Kidnapped and Tortured by the Land of the Free

Khalid El-Masri, a German national, took a casual vacation to Macedonia in 2003. Though an innocent man, Khalid was confused for a high-level Al-Qaeda operative, and the CIA requested he be handed over. Macedonia never held an extradition hearing for Khalid, nor was he afforded any of the rights of due process guaranteed to a free man -- a European citizen no less.

After being apprehended by Macedonian authorities at the behest of their masters at the CIA, Khalid was flown to a CIA black site in Afghanistan. Khalid was beaten, sodomized, frightened, and confused. His CIA captors informed him that he was in a land where the rule of law did not apply. 

For many months, Khalid was subjected to sleep deprivation, sexual degradation, beatings, and other forms of "enhanced" interrogation. It took nearly 40 days of hunger strike for the CIA finally to come to terms with the fact that Khalid's passport was genuine; he had already lost more than one third of his body weight by that point.

It was the Wikileaks diplomatic cables that proved beyond a doubt that Khalid was innocent. A 2007 diplomatic cable reads: "It was a mistake to take El-Masri." The cables also show that the US pressured the Germans into avoiding charges against the CIA, lest bilateral relations be heavily damaged. I guess the Germans would rather an innocent man be tortured than risk an economic war by the US.

Nonetheless, on the 13th of December, 2012, a European court of human rights found the CIA guilty of "torture." It represented the first time that CIA practices have been defined not as "enhanced interrogation," but torture as fact. 

Let us process the fact that a European court just found the CIA guilty of torturing, kidnapping, and indefinitely detaining an innocent European citizen. It goes without stipulating that Obama has consistently worked to cover-up the crimes of the Bush administration. In many ways, Obama has continued many of his predecessor's policies and has entrenched them as law.

Obama just gave the CIA carte blance to continue carrying out its drone war in Pakistan for a year, even in the face of the "playbook" of death that he is crafting to continue his extrajudicial assassination program. 

We can joke about North Korea kidnapping a South Korean to make a Godzilla ripoff, but what can we joke about El-Masri?

Kidnapped and Tortured by the Land of the Free

Khalid El-Masri, a German national, took a casual vacation to Macedonia in 2003. Though an innocent man, Khalid was confused for a high-level Al-Qaeda operative, and the CIA requested he be handed over. Macedonia never held an extradition hearing for Khalid, nor was he afforded any of the rights of due process guaranteed to a free man -- a European citizen no less.

After being apprehended by Macedonian authorities at the behest of their masters at the CIA, Khalid was flown to a CIA black site in Afghanistan. Khalid was beaten, sodomized, frightened, and confused. His CIA captors informed him that he was in a land where the rule of law did not apply. 

For many months, Khalid was subjected to sleep deprivation, sexual degradation, beatings, and other forms of "enhanced" interrogation. It took nearly 40 days of hunger strike for the CIA finally to come to terms with the fact that Khalid's passport was genuine; he had already lost more than one third of his body weight by that point.

It was the Wikileaks diplomatic cables that proved beyond a doubt that Khalid was innocent. A 2007 diplomatic cable reads: "It was a mistake to take El-Masri." The cables also show that the US pressured the Germans into avoiding charges against the CIA, lest bilateral relations be heavily damaged. I guess the Germans would rather an innocent man be tortured than risk an economic war by the US.

Nonetheless, on the 13th of December, 2012, a European court of human rights found the CIA guilty of "torture." It represented the first time that CIA practices have been defined not as "enhanced interrogation," but torture as fact. 

Let us process the fact that a European court just found the CIA guilty of torturing, kidnapping, and indefinitely detaining an innocent European citizen. It goes without stipulating that Obama has consistently worked to cover-up the crimes of the Bush administration. In many ways, Obama has continued many of his predecessor's policies and has entrenched them as law.

Obama just gave the CIA carte blance to continue carrying out its drone war in Pakistan for a year, even in the face of the "playbook" of death that he is crafting to continue his extrajudicial assassination program. 

We can joke about North Korea kidnapping a South Korean to make a Godzilla ripoff, but what can we joke about El-Masri?

Yes, This is my Real Laugh

It was The Onion that so wisely quipped in one of their famous headlines: "Nation's Slicked-Back-Hair Men Rally Against Negative Hollywood Portrayal." Though satire, the simple truth is that Hollywood does play with our perceptions of what is evil. It's fair to say that I've never seen a good guy in a Hollywood movie who laughs like me. 

It was in 6th grade that I first began to realize that I was born for a life of meeting people who would make prejudicial assumptions about me. I was in Mr. Torres' classroom, and it was career day. We had a nice, liberal-minded white lady passionately talking about her work with drug addicts. As your typical ADHD 11-year-old, I was half-daydreaming, half-concentrating when the nice woman said, "some babies are born addicted to crack."

The transition from daydreaming to hearing her talk about crack-addicted babies was all I needed to start laughing. I laughed -- loudly -- and, yes, in a very "evil" way. 

"I don't think babies being born addicted to crack is funny," she angrily snapped back, making me laugh even more maniacally. Mr. Torres finally came around to intervening: "José, deja de reirte por favor." Damn, he busted out the Spanish; that's when I knew it was something serious.

My laugh before puberty was much more subdued and high-pitched that it currently is. It was in 6th grade when it started going the cartoon villain route. I think it's pretty fair to say that if I had been attending school in a suburb full of sheltered individuals instead of in the Bronx, people would have been extremely afraid of me. Nevermind that I usually daydream about funny things. 

When I daydream I sometimes smirk, and I often wake up in hilarious, unpredictable situations. It was when I got to Yale and started living around people too afraid to venture two blocks from where they live, that I began to understand the power of my laugh. 

I was at some frat party with my Taiwanese suitemate when a British girl from California started talking about the war in Iraq and all the suffering and dead. I was daydreaming, smiling, when she angrily interrupted me: "Why are you smiling at dead Iraqis!?"

Not only had she in an angry tone woken me from my daydream, but she had also put me in the spot, making me look evil. I hate being put on the spot, especially by an angry person I don't know. To say that it took everything in me not to smash my bottle across her pretty, freckled face would be an understatement. You can take the man out of the South Bronx, but that night I was forced to prove that you can also take the South Bronx out of the man. 

Some people are more discreet and polite when they make presumptions about your face. During my freshman year Environmental Economics 117 class, the professor  -- a newly-arrived Greek who always seemed to sweat profusely and nervously -- told me after class, over a month into the semester, "excuse me, you're always smiling and it keeps me from concentrating."

I was thereafter too nervous to attend the class, and decided to drop it before it appeared in my transcript.  At the time, I had no idea I was ADHD and couldn't even begin to deal with the complexity of the situation that the professor had placed me in.

I've since come to learn that making presumptions about people's emotions based on learned cultural facial expressions is tantamount to discrimination. In Cambodia, people laugh and smile in the face of tragedy. Tell a person in Cambodia that your father just died, and the nervousness of the situation will likely make them laugh. Friending Cambodian people has helped me dealt with the rage that used to overcome me when someone made prejudicial assumptions about my emotions. 

However, I'm certain that somewhere out there, some kid is being angrily placed on the spot for daydreaming and laughing out of turn. Unlike me, however, that kid may not be living in a place like the Bronx, and he is slowly becoming angrier and angrier because the adults don't understand him.

Yes, This is my Real Laugh

It was The Onion that so wisely quipped in one of their famous headlines: "Nation's Slicked-Back-Hair Men Rally Against Negative Hollywood Portrayal." Though satire, the simple truth is that Hollywood does play with our perceptions of what is evil. It's fair to say that I've never seen a good guy in a Hollywood movie who laughs like me. 

It was in 6th grade that I first began to realize that I was born for a life of meeting people who would make prejudicial assumptions about me. I was in Mr. Torres' classroom, and it was career day. We had a nice, liberal-minded white lady passionately talking about her work with drug addicts. As your typical ADHD 11-year-old, I was half-daydreaming, half-concentrating when the nice woman said, "some babies are born addicted to crack."

The transition from daydreaming to hearing her talk about crack-addicted babies was all I needed to start laughing. I laughed -- loudly -- and, yes, in a very "evil" way. 

"I don't think babies being born addicted to crack is funny," she angrily snapped back, making me laugh even more maniacally. Mr. Torres finally came around to intervening: "José, deja de reirte por favor." Damn, he busted out the Spanish; that's when I knew it was something serious.

My laugh before puberty was much more subdued and high-pitched that it currently is. It was in 6th grade when it started going the cartoon villain route. I think it's pretty fair to say that if I had been attending school in a suburb full of sheltered individuals instead of in the Bronx, people would have been extremely afraid of me. Nevermind that I usually daydream about funny things. 

When I daydream I sometimes smirk, and I often wake up in hilarious, unpredictable situations. It was when I got to Yale and started living around people too afraid to venture two blocks from where they live, that I began to understand the power of my laugh. 

I was at some frat party with my Taiwanese suitemate when a British girl from California started talking about the war in Iraq and all the suffering and dead. I was daydreaming, smiling, when she angrily interrupted me: "Why are you smiling at dead Iraqis!?"

Not only had she in an angry tone woken me from my daydream, but she had also put me in the spot, making me look evil. I hate being put on the spot, especially by an angry person I don't know. To say that it took everything in me not to smash my bottle across her pretty, freckled face would be an understatement. You can take the man out of the South Bronx, but that night I was forced to prove that you can also take the South Bronx out of the man. 

Some people are more discreet and polite when they make presumptions about your face. During my freshman year Environmental Economics 117 class, the professor  -- a newly-arrived Greek who always seemed to sweat profusely and nervously -- told me after class, over a month into the semester, "excuse me, you're always smiling and it keeps me from concentrating."

I was thereafter too nervous to attend the class, and decided to drop it before it appeared in my transcript.  At the time, I had no idea I was ADHD and couldn't even begin to deal with the complexity of the situation that the professor had placed me in.

I've since come to learn that making presumptions about people's emotions based on learned cultural facial expressions is tantamount to discrimination. In Cambodia, people laugh and smile in the face of tragedy. Tell a person in Cambodia that your father just died, and the nervousness of the situation will likely make them laugh. Friending Cambodian people has helped me dealt with the rage that used to overcome me when someone made prejudicial assumptions about my emotions. 

However, I'm certain that somewhere out there, some kid is being angrily placed on the spot for daydreaming and laughing out of turn. Unlike me, however, that kid may not be living in a place like the Bronx, and he is slowly becoming angrier and angrier because the adults don't understand him.

Life in Range of North Korean Artillery

North Korea is effectively the biggest mafia in the world. Though described by the Western media as the last Stalinist dictatorship on earth, the reality of what goes on inside North Korea is much more complex. 

The latest North Korean constitution omits all references to the word "communism." Instead, Juche, the philosophy developed around Kim Il-Sung, and Songun, the philosophy developed aroung Kim Jong-Il, are the official state ideology. Kim Il-Sung, the country's founder, passed away in 1994, but he is eternally recognized as the president of NK. It's a serious faux pas for a North Korean to utter the name of their leader without also mentioning their leader's title. A gulag may await anyone who simply says "Kim Il-Sung" instead of "President Kim Il-Sung."

His recently deceased son, Kim Jong-Il, must also be treated with rigid deference: dear leader, or general secretary. There are no higher offices in North Korea, meaning that Kim Jong-Un, the grandson and anointed supreme leader, must give himself the lower position of first secretary.

The level of obedience and loyalty that must be displayed to the leader surpasses that of most fictional exaggerations of any mafia don. When a North Korean ship caught fire in November 2009, the sailors who were most rewarded for bravery were the ones who sacrificed themselves upon portraits of the dear leader, lest it be ruined by fire. Life has an irrational value in North Korea. 

It was after the fall of the Soviet Union and the death of Kim Il-Sung that North Korea sank into poverty. Kim Jong-il, his son, was a hermit, who spoke publicly only once, in 1992, uttering merely a few words: "Glory to the heroic soldiers of the Korean People's Army!" Kim Jong-Il didn't have the charisma to be a statesman like his father, but he was a far more cunning survivor. To sustain the regime at any cost, Kim Jong-il established Office 39. Office 39 is tasked with providing black money for the regime. 

The Secret Service describes North Korea as the biggest counterfeiter of US currency on earth. Likewise, NK is a manufacturer of meth -- with use rampant in the country -- not to also mention that the country is an exporter of banned weapons to other renegade regimes. 

Though seemingly a failed state, the power of NK comes mostly from its proximity to Seoul. South Korea's capital has 25 million people and is one of the world's most important mega-cities. Along the border, less than 50 kilometers away, North Korea maintains over 5,000 pieces of artillery, with strategic targets already pinpointed for destruction. NK could within a matter of two hours level nearly all of the important seats of government, media, education, technology, and transportation in Seoul. 

The very existence of NK is much owed to blackmail, to the fear that their national infrastructure is so barren that leveling their country would mean nothing to them. The latest North Korean rocket -- that put a satellite in orbit -- ran on red fuming nitric acid, a fuel used in scud-missiles by the Soviet Union. And indeed, after witnessing the fall of Saddam Hussein's arsenal at the hands of the US, NK knows that all of its Soviet-era equipment (tanks, ships, aircraft, etc.) is obsolete.

The North's only hope for preventing an attempt to destabilize their country is the fear of asymmetrical warfare: 70,000 special forces, chemical and biological weapons, infiltration tunnels, and the good fortune of their mortal enemy, the South, having built all its eggs near their basket.

The funniest thing for me, however, is that while in South Korea, I was not at all afraid. Most South Koreans rarely even think or talk about the North. When Kim Jong-Il started bombing Yeongpyeong Island, my students remained largely unfazed. One rising college freshman told me, "you're going to die anyway, so why worry?" to large class approval. 

I learned from my student that people in the US were more afraid of the North than the very people who would receive the first blow. That day, CNN and other news channels in the US made it seem as if the apocalypse had just begun, with the Four Horseman having made their first appearance in Korea. In the South, however, my life continued largely unaffected, and I began further shifting away from the American culture of fear.