2019/2020 LE blogs

      Today we didn't have class, but we watched a documentary on BBC's bias during the Scottish independence referendum. BBC had deliberately used negative words such as "warning", "catastrophe" etc. with "Scottish Independence" in their articles. Also, BBC didn't cover the pro-independence campaigns footages and only broadcasted the anti-independence campaigns. What's surprising is that the anti-independence campaign "Vote No Borders" was actually a scheme of the PR company called Acanchi, which specializes in improving the government image. BBC had broadcasted this campaign on its channels thirty minutes every day.  The campaign was disguised as a grass-roots campaign from Scotland, however, it was a giant fraud. Scotland doesn't have any independent media, because the British government doesn't want Scotland to have one, even when there are independent media in other small countries such as Moldova. I was shocked by th...

      Today we learned about how one director's political ideology completely ruined the Star Wars series in the last three movies. This topic was mentioned a few times in previous classes, but this time, Mr Paterson told us in more detail why and how the movie was ruined. Kathleen Kennedy, former assistant director of Steven Spielberg, became the chief director of the last three films. She hated the first Star Wars films because the protagonist was a white male, so she changed the protagonist into a female character and changed the character of Luke Skywalker. However, the general storyline was unoriginal. On the other hand, "The Mandalorian" which was filmed by Marvel, was a success because it was original and didn't change the characters.      I think the worst mistake Kathleen made was the unoriginality of the entire three movies. This shows she lacked the ability to create a good film, and I think that's a problem worse than using Star Wars as a politi...

      Today we learned about the history of how Scotland became a part of the United Kingdom. The history starts from around the late 1600s, when Henry VIII was the king of England. Then King James of Scotland won a war with Henry VIII and became the kings of both Scotland and England. However, people in Scotland and people in England had different interests and ideologies from the beginning of the problem. In the late 1900s there was a devolution referendum, however there was a special rule that there must be more than 40% of pro-independence votes in order for Scotland to become independent, whereas the anti-independence votes had no such border. In the 2014 Scotland independence referendum, the anti-independence votes were only few percent above the pro-independence votes. However, Scottish people that aren't in Scotland weren't able to vote, when non-Scottish people in Scotland and the people in British Commonwealth were able to vote.     As a person living ...

   Today we learned about how the British government manipulated the British media to hinder Scottish independence. The British government cares about Scottish independence because England's economy really depends on Scotland's plenty of resources. Scotland takes up about 35% of the land area in the UK but has 60-70% of sea area. In its territory, most natural resources such as oil, gas, fish, sightseeing spots, clean water etc. are produced in Scotland, and if Scotland becomes independent, England wouldn't be able to get these resources for free. Since the government was in England, the British government used BBC to manipulate the image of Scotland to make Scottish people think that Scotland wouldn't survive if they become independent. The scheme was a success and Scotland didn't become independent in the past referendum.    I was surprised that Scotland had such a significant amount of natural resources and played an important role in the British economy. However...

      Today we learned about net neutrality,  the concept that Internet service providers, or ISP in short, has to charge the same amount of fees for online communications. This is because Internet service is seen as a public service. However, because of some ISP companies and a few bureaucrats, the online world might become a place with only little freedom. If net neutrality ends, only the rich corporations can afford fast access to their websites and services, but the poor local media or small businesses t hat cannot afford them would get the slow cables.     I thought that t he American government should reconsider the purpose of their existence because the government is supposed to serve the public, not the corporations. I think net neutrality shouldn't be abolished because firstly there aren't any benefits to the consumers, secondly it only benefits the ISPs and giant corporations and thirdly because net neutrality prevents Internet monopoly. What was ...

      Today we watched "War made easy", an documentary on how the government uses the media to  to agitate people and elicit hateful feelings towards the opponent countries. The documentary covers many wars that the US had participated in the past century, from WWI to the Iraq war. The footages shows the US military bombing and destroying buildings. The percentage of the civilian deaths have increased, and in the Iraq war, 90% of the deaths were civilians. This shows that these wars were completely unethical, but the American government is making people think that these wars were just.     What left me with the most impression was that the president (mainly Bush) repeatedly stated that they were doing the war for "peace". This perplexing oxymoron has justified many wars. Also, what was surprising was that during the war, both left wing media such as MSNBC and right wing media such as Fox News were both pro-war during the war. This situation looked similar t...