Visiting speaker exposes anti-Semitic Arab propaganda
By Jonathan Graham
Staff Writer
The police officer sitting in the back row created a slight air of tension as the audience waited for the arrival of the speaker, Dr. Eli Avraham. His lecture, “Anti-Semitism and the Arab Media,” took place on Wednesday, March 25 in Wooten Hall 222 and showed how anti-Semitism has thrived in other parts of the world since its rise during the Holocaust.
“We tend to see the media here in the west as a tool to change the situation, the media goes and describes the situation,” said Avraham, “but in the Arab media its a little bit different.”
Dr. Avraham is the UNT Schusterman Visiting Professor of Israeli Studies and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communications at the University of Haifa, Israel. This marks his fourth and final lecture here at UNT. He was invited as part of a grant from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, in which he was required to present a lecture each semester.
The program began with an introduction to modern anti-Semitism. Examples of propaganda from Nazi Germany were shown that demonstrated to what extent Jews were persecuted. After the swift introduction, Avraham moved into the central focus of the lecture: how the Muslim Arab media uses similar propaganda to paint Jewish Israelis as their enemies.
“They use the media as a tool to, in a way, to serve and protect the government,” Avraham said in regard to why the media plays such a big role in the condemnation of Jews, “for the government, the goal is to survive, and to do that they need to use their media.”
One example, a talk-show style program, showed a reporter interviewing a very young girl who had been imprinted with strong anti-Semitic beliefs. When asked why she disliked Jews, she responded, “because they are apes and pigs,” which caused quite a few audience members to shake their heads in disbelief.
Anti-Semitism, a term coined in 1879 by German polemicist Wilhelm Marr, has existed throughout history as a conflict of religious beliefs and land control between seventeenth-century Muslims and Jews in the country of Palestine. After 1948, when Britain terminated its control over the country, anti-Semitism increased as a response to the state of Israel declaring its independence. The feelings were intensified by the Arab-Israeli War of 1948-1949, in which Israeli forces pushed out over 700,000 Arab refugees, and the Six-Day War in June 1967, where they gained control of the well-publicized West Bank, Gaza Strip, and all of Jerusalem.
Among the many stereotypes of Jews that Avraham showed, the most controversial was the “blood libel.” In this myth, Jews are accused of sacrificing Christian children to use their blood to prepare Matzoh for Passover. This was used in many of the examples that were displayed, including one soap-opera style television show in which a teenage boy was dragged into a basement and his throat slit.
The very popular show, according to Avraham, is one of many that demonize the Jews as entertainment for Arab viewers. Another television clip he played showed a long table of Jewish men, all dressed in stereotypical ultra-Orthodox clothing, discussing their plans to dominate everything and how they are using the rest of the world to accomplish that. The show portrayed all of this in the style of a western mafia movie.
Avraham’s lecture, which was very focused on the Israeli view of Arab media, was not without its share of controversy. A question from 21-year-old (don’t have info here yet) student Hisham Masri sparked a heated discussion that almost seemed to rise to the level of argument before it was stopped by Richard Golden, director of the Jewish Studies Program at UNT. The issue was raised by Masri after Avraham made a statement about the responsibility of Arabs to take care of Israeli refugees.
“A refugee is moved by force, they're not moved by choice,” said Masri during the discussion, “the Palestinians were evicted from their land and they wish to return, so I don't understand why you would mention that it should be the responsibility of the Arab world to take them in when it was clearly the Israeli world that pushed them out.”
After the lecture had finished, Masri had other concerns about Avraham’s presentation, mainly about the examples that he used.
“He's saying they're popular shows, and usually there are special series’ which show for 30 days and then they end, for like the entire year,” he said in relation to one of the television clips Avraham showed, “and I watch all those shows every year, its like a family thing. And that show is one of the ones that's shown for 30 days and then they never brought it back.”
Despite any confusion over who said what and where the information came from, one thing was made pretty clear: anti-Semitism is still very strong in the the Arab world, and it will take a lot of work to ease the tensions created by it.
"Its been 60 years, everything that's happened has happened, let's move on,” said Dr. Avraham, “let's forget that and try to get some kind of a resolution.”
Monday, March 30, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Media Writing Lab #4
Explosion near Kaufman County injures two teenage boys
By Jonathan Graham
Staff Writer
An explosion at a residence on FM 2727 last night injured four people, including two teenage boys who were airlifted from the scene.
They were apparently trying to open a 55-gallon barrel with a cutting torch just before 8 p.m., at a residence in Cerro Gordo County near the border of the City of Kaufman when the incident happened. According to a Cerro Gordo County Fire Marshall spokesman, the barrel had some sort of liquid inside it that appeared to be oil, and it was likely vapors from this that exploded.
“This is really unfortunate,” said Assistant Fire Marshall Randy Richards, “but it appears that they will all be okay.”
Two of the boys were taken from the scene by CareFlight helicopter to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. One refused treatment, and the other, aged 17, was possibly treated for first and second-degree burns on his hands and face. His parents were notified by the Fire Department around 8:05 p.m.
“We were really scared when we got that phone call,” said the 17-year-old boy’s mother, who wished to keep her and her son’s identity anonymous, “you can’t imagine how fast my heart was beating.”
According to conflicting sources, the boys were supposedly cutting the barrel for either a school project, or to make a go-kart. The barrel is not believed to be illegal, but where it came from or how the boys came into contact with it is not yet known.
By Jonathan Graham
Staff Writer
An explosion at a residence on FM 2727 last night injured four people, including two teenage boys who were airlifted from the scene.
They were apparently trying to open a 55-gallon barrel with a cutting torch just before 8 p.m., at a residence in Cerro Gordo County near the border of the City of Kaufman when the incident happened. According to a Cerro Gordo County Fire Marshall spokesman, the barrel had some sort of liquid inside it that appeared to be oil, and it was likely vapors from this that exploded.
“This is really unfortunate,” said Assistant Fire Marshall Randy Richards, “but it appears that they will all be okay.”
Two of the boys were taken from the scene by CareFlight helicopter to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. One refused treatment, and the other, aged 17, was possibly treated for first and second-degree burns on his hands and face. His parents were notified by the Fire Department around 8:05 p.m.
“We were really scared when we got that phone call,” said the 17-year-old boy’s mother, who wished to keep her and her son’s identity anonymous, “you can’t imagine how fast my heart was beating.”
According to conflicting sources, the boys were supposedly cutting the barrel for either a school project, or to make a go-kart. The barrel is not believed to be illegal, but where it came from or how the boys came into contact with it is not yet known.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Media Writing #3
Student Profile: Melissa Boughton
By Jonathan Graham
Staff Writer
Melissa Boughton is someone who has been places. Many places in fact, from growing up in New Braunfels, Texas to living to Europe for a couple of weeks, and it seems that she isn’t done traveling yet.
She was born in Houston, Texas, on December 3, 1987, in a family that as she grew up moved from place to place fairly frequently. It was a “kind of nomadic” family, according to Boughton. Eventually they settled into the South Texas town of New Braunfels, where she lived and grew up in for the longest period of time.
In high school, Boughton gained an interest in photography that shaped her vision of what she wanted to do as a career. When she graduated a year early, a great achievement by any standards, she received a trip to Europe as a graduation gift. This trip, along with her interest in photography made a huge impression on her life’s goals and world view.
During the trip, she lived with a good friend of hers for three weeks in Germany, during which time she also visited Paris and Luxembourg. The trip showed her so much about how the cultures of other countries and how different they are, that Germany is now where she wants to make a living as a photographer.
“I just like the culture over there better than here,” said Boughton on why she chooses Germany.
After her life-changing trip, and some family troubles back at home, she settled here at UNT to learn about how to manage living on your own. “I needed to find out about those things that your parents always tell you about doing,” she said.
Now 21 years old and a student in the Mayborn School of Journalism at UNT, the world has yet to see what impressions will be made by the ambitions and outspoken Melissa Boughton.
By Jonathan Graham
Staff Writer
Melissa Boughton is someone who has been places. Many places in fact, from growing up in New Braunfels, Texas to living to Europe for a couple of weeks, and it seems that she isn’t done traveling yet.
She was born in Houston, Texas, on December 3, 1987, in a family that as she grew up moved from place to place fairly frequently. It was a “kind of nomadic” family, according to Boughton. Eventually they settled into the South Texas town of New Braunfels, where she lived and grew up in for the longest period of time.
In high school, Boughton gained an interest in photography that shaped her vision of what she wanted to do as a career. When she graduated a year early, a great achievement by any standards, she received a trip to Europe as a graduation gift. This trip, along with her interest in photography made a huge impression on her life’s goals and world view.
During the trip, she lived with a good friend of hers for three weeks in Germany, during which time she also visited Paris and Luxembourg. The trip showed her so much about how the cultures of other countries and how different they are, that Germany is now where she wants to make a living as a photographer.
“I just like the culture over there better than here,” said Boughton on why she chooses Germany.
After her life-changing trip, and some family troubles back at home, she settled here at UNT to learn about how to manage living on your own. “I needed to find out about those things that your parents always tell you about doing,” she said.
Now 21 years old and a student in the Mayborn School of Journalism at UNT, the world has yet to see what impressions will be made by the ambitions and outspoken Melissa Boughton.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Media Writing Lab #2
Grateful Dead front man dies at 53
By Jonathan Graham
Staff Writer
Jerry Garcia was a driving force in American culture. After founding the band that would come to be known as the Grateful Dead, and gathering thousands of faithful fans, he passed away Aug. 9, 1995 in Marin County, Calif.
Jerome John Garcia was born on Aug. 1, 1942 in San Francisco, Calif. After witnessing the death of his father Jose Garcia, a bandleader, and being raised by his mother for most of his life, he became interested in playing the guitar at age 15.
“When I first heard electric guitar, when I was fifteen, that's what I wanted to play. I petitioned my mom to get me one, so she finally did for my birthday,” said Garcia in a 1993 interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, “I started banging away on it without having the slightest idea of . . . anything. I didn't know how to tune it up, I had no idea,” Garcia was a devoted fan of writer Jack Kerouac, who was famous for writing the influential novel “On The Road” in 1957. After one year, Garcia quit high school and worked as a salesman and teacher for a while until he eventually joined the Army. He received an early discharge and began taking classes at what is now known as the San Francisco Art Institute.
At the age of 23 he created the Warlocks, a rock group that consisted of members Garcia himself, Bob Weir, Ron McKernan, Phil Lesh, and Bill Kreutzman. After finding out the name Warlocks was already taken, the name of the band was changed to the Grateful Dead.
The band gained widespread popularity over the next 31 years, and collected a devoted group of followers, known as “deadheads,” who followed them from show to show around the country.
"If I knew what made us popular, I'd bottle it. Whatever it is, it invented us, we didn't invent it. The audience thinks we're providing more than music, but we don't let on what we're providing, intentionally,” Garcia said in a 1991 New York Times interview.
Garcia suffered from health problems throughout his life, from diabetes to drug use. He was an admitted user of heroin and psychedelic drugs. In the last few years of his life he had committed to stop smoking and using drugs, and had hired a personal trainer.
According to the Marin County sheriff’s office, Garcia died of a heart attack he suffered while in his bed at Serenity Knolls, a treatment center for drug addiction he was residing in at the time.
He is survived by his wife, Deborah Koons Garcia, and four daughters: Heather, Annabelle, Teresa, and Keelin. Funeral arrangements are undecided at this time.
“Ideally I would just like to disappear gracefully and not leave behind any legacy to hang people up,” Garcia said in a 1993 interview with KROG-FM, “I don’t want people to agonizing over who or what I was when I was here when I’m not here anymore. I would like to be thought of as a competent musician. That would be good. I’d like that.”
By Jonathan Graham
Staff Writer
Jerry Garcia was a driving force in American culture. After founding the band that would come to be known as the Grateful Dead, and gathering thousands of faithful fans, he passed away Aug. 9, 1995 in Marin County, Calif.
Jerome John Garcia was born on Aug. 1, 1942 in San Francisco, Calif. After witnessing the death of his father Jose Garcia, a bandleader, and being raised by his mother for most of his life, he became interested in playing the guitar at age 15.
“When I first heard electric guitar, when I was fifteen, that's what I wanted to play. I petitioned my mom to get me one, so she finally did for my birthday,” said Garcia in a 1993 interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, “I started banging away on it without having the slightest idea of . . . anything. I didn't know how to tune it up, I had no idea,” Garcia was a devoted fan of writer Jack Kerouac, who was famous for writing the influential novel “On The Road” in 1957. After one year, Garcia quit high school and worked as a salesman and teacher for a while until he eventually joined the Army. He received an early discharge and began taking classes at what is now known as the San Francisco Art Institute.
At the age of 23 he created the Warlocks, a rock group that consisted of members Garcia himself, Bob Weir, Ron McKernan, Phil Lesh, and Bill Kreutzman. After finding out the name Warlocks was already taken, the name of the band was changed to the Grateful Dead.
The band gained widespread popularity over the next 31 years, and collected a devoted group of followers, known as “deadheads,” who followed them from show to show around the country.
"If I knew what made us popular, I'd bottle it. Whatever it is, it invented us, we didn't invent it. The audience thinks we're providing more than music, but we don't let on what we're providing, intentionally,” Garcia said in a 1991 New York Times interview.
Garcia suffered from health problems throughout his life, from diabetes to drug use. He was an admitted user of heroin and psychedelic drugs. In the last few years of his life he had committed to stop smoking and using drugs, and had hired a personal trainer.
According to the Marin County sheriff’s office, Garcia died of a heart attack he suffered while in his bed at Serenity Knolls, a treatment center for drug addiction he was residing in at the time.
He is survived by his wife, Deborah Koons Garcia, and four daughters: Heather, Annabelle, Teresa, and Keelin. Funeral arrangements are undecided at this time.
“Ideally I would just like to disappear gracefully and not leave behind any legacy to hang people up,” Garcia said in a 1993 interview with KROG-FM, “I don’t want people to agonizing over who or what I was when I was here when I’m not here anymore. I would like to be thought of as a competent musician. That would be good. I’d like that.”
Media Writing Lab #1
Serious fire on Main Street leaves sixteen families without homes
By Jonathan Graham
Staff Writer
An apartment building fire at 123 South Main Street on Monday injured two firefighters and left more than 40 people without homes.
The 4-alarm fire, still under investigation by the Denton Fire Department, damaged ten apartment units and destroyed six. The department believes that a child playing with matches may have been responsible for starting the fire.
“This was really quite a serious fire,” said Denton Fire Department spokeswoman Bettye Jablonski in a press conference held Monday afternoon.
According the residents who witnessed the fire, the victims knocked on doors to check that no one was left in the building during the fire. One woman, who was trying to escape the building, dropped her baby from the second floor balcony to someone on the ground floor. The baby, named Angel, was caught safely and unharmed.
No residents were injured in the fire, but two firefighters received minor injuries when a brick wall fell on top of them. One has only cuts and bruises on their arms and hands, and the other has a broken arm. Both were treated at the scene, but the firefighter with the broken arm was taken to Denton Regional Medical Center afterwards, and will be held overnight.
The Red Cross is supporting the sixteen displaced families right now with food, clothing, and household items, and the landlord of the apartment complex is providing vacant apartments for them.
By Jonathan Graham
Staff Writer
An apartment building fire at 123 South Main Street on Monday injured two firefighters and left more than 40 people without homes.
The 4-alarm fire, still under investigation by the Denton Fire Department, damaged ten apartment units and destroyed six. The department believes that a child playing with matches may have been responsible for starting the fire.
“This was really quite a serious fire,” said Denton Fire Department spokeswoman Bettye Jablonski in a press conference held Monday afternoon.
According the residents who witnessed the fire, the victims knocked on doors to check that no one was left in the building during the fire. One woman, who was trying to escape the building, dropped her baby from the second floor balcony to someone on the ground floor. The baby, named Angel, was caught safely and unharmed.
No residents were injured in the fire, but two firefighters received minor injuries when a brick wall fell on top of them. One has only cuts and bruises on their arms and hands, and the other has a broken arm. Both were treated at the scene, but the firefighter with the broken arm was taken to Denton Regional Medical Center afterwards, and will be held overnight.
The Red Cross is supporting the sixteen displaced families right now with food, clothing, and household items, and the landlord of the apartment complex is providing vacant apartments for them.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
My gamertag.
I started playing games around the time the SNES came out, but it wasn't on the SNES. It was on a hand-me-down NES that one of my cousins gave me at christmas time... when he got his SNES. It had a bunch of games, most of which I can't remember the names of. I know there was Tecmo Super Bowl (which I could never figure out how to play at my age), some game where you run forward dodging things and jumping over big black gaps in the ground that I've never been able to remember the name of to this day, and of course Super Mario Bros.. I had fun with this system, as it was my first video game system ever, even though I never beat any of the games I had for it. Eventually I guess I grew up, got stupid, and sold it or gave it away. Only now do I regret doing that.
I never had a subscription to a gaming magazine. The reason for this was that I grew up in a lower middle class family. We weren't poor, but I knew what we could afford and knew when not to ask for something. The $10-$20 to get a subscription to EGM, Game-Informer, etc. seemed like a lot of money to me at the time, and I never had a community to see what was good, bad, and coming out soon. So when my real start into gaming started in 1996, when my parents gave me a Nintendo 64 for Christmas, I still did not have any knowledge of what was considered good and bad. I think I somehow still made at least decent choices though; Goldeneye, Yoshi's Story, Pokemon Stadium are the ones that I remember having. I also didn't ever have as many games as my friends did. This, along with my little experience of the console generation before, would play heavily into my gaming name later. I also have never and still don't have anything resembling a PC that can handle PC games, so I never played them.
I had the N64 with just a few games at a time until the next generation came about. I first got an Xbox, then a Gamecube about a year after. (Note the lack of ps1 and ps2 in all this, I was never even introduced to Sony's systems before, and didn't own a ps2 until maybe 2 years after I had both Xbox and Gamecube. Even with the newest systems and games I still wasn't caught up.) I think I finally had fallen into the "hardcore gamer" demographic. I had the Game-Informer subscription at Gamestop, and constantly checked sites like Gamespot for news and reviews. I felt like part of something, and was starting to understand the difference in the way we think of ourselves and the way non-gamers see us. That sounds all preachy, but I'm talking about a few years ago, before the Wii.
When the Xbox 360 arrived, and I had to think of a name to give myself. I reflected on my personal gaming history, and what it meant about me compared to most other people who play video games as a major hobby or job. When all the thinking had finished, I came to my amazing conclusion...I was still a noob. Even with all the interest I had in the medium and read about it, I still had only been putting my toes in the pool at each major era in gaming history. So I accepted it, and made my gamertag accordingly. It was to be cmpLtNOOb, short for "complete noob." I mixed up the capitalization and ways of abbreviating because it just seems like that's what you do with gamertags. Since then I have pretty much used that name for everything gaming related. My gamertag, PSN ID, username on 1up, Giant Bomb, forums, etc.
So now we've come to end of my little tale, hope you enjoyed it. I don't think I will want to change my gamertag, it sort of protects me from being arrogant online, by me basically saying "I suck at games." I'm proud of how well I have managed to keep up with this wildly changing medium, and my gamertag helps me to appreciate where I came from and how I came to be where I am right now: 19, in college, poor, barely scraping enough money together to pay for rent and Street Fighter 4, and getting an Electronic News degree so that I can do the thing that I have wanted to do since I first realized people do it--write about video games.
I never had a subscription to a gaming magazine. The reason for this was that I grew up in a lower middle class family. We weren't poor, but I knew what we could afford and knew when not to ask for something. The $10-$20 to get a subscription to EGM, Game-Informer, etc. seemed like a lot of money to me at the time, and I never had a community to see what was good, bad, and coming out soon. So when my real start into gaming started in 1996, when my parents gave me a Nintendo 64 for Christmas, I still did not have any knowledge of what was considered good and bad. I think I somehow still made at least decent choices though; Goldeneye, Yoshi's Story, Pokemon Stadium are the ones that I remember having. I also didn't ever have as many games as my friends did. This, along with my little experience of the console generation before, would play heavily into my gaming name later. I also have never and still don't have anything resembling a PC that can handle PC games, so I never played them.
I had the N64 with just a few games at a time until the next generation came about. I first got an Xbox, then a Gamecube about a year after. (Note the lack of ps1 and ps2 in all this, I was never even introduced to Sony's systems before, and didn't own a ps2 until maybe 2 years after I had both Xbox and Gamecube. Even with the newest systems and games I still wasn't caught up.) I think I finally had fallen into the "hardcore gamer" demographic. I had the Game-Informer subscription at Gamestop, and constantly checked sites like Gamespot for news and reviews. I felt like part of something, and was starting to understand the difference in the way we think of ourselves and the way non-gamers see us. That sounds all preachy, but I'm talking about a few years ago, before the Wii.
When the Xbox 360 arrived, and I had to think of a name to give myself. I reflected on my personal gaming history, and what it meant about me compared to most other people who play video games as a major hobby or job. When all the thinking had finished, I came to my amazing conclusion...I was still a noob. Even with all the interest I had in the medium and read about it, I still had only been putting my toes in the pool at each major era in gaming history. So I accepted it, and made my gamertag accordingly. It was to be cmpLtNOOb, short for "complete noob." I mixed up the capitalization and ways of abbreviating because it just seems like that's what you do with gamertags. Since then I have pretty much used that name for everything gaming related. My gamertag, PSN ID, username on 1up, Giant Bomb, forums, etc.
So now we've come to end of my little tale, hope you enjoyed it. I don't think I will want to change my gamertag, it sort of protects me from being arrogant online, by me basically saying "I suck at games." I'm proud of how well I have managed to keep up with this wildly changing medium, and my gamertag helps me to appreciate where I came from and how I came to be where I am right now: 19, in college, poor, barely scraping enough money together to pay for rent and Street Fighter 4, and getting an Electronic News degree so that I can do the thing that I have wanted to do since I first realized people do it--write about video games.
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