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Health & Fitness

Thoughts About the Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin Case and Events in Egypt

The results of the Zimmerman trial surprised me. I thought the jury would go for manslaughter.

This whole incident (Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a black unarmed teenager, in Florida) is troubling. I don’t like the aggressive role Zimmerman took as part of a neighborhood watch program.

In this incident, Zimmerman was packing a loaded gun. During the evening, he saw someone he thought was acting suspiciously in an area where there had been break-ins. He called the police and should’ve left any follow-up to them (in fact, that’s what the police told him). But he felt emboldened to follow and possibly confront Martin because he had that gun. In essence, Zimmerman provoked the incident and should be held responsible for it.

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I digress to some years ago when I was a long-haired student living in San Francisco. I used to shop at my neighborhood Safeway. Several times when I shopped there, I noticed that a security guard was following me around the isles. I’d move to another isle, and there he’d be at the end of the isle looking at me. Needless to say, this wasn’t making my shopping experience pleasant. Finally, I confronted him and asked him to stop following me around. He refused. I complained to the store manager, but he wouldn’t stop the surveillance. I was angry. I was being profiled: “Customers who look like hippies are shoplifting, therefore target all young men with long hair.”

The difficulty with the Trayvon Martin case lies in the fact that there were no surviving eyewitnesses to the physical confrontation and shooting, except for Zimmerman. What bothers me is the vigilante aspect, where wannabe cop Zimmerman goes way beyond the role of neighborhood watch and assumes the worst. Maybe Zimmerman hoped to be seen as a hero by helping arrest a burglar. But, because of Zimmerman's pit bull attitude, an innocent teenager lost his life. 

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This case probably won’t end here. Trayvon Martin’s family could bring a civil suit against Zimmerman or the feds could bring a civil rights case. I hope it’s possible to find a neutral jury down in that area – one that’s not biased against African Americans.

The other thing I want to bring up is the overthrow of President Morsi in Egypt, by the military. Morsi had been elected during Egypt’s first democratic election. This is what the U.S. is always encouraging, right? A democracy and elections.

However, Morsi was associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, and seemed to be moving the country toward more religious involvement in the government. Washington probably opposed this trend, fearing that a fundamentalist-run government would veer out of Washington’s sphere of influence and join with other Muslim-fundamentalist governments.

Liberals and those who wanted a non-religious government in Egypt began to protest against Morsi and the military used that as a pretext to stage a coup and force Morsi out.

Well, our government has to get it right. Do we encourage the formation of democracies, and align with wherever that will take a country, or do we encourage coups when things don’t go our way?

I personally have some problems with the way fundamentalist Islam often seeks to lay down heavily restrictive religious law when they come to power, as the Taliban did in Afghanistan. Women and girls particularly are prevented from attending school and college. Women lose any rights and become subservient to husbands, often resulting in mistreatment and a squelching of their talents. They are often forced to wear burkas and can only shop when accompanied by a man.

Read “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini to understand how this played out in Afghanistan when the Taliban were in power.

But when a democracy is set up, and citizens (both men and women) vote for this sort of society, I’d say don’t interfere. It’s their country; let them make their own decisions.

Basically, the U.S. is so embroiled in the Mideast because of three concerns: maintaining a constant supply of oil, terrorists breeding grounds, and the partnership with Israel. 

By the way, my son has been in Egypt this month to do scholastic research, and my wife and I have been nervous about him being there.  

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