Key websites to read

If anyone has any questions regarding the power points please ask me a question through this blog or next week at school.

Please read ALL articles prior to each presentation.

October 30th: Iraq war

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/country_profiles/791014.stm


November 6th: Iranian crisis

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4031603.stm


November 8th: Israel-Palestine conflict

www.israel.org/MFA/facts%20about%20israel/state/zionism-%20background


November 13th: Darfur crisis

http://www.cfr.org/publication/13129?bcpid?=716091889&bctid=716320015


November 15th: North Korea crisis

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2792.htm

North Koreans ~ Terror on the Run in China 2007.09.11 ABC

Reporter: Stephen McDonell ABC Australia


While North Korea and the United States are making progress on the issue of nuclear weaponry and nuclear energy, life remains a desperate struggle for most North Koreans.


They’ve suffered years of deprivation, famine and tyrannical rule. The latest disaster was the worst flooding in 30 years. International aid agencies have warned of food shortages.

Its little wonder many North Koreans flee the country, if they can. But in China, life for North Korean escapers is often another, Orwellian sinkhole.

But reporter Stephen McDonell discovers that making it across the river is no guarantee of freedom and a better life.

He goes underground in Yanbian to meet some of the refugees and those trying to protect them from Chinese authorities.

“I’m always in hiding…..I thought if I came to China life would be better, but I was wrong” one refugee admits to McDonell.

Women particularly find themselves in a perilous position and often fall into the hands of human traffickers and end up being sold as “brides” or forced into prostitution.

Without Chinese language skills most refugees remain at risk of being discovered by the Chinese police. If that happens they are detained, classed as economic migrants and sent back to North Korea to almost certain death. The UN Refugee agency is given no access to them.

Christian activist Tim Peters says ‘These North Koreans are being sent back by the hundreds and some of them are being killed and many being tortured and some of them get thrown into prison and the key is thrown away.

CBC Our World ~Iraq Four Years On 2007 09 16 21 mins.

This week, we look at the turning of the political tide in the U.S., as
Washington assesses its Iraq strategy and girds itself for the future.
We have reports from CBC correspondent, Nahlah Ayed inside Iraq.
And feature interviews with Washington Post columnist, David
Ignatius and with Phil Donahue, once a famous American talk show
host, now the director of a moving documentary about the Iraq war.

As we have followed the course of the Iraq war, we have seen a clear
trajectory from early bravado, to confusion over the unanticipated
chaos and now to a sense of failure, as the death count of American
soldiers and Iraqi civilians mounts.

The majority of Americans now believe that the war was a mistake
and the administration of George W. Bush is confronting the difficult
challenge of what to do next.
The dilemma: how to declare some kind of victory and get out of
Iraq without further destabilizing the country and the region?


The CBC is now one of the only major television networks with
reporters inside Iraq, so dangerous a place has it become.
The CBC's Nahlah Ayed and Margaret Evans and their crews are
there this week sending back daily reports on the situation on the
ground. It's a mixed and contradictory picture. We show two
reports by Nahlah Ayed.

In the first one, she examines the desperation of many
people in the capital as they struggle without basic services and
constant danger. In the second report, she travels with US
soldiers who show her some evidence of their success in
establishing security.

A majority of Americans now disapprove of the way President
George Bush is handling Iraq. It wasn't always like that.
When he launched the war, Bush had strong public and political
support. Phil Donahue, the famous talk show host,
was among the minority who passionately denounced the war
from the very beginning, losing his TV show for his efforts.
About a year ago, he met an American soldier who was shot only
a week after arriving in Iraq, leaving him paralyzed from the
chest down.

Donahue decided to track both the man's life and the memorable
vote in the Congress and Senate that gave Bush full authority to
invade Iraq. The film is called "Body of War." Brian's
conversation with Donahue is lively and compelling.