April 26

Social 20-1

We continued looking at contemporary examples of genocide by watching a CNN documentary called "Scream Bloody Murder" which examined genocides in Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, and in the Darfur region of Sudan. In each case Christianne Amanpour (the CNN reporter in the film) focused on certain individuals who witnessed genocide in these cases firsthand. In Cambodia, French Catholic priest Francois Ponchaud witnessed the rise of the Khmer Rouge regime. In Iraq, Peter Galbraith called Saddam Hussein's government use of chemical weapons on the Kurds in northern Iraq qualified as genocide. In Bosnia, the "Scream Bloody Murder" documentary profiled Richard Holbrooke and his efforts to recognize the atrocities of the Bosnian Serbs against the Bosnian Muslims. Next, the documentary profiled Romeo Dallaire and his efforts to get the UN to intervene in the Hutu killing of the Tutsi minority. We'll look more at the case of the Rwandan genocide tomorrow in class when we watch "Shake Hands with the Devil". Finally, the documentary examined the first genocide of the 21st century in the Darfur region of western Sudan with Mukesh Kapila witnessing the actions of the janjaweed. 

Social 10-1

Today we watched part of the documentary film "Life + Debt", and while you watched the video, you were supposed to complete film study questions. We'll finish this video off tomorrow (and start another one).