Escape from Camp 14 #3

After being released from prison, Shin watched guards publicly execute his mother and brother. Shin's mom tried to meet his eyes but he never looked back. He felt no remorse. Shin was actually mad at him mother and brother for trying to escape and he believed they deserved death. He now feels guilt for their death, but it wasn't until a while after he had escaped.

Shin went on to finish school. Then he worked as a builder on a hydroelectric dam on the Taedong river. Many people were killed by the extreme cold and poor working conditions. However, this was the first time that Shin ate well in his life. Guards allowed prisoners to catch fish and eat them. When the dam was complete, Shin began working on a pig farm. A perk of working on the pig farm was that workers could steal morsels of food. This was not allowed and many were beat, but Shin managed to steal. Shin describes his four years on the pig farm as relaxing. Outside of the pig farm, North Korea was struck with famine. Shin thought he would work on the pig farm until he would die. His time on the pig farm ended abruptly and without explanation. He was transferred to a textile factory where there was no food to steal and stress was high.

At the textile factory, Shin's job was to repair sewing machines that the seamstresses broke. All workers worked twelve hour shifts and if they did not fill their daily quota, they were required to do two extra hours of "bitter humiliation work." This encouraged repairmen to beat the women whose machines they fixed. Shin once watched a man bash a women's face with a wrench. Fed up, Shin beat him with a wrench and then a guard beat shin.
The most important thing that happened to Shin in the textile factory was meeting Park. Park Yong Chul was an educated man in his forties who was put in the camp for reasons unknown to Shin. Park told Shin about life outside the camp. Shin had never been beyond the barbed wire barriers that enclose him in Camp 14. The stories that Park told about life outside the camp didn't impress Shin, unless Park talked about food. Food outside the camp drove Shin's imagination crazy. Shin and Park began talking about escape.

North Korea #4

After reading extensively on Liberty in North Korea's website, I truly understand their goals and objectives. First and foremost, they aim to assist North Korean defectors worldwide in whatever they need. It may be escaping North Korea or China,l finding a job, therapy, or housing. This seems to be one of the most active parts of LiNK. They also focus on shifting the public view of North Korea. For decades, the public has seen North Korea as a stalemate. We constantly discuss the coverage of nuclear threats and marriages of Kim Jong-un. Why would we cover the things that we have been covering for decades? It is pointless! Instead, we should turn this conversation of nuclear potentials and capitalism into a conversation of human rights. The people of North Korea have no liberties. Most of them do not know otherwise. They were born into Juche. If we can shift our conversation to the people, this will empower them.

Escape from Camp 14 #2

Rule #8: "Should sexual physical contact occur without prior approval, the perpetrators will be shot immediately."

Shin Dong-hyuk was not conceived in a conventional way. His parents were given a "reward marriage." For their good behavior, they were allowed to become husband and wife. This gave incentive for other prisoners to snitch on one another. If a woman were to become pregnant, she and her baby would be killed. Anyway, as a child, Shin never had any sense of a family. His mother and father did not necessarily like each other and his older brother would constantly pick on him. His father and mother lived separately and saw each other few times a year. Shin lived with his mother and viewed her as competition for food. When Shin's mother worked he would often eat her food before she got home. Upon her arrival and discovery that he ate her food, she would beat him. The happiest days of Shin's childhood were in the summer, when he was sent into the fields to weed. He was able to steal some food and quiet the hunger that ravaged his body.

Rule #1, subsection 2: "Any witness to an attempted escape who fails to report it will be shot immediately."

The guards of Camp 14 effectively brainwash all of the prisoners. Shin's mother and brother had discussed an escape. Shin feared his mother and brother getting caught. He took what he viewed to be the best action and reported them. The next day, Shin was taken from school and driven to an underground prison where he was kept for 8 months. The guards in the prison tortured him by hanging him over a fire by a hook in his stomach. Shin did not want to escape but he was tortured. He was nursed to health by another prisoner. 

North Korea #3

So today didn't go as planned. I did not really learn anything about the Kim family. I did find a North Korean refugee program called Liberty in North Korea (LiNK). They have an extremely direct and  informative website that outlines everything wrong with North Korea. I am thinking for my Marketplace of Ideas presentation, I will make a fake travel guide poster that promotes traveling to North Korea.

Liberty in North Korea: http://libertyinnorthkorea.org/learn/nk-crisis/#speech

North Korea #2

Today I watched a documentary about life in North Korea. The Documentary isn't necessarily new, but it is filled with shocking information and a realistic view of the secrecy of North Korea. All of the tours that the filmmakers go on are extraordinarily fabricated. It's hard to believe that all of this comes from one man and his beliefs. Tomorrow, I am going to read about the History of the Kim family.

The documentary I watched: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj-CkRB1uis

North Korea #1

For the Marketplace of Ideas, I am choosing to research life in North Korea as well as North Korean prison camps. I am interested in this because of the book Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden. I want to focus on the human rights aspect of North Korea. While international affairs are important, I prefer to not get involved in researching them. The most fascinating thing about North Korea to me is that nobody has done anything in terms of widespread awareness.

Escape from Camp 14 #1

This semester I chose to read Blaine Harden's Escape from Camp 14. The book documents Shin Dong-hyuk's escape from the most brutal North Korean political prison camps. Shin is the only person documented to have been born in a political prison camp and escape. Shin's parents were selected to have a child; they were not married or in love. In North Korean political prison camps, three generations of prisoners are kept. For example, if I were a North Korean citizen and my grandparents were viewed as a threat, I would be imprisoned. This is called "three generations of punishment."

I don't know much about North Korea. I know that North Korea is an incredibly secretive country. I am not really interested in international affairs. However, I am interested in human rights and making sure that humanity is safe. The North Korean political prison camps have been around twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. 

The difference between Shin's story and most escape stories is that Shin began in a prison. His sense of normal was what most people would consider inhumane. He was born into snitching. He was born into a life of grueling labor and torture. 

Despite Shin escaping and sharing his story, North Korea claims that Camp 14 and other political prison camps don't exist. 

Boston

This past Monday, the Boston Marathon was bombed. I have some commentary that I feel must be expressed.

First of all, when I heard of this, it sounded like a neo-9/11. I had the impression that Boston was destroyed and all that was left was a could of dust. Thankfully, I was totally wrong. I think back to the Michael Moore film Bowling for Columbine. Moore asserts that Americans are filled with fear. We are filled with fear. The second we feel threatened, we blow the situation up tremendously. That being said, I only think that I got a blown up perspective of the situation. The bombing was horrible. The pictures and videos of the bombing were scary.
I feel the need to be fearful but play devils advocate. The "messed up-ness" of each bombing, shooting or threat to public harmony increases each time. But at the same time, we only see the bad things that happen in the US. There are horrible things that happen around the world every single day.
At this point, I am grateful for the unity that our county has had for the city of Boston. But I can't help to wonder why these types of things keep happening.
My feelings are mixed, but I truly hope we have seen the worst of this.

Black-White IAT

I just took the Black-White IAT. My results were "Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for African American compared to European American". 

I don't know how to think about this. I grew up in a primarily white community. I live in an a primarily white community. I am surprised that I had a subconscious bias against my own race. I genuinely thought it would be the other way around. I am not racist and have no conscious biases against any group. I thought that because of the community I live in, I would have a bias towards white people. The more I learn about places with more diversity, the more I become aware of the lack of diversity where I live. Everything is white. While there are minorities, there aren't enough for me to feel like my community is diverse. If I can find any explanation for why my results show that I have a preference for African Americans is that I highly respect tons of jazz musicians who are black. I never think that I have a bias towards anyone. Personally, I feel that everyone should start a relationship with a clean slate. I try to give everyone a chance before I form any judgement. If a person is mean, then the person is mean. Race doesn't dictate personality, intelligence, or anything like that. I'm not entirely sure race dictates anything. 

The Chief

Ok, so I have done some more research about mascots at colleges and football teams and my attention was drawn to Chief Illiniwek of University of Illinois. The Chief made his first appearance on October 30, 1926. The Chief's dance was supposedly conceived from a dance from the Lakota people. Chief Illiniwek would perform at men's basketball and football games until his retirement on February 21, 2007.

I think that Joseph P. Gone, the Associate Professor of Psychology and Professor of Native American Studies at the University of Michigan says it best, "three things are very clear: (1) for decades the university promoted--and the students believed--that the Chief's dance was an authentic form of some Indian tribal celebration; (2) whether or not the Chief's dance was originally "derived" from a Lakota ritual, it was "adapted"early on for sports events and currently resembles no traditional or contemporary expression of dance known to native people, the Lakota included; and (3) even if the current Chief's dance were an accurate portrayal of any Lakota dance form, that form is Lakota and not native to the Illini. It is also worth noting that the music which accompanies the Chief's dance is completely foreign to any musical expression known to native people--in short, it is the creation of white America."

In my mind, this is the argument that would drive the anti-Chief side of the debate. Not only is the dance a false representation of Lakota tradition, but the Lakota isn't even near the Illini! The Lakota people are further west, around eastern colorado and the Dakotas! I think the worst part about Chief Illiniwek is his costume. I do not see anything that would support the University of Illinois in his outfit. I believe that mascots should be at least dressed in their school colors. The Chief was not dressed in neither orange nor blue.

I want to hear a compelling argument for the Chief. I am aware of my bias against it, and I'd like to hear the other side.

Redskins

So this starts with a semi-related story. In music theory class the other day, we were talking about pentatonic scales. In many traditional Asian styles of music, the pentatonic scale is used quite often. In the media, there is a riff that is associated with Asian stereotypes, but it didn't actually come from Asia.

Follow the link to here the riff, I promise you'll know what I'm talking about. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Asian_Riff_Accurate.mid

Anyway, my teacher goes on to describe things like this. Among his most despised is the Washington Redskins and the "Tomahawk Chop". I believe that this both of these are culturally insensitive and straight up rude. I want to do a series of blogs about this because there is a ton to look at. 

The Washington Redskins name is among the most offensive and it seems that the managers of the team avoid the offensive reality of their name. "Redskin" is a racial epithet. There is no debate that "redskin" is an r-word for Native Americans similar to the n-word for Black people. I try to imagine if a football team was called the "rabbis" and their mascot was exaggerated Jewish stereotypes. I don't think the Jewish community would be too happy about that. 

If you read this, please comment. I want to hear other opinions.

Drew Peterson

"I did not kill Kathleen!" yelled Drew Peterson at his trial. Drew Peterson has been in the media since 2007 for killing his wife. Drew Peterson had a 30-year career as a police officer with the Bolingbrook Police Department. Peterson has had four different wives. His first wife he divorced. His second wife he divorced. His third wife he supposedly killed. And his fourth wife disappeared.
After his third wife, Kathleen Savio, was found dead in a waterless bathtub, nobody thought he was guilty. In 2007, his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson disappeared.
The families of both Stacy Peterson and Kathleen Savio pushed for further investigation. Eventually, in 2009 Peterson was indicted by the Will County Grand Jury and arrested for Savio's murder. On September 6th, 2012, Peterson was found guilty of the premeditated murder of Kathleen Savio. Yesterday, Peterson was sentenced to 38 years in prison.
I am grateful that the Drew Peterson case is over. The issue with his case was the media. The media made a celebrity of Peterson. He was absolutely heartless on camera. Cracking jokes about his dead wives. It makes me sick.

Sexual Assault

This week we dove into the issue of sexual assault. With issues such as this, there are so many things that can be explored. Therefore, I am going to need to dismiss many things while I form an arguement. I've noticed in class that it is a double sided: if it can happen to a girl, it can happen to a guy. I have to dismiss this issue temporarily.
I have some commentary about motives for rape on campus. There are a few reasons that arise in our discussions about why rape occurrs. 1) Guys are drunk and don't understand that "no" means "NO!" 2)Guys are uninformed of what qualifies as rape. 3) Guys are just looking to hook-up.
I think that in general, most of these are true.
While I don't know the exact percent of rape on campus that involve drugs, I imagine it is high. The common situation seems to be that a girl goes to a party and is dressed promiscuously. A guy is wanting to get some action, and makes his move. Unfortunately, he pushes too far and the girl wants him to leave her alone. His judgement is flawed by the alcohol and he eventually forces himself on her.
In our discussions, this is the cookie-cutter situation. This is what the conversations revolve around. While I think that this is a common situation, I think that there are more varying situations.
My arguments are unfocused. I need to do more research about sexual assault. I also think that our discussions in class focus too much on the hypothetical.

Methland 5

Methland ends with Major, the former member of the Sons of Silence, the father of Buck, and the man living with his parents. He had been sober for a while, but he felt like his life wasn't right. The same with Oelwein's doctor, Clay Hallberg. After Hallberg had become sober, he felt like his life was empty. He noticed that his marriage of twenty years had died during his alcoholism. And he noticed that his body was feeling the wrath from years of drunkenness. Major went to a bar one night and had seen a friend of his from high school. She revealed to Major that she had a long-lived crush on him. Elated and drunk, Major reconnects with his friend. He has to force himself home, in fear of being caught by the cops because it would constitute a violation of his probation. He begins to walk home and as he does, the withdrawal from meth overwhelms him. He finds himself wishing the police would find him. He is puking under a tree with a reprise of paranoia that had left him since he became sober. 

There is not one good thing about meth. Not one! We are unable to control it. It comes from foreign countries in huge quantities. A user could start making the meth themselves. The ephedrine that comes from the cold medicines used to make meth will always be protected by the large pharmaceutical companies. Even with restrictions, it is impossible to control. If a person does chose to make a meth lab, there is a never ending list of things that can go wrong. 

 A meth user becomes physically dependent. Meth releases 6 times the regular amount of dopamine that the body can do on it's own. Then someone who does meth becomes dependent on it. While their dependency on it, their health declines. They need more and more crank to get the same high. They are effectively killing themselves. While high, a user may not need to eat or sleep for ridiculous amounts of time, sometimes around 16 hours. When the high begins to fade, they do more and the cycle starts over again. Users also become paranoid and hallucinate. It's not my cup of tea. 

I decided to do some research on the critique of Methland  and found something rather surprising. Many Oelwein, Iowa citizens aren't happy with the book and says that Reding has exaggerated the truth about Oelwein. Here's a link to the article:

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/51041562.html?refer=y

Nick Reding

Methland 4

Well, this book is exhausting me. I'll be honest. There are long stretches of seemingly nonsensical facts that seem to never end…
The last reading was equally as uneventful as the previous. Reding explains how the meth isn't predominately coming from the homes anymore. But rather, most of the meth was coming from Mexico. The meth was now easier to make and wasn't being made in the houses. A man who busted several meth dealers notes that "If Joe Blow torches his moms house, you have to respond. But if smart traffickers are quietly moving hundreds of pounds, totally out of sight, you don't really have to pick that fight. You're a small-town cop and federal help is two hundred miles away, in the state capital. You're probably smart not to look too close." (202).
This is the paradoxical truth about meth. When the producers became the cartels and not the users, it was almost easier to look the other way. The small-town police officers could handle one house at a time. This house, by the way, would only produce 3 to 5 grams per batch; they would be making it for themselves. The cops can handle that. But the cops can't handle armed cartels with hundreds of pounds of crystal meth in their trucks. The uneducated gang of men they call cops in Oelwein wouldn't stand a chance against the cartels. Therefore the epidemic spreads.
The parts of this book that really stick out to me are, of course, the really messed parts. On a meth lab raid, a cop said that in the living room of the house there was "three old fashioned porcelain bathtubs full of human excrement…the cook and his girlfriend would get high on meth…then the cook would instruct his girlfriend to insert a store-bought enema into his sphincter. Next, to keep the enema from coming out, she inserted pigs in a blanket, small hot dogs wrapped in dough sold frozen in bags at the grocery store…the cook's record was to have one full pound of pigs in a blanket in his anus at one time." (203). Need I say more? I think not.

Any drug that may make any human do this cannot be part of society. I'm glad that regulations on cold medicine have helped lower the amount of home meth labs, but the problem doesn't end there. It is now become an issue of border control. I am excited to finish this book and see the outcome of Oelwein, Iowa.

Methland 3

This last reading has been rather dry but informative. Things have gotten significantly better in Oelwein. Mayor Larry Murphy is serious about reconstructing a meth-ridden Oelwein. Murphy says that "rock bottom provides a firm foundation…Oelwein could do nothing but push itself up." (123). Murphy's plan is to rid the town of meth and build it up from the ashes. The first step was to build a foundation of economic growth. He had to make Oelwein seem as though it would be a sustainable place for a business and for people to raise families. Murphy had to get a grasp on the meth problem and get businesses that wouldn't stimulate the meth industry by offering lousy jobs. There had to be stable jobs.

Before anything could be done, Reding tells us how the Oelwein Police Department only have one person who has a college degree, the chief. It is difficult to have an uneducated ten-man police force clean a meth infested town. Murphy needed the town's empty meth labs to be cleaned up. To clean up a meth lab, it costs the town $6,000.  On average, the police would dismantle one meth lab every four days. Assuming they didn't run out of meth labs, that would cost Oewlein $547,500 per year. I had no clue a meth lab cost a town so much! The police force during this time also tightened up on everything.

They acted with regards to assuming "everyone is guilty and put the screws to them." (132). This, out of all things in the past reading, struck me. I understand 100% that the police force needs to take on such an aggressive principle in order to do things in a meth town. But at the same time, in America, don't we assume everyone is innocent until proven guilty? Especially in a small town where everyone knows everyone, wouldn't the cops be a little more lenient? Mildred Binstock, a local restaurant owner, called the police chief a Nazi. Fortunately, the police's efforts did make a difference. After around four years, Oelwein moved on to Phase II of their reconstruction.

After a while, the presence of small town cooks like Roland Jarvis dissolved and were replaced by large Mexican drug cartels. And with ephedrine illegal, crystal meth was becoming increasingly popular. Crystal meth is a much more powerful and pure form of the meth of the late 1980's. "Crystal was both a crank addict's and a crank dealer's dream." (152). Crystal could be made for less money, in higher quantities, and get users to higher inexplicable and undeniable tweaks.

There was no chance I would try meth before thus far in the book. And there is certainly no way I'm trying it after hearing of the "paranoia, the Parkinson's-like shaking, and the schizophrenic hallucinations" that users experience (152).

Methland 2

The last reading I did in Methland was rather uneventful. I was introduced to Major, a former meth junkie and member of the biker gang, the Sons of Silence. Major was living with his parents when Reding met him. He had just gotten clean from a long history of meth use. He was living with his 2 year-old son, Buck. Buck was a meth baby. Reding hasn't looked at how meth affects children. Reding did mention earlier in the book that "at least 7,000 kids were living every day in homes that produce five pounds of toxic wast, which is often just thrown in the kitchen trash, for each pound of unusable methamphetamine." (30). One would think that kids would be taken away. One would think that kids would know that their home isn't safe. But unfortunately, kids don't.

When Major lived with the mother of his children, he would microwave coffee filters that he used to strain meth's impurities. The heated paper would then give him a good deal of powdered meth. The microwave became coated in the powdered meth and then used to cook Buck's food. Buck had to have consumed ungodly amounts of homemade crank. It is disgusting to think a parent would give their kid meth.

Reding tells about the physical difficulties of trying to quit meth. While in jail, Major said that one guy became convinced that he had the ingredients to make meth in his body. He thought that his vein was a lithium strip and sat for hours uprooting the vein with his fingernails. Meth also causes users to become paranoid.

Reding says "This, really, is the genius of the meth business. Cocaine and heroin are linked to illegal crops--coca and poppied, respectively. Meth on the other hand is linked in a one-to-one ratio with fighting the common cold." (114).  The DEA was trying to monitor the importation of ephedrine, the main ingredient in both meth and Sudafed (or other cold medicines). The DEA had finally gotten to the point to where all the cold medicine companies weren't using ephedrine anymore, but they were using pseudoephedrine or pseudo, for short. Pseudoephedrine is the "mirror image" of ephedrine. The DEA had succeeded in stopping illegal meth production using ephedrine, but now cooks were making meth using pseudo and it was even stronger than the earlier meth. Why does crime have such aggressive loopholes? I don't know. I find it ironic how the government outlawed one ingredient and it only benefitted the criminals. The pharmaceutical companies would push against the governments monitoring. Therefore, the small town cooks, like Roland Jarvis, would be protected by the big pharmaceutical companies. It's a perfect scheme.

Methland 1

This semester, I am reading Methland by Nick Redding. I was wanting to read a book about marijuana in the United Stated but decided that Methland  would offer information about something I knew very little about. As the title suggests, Methland investigates the horrible power of methamphetamine in rural America. Specifically, Oelwien, Iowa.

I knew meth was a horribly addictive drug. I knew that meth could be made at home. I also knew that meth would destroy your mouth due to the glass pipes used to smoke meth. Other than that, I didn't know very much about meth. I decided to do some research about meth and watched some YouTube videos about meth. I learned that meth can be produced from any over-the-counter cold medicine.The ingredient in cold medicine that makes meth is psuedoephendrine. Federal law states that each person can only get about  9 grams (about 7 packs of cold medicine) each month. The meth producers will gather as much cold medicine as they can in a process called "smurfing". They gather as much as they can and then pool together their purchases. Sometimes they will steal. Others will pay other people to go and buy their limit in cold medicine.

The first section of reading revealed that meth was the #1 "feel good" drug. Redding explain that "the truly singular aspect of meth's attractiveness is that since its first wide-scale abuse--among soldiers during World War II--meth has been associated with hard work…crank has been the choice of the American working class." (16). It is pitiful to think that in the land of opportunity people need to resort to such damaging measures to get by.

Roland Jarvis, Oelwein's very own meth superstar is famous for blowing up his mothers house when a cook went bad. He lit a cigarette after pouring two gallons of hydrochloric acid down the drain in the floor. He then had turned his basement into a vacuum and it ignited. To me, what happens next is most powerful. "Jarvis looked down and saw what he though was egg white on his bare arms. It was not egg white; it was the vicious state of his skin not that the water had boiled out of it." (42). Jarvis was able to flick the chunk of skin off himself and didn't think anything of it. When the fire entire Oelwein Fire Department showed up, he begged for somebody to shoot him.

 Jeffrey Rohrick blew up his mothers basement while cooking meth.

If that's not bad, I don't know what is. Oelwien suffers from a meth epidemic and I look forward to see what comes of the town. Redding mentions that towns similar to Oelwien have disappeared over time.

A Blurb of Flu

This winter has been eventful for the flu. The flu season started early this year and it is likely it will stay longer. There have been 20 reported pediatric deaths because of the flu this season. I find this absolutely crazy. We can get flu vaccines at any local drugstore nowadays, and people are still dying! I don't understand why everybody doesn't take the small steps like washing hands and getting the flu shot. These simple preventative measures could save lives. According to the Huffington Post article "Flu Outbreak 2013: Many Americans Caught Off-Guard; CDC Unveils Updated Numbers", only 37% of Americans have received the vaccine. I understand a fear of needles. But there are other options out there. The very least people could do is regularly wash their hands.