The human angle

You know how Hollywood is a sucker for the "human angle"? How they love to tell the story of an epic historical event through the way it affects the life of a regular person?

Well, if they want to tell the Iraq story, they can use this boy's life. It is one of the most harrowing things I have read in my life... the blog begins at the end of 2003 sometime, started by a 16 year old schoolboy who barely speaks English. The first year's entries are almost entirely about soccer. And computer games. When the body does mention the political situation, he is the epitome of the grateful Iraqi - you know, the kind who would welcome American soldiers with garlands. He talks excitedly about Bush visiting Iraq.

A couple of years later, he talks excitedly about being old enough to vote, finally! His entries are full of optimism, hope, national pride. Thrilled to have a free country, excited about the anticipated progress, enthusiastic about new leaders.

Then an anxious note creeps into his blogs.. he notices that Shiite militias are attacking Sunnis like him. He is afraid. But then the Sunnis react by trying to keep Sunni students out of universities. He is exasperated at the idiocy of his own people. And then the situation spirals into madness. After that, his entries morph into one long desperate scream for help - for rescue from the nightmare that is his daily life. Shells exploding outside his door, neighbours being struck dead by randomly aimed mortars. Always existing in the shadow of death. He is applying for a student visa abroad, and is not too proud to ask total strangers for money over the internet. No more pride in his country, no more desire to make his mark in the new society.
Now he is just looking to get out as soon as he can.

In three short years, from soccer in school to shells outside his house, Nabil has come a long way. In December 2005, his entry said "Just wanna say that I am still alive (lol) ..."
If he wrote that today, I don't think there would be a "lol" at the end of it.

Ridiculouser and ridiculouser

(yes I know, lousy title!)

Sometimes I don't know what the people "in charge" are smoking! Boston went into panic mode Wednesday because police got calls about terrorist bombs in subways, bridges, tunnels etc. After half the city was shut down for several hours, turns out the "bombs" were just a marketing campaign for a TV show. A marketing campaign, btw, which has run in other parts of the country for several weeks without generating any panic.
Of course, politicians and policemen tried to save face by blustering about "insensitivity" and "post 9/11 world" and so on. Fine. But then, they went and arrested the guys who put up the signs. And I do mean the guys who physically put up the signs. What a logical and completely appropriate way to make up for their previous overreaction! In this bizzaro world, the CEO of Turner was forced to apologize for the whole situation.
And everybody from the man on the street to editorials in newspapers are talking about how this was a completely rational reaction in this "post 9/11 atmosphere" to strange electronic devices on billboards "with wires sticking out of them". Yeah, these were clearly dangerous bombs -

Article

Yes, do check out the picture on that article. If you have time, read the article too - and weep. Weep that on this poverty stricken, starving planet, (somebody's) valuable money is being spent on this ridiculous prosecution. Two men are being put through all this torment by little-minded people trying to save face.

Turning from Boston to Norwich, Connecticut.. where a teacher was found guilty of "risk of injury to a minor" and "impairing the morals of a child". Heinous crimes these, felonies - with a possible maximum of 40 yrs jail time. What do you suppose the teacher was doing to these children and their morals? The imagination reels..
Shall I tell you what she is accused of?

Pop-ups!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen - the computer in the classroom went into an endless loop of pornographic pop-ups. The "computer illiterate" panic-stricken teacher ran to the teachers room to fetch help. But too late - atleast 10 kids had seen these images and are now scarred for life! The prosecution claims the teacher surfed porn sites in the classroom. The defence claims spyware infected the computer and caused the pop-ups. The prosecution says the defence is lying. Except, of course, the defence has experts who diagnosed the computer and found that it did in fact have spyware. OTOH, the prosecution has experts who claim the computer logs show she did visit those websites. Of course, I am not a "computer expert" by any stretch of the imagination, but there is just the teensiest possibility that these logs track HTTP requests made, and not mouse click positions on web pages. But of course, the judge would know more about such stuff. She allowed the prosecution's claims, but wouldn't let the defence experts say that there was spyware on the computer. (No idea of the reason behind this)

So is it fair to say the jury may have got a slightly unbalanced view of the case? I don't blame the jury for convicting actually - they do what they do. I blame the prosecution. Prosecutors have to protect the law - they don't have to prosecute someone unless they actually think the person is guilty. If defence attorneys refused to defend guilty people, they would be out of a job pretty quick. But if prosecutors refused to prosecute innocent people, they would still have plenty of cases to try.

Why, oh why, then, do they go after these obviously innocent people? Just because uninformed people in the community are "outraged" by half baked stories they hear - Why do the prosecutors have to go along? Why do they participate in what can only be described as hysteria driven modern day lynching?

Funny thing - just as I asked myself that question, I remembered a story from my high school English textbook. It was something about a man shooting an elephant in Burma. The villagers thought the elephant was mad, and they expected this man to shoot it. The man could see that the elephant wasn't mad - but what was he going to do? There was a crowd of people gathered to watch him, he had the rifle raised to his shoulder, the elephant in his sights. Was he just going to put the rifle down and walk away? He could, but that would look so.... foolish.

So he shoots a healthy elephant in cold blood, rather than risk looking foolish before a crowd.

Wow, I'm glad I got the moral of that story, even if it did take me 15 years :)