Animal Farm Extension Project #2

The Commandments of Viadmuerto

1.  No animal shall kill any other animal.  Life is sacred to all of us, for we only get one of them.  Therefore, any and every animal has the right and privilege to live under the protection of others.  Community is the essence of brotherhood and a good town.

2.  No animal shall abridge the rights of any other animal.  The sacred rights for which we use to govern every aspect of our daily life must stay in order in between any and every animal.  No animal shall try to take away and/or prevent any other animal from their rights.

3.  There will be no hierarchy or royalty ruling the land, it will be ruled by a publicly elected president or governor.  The animals of Viadmuerto, will be equal under law and protection. Hierarchy is out of date and unfair to the people.  The idea of a shared decision in how we run our town must be decided by the community.

4.  Food rations are equally distributed between every animal.  No one will steal and no one will be greedy.  Food shortages can be tricky and tough.  No animal will steal extra food.  No animal will complain about food rations, for we distribute the food equally throughout the town.  The same applies to water.

5.  Retirement age for Viadmuerto is 12 for all animals.  At some point in an animals life they look forward to settling down without worries or tedious, laborious tasks to accomplish.  Every animal deserves a break in their life.

The Back Of The Wagon Fable

There once was a time when dogs ruled over cats, and all the cats and dogs of the small village of Fortville, a quiet little village on the outskirts of London.  All the cats lived their lives thinking that this was their eternal fortune and that everything would remain the same. But there were two wise old cats who who shared the same idea of a promised land, but had very different ideas of how to get there.  Their names were George and Maximus.

They were both well respected in the village.  George, was a tortoiseshell with a white nose and white paws.  He was an easygoing cat with a passionate sense of pride and dignity. He wanted all dogs and cats to be equal, without seeing blood in a fight.  A peaceful way to achieve his goal.

Maximus was a maine coon rogue cat.  Sometimes his desire overpowers his well rounded thinking, but never the less, Maximus had black paws and a brownish nose.  He too wanted all dogs and cats to be equal, but he was impatient and wanted to achieve equality by force.  His followers were also rogue cats.  And they sided with him for the belief that brute force, which they had experienced by their past owners, could be delivered swift and quick.

George’s followers wanted to simply march and use the power of peaceful protest to achieve equality.  Since the two cats could not decide on one idea to go forward with, they held a cats only village meeting, under the cellar of the old abandoned barn on the outskirts of the village.  George jumped up onto the big haystack in the middle of the room and paced to and fro, patiently waiting for all the others to take their seats.

“Brothers, Maximus and I have called you here tonight for a hearing of a common belief, but different methods of achieving this belief.  He and I strongly believe that all cats and dogs should be equal.  We have been shown no mercy whatsoever under the rule of the dogs.  The way they treat us will go on no longer.  I am not trying to influence a war council, for I do not want to fight and spill blood.  I believe in the manor of peaceful protest.  Not a weapon on you when you demand equality.  I believe this can be achieved through demonstrations of peace, and over a short time, we will have won our way in this world.  And slowly but surely, we will influence the rebellion over the whole world, one cat at a time.”

And with that George took a triumphant leap down from the haystack, seeing that he has moved the crowd with his passion.  Maximus then crept up onto the haystack.  “Brothers, we have suffered too long.  Under this tyranny of the cruel dogs we have been shown no mercy.  We deserve better, we deserve to live our life, not live their lie.  I say we act now.  Every cat in this room should know better about life than what the dogs squeeze and force down our throats.  I am calling for action, violent or not I want equality now.  I want certainty, not probability, the mere fact that our peaceful efforts could go to waste would be devastating.”

This went on for some time, the two sharing their thoughts passionately in the barn, and at the end the cats didn’t know what side they were on.  All they knew was they wanted equality for all cats.  There was one female cat who was particularly moved in the form of peaceful protest.  Her name was Millie.  A hardworking critical thinker.  After the meeting she went about her business like she had before.  She took the wagon to work every day. She and the rest of the cats had to sit in the back, and the dogs always got the front row seats just because they were dogs.  She was always annoyed by this.

Then one morning she got on the wagon, sat in the back of the wagon and faced a laborious day at work, by far the hardest day she had ever pushed herself through.  Her boss, thankfully another cat named Ramona, who knew Millie and the way she applied herself in difficult times and how she could always count on Millie to get the job done, said she could take the rest of the day off.

“But I have so much more work to do,” said Millie.

“I’ll take care of it,” said Ramona.

Millie was exhausted from all the tedious time consuming work she had to do that day. She got back on the wagon, and noticed it was more crowded than ever.  There were only a couple of seats left on the wagon, and they were all in the back.  After the next couple of stops, the wagon was full and even though she was sitting more in the front of the cats only section, she was asked rudely to give up her seat to a dog.  She found it ridiculous that she had to give up her seat to a dog when she was following all the ridiculous rules that came with the wagon, and now she had to give up her seat?

This outraged Millie, but she didn’t show it.  All she did was look up into the big fat dogs face and said calmly, “No.”  The whole wagon gasped.  Some other dogs got up from their seats.  The bus driver asked again, only to get the same reply.  Then he started to get agitated.  The bus driver yelled at Millie, and she responded in the same fashion once again.  The police were called to take her away and off the bus.  When Maximus and George heard about this, they were outraged, and therefore started to organize something that would jeopardize the wagon industry.  It was called the Wagon Boycott.

Save My Life

 

You wanna see the world from another point of view
You wanna take your chances or maybe even two
Well step into my shoe cause I’m through with you
I’m done with this democracy its time to change my life

You ready to sweat harder than you ever have before
You ready to wish that you had more time than before
So buckle up for even more or you’ll wind up on the floor
You’re gonna feel the pain that we felt

Continue reading →

Persuasion in History Review

I chose to read the devil’s advocates point of view for this project.  In my opinion, George Wallace and his speech, The Civil Rights Movement, Fraud Sham Hoax, was a repetitive, self rising speech to try to influence people, white mostly, that African Americans are inferior human beings and they deserve no rights whatsoever.  He states numerous times that the African American community will invade and destroy the white communities just by going to their schools, churches and parks.

Wallace uses the persuasive techniques logos and pathos.  The way he uses pathos in his speech is by scaring the audience into thinking that if they let desegregation happen, their whole life will be ruined in an instant.  He uses logos by twisting and inflating his opinion into HIS logic.  Overall I don’t think it wasn’t a very convincing speech, even after I put myself in his position and try to understand why he wanted segregation so much.  I would recommend reading this speech after you have studied the civil rights movement for at least nine weeks depending on how fast you can consume and understand a subject matter.

Police Brutality

The past year has been the start of something that bubbled up from the past.  April 12th, 1861, the American Civil War started.  1955, the Civil Rights Movement started when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat.  11:07, April 19th, 2015, Freddy Gray died after actions of police brutality in Baltimore.  This country has gone through civil rights protests, and if history needs to repeat itself it will, but the police department needs to realize that something has to change now.  The people in Baltimore have spoken. But now we have to act.

Our country has had a war with racism for over 200 years.  And it is still going on today. Every eight hours a black man dies in the U.S. because of police brutality (history.com)  The police organization has been reckless with dealing with the police who have been caught and accused of brutality on the streets in my opinion.  Each recruit goes through training to deal with intense situations on the streets.  They are licensed with the trust of the organization, the city, the state, and the country, to do the right thing and act responsibly, in intense times.  And the ones that don’t follow the rules, don’t get in trouble, don’t get evicted, and claim to be innocent.  They are playing tennis with people’s lives.

Others might say that the police are acting in the right way.  The opposing side of this argument say that the police were doing their job, and were really enforcing the law.  The police were doing their job, in the wrong way.  Every officer carries a gun on their belt and that weapon is only used as a last resort to get things under control.  In most cases of police action, the gun is really used for control and order, not to fire, unless something rash is happening.  That is why this is a problem.  The police are being too brutal with minor situations, then claiming ridiculous things and lying to the people who trust the police to protect them.

I am calling for action.  Something has to be done about things like this.  The earth is our planet.  It has given us many wonderful things.  The sun illuminates our sky.  The trees give us air to breathe.  And the elements uranium and plutonium are split to create guns.  Not for harming and abusing power, but to keep peace and order in the world.  There will always be a group of people that abuse their power.  There is something we can do about this problem.  These things can be fixed.  It is not impossible, but it is very improbable.

We could actually make the officers who have abused their power over society and evict them for their crimes against humanity.  We could force the officers to go through training to retrain their minds to do the right thing.  Or we could simply ban the officers from the organization and make them lose their credibility and recruit someone with a better background and expertise.  If people as young as me have noticed that there is something that can be done about these people, than someone with higher power and responsibility better have realized this same thing.  Baltimore is rioting in the streets, getting attention through violence.  That is the wrong kind of attention.  But all it means is that some action is urgent.  Listen to the voices of Baltimore.  They have something to say, and so do I.

Jerusalem: Great City and More

Most people think that Jerusalem is just a city with a Jewish name.  In fact in some ways they are right.  Jerusalem does have a mayor, and a city hall, parks, schools, bars, museums, office buildings, and a zoo.  But to me and my family as well, Jerusalem is the birthplace of all of our beliefs, culture, religion, and pretty much everything else.  My family especially has grown up in Jerusalem.  My family has never left Jerusalem as far as I can remember.  Ever since Abraham was sent by God to found Jerusalem, my family has never left.  Not only is Jerusalem the capital of Israel, but it is the birthplace of Jewish culture.  My ancestors listened to the prayers of the first father of the first church of Israel, in 825 BCE.  The only time my family left Israel is when the Christians kicked us out in 312.  We were only let back in after the Muslims conquered Jerusalem.  And now I fast forward to just yesterday.  Yesterday was June 7th, 1967, the day we won the war against the surrounding Arab countries who wanted to kick us out again.  I was on the front lines of the fight along side my two older brothers.  We came home from war yesterday.  We won the war in just six days.  And today Jerusalem is finally the capital of Israel, as it should be.

Signed,
Joseph

city_of_david_jerusalem_tour (8)

The Five Pillars of Islam

Journal Entry #1:
This morning I met my new employee. He was a Muslim, Christian born though. He always looked tired and starved, until he explained where he was from. He was born in France, but his family relocated to Iran. He didn’t want to go back to his routes, because he wasn’t accustomed to the Muslim practice that he had to endure every day. He said the five pillars of Islam changed his life. The pillar he resented the most was, Sawm, which apparently was the practice of fasting for a whole month, which explained the starved look on his face. The pillars, Shahadah and Zakat were his favorites. Shahadah was the practice of reciting the Muslim profession of faith, which he didn’t mind. The most profound pillar, I thought, was Zakat, paying an alms tax to help the poor and needy. He loved giving back to his community. That showed me some sign of respect and affection, and improved my impression of him. He taught me how to successfully and respectfully recite the ritual prayer that every Muslim has to do five times each day. I thought this was interesting for me to gain some diversity for my group. And at the end of his interview, he told me how he just came back to Iran from his trip, when he performed the last pillar of Islam, which he has to do at least once in his lifetime. Pilgrimage to Mecca was extremely special for him, he felt rejoiced. And that concluded all my questions for him. I just let him talk. He explained that he found new hope in his life and what he could do with himself. Thats why he applied for a job as a secretary for me, the Iranian President.

 

Hajj

Peacemaker Game Review

First of all, the game is one of a kind. It focuses on real world problems and anyone who wants to play it better know a good deal about running a country. After playing the game several times, each enjoyable, I have come to the conclusion that this game is very realistic, creates problems for the user to solve, and presents the user with the difficult task of solving these two peoples conflict and keeping everyone happy at the same time. It is a very hard task, and there are different levels of difficulty. I think that this game would be appropriate for anyone with a basic understanding of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. I would rate this game 4 out of 5 for difficulty and engagement and real world application.

Unique Poems

have you ever waNdered
hours upon hours In
searCh of something
that wasn’t there Or

have you walked Is
and out of a room
forgotten what you came for
and remembered the Second after

all tHese things
add up to somEthing great
something no one has eveR
dreamed of or seEn

Nico is here