Dirty Harry

One of my all time favorite movies starring one of my favorite actors is Dirty Harry.  In the movie Clint Eastwood plays inspector 'Dirty Harry' Callahan, who is a San Francisco police officer with a dirty attitude and uses little methods to what the law prescribes. In the movie it becomes a menacing task for Callahan to apprehend a menacing killer at all cost, which later unravels into a cat-and-mouse game between the two men. One killer with a sinister, distasteful laughter. The other, a killer with just a plain dirty attitude who holds the badge.
On several occasions  Inspector Callahan broke or bent the law in order to uphold the law.  In my opinion this is an aspect of real life that usually does not get much attention.  How much power is society wiling to grant the police to ensure their safety?  Is torturing a serial killer in order to find and save a little girl unethical?  But if police are granted to much freedom there is potential for a George Orwellian society.
I believe that 'Dirty Harry' acted completely reasonably in order to keep the streets safer, except when he twistedly played with the bank robber by lifting his gun and pulling the trigger after the robber dropped his gun.  The robber wanted to know the answer to whether 'Dirty Harry' had fired 5 shots or 6 but if he had only shot 5 the 'Dirty Harry' would have shot an incapacitated unarmed man in the face with his .44 magnum.

Kenji by Fort Minor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ckvmc_486U&feature=related

Fort Minor-Kenji

My father came from Japan in 1905
He was 15 when he immigrated from Japan
He worked until he was able to buy respect and build a store

Let me tell you the story in the form of a dream,
I don't know why I have to tell it but I know what it means,
Close your eyes, just picture the scene,
As I paint it for you, it was World War II,
When this man named Kenji woke up,
Ken was not a soldier,
He was just a man with a family who owned a store in LA,
That day, he crawled out of bed like he always did,
Bacon and eggs with wife and kids,
He lived on the second floor of a little store he ran,
He moved to LA from Japan,
They called him 'Immigrant,'
In Japanese, he'd say he was called "Issei,"
That meant 'First Generation In The United States,'
When everybody was afraid of the Germans, afraid of the Japs,
But most of all afraid of a homeland attack,
And that morning when Ken went out on the doormat,
His world went black 'cause,
Right there; front page news,
Three weeks before 1942,
"Pearl Harbour's Been Bombed And The Japs Are Comin',"
Pictures of soldiers dyin' and runnin',
Ken knew what it would lead to,
Just like he guessed, the President said,
"The evil Japanese in our home country will be locked away,"
They gave Ken, a couple of days,
To get his whole life packed in two bags,
Just two bags, couldn't even pack his clothes,
Some folks didn't even have a suitcase, to pack anything in,
So two trash bags is all they gave them,
When the kids asked mom "Where are we goin'?"
Nobody even knew what to say to them,
Ken didn't wanna lie, he said "The US is lookin' for spies,
So we have to live in a place called Manzanar,
Where a lot of Japanese people are,"
Stop it don't look at the gunmen,
You don't wanna get the soldiers wonderin',
If you gonna run or not,
'Cause if you run then you might get shot,
Other than that try not to think about it,
Try not to worry 'bout it; bein' so crowded,
Someday we'll get out, someday, someday.

As soon as war broke out
The F.B.I. came and they just come to the house and
"You have to come"
"All the Japanese have to go"
They took Mr. Ni
People didn't understand
Why did they have to take him?
Because he's an innocent laborer

So now they're in a town with soldiers surroundin' them,
Every day, every night look down at them,
From watch towers up on the wall,
Ken couldn't really hate them at all;
They were just doin' their job and,
He wasn't gonna make any problems,
He had a little garden with vegetables and fruits that,
He gave to the troops in a basket his wife made,
But in the back of his mind, he wanted his families life saved,
Prisoners of war in their own damn country,
What for?
Time passed in the prison town,
He wanted them to live it down when they were free,
The only way out was joinin' the army,
And supposedly, some men went out for the army, signed on,
And ended up flyin' to Japan with a bomb,
That 15 kilotonne blast, put an end to the war pretty fast,
Two cities were blown to bits; the end of the war came quick,
Ken got out, big hopes of a normal life, with his kids and his wife,
But, when they got back to their home,
What they saw made them feel so alone,
These people had trashed every room,
Smashed in the windows and bashed in the doors,
Written on the walls and the floor,
"Japs not welcome anymore."
And Kenji dropped both of his bags at his sides and just stood outside,
He, looked at his wife without words to say,
She looked back at him wiping tears away,
And, said "Someday we'll be OK, someday,"
Now the names have been changed, but the story's true,
My family was locked up back in '42,
My family was there it was dark and damp,
And they called it an internment camp

When we first got back from camp... uh
It was... pretty... pretty bad

I, I remember my husband said
"Are we gonna stay 'til last?"
Then my husband died before they close the camp.

Kenji by Fort Minor does a great job of of highlighting some of the injustices happening in the United States around WWII.  In the song Fort Minor shows how the mass paranoia that came from the attack on Pearl Harbor led to the wrongful internment of all Japanese-Americans.  Many innocent Japanese-Americans were forced to live in deplorable conditions all because of the fear installed via the President and the media.  Furthermore, all of this paranoia carried over to racism even after the war ended.  Many Japanese-Americans lost their homes and businesses because of the connotation of all Japanese as the enemy, despite the fact that many Japanese-Americans fought in the American military.  Sadly this issue is not an isolated incident.  Although we have not locked all of the Americans of Arabic decent there is a strong wrongful connotation of all Arabs as terrorists.  And because of this many bad things have been done to them.

The Big Talk

Suicide is rarely considered an easy topic to talk about or listen to, but I feel that the guest speaker did a good job.  She was clearly knowledgeable on the subject matter and portrayed herself as calm and approachable.  A trait that I find to be very important when discussing such a sensitive subject.  On several occasions I have talked to friends about suicidal thoughts, and now I feel a little more equipped to notice and handle the situation when things start to take a turn for the worst.  I found it very interesting that a sudden burst of happiness can be an indicator that a person has made the decision to commit suicide.
On another note, despite how helpful and informative this discussion was, I am unaware how it relates to our class.  I mean no disrespect, I always find these talks important, but other than the small part about how some suicides are not counted as suicides in the media's eye I failed to connect the two.  Maybe I am forgetting something or missing the point of the discussion, but in my mind there should have been more talk about suicide in relation to either the media or justice.

Restoring Sanity and/ keeping fear alive

As Halloween is at least partially based around fear I feel that it is justified to talk about the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert rally that happened this past Saturday.  Whether it was through the threat of peanut butter covered bees, or the demonstration of media consistently using fear as a tool to shape societies views I believe that Colbert did a good job of satirizing fear as an overbearing issue for discourse in everyday life.  Stewart and Colbert  were successful in driving the point that too many debate, news, or political programs are hurting the important discussions and thus causing an abundance of dead ends on the important issues.
At the end of the rally Jon Stewart told the crowd, “This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith, or people of activism, or to look down our noses at the heartland, or passionate argument, or to suggest that times are not difficult and we have nothing to fear. "They are, and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies, but unfortunately one of our main tools in delineating the two broke." He spoke of what he termed "the country's 24-hour politico pundit perpetual panic conflictinator." It did not cause the nation's problems, Stewart said, "but its existence makes solving them that much harder ... If we amplify everything, we hear nothing."
Overall, I believe that this rally looked at everyones problems with discourse, but mainly focused as a tool to critique the media.  A subject very near and dear to this class...

Movies made me do it...

I do not deny that many people take what they see in violent movies and try to enact those heinous actions in real life.  But I do not feel that it is not because those movies are corrupting all of the wholesome youths, rather they are being manipulated by impressionable youths already prone to delinquency.  In the movie we saw a person who said that he would copy whatever violent act that he saw in movies.  Who is to say that without violent movies this person would not have committed the crimes.  That person may have committed the crimes in a different manner, but I am positive that the person would still have acted out in violence.  These movies become more of an outline rather then a driving cause. The fact that people are acting out scenes from violent movies is awful and should be stopped.  No one deserves to die because some punk kids wanted to be "Scream" in real life.
I feel that we cannot blame Hollywood for making films that seem to glorify violence.  These films are in demand by the general public for their entertainment value.  In affect the public is the driving force behind the creation of such films.  Therefore, it should be the public's responsibility to teach against committing violent acts.

Md. forest aims to curb drug activity

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/15/AR2010101506699.html?nav=mbot

This article states that Maryland's National Resource Police (NRP) have decided to try and reduce the amount of drug activity in Maryland forests.  Just last Saturday the NRP made 10 drug related arrests, accompanied by the 120 arrests mad in the first 9 months of this year.  The NRP has joined with MD State Police, County Police and the State Corrections Department and says they are committed to providing a safe family environment and will continue this joint proactive law enforcement measure to ensure the safety of the patrons to the State's public land is met. 
The NRP will be using an increase of patrolling officers as well as drug sniffing dogs in an effort to deter drug use in the forest.  But as the article stated, there are a lot of unspoiled and uncharted areas that can act as a cover for those who plan to use illegal  drugs in the forest.  As we discussed in class it may be a good idea for the NRP to employ education in an effor to deter people from wanting to use illicit drugs in the forest.

(mis)Information

I agree with the article that information is too often misused and even twisted to fit preconceived notions of truth.  Far too often are sites devoted to particular sides fill their arguments with more opinions and inferences then actual raw facts of the subject matter.  Generally these sights are used to either convert others or reinforce the beliefs of others.  By employing certain tactics, such as passion over the issues, people can sway others to jump on their bandwagon.  Take the "love-able" character Brother Micah for an example of using passion to try and sway people towards his own beliefs.  He travels around college campuses all over the country preaching and trying to convert people to his version of Christianity in order to save our souls.  Although many JMU students either ignore or mess with Brother Micah, we cannot escape the fact that he picks specific portions of the bible to try and fit his argument and then uses said portions with huge passion.  In an attempt to prove this people have stood next to him and preached other portions of the Christian Bible that seem to refute Brother Micah.
Sometimes people need to have something that they can just believe in.  But it is important to not base arguments on ill conceived facts.  A department of Information could help to fight pure passion arguments, but it could be hard to make sure all sides are represented as fully as possible.