Source: barenakedislam.com

“This is my country. Go back to yours, terrorist.”

This was the note left for Shaima Alawadi, a 32-year-old Iraqi-American mother of five who lived in El Cajon (an area near San Diego), California, three days before she was brutally killed.

First off, so many things are wrong with this statement. So. Many. For one, the U.S. is generally
regarded as a nation of immigrants. That being said, it isn’t really any one particular group’s
country. On some point in the ancestry line, everyone’s roots came from someone else-the only
people that can claim the most original status are Native Americans (it should be noted that the
majority of hate crimes are perpetrated by whites- the FBI estimates 58.6percent for whites, 18.4
percent black, 12 percent unknown, and 11 percent “other”).

A note of this nature is sickening for many reasons, one of them being that it seems they didn’t
know Alawadi or her family at all: She, her father, and her husband had worked as private
contractors for the U.S. Army, aiding them by serving as cultural advisers to train soldiers who
were to be deployed to the Middle East.

Whether or not this was a note framed by someone within Alawadi’s own family (as some new
sources are suggesting) is important to the case, but the note (whether framed or not) reflects an
anti-Islam (or the newly coined “Islamphobic”) sentiment that has been dangerously festering in
the U.S., particularly since the events of 9/11.

What’s curious is that in the first quarter of 2012 alone, the San Diego area had already tallied
a number of hostile incidents against Muslims nearly equal to the entire amount of incidents in
2011. According to Hanif Mohebi, director of the Council on America-Islamic Relations in San
Diego, the council has seen some “disturbing bullying of young Muslim students, discrimination
in employment, and even harassment in prisons, not just by fellow prisoners but even by prison
guards.”

Some particular incidents in San Diego last year stand out: A cab driver attacked a Muslim
praying near a local park, expressing the same sentiment on the note to Alawadi: “Go back to
where you came from.” A woman wearing a hijab was personally removed from a Southwest
Airlines flight because the captain “didn’t feel comfortable” with her on the flight. In October, a
group called “Defend Christians” tried to pass out anti-Muslim literature to high school students.

If this is confirmed as a hate crime, it reveals a disturbing pattern indeed: According to the
Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of anti-Muslim hate groups tripled in 2011. In 2010,
there was a 50 percent jump (FBI stats) in anti-Muslim hate crimes.

And yet the El Cajon police chief, James Redman, “said he was confident it was an isolated
incident but would not say why” (Associated Press).

Yeah…honestly? I don’t know why, either.

Needless to say, it hasn’t just been in San Diego. Last year, Lowe’s Home Improvement chose
to pull ads from the TLC program “All-American Muslim” after heated complaints from the
Floriday Family Association, that claimed showing the lives of average Muslim families was an
attempt to “manipulate Americans.” All sorts of myths have been perpetuated by the American
media, as early as in the year 2010: Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy wrote in
the Washington Times that “most mosques in the U.S. are actually engaged in a totalitarian
agenda…its express purpose in undermining…the U.S. gov. and its founding documents.” On

CNN Sunday Morning, Pamela Gellar said that “four out of five mosques preach hate.” Fox
News commentator Bill O’Reilly said that “violent extremism and sharia law is being condoned
in 75 percent of the American Muslim mosques.”

The fears and paranoia of Islamphobia are unfounded. Research shows that the majority of
terrorist plots in the U.S. since 9/11 have been perpetrated by non-Muslims, mainly right-wing
extremists and white supremacists (Congressional Research Service, Heritage Foundation).

So, I’m white. And yet, somehow, I’ve never received a note telling me to go back to my country
(which would be Italy, actually, in case you were wondering) and accusing me of being a
terrorist. But if the majority of terrorist plotters since 9/11 have been white…?

But I haven’t. Because phobia and paranoia don’t follow facts; they follow fear and ignorance.
If this was a hate crime, fear, ignorance, mistrust and brutality caused it, and all of those things
are what need to be targeted, not those who are hated.

Source: thumpandwhip.com

A 17-year-old boy is walking home on a rainy night. He holds a canned iced tea, a bag of Skittles, and is talking on his cell phone to his girlfriend.

So what’s the punch line? What’s the solution to this riddle?

There isn’t one. But there’s a gunshot, and because of it, that boy is dead. He’s never going to celebrate his eighteenth birthday. He’ll never graduate high school, go to college, get married, or have boys and girls of his own.

The man who admitted to killing Trayvon Martin is one 28-year-old George Zimmerman.

Oh, and I forgot to mention something: The victim was black.

Does that matter? Abso-freaking-lutely.

It matters because Trayvon’s story isn’t unique, except for one respect: It’s gained significant media attention.

As an infant, Trayvon was over twice as likely to die than a white infant. As soon as he reached his teens, he was 1.5 times more likely to die than his white peers. FBI statistics show that blacks are the victims of hate crimes at much higher rates than any race in the U.S., making up 70 percent of victims of these crimes in 2010. Homicide is the most likely cause of death for black men Trayvon’s age.

If he were in his 20s, the plastic baggie with traces of marijuana that cost him a suspension in high school would’ve most likely equaled a prison sentence, on the fact that his race and gender alone insured him a one in eight chance of going to prison period.

In general, the media has grasped on to the negative; not of the shooter, as you’d expect, but of the victim. They’ve clasped that plastic baggie with traces of pot like it’s their last dying breath. They’ve focused on the hood he was wearing— Geraldo Rivera of Fox News even went as far as saying that “the hoodie is just as responsible for Trayvon’s death as George Zimmerman” (after scathing criticism, Rivera hastily apologized and hoodies mysteriously disappeared from the Fox Merchandise website).

Folks, that’s victim-blaming: Blaming the choices of the victim (such as a hoodie, or walking late at night) rather than the perpetrator of the crime. Such grossness is irresponsible at best and purposefully disrespectful at worst.

Here’s what they don’t tell you: Trayvon was an A and B student. He wanted to be an engineer and was studying at an aviation school in addition to his high school work. He had a girlfriend. He had no criminal record whatsoever.

Let’s set the scene again. It’s raining (most likely why Trayvon was wearing a hood), it’s night, and Trayvon’s carrying a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea.

OK, now let’s take a look at George Zimmerman (who was carrying a 9 millimeter handgun). He outweighed Martin by at least 60 pounds and 11 years. His criminal record consisted of resisting arrest with violence and battery on an officer. He has called the police 46 times since 2004.

According to his peers and neighbors, he was “fixated on crime and focused [on] young, black males” (Miami Herald). His neighbors also complained about his “aggressive tactics” (Huffington Post). He was not, as he so claimed, a member of a registered Neighborhood Watch group.

Zimmerman claims Martin was the attacker in this scenario, that he punched him in the nose and slammed his head on the sidewalk over and over again, leaving him bruised and bloody.

However, there is so much that refutes this statement it’s ridiculous.

Three witnesses say they heard a boy (read: A boy, not a man) cry for help before a shot was fired (Miami Herald). His girlfriend said on the cell phone conversation they had that night that a man was watching him, that Trayvon had finally lost him.

She asked him to run, but he said he wouldn’t, that he’d just walk fast. The last thing she overheard was Martin asking “What are you following me for?” and the man saying “What are you doing here?” Surveillance videos taken right after the shooting show no blood or bruises on Zimmerman, which would be evident if Martin had indeed attacked him.

Perhaps most telling of all, Martin’s funeral director has said that his body showed no signs of fight: No knuckles or bruises on his hands (which would be there if he had indeed punched Zimmerman).

Justice hasn’t been done here. I really, really hope that it will be.

Various forms of contraception

Ninety-nine percent of women 15-44 in the U.S. use it. Eighty-five percent of Americans think it is “morally acceptable” or “not a moral issue” (Pew Study, 2012?). It’s small, white, and powerful.  It will cost the average woman $69, 854 (without insurance) and $12,412 (with insurance) in her lifetime. And one of the 2012 Presidential candidates has called it “dangerous to women.”

It’s contraception, and the candidate who condemned it is Rick Santorum.

I don’t actually know what his exact view is on this beyond the fact that he has condemned it. Different statements paint different pictures entirely. Because of this, I researched not only what he said on contraceptives, but what he said on sex education and abortion (all three tend to tie together, after all).

On Feb. 10, Santorum explained that he didn’t believe insurance companies should cover contraception.

“This has nothing to do with access. This having someone pay for it, pay for something that shouldn’t even be in an insurance plan anyway because it is not, really an insurable item. This is something that is affordable, available-”

Arguments — legitimate ones— are backed up by facts. But Santorum’s facts and assertions are plain wrong (and I don’t even mean morally, I mean literally, as in “opposite of correct”), and have been for a while. One may even call them a recurring pattern.

A survey of Planned Parenthood found that 55 percent of women ages 18-34 (the biggest demographic at BC, actually) have experienced a time where they could not afford consistent birth control. Fifty-seven percent of young Latina women ages 18-34 have also struggled in this manner, along with 54 percent of African American women in the same age group. Besides which, almost 14 percent of all birth control prescriptions are filled for reasons other than contraception, including ovarian cancer, ovarian cysts, endometriosis, acne, cramps/heavy periods, and endometrial cancer.

On Feb. 16, Santorum said “How do I feel about the issue of contraception? It should be available…I object to [it] when the federal government says that religious organizations that feel the way the Catholic Church feels should be required to provide it.”

OK, so what are you saying, Santorum? You say it shouldn’t be covered by insurance, but available (despite the fact that to a lot without health insurance, it’s not available), and then you say its availability should be limited. Which is it?

According to the Center for American Progress, even women with private health insurance often shoulder a significant portion of the cost for their prescription birth control needs. That’s one of the reasons women of reproductive age spend 68 percent more on out-of-pocket health care expenses than their male counterparts do.

On the issue of rape, Santorum accused his opponent, Romney, of mandating that hospitals provide emergency contraception to rape victims.

On rape victims in general, Santorum, pro-life, has said that a child as result of a rape is a “gift in a very broken way, a gift of human life, and the right approach to this is to accept what God has given to you…we have to make the best out of a bad situation.” His views are so extreme Wowza.

On sex education, Santorum has said that “comprehensive sex-ed has not been shown to have ANY impact on pregnancy or STD rates,” and that abstinence-only-sex-ed is the way to go.

Wrong again. Abstinence-only programs have no effect in reducing the risk for teen pregnancy and STD. Comprehensive sex-ed, on the other hand, was significantly associated with reduced risk of teen pregnancy, according to the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Why is a man in politics allowed to be so wrong, again and again, on these three encompassing, important issues? Imagine what would happen if, in a class presentation, you just started spouting what you believed to be facts, with no regard to what they actually were. You’d be kicked out of class.

What I see with this is a higher standard of a community college student than a presidential candidate. It’s weird, and it reveals a strange value system within our society.