collusion of the attack. Instead of seeing their attackers jailed they may face jail time for "moral crimes".
Truly the injustices that have been perpetrated here are outrageous. Three women were attacked for doing a job that men have no issue doing but since they were women doing it, it was seen as unacceptable and morally wrong. For a long time now the middle east has been fraught with gender inequality and political injustices that have been covered up as being "religiously based". With the constant unequal treatment of women in these countries you have to ask when enough is enough. There seems to be no end to the struggle that women have within these countries. Obviously there has been little advancement for the rights of women in these countries even after the wars for "liberation" that have been conducted there. Ideally women will gain the same rights that they have in other countries but it is not our job to force other countries to adopt our same traditions. However, it is truly sad to see inequality masked by "religious" based laws when in reality it has nothing to do with the religion.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/06/afghanistan-attack-female-actors
Eric Spriegel, 9/7/2012, 1:37 pm

Blog #2, Crime at Universities

         What defines crime? It is such a broad term that can be used to define many different “bad” situations. According to Dictionary.com, crime is “an action or an instance of negligence that is deemed injurious to the public welfare or morals or to the interests of the state and that is legally prohibited”. Crime is a social problem because it is effecting a large scale of people in a negative way. Crime happens everyday, everywhere and can be a very scary thing. Crime is taking place everywhere but I would like to focus on crime around the UNCG area for this blog because it has increased since school has begun. We have all been receiving emails and texts from campus police letting us know about people on campus with guns and the robberies that have been taking place. It is nice to know that they care and from my observations it looks as if there have been more campus police on patrol. 

The website: http://ope.ed.gov/security/, provides you with crime rates around universities. It gives you the option to look at a single University or to look at multiple Universities and compare there crime rates. Another useful tool for UNCG students is http://police.uncg.edu/Statistics/CrimeStats/index.php, this website allows you to see what time of crimes have happened over the past 3 years and how many crimes have occurred of that type. I think that everyone would agree that crime around University areas are a scary thing and we should do more to prevent them, but UNCG is not alone is accompanied by every other university out there. So, what can we do to reduce crime rates? Raise awareness, and if we can’t do that we should provide classes for self defense and other ways to reduce crime in our own homes. I think we should feel safe in the areas that we live in and try to find ways to make that happen. 

A Free Online University Tests the Waters - Blog 2

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/03/us/03iht-educlede03.html?_r=1&ref=internationaleducation

Last week, I wrote about Ghana and how their public school system is currently failing the children of the country. To me, the base of a good education starts at the beginning with the basic skills: reading, writing, and mathematics. However, to truly start creating a global economy full of enlightened thinkers, higher education should be promoted worldwide. The article that I read this week in the New York Times talks about a man with a dream of making higher education feasible for people from every country.

Shai Reshef decided that he wanted to pull together the vast amount of resources that American universities have and make them accessible to every interested student (regardless of economic status or social class). He created the University of the People (UoPeople), "an online school offering a four-year U.S.-style undergraduate education for free" (Guttenplan, 2012). Many professors were interested in the idea, so they volunteer their time and knowledge for free. The university is entirely online, with students completing a weekly unit of learning for a set period of weeks per course. They only offer two degree programs: business administration and computer science. One of the goals of UoPeople is to provide students with practical degrees at a limited cost.

I think that this seems like a great idea in theory, and I’ll be interested to see if UoPeople passes the accreditation assessment that they are currently undergoing. Just think about all of the resources that we as students (and faculty) have here at UNCG. Online services at our fingertips, as well as the option to take online classes (and even if your class isn’t online, it most likely has some information posted in an online forum somewhere). Now, think about all of that information being available to a student interested in a business administration degree in Ghana (or China, or Zimbabwe, or Iran, or any other country in the world). How incredible would that be? Not only would it provide working knowledge of technology to people from developing countries, but also it would help create and mend cultural relationships. People from various countries would learn how to work together in a professional environment, building trust and appreciation cross-culturally. Imagine if this were available to every potential college student (traditional age or not) across the globe. This is exactly what I meant when I said in my Icebreaker post that education is an incredibly important tool for fixing many of the other global social problems. If people are educated about certain things and have critical thinking skills, they have the capacity to take that knowledge and use it to solve problems in other areas. This would create even higher levels of globalization, as well as potentially increase the social class of citizens around the world in their respective countries, which could have a trickle-down effect and help boost their local economy, as well as encourage other students to seek education…the list of positive outcomes goes on and on.

(Now to list some obvious issues…) While this seems like a great idea, I wonder how much equality it will really bring in the long run. Unless a multitude of international governments support this, it is unlikely that it will really have the impact that Reshef wants it to, since some governments do not push education as a major social issue. Also, unless people have access to at least some form of technology, they will not be able to participate. Even though this university is low-cost, those without access to computers or internet would still be left out. It’s hard to know how this will play out, but it will definitely fizzle if they do not become accredited, as their diplomas will become meaningless and somewhat of a waste of time. Like I said, I’m interested to see how it all plays out over the next few years and the impact that UoPeople will really have, as well as how many countries and international students it will reach…and then what they will do with that knowledge (maybe they’ll help their home countries, maybe they’ll go abroad and seek a job thus supporting a different economy, and most likely one that is already fairly stable). We’ll see!

Guttenplan, D. D. "A Free Online University Tests the Waters - NYTimes.com." The New York Times . N.p., 2 Sept. 2012. Web. 6 Sept. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/03/us/03iht-educlede03.html?_r=1&ref=internationaleducation>.

Blog 2: "An Economy Built to Last"

This past week, Obama addressed the nation with the State of the Union address. The theme of his speech, “An America Built to Last”, explained to all American’s what Obama’s plan was to better our country as a whole. A major part of Obama’s speech was his plan to better the American economy. The way that Obama wants to execute this plan includes bettering the American business, yet being involved with trade agreements in countries around the world and also in-sourcing jobs back to the American economy so that we can sell our products on a global scale. Some of the proposals that Obama has to support American business would be to lower tax rates for companies that do business within the United States, require companies to pay a minimum tax on overseas profits, double the tax deductions for high-tech manufacturers who make production in the United States, and provide financing help for companies who relocate to communities that lost factories during the economic recession.

From a sociological perspective, the inequality of incomes in America (the 99% vs. the 1%) is a huge social and national problem. Rather than global, but by being a national problem, we can find ways to solve it by being involved with the rest of the world. Obama has signed three trade agreements (as stated in the state of the union address.) These trade agreements are with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama. The agreement with South Korea is estimated to support 70,000 American jobs, and the agreement with Colombia is suggested to increase the United States gross domestic product by $2.5 billion. A third agreement with Panama guarantees access to Panama’s $20.6 billion services market.

Obama has also proposed the “Buffett Rule” which states that if an individual makes over 1 million dollars per year, they must pay at least thirty percent in taxes. Currently, a quarter of millionaires pay a lower tax rate than millions of middle class families. This rule also states that if an individual has a salary of less than $250,000, their taxes should not go up. This could greatly solve the inequality struggle within the United States.

There are many other proposals that Obama mentioned in his state of the union address, but unfortunately I’d be writing for days if I wanted to break down every part of that. The main focus here is that our President wants not to eliminate the global market, but make the United States a bigger part of that market by in-sourcing American jobs to therefore create more products and goods to sell to other countries around the world. From a sociological perspective, these proposals are logical, but there must be cooperation from many different components of the government, American people, corporations, big businesses, small businesses, and many other components. As the president stated at the end of his speech, we must all work together, just like the Navy Seals that worked together to accomplish the capture of Osama Bin Laden.

source: http://www.barackobama.com/state-of-the-union?source=DNC_HDL