Aly+Gelfand

September 15, 2010 __Petraeus opposes Koran-burning__

A small church in Gainesville, Florida planned on burning copies of the Islamic holy book in rememberance of 9/11 and because they claimed it could be dangerous to American soldiers. I disagree with this because although they may have caused 9/11, it already occurred and it happened a long time ago. It was a terrible thing and Americans will never forget it, but I don't think burning the Islamic holy book would benefit anyone, I think it would just keep a war going between the two countries. I don't think this could endanger American soldiers and I think the church in Florida should just leave everything be. Also, in the United States there is a freedom of religion. Any US citizen can practice any religion they want, so therefore Islam's holy books should not be burnt, despite the awful event that happened in 2001.


 * You have a lot of thoughts here in one paragraph. One thing you will want to do is to preface some of your sentences with some background. For instance, if you are going to talk about whether or not the American soldiers are in danger because of this you will want to explain where that thought came from. Who thought it would endanger them? Work on that for next week!**

9/27 Luke Angel, a seventeen year old from Bedfordshire, U.K. was banned for life from America for sending an insulting email to U.S. President Barack Obama. The teenager claimed he was 'both drunk and high at the time'. I think it was a good idea to ban the kid from America because he was out of line for sending such an offensive email to the President of America when he doesn't even live there. If I were President Obama I would've done the same thing to make sure I'd never have an encounter with the kid in the future. I think that was a really bad decision on Angel's part because not only did he make himself look foolish, but he also got himself banned from the United States for life. I'm sure President Obama never did anything to Angel so it was unfair of him to judge when he's not even an American citizen.

10/7/10 In 1977, there was a law declared that said gay and lesbian couples could not adopt children, and last week people from Florida spoke out against this law. I strongly disagree with this law, I think it is ridiculous to ban gay and lesbian couples from adopting and I think this law was made out of pure homophobia. Just because someone is with a person of the same sex does not mean they shouldn't be happy. I think that gay parents could be good parents, as can straight parents. I don't think parenting and one's sexual orientation has anything to do with the other.

**P= great job inserting my comments from the first time** **C= Take out "I think" and just tell us what you believe as if it is fact. Who is going to disagree with you? We don't talk back!**

11/2/10 Recently, almost 400,000 classified military documents from the Iraq war were leaked on the internet. These reports depict the US as unsympathetic and even unlawful. These documents state that 'US soldiers sometimes witnessed the abuse of Iraqis without protest' and that there were '15,000 previously unreported Iraqi deaths, bringing the total to 100,000'. The editorials believed that the leaking of these files was thoughtless and 'politically motivated' and that they confirm what was already reported. The person behind WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, only stated what was not news anymore. The columnists believed that the documents prove 'the extent of the Bush administration's lies'.

This whole internet 'leakage' is just ridiculous. I don't understand what kind of person would just dump war documents all over the internet. If Assange was trying to make the US look bad, I suppose he made a decent effort but like the editorials said in the article, 'WikiLeaks has done "tangible harm", possibly derailing Iraq's attempt to form a government'. Although US soldiers 'sometimes killed Iraqi civilians at checkpoints' and did other harmful things during the war, none of this was news to anyone and what Assange did just makes him look foolish and haughty.