Before I head out of Virginia for a little while, I figured a fitting last post in the capitol of the Confederacy would be something along the lines of "What Exactly is Wrong with Virginia Republican Candidates (and do they hear the words that are coming out of their mouths)?"
So the Virginia GOP has given their nods to Gubernatorial and Attorney General candidates. First on the chopping block is my good friend Ken Cuccinelli, who you may have heard of in his many attempts to restrict women's access to abortion, planned parenthood, and bodily autonomy. He's a good man, I assure you. Cuccinelli's most recent move has been to take Virginia's infamous sodomy law (which bans sodomy, oral sex, and, assuming they have kept the full text of the original law, sex with the lights on, and classifies them all as a felony offense) to the Supreme Court. Now, in 2003, the Supreme Court declared state sodomy laws unconstitutional, on the grounds that, oddly enough, they persecute people whose partners do not have the opposite set of parts required for traditional intercourse, and also because we typically accept that you have a right to privacy and what you do in your own home between consenting adults is your own business.
But not only is Cuccinelli taking this to the Supreme Court, hoping they'll overturn or adjust their ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, but he posted on his campaign site that 90 new sexual predators (because, you know, felony sexual violations, like this one, will get you registered as a sex offender) will come off the sex offender registry. Because gay sex and pedophilia are totally the same thing and this totally isn't a scare tactic.
Our other WTF of the day comes at the suggestion of one of my readers (you can like the WCS page on facebook and make post suggestions if you'd like). Virginia's Republican Attorney General candidate is a man named Mark Obenshain, who in 2009 proposed an interesting bill. This would require women who miscarry to report their miscarriage to the police within 24 hours or face legal penalties. Now, there is a pro-choice/pro-life angle that one could attack this from, but I'm going to let that go for now and look at it quite simply: miscarriages are often painful and emotionally traumatizing. Many of the women who experience them were incredibly excited to have a child. To attempt to force a woman who is already going through this kind of emotional turmoil to compound it by forcing her to talk to the police is inhumane. And this is the man the Virginia GOP wants in charge of enforcing Virginia laws.
All that being said, I'll be spending the next few weeks in Pennsylvania and North Carolina and will keep you all up to date with my ramblings and happenings.
Frustratedly yours,
Rachel Leigh
This is a blog about things, about thinking about things, about talking about things, and about being as snarky and poignant as I can manage. I hope you enjoy it.
Showing posts with label human rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label human rights. Show all posts
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Thursday, May 16, 2013
On Monsanto and Frankenfood
When a friend of mine suggested I write a post about Monsanto, my first response was, "What about Monsanto? Pretty much everything they do is evil."
...Exactly.
Monsanto, for those who don't know (though I suspect most of you do) is the number one producer of GMOs (genetically-modified organisms) and GMO seeds in the world.
Now I am not one of those people who is personally against GMOs as a food source. And I think the use of the term "frankenfoods" to discuss crops which have been genetically-modified to be pesticide-resistant (or to grow faster or any number of the interesting things we've been able to do to seed to increase their growth and distribution potential) is a detriment to the debate because it starts out leaving a bad taste (ha, pun) in everyone's mouth. In all honesty, I think GMOs could be the future of food production and the solution to the global food crisis, because they allow for greater and more fruitful production of food products.
My problem with Monsanto is how they USE their GMOs. First, they have a patenting process which is entirely antithetical to their supposed goal of providing "poor people" with "cheap food," as their CEO stated just today.* If the goal is to allow access to cheap food, then patenting the seeds you've designed to grow more efficiently is entirely hypocritical -- it creates a monopoly, which by the very nature of a monopoly drives the price up. Sure, your foods are cheap now, but imagine how much cheaper they would be if you allowed for market competition.
The second problem I have with Monsanto is which products they make cheaper and more accessible to poor people -- corn and soy. Two products which are precisely not what we need to further incentivize in the American diet. The cost of corn is already artificially low, thanks to the subsidies corn farmers receive from the government (though that is a rant for another day), and as a result, you find it in nearly every cheaper (and worse for you) food alternative in every step of the food manufacturing process. Corn-fed beef as opposed to grass-fed. High fructose corn syrup as an alternative to natural sugars. And, surprise surprise, these ingredients sneak their way into all those foods which are responsible for a nation-wide obesity epidemic, which primarily hits those lower-income shoppers who are supposedly "helped" by Monsanto's cheaper products.
Finally, of course, there are the massive sets of human rights abuse allegations against Monsanto, ranging from the domination of small farms to health concerns to widespread rumors about the use of child labor in their supply line. Leaving out the questions of health or business practice, these are simply ethical concerns. Monsanto is responsible for a number of major concerns, which have repeatedly landed them on human rights watch lists,** and the sum total of their egregiously-questionable business decisions make them a reasonable target for criticism. I don't think Monsanto can be the be-all-end-all of the GMO debate because, if they are, the future of GMOs looks grim.
Yours (in some strange combination of hunger and disgust),
Rachel Leigh
*http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/16/hugh-grant-monsanto-elitism_n_3285378.html?utm_hp_ref=business
**http://www.globalexchange.org/corporateHRviolators#Monsanto
...Exactly.
Monsanto, for those who don't know (though I suspect most of you do) is the number one producer of GMOs (genetically-modified organisms) and GMO seeds in the world.
Now I am not one of those people who is personally against GMOs as a food source. And I think the use of the term "frankenfoods" to discuss crops which have been genetically-modified to be pesticide-resistant (or to grow faster or any number of the interesting things we've been able to do to seed to increase their growth and distribution potential) is a detriment to the debate because it starts out leaving a bad taste (ha, pun) in everyone's mouth. In all honesty, I think GMOs could be the future of food production and the solution to the global food crisis, because they allow for greater and more fruitful production of food products.
My problem with Monsanto is how they USE their GMOs. First, they have a patenting process which is entirely antithetical to their supposed goal of providing "poor people" with "cheap food," as their CEO stated just today.* If the goal is to allow access to cheap food, then patenting the seeds you've designed to grow more efficiently is entirely hypocritical -- it creates a monopoly, which by the very nature of a monopoly drives the price up. Sure, your foods are cheap now, but imagine how much cheaper they would be if you allowed for market competition.
The second problem I have with Monsanto is which products they make cheaper and more accessible to poor people -- corn and soy. Two products which are precisely not what we need to further incentivize in the American diet. The cost of corn is already artificially low, thanks to the subsidies corn farmers receive from the government (though that is a rant for another day), and as a result, you find it in nearly every cheaper (and worse for you) food alternative in every step of the food manufacturing process. Corn-fed beef as opposed to grass-fed. High fructose corn syrup as an alternative to natural sugars. And, surprise surprise, these ingredients sneak their way into all those foods which are responsible for a nation-wide obesity epidemic, which primarily hits those lower-income shoppers who are supposedly "helped" by Monsanto's cheaper products.
Finally, of course, there are the massive sets of human rights abuse allegations against Monsanto, ranging from the domination of small farms to health concerns to widespread rumors about the use of child labor in their supply line. Leaving out the questions of health or business practice, these are simply ethical concerns. Monsanto is responsible for a number of major concerns, which have repeatedly landed them on human rights watch lists,** and the sum total of their egregiously-questionable business decisions make them a reasonable target for criticism. I don't think Monsanto can be the be-all-end-all of the GMO debate because, if they are, the future of GMOs looks grim.
Yours (in some strange combination of hunger and disgust),
Rachel Leigh
*http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/16/hugh-grant-monsanto-elitism_n_3285378.html?utm_hp_ref=business
**http://www.globalexchange.org/corporateHRviolators#Monsanto
Thursday, June 28, 2012
On SCOTUS, Obamacare, and Perspective
Let's get a perspective check, shall we?
While we've been squabbling over whether a government should provide health care to its citizens (heads up, America: the rest of the first world has already made a decision on this issue and, even today, we're still way behind the trend...so, awesome).
In the 12 hours since the SCOTUS decision about Obamacare
If all this can happen in 12 hours, what could we do with a week? A month? A decade? What could the world look like if we didn't get so off track?
Sorry that got so serious. I promise, the next post will involve a picture of a kitten.
Seriously yours,
Rachel Leigh
Sources:
While we've been squabbling over whether a government should provide health care to its citizens (heads up, America: the rest of the first world has already made a decision on this issue and, even today, we're still way behind the trend...so, awesome).
In the 12 hours since the SCOTUS decision about Obamacare
- Roughly 15,000 people died from malnutrition and starvation. What did you throw away today?
- 820,000,000 people struggled to find safe, clean drinking water (Meanwhile, I have gone to the Brita in my fridge today three times to fill up my water bottle, and can't even begin to comprehend what it would be like to not have access to drinkable water)
- Roughly 3600 people have contracted HIV (for which we have yet to develop an affordable, accessible cure), in spite of worldwide programs designed to increase awareness and stop the spread of the disease
- 360 people were raped or sexually assaulted in the United States alone
If all this can happen in 12 hours, what could we do with a week? A month? A decade? What could the world look like if we didn't get so off track?
Sorry that got so serious. I promise, the next post will involve a picture of a kitten.
Seriously yours,
Rachel Leigh
Sources:
- Worldometers.info (http://www.worldometers.info/)
- The United Nations AIDS Clock (http://www.unfpa.org/aids_clock/)
- The Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network [RAINN] (http://www.rainn.org/statistics/)
- Basic math skills on the calculator on my laptop
Thursday, March 8, 2012
On Kony 2012 and Talking
If you haven't been under a rock for the last three days, you've probably at least heard about the Kony 2012 video produced and released by Invisible Children, Inc. If you haven't, let me Reader's Digest this for you even moreso than the 30 minute documentary/propaganda film (depending on who you're asking) managed to:
Joseph Kony is took over leadership of a Ugandan rebel group in 1987 and renamed it the LRA (or Lord's Resistance Army). Since then, the LRA has been responsible for the kidnapping of children who have been forced to fight as child soldiers or serve as sex slaves for higher-ranking LRA officers. Despite having mostly left Uganda since 2006, the LRA still operates in South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Kony is ranked high on the International Criminal Court's list of indicted war criminals. Invisible Children released a 30-minute film to YouTube three days ago called "Kony 2012," the goal of which they claimed was to make Joseph Kony a famous household name by the end of 2012, as a way to push for his arrest and the disarmament of the LRA.
Now, there's also been quite a bit of blow-back since the video went viral -- bloggers, activists, and media outlets have been reacting to the video in a lot of negative ways, and for good reason. Among those: the idea that IC supports direct military intervention by the Ugandan army, which is responsible for some atrocities in its own right; the fact that close inspection of where and how Invisible Children uses its money is questionable; the idea that the video is framed in such a way that reeks of Western Colonialism's "White Man's Burden" to rescue the helpless Africans... And all of these are valid complaints.
But I think about this Kony 2012 movement, and I think back to when Falling Whistles came to U of R. I was kind of disappointed with the quality of the people who were speaking and the amount they seemed to know about a cause that they so vehemently claimed to stand for. I remember when a woman who had worked as an activist and aide in the Congo for years told us to keep a close eye on what Falling Whistles was doing on the ground -- and being incredibly disappointed with the answer.
But I was still happy to have the organization speaking on campus, because while they may not be going about it right, they got a discussion going. People just generally don't know about some of the really crazy, horrible things going on in the world, and if nothing else, I stand behind IC's attempt to at least shed light on the idea that SOMETHING ISN'T RIGHT about the fact that people don't even know who Joseph Kony is. I'm not telling you to run out and donate all your money to Invisible Children or to blindly support some cause without at least thinking about it for yourself. I'm not even saying I know what the right thing to do is... I'm just saying, I like the fact that the discussion has even started. That's something.
Talk to me,
Rachel Leigh
Joseph Kony is took over leadership of a Ugandan rebel group in 1987 and renamed it the LRA (or Lord's Resistance Army). Since then, the LRA has been responsible for the kidnapping of children who have been forced to fight as child soldiers or serve as sex slaves for higher-ranking LRA officers. Despite having mostly left Uganda since 2006, the LRA still operates in South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Kony is ranked high on the International Criminal Court's list of indicted war criminals. Invisible Children released a 30-minute film to YouTube three days ago called "Kony 2012," the goal of which they claimed was to make Joseph Kony a famous household name by the end of 2012, as a way to push for his arrest and the disarmament of the LRA.
Now, there's also been quite a bit of blow-back since the video went viral -- bloggers, activists, and media outlets have been reacting to the video in a lot of negative ways, and for good reason. Among those: the idea that IC supports direct military intervention by the Ugandan army, which is responsible for some atrocities in its own right; the fact that close inspection of where and how Invisible Children uses its money is questionable; the idea that the video is framed in such a way that reeks of Western Colonialism's "White Man's Burden" to rescue the helpless Africans... And all of these are valid complaints.
But I think about this Kony 2012 movement, and I think back to when Falling Whistles came to U of R. I was kind of disappointed with the quality of the people who were speaking and the amount they seemed to know about a cause that they so vehemently claimed to stand for. I remember when a woman who had worked as an activist and aide in the Congo for years told us to keep a close eye on what Falling Whistles was doing on the ground -- and being incredibly disappointed with the answer.
But I was still happy to have the organization speaking on campus, because while they may not be going about it right, they got a discussion going. People just generally don't know about some of the really crazy, horrible things going on in the world, and if nothing else, I stand behind IC's attempt to at least shed light on the idea that SOMETHING ISN'T RIGHT about the fact that people don't even know who Joseph Kony is. I'm not telling you to run out and donate all your money to Invisible Children or to blindly support some cause without at least thinking about it for yourself. I'm not even saying I know what the right thing to do is... I'm just saying, I like the fact that the discussion has even started. That's something.
Talk to me,
Rachel Leigh
Monday, November 28, 2011
On Things Bigger Than Myself
I am blessed, darling readers. Now, I don't tend to use the word "blessed" a lot, but I am blessed. I am blessed to live in a country where our elections are relatively free and fair and where I do not need to fear that I might be raped, killed, or abducted on the way to the polls.
I am blessed to live in a place where I do not have to fear for my life, where I have not ever known someone who has been forced into slavery or war. I am blessed to live in a place where I can enjoy more comforts that the modern world has to offer than I will ever realistically need.
Today, however, I was reminded that there are a lot of people who aren't so lucky. As a member of Model UN, I was excited that an organization that I am happily a part of hosted Falling Whistles, an NGO about the conflict in the Congo. And while their presentation was not as clear and informed as I would have liked, the event jump-started a conversation within our organization, and one I hope might spread to the rest of our campus, about a conflict that is responsible for the deaths of over 5 million people.
I speak from a position of privilege. The coltan used in the capacitors of my laptop and phone is likely conflict-mined, though not necessarily from the Congo (though conflict-mining and smuggling of coltan, tin, tungsten, and copper in the Congo has contributed heavily to the body count in the ongoing conflict). I speak as someone who has never truly feared for her life or grown up in a conflict zone. But I speak as someone who does have a legitimate interest in the situation in the Congo.
Today, also, marks a historic day in the DRC, as it was their third election. Ever. In their history. As of this evening, violence has been reported at and around polling locations, and at least two deaths have been reported. But the day is still historic. And while I would like to say the world is watching, I fear that they probably aren't. Most people I know are watching Monday Night Football instead. But it truly is historic. Free and fair elections are signs of progress, potential, and hope for peace.
While we've been arguing about just how much the top 1% should be taxed, whether we should be funding Defense Department projects from the Soviet era, or whether government health care is socialism, children have been drawn into war, women have been raped, and thousands have died. And people wonder why I think sometimes we need a little more perspective.
Consciously yours,
Rachel Leigh
Also, if you're interested in finding out more:
Falling Whistles: http://www.fallingwhistles.com
Friends of the Congo (another major non-profit focusing on the Congo): http://www.friendsofthecongo.org/
Enough Project (an NGO focusing on Sudan and the Congo, with particular reports on conflict mining): http://www.enoughproject.org/
I am blessed to live in a place where I do not have to fear for my life, where I have not ever known someone who has been forced into slavery or war. I am blessed to live in a place where I can enjoy more comforts that the modern world has to offer than I will ever realistically need.
Today, however, I was reminded that there are a lot of people who aren't so lucky. As a member of Model UN, I was excited that an organization that I am happily a part of hosted Falling Whistles, an NGO about the conflict in the Congo. And while their presentation was not as clear and informed as I would have liked, the event jump-started a conversation within our organization, and one I hope might spread to the rest of our campus, about a conflict that is responsible for the deaths of over 5 million people.
I speak from a position of privilege. The coltan used in the capacitors of my laptop and phone is likely conflict-mined, though not necessarily from the Congo (though conflict-mining and smuggling of coltan, tin, tungsten, and copper in the Congo has contributed heavily to the body count in the ongoing conflict). I speak as someone who has never truly feared for her life or grown up in a conflict zone. But I speak as someone who does have a legitimate interest in the situation in the Congo.
Today, also, marks a historic day in the DRC, as it was their third election. Ever. In their history. As of this evening, violence has been reported at and around polling locations, and at least two deaths have been reported. But the day is still historic. And while I would like to say the world is watching, I fear that they probably aren't. Most people I know are watching Monday Night Football instead. But it truly is historic. Free and fair elections are signs of progress, potential, and hope for peace.
While we've been arguing about just how much the top 1% should be taxed, whether we should be funding Defense Department projects from the Soviet era, or whether government health care is socialism, children have been drawn into war, women have been raped, and thousands have died. And people wonder why I think sometimes we need a little more perspective.
Consciously yours,
Rachel Leigh
Also, if you're interested in finding out more:
Falling Whistles: http://www.fallingwhistles.com
Friends of the Congo (another major non-profit focusing on the Congo): http://www.friendsofthecongo.org/
Enough Project (an NGO focusing on Sudan and the Congo, with particular reports on conflict mining): http://www.enoughproject.org/
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