Actual Paragraph 

In the 1970s there was a lot of terrorism prevalent in America. This paragraph is not about why there is terrorism but its about is it truly terrorism if the one “terrorizing” thinks they are doing it for the good of there cause. There’s a saying one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter.This whole saying comes from the fact that there is a lense you have to take and that is prospective. Of course killing someone is not good by any means however the fact that the “terrorists” are doing it for a reason. For example the IRA was fighting Britain for the fact that they wanted an independent North Ireland. In this case some people  in Britain will see the IRA as evil trouble makers. However some people in Northern Ireland might agree with the fact of an independent North Ireland. They might see the fighting in as yes violent but its achieving there goal in the fact that its making people think that this is not mutually  good for everyone. We could look at many terrorists organizations but to the people in those groups and the people they are representing behind there cause they are just fighting for there freedom. Also if thats the case what’s the difference between that and a revolution, they are nothing trying too cause change. I am not trying to promote violence because I feel there should be different options that a person can take but its true that one person can be fighting a cause and the other person thinks they are evil.

Reflection

Making this is hard because i know a lot of people are gong to think this is dumb but I believe it’s true I don’t want to see people get hurt from terrorism acts but we have to understand there is a reason for these acts happening is most cases and its to spark some kind of change and thats what they are trying to do. I like this project in the sense that i get to share my opinion which is nice because it feels like I’m being heard. 

This mini paragraph was rewarding to do because I hardly ever flex my brain muscles and i wanted a challenge so thats why  choose such a hard topic to talk about. This would not have been capable to do this type of reflection if it was for all the research into the topic. Also the informations MS Hughe and Ms Willemse have in there brain. 

My Sources 

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/is-one-mans-terrorist-another-mans-freedom-fighter/257245/

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02668734.2017.1348979

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Terrorism

http://theconversation.com/one-mans-freedom-fighter-can-we-ever-define-terrorism-11051

 

 

 

Sugar ray Leonard was one of boxings most beloved athletes. His boxing name comes from his moms favourite singer Ray Charles. Sugar Ray was not the first to start boxing out of his family, his two older brothers showed him what boxing was like and he fell in love with the sport. Like many other boxers they are surrounded around crime as a kid, and Sugar Ray Leonard was no exception. Over the years training Sugar Ray became a great boxer however he never had dreams of going professional, he just wanted to cash out at the olympics.

However, as we know he went into professional boxing because of family hard ships. Over Sugars impressive 36-3-1 boxing career he picked up a cult like fan base. By cult I mean a lot of people loved him and loved what he was doing. Sugar Ray was a really nice guy and people wanted to see him win but I believe it goes quite deeper than that. At the time of Sugar Rays come up it was 1979. At this time in America there was a lot of fear with the Cold War.

 

I feel that the people needed an outlet at the time to get away from there life. Because with constant fear of the Cold War and Mutually Assured Destruction it makes the world seem like a terrible place and with an idol like  Sugar Ray it made the world seem just that little bit better. You might be asking your self why him? Well like I previously said he was a really liked guy and coming from the ghetto and making yourself into something was a really inspirational thing for people to hear at the time. Especially from somebody with that much pain in their soul. He was not only an idol for the African American community but also the white community. He had a very wide range of fan base which added on to his popularity. I also feel that his popularity had to do with the fact that he was African American. People in the 80s where not really racist anymore however of course there is still racism, but people didn’t want to judge him on his colour of skin they just wanted to base him on his boxing ability, and they did that. To most Sugar Ray Leonard was a way to escape the more or less depressing world. Some people need a hero to look up to and in the case of thousands of Americans that was Sugar Ray Leonard no matter if it was for his a race or the fact he was a nice guy he has people shouting his name for nearly 20 years of his professional boxing career.

https://youtu.be/usvfPMVTLLI

This project was very hard in my opinion. It involved everything I’m bad at. For example it’s hard for me to prove a message over text and I think I did an okay job on it. But I believe my strengths were show cased in the mini movie about my fire topic. I actually liked making the mini movie trailer thing and I had fun doing so. Also if you look pass the actual quality of the photo there is a plot line that I follow. This project was a weird one because there was almost no direction in where to head the project in.

 

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/boxing/why-sugar-ray-leonard-was-one-of-the-all-time-770310

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sugar-Ray-Leonard

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Ray_Leonard

 

World War Two was one of the most important historical events in the history of the modern world. This is because every problem we have in our today life can be linked and sifted down as a result of WWII. For example the Cold War was resulted because the allies won world war 2 but if they had lost we would not have had a Cold War. However we don’t know what would have happened if the results of WWII changed. WWII happens just like people predicted it would happen. I’m pretty sure everyone knows basic information of WWII or at least specific events of wwII, however if you don’t here is a quick summary. World War Two was a result of Germany invading Poland near the end of 1939. Subsequently Britain and France declared war on The NAZI party witch hitler was the leader of. This resulting in a 6 year war between The allies and Germany. Historynet does a really good job of describing the event if you want more detail. 

As a class we learned what Britain and France tried to do to stop this war from happening however Hitler was being very aggressive and we all know what happened from there. At the time hustler wasn’t the only violent ruler around we also saw dictatorships in Russia Italy. For some country’s this was a very power hungry time.

Over the time of the 6 year war there was many events that took place that most people know about. The fall of France and Dday, and that’s good because those were some of the most impactful events of WWII. The fall of France was a big deal because it showed hoe strong Germany truly was and since France fell quick the other nations were scared. D Day was kinda the beginning of the end. Without winning France back Germany may have been able to fight off to Faces but not all three, so it lead to there defeat.

After all this you might be wondering why does it matter? Well because of WWII the world was left with two consequences we that still see consequences an repercussions today. The Main 2 would be 

1. USA and Russia becoming Super Powers 

and

2). The United Nations was formed

Much like WWI after the war people wanted peace for the most part so the U.N was formed. The United Nations was practically the League of Nations but it had the USA in it so they had more of a back bone and could enforce these more peaceful world views. On the other hand another thing resulted in this war…. The Cold War. Since the USA dropped the first atomic bond the world has never been the same. Russia felt they had some catching up to do and were behind America technology wise. Sparking the competition in the Cold War

 

Learning about WWII was fun and a rewarding project because you get to see how history says its going to change and then doesn’t. I think that we might possibly have the same in 20-30 years depending on how things go. Everyone says the best way to stop something from happening in the future is to see why it happened in the past,  and its kinda true. For us to stop having wars and hating each other we have to see what went wrong. As of right now 2018 is kinda going well into the future of course there is still violence and conflicts but we haven’t had a world conflict that we couldn’t solve in many years. But don’t get me working history always repeats it self…Always

The reason why people love history is so we an learn from the past, however we don’t always do this. You would think after WWI where the world saw an astronomical amount of deaths due to war that their would be no WWII. Sometimes people don’t learn from their mistakes sometimes they do. WWI was one of the biggest pivotal points of the 20th century, it was the first time people saw war as a bad thing and as of a result of this the world had the Paris 1919 conference.

I will give a brief summary of the peace conference but if you want more detail I will leave a link to a more in-depth summary. The Paris 1919 conference was a meeting with all of the powerful countries at the time to discuss what to do with Germany post war. France wanted very extreme payments to help rebuild their land Britain wanted Germany to be demobilized. However Germany didn’t see a reason to pay France because they died to technically lose the war. The allies saw it as they where the aggressors so they needed up charging Germany reparations. At the time there was so much hate for Germany for being the ones to start the war. Personally I think its  fair for France wanting a lot of money and for them to be demobilized because we know now that Germany in fact started another war 32 years later that war having a significant amount of deaths.

I know if I was France I would not go easy on Germany. However a lot of people only see negative outcomes from WWI and that’s probably because their weren’t much but if you look closer you can see one huge impact that the world was left with. After this We wanted peace you can see that with the Paris Peace conference of 1919 but you can also see that with the League of Nations. The League of Nations was ultimately a failure in most people’s minds because it didn’t have the USA in it. But I see it as one of the most progressive achievements of mankind. Not only 20 years before WWI countries where still focused on becoming a great empire but that changed so fast and by the end of WWI there was a focus on peace. I think the League of Nations was a huge win for mankind because even though it was a failure we learned from it.

For example the United Nations now have all the major countries in the world because we learned that if you don’t peace will most likely not happen. Another thing we learned from the League of Nations is that you need some way of enforcing the polices you have. This was another reason why they failed but not the United Nations have a way enforcing their policies, however don’t be mistaken they do not have an army they just have troops from other countries to help out. Even though the League of Nations was somewhat useless at the time it left an imprint of society that will never be taken away and we could have never achieved that if it weren’t for money’s like the Paris peace conference where people started to want to live peacefully. 

LIn PLP we have  always had interesting projects whether it be the Macbeth movie project, the metaphor machines, Blue sky exhibitions …. so on and so on. The Iran/Cuba book is one of my favourite projects if not the favourite project I have done. I’ll give a quick summary of the project. The project was to use a historical lense and with that lense in mind make a book with our team about the Iranian or the Cuban revolution. Here are the 6 historical lenses.

 

Since I didn’t go to Cuba I was in the Iranian revolution group, if you don’t know a lot about the Iranian revolution I would recommend going to this website and then come back because they do a really good job summarizing it.

 However despite not going to Cuba I was actually quite happy because I found the Iranian revolution a lot more interesting then the Cuban one. So the next step for the project was to make a thesis using your lense and answer it in your chapter of the book by trying to stay specific. It’s a very hard goal to achieve because you need to be general and specific at the same time. Now that you have a little background information I can tell you why I loved this project. For me the best part was interviewing are “primary source”, this was fun for me because unlike all the other Iranian group members who interviewed their neighbour or their moms friend or somebody they knew Marley and I interviewed someone who was a political activist in Iran shortly after the revolution. 

You might be wondering how did I pull this off? Well after many failed attempts of trying to get a interview with ex politicians, Canadian ambassadors, and even Vancouver cultural groups I decided that I needed to think outside the box. Soooo what I ended up doing is joining a Iranian “Meet up” group. Meet up is almost a dating app but for people to go on hikes and do things together. This Iranian group had 2000 plus active members, so I thought to my self this wouldn’t be a bad idea t try to get an interview with just 1 or 2 of these people. When I told my team they all laughed and thought I was crazy but the next day I was added into the group with three responses and we set an interview up with this guy he wanted his name to stay hidden so that’s what we are doing. This guy ended up being a gold mine of information and told Marley and I the history of Iran. This guy was clearly very knowledgeable about this topic and even though he had a bias about the Shah he tried to keep it out for the purpose of the interview. Anyways he was an amazing interviewe and to link it back to what I was saying earlier this why I loved this project because it forced me to go out and interview an amazing guy that taught me more than any textbook ever could and it was an awesome experience I will never forget. I have to give kudos to Ms Willemse because it was great and it didn’t even feel like I was doing homework.

 

 

 

 Next up is how we made our chapter for the book. After we got the interview clip next was to mold our thesis around it. We knew what we generally wanted to do but we didn’t know the details and with the interview we narrowed it down and got a great thesis. The next step was the actual making of the book, this was my least favourite part because I’m not as strong as this as I am as getting a interview clip or as interviewing someone but thankfully I had Marley on my team and she helped tremendously in this aspect of the book. The only thing I regret is not helping her enough for the literal making of the book. Overall we made a very strong chapter and we worked well as a team because our strengths are almost opposite as each other so we complimented each other well and it all worked out.

 I learned a few things from this project that for one sometimes trusting your gut is a good idea. If i listened to everyone else I wouldn’t have got that amazing interview. However I feel even ifI didn’t get this interview I would still have a aspect I could reflect on about this project. That aspect would most likely be choose your team wisely. I feel Marley and I didn’t only learn a lot because we got a great interview but because we push each other and came up with some very good questions to ask him. Like I said previously this was a phenomenal project and I am thankful for all the skills I got to develop in result of all these projects where we have to take action with community members

In PLP there has always been fish bowls where we discuss questions we had about novels but we have never had to lead a discussion. This new task as very scary for me even though I did it well. It was scary because I was wondering if my injury questions where going to make sense to people and if they were going to be able to answer my questions and have good discussions about the prompts. This fear lead me to generate good questions that where general enough that most people could answer them with minimal knowledge of the subject but also be able to lead the way to narrow specific topics that sparked connections. 

My topic was about the Vietnam war. The Vietnam war was a easy topic for me to talk about and lead a discussion because there are multiple opinions about war and it wasn’t like the sky is blue where there is only really one answer. I enjoyed doing this topic because it was up to me  as of what I choose to facilitate about. When starting this project I saw two roots I could take it in 1) more of a western point of view /Capitalist or 2) more of a Southeast Asia poising of view/ communist. I chose to more or less focus on the western point of view. The reason behind this is that i felt people would be able to answer my questions better because that’s all they really know. When i decided what outlook I was going to take I then needed to decide what specific lenses I was going to take though. I ended up kinda melding my questions about the ethics and Nixon. These where strong things to talk about because that is what we mostly went over in the class. 

My questions:

How was Nixon’s approach different than LBJ’s andin respect to the vietnam war and do you think worked better?

If you were jfk/lBJ would you still go into the vietnam war and why would you pursue that?

Did richard Nixon achieve peace with honour in your opinion and if not what could have he did differently? 

Do you think Nixon Not wanting to be the first president to lose a war caused a lot of unjustified deaths?

Do you think with the media aspect of war being public pushed people to want to promote peace more than wars in the past or what it the shift of cultural ideologies ?

What do you think would happen If America won the Vietnam war? 

Do you think the bombing was the only way to achieve operation homecoming?

 Operation of homecoming the official agreement where they leave Vietnam?

Why do we care that America went into the vietnam war? 

My next challenge I was faced with was my overview I didn’t think much of this however I didn’t realize how important it truly is/ was. It’s important because if you don’t give enough overview of your topic people wont really understand what’s going on, and if you give too much overview your audience gets bored and you also eat up time for thee discussion. 

My Overview:

In the 1950s and 1960 many south east Asia countries were interested in trying a Communist approach to government.

in America there was fear of Communism coming to them. The country spent most of the 1950s under the influence of a Red Scare, Internationally, following World War II country after country in Eastern Europe had fallen under Communist rule, as had China, and the trend was spreading to other nations in Latin America, Africa, and Asia as well.

The US felt that it was losing the ​Cold War, and needed to “contain” Communism.

Gradually, the US got pulled into an all-out shooting war of its own with the North Vietnamese. First, military advisors were given permission to fire back if fired upon in 1959. By 1965, American combat units were being deployed. In April of 1969, an all-time high of over 543,000 US troops were in Vietnam.  A total of more than 58,000 US troops died in Vietnam, and over 150,000 were wounded.

US involvement in the war continued until 1975, shortly before the North Vietnamese captured the southern capital at Saigon. 

My sources:

https://www.britannica.com/list/vietnam-war-timeline

https://www.thoughtco.com/why-did-us-enter-vietnam-war-195158

MY next and final challenge was to put it all together in a keynote. Although this was not a mandatory step for this assignment I felt that it would be more engaging for the audience if I had a keynote. Another reason why. Had a keynote is so I could put my questions up and people would not forget them. Overall I fell like this added to my presentation.

How I Laid it out:

Overall this project was good and I’m glad I’m finally done it because it got to showcase the type of student I am. I personally like these type of projects better than written ones and i feel that they are ore beneficial because you get to discuss and showcase your public peaking abilities. Also to be honest i feel i had the strong facilitating skills of any of the presenters so far

This short 3-4 minutes video took a long time (more time than it should have). I would like to add that even though it took a lot of time, it was a lot of fun. Like any strong video the process starts with research. This stage was the hardest because first we had to choose what political ideology we wanted to do. Marley was open to anything because she didn’t really know the difference between all of them to  fine detail. All Marley really cares  about was that whatever we choose we did it well. I felt since we wanted to do a commercial that we could do a very stereotypical person no matter what we ended up choosing. We ended up deciding to make a commercial about the political ideology communism. I feel like the main reason we ended up going this root is because it’s the opposite of what Marley and I live in and its easy to almost criticize another society because we don’t live there. Also another thing to mention is that I have seen a lot of spoofs/ satires of communism through tv shows like American Dad and I felt that I had the “typical” USSR person down. So the next step after this was finding what type of commercial we were going to do…

This took so long and as hope was running out and desperation was in the horizon, Marleys brother comes in and says hey google what’s the weather like. A light ball popped in my head and we had our idea. Marley and I were going to make a commercial about the google home.

Now we had the basic premise of our project. We needed a script, and this was fairly straightforward because I based the information of communism off what I learned from edgy TV shows. Marley and I rattled off a script fairly quickly and within 50 minutes we were ready to begin filming. The next step was to storyboard. At this point it was getting a little late and we didn’t want it to be pitch black so we had to hurry, so we didn’t end up making a formal storyboard. However we did map it out. We were about to film and I realized I was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sweatpants. I’m not the smartest person in the world but I feel that a Hawaiian shirt is not typical attire for a stereotypical communist. I am a natural problem solver so I asked Marley if she had a fuzzy hat and a big trench coat and within minutes we had the proper clothing. It was time to begin filming. I feel this is where Marley really shined, she is such a good cinematographer. Marley would get multiple angles of the same shot. I would never think of that type of thing because I’m usually so focused on trying to finish what I started. This is why I feel we are such a strong team when it comes to doing projects with her, because I’m the idea man and I always think of ways to turn something I have in my head into reality and Marley knows how to get the things we need to make that happen.

After filming was complete we needed to edit, usually in the past Marley edits because she is very skilled at editing. However, this time I was elected to edit. What we ended up doing is me editing almost a first draft edit and then I would ask Marley if she has any ideas/ things to add and then I would continue editing.

I feel what we ended up with was a very strong video, however I would do something’s differently. Like Mr Hughes said there is only one small problem and it’s kinda a big one… we didn’t use a microphone. I don’t think the audio is bad but a microphone definitely would have made a difference. On the other hand, Marley and I tried but it wasn’t working with her camera so we decided to scrap it. The one other thing I would do differently would be the intro to the actual video. I’m not a huge fan of how it looks it seems a little rushed but besides that I am proud of our project. I learned a lot in the making of this video and it was a lot of fun to do. Also, I always complain about blog posts but after I’m done, it’s rewarding to see a reflection on the work I put into something.

I’ve always been known to be quite a storyteller. My family says it’s because I’m part Irish. Whatever the reason being behind why I can tell a amazing story doesn’t matter. I’m here to tell the times where I almost died, dented my skull, thought about killing my sister, and broke my arm. I have had a lot time to showcase my story telling abilities. This is one of them.

This project is about showcasing our own past as a part of history. Down below are some of the most memorable events I’ve had to go through, excluding child birth of course because I don’t remember it, but it was mandatory.

1st: Childbirth 

Ever since the beginning it hasn’t been easy. Childbirth was no simple or pleasant task for my mom. When my mom was in labour, I wouldn’t come out and it got so bad that I stopped breathing and the hospital was in code blue. This means basically no breathing. So my mom had to get a c-section. My dad ran down the hall behind my mom and I and the doctors and then they threw iodine or something along those lines, it was red on my moms stomach. They pulled me out and then put my mom back together. They raced me over to a me over to a table and got me breathing, I hadn’t taken a breath in a minute, 2 doctors got me breathing and crying. Meanwhile they were getting my mom breathing again since we were both in bad shape. Then after everything had settled down my dad was standing in between the two of us and said “look at the size of bis feet” they looked almost as big as my legs, so everyone started laughing, which was kind of an ice breaker in the room, but my mom was still out of it. Me and my mom then spent three days in the hospital together.

2nd: Wooden Go-Kart

One day my sister found this wooden go kart beside this dumpster. I was 6 she was 9. One day I was playing with it on a small hill and testing how it all worked. It was behind a garbage can and we brought it home. Then we tested it on the small hill outside of our house to see how the brakes worked and how well it handled. After we knew all the specs and details, and knew our parents would be gone, we convinced our babysitter to let us take it down the big hill. Imagine the hill as steep as the one on the parkway. We had all the neighbourhood kids there hyping us up. I was in the front of the go kart, my sister was in the back. We went down the hill, the babysitter following us in her bike. We noticed we were picking up to much speed, so we applied the breaks and found out actually only one side worked. So no joke, we swerved left straight into a truck. My sister was a little cut up, although not as bad as me since I was in the front. I dented and sliced open my head, had to black eyes and some cuts and bruises. For whatever reason the babysitter thought I was ok and didn’t take me or my sister to the hospital, despite having a dent and slice in my head. I also had black eyes, a swollen head and was beat up. All she did was put me in a bath tub… I was lucky to be alive after smashing into the vehicle with no helmet or something on. My dad was out of town for 5 weeks, and my mom was panicked.

3rd: Lego Ship Building 

My parents bought me a very expensive lego ship I had always wanted. At the time my parents couldn’t really afford the lego ship, but I really wanted it and my parents eventually caved in and bought it. This ship was like 1800 pieces. When we got home with the ship, I went to the corner of my parents room and dumped the box of lego. I spent two hours organizing the lego. I worked day after day on this lego ship, it took my dad and I three days to complete. This is one of my most fondest memories. I loved building lego because it let me showcase my creativity and I remember it was a great bonding experience between us. Side note, I once had one of my lego creations shown in legos magazine. After I was done the ship, I put it in my room near the door. Not only twenty minutes after it was completed it, my sister came around the corner and she says she’s “accidentally” stepped on the ship and destroyed it, I was so mad I almost killed her.

4th: broke my arm

One day I was in a car, pretty much like any other day, and my dad and I got into a really bad car crash. I ended up having two compound fractures in my wrist. I was rushed to the emergency room to get my arm re-straightened. After it was straight again, I had to get nine screws and two metal plates in my wrist. I kept it short because everyone has heard this story a million times.

 

 

Right after winter vacation are class was put to the task of learning about the difference between a utopia and a dystopia. This study was very interesting and actually one of the more enlightening discussion i’ve had in PLP. It was very interesting to point out that a utopia can only be a utopia without people, but once people are put into the mix it kinda becomes well… a dystopia. 1984 is a dystopian novel, in fact it’s a really good one definitely worth a read. If you don’t know much about the novel here you go.

 

BackGround Info

Ever since the dawn of mankind there has been fear. In some cases fer is what drives people to do a lot of the things they do. 1984 is a book that was made just after World War II was over, and was really the start of the Cold War. American people were scared that communism would take over and 1984 played to those fears. Winston Smith a charter in the book wrestles with oppression in Oceania, a place where Big Brother is always watching over you. Winston Decides deys against the group in his diary:in this dairy he talks about all the things he dislikes about Big Brother. Big Brother is a very controlling party almost like an totalitarian government. Another Character in 1984 is Syme, he is a very intelligent man. Syme is put to the task of creating a dictionary type thing called Newspeak. In New Speak they would remove old words so that everyone would get dumber over time and none would be smarter than Big Brother.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvHnGF6RNho

 

To make such a video we made to cut out a human sized person and draw a character of 1984. We animated his brain to show how he is an intellectual anddoes a lot of thinking. But before that we had to choose our character but before that we had to break down a character into a poem.

The poem kinda looked like this.

But in our case it was about syme.

 

The whole point of this assignment was to create almost a symbol of a character through a life size portrait made of paper. I’m going to break down what all these drawings mean so pay attention.

 

The Break Down

 

1. The Duct Tape Around His Mouth

This represents his dilotting the dictionary, and his lack of ability to speak out about it.

“The smallest thing could give you away.’

2. The Pen

The pen and paper in his hands represents his work in the Ministry of Truth.

3. The T.V screen.

This represents the connection to Big Brother and over all his faith.

“It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen”

4. The Chains Weighing Him Down

This symbolizes himself being held down by Big Brother because he is unable to share his intellect.

5. New Speak

This represents the 11th edition of the Newspeak dictionary.

“… you see… the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought… every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.”

 

1984 was a very interesting book. I find it really cool how sales have spiked up on this book right when Donald Trump was elected. Anyways like I said it was a good book. I found it investing but i’m glad it is over because it was a long read.