Friday, April 1, 2011

Libya!

                                           Rebel commander leading men into battle.


Ok, the situation in Libya. I'm going to break it down into bite sized pieces for now and I'll then post sources and links for your viewing pleasure.

Tunisia and Egypt have revolutions which spark movements around the middle east and north Africa.

Libyan people begin protesting the power of their leader, Muammar Gaddafi February 14, 2011.

Gaddafi has been in power 40 years.

Gaddafi claims that protesters are being given "hallucination pills" that make them protest.

Nelly Furtado admits to having received money to perform for Gaddafi's son.

Beyonce, Usher, and Mariah Carey also admit to this.

Nelly Furtado donates the money to charity.

Beyonce, Usher, and Mariah Carey don't.

Gaddafi arms civilians to fight rebels.

Gaddafi promises to slay rebels.

Rebels call for help from western nations.

As rebels fight Gaddafi's forces,  oil prices shoot up since Libya is an oil rich country.

Obama helps create a coalition of the Arab League, NATO, and the U.N. to end Gaddafi's slaughter of Libyans.

March 22, 2011: Operation Odyssey Dawn begins and the U.S. launches 122 tomahawk missiles from submarines off the coast of Libya.

England fires 4.

U.S. assures people there will be no ground troops in Libya.

March 28, 2011: Obama addresses Libya issue in speech.

If you have any questions or concerns, say so in the comments! You can comment with a gmail account if you don't have a blogspot. I'll be happy to answer questions or hunt down more information.

Sources:
Pictures of rebels
http://apimages.ap.org/Search.aspx?st=det&sort=date&ids=Mideast%20Libya&showact=events&prds=10135&intv=3d&sh=10&kwstyle=or&adte=1301515186&pagez=20&cfasstyle=AND&

Libya and oil
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OIL_PRICES_LIBYA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Operation Details
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AF_LIBYA_MAINBAR?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/login/Article_2011-03-22-AF-Libya/id-68f627f0783a46fb9acf112bfa0c8860

Obama's Speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUXEiwJiKj4

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Whoa

Totally dropped the ball already! I'm going to switch the update to Mondays and Fridays. It seems that I didn't have this whole blog thing planned out too well. First update will still be Libya.

Monday, March 28, 2011

News for College Kids is coming soon!


Hello everyone! Welcome to what will be News for College Kids. First, a little back-story on how I came up with this idea and what my goals are with this blog.
I’m a second year, political science major and I am constantly plugged in to CNN, the Associated Press, and a slew of websites leaning to the left and the right. As I read, I try to get the facts, the authors’ biases, and a few quick quotes so that I can hold my own when talking about a subject. Something I’ve witnessed a lot is how little college students around me know about the world outside of this campus, state, and country. I’ve heard people completely unaware of the situations in Egypt or even oblivious to shifting majorities in the House of Representatives. When I ask people why they didn’t know, the biggest reason I heard is, “I don’t have time for the news.” When I heard that from a student in a class that was about current events I sat back and thought about it.
            I don’t blame students for not reading the news. We’re all busy people and we all don’t have fluffy liberal arts majors that require us to keep up with the news. Some people have heavy math and science oriented majors that really do not leave any time for news. Some have heavy reading loads that barely leave time for the things they actually like doing. My goal with this blog is to get students and people who don’t regularly read the news to start slowly getting to know the world around them. The world beyond the syllabus we constantly look at for reading assignments and all those essays we don’t do until the night before.
            With each post, excluding this one of course, I will take a news story that people around me don’t know about or want to learn more about. I’ll break down the story into the main points, good quotes, and little snippets of the article. I’ll do my best to include sources for left, right, and neutral bias articles. By doing this, I hope people will read beyond what they’re used to reading. All those Fox News watchers can look at a New York Times article and all those Huffington Post readers can take a look at a conservative web magazine like Townhall. For neutral articles, I’ll use the Associated Press because it is, in most cases, truly objective and straightforward. My goal is to get college students to start reading and talking about the news and to challenge their beliefs.  
            I’ll do my best to update every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The first update will be about Libya and why the U.S. bombed it.
            Read some news, think about it, talk to someone about it, and challenge yourself!

If you want to hear about a particular story, just say so in the comments!