What experiences have awakened your interest and will help you contribute to the Global Initiatives Program at Poly? In what ways do you hope that the Global Scholars program will expand and deepen your global perspectives?
I am really lucky and proud that my family loves to travel and can travel a lot, both in the US and internationally, often to unconventional places and less often to more touristy destinations. I have been from the Louvre in Paris to Mao’s tomb in Beijing all in one summer. My earliest memory was me running down a cobblestone street in Venice when I was three, and most of my memories from when I was younger today are thousands of miles away from LA. Some stick out more than others though, and have enlightened me into the global traveler and global student I am today. I remember visiting French Polynesia again in third grade, and my parents made an effort to have us stay in a real local environment this time, rather than a western hotel. I do not remember the specific island we stayed on, but it was a pretty unassertive hostel with a lot of space. At the time, my Kindle Fire enveloped my world, and I was glued to that thing whenever I could pry it away from my dad. When I was not swimming or snorkeling that trip, I was playing Minecraft in a hammock, which I never got bored of. The native Polynesian owners of the hostel fashioned it in a way with a lot of communal spaces for eating, cooking, and whatnot, and I brought my Kindle everywhere. I remember seeing a kid around my age throughout the grounds, who played soccer which I played too at the time. The kid did not speak English, but eventually one of us found enough courage to attempt to ask the other to play, and I just recall playing soccer with him for a few hours, and me being not the most socially conscious kid, really wanted to go play Minecraft, which I invited him to do with me on my Kindle, and I think I introduced him to it for the first time, because for the rest of our stay, the kid and I took turns playing Minecraft on my small tablet whenever I was free, and despite us not understanding each other clearly, there was a real connection there and humbled my ten-year-old self obsessed with Legos and other materialistic things in my bubble. Most of the best memories I have traveling are from going out of my comfort zone and immersing myself in a place. In Japan, we ate thousand-year-old eggs and went to sumo wrestling matches, in China, we learned how to make dumplings in someone’s apartment and stayed in the tallest building in Shanghai, in Cambodia, I learned how to make wheelchairs for bomb survivors, in Mexico, we went cave diving in Acapulco, in Scandinavia, we took a cruise on a cargo ship, and in Martinique, I became a certified scuba diver. All of these experiences traveling and many more have given me my worldview, my cultural identity, and my love of world history, and I feel they fit well for joining the Global Initiatives program. I have already taken a GIP trip in ninth grade which was incredible, to say the least, and I hope that if I join GIP, I will be able to have many more cultural broadening experiences and help myself experience more of the beautiful world we live in. Though GIP was not the only motivation to do this, we have already hosted a French and an Italian exchange student, and my experiences with them definitely deepened my global perspective, and furthermore, GIP is also very in tune with my hope to study abroad like our guests but for a semester in college.
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This essay, similarly to my APUSH one, covers themes and issues which have much relevancy on my global studies and the modern age.
Today, video gaming is one of the most popular pastimes across America, and eighty-five percent of the games people play feature violence. Gaming is the fastest growing and by far the most expensive industry in entertainment, and more than sixty percent of Americans play video games every day. Every video game is a combination of sub genres and mechanics, blended together by engines and graphics to deliver enticing and addictive gameplay for its niche audience, which typically is a few million ‘gamers’ focused on that specific game for its lifespan or popularity period. Despite the goal to keep making unique games, one thing unites most modern video games: the portrayal of violence. Whether it is a ‘beat ‘em up,’ real-time strategy game, or a first-person shooter, gamers log on daily to shoot, stab, and disintegrate other players and AI-controlled characters. Due to all of that personal, direct consumption of violence by gamers, violent video games’ effects are the subject of many studies, and politicians, journalists, researchers, and concerned parents are giving increasing attention to the possible consequences. Does video game violence make gamers aggressive and desensitized to real-world violence? If it does, should action be taken to safeguard the millions of Americans hooked on violent gaming? From unruly competitiveness to pure anger, violent video games are bringing out emotions in their broad audiences that are uncommon in any other entertainment medium, hobby, or even profession, and in the long term, should be strictly monitored and more action should be taken to prevent children from accessing inappropriate games. Every game has its key demographic, but children primarily populate many extremely popular modern multiplayer games. Games such as “Minecraft,” “Fortnite,” and “Roblox” all have large child demographics, and each one features violence as a core element. Despite the violence being cartoonish and seemingly unrealistic, guns and killing are either at the forefront of their gameplay or easily accessible in these games. Even notorious gaming franchises, like “Call of Duty,” “Counter-Strike,” and “Battlefield,” in which the core gameplay revolves around shooting ‘realistic’ weapons to kill or as of recently “eliminate” enemy players, have large child player bases. There have been efforts to limit access to games through the Entertainment Software Rating Board, which applies rating to games based on their age appropriateness, like movie ratings, to identify is how mature the covered subjects are. But in the age of the internet, it is easy for children to fake their age on lax online shops (if age verification is even required) to purchase games online. Even with ratings meant to protect them from mature subjects that might hurt their innocence, children can still buy mature games in the U.S. without supervision. Whether they have siblings, parents, friends, or just stumble on the game over the internet, it is a common reaction for all of us, including children, to be enticed by what we should not have: in this case, children wanting Teen and Mature-rated games. But why should children not play those games? Video games can be very addicting especially for children and teens, but can prolonged exposure to the subjects that cause older age ratings affect children too? Countless parents believe so and want to protect their children from harm partially because, since the rise of video gaming, many negative tropes and stereotypes have been given to gamers. As enormous and diverse as the video gaming industry is today, fifteen years ago video games in America had the reputation of being popular with people low on the popularity ladder of society, basement-dwellers, stoners, and nerds. The rise of parental blogging also contributed to sentiments about protecting children from viewing and experiencing violence as visceral as it is in modern games. And recently, evidence from proper studies has claimed that playing violent video games causes aggression. One article from the American Psychological Association stated that “students who reported playing more violent video games in junior and high school engaged in more aggressive behavior.” In another article from the US National Library of Medicine, similar observations were made that violent games increased aggression after playing for a while. The second also highlighted other negative health effects from violent video games such as attention problems that hurt the school performance of the studied kids. Many other studies claim similar effects from video games, but there are also many studies from equally respected organizations that claim playing violent video games have little to no effect on the children’s wellbeing. One by the Royal Society claimed that “there was no evidence for a critical tipping point relating violent game engagement to aggressive behavior.” The consensus is not one-hundred percent clear, but the majority of studies on the issue claim that people who play violent are more likely to become aggressive. That said, the aggression is there, but it is rarely serious enough to cause other problems. Incidents like smashing computer monitors or keyboards, yelling at parents and significant others, and even death threats are prevalent points of humor in the broader gaming community, but are not as special as they are made out to be. Disregarding any harmful effects, is killing virtual humans the path we want for our pastimes and even careers? It is less atrocious than killing actual people, but what happens when the line between virtual and material blurs? In a military context, drones are defining modern warfare and allow anonymous operators to kill in foreign countries through a computer screen, just like in a shooting game, except for the enemies, which are made out of human flesh and bones rather than pixels. The military knows this and has targeted gamers for recruitment. One drone operator, Brandon Bryant, was interviewed by Vice about his experience in the military. Vice’s video highlights how simple the act of killing has become, at least for a gamer who is targeted specifically by a military recruiter, but also that Bryant still felt the impact of his missions. When video games are so similar to real violence and can be used to essentially train people, as in the case with Bryant, they are far more destructive than just a hobby. The problem with this argument is that very few gamers will go on to be drone operators, which is a job that exists in a grey ethical zone. Desensitization to guilt is a less studied effect of violence in gaming, and most gamers will not have to deal with it if they abide by laws, but if video games become more similar to war and keep the consequence-free gameplay that partially makes them so successful, future generations might be less remorseful as a result of violent gaming without a way to offset gaming’s effects. Jobs deriving from gaming can be found beyond the military, though. Being a YouTuber is the dream for a lot of modern American youth, and gaming is an extremely popular form of content on the platform. Gaming YouTubers can make a reasonable income with enough of an audience, and the top creators make millions of dollars from ad revenue and sponsorships. Beyond that is live streaming, a form of content that revolves around gaming by playing their game with a live audience. Content creators, as they are called, have a very desirable job and can be pretty self-sufficient by just playing video games. For their job, gaming content creators probably play the most out of anyone in America, and from playing so much, there are plenty of examples of rage and destructive habits that litter the scene. But they do play the most, and, rarely, that anger goes anywhere besides in the game. Probably the most popular argument for getting rid of violence in video games comes from Politicians and Journalists, who frequently point to gaming as a cause for mass shootings. After the Columbine shooting in 1999, the families of victims sued twenty-five gaming companies for violent video games’ influence on the shooters. Then in 2018 there was a mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and the shooter was an avid gamer. The rise of American mass shootings has somewhat risen with the rise of gaming, but both trends have little correlation. Violence is very different from aggression and is a much more serious reaction to someone’s environment. Mental health issues are the true culprit behind mass shootings, and violent video games may even help people’s mental health by “basically, by keeping young [people] busy with things they like.” They are places to fight and kill without actually hurting anybody. What would the consequences be if violent video games stopped being made and relevant ones lost support? First, a lot of people would lose their primary hobby, and some would lose their job. Video games are unique because they can be great for competitive people and people who just want to play casually. Shooting games are mostly populated by semi-competitive players and have the largest number of competitions and content creators of any gaming genre. The upsides would be getting rid of a cause of aggression, which can spiral into real-world issues, but at the same time, prohibiting violence in video games would also take away an outlet for aggression caused by the real world. It is impossible to know what did not happen because someone took their anger out on virtual characters rather than real people. How many more school shootings might there be if video games were not there for so many angry, lonely, and distraught kids. In the case of reducing or banning violence in gaming, the ends do not justify action today because there are so few examples of harm coming from violent gaming when the number of gamers is accounted for. If violence in games were reduced to an E (Everyone) rating, games could keep their competitive and creative natures without the problems that games bring. After an attempt to stop children from buying excessively violent games in 2011, The Supreme Court ruled that video games are a form of art. Games as a medium can be used to cover mature and societal themes, just like a movie, and are covered under the first amendment according to this ruling. However, that does not mean that violent games do not have negative effects on their players. Addiction is common to violent games, but it is caused by the choices of the developers during production, not by the game’s violence itself. Without clear evidence that violence in games leads to real-world violence, games should not have any further restrictions imposed on their portrayal of violence, unless it can be definitively shown that serious detrimental effects are impacting a large number of gamers. From a care-based perspective, the most important factors are that violent games are an outlet for some people’s anger, that violence in games is proven to cause aggression, and that games can desensitize people to guilt, causing issues, especially with children’s moral development. However, the aggression caused by gaming is minimal, and eliminating opponents is much better than killing real people. Where violence in games is today is still far away from being close to realistic, and it is understood that the masses are not deeply desensitized to violence, which they might be in the future from more realism in games. Until there is evidence of that desensitization, it is hard for anyone to say that killing in games does more harm than good, for the game’s appropriate audience. Children cannot be left out of the equation though, for if the gaming industry continues on the current trajectory, it is, and will be, very important to protect children from experiences that might not desensitize the average gamer, who is 18-34 but could impact children’s development. Violent video games are so popular that banning or stopping their production would be practically impossible without mass outcry. Playing games is by far the most popular hobby in America, and everyone from toddlers to senior citizens plays daily from our tablets, phones, computers, and consoles. So unless there was a massive awareness campaign around the supposed harms of violent gaming, any proposition that was aimed against the industry would have a lot of trouble passing. Free will is a core tenet of our society, but we do have restrictions on what we can do. Street drugs are illegal in most places in the US because many are very addictive and pose serious health risks to their users. Just like a video game, drugs can be an escape from reality. But without certainty that they cause aggression or desensitize people to violence, violent video games mostly played on 2D screens with relatively unrealistic graphics and animations have other reasons to be removed. The profit made from games will continue to rise as games improve every year. The curve of improvement to gameplay is not close to peaking any time soon, but when it does, games will be so addictive and immersive that people’s realities might be entirely shaped by gaming in a science-fiction-like future. But in the present, there simply is not enough evidence that video games pose a public health risk, and should not be prohibited from American society, yet. From example like a kid stealing his parent’s car after doing it in a game, and from how addictive gaming is, action should be taken to prevent children’s access to teen and above-rated games. A recommendation from the American Psychological Association in 2015 was for gaming companies “to design video games that include increased parental control over the amount of violence the games contain” and to keep in mind their target audience’s psychological development. I chose to research violence in video games because I have been told and can tell that at least for me, I am more aggressive after playing shooting games. But I believe my reason for playing is a lot different than the majority of players. Instead of using games as an escape, I love the competitive side of gaming, and the main reason I play video games is to satisfy my competitive drive. Gaming is almost too good: I can play when I feel like it and have so many possibilities to outplay and out-practice my human opponents. The studies I found throughout my research do not give conclusive evidence for or against the notion that games cause aggression, especially in children, and the reason behind that is because violent games do cause aggression, but it is limited enough that most players easily calm down. I also believe that gaming in its current form is good enough. The more realistic that graphics, physics, and senses get in games, the more that people could lose track of reality. Virtual reality is seen as the next step in gaming, replacing monitors with goggles and keyboards with physical movement. Still, we are far from a product so streamlined, immersive, and large that it will not feel like gaming anymore. It will be very important to monitor how our emotions will be affected, and also how addictive games will become. Who knows what will happen to society if an entire generation is addicted to a game? If technology advances to the point where there are no more monotonous labor jobs left, maybe video games will give people purpose, considering how many there are and will be and how creatively and skilled people can play them. Whatever the future looks like though, if aggression and desensitization to violence are increased, violence in video games should be reigned in by making sure that companies cannot produce extremely realistic games, and in the present, stricter laws should be enacted that punish publishers and distributors if children get a hold of inappropriate games. Bibliography “APA Review Confirms Link Between Playing Violent Video Games and Aggression.” American Psychological Association. American Psychological Association. Accessed January 12, 2021. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2015/08/violent-video-games. Bergland, Christopher. “Violent Video Games Can Trigger Emotional Desensitization.” Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers, April 9, 2016. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201604/violent-video-games-can-trigger-emotional-desensitization. Campbell, Colin. “A Brief History of Blaming Video Games for Mass Murder.” Polygon. Polygon, March 10, 2018. https://www.polygon.com/2018/3/10/17101232/a-brief-history-of-video-game-violence-blame. “Columbine Families Sue Gaming Companies.” CNET. CNET, January 3, 2002. https://www.cnet.com/news/columbine-families-sue-gaming-companies/. Conrad, Dr. Brent. “The Truth about Child Video Game Addiction.” TechAddiction. Accessed January 12, 2021. http://www.techaddiction.ca/child-video-game-addiction.html. Harry Pettit, Senior Digital Technology and Science Reporter. “Fortnite Gamer 'Live-Streamed Himself Battering 21-Year-Old Pregnant Mother'.” The Sun. The Sun, December 10, 2018. https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/7941171/fortnite-gamer-assault-live-stream/. Przybylski Andrew K. and Weinstein Netta, Andrew K. Przybylski Andrew K. Przybylski http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5547-2185 Oxford Internet Institute, Andrew K. Przybylski, Andrew K. Przybylski http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5547-2185 Oxford Internet Institute, Netta Weinstein, Netta Weinstein School of Psychology, Electronic supplementary material is available online at https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4392665., and Et Al. “Violent Video Game Engagement Is Not Associated with Adolescents' Aggressive Behaviour: Evidence from a Registered Report.” Royal Society Open Science, February 13, 2019. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.171474. Schiesel, Seth. “Supreme Court Has Ruled; Now Games Have a Duty.” The New York Times. The New York Times, June 28, 2011. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/arts/video-games/what-supreme-court-ruling-on-video-games-means.html. Scutti, Susan. “Do Video Games Lead to Violence?,” February 22, 2018. https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/25/health/video-games-and-violence/index.html. Scutti, Susan. “Do Video Games Lead to Violence?” CNN. Cable News Network, February 22, 2018. https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/25/health/video-games-and-violence/index.html. Smith, Noah. “Racism, Misogyny, Death Threats: Why Can't the Booming Video-Game Industry Curb Toxicity?” The Washington Post. WP Company, July 23, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/02/26/racism-misogyny-death-threats-why-cant-booming-video-game-industry-curb-toxicity/. Valle, Suzette. “Supreme Court Rules Minors Can Purchase Violent Video Games.” Coronado, CA Patch. Patch, July 14, 2011. https://patch.com/california/coronado/supreme-court-rules-minors-can-purchase-violent-video-games. vice. “The Gamer Who Flew ‘Killer Drones’ for the US Army | Super Users.” YouTube. YouTube, December 2, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyaRfhBBYTI. “Video Game Demographics - 25 Powerful Stats for 2020.” TechJury, November 11, 2020. https://techjury.net/blog/video-game-demographics/. Video Games and Children: Playing with Violence. AACAP, June 2015. https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/FFF-Guide/Children-and-Video-Games-Playing-with-Violence-091.aspx. “Violent Video Games Can Increase Aggression.” American Psychological Association. American Psychological Association. Accessed January 12, 2021. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2000/04/video-games. Waugh, Rob. “Boy, 11, Steals His Parents' Car and Drives It at 70mph after Playing GTA,” November 28, 2016. https://metro.co.uk/2016/11/28/boy-11-steals-his-parents-car-and-drives-it-at-70mph-after-playing-grand-theft-auto-6288087/. “Young Children's Video/Computer Game Use: Relations with School Performance and Behavior.” Taylor & Francis. Accessed January 12, 2021. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01612840903050414. My Essay (APUSH 2020-21) "The Devastating Ramifications of Operation MENU and Related Campaigns"12/9/2020 This essay contains a lot of themes which have been prevalent in my global studies journey, polar power, deception, cynicism, Vietnam and Cambodia, and Liberalism and Globalism's role in everyone's lives. Life today is drastically different than 50 years ago but our leaders are still often caught playing the same old games.
In March of 1969, President Richard Nixon secretly authorized the United States’ use of Boeing B-52 Bombers to carpet bomb rural Cambodia in a covert effort code named Operation MENU. Over the next fourteen months, the United States would drop over a hundred thousand tons of ordnance on the Fishhook region of eastern Cambodia, kept secret by a limited number of officials, generals, and senators, and kept hidden from Congress for the next four years. President Nixon and his National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, saw success at the beginning of the operation, but two years later the illegality surrounding the campaign caught up to the Nixon administration. From the wiretapping of Kissinger’s aids to the string of faked telephone records, Operation MENU was treachery in the name of national defense. One key article in the New York Times was published on the matter in 1969, and, while it sparked limited attention, it led to the illegal wiretapping of more than two dozen people. Despite limited press coverage and outcry from the public, Operation MENU normalized the illegal actions that would eventually lead to the Watergate Scandal and the impeachment of President Nixon and helped radicalize the Khmer Rouge insurgency which would go on to kill more than one-fourth of the Cambodian population. Beginning with President Lyndon B. Johnson, the United States bombed Cambodia as early as 1965, but still less than one-hundred times before March of 1969. The Vietnam War raged in the late 1960s when President Johnson authorized the bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which was a supply route that ran through Laos and Cambodia used by North Vietnamese soldiers. In 1965, Cambodia severed all ties with the United States while the head of state and king of Cambodia, Norodom Sihanouk, continued to stress Cambodia’s neutrality in the Vietnam War. The North Vietnamese soon took advantage of this neutrality and occupied border areas of Cambodia near the port of Sihanoukville. Sihanouk drifted leftward in his policies, eventually allowing the People’s Army of Vietnam and the Viet Cong to operate in the East and North of Cambodia. However, following Johnson, the United State’s Cambodian bombing was promptly scaled-up shortly after Nixon took office with Operation Menu. Over the course of the secret campaign, named MENU because each mission was titled after some sort of meal: Breakfast, Lunch, Snack, Dinner, Supper, and Dessert, the United States dropped thousands of tons of bombs in Eastern Cambodia. As the resistance of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong to United States intervention continued to increase throughout the 1960s and the United States became more concerned with withdrawing its troops from Vietnam, the United States began to scale up its bombing operation of Cambodia, and by 1973, half of Cambodia had experienced some sort of bombings. In February of 1969, Nixon met with Kissinger to propose a new, covert bombing operation in Cambodia. At the time, United States General Creighton Abrams, in charge of operations in South Vietnam, strongly believed that the United States Military needed to increase its bombing of supply routes and Vietnamese bases hidden close beyond the Cambodian-Vietnam border. In an effort to convince Nixon, he stated that there were few Cambodian Civilians in the area, which was the first of many lies associated with Operation MENU. By March 17th, Kissinger’s military aide, Alexander Haig, devised a plan for the carpet bombing, and soon afterward, Operation Breakfast, the first mission of Operation MENU, began. Of course, Nixon knew any bombing of Cambodia would violate international law and treaties, namely the Geneva Convention, due to Cambodia’s neutrality. In a meeting soon after he approved Operation MENU, Nixon even asked Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and Secretary of State William Rogers whether or not the United States should bomb Cambodia but by then, Operation Breakfast had already begun. The desperation Nixon had for the United States to win the war revealed itself as the MENU Campaign continued to devastate the Cambodian Countryside. B-52 bomber planes reigned terror on Cambodia for more than three years after Nixon approved Operation MENU. Quickly after the bombing runs ended small raids of United States and South Vietnamese Soldiers were permitted to cross the Eastern Cambodian Border and survey possible hidden enemy encampments for later B-52 bombings. Over 3,600 B-52 sorties, or dispatches of a combat aircraft, were flown over the six missions. To prevent leaks of information regarding Operation MENU, an elaborate system was created by the masterminds of the operation, which was a product of the combination of Nixon’s determination to win the war in Vietnam without public dismay and Cambodia’s neutrality. When the operation was first proposed, only a select few individuals had any knowledge of it at the top of their departments, and even fewer had any say in the operation. The chain of command went as follows: General Abrams, at the start of the chain, spoke to Admiral John McCain Jr, who then spoke to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the advisors of the United States Department of Defense, who then consulted the president. With all of their go-ahead, missions would be flown out of the Strategic Air Command Base in Biên Hòa, near Phnom Penh. At the radar site of the airbase, Major Hal Knight relayed the Cambodian targets to the pilots and navigators who flew the sorties and personally destroyed any documents associated with the bombings, covering up what might be searched for by suspecting officials. Accompanying the chain of approval, an elaborate dual reporting system was created by Colonel Raymond Sitton. Each mission group of B-52 pilots for each sortie was briefed together on their targets as if they were in South Vietnam. After the mass briefings, selected pilots were briefed again by Lieutenant General Alvin Gillem who told them to wait and receive instructions coming from ground radar sites in Vietnam that used IBM 360/65 computers that in the final moments of their flights would essentially take control of the B-52s’ flying and pilot them to the computer inputted coordinates in Cambodia, their real targets, as well as calculate when to drop the ordnance. When they returned home, the crews that bombed Cambodia reported their data as if they flew over South Vietnam and that data was accessible by departments like the CIA. With all of the confidentiality surrounding the missions, the New York Times article on the MENU Bombings shocked the Nixon Administration and provoked a totally illegal response. On May 9th, 1969, the New York Times published an article by correspondent William Beecher on the B-52 bombings of Cambodia titled Raids in Cambodia By U.S. Unprotested. In his article, Beecher outlined the three factors that lead to the approval of the carpet bombing being that many military men believed that the weapons and ammunition used by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were coming through Cambodia, for the bombings to serve as a message to Hanoi that the Nixon administration was willing to take more military risks than the Johnson administration, and the worry that Prince Norodom Sihanouk could not dislodge the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese then entrenched in a few northern and eastern provinces of Cambodia. The article also covered the refusal of Nixon to allow United States battalions to follow up air strikes in Cambodia to establish better relations with the Prince, as well as covering the bombing tactic utilized on the entrenched three Vietnamese divisions operating around the Cambodian-Vietnamese border. Lastly, Beecher noted that the MENU bombing was feasible because Sihanouk hinted that he would not oppose these bombings because there was a small likelihood of them expanding the war further and that Cambodian Army officers had been helping Americans and the South Vietnamese coordinate their actions. Although the article seemed relatively tame and brief, the response it provoked from the Nixon administration showed the large craving of Nixon to come out of Vietnam with victory. When the article ran, Kissinger, under the order of Nixon, immediately pursued the source of Beecher’s information, due to its highly confidential nature. When Kissinger heard about the article he immediately suspected two people as the leakers, secretaries Melvin Laird and William Rogers. To figure out how Beecher obtained his information, John Hoover, the Director of the FBI, was commissioned to track down the source. In the beginning, Nixon and Hoover both suspected Morton Halperin, one of Kissinger’s aides, and at dinnertime on May tenth, Halperin’s phone was tapped. Of course, wiretapping was and is illegal without a warrant under the fourth amendment. But Nixon and Hoover did not stop there, first by making sure no records were taken of any of the taps and second by going and tapping more than a dozen others associated with the operation or investigation. These people included more of Kissinger’s aides, Laird’s aides, and Joseph Kraft, a DC journalist who would later testify to the Senate about his wiretapping and the United States’ Cambodian gamble of 1970. The taps remained for years, but brought no hard evidence of any source for Hoover to go off of, so despite the massive breach of privacy installed to protect national security, the only true revelation that came out of the wiretapping was that Nixon was more and more creating an atmosphere around his administration akin to a police state, where the privacy for many was sacrificed for the personal interests of a few individuals. Those individuals were, of course, Nixon and Kissinger, but specifically, Nixon. He, the most powerful individual on Earth at the time, was extremely forceful in getting his way, as shown by his authorization of illegal activities such as burning records and wiretapping, and both actions later played a significant role in the Watergate scandal. He even partially admitted his illegal actions in an infamous quote, “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” Three years after the beginning of the bombings, very few Washington officials had any knowledge of Operation MENU. Save for six congressmen who were informed of the campaign in 1969 because Nixon believed they would remain silent about the operation and could be counted on to accept the secret extension of the war without question. That would change in 1973 when Major Knight testified before the Committee on Armed Services about his strategic role in the operation. Under oath, he went into detail about the chain of command and system used to plan, coordinate, and execute the carpet bombings, as well as speaking about his letter to Senator William Proxmire that January. This letter, according to Knight, questioned the retiring of a General over the falsification of strike reports in South Vietnam and inquired about the policy that led to Operation MENU. The irony of his letter, as pointed out by Senator Harold Hughes, was that Knight had admitted a crime, the falsification of records, and simultaneously he was adhering to his senior officials’ orders, a paradoxical position which exemplified the dubious grounds that the officials, Kissinger, Nixon, and the Generals, used to carry out their secret bombings. What Knight depicted during the testimony painted the entire operation as beyond highly classified and as a rewriting of history, for as Hughes pointed out, “Once [Knight] attached the false computer page to the report there would never [be] a way of finding out the record of the bombing in Cambodia.” This session would not be the last time Operation MENU was brought before congress, for in October of 1974, a motion of impeachment was created against Nixon by the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee John Conyers, who cited the secret bombing of Cambodia as a violation of the people’s trust, Nixon’s accountability, and a bypass of “Sections 7 and 8 of Article I, which give to the Congress the authority to make appropriations and declare war.” While the MENU bombings remained secret, the public was given a much greater view of the United States’ Cambodian strategy in early 1970. A major change to the United States policy regarding Cambodia in the context of the Vietnam War came when Prince Sihanouk was deposed by Lon Nol, a pro-American General. When Sihanouk was out of Cambodia visiting Moscow, the Cambodian National Assembly voted to overthrow him in a coup d’Etat and general Lon Nol became the new Head of State. Shortly afterward, while in exile in Beijing, Sihanouk allied himself with the North Vietnamese, Viet Cong, and the Khmer Rouge, a Communist Cambodian organization and party. With a new government in Phnom Penh, the North Vietnamese increasingly stationed soldiers in Cambodia and began aiding the Khmer Rouge, which had plunged into a civil war against Lon Nol’s army by March of 1970. Quickly after the infighting in Cambodia began, Nixon eagerly brought the United States into the conflict. The secrecy surrounding everything that the United States did in Cambodia would be largely lifted in April of 1970 with Nixon’s announcement of the Cambodian Incursion, a large-scale military operation to combat the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese in the Fishhook region. Through a broadcasted speech on live television, Nixon announced that “to protect our men who are in Vietnam, and to guarantee the continued success of our withdrawal and Vietnamization programs, I have concluded that the time has come for action.” That action was attacks carried out by combined South Vietnamese and American forces to clear out enemy communist sanctuaries on the Cambodian-Vietnam border. For the first time since the beginning of the Vietnam war, the public heard about any of the United States’ bombing of Cambodia from an official source, and despite it being five years since the true beginning of the bombing, there was significant outrage over the decision. Large protests struck University campuses after the announcement and even resulted in the killings of four students at Kent State in that May, known as the Kent State Massacre. More and more Nixon’s approval rating dropped as the war continued despite significant calls for peace, but his drive for victory would not quell. Some of the most impactful moments of Nixon’s presidency came close to the very end of it when the web of deception that covered many of his administration’s actions was massively uncovered during the Watergate scandal. Much like during the aftermath of Beecher’s article, wiretapping was used again by Nixon and his accomplices when men broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and attempted to re-wiretap phone lines. This wiretapping would be unveiled much quicker than those during MENU because the burglars were caught and because Nixon got so wrapped up in trying to silence the investigation of the break-in that he obstructed justice and abused his presidential power. What worked during the MENU coverup was that the secrecy was maintained, at least in the short term, so when Watergate was plotted, Nixon and others involved in the Watergate Scandal were willing to rely on the same deception and manipulation used during MENU. But, of course, they did not get away with it again, and Nixon was eventually impeached for obstruction of justice. The bombing of Cambodia continued past the Watergate scandal though, and so did the casualties continue. Ultimately, much of the United States’ bombing halted in June of 1973 when Congress voted to ban all funds for military activity in Indochina. Experts still speculate on the casualties of the United State’s bombing in Cambodia, with numbers varying from 50,000 to 600,000 between the start of the MENU bombings in 1969 and the end of Operation Freedom Deal, which was the name of the operation that continued the United States’ bombing in Cambodia in May of 1970 after MENU, which ended in 1974. However, it was clear to every researcher that a significant amount of those casualties and fatalities were civilians. The sad fact is that the effort to destroy enemy sanctuaries in Cambodia was largely ineffective and many innocents were killed because of indiscriminate bombings by the United States. The roughly 100,000 tons of bombs according to the Pentagon dropped during MENU not only failed their purpose because the Ho-Chi Minh trail and other Vietnamese supply routes were still active after the operation, but they harmed and killed many innocent Cambodian civilians. In numerous accounts from the villagers, peasants, and soldiers living in the parts of Cambodia that experienced carpet-bombing during MENU and further operations, the fright and terror from the massive B-52 bombings were incredible. One account from a civilian in 1973 after a town in Luong Cambodia was accidentally bombed by an American B-52 showed just how damaging United States bombing could be for innocent Cambodians. In an interview from the New York Times months after the event, townspeople spoke about their experience after the mistake bombing as traumatic and harmful to their health, as well as the serious fear of another mistake. In the 1970s, Cambodia became a battleground of many sides, each with their own motives. Through the Cambodian civil war, the Vietnam War next door, and the United States’ Incursion, the Cambodian people were being torn apart, and many were losing their lives to wars that had no benefits for them. When the Khmer Rouge started to take hold around Cambodia, a significant portion of their members were enticed to join by the propaganda created by the rebels of the bombings. Nixon’s bombs were meant to defeat the ‘communists,’ not strengthen them, but when the Khmer Rouge took power over Cambodia in April of 1975, it made perfect sense that a large part of their rise could be attributed to the radicalization of the hundreds of thousands of Cambodians affected by the bombs. By the time Lon Nol took power, the Khmer Rouge had gained significant influence in the countryside, especially where the United States had bombed during Operation MENU and then later invaded during the Cambodian Incursion. With the fall of Phnom Penh in April of 1975, Cambodia, for the time being, had a new leader, Pol Pot, who in 1976 recreated Cambodia as Democratic Kampuchea and officiated the Cambodian genocide, the persecution and killing of around two million Cambodians to attempt to create an egalitarian agrarian society. Thus, not only did the secret bombings damn those who orchestrated them by their own normalization of deceit to Congress and the American public, but the bombings also indirectly aided an organization that would go on to commit one of the most horrific genocides in human history, a result Nixon and Kissinger never anticipated. When Nixon was impeached and resigned in 1973, he left behind a legacy of lies, falsifications, and illegal surveillance: today those themes have remained in the Oval Office, and frequently Americans hear about the people in power blatantly lying to the public, going so far as to fire those who renounce or disagree with them. Unlike in the 1970s, today we live in a society in which information spreads rapidly and the majority of us have the resources to follow the constant stream of news. While it is seemingly easier to discern what we should be concerned about, it is equally easy for that information to be manipulated, just like how Nixon and his accomplices manipulated Congress and lied to the public by sustaining the destruction of incriminating documents, attempting to defame leakers, and by hiding any incriminating evidence they could during Operation MENU. Bibliography Beecher, William. "CAMBODIA RAIDS GO UNPROTESTED." New York Times (NYC), May 9, 1969. Ben, Taylor. "Bombs over Cambodia." The Walrus, October 12, 2006. Accessed December 5, 2020. https://thewalrus.ca/2006-10-history/. Bombing in Cambodia: Hearings, Ninety-third Congress, first session., Ninety-third Congress, first session 8-11 (1973) (statement of Hal Knight). Bunch, Will. "'When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.'" Philadelphia Inquirer, November 22, 2016. Accessed December 6, 2020. https://www.inquirer.com/philly/blogs/attytood/When-the-president-does-it-that-means-it-is-not-illegal.html Conyers, John, Jr. "WHY NIXON SHOULD HAVE BEEN IMPEACHED." The Black Scholar 6, no. 2 (October 1974). Frontline: World, PBS. "Chronicle of Survival: Caught in the Crossfire." October 2002. Accessed December 6, 2020. https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/cambodia/tl02.html. "Genocide in Cambodia." Holocaust Museum Houston. Accessed December 6, 2020. https://hmh.org/library/research/genocide-in-cambodia-guide/. Head, William P. "Menu Bombing." In WAR from above THE CLOUDS: B-52 Operations during the Second Indochina War and the Effects of the Air War on Theory and Doctrine. N.p.: Air University Press, 2002. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep13992.11. Hersh, Seymour M. The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House. New York: Summit Book, 1983. Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History. New York, N.Y.: Viking Press, 1983. Kaur, Harmeet. "50 years ago today, the shooting of 4 college students at Kent State changed America." CNN, May 4, 2020. Accessed December 6, 2020. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/us/kent-state-shooting-50th-anniversary-trnd/index.html. Kiernan, Ben. The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79. N.p.: Yale University Press, 1998. Kreye, William M. The Pawns of War. New York: Vantage Press, 1983. Lewis, Anthony. "Menu for Disaster." New York Times (NYC), October 4, 1976. "The March 1970 Coup D'Etat." In GlobalSecurity.org. Accessed December 5, 2020. https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/cambodia/history-sihanouk-4.htm. Morrocco, John. Rain of Fire: Air War, 1969-1973. Boston, MA: Boston Pub., 1985. Nalty, Bernard C. Air War over South Vietnam, 1968-1975. Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 2000. New York Times (NYC). "U.S. PLANES BOMB CAMBODIA TOWN IN ERROR." August 7, 1973. "President Nixon's Cambodia Incursion Address." President Nixon's Cambodia Incursion Address. Richard Nixon Foundation. April 30, 1970. Accessed December 6, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cAAnoqmksg. Reeves, Richard. President Nixon: Alone in the White House. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Shipler, David K. "Cambodian Villagers Still Suffer Effects of B‐52 Bombing Error." New York Times (NYC), December 3, 1973. Tho, Tran Dinh. The Cambodian Incursion. N.p.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1979. War in the Shadows. Boston, MA: Boston Pub., 1988. Washington Post. "THE WATERGATE STORY." https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/watergate/timeline.html. Wise, David. The American Police State. New York: Random House, 1976. World Peace Foundation. "Cambodia: U.S. Bombing and Civil War." Tufts Mass Atrocity Endings. Last modified August 7, 2015. Accessed December 4, 2020. https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/cambodia-u-s-bombing-civil-war-khmer-rouge/#_edn2. Pardon any grammar and diction issues. I wrote this essay when I was a lot less competent in English. Since it was handed over to Britain in 1912, Kowloon Walled City has stood out from the rest of Hong Kong with its offbeat community and bulging population. Considered to have the highest population density in the world at its height in the 1980s, the Walled City was an example of a community dictated by crime for much of its existence, and yet thousands of people immigrated there willingly and created lives within the miniature and autonomous city. The Walled City grew into a community filled with nefarious activity, yet also full of everyday people working against the tides of Hong Kong’s unforgiving job market. Despite its crime-driven climate after the Second World War and its horrific labor conditions, the City created a strong society of people brought together in collective struggles, and impressively managed to sustain itself in the modern world as the densest city on Earth.
The history of the once Chinese fort spans one thousand years. The Walled City was originally a fort built during the Song dynasty (960-1279) by the Chinese to guard the Hong Kong harbor. The fort stood tall at the beginning of the 20th century until the British were given control of the fort at the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, and Kowloon became barren, existing only to fascinate visiting British in Hong Kong and entertain visiting foreigners. By 1933, the first wave of squatters started living in the City and the Hong Kong government began pushing for the demolition of squatter occupied buildings. Fundamental change came in World War II, during a brief occupation of the fort by the Japanese when they destroyed the outer wall of the City. Eventually, the wall was replaced by a row of shacks with unstable infrastructure. The new city created in the wake of the war turned into a squatters paradise: shambles atop of shambles as people gradually built up and up only to stop before they blocked the flight path to the nearby airport. Intricate alleys lay inside and an aura of musk surrounded the homes of up to 50,000 people in the late 1980s. In a photograph taken by Greg Girard at the Walled City’s architectural peak in the late 80s, the City resembled tin cans, crushed and mashed together in a pile of scrap metal. In 1947, the new Chinese government began a campaign to reclaim the Walled City from the now idle British; this sparked the City’s legal dark zone. Immigrants from mainland China poured into the city looking for better lives. With the area now neglected by the British and Chinese, a second wave of squatters started to build atop the ruins left by the Japanese. When the prohibition of opium and brothels commenced in Hong Kong after World War II, the City, under its legal vagueness, became the host to many wishing to profit off of the cheap labor available. While the rest of Hong Kong adopted policies of law and order, becoming a very clean society, Kowloon remained a pocket for lascivious activities and drugs. Mainland Chinese continued to move to the City, some under the guidance of the Communist Party of China, others escaping the Hong Kong job market and they were accompanied by Hong Kong natives trying to delve into the criminal aspect of Kowloon, and even manage crime in Hong Kong under the relative safety of the City’s confines. From the 1940s onward, the City became a sanctuary for crime. While there was strife between the colony of the City and the rest of Hong Kong, mainland China supported and controlled it as an outpost. Thus, the Walled City remained standing through the 1960s and beyond despite increasing pressure from Hong Kong authorities to shut it down. With the continued growth of its community, the Walled City approached its understood peak capacity in terms of then built buildings in the late 1950s and remained unsubjugated by British and Hong Kong authorities to end it. With the rise in population, the Walled City took the most recognizable form of its legacy, a slum filled with criminals and unlawful workers, but also with people previously deterred by their situations and wanting to start anew in Hong Kong society. Hong Kong’s strict professional regulations and requirements for licenses drove many to the Walled City where they could charge lower rates than if they worked in the main city, bringing regular Hong Kong citizens to the Walled City and creating a unique economy no longer based on crime, as it had been for the preceding twenty years. Seemingly ordinary workers lived and died in the Walled City and were held there due to their illegal status outside the walls. These unfortunate denizens relied on jobs in the City for their small apartments and would often be trapped by unfair contracts with extreme conditions with horrible hours, forced to live their lives and often raise their families there, adding future Walled City workers. In the 1988 documentary titled Hong Kong's Secret City, a team of videographers delve into the Walled City and experience the everyday life of the city but also the accepted gangs, brothels and other sections which would be considered illegal outside. Those criminal operations were allowed to operate due to the lack of authority within since the Chinese were technically in control of the City, but the British refused to let Chinese officials into the city, forcing the regulations of the city to be under the control of Kowloon Walled City Kaifong Association, an association created for serving residents of the neighborhood, allowing the former city block to feel like it was lawless. The blend of legal and illegal situations are displayed as the documentarians explore the upper levels of the City. One key focus is on ordinary life within the dank chambers. Kids are shown doing homework and studying as their parents work. Labor was much cheaper in the City and is described in the film while showing adults working in sweatshop-like conditions. The products created in the City were often sold to prominent shops and restaurants in Hong Kong, establishing a reliance on the Walled City from many business owners in Hong Kong who relied on the cheap labor. Underlying the working nature of the Walled City was a mafia known as the Triad, which operated in Kowloon Walled City starting after its relinquishment from the Japanese at the end of World War II. By the 1970s, crime in the City began to fall, as a real community of hardworking residents rose. As the videographers continue through the gang-infested labyrinth, another very common occupation for Walled City residents comes into view: dentistry. Dentistry was a thriving business in the Walled City. Because of the difficulty associated with obtaining a dentistry license in Hong Kong, many made their way to the Walled City to avoid prosecution and work freely, despite the dim lights and frequent sewage dripping from the ceilings. Dentists poured into the Walled City from mainland China and many who could not find work in Hong Kong quickly took up shop there. As a result, starting around the same time as the Triad gang’s takeover, Hong Kong citizens ventured into the walled city looking for cheaper dentist rates. That cheapness drove Kowloon Walled City’s economy. Cheap labor and services enticed outsiders, yet simultaneously created harsh conditions for the people inside from predatory bosses taking advantage of limited surveillance and hard to enforce laws. The documentary visits a kindergarten in the middle of the City, run by the Salvation Army; it was the only school in the entire block by the 1970s. The demanding work of the adults shows in the education and lives of their children, as the children living in the City apartments have free time throughout the day and only a few are lucky enough to go to school outside. The lack of City infrastructure created a need for water and power that prompted the population to develop their non-municipal solutions. From the 1960s to the 90s, many gangs, as well as normal denizens, installed illegal power lines, which were connected from surrounding buildings and laced through the tunnels. It was an adequate power system, but it was also a vulnerable system that could be taken under control by anyone who owned a line cutter. The crafty nature of the power system, seen in a photo by Greg Girard in City of Darkness Revisited, helps illustrate the shared mindset in the society of the Walled City--a mindset of just trying to get by. That mindset was taken up by most who came looking for cheaper work or to escape homelessness. People worked in the City just to survive in the slum, in a lifestyle as tenuous as the clumps of electrical wires illegally pulling power from nearby buildings. While gangs like the Triad operated the bulk of criminal activities, other malpracticing individuals came to operate their criminal organizations inside of the walls. Often, food processors would deliberately move to the City to escape food inspectors, who were strict and drove these people away from operating in the main city. This picture also by Girard, a longtime documentarian of the City, catches two workers handling the carcasses of pigs and other livestock. Both do not wear gloves and are smoking, showing an unsanitary environment in a place processing a lot of food, which would later be distributed in surrounding Hong Kong. From this image, a sense of uncaring is conveyed by the laborer’s demeanors and rough setting, but they and others were responsible for the mass exportation of meats and other foods. The City served as a midpoint in the distribution chain, as food was brought there primarily just to be brought back out. In the picture, the two men are described as skinning dog carcasses, which reflects the lawlessness of the area, as the British had outlawed dog meat in Hong Kong in 1950, adding another reason for outsiders to want to come into the City. Dog meat restaurants were prominent in the years after the ban, and the City was the perfect place to establish these restaurants where nobody would stop them and they were supported by the lack of restaurants elsewhere. But because the City became known as a slum to the general public of Hong Kong, by the late 1970s, the Walled City was very unappealing for people to visit, even if to obtain or experience things normally unavailable to them. Just as it offered a market for dog meat, the Walled City also served as a useful place for outside restaurants to source ingredients, especially fishballs. These fish balls were essential to many cuisines in Hong Kong, so naturally, the ones from the City were purchased in great demand due to the lower price of labor inside. Keeping with the characteristics of jobs in the City, workers produced so many fish balls, not only because of unsanitary cooking methods but also because of the sheer amount of work forced upon the laborers. In an image from City of Darkness Revisited taken by Ian Lambot, a man removes raw fish balls from a large boiler. Like the workers in the other photos, the smoking man wears no protection and is inside a very hot and dirty room, and explains why he is wearing shorts and a t-shirt to a job where burns were common. The daring nature of the picture speaks to the conditions where he, like the majority of workers in the City, worked in dungeon-like conditions. These people reflect the sad truth behind the City, the realization that they are just trying to get through their lives, and are forced to work in extremely inhumane spaces with limited protection. Due to the City’s lawlessness, these people are trapped there without legal status, while the people running the operations in the shadows walk around freely in their sanctuary between the walls. That haven for malpractice only lasted for so long. As more people moved to the semi-independent city in the early 1970s, the Walled City’s collective identity began to shine. Due to rising property taxes in Hong Kong and a decrease in crime in the City, working-class people streamed into the labyrinth and propelled the Walled City to its highest population density. The Kaifong Association of the Walled City was created in the early 1960s and joined the citizens together as it worked to “clean up the Walled City,” and established a collective identity based on the history of the city. The Kaifong association, combined with the lack of property taxes, allowed people to move into a now relatively safe enclave separated from ordinary Hong Kong. The association worked to clean up the physical space by adding proper utilities, and also cleaned up the reputation of the Walled City as police took a greater presence within the walls to negate the prior domination of crime. Despite the work of the Kaifong, the Walled City was later demolished. However, an enduring image of new collectivism was created through the work to unite City residents beyond their circumstances and deep history, successfully creating a community able to survive in a very downtrodden setting. By around the end of the 1970s, the majority of visible crime had been shut down due to Hong Kong police now being stationed in the Walled City. Contrary to popular belief, Hong Kong police began cracking down on the high crime of the City when they established small stations within it. The new police activity was certainly enough to keep larger crime down, but the permanent factory conditions continued for the workers. Petty crime continued too, but at a much smaller rate than in the 1950s, and decreased while more and more people moved into the community. In 1990, an anonymous policeman described the criminal activity when he was positioned in the City in the mid-1980s, saying, “When I first took up my assignment, the City was still thriving and everything was very much out in the open. It’s become so quiet these days!... The City has never been that much different from other areas.” With the quelling of crime as described in this quote, combined with the Kaifong Association’s work to unite the community, and the influx of working-class people moving in to escape higher rents elsewhere, towards the end of its lifetime in the late 1980s to 1993, the City became a much safer and connected community, united behind the City’s history and the combined struggle of its people. Even with such a strong community, demolition of the City began in 1993. Many factors led up to this, particularly that the City was considered a visual disruption of Hong Kong’s modern skyline. And despite the new police presence, the City remained a haven for crime. After compensating the residents and businesses with 2.7 billion Hong Kong Dollars, the Hong Kong government began moving residents out, and then demolished the City in 1994. Later that year, work began on a park in the footprint of the seven-acre City to emblematize the extensive history of the deconstructed fort and the enduring squatter society that lived there. The Walled City was home to many immigrants, lots of crime, and a dense community of every-day working adults and children. Nevertheless, it surprisingly endured mainly because of the Kaifong Association’s unifying efforts and the basic will of its residents. Today, Kowloon Walled City lives on in its memorial park, in popular culture (for example, in video games, art exhibits, and movies), and in the memories of the former residents who are still alive today. Bibliography Bada, Ferdinand. "What Was the Kowloon Walled City?" WorldAtlas. Last modified January 7, 2019. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-was-the-kowloon-walled-city.html. Baddeley, Hugh. "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down." Salvation Army, 1. 1984. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgSjU4GiZ3U. Blundy, Rachel. "A Brief History of Hong Kong’s Triad Gangs." South China Morning Post. Last modified February 4, 2017. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-crime/article/2067890/brief-history-hong-kongs-triad-gangs. Butters, H.R. Report by the Labour Officer Mr. H. R. Butters on Labour and Labour Conditions in Hong Kong. Hong Kong, 1939. Carney, John. "Kowloon Walled City: Life in the City of Darkness." South China Morning Post. Last modified March 16, 2013. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1191748/kowloon-walled-city-life-city-darkness. Chan, Samantha. "Hong Kong Employment Outlook 2019." Human Resources Online. Last modified January 22, 2019. humanresourcesonline.net/hong-kong-employment-outlook-2019. Department of Justice (Hong Kong). Dogs and Cats Ordinance. 1950. https://www.legislation.gov.hk/blis_ind.nsf/CurEngOrd/A1D0F30B6DF3561C88256489000BA485?OpenDocument. Girard, Greg. "Man Smoking Cigarette." Watermark Publications. 2014. https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/05/20/10/344DC77800000578-3600482-image-a-92_1463736122802.jpg. Girard, Greg, Ian Lambot, and Charles Goddard. City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City. Watermark Publications, 1993. Harter, Seth. "Hong Kong’s Dirty Little Secret." Journal of Urban History 27, no. 1 (November 2000), 92-113. https://issuu.com/historiadeunalobotomia/docs/journal_of_urban_history-2000-harte. Hung, Matthew. "Kowloon Walled City: Heterotopia in a Space of Disappearance." Master's thesis, University of Westminster, 2013. https://www.mascontext.com/issues/19-trace-fall-13/kowloon-walled-city-heterotopia-in-a-space-of-disappearance/. Jacobs, Harrison. "Inside Hong Kong's Lawless ' Walled City'—the Most Crowded Place on Earth for 40 Years." Business Insider. Last modified December 6, 2018. https://www.businessinsider.com/kowloon-walled-city-photos-2015-2?op=1. Johnson, Elizabeth L., and Peter Wesley-Smith. "Unequal Treaty 1898-1997: China, Great Britain, and Hong Kong's New Territories." Pacific Affairs 72, no. 2 (1999), 262. Lam, Sharon. "Here's What Western Accounts of the Kowloon Walled City Don't Tell You." ArchDaily. Last modified December 2, 2016. https://www.archdaily.com/800698/heres-what-western-accounts-of-the-kowloon-walled-city-dont-tell-you. Life in Kowloon Walled City. Hong Kong: Asia Society Hong Kong, 2013. https://asiasociety.org/hong-kong/life-kowloon-walled-city. Lu, Hanchao. "Creating Urban Outcasts." Journal of Urban History 21, no. 5 (1995), 593. doi:10.1177/009614429502100501. McHugh, Fionnuala. "How Kowloon Walled City Survived Attempts to Knock It Down for Almost a Century." South China Morning Post. Last modified August 30, 2014. https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1581649/kowloon-walled-citys-fight-exist. Nosowitz, Dan. "Life Inside The Most Densely Populated Place On Earth [Infographic]." Popular Science. Last modified April 19, 2013. https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-04/life-inside-most-densely-populated-place-earth-infographic#page-2. "A POLICEMAN’S STORY." City of Darkness. Last modified 2014. https://cityofdarkness.co.uk/category/urban_myths/. Ryall, Julian. "Arcade Brings Kowloon Walled City Back from the Dead … in Japan." South China Morning Post. Last modified October 1, 2013. https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1321559/arcade-brings-kowloon-walled-city-back-dead-japan. Saywell, James. "The Architecture of Kowloon Walled City: An Excerpt from 'City of Darkness Revisited'." ArchDaily. Last modified April 10, 2014. https://www.archdaily.com/493900/the-architecture-of-kowloon-walled-city-an-excerpt-from-city-of-darkness-revisited/. Sidhu, TJ. "Inside the mystery of Kowloon’s Walled City." The Face, November 13, 2019. Wesemann, Christa. "Hong Kong's Secret City. Kowloon Walled City Documentary (with Subs),." YouTube. 1988. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-rj8m7Ssow. Yu, Zeno. "Kowloon Walled City Memorial: To Collect and Rebuild Lost Memory." Master's thesis, University of Westminster, 2011. Pardon any grammar and diction issues. I wrote this essay when I was a lot less competent in English. During the early 1900s, India was stricken with an epidemic of domestic abuse and other evils blamed on alcohol, causing many to advocate for the prohibition of alcohol, otherwise known as the temperance movement. India has had a long history of alcohol use, from the Indus Valley Civilization, to “toxic homemade alcohol” use today. In the states of India where alcohol has been banned, society is doing better than in the states where alcohol is legal. While India has the third largest market for alcoholic spirits in the world, states like Gujarat and Bihar, where alcohol has been banned, have seen a large decrease in domestic abuse and other malicious activities thought to be caused by alcohol. The decrease has brought hope that the temperance movement has contributed to these improvements, and with the constitution of India calling for prohibition, will continue to do its job in the coming years as more elsewhere in the country suffer from alcohol’s effects. Now, as India advances in the modern world, it is critical that Indian citizens understand and value the significant benefits of the temperance movement. Most importantly, prohibition has helped to decrease child abuse and other domestic abuse that arose from alcoholism.
As India staggered into the twentieth century under British rule, influential figures like Gandhi spoke out against alcohol and alcoholism as “foreign to India” and “what makes the British cruel,” resulting in blame on British imperialism for bringing the bad habits to India, strengthening the “patriotic pursuit [of prohibition] that could be followed even as India sought its independence,” and leading to the constitution article forty-seven requesting prohibition. Nonviolence or Ahimsa was a central ideal of Mahatma Gandhi’s movement, and because alcohol and alcoholism were and are very linked to violence inside and out of the home, Gandhi also advocated for the temperance movement, along with many popular women activists, in order to cease the violence. Correlating the violence from alcohol to British imperialism worked to help Gandhi spotlight the temperance movement as a part of Indian independence, and resulted in activism against British owned saloons. Indigenous Indians also led the temperance movement in 19th century India, such as Mahant K. R. Roy, who “persuaded whole communities to enforce caste rules against the use of drink.” Later in the early 20th century, people such as Sir Bhalchandra Kishna, the president of the Bombay Temperance Council, also helped get the temperance movement into the wider eye, and Kishna was famously quoted for calling the temperance movement “the only common platform for the diverse castes and religions to unite behind.” As the British remained in control into the world wars, the temperance movement found the hearts of more and more Indians, all wanting to heal their then maligned society. As more and more European nations came to India such as the French around 1600, and the Belgians also around 1600, ending with the British taking control, more and more alcohol permeated in Indian culture. Before the West’s imperialistic arrival in India, alcohol primarily existed as homemade, elaborate drinks made by talisman; along with the British beverages such as beer and wines, they flourished in India. Even today, after India became part of the modern world, unrecorded alcohol, or homemade alcohol, makes up fifty-one percent of all alcohol consumed in India, warranting concern for the drinker’s health from the lack of regulations on the production of these homemade drinks. Because of the correlation of many drinks to ancient Indian religions, such as Hinduism, the temperance movement in India focused on western drinks and, from the mass quantities of these drinks imported to India, found ground in the idea that western drinks brought by the British lead to increased alcoholism and much more consumption of alcohol in general in India. Prohibition was officially instituted in multiple states, over several years, and continues in the states of Gujarat, Nagaland, Lakshwadeep, Mizoram, and Bihar today. In 1947, the British left India. At that time, a few states initially implemented prohibition, all hoping to lower harmful side effects from alcohol consumption in Indian society. Gujarat, one of the first few states to implement prohibition and the home of Mahatma Gandhi, similar to the state of Tamil Nadu in 2016, faced harsh activism from the temperance movement to cease the epidemic of domestic abuse inside of the state, and thus prohibition was instated inside of Gujarat in 1949. Now that the effects of prohibition in Gujarat are easier to see, it is obvious prohibition is doing at least some of its job. With “a decreased incidence of violence against women,” Gujarat’s prohibition may not be blocking all of the homemade alcohol, nor some of the easily accessible alcohol inside of the state, but as long as there are less alcoholism and domestic abuse inside of state, prohibition is better than its alternative of legalization of alcohol in Gujarat. In 1920, the United States of America implemented prohibition, twenty-seven years before India put prohibition into its constitution. While the U.S. used prohibition for some of the same reasons as India, including to stop domestic abuse, some of its motives differed from India’s because of prohibition’s expected impacts on the marginalized group of Germans in the U.S. after world war one. The Indian temperance movement not only wanted to end social issues sparked from alcohol, and it also wanted to remove Europe’s influence over India, at least while the British were in power over India. Unlike America, prohibition in India did not form notable gangs controlling underground bars. Instead, many would either make their own homemade alcoholic beverages or smuggle them in personally from other, non-prohibition states. Both the U.S., and Indian states that implemented prohibition faced harsh backlash to their policies. Bihar, a state with a ban on the “import, export, transport, manufacture, possession, and sale of intoxicants or liquor” as of 2016, faced a lot of backlash from city dwellers for it’s new policies on alcohol, just as the U.S. faced backlash from many urbanites when it implemented prohibition of alcohol. After all of its backlash, prohibition in Bihar has had notably positive effects, Murders and gang robberies are down almost 20 percent from a year earlier, and riots by 13 percent. Fatal traffic accidents fell by 10 percent. At the same time, household spending has risen, with milk sales up more than 10 percent and cheese sales growing by 200 percent six months after the ban. Sales of two-wheeled vehicles rose more than 30 percent, while sales of electrical appliances rose by 50 percent. Brick houses are rising in villages where mud huts used to predominate. It has become very clear that, even after the temperance movement has essentially passed, oppressed people everywhere, especially in India, will still speak out for social changes such as prohibition as having strong benefits for themselves and their societies. Luckily for Indian political discord, with all of prohibition’s benefits, few people still oppose the policies in India. In recent years, states like Kerala and Mizoram have implemented prohibition, sparking less controversy than in the U.S. during the 1920s. In Mizoram, a bill to reinstate prohibition passed this March, making Mizoram a dry state again. The new policies had support from both major parties in the state, the Mizo National Front and the Mizoram Pradesh Congress Committee, showing the unity for prohibition still in India today. When the bill for prohibition was being processed, there was a large citing of the good effects upon Bihar once they enacted prohibition.“[Bihar] has recorded [a] lower rate (13 %) of crimes against women[,] and the percentage of rape has also decreased.” While India suffers from alcoholism affecting its communities, citing the past benefits of prohibition in of Indian states can persuade many to back prohibition policies. With new examples of prohibition succeeding, the so-called modern temperance movement can continue to improve Indian society with prohibition. Today in India, specifically in Bihar, along with the other four states with prohibition, “one person is arrested and sent to jail every 10 minutes in Bihar for flouting the ban on sale and consumption of liquor.” That means that on average one hundred and seventy-two people go to jail every day because of prohibition, in only one state. The problem with prohibition in modern India is that, before prohibition was implemented, there was and has been little in the way of rehabilitation centers for people dependent on alcohol, causing the striking amount of people arrested during prohibition finding their own cure for their addiction. To quote DARA Thailand, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center out of Thailand, “[There are m]any alcohol and drug rehab facilities in India however, [they] have a very austere setting and are comparable to boot camps or prison compounds.” Because of the large rise in alcohol use in India since before 2009, without prohibition and with poor rehabilitation centers, states without prohibition are in need of a way to rescue their new “abusive drinking” populations. As Gandhi and others advocating for temperance prophesied and reflected, as India now joins the modern world, western problems are impacting the country. Alcohol was considered a small part of Indian society before the 1950s. Now, “the country, which has seen a rapid proliferation of city bars and nightclubs in recent years, is fast shedding its inhibitions about alcohol as a lifestyle choice.” More and more, the ideals that the temperance movement fought for, such as prohibition and reform, are being stripped away by states not practicing prohibition, as they experiencing an influx of drinkers. Ten years ago, India had fourteen million people in need of help for their alcohol dependency. Bihar and other famous states, aside from their high arrests, have seen a great deal of good societal change coming from their prohibition, showing that prohibition can accomplish what the temperance movement wanted it to like preventing a lot of domestic abuse and crime. The temperance movement of India pushed for national prohibition, achieving an entire amendment. In the past three years, two new states have reinstated prohibition, causing hope that a new wave of local governments concerned with alcohol has arisen. With five states currently enforcing prohibition, temperance endures to save Indians affected by the troublesome effects of alcohol. With many arrests, it may look as if prohibition suffered the same fate in India as it did in the U.S., however with a striking decrease in violence and crime in the Indian states that have instituted prohibition, it is clear that the temperance movement has benefited Indian society. Bibliography Agnihotri, Sanjana. "What led to an early liquor ban in Bihar? Why did it fail earlier?" India Today. https://www.indiatoday.in/fyi/story/liquor-ban-bihar-nitish-kumar-dry-state-316617-2016-04-06. Ahmedabad PTI. “Alcohol ban: Gujarat govt notifies rules for new prohibition law.” Hindustan Times (Jun. 13, 2017). “Alcohol and Drug Rehab India.” DARA Thailand. https://www.dararehab.com/drug-alcohol-rehab/india/. Anand, Geeta. "Alcohol Ban Succeeds as Women Warn, 'Behave, or We'll Get Tough'." The New York Times, 15 April 2017. Blocker, Jack S., Fahey, David M., and Tyrrell, Ian R. Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History: A Global Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO.(2003). Blocker, Jack S., Fahey, David M., and Tyrrell, Ian R. “Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History: A Global Encyclopedia.” (ABC-CLIO, 2003): 309. Bordin, Ruth. Women and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty. 1873-1900. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1981: p. 8. Constitution Of India, Art. 47. Diwanji, Amberish K. "Prohibition – Gujarat's Worst Kept Secret." Rediff.com, Dec. 11, 2002. https://www.rediff.com/election/2002/dec/11guj4.htm. "The Economics of War Prohibition." Survey Associates, Inc., The Survey, Volume 38, April–September 1917: p. 143-144. Fahey, David M. and Manian, Padma. “Poverty and Purification: The Politics of Gandhi's Campaign for Prohibition.” The Historian Vol. 67, No. 3 (Fall 2005). Future Market Insights. (2017, February 23). India - World’s 3rd Largest Market for Alcoholic Beverages - to Consume 14 Bn Ltrs. of Alcohol by 2026-end [Press release]. Retrieved from https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/press-release/Indian-alcohol-market. Gettleman, Jeffrey, Venkataraman, Ayesha, and Yasir, Sameer. “Toxic homemade alcohol kills scores in India.” The New York Times, February 12, 2019. IANS. “One Indian dies every 96 minutes due to alcohol consumption.” The Indian Express (May 12, 2019). Khurana, Dr. Sukant. “Gujarat: A Disaster Case Study For Amending Alcohol Policies In India.” Countercurrents, Dec. 30, 2013. Khurana, Sukant and Robinson, Brooks. “A Case Against Alcohol Prohibition In India.” (Rakuten Kobo, April 28, 2014), p. 20. Kumar, Manish. “1 Arrested Every 10 Minutes For Flouting Bihar's Prohibition In 2 Years.” NDTV. https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/1-arrested-every-10-minutes-for-flouting-bihars-prohibition-in-2-years-1821512. Luca, Dara Lee, Owens, Emily, and Sharma, Gunjan. "Can Alcohol Prohibition Reduce Violence Against Women?" American Economic Review (May 2015): 105 (5). Luca, Dara Lee; Owens, Emily; Sharma, Gunjan. "Can Alcohol Prohibition Reduce Violence Against Women?" American Economic Review, May 2015. "Mizoram goes dry again as Assembly passes Liquor Prohibition Bill 2019." Northeast Now. https://nenow.in/north-east-news/mizoram-goes-dry-again-as-assembly-passes-liquor-prohibition-bill-2019.html. Oort, Marianne S. “Surā in the Paippalāda Saṃhitā of the Atharvaveda.” Journal of the American Oriental Society Vol. 122, No. 2, Indic and Iranian Studies in Honor of Stanley Insler on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday (April - June, 2002). Orchowski, Margaret Sands. The Law that Changed the Face of America: The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 32. (2015). Patel, Vikram. “The Politics of Alcoholism in India.” BMJ: British Medical Journal Vol. 316, No. 7141 (May 2, 1998). Phillips, Stephen H. & other authors. Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, & Conflict (Second Edition), Elsevier Science, (2008): Pages 1347–1356, 701–849, (1867). Prasad, Raekha. “Alcohol use on the rise in India.” ScienceDirect (3 January, 2009). https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2808%2961939-X/fulltext?ictd%5bmaster%5d=vid~2081b586-ac1b-4852-a177-890bf426a80e&ictd%5bil726%5d=land~2_4757_direct_~rlt~1421884337#articleInformation. Seidman, Sarah. “Dismantled Prohibition.” Museum of the City of New York, December 15, 2015. Smrutisikha. “Causes of 4 Types of Child Abuse in India.” yourarticlelibrary, 1992. “States with total and phase-wise prohibition of alcohol in India." The Indian Express. https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/bihar-liquor-ban-states-having-total-prohibition-gujarat-kerala/. The Bombay Prohibition Act. 1949. Thekaekara, Mari Marcel. "Why Tamil Nadu's women want alcohol banned". The Guardian, May 25, 2016. World Health Organization. Global Status Report on Alcohol And Health. Geneva: World Health Organization. 2014. "18th and 21st Amendments - Facts & Summary." HISTORY.com. https://www.history.com/topics/united-states-constitution/18th-and-21st-amendments Pardon any grammar and diction issues. I wrote this essay when I was a lot less competent in English. Since before the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2013, Hollywood movie stars have called for gun control, yet they have also continued to make millions of dollars from their acting in violent films. In Hollywood, many people demand fixes to the problem of gun violence, while they are making money off of gun violence. This is a simple example of public hypocrisy.
Last year, the movie Red Sparrow (2018) was released and the star actress and Academy Award winner, Jennifer Lawrence, told the media, “I think the problem is guns, not the entertainment industry.” Many of her fellow colleagues disagree offscreen and, yet, when they are starring on-screen in violent movies, they seem to agree. According to Douglas Ernst for The Washington Times, Matt Damon, star of the ferociously violent franchise Jason Bourne, had this to say about gun control while he promoted his movie in Australia, “You guys did it here in one fell swoop [in 1996] and I wish that could happen in my country, but it’s such a personal issue for people that we cannot talk about it sensibly” (Ernst 1). Can Hollywood be taken seriously in the debate over gun control if much of its industry relies on these same guns for profitability? The Wall Street Journal published an article discussing Hollywood's attack on the NRA after the Parkland shooting last year. The piece by Christian Toto detailed what a few people in the industry do to fight gun violence, including how actors discussed the connection between real violence and violence in movies. ” Oscar winner Jamie Foxx, who starred in the Weinstein-distributed Django Unchained (2012), connected movie violence with the real thing while promoting the 2012 film. ‘We cannot turn our back and say that violence in films or anything that we do doesn’t have a sort of influence,’ Mr. Foxx told The Associated Press at the time” (Toto 1). Jamie Foxx recognized the connection between violence in movies and real violence, and yet he appears to be a hypocrite by taking the opposite stance and appearing in a 2013 video “Demand a Plan,” where a group of celebrities got together and demanded President Obama to stop gun violence. According to USA Today, even after recognizing violence in movies can influence real events, Foxx discusses stopping gun violence after the Sandy Hook tragedy while still appearing in very violent and gun-heavy movies. USA Today talks about Hollywood stars pushing gun control and the contrasting opinion of many movies, “how could they reasonably expect that a few minutes of imagery on the Internet could induce positive behavior but that thousands of hours of blood-soaked entertainment will never encourage destructive behavior?” Violence is in movies more than ever now and Jenna Susko and Matt Schrader for NBC Los Angeles reported that, “PG-13 movies are now more violent than R-rated ‘80s flicks,” (Susko and Schrader 1) meaning more people are able to see them and be influenced. It would be a very hard argument to say movies do not impact our culture. According to Dr. Pautz, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Dayton, “Younger people, particularly teens, are much more likely to be impacted than older adults because they are still developing and shaping their worldviews.” (Pautz 1). to reference this to films, younger people, specifically teenagers, see the most movies and mass violence would influence them. Mike Fleming Jr for The Deadline opined on the issue with, “Can’t marketing executives find more clever ways to sell films and TV shows than simply depicting hails of bullets? Violence is such a staple of films, TV shows, and ad campaigns” (Flemming 1) It appears to this writer that Hollywood may have dug itself into a hole filled with ammunition and bodies. A few actors are combating gun violence by proposing more gun control and refusing to appear in movies with guns. In an article written by Ben Childs for The Guardian, Actor Dustin Hoffman talked about how he did not want guns in the entertainment industry and how Hollywood discriminates against actors like him, “Perhaps even more controversially, Hoffman implied that actors had seen their careers stifled due to a refusal to carry guns on screen. ‘If you are not holding a gun, and that is something I have always refused to do, then suddenly this person who was always offered leading roles, suddenly gets offered supporting parts then you... start getting offered cameos…’” (Childs 1). This argument brings up that far more goes into the process than the actors flat out refusing to carry firearms. in contrast, some actors such as Matt Damon, refuse to damage their careers in order to promote gun control. Matt Philbin at the Media Research Center reported that “An astounding 589 incidents of violence were featured in Kingsman: The Golden Circle, American Assassin, Stephen King's It and mother! And that's just four top-grossing movies from the week before the Las Vegas attack. The films had no less than 212 incidents of gun violence, and the body count was at least 192.” (Philbin 1). This ties in directly to the argument that Hollywood, while fighting to prevent gun violence, displays gun violence for profit. Many people associated in the film industry have tried to make the argument that films are art and gun violence within them should be taken as part of the art, not reality. David Ehrlich, a writer at IndieWire, wrote, “Even after the digital revolution should have fully defanged the idea that Western media is limited to Western audiences, blaming art remains a go-to defense mechanism for those who can’t afford to blame themselves.” (Ehrlich 1). The problem is that, while there are many other media and aspects of US culture to blame for gun violence, film is relying increasingly on violence to skyrocket films and influencing people. Hollywood in recent years has participated in the debate over gun control and actors continue to voice their opinions. While many thrive as actors in Hollywood making fortunes, those who speak out against gun violence often seem to defeat their own points by appearing in heavily violent films armed with firearms. Whether it is hypocrisy or not, actors, specifically those who appear in violent, gun-heavy movies, need to make up their minds over what really matters to them: their heart or their careers. Michael Philips of the Chicago Tribune puts it this way, “We create fictional worlds filled with gun violence, and search for answers as bodies stack up in our inner cities, or crazed gunmen go on rampages in classrooms.” Works Cited Child, Ben. "Hollywood's depiction of guns is fraudulent, says Dustin Hoffman." The Guardian [London], 30 Jan. 2013. thegaurdian.com, www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jan/30/hollywood-guns-fraudulent-dustin-hoffman. Accessed 16 Jan. 2019. Ernst, Douglas. "'Jason Bourne' star Matt Damon calls for the U.S. to ban guns 'in one fell swoop.'" Wallstreet journal [NY], 5 July 2016. Wallstreetjournal.com, www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/5/matt-damon-jason-bourne-star-calls-for-us-to-ban-g/. Accessed 16 Jan. 2019. Fleming Jr, Mike. "Are Gun Control Pleas By Movie Stars Undermined By Onscreen Violence?" The Deadline [LA], 2 Jan. 2013. deadline.com, deadline.com/2013/01/are-gun-control-pleas-by-movie-stars-undermined-by-onscreen-violence-395568/. Accessed 16 Jan. 2019. Susko, Jenna, and Matt Schrader. "Some Celebrities Demanding Gun Reform Star In Violent Films." nbclosangels.com, 4 Feb. 2016, www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Some-Celebrities-Demanding-Gun-Reform-Star-In-Violent-Films-367748701.html. Accessed 16 Jan. 2019. Toto, Christian. "Hollywood condemns NRA while dramatically increasing gun violence in entertainment." Wall Street Journal, 8 Mar. 2016, www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/8/hollywood-attacks-nra-while-using-guns-for-movie-t/. Accessed 6 Jan. 2019. Philbin, Matt. "Hollywood Homicide: 108 Automatic Weapons Blaze Away in Four Top Movies." mrcNewsBusters, 12 Oct. 2017, www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/ matt-philbin/2017/10/12/ hollywood-homicide-108-automatic-weapons-blaze-away-4-top. Accessed 21 Jan. 2019. Ehrlich, David. "Violent Movies Don't Cause Mass Shootings, But They Can Help to Make Sense of Them." IndieWire, www.indiewire.com/2018/02/ movie-violence-mass-shootings-parkand-utoya-trump-1201933645/. Accessed 21 Jan. 2019. |
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