Torture

                The United States has been known for its freedom for everyone along with fair trial and punishment, as said in the constitution/ bill of rights. This week, huge allegations and information about the CIA shows torture was used on suspects for the thing we crave the most, information. Many allegations have been made, most have been confirmed and it is really sad that our country has these terrible things happening within it. Torture is the worst things you can do to another human being, it’s monstrous and I can’t believe our country would do it, especially in the manner that we preformed it. People defend torture and say that it provides answers, solutions, and vital information to save lives, but it’s not worth it. Torture is the worst, it doesn’t provide answers, and it just provides what the person who is torturing wants to hear. Torturing doesn’t give more information, it gives false hope and conformation of being correct, when really one little lie can stop all the pain.

                The government has been hiding a lot of things from the general public lately. The NSA, spying on us to know our every move and they are doing all of this without anyone knowing about it. There is probably so much more we don’t know about our government and what goes on behind closed doors. Snowden really showed us how much in the dark the public really is.  Sure he revealed government secrets but he showed how much we don’t know about the people who are running the government for us. We had no clue that our calls, our internet searches are all being monitored, everyone is being watched and yet, the public had no clue this was going on.

                The people in power keep secrets, things that they don’t want everyone else to know. It’s the people in power, the people who allowed the torturing with the CIA to happen that we should be mad at. The president, congress, people in power allowed this and approved of it, the people in power have the power to torture anyone without the public knowing about it. It’s really unsettling how much the United States can do, especially without the consent from the rest of the public. The secret cy and power of our government is a serious issue in my eyes and something has to change. You want to know more about what’s going on in our country but you don’t want riots, chaos, or security secrets to be realized to the world, so this whole situation is a double edged sword. 

Royalty

                This week, the Dutch and Duchess of Cambridge came to America, home of the free, rebels of the unjust monarchy, and rulers of the free world. It surprised be really, the hype behind this special couple coming here.   They were at a pro basketball game, went to major fund raising events, and William even had an interview with the president. We (Americans) seem to care a lot more about the royal family than British people seem to.  The publicity they get here is ridiculous with the magazine covers, TV coverage, and “analysis”.

                Today, the British government functions mostly on a democratic level with the parliament and the prime minister having all the power. The queen has little to no say about the running of her country today.  She meets with the prime minister to talk about politics once a week, that’s about it when it comes to running the government.  They shouldn’t even be called a monarchy anymore; she shouldn’t really even be called the queen anymore when she has no power or controlled over the Kingdom.

                So why is she still the queen?  Why is there still so much publicity and hype for a family of people who do absolutely nothing all day but suck up money in some fancy palace? Well one of the answers is they do attract tourists. Millions of people a year go to see the beautiful Buckingham palace to try to get a glimpse of the royal family and feel like royalty. Millions of people buy up the magazines and watch all the media coverage to see and listen in on the gossip of the royal family.  I think women love all the information the most because it takes them back to their childhood when the wished they were a princess or the queen. The royals are such an iconic symbol of the United Kingdom that it seems like they won’t ever leave, no matter how much they cost. It still infuriates me though that people actually care about “what the royal family is up to” or what “Kate Middleton is wearing”, who cares really, in today’s society they are just regular people with a little bit more money. There is nothing special about them as sad as that might be. 

Argh Argh

                Black Beard, Jack Sparrow, and all the other pirates have been long gone for hundreds of years. But now there is a new group of rebels out there, the pirates of the technological age.  They are burning CD’s, taping and recording.  The internet has made stealing from the world so easy. Taking people’s ideas and money has become as easy as looking through a few links and some downloading then whamo - free content from the internet.

                The world is now starting to address this stealing of content. Movies, TV shows, and many other things have been shared and downloaded all over the world. This week, Pirate Bay, a major piracy website that hosts millions of torrents for downloading has been taken down by the Swedish government. Hours later the site was up and running again just as it used to be, it’s scary how these sites can just reappear so quickly and there is nothing government agencies can do about it. It is always said that nothing can be taken off the internet and this is true, especially for torrent websites and major pirating links.

                Piracy is something that won’t go away.  It’s been here for years and it will be even harder to get rid of as technology advances. It’s sad really; creative ideas that deserve attention and money get nothing because people can steal it with little to no work and have to pay no money. It could turn into a serious problem where music, movies, and entertainment become unprofitable due to so many people stealing.  Change is in the making if piracy isn’t somehow stopped.

                Just taking down websites like Sweden tried to do will not work; you can’t just get rid of pirating. People pirate because they want the content without having to pay. Some of them I don’t blame to be honest, cable can cost hundreds of dollars a month just to watch a few TV shows with a bunch of commercials, and it’s ridiculous. Things like Netflix, Cracked, Spotify, and Hulu have changed that, low prices with a lot of content make viewers and the general public happy. It gives people a reason to quit pirating because they can get a lot better quality content with little fees. People need to realize though that pirating isn’t ok, it’s stealing, people deserve the money and the respect for their hard work and that can all be taken away by downloading it for free.

                

                Chaos of Ferguson

Ferguson Missouri and racism in general is a very touchy subject today in America. Everything about racism in today’s society is so controversial and instead of fighting about if we are doing it or not, we need to just stop judging people for the color of their skin. Not generalizing, although sounding great, probably will never happen because it has never happened before in history and it won’t happen just because of the way people function, we make assumptions that often shouldn’t be made, we must try our best to stop.

                So instead of offending people or making accusations at certain people, let’s talk more about how Ferguson was handled as a country. Ferguson is a situation that if controlled better, wouldn’t have turned into total chaos. I’m all for protest, protest is a very good thing and it makes for a better country and world but the police force, the “peaceful” protestors, and of course the media elevated everything to a new level.

                It just takes a few people to ruin a party. What I feel like was a good idea at first, protest for something the people of Ferguson believe took a sharp turn for the worse when looting, violence, and other nasty things broke out around the town. Protestors stopped caring about Michael Brown and the situations surrounding that and started only caring about how to become a nightmare for the police and because of that, looting and harsh reactions from the police occurred. Protestors stopped protesting and just decide hey, let’s destroy this city’s reputation and go crazy on the police because we can, its kind of sad really that the city will forever be slandered because of this incident.

                Police didn’t help the cause either. Pointing semi-automatic weapons at unarmed civilians really doesn’t make any sense and the amount of force the police used to try and stop these protestors is a bit ridiculous. It’s odd that police are even allowed to do these things, pointing a gun at someone is a huge no-no unless you actually want to kill the thing you are pointing at and it really gives a bad persona for police forces around the country. Keeping back a few hundred protestors with such heavy weaponry causes a much larger controversy and the St. Louis police really shouldn’t have tried to be such a force. 

The Media

                The media, everyone always bags on them for over exaggerating, lying, and keeping the public from information just to promote business. Ferguson shows how powerful and influential the media can be. Showing reports and accounts of violence every 5 minutes on major new sources really causes a sense of worry for the general public. What started as a small protest in a suburb of St. Louis turned into a nationwide head line that everyone was talking about. It really blew everything out a proportion and fueled even more violence and rage into the public and Ferguson, Missouri.

                It’s scary how much our society is affected by the media. Television, newspapers, magazines, and most importantly the internet are so interconnected into our lives, everything thing we know about the world, we get from the media.   We want to know what’s going on in the world, all the bad things, the joyful things, the scary things and the fantasizing things. The media provides such an easy way to get this information but by allowing them to be our source of news, they can control what we know and what we think. Information can be manipulated, changed, and altered to the media wills, news as we know it could be totally different. Maybe I sound like some extremist who think that the government is full of lizards from another galaxy but the media can really hurt our world, a lot. Information is so valuable in today’s society because if you have the information, you have the power and the people of this world in your hands.

                Along with changing our information, our idea and our beliefs can be heavily influenced by the media. TV, magazines, and others try to be as charismatic and nice to change peoples beliefs. Talk shows and other shows where people express their opinions are examples of where your ideas of life can be changed by a simple TV show.

                Although I like everyone else love to hate on the arrogant and selfish media, technology and news has become such a plus for society. We know what’s going on thousands of miles away, we can figure out how to help, we can communicate with people in the blink of an eye. Communication as a whole has accelerated so quickly and news can travel in a matter of seconds across the world. Globalization has made us closer as a planet, our national and regional identities have started to fade and now we come together as a globe. Wars have come to a major halt, although there is still violence, our world has become so much more peaceful and we can now focus to create a better earth, all thanks to the darn media. 

For Mother Russia

                Russia is really losing it when it comes to respect around the world. Vladimir Putin can be seen everywhere being the butt of jokes and getting no respect. He is acting like a baby and maybe I’m just biased towards the freedom of the USA but Vladimir’s lack of strong leadership and not being able to just grow up could cost some serious problems for his people and his country.

                The fallen giant has now starting to take the stage again, the Winter Olympics could have been a major boost for Russia, bringing publicity and money to the mother nation. But that never happened because of how terrible the games were prepared and how they were set up. Along with a major failure of the games, Crimea and maybe the annexation of Ukraine is something that has been in the news quite often lately. Because of all the actions Russia has taken, along with terrible diplomacy displayed by Mr. Putin, the whole world is turning against Russia and they won’t survive long without the world’s support.

                Vladimir Putin probably realizes this but is taking no action to help the cause. His country’s economy is crippling with inflation and a stagnate trade. Sanctions from western countries has caused this poor economy along with oil companies in the middle east reducing oil prices so Russian oil companies can’t compete.  By putting themselves in a terrible economic position where no one wants to help them (not even China, their closest ally) the Russian people in trouble. I get so mad that an arrogant leader who thinks he’s hot stuff and just destroy people’s lives, a lot of people’s lives.

                Although an easy solution isn’t just going to happen, I feel that if Mr. Putin would quit trying to get the gang (U.S.S.R/ Satellite countries) back together and would use some actually diplomacy with other counties, maybe, just maybe, the  world might start to like them again. They wouldn’t be the big bad Russia anymore that we see on TV, they could be the loving Russians who are always drinking vodka. Once they become the drunk lovers of the north, they can work on that terrible economy and infrastructure which is something in desperate need of attention. I really don’t want to see Russia’s great army being shown to the world.

GMOs

                They have been debating GMOs (genetically modified organisms) for a long time; it is one of the most controversial subjects in science. Changing the makeup and DNA of an organism to make them different is now a routine thing in science. Most of the foods we see in the grocery store are these modified organisms. They are all classified as these mutants, their genetic code or makeup is changed to give those better characteristics or traits that make them more than the rest of the farming environment.

There is a major controversy over whether or not these genetically modified organisms help or hurt humanity. They have helped us by creating so much more food.  Millions of people are eating today instead of starving because of these discoveries and scientifically modified and advanced crops. Each crop can yield so much more along with farming being much less work and hassle, creating cheaper and easier food supplies. Crops also can be modified to create healthier foods, resistance to pests, diseases, and pollution make produce much better compared to organic foods. You can read more about genetically modified organisms here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_organism).

                GMO’s have been fought over since they were first being used in the 1970’s. People argue that genetically modified foods could have side-effects that effect out health. While most, if not all, studies have shown no correlation or side effects of genetic modification, there are still concerns surrounding these foods.  Changing an organism’s DNA is dangerous because we may not know what we are doing when we change an organism’s genetic code. Like I have said in past posts, we do know a lot about our world but we far from know all of it. Strict regulations also must be taken to protect our farms and our supply of food. The government has to set strict rules to limit companies from either completely taking over the world’s food or completely destroying it with GMO’s. Gigantic farms and companies cannot run the food of the world; small farms and nice people need to be in charge of the food of the world. There might not be any scientific evidence that tells us that eating organically makes us healthier, but we should still be worried about the threat genetically modified organisms possess.

                I personally believe the advantages out weight the disadvantages, almost a billion people are fed because of genetically modified crops. Problems could arise though but based on current evidence and science, I think that we should eat and be thankful for these mutants.