SOPA

       As I'm sure everyone knows, we have been studying restrictions on liberties quite in depth recently. I just remembered something i read about a while ago, about restrictions on the internet; a bill currently being considered in congress called the "Stop Online Piracy Act." The act would allow the government to blacklist sites that are accused of copyright violation; blacklisted websites would be blocked by internet service providers, search engines, advertising networks, and payment providers. The party doing the accusing would not be required to prove that copyright was actually infringed, and websites would be punished without a warrant, a requirement of due process, or any sort of oversight by the court system.

       The powers the proposed law would give to the government immediately reminded me of the cases during the war on terror in which terror suspects were incarcerated without trials or even charges against them. In both cases, a the government ignores the right to due process; the Guantanamo prisoners and the accused websites are punished without proof of guilt or oversight by an independent institution.Of course, the government's actions are much more significant when they destroy lives, rather than wrongfully shutting down websites In addition, the guarantees to due process, trial by jury, and the rest in the constitution apply only to people accused of crimes, but the principle is still the same. In the case of SOPA, the government hands out punishments despite not knowing whether the accused is truly guilty.

Source: Here

Political Cartoon

Yesterday in class we spent a period discussing parallels and contrasts we found in the text of The Crucible. A good parallel takes a small and seemingly insignificant repeated word or theme found in the text, and uses it to illustrate a broader point or message that the author was trying to convey. When I did my 555s, I had some trouble picking out the important details, those which could be used to create parallels. Because of this, I decided to practice a little at picking up on significant details. I Google searched “political cartoons,” and chose the second result, above. The website I found it only said that it was published between 1900 and 1948, although based on the images I assume it was created during the 1930s. The overall message is fairly blatant; the various powers of the world are using the League of Nations to control the U.S. However, there is a slew of smaller details in the image, many of which have greater meaning. Here is my attempt to pick out small, specific details, and what message the cartoonist is trying to convey with them.

-The only two countries represented individually, other than the U.S., are England and Japan

       The author is clear about the two nations he blames most heavily for attempting to control the U.S., and by only giving these two countries their own caricatures, he directs his message most strongly at them

-England is separate from “European Powers”

       The cartoonist views England as unique and seperate from the continental powers of Europe, despite it technically being a part of the European continent.
       

-Britain, Foreign Powers, and European Powers are all portrayed as fat men

       The other world powers are shown in a negative light. The image of a fat man has connotations of corruption and "oldness," or being out of date and petty.

-Japan is portrayed as a skinny man with a mask 

       The view of Japan at the time was as a mysterious, foreign country, as evidenced by the Japanese man's mask and foreign clothing, as well as the contrast that caricature presents with the other men in the cartoon.

-America is the tallest man in the picture
       The artist's point has a strong undertone of American superiority; America has the most flattering portyal.

-The U.S. is oriented lengthwise, starting with the Atlantic side, and neither Canada nor Mexico are in the picture
       The cartoonist makes it clear that he is focused on America. He oriented the U.S. in such a way that it fills most of the map, and all the events of the cartoon occur on and around it.

If you notice any details I missed, feel free to comment.

Rock the Casbah

       A few weeks ago, I spent several hours creating the Animoto for I was responsible for the civil war group. We used a song by The Clash, "I Fought the Law." I chose that song mainly for the obvious connection between the chorus of the song, "I fought the law and the law won," and the themes of our presentation, and for how clear and understandable the lyrics are. After finishing the presentation, I looked through a few more songs by The Clash, and found some that were interesting, and dealt with themes of law and justice in more depth than "I Fought the Law," which is basically a repetition of the one line above for three minutes.One in particular that caught my focus was the song "Rock the Casbah," which is the video above. The full lyrics can be found here.
       What I initially noticed, listening, was the link between the events of the song and the Arab Spring, about which I have written on this blog in the past. The song deals with repression and resistance in the Arab world and presents many parallels to the current revolt. There is one significant difference between the dictatorship in the lyrics and those involved in the revolutions up to this point; The Clash's repressor is a theocratic government analogous to those of Saudi-Arabia or Iran, a government that uses religion as a tool to oppress and control its people. The dictators under pressure today, by contrast, are mainly secular despots that repressed religious organizations along with any other form of civil society that posed a possible threat to their power, with the semi-exception of Muammar Qaddafi.
       On an in-depth examination, the narrative of the music is much more complex and detailed than a simple story of a king attacking his own people. The story touches briefly on an array of complicated issues, among them oil politics ("The oil down the desert way has been shaking to the top") and corruption of religion ("The sheik he drove his Cadillac").
       Fundamentally, however, the song is a story about the basic human desire to express themselves. We have been discussing freedom of speech quite heavily in class recently with our perilous times unit. We have focused heavily on political speech and restrictions related to wartime necessity, but "Rock the Casbah" deals with speech that has direct relation to politics or social issues. The people are simply trying to choose what music they want to listen to. They are exercising one an extremely basic forms of self expression. The song makes  the point about how difficult it is to suppress something so basic, and how human will can overcome even bombs and mass violence. The Clash are trying to say that no government can truly defeat the will of the masses, if they want a freedom. Most cases we have discussed in class ended with the successful infringement of some freedoms by the government, and in several cases the government appeared to abuse its power and unjustly restrict civil liberties. Applying the principle expressed by The Clash, all that is truly necessary to prevent such abuses is for enough people to stand up against them.

Clybourne Park

      Last week, as I'm sure all of you know, we saw the play Clybourne Park, a comedy that deals with issues of race. When I thought about the play afterward, the scene that thing that struck me the most was the contrast between the final scene of the play, the one in which the son is writing his suicide letter, to the scene just beforehand, the humorous racist-joke scene. The joke scene was the funniest of the play, while the suicide-letter scene was the most serious and somber. In the first situation, a huge fight erupts out of a slight perception of racism, while in the second scene a tragedy unfolds unnoticed and unseen. The stark contrast between the scenes seems to almost be an accusation; people become upset, and pay attention to issues of race, while ignoring a real and terrible tragedy. Race shouldn’t matter, and there is an obsession about differences that are only superficial, that aren’t important at all in the grand scheme of things. In the meantime, true tragedies unfold unacknowledged. Recently allegations surfaced that Herman Cain had sexually harassed several women while working as the head of the National Restaurant Association; it wasn’t long before some accused those who reported on the claims as racists. Meanwhile, an article in the New York Times today reported on three children who had been beaten to death over the past several years by parents who had read a Tennessee pastor’s book on using corporal punishment on children. That is the sort of tragedy that goes unacknowledged for years, while people focus on race, and other things not deserving of attention.