Who's the Real Victim?

I was doing my daily news scroll before I attend to any actual work I have to do and I came across one that almost made me throw up from disgust. It was an article from The Daily Beast about how a rape victim found her rapists online.

With the given pseudonym, Claire was raped in 2013 in San Diego after a girls’ night out with a friend of hers. Her attackers, Jonas Dick, Alex Smith and Jason Berlin were part of an organization called Real Social Dynamics (RSD). Dick and Smith were known as teachers through the organization. What were they teaching? How to pick up women. Yup, that’s right, and their student was Berlin.

 Jonas Dick

They set out at night at “pull o’clock” (2am, which is when the bars close) to find women whom they can easily shuffle along to their apartment and engage in sexual intercourse.

Claire was given a drink in the apartment and then found herself naked and face down in her own vomit with Berlin and Smith also naked and erect. Her friend Laura then found her and scurried her to the police where she was given the rape kit. The police then did not perform and adequate investigation and left her case cold because cases that involve intoxication are rarely brought to court due to the skewed timeline of the victim.

After she found her rapists on the RSD website she was soon then able to bring them to justice where Dick and Berlin have been prosecuted and Smith may or may not join them and will be decided on October 20th.

 Jason Berlin

I read every day, or at least it seems, that women are being raped and their rapist walks free or with minimal sentencing.

Let’s take a recent case, Brock Turner. A Stanford University swimmer was caught raping a women and was only sentence to 6 months because his attorney argued that sending him to 14 years in prison would damage his chances of becoming an Olympian and a bunch of other bullshit for lack of a better word. Come to find out that earlier this month he was released three months early for good behavior. Oh, almost forgot to mention that Turner is banned from swimming for the USA team. Getting six months to stay competitive became irrelevant because he can’t swim.

 Robin Camp

Or how about the Canadian Judge Robin Camp who told a rape victim that she should’ve kept her knees together to prevent the rape from happening. Not only did he say that, but to the men on trial he told them that next time they need to nicer to girls so that they don’t wake up and claim rape.

1 in 3 women have fallen victim to rape, attempted rape, domestic violence and or sexual assault. That is an outrageous number, why have we as a nation allowed this to happen. Now that’s not to say that we haven’t taken action because the numbers have gone down but as a woman myself I can not justify 1 in 3 as an improvement. 64% of rape victims don’t even go to the police or seek any other form of help because of the scrutiny they undergo during trial or even under investigation. The 36% of those who do report it, again either receive no justice or alleviation from the pressure they're put under because on the chance that their case does go to trial they have to stare or be stared by their attacker(s) and recount every step. Even before that process, the rape kit procedure is not a quick one or a comfortable one stated by the victim in the Turner case. The process of trying to bring their rapist to justice is a long dark road that most do not have the stamina for mainly because their privacy is put on public display and not everyone can handle that.

Allow me to add that women are not the only ones who fall victim to this, men have also reported. However, if the scrutiny for women is as bad as it is, it’s worse for men.

Don’t we have the right to know what’s in our food?

Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMO’s are a topic that needs to be discussed more. GMO’s are food plant genes that have been genetically engineered by scientists that are inserted into a plant altering their genetic code. Certain risks and unsure results as well as health and environment risks can all come along with creating and planting these organisms.

If I had things my way, I would get rid of GMO’s all together, but seeing as how difficult that would be I think changing the the labeling system, or lack of labeling system on all food products containing Genetically Modified Organisms can be a start of getting rid of them all together.

 In the United States there are no mandatory food labeling systems of foods containing GMO’s required, but with all of these possible risks there should be. Many states have tried to take action and create laws stating that food company’s need to label GMO products. In Massachusetts we were very close to passing a mandatory GMO labeling bill, but then the safe and accurate food labeling act came into effect, stopping Massachusetts and every other state from passing mandatory food labeling acts.

Since the “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015” has been put into effect all of these states efforts have been pushed to the side. This bill states that companies have a voluntary labeling system, but let’s face it, if you tell anyone something is voluntary they probably won’t do it. Opponents of the bill, who call it the Deny Americans the Right to Know Act, or the DARK Act are outraged by this bill because they have worked so hard and came so close to getting labeling into effect.

Scientists still aren’t sure the effects of GMO’s and so we should have the right to know what we’re eating. I’m not saying that right now we need to ban the use of Genetically modified organisms but we need to label any food with GMO’s in them, that way food companies are giving us the choice on whether we want to eat them or not.

Obama for Hillary? Or Against Trump?

A couple of weeks ago, President Barack Obama voiced his support for Hillary Clinton in the presidential race. Or more so his distaste for Donald Trump.

After all the criticism that Obama has received from Trump throughout the election (claiming he wasn't born in the US, threatening to do away with Obamacare if he gets elected, the list goes on...), these speeches are certainly justified.

First, while addressing the Congressional Black Caucus gala on Saturday, September 17, 2016, he stated the he would consider it a “personal insult” if black voters didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton.

He supported that statement with the instance where Donald Trump spoke inaccurately about the fact that “there’s never been a worse time to be a black person.”

Obama continued his speech by talking about how Trump has spent his entire career trying to fight against equality and civil rights and has “shown no regard for working people most of his life.”

In a second speech, at a DNC fundraiser in New York on Sunday, September 18, 2016, Obama spoke about how sexism in the United States is the reason why we haven’t yet had a woman president.

Obama said, “ There’s a reason why we haven’t had a woman president; that we as a society still grapple with what it means to see a powerful woman. And it still troubles us in a lot of ways, unfairly, and that expresses itself in all sorts of ways.”

He also said flat out “This guy is not qualified to be president.”

And most recently, Public Policy Polling has devised a poll to see how Obama would have been doing in this presidential race as compared to how Hillary is doing. And the results of that poll showed that the results would not be much different; Obama would only do slightly better, as in only a few points more.

So maybe Obama can actually relate to how Clinton is feeling during this race? I believe it's more of that fact that Obama doesn't support Trump.

What’s on 2016 American Presidential Candidates’ Official Websites

I doubt many Americans have observed or at least clicked on the candidates’ official websites. I’ve been here for nearly a month and it occurred to me that I will have the chance to be in the States and celebrate (to some people it may not be a celebration) fruits of successful democracy. What a tremendous honor! As a foreigner, I wasn’t exposed to that much American political news but now I am here and exposed to lots of campaign news. I want to know these two parties and their candidates. Therefore, I did what the candidates told voters to do —— visit their websites. Right after Clinton asked voters to look up her campaign website, Donald Trump directed voters to look his as well.(0:16-0:32) So, what about their websites? 

screenshot by wei sweater

Do you know Republican nominees’ website do not equip users with a Spanish version? It is quite unbelievable to me, at least. There is a considerable number of people speaking Spanish as their first or second language in the United States, moreover, Spanish is the world’s second language in the international communication. It is certainly the fact that most Americans speak English; however, not providing a Spanish version of the website has to do with candidate images. Donald Trump’s utterances have already aroused several controversies regarding Hispanic Americans. By not providing a Spanish version of his website, it may make Spanish-speaking Americans feel disrespected and not cared about. No matter who had designed Clinton’s campaign website, he/she must be aware of what’s going on in campaigns. In Clinton’s official website, visitors, specifically Spanish-speaking Americans, are able to switch the language into Spanish. That is to say, the devil is in the details, and you don’t want to spoil this, especially when it is considered as one of the significant battles in American history. (Is it also telling us the importance of hiring right web designers?)

Language matters because it is pretty much the way how voters get to know you, in other words, candidates would want their voters to know them. How can people vote for you if they don’t even know who you are? I believe no candidates would want their voters to know them simply through social media, for which is sometimes leaning. In Democratic candidates’ website, the About button, visitors are able to know Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine by pictures, video clips as well as their lifelong timeline. You want to know more about Donald Trump and Mike Pence? No, you can only know background information about Donald trump on Republican nominees’ official website. It is basically “Trump’s official website,” in which you can know nothing about Mike Pence. It did make me feel that Donald Trump did not prepare himself a VP candidate for seconds.

screenshot by wei sweater

Official websites are public images of candidates, it significantly shapes how voters perceive you as candidates besides social media; especially when we are now in the 21st century, a cyber-cultural era. People rely on surfing on the Internet to get information. Overall speaking, I would say Clinton has won on this.

Oh Hillary: Clinton and the Haitian Problem

When we talk about Hillary Clinton's foreign policy initiatives, many of us (quite understandably) jump right to Benghazi, or the Middle East. After all as Secretary of State Clinton spent countless hours touring the Middle Eastern countries in various degrees of diplomacy. But what the general populace is less aware of is The Clinton Foundation and its overreaching impact to the devastated country of Haiti. I wish I could put up a slideshow and go point-by-point through the work the Clinton Foundation has done, and the positive, sustained economic impact it had left on the localized community...but I can't. Even if you were like me and initially do not know much about the organization doing a quick Google search should bring you up to speed. On the website's surface we see a smiling  Bill with the local Haitians ("15 years of improving lives"), but it strikes the casual observer as something disingenuous. You can't exactly put your finger on it, but something does not feel right here.  

One of the biggest factors affecting The Clinton Foundation is the obvious lack of transparency. The foundation receives millions in funding each year, yet the organization is reluctant to disclose its donor list. The most recent list it has disclosed shows that 181 companies, individuals, and foreign governments have given monetary donations while Hillary was Secretary of State under the Obama administration. Much of these funds sent by these organizations remain unaccounted for, even though they were allegedly sent to the island after its disastrous 2010 earthquake. That is, no joke folks, upwards of millions of dollars. But that's not even Hillary's biggest problem... 

In 2012 The Clinton Foundation opened the $300 million Caracol Industrial Park, which was supposed to revitalize the local Haitian infrastructure by exporting Haitian manufactured clothing to US. markets. The Clintons publicly announced that within 5-10 years time it would generate between 60,000 to 100,000 new jobs, exciting prospects for both the Clintons and the Haitian economy. HOWEVER as of September 2016, after roughly 4 years of operations, the Caracol Industrial Park only reports 5,479 workers that are employed full time. One could argue that this development in rebuilding industry takes time (and after all it has not quite been 5 years yet), but even if we lowball the numbers and say that the Clintons want to have hired 60,000 full-time workers by 2017, they are currently only at about 11% of their goal. Considering how much money The Clinton Foundation is generating this is seriously problematic. 

That is not to say all of that money went to Haiti, the Clintons have a variety of foundations they donate to and sponsor, either in full or in part. But for someone who spearheaded a VERY public campaign to revitalize Haiti, this has the potential for some very serious repercussions.