#BellLetsTalk

"On January 28th, let's talk."

Bell's Let's Talk Day is a social media campaign to promote mental health awareness as well as have the general public take part in it's day. For a 5th year now, this social media campaign has taken over many social media sites; from the looks of it, it's definitely all over Twitter. The Canadian campaign aims to improve two thirds of  Canadians with mental health issues, as well as raise awareness of the importance of mental health in the workplace. The organization also hopes to fund research into new treatments and cures. Last year, Bell Let's Talk raised about, $5,472,585.90.

"Bell will donate five cents for every text, mobile or long distance call or their network and for tweets with #BellLetsTalk as well as any Facebook shares of an image on their page." I think this is a great thing to do for the public; to create a day that promotes what is still considered to be a social taboo. They're breaking through the stigmas of mental health and I also believe that this gives people with mental health issues a day to feel like they are recognized as people who need our help. Mental health is a serious issue and we still rarely think of it as the days go. There are many types of mental health issues and to campaign towards treatments and cures is a great way to raise awareness and get people involved. I believe people in the US should do something like this too. I love to raise awareness to issues that people usually overlook or don't put any light to. Any/all problems with health should be promoted so that we can spread awareness to all.

Please, please tweet/text "#BellLetsTalk" or call in to donate today!

Parisan Purge

Paris in Chains

 

     There has been some upset lately in Paris between Charlie Hebdo and Muslim people. The light that ignited this lovely incident was the fact that the newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, included a cartoon picture of Mohammad. Mohammad's face is NOT supposed to be shown, ever. So, in that this did cause an unsettling feeling in the Muslim community. Not to mention that Charlie Hebdo was belittling the Muslim faith. Due to the newspaper creating this, France's national security was raised to the highest degree. Twelve people were killed and ten were injured. Five of the ten injured were in critical condition. The newspaper is known for its satirical material; and it was also the target for the attack with firebombing in 2011, after publishing cartoons of Mohammed. French President Francois Hollande tweeted: "Aucun acte barbare ne saura jamais éteindre la liberté de la presse. Nous sommes un pays unis qui saura réagir et faire bloc."
He basically said that their "barbaric act" will not stop France from having freedom of the press. He said that as a country they will react and protect.

     What has happened since? Well, there's a group called Anonymous, which are a widespread group of hackers. Anonymous put up a video not too long after the incident, explaining how they are now planning the take down of all terrorist groups, especially ISIS. They were even able to hack into an ISIS recruiting page and have it disabled. The Anonymous member, just so happened to be French. But, not too long after, ISIS posted a video to YouTube praising the Paris attacks.
    Are any ISIS videos in retaliation to what Anonymous said? We really aren't sure, but I do know that ISIS is a reckless group that will do whatever they need to get their point across. With Paris having an issue with terrorism, that creates a worldly panic.
    People all around the world aren't feeling to great about this. I wouldn't feel safe at all flying to Paris. Actually, considering that I'm flying to Italy and Spain in about two months, also really makes me nervous with all this terrorist attack going around. I pray that all this chaos will cease so France, and the people of the world can live without being frightened by terrorism.

Ferguson Fury

   There has been so much media attention on the Mike Brown case. Not that there shouldn't be, but it's caused a lot of uproar in the general public; enough so to cause many videos on YouTube regarding people's feelings, protests, riots and all. All the events have in common is that this is an entire "race issue". I'm not saying that race issues don't exist, but in cases like this not everything needs to be turned out as a racial problem. I don't think the situation would've changed if they were black, white, blue, polka-dot, yellow, purple, or whatever. As a stated from a previous blog post: Personally, my opinion may not be what everyone wants to hear. It's kind of an ugly truth I suppose. The entirety of this case is that it has turned into a "racial" thing. That's the ugly truth here. Nobody is really caring that somebody has died; it's turned into a fact that it was a white police officer that "murdered" a black teenager.
    I will stand by that opinion regardless of how my classmates feel or the public. The one driving force here is that the African American community is going around blaming "white folk" for an issue that not all "white folk" had to do with. This was one man's decision and rioting and looting their own cities does absolutely nothing towards their "driving force". Acting like a bunch of crazies through the town looting, burning, and "protesting" isn't right. It's not even a protest at all! And at the end of the day they're only hurting themselves and that's how it is, like it or not. The cookie's going to crumble that way because they made the cookie the way they wanted to.
    The group that might be underrepresented are the people who feel that the issue was not just racial and it wasn't right. That's where I stand in all of this. I do not care what you look like, where you came from, what you do in life; if you partake in criminal activity I will treat you like a criminal. No bad deed goes unpunished. You should expect that if you're getting into some suspicious criminal behavior that the police will come around and be skeptical of what you're doing. These people are underrepresented because we'll end up being called "racists" for not agreeing that it's a racial murder. People agree with the fact that we think it's wrong up until we tell you that we don't think it's a racial issue.
    An African American pastor even created a video about how he felt about the entire thing and he even says himself that you can't blame the white folk for every incident that happens. "We have toiled around this mountain long enough", he repeatedly says it throughout his video. He even explains that he's had incidents involving being pulled over by white policemen in the valley. He explains that he's had no trouble with them whatsoever. So if he can get pulled over for doing something wrong, by a white police officer, tell me why other African American people can't just come to the conclusion that it's the way you cooperate with the authorities. At the end of the day whether you cooperate or not they do have power over you. It's like going to the DMV to get your license and having a major attitude with the lady behind the desk. She has power over you, therefore she can judge whether she feels as though she can provide you with her services or make you leave.
   Below is the video of the pastor explaining his take on the entire situation. I think everyone should take a look at it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ_RpVSjr6w

Rerunning Through Kentucky

     Rerunning through the elections in our "Old Kentucky Home"

      Today we're throwing it back to October of 2014. As we remember, we were following the midterm elections for Congress. Over the course of two months, the election shad taken some odd turns. At the beginning of the campaigns, Republican Mitch McConnell was seen as an easy pick. He was familiar with the ways of Kentuckians and he's been a representative for quite some time. The people of Kentucky, at the beginning, were almost completely against Democratic candidate, Alison Grimes. As the elections went on, Grimes was starting to build up her numbers (she also had some help from a past first family, the Clintons).
      This led to tv ads becoming more aggressive from McConnell and stinging retaliation t.v. ads from Grimes. This definitely caused some upset within Mitch McConnell's campaign due to the fact that his "claimed" Kentuckians were changing their minds on him. He starting to barely receive any votes. This to him was just unacceptable. I agree with the Kentuckians voting for Grimes. They needed change and Alison Grimes did have some Democratic views and McConnell tried making her look like Obama's puppet. McConnell was a familiar face to the people and he knew what Kentucky needed but never lived up to what Kentucky really needed out of him. This began to cause confusion and even more doubt about their faith in him.
       The end of the wire was near for the two candidates. Who would it be? The newly needed, hesitant Democrat? Or the unwanted but all-too-familiar Republican? It was a complete toss up between the two and it was anybody's game. But, at the end of the election Mitch McConnell was in for the win. He had his "coal-bashing, gun-grabbing, Republican having" Kentucky back in his clutch. So, maybe experience does give you a major upper hand in this government. Alison Grimes stated that it was "worth the fight", as she has probably gained some new competitive and aggressive experience in the campaigning world.
       But, as great as this is for the Kentuckians, there might be one person that might not be too excited about this. Obama might have a slight problem with another Republican in Congress. "United we stand, divided we fall." Will our good ole President stick by the Bluegrass State's motto? Looks like during the rest of the year we will surely find out.

Flu Flying through NC

It appears as though some sort of bug has made it's way through the doors of NC. About 60 kids left school on Wednesday and 11 teachers planned on calling in sick for Thursday. There were so many people out that the principal decided to call off school on Thursday. This little problem turned into a newscast story, being posted on all sorts of social media. The comments being made on these social media sites were beyond ridiculous. Grown adults making fun of students/staff being sick, and people playing right on with it. You are a parent, you are an adult, and you're making yourself immature and rude for making such comments. The fact that WGRZ or the other newscasts didn't specify what was going on to the general public wasn't right either. I myself even read such comments that immediately made me upset. A few students from the school even took charge to the posts and starting commenting back, they were more mature than the parents and people on that post. If it had been their kids sick and out of school I bet they wouldn't have started complaining about it or making such jokes. If they were sick with what's going around here, it'd be a completely different story. Maybe if a few students form here coughed on them they wouldn't sing the same tune.

Military Hacked by ISIS

A couple of days ago there was an issue with members of ISIS hacking a military Twitter page and posting a threat against American soliders. They tweeted, "AMERICAN SOLIDERS, WE ARE COMING WATCH YOUR BACK." This is a really big deal to us considering that most people are thinking that ISIS is coming here, or already is here. The hack occurred at the same time as President Obama's speech on cyber-security, which is quite ironic. The White House is still taking action against the hackers so it's still unknown as to which people hacked into the Twitter page and where might they hacked into from. Thankfully, no classified information was leaked out so that made the White House feel a bit more secure about the situation. But, not only did they tweet threats against Americans, they changed the photo to a masked jihadi with the quote, "I love you ISIS". 40 minutes later the tweets were taken down; the YouTube and Twitter accounts were taken down and are no longer used.

Anarchy

The anarchy group, Anonymous, has recently posted a video talking of going after ISIS and other terrorist groups after seeing what went on in Paris. They were able to take down one terrorist page and because of their hacker abilities, it is now disabled. Now, not even two days later, ISIS posted a video of a young boy executing Russian prisoners. The "prisoners" were Russian spies sent to kill/look into ISIS leaders. I'm not sure if this was a retaliation video towards Anonymous' threat, or if it was posted simply because they found it amusing. Whatever the cause, it definitely needs to come to an end. Getting children involved with these disgusting and violent acts is beyond disgusting. Below are the two videos that were posted by both. The Anonymous video was posted by one of the Anonymous members and the other video is of Fox News summing up the ISIS video with the 10 year old boy shooting and killing the two men.

Anonymous video on Charlie Hebdo:

http://youtu.be/4po1ygxDBcU

ISIS

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/01/13/new-isis-video-appears-to-show-child-executioner-killing-alleged-russian-spies/

Rex Ryan Revolution

As we all know, Rex Ryan, former coach for the New York Jets, is now head coach for the Buffalo Bills. "Rex brings a wealth of experience and enthusiasm to the position that we feel will be a tremendous benefit to our players and the entire Bills organization", Buffalo Bills owner, Terry Pegula stated. Some people are not thrilled about having Ryan as the new coach. WGRZ recently asked the public how they felt about having Rex Ryan come to the Bills and the responses were pretty mixed. His greatest strength is defense, and people are worried that we don't have enough strength in our offense and that we need more help in that department. (I don't know much about football, so I'm not trying to make it seem like I do. Just the general knowledge about the Bills is appealing.) I feel Rex Ryan could be a boost for Buffalo. He's disciplined, an enthusiastic person, and so far most football players enjoy him as being coach. Some people even believe that with Rex Ryan as coach he may get rid of Ej as QB and get a vet QB instead. Nobody really knows how he's going to do considering the Jets lost against the Bills. But, I'd say we should remain hopeful.

Peril in Paris

3 people critically injured and twelve people shot and killed at the offices of the newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, today. The newspaper was probably targeted for its content which was aimed at certain religious affiliations. In 2011, they had another "attack" for putting Muhammad into their newspaper article. The newspaper is getting into some risky behavior by belittling the Muslim religion and all. I know for certain that a magazine should know better than that, but they're the type of magazine that prints out satirical material (satirical meaning sarcastic, satiric, and mocking). French President Francois Hollande tweeted:
"Aucun acte barbare ne saura jamais éteindre la liberté de la presse. Nous sommes un pays unis qui saura réagir et faire bloc."
He basically said that their "barbaric act" will not stop France from having freedom of the press. He said that as a country they will react and protect. I guess it's similar to the United States putting out the movie, The Interview. Freedom of the press does exist so is Charlie Hebdo wrong for the article? Or is the Muslim community overacting to another county's thought of them?

Brockport gone Dateline NBC

The popular nighttime television show, Dateline: After Midnight (frequently on the Investigation Discovery channel), revisited the murder of Brockport freshman, Alexandra Kogut in 2012. The episode aired on January 4th, 2015. Lester Holt began to describe the terrifying scene that was left in her dorm room after her two-year boyfriend, Clayton Whittemore, beat her to death with his fists and a curling iron.
The story goes that Whittemore and Kogut were walking back to her dorm room where they were stopped because Whittemore was holding an open can of beer. This incident must've caused a little tension between the two because he stormed off to his separate way. Back in her dorm room the fight must've been happening again. Physical altercations began and then Whittemore just "snapped", as he said. "I wasn't even drunk. I just snapped." He began punching her and beating her almost to death. The blood everywhere. "I didn’t want the girl I loved to suffer, so I started beating her with the curling iron until the noise stopped.” He knew he had hurt her to the point of death, and assuming that she was choking on her own blood, he took the curling iron and beat her. Bludgeoned, disfigured, and unidentifiable, she laid on the dorm floor until police found her body. They couldn't even tell if it was her or not because of how bad the beating was. After this tragedy, it was found out that she was in a psychological and physical abusive relationship with him. It's so sad and unfortunate that it had gotten this far.
Dateline NBC commonly provides tv shows like this with some sort of warning and precautions to the people watching. It's an educational tool without people even realizing it. Lester Holt and the other people working for/with Dateline provide the types of tips and things to know for people if they ever happen to get into a certain situation similar to said event in the episode. As an avid watcher, I definitely recommend the public to watch this and gain the knowledge that can save their lives, which I hope they'll never need to use.