Rania Khalek Dispatches from the Underclass
/ January 8, 2013 / Leave a comment

'Gun Appreciation Day' and the racialized double standards of gun ownership

January 19 has been declared “Gun Appreciation Day” by a coalition of right-wing groups who adore the second amendment (and apparently loathe all the others). The group’s press release calls on America’s gun lovers to “show their support for gun ownership by turning out en masse at gun stores, ranges, and shows from coast to coast” to  “protest the Obama administration’s post Sandy Hook assault on gun rights.”

They even created a website devoted solely to “Gun Appreciation Day“. Each page is bursting with stars and stripes, a testament to how much these folks love America, freedom and guns, all of which are interchangeable if you ask them.

It’s no accident they chose January 19 to collectively mark their paranoid obsession with firearms. The purpose of the date, they say, is “to send a message to Washington two days before Obama’s second inauguration”. That sounds like a veiled threat to me, but what’s new? This distinctively hostile form of activism from the gun lobby and its supporters is so common that we don’t even think twice about it anymore.

But here’s a thought experiment: How would the nation respond if muslim Americans, black Americans or undocumented residents behaved in a similar manner? Read More

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/ January 8, 2013 / Leave a comment

Obama administration celebrates Brennan nomination with drone strikes, killing 25

In the backdrop of President Obama’s nomination of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense and John Brennan for CIA Director, the US war machine was busy dropping bombs on Pakistan, just one of the many countries where the US is waging an undeclared war. On Sunday, 17 people were killed in Pakistan’s tribal region in a series of US drone strikes, marking the fourth US drone attack in Pakistan so far this year, according the Long War Journal. That number rose to five when another eight people were killed  in a US drone attack on Monday, bringing the total to 25 dead in just 48 hours.

Though unnamed Pakistani security officials say the Sunday attack took out al-Qaeda affiliated Taliban leaders in South Waziristan, the identity’s of the dead have yet to be confirmed. As for the Monday attack, unnamed intelligence officials claim that among the dead was “[a] foreign tactical trainer for al-Qaeda…although reports differed on his nationality,” according to Reuters. “Some intelligence officials said he was from Somalia but others said he was from the United Arab Emirates.” Read More

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/ January 7, 2013 / Leave a comment

Police officers accused of rape get a pass from the LA Times

The Los Angeles Times reports that two veteran police officers from the Los Angeles Police Department are under investigation for using the threat of jail to force several women they had previously arrested to have sex with them.

Though the crimes committed are horrific, this wouldn’t be the first time rapists disguised as police officers have abused their authority to rape vulnerable women. Recent examples include the two California Highway Patrol officers who raped a drunk woman they pulled over for a DUI (neither will face rape charges); two NYPD officers who were acquitted of rape charges last year, also for raping a drunk woman; a Memphis police officer who was recently charged with rape and incest; and the list goes on.

Still, my stomach knotted up as I continued to read the article, which I now understand to have been the result of egregious reporting by the Times combined with willful ignorance at best or a cover up at worst by the LAPD.

For starters, I wish I could shout at the Times for employing every word imaginable besides “rape” to describe what these two officers did (more on that later). To add insult to injury, the Times unquestioningly regurgitates police statements as fact, almost all of which are suspicious, to say the least. Read More

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/ January 5, 2013 / Leave a comment

Rape culture is NOT isolated to Steubenville

The repeated rape of an unconscious 16-year-old girl in the small football-loving town of Steubenville, Ohio, in August is making national headlines thanks to the diligence of Alexandria Goddard, a crime blogger, and the internet vigilanteism of the hacktivist group Anonymous. Yet, in spite of all the new attention focused on this horrific act, the media is still getting it wrong.

Rather than acknowledge the context in which the crime took place (rape culture), the media is treating this as an exceptional incident, an anomaly isolated to Steubenville. The perpetrators are portrayed as sociopaths rather than products of their environment. But to pretend that Steubenville is the exception rather than the rule is to deny that rape culture exists.

The uncomfortable truth is that prioritizing the interests of rapists when they are in positions of power is the norm in America. Which brings me to the case of Terry Williams, a former death row inmate in Pennsylvania who I wrote about back in September. Read More

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/ January 3, 2013 / Leave a comment

FBI, DHS Teamed Up With Corporate America to Crush Peaceful Protests

Back when occupy encampments around the country were violently evicted one after another by police armed in riot gear, activists speculated that it was a coordinated crackdown. Leading the charge was Naomi Wolf, who was immediately attacked for making accusations without any evidence to back them. To be fair, there was little to no proof at the time. Nevertheless, certain people (you know who you are) owe Wolf an apology for portraying her as a paranoid nut job because it turns out she was right.

According to recently released secret FBI documents, Occupy Wall Street, a peaceful and nonviolent movement, was labeled a potential hotbed for terrorist activity by the federal government. The heavily redacted documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by  Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) and can be viewed here.

The creepiest revelation of all would have to be the fact that activists were beaten, pepper-sprayed, tear gassed,  hit with skull-cracking projectiles and arrested all on behalf of the private financial institutions that destroyed the economy with impunity. Read More

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/ January 3, 2013 / Leave a comment

This is what US rape culture looks like

In my last post, I forgot to include, as an example of rape culture, a gang rape that took place in Steubenville, an Ohio football town where at an August end-of-summer party, members of the Steubenville football team raped a passed out 16-year-old girl, who was from a nearby West Virginia town, and then dragged her from party to party where she was sexually assaulted some more.

Cell phone footage and pictures were posted online by witnesses and participants alike, documenting the crime as it unfolded, meaning this girl was repeatedly violated in the presence of many teens, none of who thought to call the police or report the crime the next day. In fact, it was through social media that others learned of the gang rape, which was most traumatizing for the victim who hadn’t even known she was abused until she saw the images and videos of herself.  Read More

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/ January 2, 2013 / Leave a comment

US media portrays rape culture as a foreign problem. Here's why they're wrong.

The public gang rape of a college student in India has rightly sparked global outrage about violence against women, forcing rape to become a topic of discussion for even US media outlets. For the first time that I can recall, mainstream publications are using the phrase “rape culture” to describe the environment that fosters and accepts violence against women. But I can’t help but notice that it’s being portrayed as an exclusively foreign phenomena, something found only in nonwestern cultures in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

If one were to rely solely on US media coverage, they would get the false impression that India is plagued by a rape-glorifying, sexist culture, whereas the west is some sort of global safe haven for women’s rights.  Read More

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/ December 27, 2012 / Leave a comment

Super Creepy: The CIA's covert paramilitary force is on the rise

The Washington Post published an excellent article yesterday highlighting the creeping expansion of the CIA’s paramilitary force, better known as Global Response Staff (GRS).  The Post describes the GRS as “an innocuously named organization that has recruited hundreds of former U.S. Special Forces operatives to serve as armed guards for the agency’s spies.” It’s “designed to stay in the shadows, training teams to work undercover and provide an unobtrusive layer of security for CIA officers in high-risk outposts.

Armed security for spies seems simple enough, until you consider who these guards are and what they’re actually up to. The Post explains: Read More

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/ December 27, 2012 / Leave a comment

Nothing says 'Happy Holidays' like Christmas Eve drone strikes

Back in the day, Christmas brought with it an unofficial truce during times of war, allowing troops to celebrate the holiday, maybe even with their families back home.

Thanks to technological advancements in warfare, this is no longer necessary. Armed drones enable soldiers to extrajudicially assassinate their targets from the safety of military bases thousands of miles away. This way  they can get home to their families just in time for supper.

Perhaps this is why the Obama administration chose Christmas Eve to launch two drone strikes in Yemen, the first in 47 days, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ). Investigative journalist Kevin Gosztola reports: Read More

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/ December 27, 2012 / 1 Comment

How NRA lobbying fuels violence all around the world

For most of us in the US, the National Rifle Association (NRA) is viewed as an exclusively domestic obstacle to gun regulation. But, as it turns out, the NRA’s obstructionism extends far beyond our borders, impacting the safety of the entire world.

In the US, it’s more difficult to purchase a car than a gun due to lax gun regulations. World trade isn’t much different considering that fruit and bottled water are more strictly regulated than the arms trade, and the NRA wishes to keep it this way.

Back in July, the NRA bragged about killing a United Nations global arms treaty that would regulate small arms, conventional weapons and ammunition, a treaty the Obama administration had initially supported. Using its stranglehold on congress, the infamous gun lobby got over over 50 US senators (including eight Democrats) and 130 members of the House to sign a letter demanding that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton oppose the treaty. They claimed it would “restricts the rights of law-abiding American gun owners”,  despite the treaty’s acknowledgement of “constitutional protections on private [gun] ownership”.  With the presidential election just months away, Obama caved and the U.S. declared it “needed more time to review the treaty,” just one week after the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater massacre. Read More

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