The UK’s war on terror.

Ever since the 11. September 2001, terror and immigration has been one of the hottest topics of discussion. Not only America was affected by the event. Citizens all over the world became more hesitant to foreigners flooding into their lands. The UK was no exception to this. Although the UK had not gone through such an event themselves at this time, they certainty felt the wave of fear and uncertainty going through every family with their eyes on the media during the 9/11 attacks. It was just unheard of for such an established country as America, to be attacked in such a drastic matter. How could a group called Al Qaeda, so easily take down one of the biggest monuments in Manhattan, the heart of New York.

Suspicion increased in the UK. Some people grew anger, some fear, whilst others were left unbothered, thinking it could not possible happen to the UK. The UK prime minister at the time, Tony Blair, felt he had to step in and act on the situation that 9/11 had caused. The USA President George Bush and Tony Blair worked closely together to solve the problem that was the threat of another Al Qaeda attack. They came to the conclusion that invading Iraq would be their greatest bet. This was because of Iraq’s president at the time; Saddam Hussein’s alleged association with Al Qaeda. Such a radical approach was not too familiar to the UK’s typical diplomatic behaviour compared to the US. Which expectedly enough, triggered a lot of people in the UK at the time. The hate towards Tony Blair was increasing as more and more information about the invasion leaked to the public.

In July of 2005 the first major terror attack on the UK was made. The “London Bombings” was an attack consisting of Islamic extremist suicide bombers, killing 52 people and injuring over 700, in the London underground station. This is probably where the support for the Iraq invasion peaked. The people of the UK, now took the terrorist situation personally and completely failed to look at the situation objectively. It is hard for me, as a Norwegian to put all the Blame on Tony Blair, as many Brits now do, years after the whole situation occurred. He was obviously empowered by his people to go through with the actions he and president George Bush had purposed. As I mentioned earlier, over time, more and more information on how Iraqi civilians were not only killed, but tortured, came to the light of the public. As the emotionally fuelled hate died down in the UK, people became a bit more objective. They now saw how terrible of an idea the Iraq invasion was. Tony Blair became the scapegoat for many of these Brits who failed to take any blame themselves. Tony Blair is to this day, remembered in the UK not as a president, but as e traitor and even a terrorist, himself.

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“Remember the ship”

Remember the ship is a poem written by the author John Agard. Agard was a short-story and poem writer from formerly known as the colony British Guiana. Agard was born in 1949 and in 1977 he made his move from Guyana to England. Knowing this, we can tell Agard has his own experience when it comes to immigrating into a whole different country, which is the theme of probably his most known poem; remember the ship.

The poem is not really discussing, but more mentioning the tragedy of the Windrush situation. Agard does so, by putting heavy focus on the word “ship”. Throughout the entire poem, he seemingly draws lines between citizenship, kinship and just ship. It is obvious that he is trying to make the sentences as positively loaded as he could manage, to try to make the reader feel the unexpected denial that he and the Windrush generation felt, when they were poorly welcomed upon their entre of the UK.

Here we can see some obvious reference to the new wave of race diversity and racism that was about the effect the UK:

will the ghost of race
become the albatross
we shoot at our cost?

From the entire poem we get hints of race involving conversations. It seems like the author want his audience to sympathize for those going through such drastic changes to their surroundings. This can definitely be applied to todays society with immigration being just as popular of a topic as ever.

Expectations

For my third year on Fagerlia VGS, I decided that one of my classes would be “social studies english”. This is a class building upon my past experiences in “international english”, which was one of my more exiting classes last year, hence why i chose english this year as well. From last year I was left pleasantly surprised by how engaging all my english classes were, I felt like I was doing something to actually learn from it, not just as a duty.

I became more and more certain I wanted english for my third and last year here on Fagerlia, although I was left with an option between english social studies or english literature. After some thinking I decided to go for social studies. As a student who already focuses on classes based of of public opinion, our society, economy and so on. I expect this class to be both intriguing and involving. Hopefully I do not set the bar too high, as international english was quite amazing.

American History X – Final Thoughts

Even though I did not watch the last 30 minutes of the film, as I was holding a presentation at that time, I have seen the movie 4 or 5 times before, so I have a relatively good memory of what happened. The movie stirs up a lot of controversy, it questions the average Americans perception one black and white peoples’ history. The main goal of the film would be to convince you that there is more to a person than what you see. Just because someone is black does not mean that they have come from a poor family, just as not every white person comes from a rich, privileged family. The movie shows you how you could easily relate to someone you think you hate more than anything in the world. It is an eye-opening film for a lot of people, although I do not think I fit into the target audience for the movie. I believe in an equal world, where everyone is given the same opportunities despite their skin-color, sexuality, and so on.

American History X, does not really come with any solutions, it addresses and sheds light on an issue. It offers a common ground for those the film is trying to impact. I think the target audience is extremists on both the black and white sides of things. It is trying to show them that although their history is different, they are not so different from each other. Personally, I know people with racist views, I can definitely recognize their arguments, but I can also recognize the flaws in their understanding of the “other side”.

The Tragic Life of Fatou

Fatou was a young girl and a domestic migrant working in London. Originally it seems she came from the Ivory Coast, she travelled through different places like Ghana and Italy, all to end up working as a domestic migrant in the UK. As she is both a female and a domestic migrant worker, she is definitely a minority, but there are people like her all over Europe. Being a domestic worker, she never found herself at home at any place, neither did she manage to establish connections, friends or respect from those around her in any places. The majority of migrant workers are surprisingly women. Which obviously adds up with Fatou and her situation.

Personal Statement

I want to be an inventor. I’ve always been someone who’s had a negative look on different inventions and how the world has been developing. I don’t see myself as an outsider who fails to accept for example technological development, but as someone who questions both the efficiency and ethics relating to it. I know for sure that I want to study a subject where I could benefit from my best features and maybe not do the job traditionally, but more creatively. I hate inventions, but I want to be inventive. I feel like I have matured immensely throughout the last few years, I used to be a shy, nervous, unsure kid who only wanted to spend time with himself and his videogames, although I have changed a lot recently, the videogames will always have a special place in my heart as an outlet to express yourself through creative thinking. I feel like I have gained enormous amounts of experience through my life, anything from doing my homework on my own since I was 6 years old, or my parents getting a divorce when I was 12 and me being the oldest of 4 brothers at that time, has affected me tremendously. I feel like for my life there was a very thin line between succeeding and disaster. There could have been so many different outcomes from my experiences, but I manged to become independent and understanding at a very young age, which has given me a big advantage in recognizing situations way quicker. My biggest strengths are being a critical thinker, who has it very easy to understand different people’s different situations. Whether I become an economic, journalist or teacher, I want to think outside the box, and focus less on “getting my job done”, but more on performing the job in the best possible way. I want my work to be understanding for everyone and a developing way of thinking more critically and diplomatic.

Liberal vs. Conservative; ISIS

I chose to look at liberals and conservatives views on ISIS. The reason i chose this topic instead of any other, was because both liberals and conservatives are against ISIS, but on a most other topics such as guns or Donald Trump, they have totally different views. I was interested in seeing how the issue is presented and tackled by both sides. From looking at (http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/#/isis) The Wall Street Journals’ page showing Facebook posts about the same issue from both a liberal and conservative perspective, we can see some minor differences between the two sides, especially in how they present the issue.

We can see that on the Liberal side, they are comparing conservatives to ISIS. This shows how much hatred the liberals can have for the other side, and this is something we saw through the entirety of Hillary’s campaign for the presidency. She tried to tackle Trump as a person, not his policies. This might be because of how different this election was for America, and how Trump made everything so much more understandable for every single American, so if Hillary would try to tackle his opinions, she would seem too “politician” like to win the argument.

On the conservative side, we can see that they put a lot of focus on guns. I think the main purpose of this is to show how dangerous ISIS, it is about scaring people into feeling like they need guns themselves, in my opinion. There were not too many good points made on the issue for either side, but it was mostly the way i was presented. I normally support  the liberal side of things, but comparing ISIS to christian conservatives was kind of crossing the line for me. The liberal side also says that the NRA is the bigger issue, and that they are way more threatening than ISIS. This is quite a bold statement in my opinion. I do not think the NRA is a bigger threat than ISIS, but i do agree that it is a more relevant issue, that we should try to come to a conclusion on.