Absurd Frenzy

An American flag burns. An angry mob goes on a rampage. A car is set ablaze. Black smoke rises to the sky. People scatter attacked by water canons and tear gas. Yet again anger against America ignites violence in some parts of the Islamic world. And American's are left aghast as the reasons don't make sense. Unfortunately the reasons have always remained the same, it is the spark that is always different.

This time it is a youtube video. The trailer for a despicable and amateurish film titled Innocence of Muslims by a man named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula is at the heart of the anger and the rage. Mr. Nakoula is no film maker of any repute. A Coptic Christian from Egypt, he may not even be an American citizen. In 2010 he was convicted of check fraud and was on probation. A 14 minute preview for a supposed feature length film that depicts Prophet Muhammad as a badly dressed buffoon, womanizer and pedophile was uploaded to youtube in June. No one paid any attention. It was then translated into Arabic and uploaded several more times in the weeks leading up to the infamous day, September 11th. The video was then shown on Egyptian television which sparked an unforeseen chain of events that has caused death, injury and destruction. A response to no film or any kind of expression in this world justifies killing and mayhem the likes of which we have seen over the last few weeks. So is this absurd frenzy really a reaction to the film or is it just a pretext to something that is very present.

Today, the Pakistani government declared a public holiday giving people the leisure time to protest against what they see as an attack on their religion. Images of people after Friday prayer going on a destruction spree of their own property, took the absurdity of the situation even higher. But then again Pakistan has a lot to be angry about. And Pakistanis in the last decade or so have taken every opportunity to publicly exhibit their disgust against America for the war they have brought to their region. Here seemed to be another occasion to display that anger. A minister even declared a $100,000 bounty on Nakoula Basseley and a few dozen people have already died in clashes with the police. From the Middle East, South Asia, Africa to the Far East, protesters have come out displaying their anger against America. Even though their numbers seem to have swelled, they are a minority, but a loud and raucous one.

In 1989 Ayatollah Khomeini, the cleric leader of Iran, used Salman Rushdie and his book The Satanic Versus as a soft target to launch his attack on the west. When he announced a Fatwa, calling for the author's death for desecrating Islam, people who had not read even a page of the book or knew a word of English went into a state of mass frenzy expressing their anger against the west for harboring him. Other nations resorted to banning the book, including the democratic nation of the author's birth, India. Even though freedom of expression was and is an integral part of India's constitution, its leaders buckled to the frenzy of the extremists who were not interested in an intellectual debate but were more energized by a medieval response, much like what is being seen today.

The furor over the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad published in the Danish magazine Jyllands-Posten lead to the undesirable death of hundred mostly Muslims around the world. Again a medieval response was favored by some people instead of a non-violent discourse. Much like in the case of this film, there was a four month delayed response to the cartoons since the time they were published. Why that was the case is open to speculation and the absurdity of it all becomes even more pronounced as a result.

On September 12, 2012 prisoner number 156 at Guantanamo Bay committed suicide. Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, a Yemini was picked up by Pakistani security forces in late 2001 near the Afghan-Pakistan border and was handed to the American forces. Barely 20, he was labeled a "foreign fighter" a foot soldier for Al-Qaida and transported to a hell that would see his end. Without a shred of evidence to prove he was part of a terror group or had committed a war crime he was held without being charged, deprived of any contact with the outside world. He was the ninth detainee to commit suicide at Guantanamo Bay. 170 detainees still stare into the abyss, and they are all Muslim. Drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen steadily kill what the media calls "suspected militants". This month alone there have been several dead and some were women and children, "Collateral Damage" all Muslim. Israel continues to inflict a system of apartheid on millions of Palestinians, all Muslim, with the world and America just watching by. The casualties of illegal wars orchestrated by America in response to the action of a few Muslim terrorists are still on going. Not a single American in power has been prosecuted for those criminal wars and the present US administration recently made sure no one ever will.

There is enough anger simmering in the Muslim world, justly so, as a result of the double standards the west has so blatantly advertised. On one hand the west talks peace, freedom of speech, social justice and rule of law and on the other allows institutions like Guantanamo Bay to exist and places like Gaza to fester, with no recourse. Therefore a large majority of Muslims around the world believe 9/11 to have been an inside job. The conspiracy theory that the Israeli intelligence agency was involved behind the planning and execution of the attack to stoke up western hatred for Islam, is a widely believed thesis. According to the magazine The Economist three quarters of Egypt believes in this account. So the protests we are seeing could be an expression of this indignation and it is important to pay attention to it, if we are to understand the world we live in today.

In a recent interview while publicizing his memoir about living under a Fatwa titled Joseph Anton (his code name in hiding), Salman Rushdie conceded that he would not have been able to publish The Satanic Versus today. According to him, there has been a chilling effect as a result of what has gone on since those days of mass hysteria, and the casualty has been the freedom of expression. In an earlier interview he expressed the opinion that the battle that is ensuing today is not between Islam and the west, more so it is a battle between moderate and liberal voices within Islam against the extremist ones. It seems like the extremists are setting the agenda. Fear and intimidation is working in drowning the moderate voices and a version of the Muslim world is filtering through which is far from accurate. The unspoken casualty is civility and the outcome is the demonizing of a people and a religion.

The film Innocence of Muslims is an anomaly that is so extreme, the fact that it warranted such attention is astonishing. Much like the propagandist films of Al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah and other extremist groups, this film was purely made to offend, create hatred and instigate a response. The slow burning fuse was lit on the internet and certain vested interests succeeded in fanning it into a fire. Whether the fire will turn into an engulfing blaze, only time will tell.

The corner stone of any civil society is the right to express oneself without fear. Without it there cannot exist a healthy mind and without which there can be no progress. Everyday even in the most democratic of societies this freedom is under threat. The imprisonment of the Indian cartoonist Aseem Trivedi and the sentencing of the Russian feminist punk band Pussycat Riot are recent examples of state oppression against free speech. It is the fight for freedom to express new thoughts and ideas and to do away with the old guard that gave rise to the religions of Islam and Christianity. Jesus did not accept the law of the land he lived under, nor did Muhammad. They both had a clear idea of what the world should be like, and the idea of "peace" played an important role in shaping it. They both fought against persecution to make a new path for their followers. There in lies the irony of the world we live in today. It is what it is.

Pause

"Human hate is bigger than god's love for man, if you let it be"
- Anonymous

This statement captures why there is so much violence in the world and it does not seem to desist. For those who live their life in moments of conflict, here is a moment for pause and reflection. Violence is a human problem and therefore there can only be a human solution. It is what it is.

Vio-LENS

An all too familiar brand of American horror unveiled its ugly face at a cinema theater in Colorado. This time it was not on the screen. A young man unloaded his gun into an engrossed crowd who were taking in a fictional shoot out from the latest Batman movie. By the time it was over twelve people were dead, fifty eight were wounded of which nine clung to life as the nation came to grips with yet another senseless orgy of violence.

Much like those who came before him, this murderer's psycho-graphic profile was familiar and predictable. An intelligent man, a PhD student in this case, a social recluse, with an ideology that is not yet clear, snapped at a place and time where he could get the maximum attention. The opening night of the most anticipated block buster movie of the summer. And attention he did get. Instantly the news-media went into over drive, speculation was rampant and Warner Brothers' ongoing promotions for Batman were suspended. Even the presidential campaign was halted and the world turned to America and wondered in dismay and disdain, thinking "Only in America!".

The irony behind the choice of location for the massacre is hard to ignore. The gunman did not chose the movie "Ice Age" to unleash his terror, he chose "The Dark Night Rises". A violent and dark movie that is rated PG-13, in which the villain commits mass murder at least a few times spreading panic and peril. This is certainly not a case of life imitating art. This is a blatant example of a culture making a crime easy to take place. Both by providing the means to do so and creating a climate to do it within.

Here in America to say that we live in a climate of constant violence is an understatement. From wars that are orchestrated by the mammoth military industrial complex, a pop culture that peddles violence for a profit, to the violent words that are constantly hurled at each other in the name of freedom, America has become accustomed to violence like never before. It was appalling to hear on the airwaves from some people in power that this was not the moment in time to discuss "gun control".

Thirty people die every day in this nation from guns, a million have died since Kennedy and King were shot.

This murderer bought six thousand rounds of ammunition and other accessories using the internet and FEDEX, while most people are humiliated at airports for carrying a nail clipper. Even if you were a rabid advocate of gun ownership, you could not ignore the ludicrousness of this situation.

In America to watch Batman with a bucket of popcorn and a giant soda on your lap and not be phased by the violence is called entertainment, and to own a deadly weapon with ease is called living in freedom.

Acts of violence in movies or video games do not drive the consumer to commit horrific acts of violence. This has been often proved by statistics and qualitative academic discourse.

While in graduate school studying Mass Communication Theory, this was always a topic of discussion in my classes. But there is something to be said about a culture that celebrates acts of violence as pervasive pop consumption and rewards it with bigger and bigger box office collections.

When I came to this country I took part in a campus ritual of Halloween by seeing a horror film at midnight, as that was the thing to do. I saw the horror "classic" from the 80s "Texas Chain Saw Massacre". This is definitely among the most violent movies every made and I was quite disturbed by the constant sense of peril embodied in its sheer rawness.

I was even more disturbed by the interaction of the audience with the film. There were people laughing and relishing in the orgy of violence on screen while I was petrified. I was in shock, culturally and otherwise. I was later told that I had completely missed the cultural context of the moment since I was a foreigner and it was Halloween.

Later I wrote an academic paper on the American obsession with the horror genre of cinema and realized that this is unique to the American experience. A "thrill ride" that has roots in Christian mythology and war. Only Japan and Korea seem to compete in this arena.

Among the twelve victims who were gunned down in Aurora, Colorado, there was a six year old. There is nothing more grim in this world than to witness the death of a child. While I was shaken by her death, I was also disturbed by the fact that she was an audience member at this movie.

Batman is a comic book hero, but the movies in every sense of the word are adult. Being a father of a six year old, I am very cautious of what she is exposed to in a world that comes at her without filters. And I feel in America there is a rapid loss of innocence by a carefree attitude that anything goes. And there is a belief that children can adapt and learn anything when provided the right context. The television landscape is a great example of the changing standards and so are the toys that are manufactured for consumption and advertised to the impressionable while the adults are turned away.

As a society there is a high degree of insensitivity, an attitude towards violence that is indifferent and it only becomes real for a brief moment when an act such as this one in Aurora occurs.

In a bizarre response to the tragedy, gun sales in Colorado jumped 43%. 2887 people were approved over the weekend to legally possess guns. Fear is a reason given for this absurdity and certain insanity.

The shooter when displayed to the world with orange hair and dazed eyes, conveyed a disturbed mind. He was not born like that. He apparently grew up in a stable middle class family among sprinklers and white picket fences in California. So what went wrong? What role did the people who made his world have to play? No matter what, there is no excuse for a crime of this nature. But these are important questions to ask. A killer is made by society. And then society gives him or her access to commit the crime.

It is a proven fact, that nations that have strict gun control have less or no gun crime. In this country the constitution gives you the right to legally bear arms. Guns can be purchased at expos, internet and in some places at the local mall. The National Rifle Association's (NRA) sole purpose is to make sure that the second amendment stays alive in all its glory and criticize vehemently those who oppose it.

President Obama is often lambasted by the right for having plans to take guns away from the people and deny them their second amendment. In reality he has not tabled a single policy aimed at curtailing gun violence during his term in office. And the Republican nominee for president Mitt Romney, could not form a single coherent idea in response to the tragedy in Colorado to save his life. Such is the bankruptcy of the American political system.

No matter what lens you see through, there is a perception that the world is in a grip of excessive violence. The media certainly makes that impression more present when a tragedy of this magnitude occurs. There is no doubt that popular culture around the world has come to embody more violence in its content. But even with the senseless killings in Syria, Afghanistan and Africa, terrorism and human rights abuses in other places, statistically more people on the planet are living in peace today than they have ever before.

Humanity has always been plagued by a culture of violence. Religion to some extent has tried to tame it by promoting ideas of peace and harmony in scripture. But religion has also spawned some of the most horrific violence known to man. Peace through deterrence seems to be a norm as the Gandhi and King model is relegated to history books and commemorative postage stamps. In this age of surveillance, drones and excessive policing the bumper sticker "If Guns are Outlawed, only Outlaws will have Guns" sadly still rings true for many Americans who still like to believe they live in the "Wild West".

As this Colorado killer is brought to justice and many call for his head, and as the wounds of those who have lost everything begin to heal, there is very little hope that there will be a shift in the culture of violence. The last time something horrific like this happened in America, was when Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and six others were shot mercilessly in Arizona. Not much has changed since that 2011 incident and the hopes that anything will now, are slim.

Despite the glitch, as expected "The Dark Night Rises" broke all records at the box. Many of the movie makers expressed their grief publicly in response to this aberration. In light of this incident if the producers of the film could use some of the box office money to fund a campaign against gun violence in our culture it would be a much more poignant way of expressing grief than just words and photo ops.

Sometimes when my wife and I have a fervent disagreement and walk away feeling enraged, she always says, if things cannot be peaceful at the family level how can one expect harmony between nations and peoples. I always shrug it of as a very simplistic view, an analogy that has no bearing on the complex issues of nation state. But then again, there never can be real peace unless there is a "culture of peace". And culture is created by the sum of its individuals.

It is what it is.

The Riot Within

A grainy shaky video of someone being ruthlessly beaten by a gang of uniformed men dominated America's television screens over and over in 1991 and 1992. There was no "youtube" then, or else the word "viral" would have been associated with this video which etched itself into millions. 

I had just arrived in the United States as a fresh graduate student from India, and watching this from a remote mid-western campus in Ohio was deeply disturbing and unsettling. 

The man being beaten was Rodney King and the gang doing the pummeling were Los Angeles policemen. When the story behind the video eventually emerged and the severely bruised and swollen face of Rodney King with a blood shot red eye was published, the horror of it all shook America to its core.

It was March 2, 1991 after a night of watching basketball on TV and heavy drinking Rodney King and his two friends left a friend's home. Around 12:30 AM a couple of Los Angeles policemen spotted them speeding down a highway. The officers pursued the car which turned into a high speed chase. Rodney King had enough alcohol in his body to get arrested for drunk driving. He was out on parole for a prior theft and an arrest could send him back into prison and he did not want to take that risk. 

After approximately eight miles, with several police cars and a helicopter on his tail, he decided to give up. The police asked his two passengers to exit and face down on the ground. They complied. When Rodney King was asked to do the same, he acted strange, giggling and waving at the helicopter above.

King then grabbed his buttocks and the officers thought he was reaching for a gun. At this point one of the officers drew a pistol and King complied by lying face down. Four other officers proceeded to hand cuff King at which point he began to resist causing one of the officers to fall off. The officers withdrew and King got back on his feet and an officer deployed a "Taser". 

The electric shock immobilized King but not completely. The officers then proceeded to attack him with their batons, hitting him hard on his joints. After 56 blows and 6 kicks and surrounded by seven officers he was finally subdued and cuffed by his hands and legs and dragged on his stomach to the side of the road for an ambulance to arrive. Unknown to the policemen the whole incident was captured on video by George Holiday from his apartment window. Video technology in a citizen's hand for the first time had unlocked the doors to what was to come.

The video was first shown on a local television station in its entirety and the response was immediate. Within hours the video went national and Rodney King became a household name. 

The court case that finally got underway had the nation gripped. The color line grew thicker and wider and the justice system was under a microscope to see if the officers would be prosecuted for their brutality. The graphic video to many seemed enough to prosecute the white policemen. 

A year later an all white jury acquitted the officers of assault and hours later an already simmering city burst into flames. The "LA Riots" as it came to be known ignited the "City of Angels". It was certainly not the first race triggered incident, but the extent of it was wide. 

By the time the US Army, Marines and the national guard controlled the violence it was six days and 53 people were dead and $1 billion dollars worth of property was damaged by looting and arson. Most of the violence took place in poor Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. Smaller riots were reported in San Francisco, Las Vegas and Atlanta.

In the midst of the rioting Rodney King appeared on television. Hunched over a microphone he pleaded "can we all get a along?". His voice tempered by emotion added "We're all stuck here for a while". His plea had little effect. His plight had exposed the racial divide in the country and like the O.J. Simpson trial a couple of years later and the Trayvon Martin shooting early this year, the polarization of opinion was stark.

Rodney King eventually sued the city of Los Angeles and won $3.8 million in restitution. Even though he was made into a symbol of resistance by many civil rights leaders, he never fit the mould. He became a victim of his celebrity. His drinking problem only exacerbated. He squandered his fortune in bad investments and could never hold a steady job. He also had trouble keeping away from the law. He was arrested in 1995 for hitting his wife with his car and in 2003 for drunk driving. In April of 2012 he published a memoir titled "The Riot Within" to commemorate the 20th anniversary of his ordeal. On June 17th he was found dead in his own swimming pool. He was 47.

Rodney King was no saint or a civil rights leader. For that matter he was no hero or an activist. Like many of us he was a deeply flawed individual, probably a victim of his upbringing. But his story acted as a catalyst in exposing the divide which America still struggles to bridge.

The 1992 feature film "Malcolm X" opens with the grainy video of the Rodney King assault. The image then dissolves into the letter "X" and the movie takes you back a few decades. Spike Lee, who's films mostly deal with the subject of racial tension in America, was trying to make a statement that not much had changed since Malcolm X embarked on his struggle from a street hustler to a charismatic leader.

Though America has come a long way enacting laws to blur the color line, every now and then when there is a crime where race is a factor, and justice seems to falter, the nation erupts in a polarized debate that often turns violent. 

In a recent interview with the LA Times Rodney King said "Obama he wouldn't have been in office without what happened to me and a lot of black people before me". While there must be some truth to this statement one thing is certain the Presidency of Obama has certainly psychologically pushed the nation further in the direction of racial amity. More so by default, rather than design. It is what it is.

It is what it is.

FB

FB is the stock symbol for Facebook on the New York stock exchange. This month Facebook launched its IPO (Initial Public Offering) inviting investors to buy shares in its company. Every newspaper and television network around the world was buzzing with this news and the excitement for some was epic. The 28 year old baby faced founder Mark Zuckerberg opened the day's trading by ringing the bell on his California company campus surrounded by a herd of his beloved employees. The cheer and optimism was palpable as the company that almost replaced the telephone hoped to rake in $5 billion in its initial stock offering. The estimates and analysis from a few days before were guarded but the expectations were all over the barometer. The company was valued at $100 billion dollars, even though it had only made $3.8 billion in revenues in 2011 and had only 3500 employees. The IPO was destined to be historic.

Then reality struck. When trading began on May 18th there was a mad rush and the shares priced at $38 began to move in gigantic volumes. The computer networks that execute the transaction on the stock exchange hit a snag. The requests were not satisfied in time, and by end of trading day the share value was just a few cents above the debut price. The next day news about the technical glitch and rumors that the giant bank Morgan Stanley had over valued the company and key information about the company was only made privy to a select few made the market nervous. The share price took a tumble ending below $30 today, losing 24% in value since the IPO. Angry investors lodged lawsuits against Nasdaq (the stock index) and other parties involved, claiming deception, insider trading, impropriety and pure negligence. While a number of people did become wealthier at Facebook, it sure did not go the way they hoped it would.

Facebook which only started eight years ago as a prank on the Harvard University campus, has come to dominate the lives of close to a billion people around the world. With clever technology, which for the most part already existed, it was able to create a vast network by allowing people to communicate with each other without impeding that process by overt advertising. With a revenue model that relied on subtle advertising, it was able to position itself as a company that could be the platform for future commerce and human interaction. In eight years it launched an IPO hoping to rival giants like Apple, Google and Microsoft. Facebook  had very little technology to sell and so it banked on the 900 million eye balls it had accumulated. Apple, Google and Microsoft actually built tangible products which transformed the way we live. Facebook had only transformed the way we say "Hello".

The hype around Facebook from the beginning was overblown. So overblown that even a Hollywood movie was made about it. The shenanigans of golden boy Zuckerberg and his fellow cohorts quickly became Silicon Valley lore and the post Jobs/Gates generation that would shake up the world was ushered in. Soon Facebook took over the planet with a storm and the term "Social Networking" became ubiquitous. And the users of Facebook entered a bubble where the norms of private and public interaction began to be redefined and the "global village" seemed to grow smaller. Friends were finding lost friends, protests were being organized, impromptu flash mob dances and rave parties were being planned, people suddenly found hours in their daily life to spend in front of a screen and even revolutions were being triggered. Today Facebook has become an unstoppable juggernaut almost to the point that if you are not on Facebook you do not exist.

There is no doubt Facebook is all pervasive and people use it to define their identity by exposing their lives on it. For those who feed off of it, it may seem therapeutic. For those who use it just as another business or personal calling card, it just means that, another channel to stay connected. And for others who reveal every second of their lives, it is an obsession. And when the lines between the user and technology begin to blur, there are unintended deadly consequences and in the recent past there have been many. For Facebook the more personal information that it can collect from the user, the more profitable and powerful it becomes. While opening an account on Facebook one might think it is a free service, but it is not. You are paying for that service with your personal information. That is the currency that makes Facebook the $100 billion company that it thinks it is.

In the Hollywood movie made about the Facebook founder titled "The Social Network", a pivotal character named Sean Parker makes a statement which has come to define our world to some extent. He says "We lived on farms, then we lived in cities, and now we are going to live on the Internet!". It is this belief that drives Facebook and many other companies to battle it out and grab as many eyeballs as possible. Facebook recently bought a fledgling company called Instagram for a billion dollars. It was the eyeballs they were after and not the product that the company made. In a new book titled Digital Vertigo: How Today's Online Social Revolution is Dividing, Diminishing and Disorienting Us  author Andrew Keen warns us about the slippery slope users of social networking websites are on. He cautions that "social" behavior on websites like Facebook could have adverse effects that have not been fully considered or understood yet. Questions of privacy, responsibility and freedom lie at the heart of this discourse. He says "the more we put ourselves on the network, the more we lose ourselves". The people who are behind building companies such as Facebook are counting on us putting ourselves more and more on the network. One's vulnerability is at the core of their business model.

The digital world is uneven. Access to the Internet is the privilege of the wealthy. But as mobile devices like the cell phone become mini-computers accessibility to the Internet becomes more viable on a broader scale across the globe. And the possibility of tracking an individual's every move becomes that much more easy, as long as the device is kept on. The smart phone, as they call it, offers conveniences never imagined before, but it also allows the person to be under surveillance at all times. And it is the data collected from that surveillance that will build our world within which we will become insatiable digital consumers. As James Gleick hypothesises in his new book The Information: A History, A Theory, a Flood, we would become the information. And that is the dream companies like Facebook are chasing and engineering.

It is easy to conjure up an Orwellian world in an age where technology infiltrates every aspect of our lives and seamlessly lodges itself promising a better world. The challenge is to be aware of it and draw the line so that the "social network" is made up of real people and not virtual ones. And solitude is celebrated and cherished as being essential to the human social condition. While Mark Zuckerberg may not have been happy about his share price this month, I am sure he was happy about changing his Facebook status from "single" to "married". And I hope his wife is a real person and not friend number 639. It is what it is.

One Down Many to Go

In 2007 I was called upon to edit a television program for ABC News titled "Hell: Our Fear and Fascination". The show examined the concept of "Hell" across many cultures and delved into where, when and how the idea was conceived. Everything from the religious to the contemporary existentialist notions were examined in a short but concise manner in the 40 minute program. The biblical notion of hell seemed to have evolved around a toxic garbage dump that existed outside Jerusalem in the days of old. Dante's Inferno in the 14th century later visualized the idea of "Christian Hell" in a more vivid manner, which to this day forms the basis of contemporary hell mythology. Hindus have more than 100 separate underworlds and Muslims describe seven different fires of torment. The Jews do not believe in the implicit notion of heaven or hell.

As part of the program we also examined the lives of people who had lived through hell right here on earth. Three individuals out of the countless who survived the worst atrocities inflicted by humanity were chosen. Sister Diane Ortiz was brutally raped and tortured in Guatemala 20 years ago after being mistakenly suspected of supporting rebel fighters. Her story of courage was powerful. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel had lived through the worst death camps ever devised by the human mind in Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald. His life is a constant reminder of the tenacity of the human spirit. The story that really stayed with me, was that of a handsome young boy named Ishmael Beah. At the age of twelve he was forced to become a soldier in Sierra Leone, and was forced to murder his own people during a decade long brutal civil war which started in 1991. Like many children who were conscripted to fight the wars of mad men, he was forcibly drafted after his family was exterminated. He had seen unspeakable horrors and later became an instrument in inflicting horror on others. He had lost count of how many people he had killed under the influence of "Brown Sugar", a concoction made  of gunpowder and cocaine which the children were forced to snort before they did the killing. Ishmael Beah was one of the lucky ones who survived the war, and was later adopted by an American family, and went on to write a best selling book titled "A Long Way Gone" which documented his unthinkable life.

While editing the TV show I had to watch a documentary titled "Cry Freetown" made by a Sierra Leonean journalist Sorious Samura. Watching the footage was like being in hell. There were parts that were so gruesome that I could not view and had to fast forward through to stay sane. The film captured the moment when the RUF (Revolutionary United Front) forces led by the brutal warlord Foday Sankoh entered the capital Freetown with their battalion of child soldiers. The violence that they inflicted on civilians on their journey was grotesque and painful to see. Amputation of limbs was their chosen method of inflicting terror. They called them "Long Sleeves" and "Short Sleeves", referring to those that were hacked below the shoulder and those below the elbow. 50,000 people were killed during that war and half a million people were displaced. Today the children of Sierra Leone still bare the scars of the decade long war, with amputees all over the country serving as a visual reminder.

One of the main architects of that hell inflicted on Sierra Leone was indicted on war crime charges this week at The Hague. After five long years and millions of dollars spent litigating, the warlord turned president of neighboring Liberia was found guilty on eleven charges by the UN appointed Special Court for Sierra Leone. Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor was found guilty of aiding and abetting the rebels in Sierra Leone who carried out some of the worst atrocities ever known to mankind. The former warlord was convicted on charges of murder, rape, sexual slavery and enforced amputations. Charles Taylor's primary interest in neighboring Sierra Leone was for its diamonds. He supported the RUF rebels to secure the diamonds so he could fund his dirty war in his own country. The diamonds would soon earn the name "Blood Diamonds" and they still proliferate the market from Antwerp to New York.

With this guilty verdict Charles Taylor became infamous for another reason. He became the first African head of state to be convicted for his part in a genocidal war. While many in the west and in Africa were proud of this moment, there were others who were angered calling it the "blue eyes" or the white mans justice. No matter how you see it, one cannot ignore the facts. Charles Taylor, with all his charisma and sophistication was a man engaged in an ugly enterprise which had become the only life he knew. The enterprise included providing information to the CIA, working with international arms dealers and enriching himself in the process. And like all wars he was implicated in the atrocities that become a part and parcel of that enterprise. While there are many western war criminals who roam free including George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Tony Blair, Paul Wolfowitz, Henry Kissinger and that list is long, when an African despot is singled out and prosecuted by a predominantly western apparatus, it sure does come across to many as uneven justice. Since the Nuremberg trials the west has born the burden of making sure that impunity to kill on a mass scale does not go unpunished. That drives them to hunt down criminals in parts where the justice system is hijacked or is practically non-existent.

While an unprecedented amount of money was spent in prosecuting Charles Taylor, a decade later the "justice for who" question does become an important point to examine. There have been many wars that have been started since and are still in progress in Africa and elsewhere. Children are still being conscripted and are being made to commit heinous crimes by the likes of Joseph Kony and others. Poverty and illiteracy drives people to commit unspeakable acts of violence against their neighbors. And the victims never receive justice, compensation or reparations. While Charles Taylor in his old age is being made an example, and a clear message is being sent to the likes to Bashar-Al-Asad of Syria and Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan one thing is also starkly evident that there are many more who go unpunished. So as people in Sierra Leone and Liberia watched Charles Taylor be condemned, there was guarded celebration, as it is a moment in history they rather forget and move on and hope that it never returns. Even though the risk is always there.

For those of us who watch these events from a distance and read about unspeakable crimes in newspapers and books, there is a disconnect.  To bear witness to it in reality, to live through abject poverty and famine, to fall to the depths of depravity is a sensation that can only be visualized by the privileged, but can never be felt. To empathize and feel moved is but human and to watch perfectly rational human beings like Charles Taylor conduct themselves with grace on television is chilling. Another insane person we saw this month conduct himself with perfect composure on television was Anders Breivik. The Norwegian delusional mass murderer who killed 77 with impunity a year ago claiming it was an attempt to save Norway from being over run by multiculturalism. Here he was gloating in the media exposure that he was being awarded and we all watched intrigued and repulsed at the same time. To watch these individuals from a distance is to realize that those who create hell are among us. There are those who create it on an epic scale like Hitler and Stalin and there are those who do it on a much smaller canvas. The architects are those who are nurtured in a setting that is soulless and devoid of any norms of humanity. All of us are born innocent, it is our social conditioning that makes us who we are and leads to do what we ultimately chose to do.

All the tools required to create hell on a global scale have already been invented and tested. Nations like India, Iran, Pakistan and North Korea, who struggle to feed their own people, toy with the ultimate weapon of hell, the nuclear bomb. They launch missiles and flex their muscle in a global hell raising competition. Other prosperous nations continue to stock pile and engage in the commerce of weapons, making sure the constructs of hell are always in ample supply if needed. Yet life goes on and people's faith continues to root itself in mythological ideas of heaven and hell, so they could be in denial of the ones that exist right here on earth. For those of us who think they visit hell when they face minor inconveniences like no air conditioning on a hot day, Charles Taylor and his ilk remind us of the bubbles we live in and the distant wars that we inadvertently orchestrate by being ignorant. 
It is what it is.

Trayvon's Tragedy

On a rainy February evening a seventeen year old boy was returning home from the local store after buying himself a bag of candy and a can of ice tea. He entered the gated compound through the main entrance and was on his way to his father's friend's house where he was visiting for the past few days. As he was walking past the club house he was spotted by a self appointed neighborhood watchman. It was a few minutes past seven in the evening and the boy like most teenagers in this country, was wearing a hooded sweat shirt, probably because it was raining. The watchman who was in his car called the police to report an intruder. The policeman on the phone asked him to identify the race of the intruder. He revealed he was black. The policeman asked the watchman if he was following the intruder. The watchman replied yes. The policeman asked him not to do so and he agreed to comply. Minutes later somebody was yelling and screaming and a shot rang out. The boy was dead from a single bullet wound fired from the watchman's gun. The frightened neighbors hearing the screaming and the shot called the police. The watchman was taken to the police station and then let go as he claimed self defense.

Four weeks later this incident that took place in a small suburban Florida town called Sanford went national and even international. Major television channels, radio stations, newspapers and websites were consumed by the story and a national debate began to form around the idea that this could have been a racially motivated "hate crime". Civil rights leaders like Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson picked up the bullhorn calling for the arrest of the watchman. Rallies and protest marches around the nation and social media on the internet organized around the same demand. Even President Obama was forced to weigh in on this story as it began to infiltrate every living room across America. Even I was hired by BET Television (Black Entertainment Television) to edit a half hour program on this story. The boy Trayvon Martin and the shooter George Zimmerman became household names as the nation went on yet another soul searching journey to come to terms with what happened on that ill fated night.

Whether the shooting was racially motivated or it was a scuffle that went terribly wrong or whether it was a trigger happy vigilante who gunned down a teenager who looked suspicious because of his clothing, only time will tell. But what irks a vast number of people is the fact that the shooter was allowed to go free as a result of an absurd law passed in the state of Florida in 2005, called the "stand your ground" law. The law states that a person may use deadly force in self-defense when there is reasonable belief of a threat, without an obligation to retreat first. In some cases, a person may use deadly force in public areas without a duty to retreat. In a nation that is awash with guns, the outcome of such a law could be deadly as it was in this case.

When Trayvon did not come home that night, his father was worried. But he went to bed thinking he would return late. When he was not back the next morning, he filed a missing person's report. A few hours later the police arrived at his doorstep and showed him the photos of his dead son. His world was shattered. When asked what happened the police told him that Trayvon was in an altercation and was beating up Zimmerman and therefore was shot just fifty yards from his home. Trayvon's father had to call his ex-wife who lived in Miami to give her the devastating news. Trayvon lived with his mother and was visiting his father in Sanford as he was temporarily suspended from school for bad behavior.


The explanation that was given to Trayvon's father by the police did not make any sense. It did not fit his son's character. Trayvon had never been in trouble with the law before and was considerably lighter than the shooter to be physically able to subdue him. What did not make sense either was the fact that Trayvon was tested for drugs and alcohol and the shooter was not. To the father it appeared like the police were trying to brush his son's death aside, by calling it another "no good black kid killed in the hood" story. Since the police were not willing to investigate further, he hired an attorney and decided to find some real answers about his son's death. Along with his divorced wife he launched a media campaign to seek justice for his boy's senseless death. Their campaign became more successful than they could have ever imagined. A truck driver with limited means could not have asked for more. The dignity, composure and grace the separated couple have shown in the face of media scrutiny, six weeks after their young boy's death, has given renewed momentum to bring issues of justice and race to the foregfront of the national debate.


In a country where the sale of guns keeps rising exponentially even when the economy falters, and where gun violence kills more young people than any other nation in the world, it is important to take notice of Trayvon's tragedy. A nation that has grappled with stories of Emmet Till, a 14 year old black boy who was murdered in 1955 for reportedly flirting with a white woman, Rodney King, a black man who was brutally beaten by a gang of white policemen and O.J.Simpson who allegedly killed his white wife and her boyfriend and got away with it, Trayvon's story again brings to the surface the racial tension that is always simmering. The national debate that is currently taking place with Congressman Bobby Rush wearing a hooded sweat shirt on the floor of the house to make a statement to the Black Panthers setting a bounty for the capture of Zimmerman and Fox News not adequately covering the story or carrying it in a way that boggles the mind, is an indication where this incident has taken the country.


Racism is always present not just in America but around the world. Fear of the other, suspicion of ones skin color or garb, blaming a group of people for the misguided actions of a few is a practice humans have indulged in since time began. Religious hatred, ethnic cleansing, genocide etc. are all forms of racist human expression.

The recent brutal killing of an Iraqi mother of five in California and the killing of Jews in France by a crazy misguided murderer were racially motivated. The call Zimmerman made to the police on the night of the shooting to some extent did make clear his racial presumptions. Just from a visual observation of Trayvon in a hooded sweat shirt he branded him as "Suspicious", "He's on drugs", "Something's wrong with him", "These assholes they always get away". Based on the conversation recorded on the police dispatch, to prove he did not have a bias could be difficult in a court of law. In the court of opinion he has already been branded a white racist.


For those who face racism in the slightest of fashion, it is a heavy burden to carry. America unlike many other nations is more racially forbearing and has enacted stringent laws to enforce tolerance in all spheres of life, partly because of its shameful apartheid past. That does not mean it has eradicated racism. Yes it did elect a non-white president, which was a monumental moment for this nation, but that in no manner means that it has crossed the color line.

I came to this country as a student almost two decades ago. I have had my share or racial epithets hurled at me and have dealt with veiled discrimination in the professional field. These moments have taken me on soul searching journeys which have only made me stronger. I feel proud to be who I am as this nation guarantees me rights which I can feel good about and offers me stories of courage to live by. When in a nation everyone is an immigrant or a descendent of one, no single person or group can claim supremacy over another just based on the color of their skin or ethnicity. No individual group defined by their ethnicity can lay claim to this land as the United States of America was formed out of history's largest land grab. Therefore when a crime is committed where the sole motivation behind it is hatred of the other based on race, it must be investigated and punished to the fullest extent of the law, otherwise America loses its meaning. And so Trayvon's killer must be arrested to investigate his motivations and understand what happened that night. Hiding behind an absurd law can only make the situation worse than it already is. It is what it is.