Was the heinous attack and murder of the three Chapel Hill,
North Carolina Muslim students a hate crime? Was it terrorism? From CBS News:
Excerpt:
Muslim groups demand federal hate-crime probe of N.C. slayings
RALEIGH, North Carolina -- Muslim
groups planned to take their demands for a federal hate-crime investigation of
three young Muslims slain in North Carolina to the White House on Friday….
Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, is charged
with first-degree murder. Police say he shot 23-year-old Deah Shaddy Barakat;
his 21-year-old wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha; and her sister, 19-year-old
Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha over a long-standing parking dispute in the
condominium complex where he lived with the newlywed couple. But the families
of the victims have said they were gunned down because of their religion.
"This has hate crime written
all over it," the women's father, Mohammad Yousif Abu-Salha said….
Mohammad Yousif Abu-Salha
reiterated to about 5,000 people attending a Thursday memorial service for the
three victims that he wanted the FBI to investigate.
"Let's stand up and be honest
and see what these three children were martyred about. It was not about a
parking spot," Abu-Salah said during the memorial service at North
Carolina State University, which all three victims had attended.
So was this vicious, lethal attack against these young people
a hate crime? The women wore hijabs, the
traditional head scarf and identifier of Muslims and the anger and hatred Mr.
Hicks demonstrated toward Mr. Abu-Salha intensified when the women moved
in. According to Wikipedia Hate Crimes
are described as:
Hate
Crimes:
In both crime and law, hate crime
(also known as bias-motivated crime) is
a usually violent, prejudice motivated crime that occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her perceived
membership in a certain social group.
Examples of such groups include but are not limited to: ethnicity,
gender identity, language, nationality, physical appearance, religion, or
sexual orientation. [1][2]
By those definitions the crime does appear to be a hate
crime, so what is the difference when it comes to prosecuting a hate crime as
opposed to other types of crimes?
A hate crime law is a law intended to deter bias-motivated violence.
Hate crime laws are distinct from laws
against hate speech in that hate crime
laws enhance the penalties associated
with conduct that is already criminal under other laws, while hate speech
laws criminalize a category of speech.
It is not as though there is no precedent for prosecuting
hate crimes; the law was used to prosecute hate groups that promote
bias-motivated crimes, such as the Ku Klux Klan. From Fox News:
Excerpt:
Ku Klux Klan Sued for $2.5 Million For Beating of Latin Teen
Published November 15, 2008 Associated
Press
A white supremacist Ku Klux Klan
group was ordered on Friday to pay $2.5 million in damages in a judgment that
civil rights attorneys hope will bankrupt the chapter.
The
Southern Poverty Law Center sued the nation's second-largest Klan outfit on
behalf of a Latino teen severely beaten in 2006 by two Klan members. The
Klansmen were convicted and served two years in prison.
A jury on Friday ordered Imperial
Klans of America grand wizard Ron Edwards and two former lieutenants to pay
19-year-old Jordan Gruver $1.5 million for lost wages and medical expenses and
Edwards to pay $1 million in punitive damages.
Morris Dees, the lead attorney for
the center, said after the verdict he plans to seize Edwards' property in
Dawson Springs that serves as Klan headquarters along with any other assets
that can be found. It wasn't clear what the property is worth….
"It's all about the money.
It's all about the money," said Morris Dees. "If you stop the money,
you'll cut the organization off."
Morris Dees is right, to fight hate crimes or terrorism or
any crime, you go after the money. Money
is mother’s milk for groups like the Klan, who support GOP candidates. Back in 1992, the Klan had risen in Indiana
to new highs. From the New York Times:
Excerpt:
How the Klan Captured Indiana
IN "The Dragon and the Cross:
The Rise and Fall of the Ku Klux Klan in Middle America," Richard K.
Tucker offers an instructive, narrowly focused look at a short, dark time in
Indiana history: the 1920's, when the
Klan held sway over state politics, with its leader aspiring to the United
States Senate and even the White House….
David Curtis Stephenson
(1891-1966), a sometime printer and salesman, sensed around 1921 that his greed
and political ambition might be rewarded if he joined the newly revitalized Ku
Klux Klan. Rising quickly, Stephenson was given control of the Klan in Indiana
in 1922. He was also handed the right to organize in 20 other states.
Soon he was a millionaire; he received a share of new members'
initiation fees and sold members, at a good profit, their white sheets and
hoods…
Stephenson also controlled a
secret, autonomous society within the Indiana Klan, the Military Machine, which
had a quarter-million members. And he had pervasive influence over the state
government.
In 1924, Mr. Tucker writes,
the Klan captured the government of Indiana by helping to elect closet Klansmen
or pro-Klan candidates to office on the municipal, county and state levels,
including Gov. Ed Jackson, many members of the state legislature and all but one member of the state's
Congressional delegation….
Yep, the new GOP same as the old GOP. Is it Indiana in 1924 or is it Wisconsin 2015?
Mr. Tucker, a freelance journalist
who formerly worked for The Indianapolis News, has provided a good explanation of how and why the Klan enjoyed
such popularity, no matter how briefly, in the early 1920's: hyper
patriotism, religious bigotry, racism and nativism -- all of which have
been part of our national character since the nation's founding -- swelled in
the years after World War I.
Immigration, Red scares and Jazz
Age profligacy fanned anxieties in small-town Middle America. Roman Catholics, Jews, blacks and
foreigners were only the most obvious targets of the Klan's fear mongering;
bootleggers and Charleston-dancing libertines were also the enemies of
so-called real Americanism.
So what has the new GOP been up to with regard to hate crime
laws? From Town Hall:
Excerpt:
Congress Should Not Pass But Repeal Hate Crimes Laws
The
U.S. Senate is preparing to vote any day on S. 909, a "hate crimes"
bill that would grant special preferred government status to a select few
citizens based on the behaviorally driven, fluid and undefined concepts of
"sexual orientation" and "gender identity," while expressly
excluding other citizens….
When the House version of the bill,
H.R. 1913, was being considered, Rep. Louie Gohmert, Texas Republican, and Rep.
Steve King, Iowa Republican, attempted to curtail its inherently discriminatory
nature and make it more inclusive by offering an amendment to add other
identifiable groups such as veterans, the elderly and the homeless. The bill's
sponsors inexplicably shot them down without explanation.
Yes, the GOP doesn’t want to end hate crime laws, they want
to make them better, cover more people, they are just so nice.
Lawmakers on both sides of the
aisle - in Washington and around the country - should not only reject S. 909, but should also begin working toward repeal
of all state and federal hate-crimes laws.
All violent crimes are "hate crimes." Ever known anyone
cracked upside the head in love? There
may have been a time when hate-crimes laws were temporarily necessary, but that
time has come and gone. When the 1968 federal hate-crimes bill passed,
there were multiple and verifiable cases of local prosecutors refusing to indict
whites for violent crimes committed against blacks. This was the justification
for the law at the time.
Rep. Louie Gohmert, Texas Republican, and Rep. Steve King,
Iowa Republican truly are representative of the new GOP, same as the old
GOP. The views they espouse on hate
crimes are not new for the GOP, that view was reiterated by 2000 Presidential
candidate George W. Bush.
If you recall, during one of the debates between Al Gore and
George W. Bush, the subject of hate crimes came up surrounding the prosecution
of the murderers of James Byrd. From the Texas Observer:
Excerpt:
Fifteen years ago, on a hot June
night in the small East Texas city of Jasper, James Byrd Jr. left a party at a
friend’s house and began the long walk to his home on the other side of town.
Accustomed to catching rides with passing drivers, the 49-year-old
African-American apparently didn’t hesitate when a pickup stopped and a white
man he was acquainted with, Shawn Berry, offered to take him home.
Inside the truck were two other
white men, Lawrence Brewer and John King, both
of whom had ties to white supremacist groups in and out of prison. Byrd
never made it home.
When the story of the abduction and
murder of James Byrd Jr. hit the next day’s news, it was as if a bomb had
exploded in the complacent consciousness of contemporary America. The details
of the crime were almost too horrible to believe, but anyone familiar with the
history of the American South could recognize the echoes of a not-so-distant
past filled with arbitrary white-on-black
brutality, mob justice, torture and lynchings.
Berry, Brewer and King had driven
Byrd to a remote country road where they beat him and chained him to the back
of the truck by his ankles. The men then dragged Byrd for three and a half
miles. According to the autopsy report, Byrd was most likely conscious most of
that time, right up to the moment his head was severed. Police found Byrd’s
remains in 81 places along the road. By the end of the day after the crime, all
three suspects were in custody.
What was candidate George W. Bush’s views on prosecuting the
White Supremacist murder of James Byrd as a hate crime? From On The Issues:
Ignored Byrd hate crime bill despite plea by Byrd’s family
The Gore campaign accused Bush of
trying to deflect attention from his unwillingness to push for an enhanced 1999
hate crimes bill named for James Byrd that died in the State Senate. And Byrd’s
daughter, Renee Mullins, who lobbied Bush in 1999 to help pass that bill, said
in an interview today that the governor pointedly told her that he would not
work to do so….
A Bush spokesman attributed the
governor’s inaction on the Byrd bill in 1999 to several factors: It was not
part of Bush’s own legislative package, and
[strengthening penalties for one group] might weaken penalties under existing
laws for [other groups which were not specified in the Byrd bill].
Advocates of the Byrd bill argued that the existing law was too vague.
Ah, yes. The new GOP
same as the old GOP. And the GOP is busy
rewriting history on the murder of the homosexual young man, Matthew Shepard
who was murdered by white skinheads in Wyoming.
From The Guardian:
Excerpt:
For 15 years, Matthew Shepard’s
unspeakably brutal murder on a lonely prairie in Wyoming has been a byword for
the very worst of American anti-gay bigotry and a rallying cry for a more
tolerant, more inclusive society.
The 21-year-old University of
Wyoming student was found trussed to a fence post, bleeding and half-frozen to
death, in a rocky field on the outskirts of Laramie. He had been pistol-whipped so severely that his brain stem was
crushed. His killers even removed his shoes, on the off-chance he broke
free of his bonds and tried to run to safety.
Shepard’s death inspired the play
The Laramie Project – later turned into a television movie – countless songs, a
foundation devoted to his memory and a political lobbying effort that pressed
for, and eventually obtained, a new federal hate crimes statute named after
him.
Instead, Jimenez makes a persuasive
case – based on interviews with the murderers, their former girlfriends,
friends of Shepard’s, and police investigators – that Shepard was already
acquainted with his killers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. That
acquaintance hardly casts Shepard in the best light.
All three of them, Jimenez argues,
were involved in Laramie’s crystal meth subculture, as users and dealers.
McKinney and Shepard may also have had a casual sexual relationship.
No hate crime here, move on.
And there was the 1999 case of the Los Angeles attack on a Jewish Community
Center shooting. From Wikipedia:
Excerpt:
The 1999 Los Angeles Jewish
Community Center shooting occurred on August 10, 1999, at around 10:50 a.m.
local time, when white supremacist
Buford O. Furrow, Jr. walked into the lobby of the North Valley Jewish
Community Center in Granada Hills and opened fire with a semiautomatic weapon,
firing 70 shots into the complex.
The gunfire wounded five people:
three children, a teenage counselor, and an office worker. Shortly thereafter,
Furrow murdered a mail carrier, fled the state, and finally surrendered to authorities.
On August 7, Furrow bought a used
red Chevrolet van in Tacoma, Washington, and loaded it with five rifles, two
pistols, 6,000 rounds of ammunition and a flak jacket. Furrow considered
attacking three Jewish institutions: the Skirball Cultural Center, the American
Jewish University and the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance, but
security measures presented too much of a problem.[3][4]
Yes, hate crime laws have stuck in the craw of the GOP. What was one of the first things George W.
Bush did when he was installed as President by five GOP members of the Supreme
Court? Pack the bipartisan Civil Rights
Commission with GOP members. From Boston.com:
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON - The US Commission on
Civil Rights, the nation's 50-year-old watchdog for racism and discrimination, has become a critic of school desegregation
efforts and affirmative action ever since the Bush administration used a
controversial maneuver to put the agency under conservative control.
Democrats say the move to create a conservative majority on the
eight-member panel violated the spirit of a law requiring that no more than
half the commission be of one party. Critics say Bush in effect installed a fifth and sixth Republican on the panel in
December 2004, after two commissioners, both Republicans when appointed, reregistered as independents.
Excerpt from The Intercept:
IS YOUR CHILD A TERRORIST? U.S.
GOVERNMENT QUESTIONNAIRE RATES FAMILIES AT RISK FOR EXTREMISM
Are you, your family or your
community at risk of turning to violent extremism? That’s the premise behind a rating system devised by the National
Counterterrorism Center, according to a document marked For Official Use
Only and obtained by The Intercept.
The document–and the rating
system–is part of a wider strategy for Countering Violent Extremism, which calls for local community and
religious leaders to work together with law enforcement and other government
agencies.
The White House has made
this approach a centerpiece of its response to terrorist attacks around the
world and in the wake of the Paris attacks, announced plans to host an
international summit on Countering Violent Extremism on February 18th….
Gee what could go wrong there?
“The idea that the federal
government would encourage local police, teachers, medical and social service
employees to rate the communities, individuals and families they serve for
their potential to become terrorists is abhorrent on its face,” said Mike
German, a former FBI agent who is now with the Brennan Center for Justice at
New York University School of Law. German called the criteria used for the
ratings “subjective and specious.”
Subjective and specious, why that’s the new/old GOP. The questionnaire dovetails nicely with this
legislation being pushed by ex-GOP current Independent Michael Bloomberg sounds
a tad racist. From Brietbart.com:
Excerpt:
BLOOMBERG SUGGESTS BANNING YOUNG MINORITY MALES FROM GUN OWNERSHIP
Speaking to the Aspen Institute on
February 6, Michael Bloomberg said cities
should ban young minority males from owning guns, both as an effort to reduce
crime and to keep those minority males
“alive.”
Man that’s got GOP written all over it. Hey what about the Second Amendment Rights??
According to The Aspen Times,
Bloomberg addressed a variety of topics, and after commenting on poverty and
education, he discussed guns. The Times reported that he said,
“Cities need to get guns out of [the] … hands” of persons who are “male,
minority, and between the ages of 15 and 25.”
He claimed that “95 percent of all
murders fall into this category” and that taking guns away from them will not
only reduce crime, but will “keep them alive.”
Bloomberg said male minorities from the ages of 15 to 25 do not have a good outlook on
life and “think they’re going to get killed anyway because all their friends are
getting killed.” He also said having a gun “is a joke” for them, that
“it’s a joke to pull the trigger.”
Maybe anyone running for public office, especially in the
GOP should have to fill out that questionnaire, because you could say that the
attacks on Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Ukraine, Palestine, Gaza etc.
could be considered hate crimes. From Politicus USA:
Excerpt:
Cheney Bush War Crimes Torture
A top international official is
calling for the criminal prosecution of top members of the Bush administration
for torture and other war crimes.
United Nations Special Rapporteur
on counter terrorism and human rights, Ben Emmerson called for prosecutions of
former Bush administration officials at the highest levels,
It is now time to take action. The
individuals responsible for the criminal conspiracy revealed in today’s report
must be brought to justice, and must face criminal penalties commensurate with
the gravity of their crimes.
The fact that the policies revealed
in this report were authorised at a high level within the US Government
provides no excuse whatsoever. Indeed, it reinforces the need for criminal
accountability.
International law prohibits the
granting of immunities to public officials who have engaged in acts of torture.
This applies not only to the actual perpetrators but also to those senior
officials within the US Government who devised, planned and authorised these
crimes.
Oh, dear. But hate
crimes committed by our government, especially the GOP will never be prosecuted
in America, as long as hate is a daily staple of talk radio and TV cable shows.
From Joe Conason of the Observer:
Rush’s Defenders Ignore His Venom
By Joe Conason | 12/02/02 12:00am
The legend of the liberal media is finally
dead. When the mightiest voices of the mainstream gang up on Tom Daschle with
Rush Limbaugh, who can believe in that old myth anymore?
The historic rumble started after
the Senate Democratic leader compared the shrill radio host to foreign fanatics,
and complained that he and his family receive threats when Mr. Limbaugh airs a
diatribe against him.
“What happens when Rush Limbaugh attacks those of us in public life is
that people aren’t satisfied just to listen, they want to act because they get emotionally invested,” Mr.
Daschle said. “And so, you know, the threats to those of us in public life go
up.”
After the discovery of anthrax in
his office mail, Mr. Daschle deserves sympathy as well as the best possible
protection..
Yet Mr. Limbaugh’s friends and fans
in the mainstream media, from Fox News to NBC to The Washington Post, weren’t
content to scold Mr. Daschle. They
behaved as if Mr. Limbaugh is a paragon of respectability whose listeners
would never, ever threaten anyone.
It isn’t so far-fetched, however,
that a loony or two or a dozen among the millions who listen to Mr. Limbaugh
every day might threaten Mr. Daschle. Why? Because of what Mr. Limbaugh has
actually said about Mr. Daschle-and because a serious physical threat has
already occurred at least once as a direct result of irresponsible broadcasts
by Mr. Limbaugh and others.
On May 11, 1999, Hardball host
Chris Matthews coaxed Kathleen Willey into naming Cody Shearer, a longtime
Clinton friend, as the man who had allegedly used threats to silence her.
That this was a wholly false (and
easily disproved) assertion didn’t matter to Mr. Limbaugh, who repeated the inflammatory slander the following day
and even spelled out Mr. Shearer’s surname on the air. Several days later,
Mr. Shearer started to receive death threats.
Then on a Sunday afternoon, Hank Buchanan, a brother of Pat and Bay,
decided to visit Mr. Shearer’s Washington home. He broke into the garage,
slashed the tires of two cars and threatened three other people with a handgun
before fleeing.
Hank Buchanan was apprehended and
sent to a mental institution… And while that was the end of the matter, the
assault by the deranged Buchanan showed that ugly broadcasts may have tragic consequences.
And don’t forget Bill O’Reilly’s attacks on Dr. Tiller the
late term abortion physician that was assassinated in his church after O’Reilly
repeatedly stoked up hatred for the doctor calling him Doctor Tiller the Baby
Killer.
And protecting minorities by denying them the right to bear
arms is only one GOP great idea to control black on black crime, don’t forget
GOPer Bill Bennett’s solution to solve black crime. From Media Matters:
Excerpt:
Addressing a caller's suggestion
that the "lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last
30 years" would be enough to preserve Social Security's solvency, radio
host and former Reagan administration
Secretary of Education Bill Bennett dismissed such "far-reaching,
extensive extrapolations" by declaring that if "you wanted to reduce crime ... if that were your sole purpose, you
could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go
down."
Bennett conceded that aborting all
African-American babies "would be
an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do," then
added again, "but the crime rate would go down."
The FBI must conduct an investigation into the murder of
these remarkable young people in North Carolina as a hate crime. From The Intercept:
Excerpt:
HOW THE CHAPEL HILL VICTIMS DESERVE TO BE MOURNED
BY MOUSTAFA BAYOUMI
The personalities that come through
from the testimonies of friends and family, the record of the efforts and achievements
of these young people, and the photographs that radiate such joy and life are
all too familiar to miss.
Yusor, Deah and Razan — may they
rest in peace — are like so many young American Muslims I know. These are
hard-working, well-meaning, family-oriented people. Muslim communities around
the country are full of Yusors, Deahs and Razans, and they are the ones who are
out there, inspiring the older
generation out of their despair at the state of the world by their actions.
These young American Muslims are
the ones who think deeply about inequality at home and injustice abroad, and
act on both. They are the ones who will volunteer to deliver food (or dental
supplies) to the needy while organizing assistance for Syrian refugees abroad.
They are the people who are never
searching for outside recognition for their efforts but who are acting out of
their moral commitment to doing the right thing. They are the ones who take
school very seriously, and their careers seriously, but who will always find
time for others at the drop of a text….
What’s infuriating about the murder
of the three young people in North Carolina is not only their tragic deaths,
but also the speed by which the motive of the shooter has been labeled a
“parking dispute” by the authorities and the press, as if that explains
anything and as if a hate crime or a political crime could not also have a
catalyzing event. The question is not whether this was either a hate crime or
parking rage. It can be both.
When it comes to hate crimes in America and the GOP it seems
there isn’t a whole lot of daylight. The
GOP is always throwing some faux allegations of a war on Christmas, a war on
white people, black on black crime, when will they see hate crimes for what
they are. The systematic incitement of
hatred against people who look different from them.
By Patricia Baeten
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