GPHC Blog 2020-2021

  Please use the four features of human rights - that they are universal, interdependent, indivisible, and inalienable - to analyze a historical or contemporary political case that violates or protects human rights. Please note at least one article of the UDHR that was violated or upheld.  The writing should be 300-400 words.  Known as "the island outside of the law," Guantanamo Bay is a detention facility located in Cuba on land that has been leased to the US for the past 45 years. As of June 2020 there are 40 detainees currently located at the facility, and in the recent years at least nine have died. The article that I read says, "Violations of international law at Guantánamo include illegal and indefinite detention, torture, inhumane conditions, unfair trials (military commissions), and many more.These human rights violations, however, remain unpunished or remedied."  Universalism: "Universalism refers to the notion that human rights are universal ...

Jack Gross The concept of  human rights being universal is a fairly recent idea only being codified on an International level (which is the level that matters the most if human rights are being talked about as a universal idea) in 1948 by the United Nations. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a document stating the basic human rights that ALL people should be given regardless of well, anything. While the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was wonderful in that it took the concept of “what human rights should everyone have” and formalized it in a written text (one that was distributed worldwide and translated into over 500 languages) this process is known as Codification and it is pretty much the first step towards solving any problem, clearly defining the problem and defining the intended goal. However, that is where codification’s usefulness ends as it doesn’t matter how clearly something is stated if no one has to listen to it. The unfortunate thing about the Univers...

  Blake Peterson  Mr. Roddy  GPHC  12 October 2020  California’s New Executive Order  The article I read about talked about a new executive order, signed by governor Gavin Newsom that states all new passenger cars and trucks sold in California must be emissions-free by 2035. The goal of the new mandate is to completely eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by passenger vehicles. There are many problems California has to overcome before they can fully implement their plan to have zero emissions from motor vehicles. One of the big issues they are facing is the question of whether the order is even legal. The Trump administration has challenged California in court, stating that only the EPA should be able to regulate auto emissions. If the EPA is the only one that can regulate auto emission it will most likely mean that the executive order will not be carried out. This means that California needs Joe Biden to win the election if they hope to eliminate their emi...

 A notable problem in the greater Houston area is a phenomenon known as food deserts, where large groups of people find themselves without easy access to healthy, affordable food and are stuck with the heavily processed but cheap products sold by chains such as McDonald's and Whataburger. Large communities simply have no easy to access grocery stores within their range. The US department of agriculture defines a food desert as "an area where at least a third of the population lives more than a mile away from a supermarket for urban areas and greater than 10 miles away for rural areas." The people living in such areas are deemed "food-insecure", as of now, 724,750 food-insecure people live in the greater Houston area. Houston is 4 percentage points above the national average for rates of food insecurity. Over 500,000 people live in these food deserts, most likely affecting those in poverty above those outside of poverty. This problem has been exacerbated by the p...

  HOW LONG BEFORE THE ENTIRE WORLD IS VACCINATED AGAINST COVID-19? ( https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-vaccine-covid-19-who-gavi-putin-trump-boris-johnson-health-economy-1524958 ) We still have a long road until the vaccine for covid-19 is complete and ready for the public. Countries need to work together in order to get there with over 750,000 people dead and the poor state of the global economy.GAVI, the vaccine alliance, who has been primarily focused on finding a vaccine for AIDs, has opened a facility where they will try to make the vaccine accessible for all countries, especially poorer ones. Their goal is to deliver at least two billion doses by the end of 2021. They hope to pool together the resources of wealthier countries to help the vaccine reach poorer countries so that it is available for everyone. Since the vaccine can’t ultimately reach everyone, they want to focus primarily on health care workers and people at risk. They aim to vaccinate 20% of the population sin...

Governor of California, Gavin Newson, proposed that all vehicles sold in the state would be emission free by 2035. California is allowed more independence over how it regulates air quality and auto-emissions since historically, it has produced significantly more emissions than most states and has had to manage their air quality since before the EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) was established. California has benefited from this since they use generally stricter rules which have resulted in lower rates of childhood asthma and limits on sales of emitting vehicles among other things. Most of California’s waivers to reform air quality have been approved by the federal government, but they have faced some opposition from Trump who states that it’s only appropriate for the EPA to regulate air quality and auto emissions across the states.  While California has been trying to limit auto emissions by encouraging the sales of electric cars and limiting purchases on high emission ve...

  Armenian-Azerbaijani Border Conflict      The Caucus Mountains have been a place of conflict for most of recent history. Beginning in the 1850s, aggressive Russian expansion into Europe led to a coalition war against them in 1853, where modern day Armenia was a ferocious battleground between the Ottoman Empire, France, Austria, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Russia. Russia ended up losing and giving back territory they had gained from the Ottomans, and they also suffered a lot of economic damage that led to a lot of Russian History that I'm not going to get into. Anyway, since Oil wasn't a sought-after resource yet, there were no border changes in the Caucuses. During World War One, however, there was another frontline in the caucuses (which is usually glossed over) between the Ottomans and Russians, and in 1915 the Ottomans began the Armenian Genocide which later ended in 1923. Racial and Political tensions had been mounting between Turks and Armenians since the O...