My Free Speech Space

My reflection on the Shahbazi presentation.

2008-04-30T16:26:00.000-07:00

I was really disappointed with how critical of Shahbazi some of the other students in class were being. Going far enough with thoughtless statements to call such a heroic man "dumb" was in my opinion, pretty narrow minded. How can such bravery be overlooked? What Shahbazi did for his beliefs was beautiful, brave, and amazing. Not to mention, it is far more than any of us have done.
I heard people saying, "But he's just one man, what can one man really do?" Haven't you all heard of Jesus Christ or Gandhi? Think of the following that those two have! The most monumental movements have begun with one person, and if they die in support of their cause, it does not end there. I heard people saying, "But now he's dead, so what good is it going to do?" I'll tell you. Now our class knows about it, the community members who strive to inform themselves know about it, and his children are continuing his legacy through activism. This is an opportunity for individuals who care about the cause to stand up and continue what Shahbazi began. It's not over.

I heard people say that "everyone needs oil, we rely on it!" If you genuinely care about the oil conflict, you don't have to rely on it. Ever heard of riding a bike? I know plenty of people who dis-continued supporting the oil industry by selling their cars, relying on public transportation, walking and biking. If you truly care, you take responsibility through your own actions by adjusting your life accordingly. You can live in a small community with biking access to everywhere, or you can live in a city with a subway system. It's unstudied and naive to assume that our reliance on oil is predestined or incessant.
I was so caught off guard by the negativity in the class that day that I couldn't even contribute. I didn't even want to be in the room, let alone speak. The presentation was awesome, but the feedback could have been far more compassionate, wise and well thought.

Buying the War

2008-04-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

I remember when U.S. government suddenly switched its focus to Iraq, after 9/11. It was a good example of 1st Amendment rights shifting during wartime. When I felt skeptical, and unclear on the connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, I heard comments that made me hush my doubts. People were saying things like, "That's easy for you to say, cuz you didn't lose your entire family in 9/11." People with doubt or dissent were made out to be unpatriotic.
The film Buying the War was eye opening, because I wasn't aware that the entire world was duped. I figured there must be some link of truth amongst the decisions of the Bush administration. It made me think back to the days when I questioned the real purpose of the war, yet had faith that there must be reason. Now, I can't believe that high school and college kids knew 6 years ago what Buying the War is revealing to the whole world today, and our questions were hushed in light of patriotism. And now, 6 years later, thousands of Iraqi's have been killed. More U.S troops are dead than victims of 9/11.

FCC

2008-04-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

I just finished watching the film, "Massing of the Media" on blackboard. The chairman of the FCC, Kevin Martin, seems like he's fresh out of high school. His response to every question was "Um..." He didn't listen to the public pleading to keep democracy alive, by avoiding the loosening of FCC regulations. I really enjoyed the film because it shows how many concerned citizens there are, as well as the senate's responsiveness. I'm interested in what the outcome is. click here to view.

Meat Freaks

2008-04-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

In response to blogdog's post:<------(link)

What is most discouraging about this topic is the fact that two thirds of the crops shipped abroad are to feed livestock, not the hungry people in the world. Roughly fifty percent of the grains we grow in the country are used to feed our livestock, because of America's obsession with the meat-based diet. I'll quote Howard F. Lyman, author of Mad Cowboy, because I can't say it better myself:

"Producing beef is incredibly inefficient. According to Frances Moore Lapp, "It takes sixteen pounds of grain to create one pound of beef." (Diet for a Small Planet) The same amount of grain needed to produce one pound of meat could feed thirty-two people a day if they ate the grain directly. As our population grows we will basically face the choice of whether to continue feeding our corn, soybeans, oats, barley and wheat to animals, while letting untold millions go hungry, or else to eat our grains directly and have many times as much food available for human consumption."

As our Westernized and meat-based diet catches on in affluent families overseas, such as China, there is inevitably a rise in health problems within those communities, such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and cancer.

"If stress itself were really a leading cause of heart attacks, surely the number of heart attacks would have risen dramatically during World War 2. But in fact, the death rate from heart attacks fell, as people in war ravaged countries were forced by circumstances to eat less rich, high fat, cholesterol laden foods. in other words, it's demonstrably better for your heart to eat a low fat, vegetarian diet while bombs drop all around you than to enjoy your steak in peace." (Lyman)

Marry Our Daughter

2008-03-28T12:57:00.001-07:00

I guess anything goes on the web. As far as I can tell, we are free to post anything but child pornography, but the U.S. can still access it through international links. Gee whiz. I'm not sure if you've already heard about this website which has outraged many. Take a look : nothing is shocking.

Click here

then click here for relief.

Is it art?

2008-03-23T16:51:00.000-07:00

I am amazed by the work of Marla Olmstead, a (now six year) old painter. She has been compared to Jackson Pollock and Picasso. There is controversy in the art world surrounding issues of genuine "art." A lot of conversation around the possibility that if a little kid could do it maybe Jackson Pollock wasn't such a genius. Maybe Marla is just a kid having fun with some paint. Or is she a child prodigy? A documentary titled: My Kid Could Paint That just came out about Marla. View her work here.

the other side.

2008-03-03T23:59:00.000-08:00

After watching Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial, I got an email from my fundamentalist Christian cousin in Georgia. She sent me a link consisting of a trailer for a creepy I.D. movie coming out in the Spring. It's called Expelled.
check out this link

10 Days without Speech

2008-02-28T17:37:00.000-08:00

Check this link out!

Imagine 10 days without speaking! Those who practice Vippassana claim that within the ten days of silence, our minds have time to process years of jibber-jabber which has been occupying our thinking. After a week of thinking about everything under the sun, we finally come to a point where there is far less to consider, aside from the present moment.
After returning home to our everyday lives, it becomes much easier to live a rich and full life, without our thoughts constantly drifting to the past and/or future. Every moment is spent with more purpose and intention behind it. Every word you speak has a purpose. You're more equipped to actually live your life, rather than plan on living it, or dwell on how you've lived, or distract yourself until it's too late.
Sounds awesome to me.

Religions thirst for Evolution

2008-02-27T12:35:00.001-08:00

After reading the Scopes Trial, I have some stuff on my mind.

Creationism is said to be the religious belief that the entire universe and everything living on it is a creation of God, whose existence is presupposed. Presupposing God, is entirely faith based. To have a completely faith based belief in God, it seems God would be incomprehensible or ineffable. If God is ineffable, "he or she is incapable of being expressed or described in words." (Kowalski) Absolutely indescribable. But, isn't it true that characterizing something as ineffable is a description in itself? Based on this train of thought, I wonder if Creationism is merely a religiously motivated rejection of evolution? Hmm...

Man Forgot to Speak Up

2008-02-15T21:52:00.000-08:00

I was deeply saddened to hear about the shooting at Northern Illinois University yesterday. I believe the best way to calm down when angered is to SPEAK UP, and avoid making irrational measures like murder. Unfortunately, this man must have been deeply angered for one reason or another. Despite his sociology degree, and emphasis in criminal justice, he took the law into his own hands. My prayers go out to the families of the six killed, and the fifteen injured. Here is an article below:

Feb. 15

6 Killed in Northern Illinois Shooting

A gunman killed five students in a Northern Illinois University lecture hall before shooting himself Thursday afternoon. Many more were wounded: Aside from the perpetrator, Northern Illinois reported 21 victims in all.

The tragedy reemphasizes the intense focus on emergency response and communications systems that emerged after the April shootings at Virginia Tech University, experts said Thursday. But, President John Peters said in a press event, “I don’t know if any plan can prevent this kind of tragedy.”

Officials said Thursday that shortly after 3 p.m. the shooter, dressed in black, emerged from behind a screen in the front of the classroom, and opened fire. Northern Illinois identified the shooter as a former graduate student in sociology who was enrolled in the university in spring 2007 but no longer is. (The Chicago Tribune said it had identified the shooter, but wasn’t naming him pending formal identification of his body, and that he was enrolled in a graduate program in social work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and that he had won a dean’s award at Northern Illinois two years ago for work he did on prison systems.) He carried one shotgun and two handguns. Four of those killed were female; one was a male. Among those wounded was the instructor of the geology class, a graduate teaching assistant who related his account of the shootings to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Not so free speech

2008-02-08T16:52:00.000-08:00

After reading about the different analysis styles of the first amendment, I realized how funny my paper on free speech was. I wrote it in such a categorical sense, for example: "this type of speech should be free, and this type shouldn't..." and so on. In our group seminar we talked a little bit about Heath Ledger's funeral being protested by a Baptist church. This is the type of free speech that I question. Here is an article about it:

Anti-Gay Church to Protest Ledger Funeral

Church Known for Protests of Soldiers' Funerals, to Picket Actor's Memorial

By RUSSELL GOLDMAN

Jan. 24, 2008—

A fundamentalist church whose members demonstrate at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and believe God hates gays will protest the Academy Awards and the funeral of Heath Ledger, because the actor played a gay cowboy in the 2005 film "Brokeback Mountain."

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., are trying to find out where the 28-year-old actor's funeral will be held and have already made signs to hold outside the Oscars that read "God Hates Fags and Fag Enablers," "Heath in Hell" and "Mourn for Your Sins," Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of the church's controversial founder Pastor Fred Phelps, told ABCNEWS.com.

Though Ledger was not gay, the church believes he "misused the giant megaphone given to him by God Almighty to speak the truth about fags," Phelps-Roper said, and instead "used his position of prominence to say God is a liar and that homosexuality is not an abomination."

The time and location of the Ledger's funeral remain unknown, but it is widely believed it will take place in the actor's native Australia.

George Amado, the general manager of New York City's Frank E. Campbell funeral home, told The Associated Press that funeral arrangements for the actor are complete and his relatives are expected to arrive in New York City Friday.

He refused to elaborate further, saying, "The family doesn't want us to give out any information."

"They are going to try and hide the body like a bunch of ghouls so we can't protest. The only thing in this country people worship more than filthy sex acts is the dead," Phelps-Roper said.

She said members of the church had already purchased plane tickets to picket outside the Oscars, scheduled for Feb. 24 in Hollywood.

A press release posted to the church's Web site, godhatesfags.com, reads: "Heath Ledger is now in Hell, and has begun serving his eternal sentence there -- besides which, nothing else about Heath Ledger is relevant or consequential."

According to the Web site, the church, founded in 1955, has held more than 34,000 protests. But Phelps-Roper said there are currently only 50 members.

Hate Group, or Religious Freedom?

The Southern Poverty Law Center considers the church a hate group because of its "platform, writings and statements by its leader, which are egregiously anti-gay," said Mark Potok, director of the center's Intelligence Project.

"The group is made up of people who are almost literally out of their minds," Potok said. "In addition to regularly picketing the deaths of American soldiers killed in Iraq, they have picketed the funeral of little girls killed in a school bus crash because they wanted to link the death of children with 'America's sin.'"

Last year a Baltimore jury determined the Westboro Baptist Church was too vulgar and offensive to be covered by the First Amendment. The church was ordered to pay nearly $11 million to Albert Snyder, who brought a suit after the Phelps clan picketed the funeral of his 20-year-old son Matthew, who died while serving in Iraq.

The group routinely uses young children on its picket lines, sometimes giving them signs featuring explicit images to carry.

According to Potok, the only members of the church are Fred Phelps' family members.

"I doubt there is anyone in America who thinks more about gay sex than Fred Phelps," Potok said.

Ledger, 28, was found dead at the foot of his bed in his rented Soho loft Tuesday with several bottles of prescription drugs nearby. A preliminary autopsy completed Wednesday was unable to determine what killed the actor.

Back from the DEAD

2008-02-01T14:43:00.000-08:00

I went to a Bikram Yoga class this morning and was so weirded out afterwards that I forgot to post my blog by noon. It was 105 degrees in the room, which is a mixture of dry heat and humidity. A group of about 20 people practice 2 sets of 26 postures accompanied by some breathing exercises. It felt rejuvenating since I am still recovering from what I call the "death flu" that I had earlier this week.
OMG! I was so sick, it's hard to believe those three days really even happened. If it's not too late to get a flu shot, I highly recommend it, because this flu is FUNKY! Some of the various symptoms were: stinging eyeballs which were streaming water at any given moment, visual hallucination, incredibly hot then cold...then hot, golf ball sized glands accompanied by soar throat, deep respiratory coughing, ZERO energy, sleeping for twenty hours straight, ZERO appetite, congestion, and the worst three-day-long migraine headache of your life...
Now that you're thoroughly disgusted, I'll fill you in on the yoga class. The heat warms you up and loosens your muscles, allowing for a deeper stretch meanwhile preventing injury. The 90 minute class consists of beginner postures, half of which are standing, and the other half seated. It's challenging, but sufficient in providing a workout and it rids your body of toxins like ringing out a sponge. I feel soooo good afterwards. Highly recommend.

hello

2008-01-30T16:17:00.000-08:00

thanks for the help Dave!