Ghandi the Bhodisttava-- #5

Ghandi was a peaceful man:

"A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act."

-Mahatma Ghandi

Throughout the world for countless ammounts of time, people have been opressed by totalitarian govornments and few have done it in a peaceful mannor. Ghandi Is one of those few.

In 1915, he organised protests by peasants, farmers, and urban labourers concerning excessive land-tax and discrimination. After assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns to ease poverty, expand women's rights, build religious and ethnic amity, and increase economic self-reliance. Above all, he aimed to achieve the independence of India from foreign domination.

Ghandi spent several years in prison for him standing up for what he beleived in and protesting non voilently for everything, He was released from prison finally because he got malaria and the government didnt want him to die in jail and create political outrage.

Ultimately his fights created peace in India and finally gained their freedom.

Surviving Mumbai -- #4

This is the Video I watched:

Surviving Mumbai

The video depicts how terrorists took over two hotels in India. Most terrorist attacks last only a few minutes maximum but this attack lasted several days. The whole point of the attack was to kill as many people possible, but the video interviews some of the survivors.

The video shows how people used technology to escape the terrorist attack, and how the terrosists used the same technology to find out where people in the hotel were.
--> Scary how technology can be used against it in the way we thought least possible

These very things made me think of big brother because everybody in the book is constantly under surveilance and if they ever did anything wrong, the very same technology could be used against them in this way.

 

In the end, in today's society, Big Brother is ALWAYS watching you.

Totally Totalitarian -- #3

DO AS YOUR'E TOLD!

Totalitarianism is defined as:

Domination by a government of all political, social, and economic activities in a nation. Totalitarianism is a phenomenon of the twentieth century: earlier forms of despotism and autocracy lacked the technical capacity to control every aspect of life. The term is applied both to fascist governments and to many forms of communism.

Kim Jong Il.
North Korea.

Kim Jong Il controls every aspect of life in North Korea with an iron fist, and has been self-appointed "eternal leader." People in North Korea refer to him as ""Dear Leader", "our Father", "the General" and "Generalissimo".

----> .....whoah....

Every person by law, must have a picture of both him and his father in their house, and there are regular govornment inspections regarding this. You may be executed for any form of blasphemy that he sees fit, and people live in fear of  him.

Raul Castro
Cuba

Cuba is considered another modern day totalitarian state, Their govornment controls nearly all aspects of life through Communist gorvornment. The government incarcerates citizens for their peaceful political beliefs or activities, and The total number of political prisoners is unknown due to the fact that the government does not disclose such information, and   keeps its prisons off-limits to all human right organizations. The law does not allow Cuban workers to form and join unions of their choice. 

 Lastly, The law punishes unauthorized assembly of more than three persons,

(No thanks....)

 and the military plays a dominant role in the economy, particularly in tourism, civil aviation, foreign trade, and retail operations issued by other count

 Hosni Mubarak

Egypt

Mubarak has been the president of Egypt since 1981, which makes him one of the world's longest serving presidents. Among many things, he kept the majority of 80 million people in poverty, and authorised the torture and vile brutality of inmates in prisons. Between 2004 and 2005, The Bush administration in the U.S tried to bring the presence of democracy to the Middle-East, and Mubarak promised to reform his ways slightly, and to have more open elections, but this never happened.


Because of the uproar of the citizens, he ordered service providers to shut down any international connections.

.

Though these countries are slightly different in their manors, they all follow roughly the same principals, and it is because of this that they are considered totalitarian.

Animalism-- #2

All Animals are equal but some more then others.

The idea of a communist state is in essence a good idea, creating equality and deminishing prejudice, greed and poverty. Everybody makes the same ammount of money, owns the same type of car, pays the same for goods and services, and for the most part is happy. 

In Animal farm, we see this very thing happen, the animals think that they are being treated poorly by the farmer. They decide to revolt, and they become a communist state. For a while, everything runs smoothly, and then greed and the lust for power take over. Animals begin being treated unfairly and conditions become poor.

  -----> This is common with communist states; they become totalitarian.

As with 1984, this fictional story is Orwell's comment on this issue, and though fictional, has direct references to communist states like Russia.

Lets make a trade. #1

The one thing that everybody remembers from 1984 is the watch that the government has over the citizens of Oceania, So much that they have even abolished free thought, and individualism. At the time this book was published (way before 1984)  This instilled fear in all who wrote it, and the references started to appear everywhere. Nobody wanted this to happen...



In the United States, they have a law called the patriot act. It permits law enforcement to use surveillances to investigate against terrorist, getting court orders to obtain business records without tipping the terrorists off. It also, allows different government agencies to share important information among them. In order to do this, they basically need the right to an Invasion of privacy as they see fit; a Vito if you will. 


Among this, The united states airports are equipped with facial recognition software at all their airports that scan your face as you walk in.... without you even noticing, this is meant for the detection of criminals, as well as them asking for your finger prints when you cross the border into the U.S. ....

----> You have to wonder who exactly is looking at this information..

~Facial Recognition~

Unltimately, Technology is advancing in the scariest ways; the ways that nobody ever thought were possible, the ways that people feared. In the end, this could be useful in regards to our safety and protection, but you have to ask yourself what price you are willing to pay.

Are you willing to be watched at every instant; Give up some free thought?

Enrichment; Enlightenment.

Enrichment- The act of makeing something more full, more meaningful, or more rewarding.
Enlightenment-  Education that results in understanding and the spread of knowledge.

To the average highschool student, Shakespeare is that reeeeally REALLY old guy that writes those plays with that really boreing way of talking that makes no sense...
  <}------ ( nice hair )

On the surface, this may be a little hard to understand, especially for those of us who are ESL students, But it is this very thing that greater expands our understanding of this language, for you, and even for me.  

If you have the ability to  analyse, interpret and comment on what shakespeare says, even in the lightest sense, it is this education that makes it useful.



Canadian Poets: Irving Layton

Irving Layton

( March 24, 1912 - January 4, 2006)

Born of Jewish descent in the Romanian Town of Tirgul and nominated for the Nobel prize in literature, Layton gained local fame because he was born naturally circumcized, which was believed to be the mark of the messiah by Orthodox Jews.

His family immigrated to Montreal in 1913, and was forced to live in the poor St. Urbain neighborhood. <-- ( this neighborhood is not as poor now ). He was strongly infulenced by his father, Moiche, and taught a strong sense of the devine and poetry.  After the death of his father in 1925, Layton became a buisness man, but later abandoned this suprisingly successful job to enroll in highschool. His early influences included the poets: Tennyson, Walter Scott, Woodsworth, Byron, and Shelly, the novelists, Austen and george Elliot , the Essayists Bacon, Goldsmith, Addison, and Swift, and more importantly, Shakespeare and Darwin,

-Layton later obtained a B.A.S in Agriculture from Macdonald College in 1934.
-Enlisted in the Canadian Army in 1942 where he met his first wife which lead to his two children and given an honorable discharge in 1943.

- In 1946 Layton receives his Masters degree in political science and began his teaching career in 1949 at the Jewish Parochial high school. Among his students were: Leonard Cohen and Moses Zniemer,
- Layton would continue teaching for the greater part of his career at Sir George Williams University, which is now Concordia where he taught modern English and american poetry. and as a tenured professor at York University in the 1970s.

- He worked with Dudek and Souster on "Cerebrus" a compilation of three poets' work and it was published under contact press, and later became one of their first editors. He was part of a new movement in poetry that moved away from the world war 1 romantic poetry.
 - He was well- known for his booming voice, engaging personality, and enjoyed smashing Canada's puritanism and creating controversy.

It was said that " Layton's work provided the bolt of lightning that was needed to split open the thin skin of conservatism and complacency in the poetry scene of the preceding century, allowing modern poetry to expose previously unseen richness and depth."

Many writers acknowledged Layton as a teacher and a prophet.

On The Death of A. Vishinsky

by Irving Layton

Adults are children merely

with a larger vocabulary:

my fears are no different from

when I was a six-year son.

This I my wife abuses;

and others, my principal:

who lives by daily ruses

a desperate animal

Heard today how quietly

the fluent Vishinsky died:

if he could not out-talk Death

what chance have I, so tongue tied?

Big Brother in today's society

      In George Orwell's book: "1984", he depicts a totalitarian regime modeled after Communist Russia, which was a large influence at the time the book was published.

      Now, you may be thinking exactly what this has to do with todays society, considering the fact that the book itself is 27 years old..
Well, in the book, the government ( referred to as " the party" ) takes invasion of privacy to a completely new level. Every citizen has a large screen in their house in which law officials can hear and listen to you as you watch anything on the screen. ......  kind of like a webcam on a laptop? 

( Now THERE is a slight resemblance, dont you think?)   

Furthermore, in the book, the government abolishes free-thought, and makes it punishable by death. They actually have thought police who can control this; the government of the United States has the ability, and RIGHT, appearantly to listen in to cellphone calls,  screen text messages and e-mails, tap house phone lines, and open your mail... all in the name of  " Homeland Security"  ..... UH OH! More similarities.

http://www.aclu.org/national-security/ -----> Harrasment.