(In)justice

When law enforcement has lost the trust and respect of the people a very dangerous situation is created. One in which police officers, even the good ones, the just ones, are reviled, feared, and hated. I know there are many officers who joined the force for the right reasons, who believe in justice, who believe that their job is to protect and carry out the will of the people not to try to break that will. But as horrible as it is, I understand why so many have come to hate all law enforcement. It has nothing to do with being a criminal or feeling guilty. In the last few months stories of overwhelming police brutality have flooded the news. The really horrifying thing is not that these tragedies are occurring but that they seem to be sanctioned by our governing bodies.

On November 19th, 2011, 68 year old Kenneth Chamberlain Sr. was asleep in his bed. A retired marine and ex-corrections officer, the older man had a Life Alert pendant due to a heart condition which he inadvertently activated at 5am. The procedure for Life Alert and similar services is to have the company try to contact the individual to make sure they are alright. If there is no response, the authorities are alerted to a possible medical emergency. Shortly after accidentally setting off this chain of events, Mr. Chamberlain heard a banging on his front door. Several armed officers were outside demanding to know if he was OK. He said he was but that he was not comfortable opening the door and to please leave. The officers refused, called him a nigger, and proceeded to break down his door. They forced their way into the home of an elderly man with a heart condition on a routine MEDICAL call. Once inside, the police claimed that Mr. Chamberlain rushed at them with a knife/hatchet (depending on which spin story you're reading) and so they tasered him. They tasered an elderly man with a heart condition in his own home. After which they shot him, point-blank, in the chest. Unfortunately for the officers, there is a camera on their tasers which recorded most of this. The camera shows them bursting into this man's home to find him standing, in boxer shorts, with his hands at his sides. No knife in sight. The video also shows them, immediately upon entering, charging and discharging their tasers at him. An unarmed, elderly man in his own home. In the video, shortly after tasering Mr. Chamberlain, the officers are heard to say something along the lines of "cut it off", referring most likely to the camera that was filming their actions. Again, unfortunately for them, Life Alert was audio recording these events. The audio includes an emotionally distraught Mr. Chamberlain saying "they're going to kill me." Which, of course, they did. Shortly after this incident, several White Plains news outlets released stories about an "emotionally disturbed, hatchet-wielding man". There was no mention of the fact that the police were only called to this man's house for a medical emergency. This happened in November. The officer was only recently identified by news outlets (as the department refused to identify him, an odd occurrence in a case like this). No apology was issued to the family of Mr. Chamberlain. Until last Friday when the mayor of White Plains begrudgingly offered his condolences. 

The officer identified as the leader of this travesty is currently being sued by two brothers whom he falsely arrested and then proceeded to beat on the head with his baton while they were handcuffed to a pole, causing severe injuries to the face and skull of one brother. They were Arab. While beating them he used several racial epithets. This officer is still on duty. 

And of course there is Treyvon Martin. The young man who was stalked and murdered for the simple crime of WWB. Walking while black. People are arguing about the fact that he was wearing a hoodie (and Lord knows, that's the clothing of choice for all Skittles-wielding criminals). People are complaining that images released of the victim and his murderer are outdated, showing Treyvon to be a child (he was 17) and Zimmerman in a mug shot. People are actually insinuating that race couldn't have played a factor because Zimmerman is Latino. None of these things have any bearing whatsoever on the case. Or the fact that George Zimmerman has not been arrested and is still wandering the streets with his gun. 

These cases are disgusting. They're reprehensible. But even more vile is the reaction, or lack thereof, of the governing authorities. No action has been taken in either case to bring the perpetrators to justice. They are continually defended by their respective police departments. Even the president of the United States, to whom many African Americans turned to expecting him, at the very least, to be on the side of justice and racial equality, has only recently issued a half-hearted statement of condolence to Treyvon's family. A statement in which he narrowly avoided condemning Zimmerman's actions despite overwhelming evidence of his guilty and massive public outcry. 

This can only go on for so long. A government that has lost control of it's law enforcement and has lost the faith of its people can only last so long before it collapses under the weight of its own lies. 

The Audacity of Hope

A year ago an international flotilla attempted to deliver aide in the form of food and basic necessities to the besieged people of Gaza. The government of Israel responded to this group of peaceful protesters with bullets and bad decisions. There was an international outcry at the slaughter of innocent civilians and this put the United States in a very awkward position indeed. Do they defend their ally in spite of the gruesome truth? Or do they at last condemn the cruel actions of a government that openly sponsors violent racism? In a wholly unsurprising turn of events, the US chose to disregard the findings of several international investigations which found the Israeli military to have commit atrocious acts of unprovoked violence and murder, and instead supported the findings of the Israeli investigation. You know, the one no one was allowed to verify? The one that claimed that the flotilla attacked the military vessels despite being utterly without firepower? That one.

On the anniversary of this travesty, another flotilla is scheduled to leave, once again carrying only basic necessities into the Gaza ghetto. This time the United States decided to cover its ass ahead of time. Hilary Clinton announced that the US government condemned the idea of an aide flotilla, going so far as to imply it was an act of terrorism (imagine that, the US calling someone it disagrees with a terrorist). The clincher though was when she and her cronies outright stated that the government of Israel had the right to defend itself. When pressed by a number of people, who were, unfortunately, struck with the terrible affliction of common sense, what exactly Israel was defending itself from (because apparently food and medical supplies are the new tools of chemical warfare?), Hilary hemmed and hawed and generally avoided any statement of merit. As did every other government representative to whom these legitimate questions were posed.

In short, the United States government has openly declared that the potential murder of its citizens is permissible because, well hey, they were totally asking for it!

Jihad

I'm almost too disgusted to say anything. But therein lies the point. It needs to be said. Hypothetically speaking, how seriously do you think most people would take a chain letter or article or news segment about the evils of Christianity? Even if they cited a million examples of the horrible things people have done in the name of Christ (and frankly, a million is a drastic understatement in that regard), most people would smirk and shake their heads at the crazy nutjob extremists who expect us to believe that an entire people could be evil just by nature of believing a certain religion. Doesn't that sound like something the Nazis would do?

If such a letter or article were released, the backlash would be swift and it would be harsh. This holds true for practically any religion, except one. One people are exempt from being dealt with with courtesy and understanding: Muslims. Condemning Islam has become a national pastime in this country (and in several others in the Western world). People cite a number of absurd reasons for this distinct prejudice: the oppression of women and gays, the "violent" nature of the Muslim people, the overwhelming number of terrorists who kill in the name of Allah. Today I was sent a chain letter with the urgent message to "spread the word!" The entire thing was comprised of fanatical ignorance and astounding overstatement. One point in particular nearly made me lose my breakfast: "In the Muslim faith a Muslim man can marry a child as young as 1 year old and have sexual intimacy with this child." Really? Could that sentence contain any more paranoid delusion? 


You may say "well of course that sounds crazy, but that's just the wacko fringe." Except it's not. It would be one thing if this sort of behavior were shunned or condemned by the general public, but instead it's encouraged. All you have to do is look back at recent events to see that Islamophobia isn't a concoction of the liberal agenda, but rather an established American institution. That is the frightening part. There will always be crazies with wild eyes who accost you on the street to tell you that judgement is at hand, but it becomes a serious problem when those madmen are the ones running the country, the media, the hospitals and schools.

Free The Boobies!

It’s become commonplace to see scantily-clad women in almost every type of advertisement around these days. The majority of the population doesn’t bat an eyelash when faced with the nearly-nude or the overtly sexual. Of course, there’s a fringe who believe that this idolatry of the carnal is the reason for all our suffering and that we should turn to the Lord and yadda yadda. So here we have two extremes, deathly opposed to the other’s perspective on what basically amounts to a singular issue: women’s breasts.

Nevermind that breasts are not inherently sexual organs or that both genders posses them (to varying degrees of utility), according to both sides of this argument, breasts are the most important aspects of a woman’s sexuality. These bits of flesh have been so eroticized that all other attributes of them have been thrown aside as secondary. Breastfeeding has become something almost vile. It’s seen as something uncivilized, something that animals do for lack of modern technology and opposable thumbs. Their primary biological function aside, breasts have become the embodiment of sex. It often astounds me that so many heterosexual males don’t even think twice about the supposed goal of their conquest (you know, the vagina) but instead focus all their lust on two fleshy orbs.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to find breasts sexually appealing. The problem I see with this hypersexualization is that the rest of the woman is basically forgotten. This licentiousness is used by both sides of this contentious argument to reduce a woman to a sex object.

By labeling this otherwise benign section of a woman’s body as taboo, we’ve created a huge disparity between the sexes. A man’s exposed chest is not only commonplace in advertisements and in the media, but it is perfectly legal for a man to walk around shirtless in public. We, as a society, do not consider a bare-chested man to be inherently sexual. But a woman’s breasts are seen as a corrupting influence, something dirty and sinful. The religious right seeks to cover them for the sake of salvation while the liberal media seeks to expose them for the sake of profits. Both sides neglect the harmful impact this has on the psyche of those who just happen to have been born with these fleshy lumps of controversy.

I recently read an article on Jezebel.com about Barnes & Noble censoring the cover of a magazine which displayed a bare-chested male model. Why, you might ask? Because this particular guy looked just a little too girly for the bookstore’s tastes. Apparently the decision was made in order to diffuse the possibility that some young child might look at the cover and realize that that fine line between nature and pornography is actually pretty damned wide. This, of course, would create a backlash causing an entire generation of Americans to grow up not being ashamed of their own bodies. And of course that lack of shame would bankrupt both of the institutions that capitalized on it, the church and big business.

And so an entire gender (as well as the slew of androgynous men out there) is reduced to being only slightly more useful and maybe a little less shameful that a Fleshlight. I honestly don’t think women’s rights will progress substantially at all until both genders are treated equal when naked. It’s a catchy slogan isn’t it?

The original article on Jezebel.com if anyone wants to read it.

The Obama Effect

"...in his Cairo address June 4, [Obama] accepted responsibility for America’s part in the enmity between the United States and Iran." - Helene Cooper, The New York Times.

Well halle-freaking-lujah, Mr. Obama! The president went on to admit that the United States staged a coup to forcibly remove a democratically elected Iranian president in the 1950s (Mossadegh), a move which was theatrically known as Operation Ajax. While remaining on the course of the Bush administration's policies towards Iran (insisting on an end to Iran's quest for nuclear power and condemning radical, militant Islam), Obama has held aloft a tentative hand of friendship. A move that the Iranian government has yet to respond to, in any way.

The recent elections in Iran sparked a quite remarkable (and personally satisfying) result. The actions of Ahmadinejad's "administration" prior to, during, and following the elections were highly suspicious. And for the first time in a long time, the Iranian people seemed to notice and act. Protests broke out in Tehran (the only place in the country where protests ever seem to happen...). The election was rigged! The people cried. The government and the clerics denied this possibility. "How dare you suggest that we, the ruling religious elite with heavy stakes in this election, could possibly be dishonest with you?"

With Ahmadinejad winning a whooping 64% of the vote (beating his opponent by 11 million votes), people's eyebrows couldn't help but creep a little higher towards their hairlines. Especially since many of them could swear they had voted for the other guy... Well, as it turns out, in many of the districts where Ahmadinejad had won en mass the polls showed that more people voted than actually lived in the area. So, for example: in a town whose population was 4,000 people, Ahmadinejad got 7,000 votes. Makes sense, right?

The single greatest effect of this blatant tyranny is that the people have finally been incited enough to do something besides rant about the injustice in their blogs! This whole awful political mess has given me so much hope for the country!

Stay strong, Iran! Solidarity! Let your oppressors know that your voice will not be silenced by military force or religious coercion! Huzzah!


-Impassioned Iranian-American