Paris Siege Flat Owner: 'I Don't Know Anything'

The owner of the raided apartment says he did not know terror suspects were inside, as a woman describes hiding with her baby.

14:53, UK,Wednesday 18 November 2015

Video: Flat Owner: I Don't Know Anything

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The owner of the apartment involved in the Paris siege has insisted he did not know his tenants were terrorists.

Jawad Ben Dow, who was detained by police in Saint Denis during the raid, said he had been asked to accommodate two people for a few days as a favour.

He told BFMTV: "I found out that it's at my house, and that the people are holed up at my flat. I didn't know they were terrorists."

He added: "Someone asked me to put two people up for three days and I did them a favour, it's normal.

"I don't know where they came from, I don't know anything. 

Video: Neighbour Describes Paris Raid

:: Paris Siege: Mastermind's Fate Remains Unclear

"If I'd known do you think I'd have done it?"

The siege in the northern Parisian suburb began shortly after 4.30am local time, with locals woken by the sound of gunfire and several loud explosions.

Dozens of residents were evacuated from their homes as armed police launched the raid on the apartment, where they believe the mastermind of last Friday's terror attacks – Abdelhamid Abaaoud – was holed up inside with several heavily armed suspects.

Two of the suspects have been killed, including a woman who detonated a suicide belt.

Witnesses to the deadly siege have said it looked like a war zone – with the sound of grenades and automatic gunfire reverberating through the street.

One woman, Sabrine, was just below the terrorists' apartment when the assault began.

:: Live Blog: Latest On The Anti-Terror Operation

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She told Le Parisien: "I was woken at about four in the morning by gunfire. I lay down on the floor with my baby. It was awful.

"I heard the explosions, dozens of gunshots. My ceiling began to collapse, there was dust everywhere.

"My baby was gripping on to me when he heard the guns go off. It was never-ending."

Sabrine told the newspaper she had been lying on the floor for about two-and-a-half hours by the time she was evacuated – and described how the stairwell had been destroyed and the building wrecked during the assault.

Another resident of the building said he was asleep when the sound of gunshots woke him up and police told him to "Get out quick".

He said: "I threw myself on the floor and lay under the bed. I was scared and I waited - that is normal when you hear everyone firing, firing, firing.

:: Paris Terror Siege: What We Know So Far

"I thought if I left my house, they will kill me. While I was waiting the building was trembling underneath me.

Video: Mum Describes Hiding With Her Baby

"When I looked up, I saw that the third floor apartment had exploded, but I did not leave. I was scared. You do not know what to do."

Those who live nearby have now been relocated to the city hall.

Sky's Michelle Clifford, who is also in Saint Denis, said it was a challenge for police to handle the threat posed by the people inside the apartment, while also protecting the public.

She added: "Police were saying 'stay in your apartments, keep the doors shut, don't come to the windows'.

"It was clearly was a very tense situation from the start."

Response:
Due to the very sad six terrorist attacks that happened to Paris recently, Parisian authorities took action by carrying out a counter anti-terrorism siege. The results of the siege were a combination of successful and vague. Two people were killed including a woman who detonated a suicide belt, two terrorist suspects were arrested as well as the owner of the flat with his friend. That brings us to the article above; the owner of the flat blatantly states that he had absolutely no information on the people that were staying in his apartment. My question is in light of the terrorist attacks that happened, wouldn't that have caused this owner to require details on tenants especially new tenants that could potentially be fugitives? I am very skeptical that this flat owner is saying the truth. The order of events that led to the terrorists to stay in this flat seemed quite abnormal. A friend of the owner asked if his friends could stay as a favor mind you, so rent was probably not being paid for the short stay. It does not make sense that any owner would not want to inquire more details on his guests. Hopefully, the Paris team that is investigating this case can look into the owner further to verify his statements.
The writer of this article did a better job in being objective than me. He simply reported the facts, without suggesting that the owner may be fabricating the truth. 

Source:"Paris Siege Flat Owner: 'I Don't Know Anything'" Sky News. 2015 Sky UK, 18 Nov. 2015. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.

UN Chief Ban Ki-Moon To Meet Kim Jong-Un

The South Korean UN Secretary General hopes to cross the border after an attempt earlier in the year was blocked by the North.

02:22, UK,Monday 16 November 2015

The UN chief will meet North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Un

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Ban Ki-moon is to visit North Korea this week for talks with Kim Jong-Un aimed at resolving issues on the Korean peninsula.

It is Mr Ban's second attempt to meet with North Korea's leader after approval for a similar trip earlier this year was rescinded by the secretive state at the last minute.

The UN Secretary General, who is South Korean, crossed the border in 2006 to visit the joint industrial zone of Kaesong with a delegation of foreign diplomats when he was South Korea's foreign minister.

Two UN secretary generals have visited North Korea in the past - Kurt Waldheim in 1979 and, in 1993, Boutros Boutros-Ghali who met with then-leader Kim Il-Sung to discuss tensions over its nuclear ambitions.

In December last year, the UN General Assembly urged the Security Council to consider referring the North to the International Criminal Court after a UN inquiry detailed wide-ranging abuses in the country comparable to Nazi-era atrocities.

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   Gallery: Smiling Dictator Tours Major New Building Project
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   Gallery: Smiling Dictator Tours Major New Building Project

The secretive North, officially named the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is under heavy UN, EU and US sanctions for its missile and nuclear tests.

"It is impossible that the UN Secretary General will not meet the leader of North Korea, a UN member state, as he visits the country," a UN source told South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

Response: 
When you consider the tremendous conflict that has taken place between North and South Korea, you can then understand how monumental this event is. Last time Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, visited North Korea was in 2006. Mr Ban Ki-moon was not yet the Secretary General instead he visited as part of South Korea. Thus, his position in the United Nations greatly affects this situation. Mr Ban Ki-moon with other diplomats will address North Korea on some injustices that are comparable to the atrocities that the Nazi's inflicted, as well as the sanctions placed by various organizations. Hopefully, these talks come with a positive results and both parties do not let their patriotism affect he talks negatively.
The writer was mostly objective when trying to reach his audience of the general public. However, he seemed to hold a slight bias against North Korea by calling it secretive. But he strategically posted a smiling picture of the country's dictator. That picture seemed like a balancing tool by the writer to make this article as a whole objective. 

Source:

"UN Chief Ban Ki-Moon To Meet Kim Jong-Un." Sky News. 2015 Sky UK, 16 Nov. 2015. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.

What not to wear: Halloween edition

OCTOBER 30, 2015 BY MAYA KAMAMI

Halloween is this weekend and I’m excited for all the festivities that come with it. However, I’m also kind of nervous about what I’ll see across not only our college campus, but the nation as a whole. Halloween is prime time for cultural appropriation. Over the past several years, but especially of late, cultural appropriation has become one of those buzzwords featured on blogs, tweets and the like that many people see but often don’t understand.

If you google cultural appropriation this is what will come up: “Cultural appropriation is a sociological concept which views the adoption or use of elements of one culture by members of a different culture as a largely negative phenomenon”. Nice try Google, but you’re missing a key point.

Cultural appropriation involves a power dynamic as a key part of its definition. It’s not a cultural exchange in which cultures borrow from one another as a form of honoring one another: that requires even footing. It’s an issue of a dominant culture or group adopting or using the culture of a less dominant, usually oppressed culture or group. In other words, the argument that others can appropriate American culture is void because Caucasian American culture is the dominant culture and most Caucasian Americans as perpetuators (actively or passively) of the so-called “system” have not been systematically oppressed.

Cultural appropriation has a lot to do with striping away the experience of a people or group. I remember a couple of years ago when I saw my friend’s mom tweeting about the Washington Redskins and how they needed to change their name. At the time, I didn’t get it. The football team was named after the Native Americans, it was to honor them….right? WRONG. Later, I learned the word was derived from the term to refer to the red skins of dead Native Americans. Someone along the way decided that they should take that horrific moment in history and use it to name a bunch of men running around in sweaty pads playing a sport watched for leisure. By doing so, it lessened the value of the experience that so many Native Americans experienced when white colonialists appeared. In a way, to the oppressor, it was genius. Now when you say “redskins,” people think of the team. How many people can even remember what it meant, other than those for whom it meant the loss of life for their people? It is a constant reminder of their underprivileged place in society. It wasn’t the Native Americans donning red skins jerseys, it was the later generations of the colonialists who coined the name that they would cheer every Sunday, unknowingly disempowering the struggle that so many had faced all in the name of a pig skin.

But wait, you’re just wearing that native American princess/geisha/sexy seniorita/saari costume cause you think it’s cool, not because you’re trying oppress or strip away anyone’s culture. It’s all in the name of fun right? But it isn’t. For most of the costumes that are usually appropriated on Halloween night, those who wore them in their proper context, wore them knowing that by embracing their culture or religion through clothing, language, etc., they would face prejudice, injustice and cruelty. So no you cannot take their pain and turn it into your laughter and thinking you can is just a testament to how privileged you feel. And that privilege, the same privilege that allowed so many religions and ethnic groups to be persecuted along the way, is the same privilege that divides us today. And if we are making any strides toward equality, we need to start with small things like this.

Response:
I thoroughly enjoyed this article written by an RVA alumni; through this informing article 
she targets the youth of our world. Halloween is widely celebrated but mostly in the Western world, however even in my African home we had a milder Halloween celebration, a simple costume party. Therefore, cultural appropriation is a concept that needs to be discussed internationally. Kamami states that cultural appropriation has been popularized recently, but the word has been misunderstood even by the search engine google. She continues by properly defining the word and listing the resulting effects. Kamami later in the article uses a personal story to drive her main point that by treating cultural appropriation lightly, we are undermining the experiences especially of prejudice that people in those cultures went through. 
Even though i think this article was very well done, i do not think the writer was extremly objective. I came to that conclusion because she wrote the article from her own opinions even using personal experiences to back it up. Although, I think this article is allowed to have an opinion of some sort. Lastly, I wish Kamami gave us a tangible application of what students should wear on Halloween. However, we are given some direction, on how we should change our thinking and gear it more towards equality.  

Source:
Kamami, Maya Eunice. "What Not to Wear: Halloween Edition."TheTriangle. Independentstudentorganization, 30 Oct. 2015. Web. 3 Nov. 2015.