My Political Side

My favorite quote from the past few months
"...The dangerous dogma of free market fundamentalism turns our attention away from schools to prisons, from workers conditions to profit margins, from health clinics to high tech facial surgeries, from civic associations to pornographic Internet sites, and from childrens care to strip clubs. The fundamentalism of the market put a premium on the activites of buying and selling, cosuming and taking, prmoting and advertising, and devalues community, compassionate charity, and imporvement of the gerneral quality of life,. How ironic that in America we've moved so quickly from Martin Luther King Jr's "Let Freedom Ring!" to "Bling! Bling!" as if freedom were reducible to simply having material toys as dictated by free market fundamentalism"
-Cornell West

My mom is traveling in Africa right now, super jealous. Feel so lucky to be here in Ukraine, to know that I have a cousin living Africa and a cousin living in Asia. Its so cool to see the we are all able to travel to so many different places in the world. Turns out that citizens in all these places find ways to be happy with out large amounts of money. My mom told me that she met a family that had 14 people living in a two bedroom house and they are still happy. So basically my point is that we can share some of our wealth to help the poorest in the world get basic shelther, food and health. Maybe a little more than the 0.2% of our GDP that goes to non military international aid (33% goes to Israel) than we give now. Despite what society and large corportations tell us we can still be happy without all the money that we think need, plus we can help others live with much better conditions.

I swan across a river in Ukraine yesterday. It was awesome. Then I made Palmeni.