I would totally hire illegal immigrants if it meant I ad to cough up less money. Anyone who says otherwise did not consider things such as bankruptcy, business competitiveness and speed. I really do believe it is an important sector though, we need people willing to do jobs that others do not particularly want to do. Harvesting is a perfect example; I know I do not want to pick anything unless I am going to get to eat it. Maybe I am just perpetually lazy and hungry, I do not know. I think there is a definitely misunderstanding of the intention of illegal workers. People think it is of malicious intent, that workers are under the impression there is an abundance of resources so they do not think too much of it. Also who is anyone in this country to judge someone who is willing to bend over backward to all of society just to meagerly provide for his or her own family. People should be commending instead of complaining about these people. They work really hard to receive barely enough money to survive off of, meanwhile saving to support their family. As we all saw in the video the immigrants are homeless, starving and waiting on the corner for work. This is undeserving conditions for people that are trying to do the right thing. So while I'm at it, not only am I helping myself by saving money, not dealing with worker unions, striving with speed and competitiveness, I am also giving these people jobs with out papers. I would also be supporting their families. There has to be a give and take. I am giving them a job with out papers they are giving my labor for cheap. If there was not business owners that thought like this, then many more immigrants would have a deeper struggle then can be imagined. So at the end of the day, even though it does not even out quite right, the relationship will still be the same with big scummy business workers and workers willing to do anything for money. This really is ashamed because those workers deserve than most people getting paid minimum wage. The sad thing is these people would probably appreciate a u.s. citizenship more than most Americans. The next idea for America is to start revoking U.S. citizenship if a person does not do something wonderfully joyous and caring with their life. I am not sure where they would put the degenerates but it does not really matter because America's economy would end up booming and everyone that deserved to be rich, would be. So that's life now, what it should be and then hopefully that will be the happy ending, until the end of the world comes, just sayin.

Concerning the rates of suicide among soldiers who have returned home from combat, I think we should keep in mind our own lack of understating in that realm. I know I know nothing of the intensity and range of emotion that must be experiences by our military. The fact that such astonishing rates of returned men and women are committing suicide is disturbing. As if they didn’t endure enough they are forced back into a world that the war has caused them to fall out of.

The cover story about the mistakenly slaughtered women with a white flag is a very open story that I’m sure isn’t different from a lot of kept and wrapped up guilt. I can only theorize about how I would feel in that situation. When death is numbers it is hard for me to find compassion. But looking down upon a fallen fellow human is different. It is that moment of realization that their life was as complex, involved and full as yours that shakes you to the bone. Ending a life and having that same realization must be excruciating. Not only did they end lives that shouldn’t have been ended, but they get a salary (not good mind you) and they walk off planes to claps cheers, hugs and kisses. I wouldn’t be able to comprehend the misunderstanding around me nor would I be able to find the strength and energy to explain the complexity of my own guilt.

The flashbacks portrayed by media however exaggerated, I don’t believe to be too far off. I’ve had flashbacks myself, luckily nobody was shooting at me, but it was immersion to an unreal and past reality. I felt disconnected, flashbacks aren’t NORMAL, and everyone wants to feel normal right? So when you don’t feel normal the alienation starts to set in and it is easy to drift close and closer to the unreal reality. That unreal reality is enough to reek a lot of havoc on a person.

I really don’t believe enough resources and outlets are given to returned soldiers. I think there is a misconception that ‘hey they should be happy they’re home and their getting laid again!’ Hoorah! We can’t take the severity of something we have never seen lightly just because those that have don’t want to hoot and holler about the pain and difficulty of war.

It’s always hard for me to write blogs about these things in particular because never having lived anything close to warfare, I can only speculate. But I guess live is just my own perspectives speculation. I just hope there is an effort to supply soldiers with any resource they may need after returning to what may or may not be there home anymore.

(The personal revelation is bitter sweet Mr. Nathanial Peters, let me tell you.)
Again on the content itself, I want to make it clear that if all of these events if retold as full truth, I don’t at all blame the murderer, or victim, as I feel to be more appropriate. If in a similar situation I could never predict, but I would never rule out, this extremity. This is terrible to say, and is a horrible hypothetical situation.
Synopsis of mish mash: I think I need to reiterate that when pushing another person you should take in to consideration thresholds and evaluate the mental and physical risks of harming another being. I think I found my ideas of my own cultural constraints were multiplied. And I think that any person who responds in this manner to an atrocious life and constant setting, should not be, in any way shape or form condemned to death.

Maybe I am more indoctrinated to gender roles than I like to think, because for whatever reason I felt a new wave of sympathy for this man that years of hearing about the abuses of fellow women couldn’t muster. There is something about norms being shattered that rattled even me, when I like to pride myself as being immune or as immune as possible to the norms that are everywhere I go. And it leads me to an interesting personal evaluation. So I would like to know if I am the only one that feels this way. If I were to be shown the same personal story written by what clearly was a female speaker, would I have felt as much compassion, anger and emotional all around rouse? I don’t know.

This is profoundly horrible story. I’ll be honest and say sometimes I know abuse can push people past their brink. I know I have felt that way, and this person who pushed me was not nearly as abusive. It’s what I would define a ‘worst case scenario.’
From a different standpoint entirely I really want to commend this as a piece of writing. The piece is entirely un-gendered, with a few exceptions of slight gender role assumption: long hair, the father’s raping of the child, and relations ships with women.
Long hair: The speaker references being ridiculed for long hair, with which most readers would assume a male speaker.
The father’s raping: You would automatically assume the speaker was a female.
And unless you were oblivious to the frequency of abused women leading lesbian lifestyles you would assume it was a female speaker in response to the paragraph on failed relationships with women.
Yet this is obviously a man’s story which I believe is so jarring because of gender role semantics the speaker/writer chose were broken.

You know one of the arguments I hear a lot against same sex adoption and child raising? It’s that in that environment, THE GAY ENVIRONMENT, children are more likely to be homosexual or converted. And let me tell you a little something about my upbringing, my parents are straight as arrows, and I my friend, am certainly not. And some studies show that children brought up by homosexuals are more likely to experiment with people of the same sex, god forbid. God forbid we accept people who are accepting and like to try on their shoes before they buy them. ‘Silly homo kids, going crazy!’

The whole situation is ridiculous. If we could just accept homosexuality whether or not their children had homosexual tendencies would be irrelevant, because duh silly it would be accepted. It gets me rather flustered, because being a homosexual and beginning to weigh the options for my future family is hard. Do I want artificial insemination? Would I carry the child? Is adoption the appropriate path? Does the race of the child matter? Do I want extra prejudice placed on my child? Should I just do what I feel is best and always be there for them as they experience some of the prejudice I inadvertently facilitated? Is this all-pointless deliberation because when I want children this country will be a more open-minded? Doubt it, but I like to write my hope.

It’s completely dehumanizing this question of whether or not gays can raise kids. Are we dogs, hamsters maybe? Honestly I think I’d rather these ignorant asses have been raised by hamsters than their own parents, because they didn’t seem to instill much of anything I view as moral. Maybe that’s just me being all gay and crazy, or maybe it really is them and they really are misinterpreting a huge demographic entirely.

And as far as suitable parents go, it’s on a personal basis. Maybe there are some shitty parents that are gay, but it isn’t because they are gay that they are shitty. Just like it isn’t an incompetent heterosexual males’ orientation that make him a horrible parent.

It blows my mind and is disappointing that Zach even have to stand up and say all of this, it just reminds me where we are in our fight to end the misinformation that this country has been plagued with since the very beginning.

One more tangent to wrap this rant, I don’t care who my parents are no matter what as long as they love me. They could be aliens and I wouldn’t care at all, the only thing is I might be more likely to talk to a green person on the sidewalk. I guess I just can’t fathom why the openness is anything less than ideal.

Do I feel that it is selfish for people in poverty to have more kids because of their lower income? Well to start with what I think is appropriate for any type of income family, they should only have two children. This is because I believe that a person should only replace themselves. With having two children, you replace yourself and you replace your spouse. I feel like if everyone reproduced this way it would not over populate the earth. Unfortunately, this does not always happen. I don’t think it should matter what income people should not have a large amount of children. For example the reality show about the family with eighteen children, I never personally watched it. I just think that is absurd and unnecessary. When people have that many children, they are taking from some one else. I am not sure if I could really explain on the point and make sense. To go back to the answer, I do feel like it is selfish for people that have more kids with a lower income. People should be cautious when having sex and having a low income. Especially when you know you can not support yourself, never mind a child. It is not fair to the children that these people have. That child did not ask to born, but someone brought it into the world and can not even support. How is that fair to the child? It is not at all. I just become so furious when people have babies and can not support them and do not give them up for adoption to lead a better life. May be I am crossing the line by bringing adoption into this topic, but it is an option. Some people just can not handle losing their child, which is completely understandable. When the child’s well being is brought into question because the parent can not support it, I would call that selfish. I do not feel guilty about saying that either. For example the “octomom”. I would call her completely selfish. She has no money to support her eight children and she decided to keep them and make money off of the media. How can it be any other way than selfish? Unfortunately it can not be, no matter how any one justifies it. This is something that I feel is brutal topic among mothers. Especially mother’s that are not in the situation. If I were in this situation though, you probably already know my answer, that I would not have any children if I knew that I could not comfortably support them. But that is just my personal opinion, even though I know that it is harsh.

" I really believe white people have everything easy. Everything is given to them most of the time. I am pretty sure there are white people out there that struggle just as some black people; however, a white person being poor has the same amount of struggle as a black middle class person."
I'm sorry I just think this is a ridiculous statement, and you should try to gain a little perspective before you say bat shit crazy things.

Why do we think of people from other countries as so different from us? Because they are. They are different. I believe that there is really not much ‘nature’ at all. We have culturally dictated commonalities and culturally dictated differences. The problem doesn’t lie in the differences themselves. It lies in our reaction to difference. People living in Indian slums and Japanese high rises have pretty different lives than I do but they are radically different in different ways.
Here’s the problem, we are all different no matter how ignorant the arguer, they never dispute that point. But in this society (generalizing) certain differences mean more than others. Here’s the trifecta, color, location and religion. God forbid your black, from Sudan and believe in more than one god. It sends people who aren’t any of those things into a panicked frenzy. I’m being dramatic, a little.
But this is where I rant about the importance of tolerance and education and not being a total idiot. Have you ever had that awkward situation that you have no idea how to handle because the person you are encountering has one or more of the trifecta differences? It is probably feeling that way because you are embarrassed by your own lack of knowledge. Rather than take the steps to become acquainted with differences to avoid discomfort, we avoid difference entirely. Hello prejudice and discrimination.
Just the other day I was reading an article on the cut religious studies program at Penn State University, and later that night my girlfriend received an email from a previous religion professor say “I guess I’ll need to find a new calling.”
What the fuck? Am I right to be upset? How are we going to learn if the learning isn’t institutionalized? Because we obviously avoid the confrontation of ‘real time experience.’ It’s all just a crazy mess, people aren’t afraid of difference as much as their own ignorance and lack of initiative.
(I generalize terribly in all my blogs “we, people etc.” I just wanted to specify I’m generalizing on what I observe of humans.
Sometimes you can take the initiative and the other person won’t, remember you have and equal amount of difference on both ends. That can be hard to remember when egocentrism is in full swing (pretty much always).
I just want to riterate what I meant by the bolded sentence: If you look at someone and take an inventory of all of the differences between the both of you, the other person noted many or all of those same differences. Isn’t that interesting? “He is so different than me,” you could say, but on the other end that person is saying the exact same thing. (Irony)

How can we make people more aware of modern day slavery? That’s not the issue at all, how can we make people care about modern day slavery? That’s the question we have to ask and address. And to be honest it’s impossible to make anyone care about something they DON’T WANT and can’t find the energy to care about. It’s exhausting. Talking about Thursdays lecture, I knew we were going to be speaking about blood chocolate as soon as I saw those cups in the front of the classroom. As soon as it crossed my mind I felt the empathy and sympathy that is, and should be, evoked be the thought of unpaid labor, beatings and pissing in a tin can chained to a wall. But it’s DEPRESSING. You know it and I know it. On top of the empathy and sympathy, I would say it’s also natural to feel angry, small and helpless. Sitting there you are angry the situation exists, your angry there is really not all that much you can do, angry at yourself for not wanting to hear about it, and even angrier because most of us know that perpetuating the evils in the world is virtually inescapable. And that makes you feel small and helpless. I heard people behind me, ‘I’m never going to eat that shit again.’ Really? Don’t make promises you can’t keep, don’t embarrass yourself. Coco puffs have chocolate too.

I ate my chocolate. We have all been eating those people’s flesh for a long time. But imagine your life if every time you eat some chocolate or send a text you think about some unnamed person bleeding while they assemble or facilitate your way of life, you’d probably jump off a cliff. I don’t mean to sound theatrical about it, but imagine. Every time you did anything you directly linked it to perpetuating the misery and death of others. It would be crippling.

We would have to have that film running right in front of our eyes every single fucking day if anything was going to be done, but if we were to do that when do be get numb to the entire thing??? When would it just not evoke anything from us at all? Probably frighteningly fast.

One more thing, what does 30,000,000 look like? Can you visualize the lives of that many people? Do they matter like your family, friends lovers? Of course not. Be realistic for Christ’s sake. Don’t blow smoke. And by the way all those missing person’s posters of pretty blonde American girls, whose bodies are never recovered, they are dying in some slum somewhere of aids after they got kicked out of whorehouses. Ironically, slavery is what's colorblind.