6 o’clock section: Thursday, November 8, 7:00-9:00. Mabel Brown Room, Student Center. "Citizen Soldiers and Global Warriors: Challenges of Iraq." Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter.
12 o’clock section: Tuesday, November 6, 12:00-1:30. Main Theater, Redfern Arts Center. Welcome Address, KSC Provost Emile Netzhammer. Citizenship Day Proclamation, Mayor Michael Blastos. "What Kind of Democracy Do We Want?" Nancy Tobi.
12 o’clock section: Thursday, November 8, 12:00-1:15. Main Theater, Redfern Arts Center. "Citizenship and Responsibility." US representative & Holocaust Survivor Tom Lantos.
I went and saw all three of these citizenship symposiums at the Keene States Fifth Biennial World Affairs Symposium. I have to say that some where more interesting then others but I think I took a little out of each one of these symposiums. They all had a little lesson in them to learn.
The first symposium that I went to was the Tuesday 12 o'clock section with Nancy Tobi, her session was called "What kind of Democracy Do We Want?". Nancy Tobi is a writer for the Black Box voting companies. She talked about elections and how they are counted and how they "should" be counted. Nancy is a big believer in hand counting the ballots because the machines that are used have such a high rate of error. A lot of people believe that this is a hard thing to do because there are not enough people to count the votes, but according to Nancy it doesn't take that many people to count the votes. "You can count 700 ballots with 20 counters in under three hours." Now that isn't a lot of people and they are getting a lot done. She also believes that there is a problem with the machines counting because people can easily mess with the machines and change the votes, she also say that they people who made the machines that count our votes here in New Hampshire can't be trusted because almost all the CEO members have been in Jail for one reason or another. this really surprised me and many of the people around me because after she told us this there began little talks about this fact.
The second symposium session that I attended was Tom Lantos, Tom is the only U.S. representative that is a Holocaust survivor, and will be the only one. Tom's session was called "Citizenship and Responsibility." He talked a lot about how America has gotten a bad reputation in the past few years and that we needed to work on getting our good reputation back. He said that "other countries have only been looking at the bad thing we have been doing, they forget to look at all the good things we have done in the past to aid other countries in need." He then talked about how we went and helped when the countries in the Pacific Ocean were hit by the tsunamis and how much we give to aids research in Africa. I like his speech a lot, I think that the crowd that was there did as well because I don't know how many times they burst into applause.
I also went to the Thursday night session called "Citizen Soldiers and Global Warriors: Challenges of Iraq" The speakers name was Scott Ritter who is the former U.N. chief weapons inspector. He talked about the rights of being an American. He also talked about the difference between being a soldier and being a Citizen soldier and what it really means to be a Citizen. "Citizenship is something that has to be earned everyday." This made me think about me as an American, I questioned myself on weather I have shown that I have the right to be an American Citizen. I think that he actually got a lot of people thinking about how they are as Americans and what it really means to be a Citizen of the United States of America.
Scott Ritter, "I love my country"
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