Holy War

Holy War is an oxymoron because Holy tends to have peaceful connotations while War is thought of as quite the opposite of that. I think that those who fight "Holy Wars" are simply using their religion as an excuse for a hidden agenda. They might be simply hateful of certain people, and if they decided to attack those people they could just blame it on their religion. I don't think that a religion should have to have a bad name only because certain people who also practice their religion do bad things.

D.O.I. Response

When a group of people need to separate from another group of people for their own good, they should give their reasons. We think it is obvious that all men are created equal and they have the basic rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If anyone takes away these rights, people should be able to make their own government. The current king has not rightfully taken the throne, and has become a tyrant over us. These are our reasons why he is a tyrant. He has not cared for our laws. He makes people do what he says. He has taken away our representation. He has made judges dependent on him. He is always deploying troops even during times of peace, and they annoy us. He also started many acts that we are opposed to. He made us share our homes with soldiers. He taken away our trade with the world, and given us unfair taxes. For falsely accusing us and trying us without a jury present. He has waged war upon us and destroyed our lives. We simply would like to have our own government. We would treat England like every other country. We are telling you that we are now our own country.

Cold War Simulation

In the Cold War simulation I was USA. One tactic we used was to be prepared for any weapons that the USSR might send our way. This meant using quite a lot of points on buying missile defense systems. We also tried to buy many economic, food, and military aid points to be able to persuade countries to ally with us. If we could get countries to ally with us then we would have their strength points to use to get even more methods of persuasion.
I think that in our simulation the USSR and USA both won, and that all of the allies would technically lose. I thought this because by allying with either side they were in risk of being attacked by nuclear weapons. Then again, the regions of Europe and Africa obviously profited from these alliances, so I don't know if there are any clear winners. I think that the USA won the Cold War, but paid many prices to do so. They had heavy casualties in Vietnam and Cambodia, and suffered embarassment during the Bay of Pigs Invasion. I think they won because in the end the USSR had crumbled and many people opposed their ideas like the Berlin Wall.

Visual Communicator

The process of making a video on visual communicator consists of filming parts of the whole video, and in the end putting them all together. We filmed and edited Shuk's part, Sameet's part, and my part and put them together to make a final video. The editing consists of adding images, titles, and transition scenes to make the video pretty.
I would definitely say that although it seems obvious, it helps a lot to not waste any time and finish as much as possible in a short time. This way you are less stressed on the last day and maybe even have time to start other work. Also, you don't want to wear a green shirt when filming because you will appear invisible on the V-Screen. Finally, Make sure that you adjust your video settings to get rid of as much fuzziness as possible.
The worst parts of the VC process were when one member of our team was unsatisfied with his video, and kept complaining because there was no time to change it. Another bad part was that the video adjustments were difficult to set so there were no fuzzy spots. The best parts of the VC process were definitely being able to make it look like I was a reporter, and also making the editing look very professional.

VC Speech - Cambodian Genocide

Hello, This is Joel Witt live from Cambodia, continuing our discussion regarding the Cambodian Genocide. Within days of overthrowing the government, Pol Pot and his army known as the Khmer Rouge began a ruthless campaign to reconstruct Cambodia. This mission is known in Khmer as “Kampuchea”, and the goal of Khmer Rouge was to create a model of Maoist China, and to force the whole population to become laborers working on a series of farms throughout the country. All basic rights of the Cambodian people were stripped from them, and everyone living in the cities were forced from their homes and taken away to labor camps or even prisons like the one I am currently standing in. Those who refused to leave or did not leave fast enough were murdered. Schools, universities, and even hospitals were closed. Scientists, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and virtually all educated Cambodians were killed along with their families. Religious practice was forbidden, and many leading Buddhist monks in Cambodia were executed. The Khmer Rouge banned all music and radio, and they were known to shoot people for simply wearing glasses, laughing, or crying. Minority groups also became victims of the Khmer Rouge’s racism and hate. Those who had Chinese, Thai, or Vietnamese ancestry were killed as well as Christians and Muslims. Those who were able to avoid death were forced to work on farms for no pay, very little food, and for extremely long hours. Within a short amount of time the laborers fell ill from starvation and overwork, and eventually died due to lack of treatment. Despite all of these killings, the Khmer Rouge leaders such as Pol Pot were paranoid that they might lose their power, and therefore began to question, imprison, and execute their own Khmer Rouge members on the smallest suspicions of treason. The death toll of this period in Cambodian history is well over 2 million people. This has been Joel Witt reporting live from Cambodia. Back to you Sameet.

AF Movie Response

To be honest I liked the book Animal Farm much more than the movie. I think that the movie ruined some key points of the book and there were some unnecessary differences between the book and movie. Also, in the movie it seems like they are trying to make it seem like a happier story then it is supposed to be. The movie has a very happy and warm ending when it is not supposed to be like that. The point of the book was to show how grim the situation was.

There were many differences between the AF book and movie. One of the noticeable differences was that the dog had a much more important part in the movie than in the book. Also, the book states that a storm destroyed the windmill, while in the movie a desperate Mr. Jones blows up the windmill with explosives. Another difference is that in the movie they took the television from the farmhouse and brought it to the barn. This never happened in the book. One final difference between the book and movie is that the cat which appears in the book is not at all in the movie.

Overall I feel that the Animal Farm book is much better than the movie especially because of the differentiating plot at the end of the movie, and because of some of the skewed facts in the movie that change the point of the story.

Out of all the characters in Animal Farm I associate most with the character Snowball. The reason I say this is because I am usually quite good at coming up with plans, and so is Snowball (Orwell p. 26-27). Snowball plans the defense of Animal Farm very well, and that is why the animals were successful against the humans in the Battle of the Cowshed. They fought with very good strategy and Snowball himself had divided the animals into their own posts (Orwell p. 27). I also think that I can take leadership of things when people don’t know what to do, and Snowball also exhibits this quality throughout the book when he convinces the animals to work (Orwell p. 16)

Sources Cited

Orwell, George. Animal Farm: Centennial Edition. New York: Plume, 2003.