Author: Jalynn Thompson (Page 1 of 2)

I think its important that they are documenting the deaths of journalists.  Journalists in the war zone can experience a lot of danger and acknowledging their deaths reminds the public.  It also is interesting that most reporting comes from Israel for safety.  I think this directly relates to the disinformation article.  We can say that journalists only have one view of the conflict and also can’t verify the inside personally.  I think this article on disinformation is very informative about certain practices.  Yesterday I attended a meeting with a woman who has degrees in journalism and law and does tech policy work.  She talked about her time at twitter during the insurrection and how the policy was already weak and that with Elon Musk and X he has destroyed policy against disinformation and hate speech.  I also think the traumatic and graphic images that people on a daily basis reshare make people want to not engage with content.  I liked that the article encouraged not having to engage with this media.  Even though I understand why people have the inclination to do it, I don’t think its as productive to the cause as some people think.

On the Racial reckoning the same person at the meeting talked about how she worked to create better policy and the struggle as a person of color to achieve change.  She said she had to come to a point where she realized that no one policy was going to fix racism.  She also had to be ok with the fact that policy is not a fixture and couls be and probably would be changed once she left that space.  She said it is draining at times to be apart of but its worthwhile to do.  She closed by saying its hard to get your foot in the door in these spaces but once you do its easier to walk in.  And instead of closing the door behind you, throw away the key and let others in with you.  I think this was very important and speaks to both the costs and achievements of doing work where marginalized voices can be present through you.

I picked this picture of George Santos.  It was about his final removal from the House of Representatives.  I think its iconic for so many reasons obviously it is a meme.  I think however that it also encapsulates many things addressed in the new yorker article.  It first shows the spectacle that Santos has created in the media and the public. I think it also represents how politicians want to be a spectacle and how out of control the government has gotten.  The article’s sub line was: Washington finally rediscovers how to give a grifting congressman the boot.  In the picture Santos is leaning into this character he has created.  It shows the person he has tried to show all this time.  X has had so many memes and tweets about Santos and I feel like the public interest is there.george-santos

I think that it is important the organizations are helping to fund things like this graphic novel.  Art is integral to social change and also helps convey stories long after their moments have pasted.  I think also especially as the demographics of schools change and some children over the course of their education in Germany see this it helps.  Making books or art like this helps build understanding for children and make the event normative and children’s experiences inclusive.  I think that it is a worthy cause.

In relation to expanding the scope of being prosecuted for war crimes in the holocaust I have mixed feelings.  I think that in some ways we will never know who agreed with this regime anf who went along with it for means of protecting themselves and their families.  Making it more expansive allows possibly more people brought to justice.  However it feels very late. Very few people are still alive anf so instead of investigating everyone its basically a tax on who has managed to live long enough for this change of heart.  Though it is not double jeopardy in the legal sense it seems like it theoretically.  In the immediate aftermath of the war the government and allied powers chose who to try and whose crimes could not be.  Essentially in the public eye they were acquitted of their role.  To have a change of heart and widen the scope convicts them of crimes they were guilty of from the beginning. To say there is no statue of limitations on murder is true but these are not new crimes so it seems a reach to me.  I also don’t feel it does the justice they think it does.  I could easily see the far-right spinning it in an unfavorable light.  I understand the point of bringing it back to public attention the horrors of the Holocaust but it seems more symbolic than productive.

This discussion of prosecuting Russia makes me think of Israel and Palestine. Many people are calling for prosecution of Israel on the world Stage.  If in a war where much of the World Powers are on the side of Ukraine and still prosecution seems out of reach, the chances of Israel being prosecuted seem grim.  The Roman statue and Israels exclusion from it put the war crime of aggression out of  reach for prosecution.  Also it was important to note the differing Opinions of the West and the Global south about solutions.  The Global South’s apprehension came out of the economic power that Russia has.  I wonder if this figures into the Global South’s opinion on Israel and Palestine as well.

Looking at Eli Saslow’s works I think they are very compelling works.  They all read like profile’s but also highlight important issues.  The article about the bus driver is compelling because he plays up how stressful her job is and also the bravery that she displays.  Similarly, in the article about the billionaire he offers almost opposing sides of them.  We see the almost addictive habit the billionaire has to keep making money but also his desire to give back.  I like that both start and end with quotes from the subjects.  While they may throughout the piece broaden the frame of the story this centers the subject.

I was particularly interested in the article about Journalism and racial reckoning.  Just hearing the names of the reporters that they hired produced a very salient reaction fore me.  All I could think was how in modern times could we really think having one person covering a beat of an extensive magnitude is justice to anyone.  I know much comes back to Black Americans and the BLM Movement helped spark important change.  But there are many other important  and historically relevant cultures to particular areas a newsroom may cover.  Having one person from a particular minority community speak for all is offensive.  It was also disheartening the expectations some papers had for sometimes emerging departments.  The fact that some people were required to put out the same amount of work while having to start from scratch with contacts or turn out more stories to keep up with page views are insane.  I appreciated the belief that including diversity in all stories and subjects. The intention of diversity movements and reform is to get to the point where it is the standard and not atypical.  I liked that one writer was conscience of going to professors from historically black colleges and not just pwi professors.  Its little things that can go far in making real change.

I also was interested in the war tribunal and specifically Gary Bass’s book.  The more I think about them in the context of Nuremberg and Tokyo or even in the wars that are unfolding presently I feel very pessimistic.  I took a class about Environmental Policy and we discussed at length about how hard it is to incentivize country participation and also to hold those who were apart of treaties, parties, agreements, etc accountable.  I think much of what we talked about is relevant.  There are always economic incentives and disincentives that permeate how a countries held accountable.  It is a major reason why the US is never held accountable.  Also due to sovereignty over your own country there is no legitimacy in international processes unless nation give it that.  When it no longer fits their needs a country can choose to leave agreements which weakens legitimacy.  I think even as I am aware of the atrocities our country has committed.  I think its a foregone conclusion that no one will ever be tried and convicted in the international courts.  I think also on some level the western influence as we have been taught through our historical education is that we as the USA are the sole arbiters of justice.  We see injustice and we go in and stop it.  We can’t be convicted because we are the ones that convict.  Anything that is done is a means that justifies our hopeful ends.  While this is false and western centric view I think for so long the US has operated under this mentality for so long.  I think this is why Bass can point out the hypocrisy of our country but does not call for much further.  In many ways it is an accepted truth.

I really enjoyed all of the readings we had to do this week.  But I think the one that captivated me the most was the “What the Garbage Knows,”.  It was such a well done story because it takes this one man’s story and ties it to so many of the issues that face Cairo and Egypt.  As someone who is not familiar with the geopolitical landscape of this country but in seeing it translated through this man’s life I was able to get a clearer understanding of the society he inhabited.  I appreciated that is started pretty informally and was about Sayyid and then unfolds about how the journalist came to meet him. I also appreciated that we learned more about Sayyid organically and his life unfolded as the story progressed.  This felt liek we were in the shoes of the writer as when we get to know someone we see them as these very one dimensional figures that is shaped by how we meet them.  There is this one cool thing like how he knows so much about people from his job picking up their trash.  But then Sayyid becomes this complex character and we learn about his home life and more of the complexity of who he is as a person.  I think the author does. A good job of inserting some of the biases he may have had about Sayyid like how well off he was and letting the discovery of his relative well being play later int he story.  Overall, what I loved most was that this story affected my mood throughout.  It started off very entertaining and gripped me with some of its humor.  But then it became sadder and also I questioned Sayyid as a person because his flaws were revealed.  And then I felt anxious about the deterioration of their marriage and wanted to see how it would resolve.  The ending nicely structures the relationship Sayyid and Wahiba, his wife, with the conditions of the country after revolution.

I liked also the sample of the Naked Don’t Fear the Water.  I feel like we were starting to get a good picture of Omar and Matthieu’s relationship.  I however, don’t think I can make a fully informed decision about my opinion of the piece because we were write at the beginning of the story when the sample cuts off.  I can only glean from the book review that it is an honest account but I feel like I won’t pass judgements on the piece yet.  I think embeds are very interesting and this book was in many ways in embed though not in the military obviously.  I find it incredibly brave that anyone would willing choose to enter into such dangerous situations.  I understood Matthieu’s willingness to go through the process with his friend but the journalists who willing entered dangerous territory seems so far fetched to me.  Lastly Dancing For Their Lives I feel did a really good job of sharing the overall story.  We didn’t go in depth to any one person as much as the previous two do but I think we can get a sense that these women are doing what it takes to survive.  I thought that the line “Lingering together in this comfortable female place, homesick, they were preparing to live off their bodies,” was particularly a brilliant line.  I think it set up the piece well and connected to the title of the piece as well.

I found the readings this week interesting.  Especially because it related a lot to what we saw and heard while we were in Berlin.  The first article really grounded a lot of what is being shown in the media.  Even as I read some of the other articles and current event on the war it was obvious the biases that can sometimes bleed through.  The way in which sometimes the articles emphasizes the disinformation for things Israel has done and then will say something about Hamas or Palestine.  I don’t know if it is intentional but I saw it after reading the first article.  I also think these articles about disinformation made me think about my social media.  We read how the Ukrainian War was remarked as the first Tiktok War.  The use of social media can be very difficult.  In many ways there is propaganda that is being pushed.  We want people to believe in our viewpoints and so we can promote harms against people and also so that we can make apparent what the other side is doing.  When there is this incentive it can be dangerous.  People who want clikcs or shares or likes can have the incentive to put out dangerous and false narratives to get people with this goal to share the post on their platforms.  I am scared as AI advances that people may start to use that to fabricate pictures from war.  At least with reusing exisiting pictures from other wars it can be tracked rather quickly.  However, AI is dangerous in that sometimes it isn’t easy to tell.  Furthermore in one article it cited that when people were looking to find coverage of the ground do to Israel bombing towers that allowed service and electricity much of the documentation that we saw in the Ukraine War did not happen in this current war.  The absence of this made people more eager and also more susceptible to disinformation.

I think also the article about the US military and the use of cyber warfare was really interesting.  As I was reading I thought it was cool but alos weird.  This is because they essentially were acting like the actors you see in movies and studying peoples habits.  Especially when they were doing the simple hacks that would annoy people as a means of slowing down this very serious terrorist organization.  Also, found it interesting and wondered at the beginning why they would be sharing this.  It seemed like the type of work that should be kept secret but here they were broadcasting it on multiple news sources.  But then when they explained that in order for them to be dangerous people had to know about it I understood.  I also as the pointed out thought about how talk of Russia hacking us was so prevalent.  I would always wonder what we did when they did it and how dangerous it was to our national security.  The article pointing out that we didn’t know how we reacted was really cool because it means that there may be actions that we do back but that as the public we are not privy too.  I like them are concerned with as cyber warfare becomes an important means of combat what that may mean for our society.  A lot of times we get away with engaging in wars because they don’t happen on U.S. soil.  With cyber warfare this may just change the game and eventually have repercussions on citizens of the US.

Monday, October 16 marked our last day in Nuremberg and our first in the city of Berlin. 

In our final hours in Nuremberg, in the southern state of Bavaria, the group gathered inside the train station to prepare for the next phase of our trip. We grabbed lunch at the station, which offered a variety of options — cannoli, currywurst, enormous blocks of cheese, and of course, American fast food chains. (Dunkin Donuts has a different menu in Germany!)

Then, it was time to hop on our train, a sleek, high-speed vehicle that carried us 275 miles in about three hours. With no time to lose upon arrival, we crossed the street to our dinner destination. The Cube, a large glass structure adjacent to the station, is home to a food hall on the ground floor where we were set to meet a group of volunteers.

Their task, we found, is to meet Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war as they get off the train in Berlin. I had the pleasure of eating at a table with three of these volunteers. Zahra is a young filmmaker who worked primarily in the children’s corner that was set up in the train station, helping out during the height of surging arrivals from Ukraine last year. Alp, who is from Turkey but also spent three years in New York and now makes his home in Berlin, shared with us his knowledge of the city, its changing neighborhoods, and its many communities. David turned out to be a bit of a train enthusiast, telling us about his visit to the MTA Museum in New York City, and that he initially got involved with greeting refugees simply because he worked at the train station and was there when refugees began to arrive.

Trains were a running theme throughout the day; aside from our three-hour journey and our discussions of migrant travels, weekly train passes were also distributed during dinner. David explained to us that, although Germany’s trains have a reputation for modernity, the country only uses a paper ticketing system. There are no turnstiles in the subway here, and no place to scan a ticket before boarding; whether or not your ticket is checked is solely up to whether or not a conductor on the train asks you to produce it. In fact, after riding a high-speed train to Nuremberg and multiple metro trains in Munich earlier in the week, today was the first time my ticket was actually checked. (Imagine the money we could’ve saved had we skipped buying the tickets in the first place!)

All of this is to say, trains produce a lot of material for discussion, and actually gave us an opportunity to connect with these new people we met in Berlin tonight. Lively discussions bounced back and forth as we shared stories about lackluster American public transit, and compared higher- and lower-tech ticketing infrastructures.

Expectedly, it’s sometimes easy to feel out of place as an American abroad, especially when you don’t speak German, and especially when you’re traveling with a large and noticeable group. It’s nice to come across a common experience with people — something as simple, even childlike, as the enjoyment of a train.

I find this weeks readings really interesting because it further complicates the issue of accountability.  When we see overwhelming support for Ukraine its seems difficult to understand why an ICC can’t join to prosecute Putin.  On the flip side even though I see this clear interest in holding Putin accountable he does seem a bit untouchable.  Like how could they realistically convict and imprison him and his highest leaders.  Ukraine is fighting for the right to convict Putin in the international court but there are so many roadblocks to achieving this.  What was interesting is how in the UN vote a lot of countries that generally condemn Russia abstained in the vote for a international tribunal to prosecute Russia. This introduces the political and economic incentives that make it difficult for people to choose between two opposing Powers.  With the US and Western Powers on one side and Russia, China, etc on the other.  These developing countries have to try to align themselves in the best interest of their countries.  This while it seems obvious now was not apparent in many of the earlier pieces we read in the past few weeks.  The US and Western Powers or even just developed nations have the privilege to be able to condemn Putin without facing consequences to their economy.  While this sets them apart to be leaders of the cause but also due to the democratic nature of international law puts us in a difficult position.  We can’t reach a democratic majority when the power imbalance exists between Nations outside of the apparent situation.

While the focus is on Ukraine in their present battle in the Russian War on Ukraine it is important to think about the justice that hasn’t been served.  Syrian people are still fighting for the crimes against their families to be tried and for their killers and tortures to be convicted. I really admire the lawyers that were not afraid to speak up in the face of the brutal regime.  And that even once they were able to reach safety are still fighting for justice.  It was cool that there is a place that has immense documentation of the torture that is kept secret to protect it. While we are key to try to prosecute Putin we should not forget about the past.  All war crimes should be prosecuted.  Whats more is that the Crimes of Aggression article brings up how only Blacks and Africans have been prosecuted.  This further adds this racial aspect and furthers the point that people in powerful countries can get away with crimes.

Enemy of Mankind is also a really good listen to understand the reasoning behind international trials in America.  Jurisprudence is a precarious thing that strikes the balance between precedent, constitutional review and changing eras.  The Alien Tort seems as much of a constitutional  review as a political response to outside pressure.  It is also interesting that laws that are largely forgotten can take new purpose.  That in taking this court case we could establish new precedent that could set of new commitment to human rights.

For my Final Project I am interested in focusing on Syrian refugees.  Right now I am mostly leaning towards looking at educational attainment and the difficulties of it.  I know there is always a discussion of forced migration and its effect on educational attainment.  From what I have seen in my research it can be quite difficult for Syrian refugees to adapt once in Germany.  I think over the entire course of education from grammar school all throughout higher education there is a struggle for people.  I think I would particularly focus on from the age around 12 and up.  This is because children born in the 2010s are at the age to have been apart of the crisis as well and be entering into their teenage years in the coming years.  There is however particular interest in Syrians aged 15–24 “whose higher education, professional development, and technical training has been disrupted as a result of the violence and general deterioration of Syria’s high schools, its public and private universities,”.  This is starting even before they were refugees in Germany.  We can then add in the burden of having to learn a completely new language and even having to repeat grades.  In the courses Syrian refugees are put into they often don’t focus on math and sciences which arguably in this day and age is very important to many careers. In higher education there is no distinction between an asylum seeker or refugee and an international student.  For the sake of equality this is not exactly an honest representation of their experiences.  I think also adding in the trauma and stress that can impact performance and ambition I think this is a worthwhile pursuit.  I think speaking to students across the specified age demographic would be helpful.  Also maybe talking to school officials in places that particularly have Syrian populations would be enlightening about how Germany accepts Syrian children.  Additionally maybe looking into the mental health aspect would be enlightening or resources to help.

I think that this could be a part of the greater discussion of the German integration regime.  My thesis is focusing on Post-interment social mobility of Japanese Americans.  This involves the discussion of assimilation ideas of Japanese Americans and opportunity and the imagined social structures that Japanese people were expected to uphold.  I think education and citizenship play a role in Germany seeing Syrians as a part of their country.  Right now Syrians make up almost 1% of the German population.  It would maybe suggest that Germany’s policy of integration over multiculturalism obscures the needs of Syrian refugees in order to actually succeed successfully in Germany. As I did research it showed that some Syrian refugees that desired higher education instead took up apprenticeships because there were so many barriers to education.  I think talking to immigration lawyers in Germany or even policy makers around the crisis might be enlightening to my final project endeavors.  This might be a bit expansive right now but I think starting big might allow me to hone the final topic.

I think this problem of accountability in wars of aggressions is so important but it can almost feel futile to attempt.  I want justice for the people who have faced horrible atrocities but across international borders it is so hard to do.  In my environment class last year we talked about treaties and laws and what it took for some to succeed and why most failed.  It went back the fact that even though national laws are binding, international laws can’t be enforced unless the countries apart of it agree to enforce it.  It is often easy to walk away from treaties that are not convenient to you countries agenda and often there isn’t a means to penalize that country in order to induce enforcement.  It is at this inability to enforce treaties or require participation that  we have this difficulty.  Most of the articles really hit home how difficult it would be to even establish the court to even prosecute the war crimes.  But then the question that is next is who will actually be prosecuted.  I mean even in America our country has committed war crimes that will never be prosecuted and what does that mean for anyone else.

This week in us looking at how civilian data and footage has been sued to find and prosecute war crimes and criminals I thought of my own research I have been doing.  I am apart of the Just Data Lab and have been doing research on the use of cell phones for tracking citizens.  I specifically look at how law enforcement tracks protestors.  We see the ways that the government can gain access to so much personal information through facial recognition, license scanner,  consumer data etc.  And every time I look up these sources there is an article about the danger of the ease of accessibility.  Then when  it comes to horrific atrocities  we are ok with allowing privacy to be breached in pursuit of these criminals.  I myself felt vindication in seeing how they were able to track important war crimes and locating the concentration camps in China.  Even when it came to the insurrection both private citizens and the FBI were able to use social media, data , geolocation etc. it was a collective effort.  I thought a lot about how we are able to reconcile these two similar uses of data.  I think as the Bellingcat documentary said its partly because when it is citizens doing it there is a lot more transparency in open source journalism that makes people more comfortable.  And then also of course our sense of law and order.  That if you commit these crimes you in a moral sense forfeit the right to privacy and we got to any means in order to bring justice to those impacted.  I think however the work of open source journalists is really cool and important.  Particularly I though it was so amazing how the architects were able to use the memories of blindfolded formerly imprisoend Syrians to recreate the inside of the Sednaya prison.

I found the readings deeply moving and also difficult at times to comprehend and process.  I started with the second assigned reading.  First I saw the picture of Yazmin and then I read after what happened to her.  I thought that the burning had been inflicted o her.  But then to read that she lit her self on fire from trauma and that she thought she was being recaptured was something that truly demonstrates the horrors that they faced.  The stories we read this week further showed the brutality that was inflicted on Syrians, Yazidi, and people in Iraq.  The brutality was often indiscriminate and also scarier because it was so unpredictable.  I found problem with the author of the beekeeper saying that the boys had it worse.  I feel like victims should never be weigher against each other and also that boys and girls each had horrific and traumatizing experiences that they had to survive.  Nobody left their capture unscathed.

I think furthermore that what was overarching necessity for all survivors was the necessity of mental health and rehabilitation.  As I read I just kept realizing that many of these people would have to watch the fathers, brothers, husbands die or hear about their deaths.  However, they were fighting to survive and so they did not have real time to process their deaths.  The trauma to have to repress your sorrow and fight for you and sometimes your remaining family to survive is an immense emotional burden.  This on top of whatever horrors they faced after irreparably changes who you are as a person.  While being able to escape is the first step there is so much that it takes to actually start to recover from such traumatic events.

I think another article that was so interesting was the one about Halabi.  He was such an enigma in the article.  I mean I felt like as the story unfolded more parts of him were exposed but at the same time he became more shrouded  and secrecy.  I think even by the end the person writing the article didn’t even really know who he was or what he stood for.  I read Halabi as a man that would do anything to survive and that included leaving his wife and children behind and telling whatever stories that he could in order to achieve this. While there were stories of him helping or not being as violent there are also accounts of him being aware of the torture and oppression so many faced during his time in the intelligence in Syria.  I think is there ever an innocent person who is a member of a government body that represses people.  How do we justify allowing the possibility of refugee status for him.  But then also as it was shown in the article he played a very small role in a much larger regime.  They were after him because he was the highest government figure in Europe.  As the article pointed out is this really justice if you were to try this small scale person for crimes when there are much bigger players still roaming free.