Punishment

Obama supports death penalty for child rapists. This is going a little too far.

He describes child rapists and mass muderers as being deserving of the "ultimate punishment". This phrase bothers me. I dont think the purpose of jails and prisons is to dole out "punishment". Human beings don't have the right to judge, condemn, and punish. I've always thought that the only reason we have the right to construct jails and put people in them is to remove criminals from our society to protect people. Of course going to jail does suck and it has been conflated with and used for punishment, but the whole underlying justification for sending criminals to jail is more as a protective mechanism for society. We certainly have the right to defend ourselves, but we don't have the right to actively punish. At least thats how i see it.

Thats what the argument about the death penalty rests on. Just because someone commits a heinous act does not thereby give us the right to murder them. Eye for an eye was abandoned in the new testament, hellooo people.

Anyway. Just one disappointing statement by Barack Obama. I still love him.

living a life of poverty

What does that even mean, anyway? Living a life of poverty. Does that mean you live so that you don't have enough food to eat? Do you go hungry? do you live without shelter, clean water, access to health care?

Or does it mean you have enough food to not only survive but to gain weight, you live in a sweet house (even if it is in the ghetto), you have plenty of clean water, total access to health care.

I don't feel like we're living in poverty. Its more of an attempt to get a glimpse of how the other half lives, except without any of the worry. Living on $5800 a year is just annoying, mostly because of the cost of education and the inability to save for the future. When I think about it in terms of living right now, I don't even notice it anymore, really. $85/month on personal expenses is simple when you don't have to pay for gas or plane tickets and you're used to leading a non-extravagant lifestyle. Of course, I was used to leading a semi-extravagant life before JVC, so it was difficult for me at the beginning. But after you get used to something, pretty much anything can become bearable. So while i don't feel it now, and am not exactly impressed with myself, perhaps in fifteen years ill look back and be amazed that I thought $85/month was not difficult to live on as a single woman (?) in her early twenties. 

Other than personal money matters, mostly this year has taught me about political bureaucracy, the structural limitations that don't allow people on the ground to really push through change, the importance of big money and funding, and the slowness of political machinations. And the amorality of people in bad situations. 

Pretty much everyone has some good and some bad in them. Most people will react in a way that corresponds with their environment, oppressing others for their own sake, stealing, beating, killing, etc. It was quite disappointing figuring that out.  But it also means that if you create a sustainable, peaceful, encouraging environment, that the people within that environment will react accordingly. Of course you will always have your dissidents but we are talking population as a whole here. So thats the challenge, creating and transforming environments. 

I can't wait to go home next week. My mom's going to cook me kimchi and brisket and rice and its going to be sooo delicious i can't wait! 

No, amanda, No

NO

I KNOW I SAID YES

BUT REALLY I MEANT NO.

ESPECIALLY IF ITS ON CAPITAL BLVD. sorry dude. Okay i'll go if i can drive the benz.

robert mugabe sucks

Hes 82 years old and still grappling for power. what the eff ? arent old people supposed to retire and let their younger counterparts take over? Is he so reproductively unsuccessful that he cant count his his own genetic offspring to continue his legacy of oppression and evil tactics?

Its not that hard. Just beat people up and kill them, coerce them into supporting you by threatening them with their lives; eventually create an image of mobs supporting you because if they don't shout and chant that they support you they will all be killed. genius tactics, except that western journalists are there to interview people who have been under constant threat of death for the last forty years, and are pissed off and telling these western journalists everything. Anonymously, of course. but he gets to hang on to power! for the next 4 years of his life, maybe, when he dies. 

Tsvangirai, had he stayed in, would almost certainly have lost. Or been shot if he had won. Dropping out of the race was really his only viable option, not only to make a point but also to preserve his life. 

Sometimes I understand why people get assassinated. Its so frustrating to think that this man singlehandedly undermines the stability of millions of people living in his country. And why isn't South Africa doing anything? theyre right next door. theyve been forced to deal with immigration consequences as a result of whats been happening in zimbabwe for the last few months -- Johannesburg erupted into a massive battleground of South Africans murdering immigrating Zimbabweans, to the point where the attitude in S Africa was so bad that zimbabweans returned to their home country, actually preferring the zanu-pf's tactics to those of the peoples of south africa. And it never benefits any country to have a poor unstable country next door; pure geography dictates this fact. Unless maybe you build an electric fence. But South Africa has just stood idly by, watching the political upheaval next door, doing nothing but dealing with their lame-in-comparison problems of white landowners being moved off their property. 

Ahhhh effing mugabe, why are there so many terrible people like you in the world? oh, alpha male who refuses to give up power. Its the story of Africa. why cant anyone come up with a solution to this problem that keeps presenting itself? freakin a. 

Maybe if you look at it from a perspective of resources; only those in power have access to money and food and everyone else lives a life of poverty. So unpopular men in power hang on to it for dear life because if they dont have complete control then they will either almost certainly die because they can no longer afford security guards and massive amounts of intelligence, or they have to live like a normal person, eating rice and beans and struggling to survive. 

the economist a few weeks ago mentioned that tsvangirai had offered mugabe the opportunity of perhaps a less prestigious post with cash benefits and a comfortable retirement. This suggests that the alternative paragraph was almost certainly true, or at least that tsvangirais camp believed it to be so. But this was clearly not enough to tempt Mugabe - he knew that he could continue employing tactics that hed learned from the people he overthrew, and from decades in power, that he could continue living the life of luxury in power, second to nobody. Somewhere in his personal, economical judgment, he determined that the chances of staying in power with all that money were greater than the chances that he would lose and still be able to live a comfortable retirement. What conceit and confidence he has in his own powers of totalitarian rule. 

and he must know that the west will do nothing to intevene (because we never do) and that south africa will do nothing, and that no other country in africa has either interest or ability to do anything, and that his people are too poor and disorganized to stage a revolution or a successful coup. Tsvangirai should have offered him something more valuable than the comforts of power in order to entice him to peacefully leave zimbabwe, or made the prospect of staying in power a dismal one. As far as what that may have been, id assume that required a personal knowledge of Mugabe and a deeper understanding of how leaders in zimbabwe make their money, and i am really not in a position to postulate about either of those. 

so there you go. simple behavioral economics. something has got to turn this tide.

Organic

I used to scoff at organics. bah, who needs pesticide free food? psh. mass produced food is good enough for me!

And then when I started working here at the Farmworkers Unit, I started considering what it meant to buy organics out of concern for the workers who pick and spray the foods. There was a big case against AgMart a couple summers ago that one of our colleagues is collaborating on, where they found that a corporate giant (AgMart) was guilty of all these pesticide violations, and three women that summer gave birth to children with extreme birth defects. When they did further investigations into the case, they found more women who'd been forced to abort in the 8th month of pregnancy because their babies were horribly deformed and not viable, they found babies born in Mexico to mothers who had been working in AgMart fields in Florida who had crazy birth defects (like no rectum, no intestines, no genitalia, etc). Most of these babies died. The one that survived was Carlitos, who got away with his torso intact but no arms or legs, who is referenced in the link above.

Anyway, clearly, these women work with way more pesticides than we come into contact with on our fruits and vegetables. But still, the bigger the demand for organics, the more huge farms might try and produce pesticide-free food.

But then Fawn Pattison of Toxic Free NC came and spoke to some interns about pesticides, and I happened to sit in on the conversation. There is no such thing as "safe" pesticide use. Using the term "safe" to describe pesticide use is actually illegal. Nobody actually knows the long term effects of chronic pesticide exposure, whether its on your food or in your work environment. They do know that farmworkers dont live as long and develop cancer at higher rates than their hispanic counterparts. And they do know that massive doses experienced during pregnancy causes birth defects. Well, they sort of know that.

At any rate, they spray those pesticides, which are so dangerous that you can't touch them with your bare hands, you aren't even supposed to wash clothing that has been exposed to pesticides with other clothing, they spray these pesticides all over our fruits and vegetables from the time they are little baby fruits to the time they grow to be ripe. That means the pesticides aren't just chillin on the outside of the fruit. They're all up in it. That means you're eating cancer. When you eat inorganic fruits, and some are worse than others (like celery, peaches, strawberries are all more cancer-retaining than, say, oranges or apples), you are actually eating cancer. And Alzheimers and other neural diseases. All those pesticides are going straight to my brain and binding to some hormonal developing tracts up in there and confusing signals and laying the foundation for alzheimers and parkinsons disease. Before, I had a one pronged approach for fighting alzheimers, and that was doing crosswords every day when I turned sixty. Now I have a two pronged approach, and its called doing crosswords every day when I turn sixty and only eating organic foods for the rest of my life.

The moral of the story is that I couldn't enjoy the most delicious peach of my life today. I kept thinking about how I was eating cancer, and how those stupid pesticides are tasteless, and how I wished that we had made more educated decisions about buying organic fruits at the beginning of the year.


The alternative moral of the story is cotton. At least with fruits and vegetables you can pretend you're washing off the pesticides. With cotton, they spray these intense leaf defoliants all over the entire cotton crop, which destroys the leaves in a matter of seconds. These are intense pesticides. Anyway, then they just go straight to the magical cotton processing place, where they get turned into cotton products -- like tampons. We just put those little cancer sticks up our hoohaws like they're vagina candy and don't even think twice about it. thats cancer-loaded cotton! right next to my future babies! Never again. Organic cotton tampons forever for me.

perhaps i'm being paranoid. but better safe than sorry, i say.

Tidbits of life

be prepared for longest post ever!

So I finally uploaded pictures from my camera from months and months ago, and here are some samplings of my life.

Amanda and I attended a war rally a couple months ago, where they had processions of tanks and military people and other military accoutrement. But we went as protesters, with Patrick O'Neill, the beloved catholic worker we all adore. Heres an example of the signs some of the peeps in our group were carrying:


Quite depressing. That was us, the "war-sucks, dead-people-suck, and we're-mournful" peeps in black clothing. Of course, I opted out of black, since it was a tad hot that day, and chose to go for instead the $3 hanes tshirt with War Sucks in blue sharpie, masterfully done minutes before showing up at the rally.
I got a few comments, like, "YOU suck!" and some people would walk by and mutter "buncha punks." Oh yes, yes, very clever. Keep em comin.

and heres my personal favorite, the highlight of the day, Fupa Lady With Camel Toe !!! Here she is, exhibiting her pride at being FLWCT and yelling at Patrick, calling him an asshole that needed to go home:

Man that lady is so awesome. Shes truly delightful.

Ahhh, one of my first experiences being a hated minority in a large group of white people.

On another note, amanda and i found a place to live next year! wheeeeeee!! The backyard is duke forest, the house is in American Village, and there are a whole bunch of trails and walking paths in the forest. No weight limit on dogs! yay! We each have our own huge walk in closets, our own coat closets, our own bathrooms...so sweet. And it is a sweeeeeeet neighborhood, five minutes to Duke by car, possibly withink biking except I hate biking, maybe i'll rollerblade. =)


(Un?)Fortunately there are so many trees you cant really even see the house. Here are views of the side street


And this adorable boston terrier we met


And a turtle we rescued. =)

Globalrichlist.com

How rich are you?
I have been complaining all year about how poor I am, blah blah blah, but it wasn't until I did this that I realized how very rich I am. Just by virtue of living in the United States, not being hungry, and having shelter, I still qualify as being in the top 14.22 % of richest people in the world. I included my JVC stipend and community money (the checks we get for food, rent, bills, phone, gas, etc), which totals an annual income of $5800/year. At 5800 a year, i still manage to be in that echelon of wealth. At 48,000 /year, you enter the top .1% of wealth in the world, approximately within the top 60 million richest people in the world.

While we're talking about poverty, theres a really fascinating photo series of average weekly food consumption in various countries in the world. This guy does a pretty good job, though it was originally done by Peter Menzel Photography in Time. Below are a few samples.

United States: The Revis family of North Carolina
Food expenditure for one week $341.98

Germany: The Melander family of Bargteheide
Food expenditure for one week: 375.39 Euros or $500.07




Poland: The Sobczynscy family of Konstancin-Jeziorna
Food expenditure for one week: 582.48 Zlotys or $151.27


Egypt: The Ahmed family of Cairo
Food expenditure for one week: 387.85 Egyptian Pounds or $68.53



Ecuador: The Ayme family of Tingo
Food expenditure for one week: $31.55

Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp
Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23




These are such great photos. I saw them in an airport a few weeks ago and it really struck me. I love that the family unit is so prevalent across cultures, that every family has a smile, and that the organization of the photos is so similar: the week of food placed in front of the family, placed in front of or inside the home. Culture is awesome.

I'm also surprised at the amount of food $1.23 buys in Chad. While certainly it points to poverty levels, affordability, simple economics in third world countries, it still makes me wonder: Am I being ripped off?

Okay, logically, it really doesn't. But at the same time, it kind of does.

BJ Honeycutt, Super Star

Two posts in one day! wow! i just got all these pictures and got super excited about posting them, so here's a picture of me and three of my Jesuit Volunteer roomies hanging out with Mike Farrell, aka BJ Honeycutt from M*A*S*H, at his book signing, hosted by PFADP (people of faith against the death penalty) and by the NC Justice Center.


Linnea is missing. Dinner was deeeeeeeelicious.

Party in the Fields!!!!

We did outreach to H2A workers on Monday night. "H2A" is a visa for foreign guest workers in agriculture. Most H2A workers are Mexican, though recently its been used as a vehicle to traffic laborers in from remote parts of the world, like India, Bali, South Africa, Indonesia. An H2A visa is temporary, only lasts 11 months, and workers are guaranteed on average 30 hours of work per week, at $8.53/hour, they get workers comp, inspected housing. At the "good" camps, this is more or less what you see, but at some more exploitative camps you see them not getting paid the correct wage, sitting around for weeks without work, not getting workers comp, not getting enough water in the fields, etc.

The camps we went to on Monday were "good" camps. The guys were all getting paid correctly, didn't have to work when it was too hot, got plenty of water, no pesticide danger, and they were super friendly. Some of them have been coming here for a couple years, and almost all of them have children and wives at home. They were receptive to what we had to say but didn't seem to be having any problems with their work.

I did get invited to a dance on Saturday by one of the workers! But I had to turn it down, alas, as we are having our sweetness party Saturday night. Which everyone is of course welcome to attend, see facebook for details.

That's Peter, our law intern, talking to one of the workers and explaining that our phone number is on the back of the booklets


Thats me and a SAF (student action with farmworkers) intern talking to two of the guys, one of whom has Curly's haircut from the three stooges.

And me again, with my terrible posture, talking to two other dudes. These guys weren't as friendly, though they did teach us how to say "i'm hungry" and "its really hot" in Tarrasco, a native dialect of Michoacan, their home state in Mexico.



yay for my first blog post with pictures!!!! Photos were taken by Omar, our community ed coordinator.

barack obama isnt black

hes half black.

He's just as white as he is black. Helloooooo! I'm HALF asian. People describe me as being 'half asian' and nobody says I belong to the Asians. thats crazy talk. 

Obama is more of a light brown mixture. If one could say that a person of a particular race "belongs" to that race (which is total bs) Obama "belongs" just as much to the whiteys as he does to the blacks. He is quite handsome though, and does, incidentally, "belong" to the pretty people of America.  

I belong just as much to the mexicans as I do to the whites, and just as much to the koreans as to the half mexicans. Theres a math problem for you, if you couldnt figure out the portions of my heritage. =) 

and im so jealous of evan.  his life is crazy. 

crazy awesome

So we all knew this was on its way; it was inevitable and fairly obvious that at some point people would realize that most genetic deficiencies could be supplemented/erased by taking various vitamin cocktails. Most geneticists have been anticipating this for about a decade now.

But the awesome part of this all was that I had a visionary flash of the future: someday, we'll all be able to go to a DNA consultant, have our genomes mapped out for us, and they'll tell us what we need to do to live to be two hundred, avoid cancer, alzheimers, and parkinsons, and then we'll all just take our own personal vitamin cocktail for the rest of our lives. I say DNA consultant instead of doctor, because lets face it, doctors dont really know anything about DNA. And I don't trust doctors; they make too much money even when they don't cure anything. But a true, capitalist based industry such as DNA consulting would actually work. And DNA biologists actually know what they're talking about.

Ten years from now, there will be more online dating sites like eharmony and scientificmatch, a little known site that is locally based because it matches people based on pheromone DNA, ensuring fabulous chemistry. But there will be dating sites that match people based on how awesome their children could be too, ensuring top notch reproductive success.

Why is this a breakthrough? Because up until now pretty much the most effective cure all is daily exercise and not smoking. Thats boring. Taking vitamin supplements to maximize your DNA efficiency is way more awesome. In fact, I want to be a DNA consultant. Nobody steal my idea. If I had no other goals for my life, I'd totally get the capital together to do this and travel the world telling people which vitamins to take.


NOTE: IF YOU ARE A PREGNANT MOTHER:

TAKE LOTS OF CHOLINE. Eat hardboiled eggs and fish, up to the daily threshold limit. You can also buy the vitamin supplement at most drug stores. Your kids will be awesome.

god science is so freaking cool.

Embarassing

so today I made a really embarrassing mistake.

This morning I decided to try out the new lotion that my uncle brought home from the airport one day a few months ago. Its called "NutriMilk" and its in a fancy bottle. Anyway, I ran out of time this morning and so took it with me to work, where I left it in my bag and thought i'd put some on at work. Anyway, as I'm walking up to the building, I start applying some on my face. Its sort of runny but feels nice as I rub it into my skin. When I get to my desk, I start putting it on my legs, but I notice that it doesnt rub in as well as it did on my face. After some extensive rubbing with little to no success at getting it to absorb, I decide to re-read the bottle. Yup, DEFINITELY says jabón liquido para el cuerpo -- liquid soap for the body. Dammit.

So I get up and run to the office bathroom, where I realize that my face is covered in dried liquid soap, and my leg is foaming. And I basically end up taking a shower in the sink, washing off my legs with paper towels and water. When I go to wash my face, my face looked totally normal -- just felt a little weird - but when i splashed water on it, it immediately started foaming.

And I havent been able to get the soap smell off of my body all day; i put so much of it on and rubbed it so thoroughly that its now, like, embedded in my skin. Ahhh. I hate liquid soap. Why'd they put it in a bottle that looks like lotion? ahhhhh. And I smell like an old woman. booo.