POST 14: OUTSOURCING/OFFSHORING: Two Cartoons

This cartoon was made by R.J. Matson for the St Louis Post-Dispatch news paper.
Two kids are sitting on a boat which is arriving on the "Cayman Islands"on which is written "Believin' In America", Mitt Romney's presidencial campaign slogan.
Romney is standing on the island, digging a hole in the sand to hide a chest full of money. He is explaining to the kids on the boat how to gain the most of money possible, which is outsourcing jobs "so you don't have to pay more wages or benefits to your workers..." and offshoring the profits "so you don't have to pay more taxes to your country".
The kids are chearing him for his "smartness", and tell him he should be president (in relation to his election campaign). They are even calling him "grandpa" as a sign of affection, to make people believe he is a nice guy.
In the background we can also see another island and a whole land, Bermuda and Switzerland, on which there are crosses, indicating the spot where he hid other money chest, like a treasure.
The three lands are actually tax havens which means Romney hid his money there to escape from his country's taxes so he could get even more rich than he already is.
The cartoon is a critic oF Mitt Romney and his presidencial campaign. He blames him for showing only his lovely side to America by telling his country to believe in itself meanwhile in its back he is betraying his country by hiding money in other countries so he won't have to pay more taxes which countributes to the care of the country, and sending the work away from the country so he gains even more money and provide his country with thousands of jobs increasing unemployement.
The cartoon is related to the notion of spaces and exchanges. Offshroring and outsourcing both involve exchanges within different places all around the world. Due to business, and for some people's economic satisfaction, wealthy countries or companies prefers to transfer their jobs in poor countries and their money in tax havens, so that themselves can gain even more money from those exchanges. Perhaps, those exchanges are not totally beneficent as they make their country loose jobs and prevent poor countries from developing themselves.



This is a Geek and Poke cartoon.
Two characters, who are CEOs (Chief Executive Officer), are talking about changing the country where they were outsourcing, because even though they gave the "folks" there "thousands of jobs", "they couldn't get enough" because they wanted to "get paid"... To which the second CEO responds that is "unbelievable"...
The cartoonist mock the CEOs and the concept of outsourcing as the cartoom os ironic and satirical. The problem shown here is that the wealthy companies take advantage of their firms. The countries they settle their firms in  are poor and people there would do anything for a living even though it ain't much. They are underpaied and struggle to live at least properly, it's barely like they were not paid at all just like the cartoon let understand. Meanwhile, the companies still find the way to complain about the ''big amount'' of money they are wasting on those firms and change to a more poor country if they ever try to get paid more.
Here the cartoon only speaks about the problem of offshoring. The cartoon is related to the notion of Spaces and Exchanges as the wealthy companies try to gain the most money possible even though it means encouraging poverty in already poor spaces and changing to another country if this one try to develop itself, letting alone the concequances it could have on peoples life there, they will get unemployement increased overmore the misery they already live in.

POST 10: The Power Of IMAGINATION

BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA

Bridge to Terabithia is a 2007 American fantasy drama film directed by Gábor Csupó and adapted for film by David L. Paterson and Jeff Stockwell. The film is based on the Katherine Paterson novel of the same name, and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film stars Josh Hutcherson, AnnaSophia Robb, Robert Patrick, Bailee Madison and Zooey Deschanel.

BEWARE

SPOILERS

PLOT:

Jesse "Jess" Aarons (Josh Hutcherson) is a 12-year-old aspiring artist living with his financially struggling family in Lark Creek. He rides the bus to school with his little sister May Belle (Bailee Madison), where he avoids the school bully Janice Avery (Lauren Clinton). In class, Jess is teased by classmates Scott Hoager (Cameron Wakefield) and Gary Fulcher (Elliot Lawless), and meets new student Leslie Burke (AnnaSophia Robb). At recess, Jess enters a running event, for which he had been training at home. Leslie also enters and manages to beat all the boys, much to Jess' irritation. On the way home, Jess and Leslie learn that they are next-door neighbors.

Later in the evening Jess becomes frustrated when he finds that May Belle has drawn in his notebook, but his strict yet caring father (Robert Patrick) sides with her. He later watches them gardening together, disappointed that his father does not spend time with him. Moreover, his mother cherishes her daughter more than him. The next day at school, Leslie compliments Jess' drawing ability, and they soon become friends. After school, they venture into the woods and swing across a creek on a rope. Jess and Leslie find an abandoned tree house on the other side, and invent a new world, which they call Terabithia. The fantasy world, which is a reflection on their lives, comes to life through their eyes as they explore the surroundings. For the next few days, Jess and Leslie spend their free time in the tree house getting to know each other.

Leslie gives Jess an art kit on his birthday, much to his delight. Jess becomes angry with his father's attitude to him, and refuses the existence of Terabithia the next day at school. Afterwards, Jess apologizes to Leslie by giving her a puppy, whom she names Prince Terrien. Once in Terabithia, they fight with various creatures, including a troll resembling Janice, and a squirrel-like creature resembling Hoager, whom they name the 'Sqoager'. At school, Leslie becomes frustrated by Janice's fee for using the toilet. Jess and Leslie play a prank on Janice, and she becomes the laughing stock of everyone on the bus. Once Leslie's parents finish their book, she and Jess help paint their house. Jess is impressed by her parents' happiness, and smiles as he watches their family. At school, Leslie discovers from an upset Janice that her bullying is due to her abusive father, and they become friends and later Janice becomes Jess' friend. Jess and Leslie take P.T. to Terabithia, where they fight off several creatures resembling students at their school. When it starts raining, they decide to go home, and Jess looks on smiling as Leslie runs away.

The next morning, Ms. Edmunds (Zooey Deschanel), Jess' music teacher, calls to invite him on a one-on-one field trip to an art museum. Jess tries to ask his mother's permission; however, she is half-asleep and he takes her mumbling as approval. Jess doesn't ask Leslie to accompany him, and merely looks at her house as they drive by. When he returns home, Jess finds that his father and mother were worried sick since they didn't know where he was. His father reveals to Jess that Leslie had died that morning by drowning in the rain-swollen creek after the rope she used to cross it broke. Jess, being traumatized by this shocking news, first denies it, then runs out of his house to check on Leslie, but he discovers the emergency vehicles surrounding her house, and has no choice but to accept Leslie's death.

The following day, Jesse and his parents visit the Burke family home to pay their respects. Leslie's father, Bill Burke (Latham Gaines), tells Jess that she loved him, and thanks him for being a very good friend to her, since she had trouble making friends at her old school. Jess feels overwhelming guilt for Leslie's death, but his father consoles him to keep their friendship alive for her sake.

Jess decides to re-imagine Terabithia and builds a bridge across the river to welcome a new ruler. He invites May Belle to Terabithia; she is delighted because she was previously denied any opportunity to enter. They bring back Terabithia in even greater splendor, with Jess as king and May Belle as princess.

Imagination is the ability to form a mental image of something that is not perceived through the five senses. It is the ability of the mind to build mental scenes, objects or events that do not exist, are not present, or have happened in the past.

Everyone possesses a certain degree of imagination ability. The imagination manifests in various degrees in various people. In some, it is highly developed, and in others, it manifests in a weaker form.

Imagination makes it possible to experience a whole world inside the mind, just like Jess and Leslie created the wonderful world of Terabithia. It gives the ability to look at any situation from a different point of view, and to mentally explore the past and the future.

This ability provides temporary happiness, calmness and relief from stress, here it reliefs Jess and Leslie from the trouble they have to fit in society as they are bullied at school and are antisocial. Jess also have issues with his family as his father spend less and less time with him and his mother only takes care of his little sister. They’re imagination allows them to forget about all their problems and makes them fit in their own society.

Thanks to their imagination, they can travel anywhere in the speed of light, without any obstacles. It makes them feel free, though temporarily, and only in the mind, from tasks, difficulties and unpleasant circumstances.

They imagine a world which includes all five senses and feelings. They imagine sounds, tastes, smells, physical sensations and feelings or emotions. They remodel their world and life in a greater and more fantastic way.

Their imagination are the key to their friendship and their happiness. But it is also the key to Jess’s reconciliation with the real world. After he (and other people around them) got really saddened by Leslie’s death, he started to get along with the girl that use to bullied them, and above all with his little sister whom he use to dislike and offers them both a place in his imaginary kingdom where Janice becomes a kind giant serving the kingdom and his little sister becomes the princess.

We can also see the construction of the bridge to Terabithia a safer way to a safer place and a consolidation of the imaginary in the real world.

To conclude, power of imagination help to escape from an unhappy reality and tends to create relationships between creative and/or rejected people it also help creative people to achieve greater things in the real world to help less creative people to escape and be a little more happy.

POST 9: THE US GUN CULTURE

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FQUJ3sap2kAAozdjxLpbpTtlP8GFgeglGBdfIBZYgQQ/edit?usp=drivesdk

1. 
   

   Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence

   
   

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun

Violence are affiliated American non profit organizations that advocate for gun control

 and against gun violence. Together, they are commonly referred to as the Brady Campaign.

They are named after James "Jim" Brady, who was permanently disabled as a result of

the Ronald Reagan assassination attempt of 1981, and Sarah Brady, who was a leader

within the organization from 1989 until 2012.

The Brady Campaign was founded in 1974 as the National Council to Control Handguns

(NCCH). From 1980 through 2000 it operated under the name Handgun Control, Inc.

(HCI). In 2001, it was renamed the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, and its

sister project, the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, was renamed the Brady Center

to Prevent Gun Violence.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

(2010)

This document is a poster made by The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun

Violence in 2010. The poster represents a gun on which the American flag, the

Stars and Stripes is painted. Above the gun, the scores of deaths made by guns

in different countries all around the worldin one year (2010) are written. We

can clearly see that the countries in which guns are not allowed own a lot less

deaths by gun, like 17 in Finland or 35 in Australia, than in the United States

where guns are allowed and where the number of deaths by guns reaches

9,484 in one year. Even the countries with the most of deaths by guns with gun

don't reach such high scores, Germany has 194 deaths and Canada has 200. It

is a lot for a country with gun restriction but it is nothing compared to the

United States’s scores.

Underneath the scores, we can read the sentence “GOD BLESS AMERICA.”

which is the main point of the poster. The United States are a really religious

country, mostly Christian. Americans are also very patriotic, so much that even

“God blesses them”.

According to the Bible (also to laws and morality), killing is a horrible sin,

but still, Americans allow what has been created in order to commit murder.

This contradiction makes the poster more polemic and shocking as it is ironical

so that people will realise the dangerosity of gun allowance. The goal of the

poster is to save people’s life by incorporating sensible gun laws just like

their logo says.

It engages people to give up on firearms, so that their country will be more safe,

there would have less deaths and they would also be closer to their beliefs than

what they actually think they are.

2. Human Index
   
   

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite statistic (composite

index) of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators,

which are used to rank countries into four tiers of human development.

A country scores higher HDI when the lifespan is higher, the education 

level is higher, and the GDP per capita is higher. The HDI was developed

by Pakistani economist, Mahbub ul Haq, for the UNDP.

The 2010 Human Development Report introduced an Inequality-adjusted

Human Development Index(IHDI). While the simple HDI remains useful, it

tated that "the IHDI is the actual level of human development (accounting for

inequality)", and "the HDI can be viewed as an index of 'potential' human

development (or the maximum IHDI that could be achieved if there were no

inequality)".

The index is based on the human development approach, developed by Ul Haq,

often framed in terms of whether people are able to "be" and "do" desirable

things in life. Examples include-Beings: well fed, sheltered, healthy; Doings:

work, education, voting, participating in community life. It must also be noted

that the freedom of choice is central-someone choosing to be hungry (e.g.

during a religious fast) is quite different to someone who is hungry because

they cannot afford to buy food.

2010 Graphs

This document is called Gun Murder by Country. It was made

by the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) in

2010.

It represents 2 graphs that shows the number of gun murder

by rate per 100,000 people in the top 10 countries for the first

one, and in the developed countries for the second one, both

enhancing the position of the United States.

In the first graph, we can clearly see that the United States are

not part of the top 10 countries of gun murder, they are 26th with

around 3 gun murder per 100,000 people while the top 1 is

Honduras with around 68 gun murder per 100,000 people.

Perhaps, on the second graph, it is clear that the United States

are the worst case of gun murder among the developed countries

with 3.2 deaths per 100,000 people while the other countries

stays around 0.3 gun murder per 100,000 people with Japan

on the top with no gun murder at all.

This document shows that even though the United States are the

ones with the most gun murders among the developed countries,

they are still far from the most dangerous countries where they

are around 20 times more gun murders.

It also shows that the kind of propaganda shown with the first

document shouldn’t only be spread in the United States but also

in all the other countries which have as much and/or more gun

murders.

3. Second Amendment,  Foudind Fathers of the
   United States & National RifleAssociation(=NRA)

Second Amendment

The Second Amendment (Amendment II) to the United States

Constitution protects the right of the people to keep and bear armsand was

adopted on December 15, 1791, as part of the first ten amendments

contained in the Supreme Court of the United States. The  has ruled that

the right belongs to individuals, also ruling that the right is not unlimited

and does not prohibit all regulation of either firearms or similar devices.

State and local governments are limited to the same extent as the federal

government from infringing this right per the incorporation of the Bill of

Rights.

The Second Amendment was based partially on the right to keep and bear arms

in English common law and was influenced by the English Bill of Rights of 1689.

Sir William Blackstone described this right as an auxiliary right, supporting the

natural rights of self-defense, resistance to oppression, and the civic duty to act

in concert in defense of the state.

Foudind Fathers of the United States

The Founding Fathers of the United States were those of the Thirteen Colonies

in North America who led the American Revolution against the Kingdom of

Great Britain and contributed to the establishment of the United States of

America.

Historian Richard B. Morris in 1973 identified the following seven figures as the

key Founding Fathers: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton,

John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington. Adams,

Jefferson, and Franklin were members of the Committee of Five that drafted the

Declaration of Independence.

National RifleAssociation(=NRA)

The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) is an American nonprofit

organization that advocates for gun rights.

Founded in 1871, the group has informed its members about firearm-related

bills since 1934, and it has directly lobbied for and against legislation since 1975.

It also claims to be the oldest continuously operating civil rights organization

in the United States.

Founded to advance rifle marksmanship, the modern NRA continues to teach

firearm competency and safety. It instructs civilians and law enforcement,

youths and adults, in various programs. The organization also publishes several

magazines and sponsors competitive marksmanship events. Membership

surpassed 5 million in May 2013.

Steve SACK, on www.startribune.com,

Gun Lobby and Congress (2010)

This cartoon was made by Steve Sack in 2010. It shows the relation between the government (the congress) and the gun lobby. We can see the gun lobby handing a bag of money to the congress saying '' Now, where were we, before we were so rudely interupted...'' while there is a trail of blood coming from next to them and coming into the White House

Dave GRANDLUND, on www.davegranlund.com, 

Second Amendment and NRA (2013)

This cartoon was made by Dave Granlund in 2013.
It shows two different embodiments of the Second
Amendment. The first one embodies the definition
of the Second Amendment as seen by the Founding
Fathers, it is reoresented by a statue of a civil with
a firearm, elevated by a ''marble stone'', probably a
memorial in honor of the American revolution.
He looks proud and powerfull. It symbolises America itself,
a Republican country, it symbolises liberty.
The second version is the one of the NRA, but this time
it's a soldier armed to the teeth holding lots of machineguns,
grenades and other killing items. He is standing on a pile of
munitions and explosives. He looks very dangerous and sort of dumb.
The cartoon shows that the vision of the Second Amendment is
completly alterated from the original one, this law became dangerous
and unsafe because of the NRA when it used to be something
made to protect people.