Journal #5

Today’s class was spent discussing a few pieces of news which I found very interesting and also a bit depressing. I knew about the health risks involved with high fructose corn syrup, but I never knew it was in our bread. I find that to be absolutely disturbing. When I asked my mother why the hell there was high fructose corn syrup in our bread, she said all bread needs sugar. Obviously I know nothing of cooking. At any rate I think that the situation with the foreign dependence on oil, the crisis in the economy, the possibly stagflation, plus the ongoing wars which aren’t looking great, all spell for a bleak future.

I am just as patriotic as the next guy. I also, however, read a lot of history, and every empire falls. Every civilization crumbles. Time defeats them all. Is the American republic as we know it reaching its end? The idea brings my mind to scenes from post apocalyptic films. Highways in disrepair and people fending for themselves. America is the world sole super power as of now, but our food is killing our children, and we are not making many friends with foreign policy. I have honestly looked closely at each presidential candidate and can say that I don’t feel that either will really change things enough to take us away from the path to ruin.

This generation of children doesn’t know the meaning of exercise. I see the kids in my former high school, and half either look older than me, and the other half look younger than 13. More than two thirds of the kids at my elementary school are chubbier than their baby fat should let them be. There are weird things going on with the diet and basic health patterns of Americans today. I have gone through my whole life thinking that my generation was the same as every other, and the next generations will live in the same world I lived in. Things were pretty solid I assumed. The reality is that the next generation of kids is going to be growing up in a world we can’t even truly imagine. A world where admitting you believe in God is basically like admitting your irresponsibility intellectually. A world where rap and hip hop is the same message worded in as many different ways as possible. The message of all I care about is having sex and getting more money. I love rap, and I listen to hip hop all the time, but if I hear I got my money on my mind in one more song I might turn off the radio for good.

The sad thing is that some people spend every second of every day listening to these songs or whispering them under their breath when they can’t hear them on their ipods. If that wouldn’t brainwash you, I don’t know what would. The message isn’t one that has any real meaning. It is a very materialistic message which, when one makes it his only value in life, is a message that leads to depression and even suicide.

These same people that spend all day immersed completely in this fake world created by the media and artists have no clue what their country is doing over seas. If you give them an article about why Chris Brown died they will read it all the way through, but if it were instead an article about something real and relevant in anyway, it would some how cause them to be bored with it and not desire to read any more.

This is the world as we know it in America, and I think that it is reflected in the fact that we haven’t really had any great presidents in a while. And this upcoming presidency is not going to be that great either.

It is said the only thing that unites America is the common language. After all, what really unites me to an Alaskan? Or a man from Dakota? Truly the only possible thing would be the language we speak. We are both in an extremely large republic named the US, but what is the US? When broken down, it is a system. A system that creates the need in every child to get a degree and enter the work force as fast as possible. And once in this work force, to produce as much as possible as fast as possible until you retire. Now because there is this need built into the society of the US, those who cannot afford university education need a means to attain the goals of the society. Well that’s part of the system too. Those that cannot afford to do what the system has mandated that they should do are sent into the military.

One of the main signers of the Communist Manifesto was the United States. Basically underlying how important a public school system was for the new society. With this public school system the ideals of the society are placed on the children and they know that they need to get to work. If they don’t want to or they cannot afford an education, the other option is to serve in the military. Everything you do is taxed, so that your success is actually the systems success. What real connection to I have to Washington other than the fact that my taxes go there? The only thing we have in common is our language. Our culture is different, our ideals are different, and our appearance is different. When America looses its common language, it will loose its unity.

Give a rap song to the president and ask him to translate. I guarantee he cannot comprehend what is being said. Not even Obama could understand most rap. It is a new language. There are many sub-cultures being developed around the nation, and as long as they develop independent of the other areas, they will eventually be irreconcilable. The standardized public school system is completely crucial to the American system. This is what teaches kids how they should speak correctly. This is what teaches kids why we should care about people thousands of miles away. I think it’s funny that some politicians claim to support education very strongly. Deep down, if they know anything, they know that the public education system is the only thing holding this country together. Now we all know that America is supposed to be a capitalist based economy, so why would the United States sign the communist manifesto? I honestly don’t know much about that particular era in history, but if Obama becomes president he is going to try and change a few things. Centralizing and monopolizing by the state of all that produces while maintaining the free public school system is something to watch for. If not communist then at least one could say it is socialist. Whatever one calls such policies, they are not capitalist in the least, and any deviations away from the original capitalist ideals in my opinion show a lack of trust in them. A different America is coming, slowly but surely. Within the next few generations The State will grow in power until just insinuating somebody is an Arab will be the same as charging them with a crime. Every phone call is already monitored some argue, what is the next step? Torture, which is forbidden by the Geneva Convention, is commonly practiced by bases on foreign soil run by our soldiers. Just what kind of country are we going to be in thirty years?

Bassim Oshiba

Blog 6

Going into today’s class, the students were much prepared with this week’s reading, Men in the Sun. I guess the fear of being kicked out of a college class hit a spark as everyone was ready to present their part of the story. There was much more relaxed feel in class this week; I thought it was due to the lack of pages in the book by Ghassan Kanafani, Men in the Sun. We began by getting a quick feel for the book and immediately I saw the uneasy reaction shown by the class overall. Before I began reading the book, I was drawn initially to the topic of an adventure through the dessert, almost like Disney’s Aladdin. As I began to read the book I began to wonder when the other characters of the story would appear other than Abu Qais. Kanafani initially focuses the story on one character making it his use of flashbacks easy to follow within the first few chapters. As a common opinion of the class I began to lose track of the story once Kanafani introduces Asaad and Marwan, the two other travelers. In all I thought that Kanafani use of flashbacks was overdone and that it didn’t allow the reader to comprehend each part of the story as well as it needed to be.

I felt that each traveler had his own destiny or goal in travelling on this journey. Abu Qais, is portrayed as the wise one, the one who has overcome personal goals and now only has dreams of providing the best possible like for his wife and son. Assad is shown to be the muscle of time; he is in his primal age, who has hopes of dreaming big and his on this journey to travel and find a wife. Then we have Marwan, the juvenile who escaped from home. Marwan, the 16 year old country man, intrigues me the most due to his dialect with the other characters. He resembles every youngest boy in the planet who is trying to strive to be like his older brother, however is hindered by the confinement of the overprotective father. The description and imagery created by Kanafani was excellent in a sense that it made each character relatable and believable, however it is in the plot and describing the journey itself that makes this book very hard to read and follow. Thus I wish that Kanafani would have just began the story from the beginning without switching back and forth between the past and the present.

The journey in all turned out to lack the majestic ending of finding ones hopes and dreams come true, rather all it contained was pointless hopes that ended in a water tank. Kanafani’s ended the journey by having all three hopeful journey men suffocate to their death is not exactly the kind of ending the title “Men in the Sun” portrays. It is common human behavior to think that with hard work and effort one’s dreams will eventually be reality, instead Kanafani tumbles each dream by having the pessimist of the story take the last laugh. Maybe Kanafani was basing this short story on real like situations and tries to inform the wolrd about the horrifying situations that affect all kinds of people in the Middle East. However, I wonder what about the readers who are in the horrific situations, does this book provide hope for the future or does it promote depth in despair.

Though this novel was hard to read and follow, I think it is because it was translated from Arabic. Arabic a more rhythmic and dynamic language doesn’t exactly evolve and move that same way in English as Kanafani meant it to be. As one who’s studied in the Arabic language, I can first hand tell you that many of the dialect and expressions that are commonly used can very much change when translated to any other language. Many of the expressions refer to personal family, where in English most expressions that refer to direct family are usually an insult.

This ending empowers us, the reader in imagining the situation within our close homes. one of the guys in class mentioned that as residence of the great state of Texas, we can imagine long trips that families have taken to migrate from one area to another, unlike cities in the north, where long trips may involve a 2 hour drive down to grandma’s house. I completely agree with that opinion in that on many trips on the road along the Texas plain, I notice a plethora of different license plates from all over the united states. Though is not way close to the type of trip that the 3 travelers were on, we can at least picture the pain of being in one car for five to six hours and multiply the agony by a million. This leads to the question, what would I do if the conditions in my community have become unbearable not in terms of nature, but the society’s hierarchy are completely unfair? I’ve concluded that I would have to leave as the travelers did. This shows that these men were not acting on pure instinct; it was literally their last option. However, living in the US, travelling across the great lakes or the Rocky Mountains cannot be as grueling as travelling in the lifeless dessert for weeks at a time. I actually think traveling across the United States might actually be relaxing and it would allow many people to re discover a new heart beat to share with Mother Nature.

Ironically, all this talk about migration to a better future led to the conversation of immigrants in the United States. The issue on how Mexicans cross the border to send money back to their family proved that many people simply come to the US just to make more money, and not because it is a “better life”. The movie, “A day without a Mexican” was brought up, and it showed the society may have rules about immigrants and how people can become citizens, but the truth is: people need each other, as long as they are safe and peaceful people who don’t cause terror. Law is only good as it is being followed, most people follow the law as long as it keeps things going smoothly and keeps everybody happy, however the second panic strikes one’s tummy, acts like the patriot act are created that invade peoples personal privacy. Very little people travel and migrate to another city or community simply to disrupt its equilibrium. Hence I believe that tought people must earn their citizenship, they mustn’t feel that they are already proven guilty of not being one in the first place. In the distant future, I can see a country that welcomed all people with no question to what their purpose in the territory is, this way people begin to see each other’s similarities rather than their differences. Turmoil over land will definably vanish. More brains and hands come together in the fight to cure diseases instead of having the common patenting of every little discovery that slows down the advancing of medicine and technology. This will lead to the tacky quote if “Word Peace”.

Bassim Oshiba

Blog 5

Today’s class took a new twist as the students walked in today. Before class started there was a rumor that Dr Hernandez revealed some of her less pleasant side and kicked asked students to go home for failing to read the readings assigned. As we all waited anxiously, we began to fear that the rumor was true. Finally Dr. Hernandez came into the room with the usual smile. She subtly asked whether we read the reading, Picture Theory, we all raised our hand saying yes. Dr. Hernandez then re-informed us how important the readings are for the class to be effective and productive; she then confirmed the rumor by asking anyone who hasn’t read Picture Theory to exit the room. I found that the theme of kicking people out of class to relate to the reading in a sense that part of the message in Picture Theory is to establish a point, which is exactly what Dr. Hernandez accomplished.

Now enough gabber about the beginning of class and more about the meat of information that was learned from Picture Theory. After each group presented their share of the book, I think I may have grasped the W. J. T. Mitchell’s goal. I believe he was trying to implement that the world’s use of pictures to send and exchange information has evolved and defied history, as we know it. In the beginning of the chapter, Mitchell begins by pointing out the differences between words and images, why are there both and what is the point of images?

In the first chapter, The Pictorial Turn, Mitchell explains how the pictures in history can be interpreted in different ways depending on the text that is involved. The chapter also focuses on how the definition or the purpose of the picture can be altered and changed simply by adding text. We begin to understand that as each artists draws or writes art, he leaves it up to the audience to decide the meaning of the picture by visualizing or glancing at the art work. Mitchell also relates the pictorial turns to words. He shows that as there are different styles and models for reading and writing, there are styles and models for pictures. He poses the question, who is saying these words to explain that a picture can say what is the art work saying. From the presenters of the chapters, it seemed like Mitchell was very fond of communicating with pictures and he lived by the motto of “a picture says a thousand words”; nevertheless, I feel that though a picture may help in visualizing the common theme and time period of the artwork, that no picture could come close in portraying an artists true feelings as the adjectives and nouns that make up a sentence.

In his second chapter, Metapictures, Mitchell defines it as “a picture within a picture” or “pictures about pictures”. This allows him to contrast his first chapter that related texts with in the pictures with secondary pictures changing the image rather than the text. He reiterates that with pictures instead of text that are with in the first picture, he can taunt audiences by counting the infinite amount of meanings that a picture can do as opposed to text. The images that are nested within an image create a unique dialect with each individual who absorbs the art. From the chapter, I also understood the term multistability, in pictures; it is the affect that a picture appears to jump from one image to another, or subsequently a change from one meaning to another. Images like these are what allows the brain to grow its creative side, the development of being able to see images in more than just one angle helps in real life situations when the brain is required to see or think out side the obvious. Personally I consider the being able to differentiate these multi images has to do with a genetic trait. I believe that there must be some scientific reasoning to why some people see one side of the image over the other or non at all. Genetic sequences exist for almost all traits for the human genome, and if they can find a gene that affect whether you taste bitter food or not, there must be a gene that bends the brain in a way to allow to visualize the image as it is meant to be.

The debate of images also takes place when he brings up the painting that theoretically has the audience in the painting looking at the characters. This shows that not images are meant to be seen from the outside, but he confesses that some images can be interpreted from the inside of the image. The class had an hour discussion on where the artist is on the painting, some agreed that he was in the mirror as there was only the father and mother of the painting being reflected in the mirror. Other argued that the painter was in the second room of the painting where he drew the family from a distance. I on the other hand believe that the painter was behind the canvas, he seemed like he was drawing the family from the back as he hid, that’s why there only were two people in the mirror image of the painting, from his angle that’s all he should see. The second painter that was drawn may confuse the audience in making them think that he is the real painter when all that character is just person painting a painting. It is images like this that gives us students sleepless nights in trying to analyze metapictures. It is almost impossible for us to give a true synopsis on this painting not knowing.

One of the main points that were well presented was by our very own Russell, the guy who made the PowerPoint. His presentations showed many facts that Mitchell emphasized in the book. One slide was the comparison of images the depicted the Vietnam War. Russell showed children being burned by napalm and showed another picture showing the great aerospace technology with the F-16s. He explains that picture of the jets was used to bestow a false hope to the American people that the war was being won. The picture of the suffering children was forbidden from bring broadcasted on TV networks like CNN. This shows the type of government that is run here in the US, it is democratic in every possible way, however one much think on whether the democracy is truly a free one or a controlled one that is manipulated by the media and biased journalist. As pictures, topics like these create public debate in households and communities. This is the type of debate that I think that Mitchell tries to show, that in some ways, pictures may bring people together in harmony and peace, but it can equally cause animosity and tension within people who have different opinions over a very subjective subject.

In conclusion, I agree with much of the subjects the Mitchell sets upon the reader, howeve; I must deviate from the idea that pictures can cause the amount of hatred and chaos that is affecting the world today.

Picture Theory

Soledad Guido

Picture Theory

This past week we shared with the class what we got out of the book Picture Theory.

The author, Mitchell, talked about what he called the “pictorial turn” which involved the change from just looking at pictures to actually analyzing the meaning behind them. This is initially the mixture of images and language.

This book overall was about taking pictures and analyzing beyond the aesthetics. Mitchell talks about mass media such as CNN and how they manipulate what we see now. The media has the power as to how to portray a person or a nation to justify certain actions. The first group that presented talked about how today’s culture is media based and that images can be interpreted in different ways. They also pointed out that political power is fed through images produced by the media. This is true a lot of what we see now is based on what we see on television. Media can be used to manipulate us in the past when there was no television Americans relied on radio and newspapers to get information and now we still get the news coverage but it can be seen. It can also be manipulated to seem a certain way to get a certain emotion out of the viewer.

Another group talked about the effect of images in war specifically the Vietnam War. For the first time Americans were able to see what the effects of the war were having on the American soldiers as well as the Vietnamese civilians. The country was flooded with images of casualties on a daily bases because reporters were right there in the middle of the action. I think that these images played a strong part in Americans losing support for the war.

I read chapter eight and in this chapter Mitchell talked about Robert Morris a contemporary artist whose work was called High Postmodernism mostly from 1960-1990. His work is not easy to explain because he never committed to a single mode or style. One can’t identify the style by its visual from across the room. Morris was part of what Mitchell refers to as “Post Modernism” which is relation between art and language. Some object to Morris’ art style by saying that “an eruption of language into an aesthetic field from purity and silence to art of noise.” A picture is no longer the creator of an original image this confuses some spectators instead of allowing them to appreciate the art. Morris is bothered by the label of “major artist” given to him by Guggenheim museum administrators because he felt that he wasn’t a major artist at the time.

Morris is also called a minimalist; minimalism; art stripped of the essentials and could leave the audience more puzzled or won’t understand at all. The pieces or art require hard thinking and serious discussion by the audience. So in other words unless you appreciate art then you might understand the concepts that are trying to be portrayed by the work, otherwise it will be misunderstood.

Morris produces a rational or systematic art that aims to clear up the possibility that art and history could be nightmares that we could never wake. This is art for a possible future in which art would not exist; the aesthetic art that is.

Morris’ choice of elementary polyhedrons in a scale in relation to the human body is so that the viewer moves in relation to the object or the object moves into new situations, the shape will have endless variation. He wants to associate the art with the public’s mode of perception.

The work called SLAB, square plywood box painted gray. SLAB is open to any prefabrications or language games. It is the key that opens the object as a case of philosophical provocation. These leads to the theory of the relation between language and objects, that language itself is a system of labels. SLAB is an invitation to transform the label given by museum administrators into an intellectual form of public work. John Cage, another artist, saw the SLAB and he didn’t see any works of art just objects. Morris is just asking the observer to look at the foundations of the sculpture as a sculpture.

Morris also criticized World War II by using his work. He says that the government feels guilty and is putting a mask over the event. His response was the Bomb sculpture proposal, which were the casing of atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan. The casings were to be displayed in front of the plaza of the Veterans hospital in Florida in their honor for fighting in that war. The proposal was rejected, according to Morris because the casings represented the mask that fell off which then shows the deaths the bombs brought upon the Japanese by American Veterans. But this work of art would not erase the guilt and memories.

Morris also did another controversial piece of art called the I box; here he placed himself in a coffin like box without clothing. The I box is supposed to mock a form of life in which we talk of the self as an invisible presence concealed behind a surface. According to Morris, the human body is the best picture of the human soul.

Personally, I would probably be one of those people that would not understand Morris’ art work simply because he uses very little props. I’m more of a visual person and his work requires more thinking outside the box.

In addition, another group talked about how the assassination of John F. Kennedy was shown to the public. At this time, at least it seemed that there was not as much censorship as today. For example, everyone that was watching saw Jack Ruby walk up to Lee Harvey Oswald and shoot him. Then the assassination was brought to life when a movie was made about it. In this movie, the examiner actually puts his finger inside the whole left by the bullet that went through John F. Kennedy’s skull. The movie was deemed awful and it was insulting to many.

Overall, this book tries to explain that there is more to images and this was not always the case. Mitchell talks about how the media used to portray images that meant something and now the images are being manipulated to achieve a certain perception. He even compares the war coverage over the years and it was clear that by the Cold War, the government was censoring the content released to the public. It is for this reason that we no longer see the caskets of dead soldiers from Iraq. If any journalist dares to comment on the truth then he or she is unpatriotic. Perhaps this is the reason why many Americans don’t care what is going on in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East. We no longer see the graphic images of dead people like during the Vietnam War. The reality is that our generation is not well informed and that’s part of the reason why we disregard these issues.

Good Muslim, Bad Muslim Journal

This past week I was responsible for reading chapter four of Good Muslim, bad Muslim. When I first head the title of the book, I thought that it was going to focus on Muslims. However, it seems that it focused more on the United States and their foreign policy. It also was about how the United States handles itself when dealing with other nations.
My chapter basically talked about the United States post Cold War period. It basically says that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States was the only remaining superpower left. It goes on to say how the United States abused their power as the only remaining superpower. For instance, the United States broke many treaties with other countries because they no longer needed them. It also talks about how the United States abuses it power by forcing members of the United Nations to resign after they call out the United States on their wrong doing. One of the most memorable cases would have to be Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Ghali was an elected member of the UN and with his credentials he went on to become the secretary general of the UN. While serving as secretary general, Ghali criticized the United States for not paying their dues. However, Ghali got under the US’ skin by his plans on releasing the findings of the UN inquiry which implicated Israel in the killings of hundreds of people in a Lebanon Refugee Camp. This fact alone shocks me because in the media, it is all about having pride in a strong mighty nation. But our nation is misusing our power as a super nation for wrong doings.
In class today we discussed how the CIA shipped cocaine to Latin American countries and supported terrorist in those countries in order to overthrow the communist government which were in place. The people or terrorist then would smuggle the cocaine back into the US to sell it on the streets in order to get more money. This is a double standard because here in the US people are locked up almost on a daily basis because of drug possession, many of which comes from across the border. However, we supplied these people with the drugs and yet we act as if we don’t know how they get so many narcotics. This situation could also be classified as hypocritical because how does the US call out other countries for their drug possession when we are the people who originally gave it to them in the first place. This is just crazy but I guess that is the kind of things the government needs to do in order to maintain this country in which so many take pride in.
In Chapter four it also talked about how the US expect other nations to abide by International law, however when it comes to them then the US believes it is above the law and does what it wants. For example, when crimes against humanity occur the US wants those people, usually from other countries, to be charged by the high courts of the UN. However, when the US commits similar crimes it does not let any of its people get trialed by the high UN courts. With myself be an American, I like this principle however if I was from another country the n I could really understand the frustration which many see with this issue. The US should not think of them to be above the law. We are no better than the other countries especially now that I know more about the dirty side of the US. We also stretch the fact of equableness in the US but we are acting like we are above the law.
Another thing mentioned in Chapter four was the relationship between the US and Israel. It talks about how similar the war tactics are. For example when the US decided to go to war, it was supposed to be a war on terror. They did let neither any thing nor any one get in their way of finding terrorist. In the process many innocent people suffered and eventually killed because of the tactics. Just like the US, Israel used the same tactic when they went looking for terrorist in the Occupied Territories. They bombed innocent people in order to look for terrorist on the region. However in February 2002 more than one hundred Israel’s reservists refused to go serve in the area because of the policies which Israel was using. Just like the US, Israel refused to recognize terrorist from ordinary civilians. But the media do not report these kinds of issues to the people. However they report the stories which seem like heroism.
The story of Kurdi Bear was the main story of Israel’s media sources. It was the story of how this one man managed to stay and demolish “terrorist” houses for seventy five hours straight while in a major bombing area. He said that he managed to do his job by drinking whiskey ands if he could then he would have knocked down the whole village. The story of a hero however he wished that he could have destroyed the whole village. That is crazy because when I think of a hero, I do not think of people harming others who have nothing to do with the situation which is revolving around them. However, the media tried the spin the fact is that this man destroyed people’s home whom he thought was terrorists but they were in face innocent people who were in a bad situation. However, the media and the country hail this man as a hero.
After constantly reading articles and book or stories such as these put a lot of things in perspective for me. I use to think that terrorist were just people who had different religious beliefs than ours. I also thought they only attacked us because they did not agree with how we did not agree with what their religion had them to do. Now I kind of get the understanding of where terrorist motives come from. Just think about it, we claim to be this nation that is going to liberate them. However, when the US came in we made their lives worst by destroying their homes and mainly killing their innocent loved ones. They have this hate for America because they believe that America is the reason why all these bad things have happened to them. I still do not agree with their tactics but I have an understanding of where they get their ideals from. I believe that if somebody has done you wrong then they will eventually face the man upstairs and try to give him an explanation of their doings. Overall, I still have pride in the US and I still love it but at the same time I am just a little bit disappointed in my country. We have this perception that our country is this do good nation however it has been very shady and they have kept many of the horrible things of which it has done away from mainstream media.

Journal Entry #5

Last week in World Cultures we ended Picture Theory finally and now we are discussing Good Muslim Bad Muslim by Mahmood Mamdami. My group read the conclusion of the book, which at first I thought would be best because then we would get the gist of the whole book. However, after reading it I found I would have liked to read more of the book besides just the conclusion. I found it hard to understand how the title related to the book and I wanted to know more in depth of what was discussed in the conclusion. I think for the next class they should read the whole book and maybe just not read as many books in total so there will be enough time. It would save a lot of time in class, though, if the class read the whole book because we wouldn’t really have to explain the book we could actually discuss it instead of summarizing it. All of the groups ahead of us really go into depth of what we got the outlines of, and so presenting it might be a little repetitive, but I guess that is okay. In the beginning of my section Mahmood Mamdami talks about how terrorism is not a crime, it’s a political problem. He claims that terrorists are not discouraged by punishment as long as they have support. The author kind of rebukes the United States by saying that terrorism has no military solution because if you isolate terrorists it addresses the issues that the terrorists want to be raised. His example explaining this theorem is when America bombed Afghanistan and he says that it is only remembered as bloodshed and revenge and not a fight against terrorism. Mamdami draws a parallel between September 11^th and the war on terror by saying that George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden both want a fight to the finish and that there is no middle ground. He claims that both sides of the war “understand justice as revenge”. I found this interesting because it made perfect sense to me and I could clearly see he was right about Bush and Bin Laden. Neither of them were willing to compromise as far as I’m aware and that seems strange to me that they both jumped into this war without even trying to solve it without bloodshed. After he states all of this, he also says that the Bush administration jumped into this war so quickly because they wanted “to settle unfinished business from the Cold War”. This also clears up my aforementioned questions about why we got into the war with no compromise. He continues in the conclusion by talking about how “political terror comes out of a government’s or guerilla movement’s failure to win civilian support”. Basically the citizens of wherever the government is failing there will be some sort of terrorism. He states that civilians had to be targeted because terrorists relied on them for money and support to continue doing whatever they needed to. The difference between guerillas and terrorists would be that guerrillas depend on the people and usually reside within a city where there are a lot of people around to help them. Terrorists are usually isolated from civilians and keep their support within their own ranks. Mamdami goes on to talk about the CIA’s involvement with terrorists and the drug trade which we also already talked about in class. He says that one cost of the Afghan War was that we trained a lot of the terrorists who are now against us and using our techniques against us. He talks about how Osama Bin Laden is the most popular terrorist that the CIA trained, but there were many more that infiltrated the United States and conspired against us. “The co-conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing included two other veterans of the Afghan Jihad.” These two conspirators were trained by the CIA and created a bomb that they were taught how to make by the CIA. The bomb exploded underground of the World Trade Towers and made a two hundred feet deep crater. Along with teaching terrorists how to terrorize the United States, the CIA also got involved with “illicit drug trafficking”. When the CIA was short on funds to continue their secret works, they would make friends with drug lords and make some money off of them. Charles Cogan, the CIA director of the Afghan operation says that they “sacrificed the drug war to fight the Cold War”. But he also says it was for the right reasons because in the end the bigger picture was the most important which was winning the Cold War and not winning the Drug War. It seems to me that the government often gets caught up in the bigger picture and not the side plots. With every big step we take there are a million other little steps getting messed up. The drugs that the CIA helped manufacture ended up with some of the Vietnam soldiers and eventually there were ten to fifteen percent of “low-rank soldiers [using] heroin on a regular basis”. Those numbers are insane due to the total number of soldiers in Vietnam fighting. Also while the Afghan Jihad was being trained by the CIA, Afghanistan became the top heroin producer in the world. It supplied sixty percent of the United State’s demand for heroin. Not only were there a lot of heroin users in Vietnam and Afghanistan, but it also affected the United States directly. David Musto, who is the former White House adviser on Drug Policy, claims that, “the number of drug-related deaths in New York City rose by seventy-seven percent”. Cocaine users in the United States rose to 5.8 million. It is unbelievable how many drug users came out as a direct influence of the CIA, which is supposed to be helpful to America not harmful. Based on these statements made mostly by Mamdami and others I am shocked at the amount of bad connections the CIA made in the past and probably still going on in the future. I knew the CIA had some run-in with terrorists and training them before they were actually terrorists, but I had no idea to what extent it actually went. I had no idea at all that the CIA had a past in drug trafficking for more funds to help train terrorists. That part of my section was alarming to read, considering we don’t know what the CIA is up to even now. I guess we’ll find out in twenty years what they were doing right now. For the whole, I thought my section of the conclusion was very interesting and informing. It was a very easy read, which was good for me because I tend to zone out while reading and not pick up anything. It’s been even easier to understand while listening to the in-class presentations so I can understand what’s going on in the conclusion better and more in depth. I hope our government has learned from its mistakes, even though I guess it hasn’t since we’re still under the influence of people who have taken part of things that harmed us in the past. So hopefully we will see change with the next election.

by Russell Weeks

This week’s journal I had no idea what to write about so in finding what to say I wanted to mention some stuff about Men in the Sun. The main topic we talked about after hearing a class long synopsis of, Men in the Sun was the ideal of leaving your country for something better. Is it right to risk everything to have a chance at a life for you and your family? Do we take our civil rights for granted?

I along with most of the kids in my class after trying to put ourselves into the position of the men in the story came to the conclusion that we would also leave in order to find something better. Most of the kids in my class have an idea of how hard it is to become a United States citizen. I think a good five people out of my classroom actually went through the process of taking the test and presenting the legal documents necessary to become a United States citizen. We compared the relationship of the people running from Palestine to Kuwait in search of a job and money to the immigrants from Mexico who come such a long way just in search of a job to send money back to their families.

Everything is at risk when you leave in search of a better life especially your family because it will probably be forever until you see them again. Honestly, If you have nothing and you are only in the pursuit to better your family and your name then I believe you should flee to another country because I definitely would. I know I am an American but if I were displaced on some other continent I would sure kill to be back in the states. Some would say our rights our melting away others would say we are protecting our security and I say I am glad to have some kind of barrier. We are so lucky to have the freedoms we have where the press can choose sides and talk bad about Politian’s without someone finding them dead the next day. I am truly glad that I do not have a life like the characters from Men and the Sun do. They are hated by neighboring countries and have to be smuggled across the land to Kuwait. Lawrence of Arabia seems so terrible to call upon but if these people really are fighting tribe against tribe from an age long grief and have never settled the dispute they can be considered barbaric.

I do believe that Americans take their freedoms and their lives for granted. Many people do not know what it is like to not trust anyone and live the life under the gun. Many people have no idea how hard it is to become a citizen. I am just going to use my girlfriends grandfather for example who has been trying to become a citizen for 6 years and the only reason he wanted to was to live with his son who is closer to the downtown medical center. Now her grandfather has no real interest in staying in the United States but the medical center is his top priority due to health issues. He has been trying for 6 years and still the paper work is slow and costly which from this experience of helping him I know why people want to come here illegally. I absolutely hate when someone does not understand about how bad some people’s lives are. I really hate it when I over hear conversation of “why are they here? They should go back to their own country” or they do just not understand why someone would want to live their stuck in a hole all their life. I am very understanding because I read these stories, I see some news articles, I browse the web and I know why people leave when they leave. I would not want to wait around until someone came around to kill me or place me in a prison for being a certain nationality.

What I would like to see in the future is especially in the next presidential Administration is a good foreign policy agenda. What is a relief in some ways and agony in others is Barack Obama being backed by Colin Powell on foreign administration. The decision by Powell made me weary of Obama’s ability to actively make decisions on his own. In my comparison it’s like taking a chemistry formula to a chemistry test and trying to decipher what is being said on the go. In other words it is not practical and it does not work the only way you become better at it is by practice and experience. I was not happy by hearing he was going to receive White House tutoring however everyone learns at certain times how to do different things so I cannot be hypocritical especially if the opposing party has a fresh governor. We need the United States to become the respected super power it once was and not a target of bad diplomacy and on that thought I will leave this topic and talk about the ideals in the beginning of my chapter of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim.

My chapter in Good Muslim Bad Muslim is the conclusion, which is titled Beyond Impunity and Collective punishment. The name is quite appropriate since the beginning of the chapter talked about the connection between the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Really what is the connection between Afghanistan and Iraq. Well it was believed to be at first terrorists were harbored there until the big topic of the tyrant Sadam Hussein came into play. I am glad that a tyrant has been brought from power but I honestly do not know the connection between September 11 and the war in Iraq. The argument in Good Muslim Bad Muslim was stating that we have lost our true sight in what is right and wrong basically. America and the Terrorists can both claim to be fighting for Justice, which is known as revenge. The main argument, which bothered me, was of America thinking it has impunity to all laws foreign and domestic.

The book went on into talking of how to make terrorism work, which is best known by political support of the people. I read a good quote from the book, which spoke of America distinguishing between their terrorism and our terrorism only to be more acclimated to ours not realizing theirs was born from ours. Back to making terrorism work I can think of JFK to CNN from picture theory, which describes how the media displays the war in Iraq as a bodiless and only airstrike war by which no one dies. To me it seems monitoring what the population views is a form of terrorism because you are controlling how they feel about something far away.

Now something that is the funny is the list of CIA trained terrorists. Osama Bin Laden, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, and Mahmud Abouhalima are the most wanted people by the CIA who were trained by the CIA; now in my opinion America had this coming if we trained these people to be terrorists. I believe they were trained as part of the effort to remove the soviets from Afghanistan, but instead years after the Cold War they turned on the United States. Personally we could have avoided the bullet of September 11 by not training these men. We let them know the core beliefs of America, our secrets, our tactics, and they made us pay. The United States hopefully will tread lightly in the next 4 to 8 years and not with impunity because our reputation depends on it.

The book Picture Theory, by W. J. T. Mitchell was relatively hard to read, but once everyone presented their part of the book in class, the concept started to make sense. The first part of the book talks about how one needs to personally experience something rather than read about it or watch it on television, because these days media is altered so much that even reality television is scripted and edited before being aired. One of the best contemporary examples of false news media alterations is the war in Iraq. In reality the present situation in Iraq is extremely barbaric, thousands of families are killed every month, but the raw truth is never aired because murderous photographs and video clips are known to cause controversy and can lead to more conflicts. For this reason, the media chooses to hide the truth from it’s viewers. This makes people develop an insensitive attitude towards the Iraq War, not showing the public what is really happening desensitizes the same articles or headlines in the newspapers about this situation. Being a visual person, myself I feel like the media should continue to do it’s role in spreading awareness about realism and how people in Iraq go through near death experiences on a day to day basis. This would stir a sense of alertness especially among the younger citizens. Photographs are a powerful source of illustration.
Mitchell also talks about how visual media started to play a relatively important role in the society after world war two in the American Culture. In class we talked about how photography was the most dominant source of visual representation, even more powerful than movies or other forms of video. Mitchell also refers to our era as the end of post modernism and talks about how writing and imagery go hand in hand. People today are more convinced by a photograph when it is associated with textual context. Because we are all so influenced by the pictures we see in the media, he talks about how this evolves into our culture that is controlled by imagery instead of just articles or write ups. This was first evident after beginning of the renascence era when people comprehended that “seeing was believing”. He also specifies the term “metapicture” which he refers to as a picture that is about itself, he derives this term from the modern art and analytical of photographs and imagery. For instance political comics and the optical illusions such as the duck-rabbit etc, come under this category. Basically he talks about how people interpret pictures in different ways and one’s perspective on things differs depending upon one’s personality. Picture Theory being one of my first books I had to read that was based on philosophy certainly caught my attention and varied from other philosophical books. He begins to talk about art history and how the invention of camera obscura was a turning point in the history of art. Camera obscura was a enclosed box with a hole in one end, that allowed light to pass so as to reflect an inverted image on the other side of the box. This invention shifted the focus from painting and drawing to photographs, which is a more plausible source of depicting a message. Photographs provide for a relatively bigger ground for perspective and interpretation and enables viewers to come up with their own perceptions on the topic. Mitchell believed that pictures spoke for themselves and in the book he quotes from a large number of essays and theoretical articles that have to do with what different people think about different kinds of visual elucidation. Some of the authors/ writers he quotes from are Nelson Goodman, Murray Krieger and Ludwig Wittgenstein. In the book, Mitchell clearly states, “The interaction of pictures and texts is constitutive of representation as such: all media are mixed media, and all representations are heterogeneous; there are no ‘purely’ visual or verbal arts”. As opposed to being homogeneous, he tries to relate different forms of visual arts to “power, value and human interest”. This shift of interest towards a more illustrated notion of perception is what Mitchell refers to as “pictorial turn”.
In today’s world visual media is extremely influential and often predicts the results of disputes etc. According to me, I think Mitchell explains his beliefs extensively and extremely in depth in such a way that enables his readers to perceive his opinions and judgments in the most comprehensive way possible. Unlike other philosophical books, the way Mitchell executed his ideas and point of view formed a never before heard of genre that has a lot to do with modern literary or artistic criticism. Different people have different perspectives and opinions on artifacts, and imagery is often bound to be discerned in more than one way or form. Mitchell talks about how it is more important to identify these different meanings rather than coming to a stable conclusion. The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines “iconology” as “the study of icons or artistic symbolism”. It was very interesting to read Mitchell’s perspective on paintings and drawings by Rene Magritte, Diego Velázquez, Fliegende Blatter, and Saul Stienberg among many others. One of the paintings that stood out to me personally was “Las Meninas” by Diego Velázquez who was a very famous Spanish artist. Over the years, many critics have tried to analyze this painting and contribute to each one’s outlook on the way people perceive things. The painting consists of Infanta Margarita, the daughter of the king of Spain at the time, surrounded by her maids of honor and attendees. In the back Velazquez drew himself working on another painting at his studio. The mirror on the wall towards the back of the room is believed to be a reflection of the king and queen looking at their daughter but others think of it as another one of Velazquez’s paintings. The latter is shown to be accurate as some of the subjects in the painting are looking at the king and the queen or in other words the viewer. But that is seldom thought of when you first look at the painting. To wind up, Mitchell keeps going over how you need to think outside the box in order to understand art or visual media. He also writes about Saul Steinberg who was a Roman-American cartoonist who worked for the New Yorker Magazine. His works were most known for portraying the world war two in a very witty and comical approach his art was usually political. Another witted artist was René Magritte whose paintings were mostly abstract. He is infamous for his ceci n’est pas works like the popular pipe painting he is known for. He infuses mystery and interest into his pictures by making them abstract in such a way that the literal meaning of the painting makes sense. To conclude, I believe that WJT Mitchell’s book has more to do with art interpretation than it does with humanities, and he also managed to instill certain philosophical principles into his writing that set him apart from other critics.