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Last week, I went to participate the prestigious National Model United Nations in New York. This part of this conference took part in the United Nations, where Secretary General spared his precious time to personally address to us. It was truly a inspiring trip. But apart from the conference and the UNHQ, I went to another place that was of great significance.

My team and I went to visit the 9/11 Memorial, and honestly it was a very heavy place. Like mentioned in class, two structures called the Eternal Well was placed where the two towers once were. The flowing water sounded like the lost souls of those who have lost their lives on that day. The names of the victims were cut out all around the well, with lights to illuminate the many names around the Well. Some people have stuck a white rose in some of the names to pay respect to their loved ones. At a fire station nearby, a framed poster of all of the firefighters that have lost their lives on 9/11. The brave men and women who sacrificed their own lives in order to save others. 

After we left, some of my friends and I started to discuss about people’s view of 9/11. One of my friends was rather angry because she saw how the incident of 9/11 was so strongly emphasized, and yet the millions of people who are suffering all around the world have little or no mention in comparison in the US. Having just attended a MUN conference, it really got me thinking about that view. No doubt that 9/11 was a terrible tragedy, but we must not have this incident overshadow the thousands of tragedies that happen everywhere else in the world, and that we must be able to give equal attention to all of them. The museum attack in Tunisia, the civil conflict in Syria, the conflict mineral trade in Africa, the grave issue of child soldiers,  the many deaths by drone strikes, and so many more issues that require our attention. We cannot just be attentive to only the events immediate around us, we have to give our attention to the rest of the world. Or at least, be conscious of the many things that are happening in the world. To see the bigger picture. 

Last time in my geography discussion, we discussed about the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and what were our view about it. Most people recall how terrifying it was. Although I fully agree that Katrina was devastating, I reminded everyone that there are so many other hurricane and typhoons that occur elsewhere in the world and that they are all equally terrible and important.

Today in class we discussed and started formulating our research proposals. We started some brainstorming activities since last week, one of the activities included writing pairs of opposite words. Some of the one I came up with were pretty straight forward like left and right, Individual and Society, Connection and Disconnection. But I realized that many of the words that I came up with were terms that was up to interpretation: Hero & Villain, Good & Bad, Patriot & Traitor. This really sparked me to think about how we view America, The savior or the oppressor of freedom. The Poems of Guantanamo reflected the human side of the detainees through the bibliography and the poems themselves. The poems did not suggest that they were innocent, but it showed that they are humans too. Somehow, even with those that are guilty, when we see the human side of people, it changes our view.

Human characteristics include empathy, emotions, kindness, sorrow, weakness and even anger. Like how we all connected through our body in Spahr’s This Connection of Everyone with Lungs, we all share the mind and soul of being human. We all have different beliefs, but we’re all people of the same earth. However, many factions of Western media and political view dehumanizes some people as so called “terrorist”. These people are often portrayed as non-human, cold-blooded and evil. It would be extremely hard to create fear or hate against terrorist if they were seen as human beings just like us. Dehumanization is evident not only with portraying terrorism, but also with portraying Non-White people during the Colonial era. French imperial theorist Jules Harmand devised the notion that “expansion by conquest, however necessary, seems especially unjust and disturbing to the conscience of democracies”, therefore, the conquered people have to be seen as savages in order to justify colonialism as liberation of these people. 

A recent film called “Camp X-Ray” tells the story of a young female prison officer befriending one of the prisoners of Guantanamo. Having guard Camp X-Ray for a while, she realized that Guantanamo wasn’t as black and white as she thought it was. Her commanding officer in the movie told her to not call them prisoners, but as detainees. 

This week, we primarily focused on an exempt from Judith Butler’s novel “Frames of War”, in which Butler talks about different perspectives and thoughts on the War on Terror. A key idea that Butler wanted to convey was seeing things in different “frames”, and how the same event or occurrence can be interpret differently. Some of these ideas include views of a society as a whole and the global view on humanity.

Butler makes a lot of reference to the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay and how they are given inhumane treatment whilst detained against their will without prosecution. A key quote that we analyzed in class today was “the body is a social phenomenon” on page 33. “The body” refers to the body of those wrongfully tortured in Guantanamo Bay and how their physical can have a social representation; these individual not only represent themselves, but also the collective society they come from. In a sense, the torturing of these victims is transcended to the societies they’re from, a collective suffrage. This relates closely to our studies on Obasan and how the treatment of Japanese-Canadians during World War II is an collective memory for all Japanese-Canadians of future generations. So these torture incidents, in some ways, reflect how the US government and some Americans view the Islamic culture and religion, as non-human radicals who conducted atrocities such as 9/11. 

Another important idea that arisen from the essay and our discussion is our commonality amongst all people, our humanity. Dr. Luger gave examples of how many soldiers are trained to not see their enemies as humans so they can kill without hesitation. We discussed about how despite each of us being a person of different race, religion, nationality and culture, we are all people on the same planet. And yet these torturing activities conducted by the US government clearly violated even the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a UN declaration signed and recognized by all states. I would also like to argue that even in warfare, there should be humanity and respect amongst all sides. After Germany had first used chemical weapons in WWI, a global consensus was reached of not using chemical weapons ever again because of its devastating effects it caused. We also created the ideas of honor and chivalry, so that when conflicts are imminent or required, people would fight fairly and with pride. 

To conclude, it is crucial for all of us to be able to see from more than one frame, to see from more than one perspective. One man’s traitor, is another man’s patriot. One man’s terrorist, is another man’s freedom fighter. And whilst seeing different perspectives, remember that no matter who it is, he/she is another human being as well.

Many conspiracy and political theories formed after the attack on 9/11, especially about the intentions of the US government with their actions before and after the attack. The US has always had strong relations with the State of Saudi Arabia because of their oil deals. Despite growing up in a wealthy family who owned one of the largest oil companies in Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Ladin despised American presences and influences in the country, so he left to form the terrorist group Al-Queda, aimed to attack and challenge the US.

Although the current media report about the fear of religious fanaticism, I think that perhaps some of these labeled fundamental groups have a bigger political motive than we thought. Many of the Islamic fundamental groups we see on the news such as ISIS or Boko Haram are extremely violent and often acting unfaithful to the religion they try to preach. Many Islamic nations and organizations often condemn these acts, making me doubt about whether the motives behind fundamentalist are truly religion based. Osama is himself hypocritical as he benefitted from the capitalist system growing up in a wealthy household that earn by selling oil.

After the recent Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, many retaliations on the Muslim community in France occurred, sparking even more friction and tension between the Muslims and non-Muslims. Its very possible that these fundamental groups attack with a political purpose of creating Muslim hate and fear, encouraging Muslims from those places to join their cause. This also evident in Muslim discrimination that occur in the US and in Europe. The media often describes the dangers of the spread of the radical version of the Islamic ideology, but probably in fact its not the case. We’ve barely heard or cared about any fundamental terrorists attack before 9/11 happened. So to summarize, the more fear, panic and hate these terrorists create amongst a non-muslim population, the more support and influence these groups actually get. It is not they who proliferated terrorism, but us who are scared and angry and inadvertently strengthened their movement.

This week in class, we started reading Joy Kogawa’s novel Obasan. The novel portrays a fictional story of a girl living through the discrimination against Japanese-Canadians during WWII and her experience in the intern camps. The idea of silence was prevalent throughout the whole novel; Naomi used her silence to cope with many traumas that she experienced in the story. In Japanese culture, silence is interpreted differently from that of Western cultures.

In Robert N. St. Clair’s essay The Social and Cultural Construction of Silence, Clair argues that silence has a vastly differently meaning in Japanese culture then it does in Western culture. Firstly, the act of being silence, unlike in the US, is institutionalized into a cultural behavior and not a social one. Silence is a form of non-verbal communication, in which people communicate through observing body language. So when reading Obasan, we should not only pay focus on the reasons why she is silent, but also focus on the situation in which she is being silent. Kogawa has great imagery and description in her novel, helping convey the silent message without needing the character to speak.

Unlike in Obasan, Safe Zone Gorzarde emphasizes its silence not in the people living in Gorzarde but on the silence of the Western media. The graphic narrative portrays how the Western media intentionally keeping what’s happening in Bosnia silent in hopes that they will swiftly go away.

In chapter 11 of Obasan, Naomi portrays her trauma of being sexually abused by Old man Gower and how she used her silence to protect herself. She felt that if she spoke, she would “split open and spill open”. In our group, we interpreted her silence as a way to protect herself from shame.

Our views vastly change as we get older. The same things we saw as a child are now drastically different once we see it again as adults. This point is particularly important in Marjane Satrapi’s graphic autobiography Persepolis. The story portrays Satrapi’s childhood during the time of the Iranian Revolution in 1979. During the sessions of this week, we looked into the historical context of the graphic narrations and explored the genre of comics.

Understanding the background context for certain novels and narrations is extremely important in understanding the text. For example, when I read the novel The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, it was important to know that the story was set in Western Germany in the 1970s, a time when the fear of Communism was prevalent. Understanding the history behind not only help us understand the text, but also gives us insight on what influenced the author’s writing. One thing that I noticed was the European tapestry looking figures in her graphic narration.

The very famous medieval wall tapestry known as the Bayeux Invasion of England tapestry. A similar portray can be found in Persepolis on page 11.

In addition, her use of black and white in her graphics is similar to those old French comic styles as mentioned in class. These European elements in her drawings could be from her background in studying a French non-religious school.

Furthermore, understanding the political tension in Iran of the time helps explain some of the panels in the narration. For instance, Marji’s cheerful reaction on page 84 after Iraq got bombed by Iranian bombers. Her patriotism and hatred for a demonized foreign force is similar to those of Amercians during the War on Terror era after 9/11. The propaganda against Iraq by Iran was one of the tactics employed my the Iranian government to unite the people, distracting them from the real threat and people which is the oppressive government itself.

Another key aspect we explored during class was the genre of comic itself. A comic is generally seen as low information literature and usually hold minimal meaning. They are generally easy reading and have simple story lines, a form of text used primarily for entertainment. But in 1991, American Cartoonist Art Spiegelman revolutionized the norms of comics by publishing the graphic novel “Maus”. The novel portrayed the events during WWII and the Holocaust using the Cats as the Germans and the Mouse as the Jews. It was the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize.

In Persepolis, there were several scenes or events that could only be conveyed graphically. On page 13, we can see that her God is similar to those of Western Christianity, and that she describes him to resemble Karl Marx. Plus the graphics portrays her interactions with God in her dreams, which is hard to achieve through solely writing. Also the graphic portrayal of her Uncle, Anoosh, greatly minds me of Charlie Chaplin from The Great Dictator, in which he made an inspiring and revolutionary speech. Like Chaplin, Anoosh wanted to seek justice and righteousness, and we can see his determination in page 62.

These couple sessions have got me thinking of so many questions and reflecting on so many past experiences. Such as “If a child was to read Satrapi’s Graphic Narrative, how would he/she interpret it differently from us?”. I remember recently watching the cartoon series Avatar: The Legend of Korra, and although it is cool and action-packed (the stuff kids liked), it had a very mature underlying message which includes the dangers of socialism, be in harmony with nature and the dangers of anarchism.

For the past few sessions we’ve been reading Shahzad’s article on the War of Terror. Her studies is based on the narratives of students on their accounts on the war of terror. Their accounts are strongly influenced by the different technology of memories that exists in our generation such as social media sites, youtube, live news and etc.

I’ve got strong influence from the news media itself. I grew up in a country where the news is extremely bias and uses emotive language. In my IB English class, we looked into the use of language by the media and politicians. In particular, we analyzed the language used by George Bush in his post 9/11 speech. His words evoked emotion and patriotism. He described in detail the traumatic scene that happened that day. And using that emotive description, he blinds the American people into supporting his campaign in Afghanistan, despite there’s no direct link between the attack and Afghanistan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CSPbzitPL8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BwxI_l84dc

In addition, the use of words is key. In the second speech (second link), he uses words such as “coalition of our allies” or “common defense” to evoke a sense of unity. And he keeps emphasizing on the word “terror” or “terrorist”.

Another key technology of memory that comes to my mind is the social media. So many news articles or propaganda appear on sites such as Facebook and spread like wildfire. I’ve read so many news article regarding so many key issues from my own Facebook page alone.

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