We are Property

BREAKING NEWS! If you live in the United States, they own you! It’s a pity you can’t own yourself, isn’t it?

In the US state of California, a federal judge ruled that federal officials can force feed someone on a hunger strike. In other words, if you would like to peacefully protest, the federal government is obliged to violently suppress your rights. Now, you might read through the article I linked and decide that it sounds fair (the author certainly make it out to be), but let’s take a closer look.

The ruling basically states that if you’re on a hunger strike and did not sign some sort of release form, the government will force feed you, provided you are too weak to tell them not too . That’s all fair and good, but this release form is a little sketchy. For one, if they “reasonably believe” that you were forced to sign the form, they will stop your peaceful protesting. Also, “Do-not-resuscitate orders signed by a hunger striker at or near the beginning of the strike or during the hunger strike would automatically be deemed invalid.” In other words, it’s okay if you protest us, as long as you let us know in advance so we can prepare to do everything to stop you. The government can stop you’re hunger strike forcefully unless you give them a heads up that you’re doing one. Then they can stop your constitutional right by preparing to do so with their heads up. Who’s to say they”ll even tell you about the form? There is no law about that. You might just start you hunger strike not even aware about such a rule.

So what does that signify for human rights? It means the government owns you. You have suddenly lost the right to manage your own body and decide whether it lives or dies, starves or eats. It means that you don’t have the right to your own choices for your body, the government does. You are it’s citizen, right? This is almost as silly as laws against suicide. You can mess with your own property, but not the government’s. Oh no. That body of yours is just a tool for the US government to generate census data with.

“The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword…”

Whispers of Satan

“…If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.”

“A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is”

— Eddard Stark. Game of Thrones, by George RR Martin

This is one of the most powerful quotes I have read in my entire life. It has influenced much of my views and thoughts on bravery, hypocrisy, and cowardice. To think that every day we cower behind people to do our dirty work. To think that we are all hypocrites in this way: too afraid to do what we think is right with our own hands. To think that we watch bombs drop day and night on people across the globe and call it legitimate, while too afraid…

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“The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword…”

“…If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.”

“A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is”

— Eddard Stark. Game of Thrones, by George RR Martin

This is one of the most powerful quotes I have read in my entire life. It has influenced much of my views and thoughts on bravery, hypocrisy, and cowardice. To think that every day we cower behind people to do our dirty work. To think that we are all hypocrites in this way: too afraid to do what we think is right with our own hands. To think that we watch bombs drop day and night on people across the globe and call it legitimate, while too afraid to do it ourselves. If we cannot bear to bring death to others with our own two hands , then perhaps those we think are worthy of death do not deserve to die.

Unless Obama was willing to explode a young teenager with his dad knowing that that was the only way to kill his father. Unless Bush was willing to shoot everyone of the hundreds of thousands people his pawns shot with his own AK-47: the innocent women, children, cripples, and clergymen that had no involvement in anything or no inclinations to violence. Unless President Bashar Al-Assad took chemical weapons with his own hands to fight the rebels of his country, or unless Mao Zedong lit fire to villages with his own matches….perhaps those people did not deserve to die.

The thousands that have been executed under our court systems, many of which died because of racism, failed court rules, or mistreatment from society, were executed behind paid executioners. The judges and the juries that sentenced them, perhaps, have forgotten what death is. The American Presidents that ordered massacres of villages and assassinations of children, perhaps, have forgotten what death is, just like the British Prime Ministers or the Saudi Arabian Kings. People like you and I, who voted in favor of this war or the other, or served in the military of this country or that: perhaps we have forgotten what death is.

Let’s not play the blame game, or equate this political leader to that one. Let’s not fight over things that happened decades ago or judge people for decisions you and I couldn’t make better. But let us remember. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.

And I don’t know about you, but I cannot bear to do that.

Misquoting Jesus

The author of this book is a sheer badass and a genius. His lectures, speeches, and debates are amazing and they have opened my mind over the years. I owe almost all of my understanding of New Testament history to Ehrman, and his views and opinions while quite controversial are certainly academic and not original. This work of his is world renowned and respected, and there are few of its kind. As the back cover of the book explains, his ideas and examples are not original nor unknown to academics of this field, but the public has absolutely no idea and little resources to know these ever important things.

Nevertheless, I hated this book. Quite frankly it was written poorly and organized in a jumbled hargle bargle. It must be remembered that this book is one of the first of its kind though, and I commend his iniative. The book first explains how Ehrman shifted his faith from a non practicing Christian to a born again to a Christian scholar to an agnostic. Now I don’t know numbers, but a large number of people in his profession are agnostic because of the blurred origins of the Christian bible (but certainly not all). He then explains how the complicated field of New Testament criticism and the history of searching for New Testament origins from various brave scholars of the past. The book  devotes the rest of its time to various parts of the New Testament that he believes aren’t authentic. Some of these are well accepted fabrications by scholars, others are a bit more controversial (he thankfully tells us which is which).

Written poorly and shoddily organized, its difficult to follow through with what he is saying or even to remember it all, but he goes through events such as the Jesus’s encounter with the female adulterer and explains how this was a clear fabrication. Other more controversial include who wrote Peter (was it actually Peter?). Either way, simple internet searches can get you the results that Ehrman explains poorly in his book. One thing I should note though, is that while Ehrman’s views are scholarly legitimate, he is one of the most critical scholars and few share all of his views together. If you want to learn about New Testament criticism, I don’t recommend this book, and you’re time is better spent watching Ehrman’s lectures  on YouTube(he is ridiculously entertaining when not not writing books) or reading some articles on the internet.

Aladdin

You would think that one of the world’s most respectable film companies, Walt Disney, so widely known that the American public entrusts the childhood of their children too, wouldn’t make movies full of racist trash. Not so, apparently

To start off, do Jasmine and Aladdin look Arab at all to you? They appear Caucasian – with brown skin. They have American accents, American (should I say it?) values. And what kind of Arab name is Jasmine, anyway? Meanwhile the bad guys, Jafar, for one, has an Arab name, Arab dress, and Arab looks. Exaggerated Arab looks to be certain, for the purpose of making him look more ugly. Just like the rest of the bad guys. Good guys look American. Bad guys look Arab. Americans are beautiful. Arabs are ugly.

But it gets worse. The original release of the movie had a song lyric: “Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face/It’s barbaric, but, hey, it’s home” It was in reference to the Middle East, where in certain areas such as Saudi Arabia they have amputations as a form of criminal justice, something we’ll talk about later . Amidst controversy of getting politics involved in a children’s movie, they dubbed that over in the DVD release to “Where it’s flat and immense and the heat is intense/It’s barbaric, but, hey, it’s home”.

To add on to the calling the Middle East barbaric and to depicting Arabs as evil,  why is it that every women in the movie has to be wearing as scanty clothing as possible? The women in the movie are practically sex objects. And the scene where Aladdin steals some bread and hides in a room with a bunch of women? People have speculated that was a brothel. Whatever it was, the fact that we can even speculate that in a children’s movie is disgusting. Jasmine wears the same stuff the women in the brothel were wearing too, which doesn’t help much.

One last thing for this rant: how great are the “morals” of it, anyway? Now this movie might be an extreme case, but the simple insistence of Disney to tell children to disobey their parents and do what they want is ludicrous. To make that a sort of moral maxim in the minds of Disney’s audience is all for an agenda – to get children hooked on Disney products, Disney ideals, Disney television. To think that most good parents would want the television to tell their children to not obey their parents is flat out stupid. We have a serious problem in this world where those ideals are treated as universal on children’s television shows. Certainly, challenging the ideals of our parents can be good, but to ingrain the thought into the minds of children that they are more correct then their parents is utterly insane. Mere children cannot reason as we can. When they heard “Don’t obey your parents,” they don’t.