New York cabbie Ahmed H. Sharif was stabbed in the neck, face and arm last night after passenger Michael Enright asked if he was a Muslim, and Sharif answered “yes.” Yet another example of the cultural insensitivity of Muslims flaunting their religion so close to Ground Zero.
Why couldn’t Sharif let the 9/11 families grieve in peace?
Conspiracy theorists: Bringing bizarre rationalizations for violence to the unhinged since humans first developed language.
Hopefully, this is an isolated incident and not the start of a trend. There have been politicians and entertainers in the mass media implicitly calling for such rationalizations, really since the end of the Second World War.
Reaction begets reaction. We cannot allow the reactionaries and fanatics to take any measure of power in this country, the stakes are just too damn high. People like this psycho are far too common, and too easily led by information that merely reinforces the personal state of anger they already harbor. People who angrily internalize events they have no control over or not even affected by, should never be allowed to work in public service. That goes double for cops and politicians.
When I look at places like Afghanistan or northeast Africa, I can’t help but wonder if such conditions are the future of the entire human race. An eye for an eye, etc.
But we are already blinded.
Where is the outrage?
Is anyone protesting Gauleiter Glen Beck’s plan to hold a rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of the I have a dream speech?
Insensitivity????
1
Good post. I do fear that if the Teabagger types gain more influence, there will be considerable blood in the streets. They simply do not recognize, let alone respect, the bonds that hold a civilized society together.
@3
you mean like all the “peacefull” protests by those on the left? LOL..anybody remember WTO?
seems the lefties have a worldwide reputation for blood in the streets that far surpases anything from the right.
20th century history is not your friend.
4 flip bastaRd
“seems the lefties have a worldwide reputation for blood in the streets that far surpases anything from the right.
20th century history is not your friend.”
Hunhhhh?????
Not exactly sure what YOU mean by the left and the right BUT …
Hitler, Torquemada, Andrew Jackson, Jeff Davis, … seems like e pretty impressive record.
As for the US of A … our aggressive wars, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, the Wars against the Indians, Iraq … note a theme here?
On the other hand, lets see if we can list the most peaceful countries in today;s world .. Sweden, Germany, Canada, South Africa, Japan, … notice something? They are ALL (by YOUR standards) lefty.
Actually, this left v right bit is more than a little stupid. Hitler and Stalin were both nationalists, both believers in State Corporations … why the fuck some see Stalin as “left: is beyond me!
Is the PRC (China) left enough for you?
The one thing I see is that democracies … whether socialist or not .. seem pretty much resistant to making war.
I guess I am just a democrat.
@ 4
Your handle suits you.
There was no “blood in the streets” during the WTO protests. Yes, there was some vandalism, yes, there was loud yelling, bullhorns and street theater. There was tear gas, and pepper spray, and deliberate blocking, corralling and assaultive actions by unidentifiable and identically dressed paramilitaries in suits of armor. People with clubs, and shotguns, and more than a couple M-16 rifles in view.
But what I saw were union workers, social liberals, environmental activists, social justice activists, ordinary working schmucks like you and me. People who knew what the WTO really is and the destruction it is causing to economies around the world.
If you cannot fathom the damage caused to the world economy by the World Trade Organization, and the free trade agreements it facilitates around the globe, there is probably no educating you. Some of them work, but most are designed to give access by the wealthiest nations to the local level economies of the poorer ones. Their banks, their credit systems, their local supermarkets and farms. And most especially, their labor.
You cannot claim to be troubled by the loss of good paying solid employment in this country, and in the same breath, even attempt to defend the WTO and the multinational banks that control it, or the politicians that facilitated their plundering of the US Treasury.
SJ..not only are you a democrat, you are apparently either too fucking stupid or ignorant of 20th century history.
First of all – Andrew Jackson was 19th century- just thought a UW prof would know that – I guess I gave you too much credit. Hiring standards seem to have dropped – like everything else on the left.
Now, lets get to our favorite 20th century leftists – starting with the biggest dicks of them all: the tag team of Lenin and Stalin(and you are wrong about Stalin), and moving on to other great names like Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, The father and son team in North Korea, Ceausescu, any of the Commie socialst leaders in East Germany, Poland, etc…well I could go on but that would be considered piling on at this point.
You seem to have a special grudge against the US – perhaps you should take yourself back to Isreal or some other place that makes you happy. I’m sure they would welcome you with open arms (Not)…lol
And the next time you start bantering on about Canada, Germany, etc…those countries are far more capitalist than they are socialist. Of course that little diddy of a fact gets lost on the far left and far right nutballs.
Now run along and get me cold beer.
goldstein, seriously. you’re not given orders by the world jewish congress?. its not hate speech, he fucking stabbed him. hate speech is not illegal, yet. within ten years, however, you’ll have your wish, total control of expression in this country, and you’ll never have to worry about the goyim again.
@6 WTO vs chauvinism
I will defend the WTO.
The US is not a planet unto itself. The WTO promotes a flat playfield. If that means it is more efficient to answer tech calls in Bangalore or make TVs in Shangahi, what would YOU want done about that?
The reality that neither the L nor the R wants to accept is that the world IS a zero sum game. If trade is flat and if other countries use this as an opportunity to compete, the US standard of living MUST go down.
Left, right is all BS on this issue. We need instead to adjust to a future that takes the best advantage of OUR resources. That means maximizing opportunity for ALL Americans to compete .. something the right hates … but ti also means Unions accepting the reality of lower wages .. something the left hates.
I think I will start a new party and call it the rationalist movement.
Anyone else notice that all the righties ever point to on this one are isolated incedences and half the time they weren’t even violent? From what I remember of WTO most of the violence was from sheriff R’s deputies directed at peaceful folks, half of whom weren’t even part of the protests.
@6
well your wrong, there was some blood in the streets – some of which was my mother’s, who was just trying to get home from work before being assaulted by a couple of leftist pussies with masks on…but thats another story…
and dont get me wrong, I think the WTO should be dibanded, along with NAFTA and any other current trade treaty. I’m all for heavy tariffs.
You will notice that its been both the R and D politicians that have brought this shit upon us…yet all the lemmings out there just keep voting by letter, not by policy. anyway..
on the trade issue, we are on the same page.
and yes, I am a flippant bastard – I dont give a fuck about the lie of being politicaly correct. an asshole is an asshole, a fag is a fag, a fat bastard is a fat bastard, white trash is white trash and so on….call em like I see em…nobody goes unscathed.
Flippant Bastard, the man they couldnt hang.
@ 8
But incitement to riot IS illegal, it is actually a serious felony.
And “hate speech”, is the very definition of incitement to riot. That is its express purpose. The desire to make people angry for nothing else but to reinforce ones personal egotism or enhance ones bank account is a natural symptom of a Sociopathic mind, and should be treated as such.
Reactionaries cannot process information at anything but the most superficial level, and cannot be trusted to make rational decisions in times of boredom or social stress. They are too easily misled, too quick to anger, and not intelligent enough to think beyond what they can see from one second to the next. This is why television is so popular.
@7 .. Flip Bas
You are correct on one thing, I did note note that you wanted to restrict violence to the 20th century.
Otherwise, you somehow managed to leave Adolph Hitler out of your dialectic.
Sweden and Germany are “more capitalist than socialist?” Wgat the fuck does that mean? Seeems like you have a pretty ignorant idea about what social democracy is. Read some Alinsky bubbelah.
As for your statement that I have a grudge against the US .. what effin weed are you smoking? Did you buiy it from Lee?
I will trade my cred as an American with your anyday. Tell me about your military service, about your work during the civil right era, about you efforts (with Reagan) to smuggle folks out of the DDR, then tell me about how your Dad worked with Ike in WWII, kliberated Buchenwald but has to overcome a local Nazi movement when he got home.
You Red White and Blue traitors to MY country disgust me.
SJ,
I was talking about leftists, in case the subject matter escaped you. Go back and re-read – then comprehend.
Hitler wasnt really a leftists per se, therefore I did not include him.
fuck alinsky..he is a POS, and his followers are now helping turn the US is biggest wussie state in the world…lets all join the great collective(gag me).
I dont care about your wannabe cred. The best cred you can gain with me is by starting with the ability to stay focused on the subject, and not wander off into the daisies.
@9
SJ, if being and living like the rest of the world is so important to you, the dump your overpaid job and go live in a tent…or better yet, go move to Nigeria or some other shithole, so you can “live like them”
Personaly, I like living better than the rest of the world, and I will be damned if someone like you with some fake-ass guilt and the desire to live like the rest of the planet is gonna force me to live like someone in Crapistan or South Shitholia.
Of course we both know you wont give up your over paid UW job – another case of liberal “do as I say, not as I do”.
@13
Lee sells mellow, this guy’s high on crank.
Proud to be drug free… :)
@ 17
What it been now, two days?
in massachsetts, there is a pilot program funded by the feds, to allow someone a 30 per cent discount on fresh fruits and vegetables if they purchase them with food stamps. is it hate speech to say that i’m pissed off that i have to pay 30 per cent more for my food than someone who uses food stamps?
I’ll see your Muslim cabbie attacked for being Muslims and lives, and raise you 3 Indonesian Christian schoolgirls are beheaded by Muslims because they are Christian. (They aren’t as lucky as the cabbie. They didn’t survive the beheadings).
Only click the link if you want to see proof of some beheaded Christian schoolgirls. Warning. Very graphic!
http://barenakedislam.wordpres.....y-muslims/
Hmmm.. Followers like this guy?
http://thebruinstandard.com/?p=119
baaabaaaaawwkkk! dumbass tehchickenshit alert!
Finally he (Rove’s right hand man in the Shrub glory days) comes out.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....95040.html
If only some other repressed right wingers would do the same. There’s be a lot less of this:
http://republicansexoffenders.com
@1 “Hopefully, this is an isolated incident and not the start of a trend.”
It’s not an isolated incident. There have been a number of such crimes around the country since 9/11 — stupid baboons taking out their rage over that awful event on innocent strangers because their pea-sized brains operate on a racial, cultural, and linguistic stereotyping level … people so stupid they think their criminal acts are patriotic.
Conservatives love to bray that “hate crime” legislation gives “special treatment” to minorities. (Never mind that hate-crime laws are color-blind and minorities can be prosecuted under them for crimes against whites.) They claim such laws aren’t necessary because these perps can be prosecuted under existing laws against assault, murder, etc.
In a perfect world, they would be right. In fact, conservatives would be right about everything in a perfect world: Unregulated markets, minimal or no government, and so on. When I was young, I was a Goldwater conservative. On paper, conservatism looked very rational — and it is. Then I got out into the real world and conservative rationalizations for just about everything fell apart in front of my eyes.
Take “hate crime” legislation, for example. These laws do not create a new class of crimes. That is, they do not criminalize behavior that previously was legal. Hate crime laws are simply enhanced-penalty laws: If your motive for stabbing a cab driver was his race or religion or whatever, you do extra time. It doesn’t make bigotry a crime; it simply makes bigots do more time for committing acts that already are crimes. (See, e.g., Mathew Shepherd; even without hate-crime laws, it wasn’t legal in Montana to kidnap people, tie them to fence posts in the middle of nowhere, and leave them to freeze to death in the dead of winter.)
Conservatives tell us these enhanced penalties aren’t necessary. This is an argument for lighter penalties for people who stab cab drivers because of their race, skin color, language, culture, or religion. Yes, that’s what conservatives are arguing: The white guy who stabbed this cab driver because he prays to a different god should get a lighter sentence because one stabbing is as good as another and motive has nothing to do with it. Ergo, no penalty for being a fucking bigot and hating other people to the point of inflicting grievous bodily harm on them simply for being different.
Fuck that. Every day, I get down on my paws and thank the Great Mother Rabbit Spirit that I went to college on government-subsidized student loans (as a poor rabbit, I qualified) and got a liberal education that opened my eyes to the fact this world isn’t the wonderful paper theory that conservatism assumes it is. The world, in fact, is full of imperfect and irrational human beings — which is why a rabbit who goes to law school and then becomes a judge has a paying job and a useful role in society.
I haven’t figured out yet how to make bigotry disappear from our society, and I’m not sure I ever can. Conservatives haven’t either, they are in fact no closer to a solution to this problem than I am, so at best their conservatism is no better than my liberalism, but I would argue it’s worse because logic argues that the kid-glove treatment of violent bigots which they advocate will simply encourage more violent bigotry. I think I can do better than that. I’m not a practicing judge anymore, but I can offer a simple and elegant solution to cases like this.
Deep well. Cell door key. Splash.
@20
1. We don’t have any control over what happens in Indonesia.
2. The dominate religion of a country or region using force, or threat of it, to enforce it’s views is a common theme. The American parallel to those school girls in Indonesia would be the murders of and threats directed at people that work in women’s health centers by far-right Christians.
The purpose of enhanced-penalty legislation is to discourage certain antisocial behaviors. Washington has an enhanced-penalty law that says you do an extra 5 years for committing a crime with a gun. The objective is to discourage bad guys from using guns to commit robberies and other crimes. Likewise, hate-crime laws that tack on extra prison time for assaults motivated by racism or other forms of bigotry are designed to deter bigots from acting out their hatreds against innocent people. These laws are simply an additional deterrent. Yet, it somehow offends conservatives that you can get extra time for stabbing a cab driver because he worships Allah instead of Jesus, as opposing to stabbing him simply to rob him. They see no distinction between robbing and hating. That would be fine if robbery laws deterred haters from acting out their hatreds. They don’t. Hate crime legislation doesn’t really deter them, either, anymore than enhanced-penalty laws deter robbers from pulling guns and shooting convenience store clerks. But these laws give prosecutors and judges another tool to keep an especially vicious brand of criminal off the streets as long as possible.
@20 Are you using this to justify the attack on the cabbie?
@22
Well good for Ken Mehlman.
You gotta wonder what Michael Enright was thinking. (Aside from the fact he was drunk.) He’s looking at 20 years, so might serve 15 actual with time off for good behavior. I don’t know if he has a girlfriend, but if he does, he won’t be fucking her tonight. Or for a very long time. Mr. Enright is now 21 years old. He’ll be at least 36 before he gets to fuck a girl again. On the other hand, he’s probably going to become very accustomed to being fucked in the ass by big guys, whether he wants to or not. When you go to prison, you don’t get to fuck women. Period. You gotta think this guy wasn’t thinking very much when he did this. He sure as hell wasn’t thinking about his love life, because he doesn’t have a love life for the next 15 years. If the cabbie had died he wouldn’t have a love life for the rest of his life. You know what I think? As much as Michael Enright hated the cabbie, he hated himself even more. Only a self-hater could do this to himself.
Flip Bastard ..
I think you need help.
Before you go to bed tonight, go outside and look at the belt of Orion.
I will be there for you.
I am that I am.
So ..
Your “service” to America has been nada?
As for your bleeding heart BS .. hay bud, I live here too. If you are so dumb as to think America is on its own planet, I suggest you stop buying anything madc in China, stop drving cars built with rare metals from Africa and Russia, only eat food grwon in America with workers paid “American” wages. ….
Oh yeh, while you are at this don’t pay any taxes so the next generation of American kids will be too dumb ass to compete for jobs with the Dilips and Kumars.
But do keep our economy up by shopping at Nordtrom’s for that designer underwear you so like and getting lee to only sell you genuine American grown weed.
Ooops … I forgot! … Your are drug free, 100% drug free! I guess it must be the Johny Walker you been slugging that has rotted your brain.
@20;
I’m betting the cabby in NYC had absolutely nothing to do with the girls in Indonesia.
re 2: Beck plans on delivering the I have a Scheme speech.
Hold onto your wallets, attendees.
@32 Of course it’s about money! Everything the rightwing demagogues say and do is about lifting cash from the pockets of their gullible followers. Have you ever wondered why so many rednecks live in trailer parks? It’s not because they don’t work or don’t have any money. They’re simply easy pickings for hucksters. That’s why there’s so many rightwing hucksters — on radio, the internet, etc. “Thar’s gold in them thar rednecks!”
Beck’s probably gonna sell ’em books and tapes about how to make a million by flipping distressed real estate in places like Alabama.
And there is also this:
Madera Islamic center vandalism called hate crime
Beck… I mean what kind of a country are we living in where people gather at Safeco Field, Lincoln Memorial, wherever to pay the slightest bit of attention to such a charlatan.
(SJ News, Peoples Republic of Utah Bureau, April 2065)
Beck, The Movie
Ging Hua Films announces that their SONY/Paramount division has purchased the film rights to the biography of the assassinated Great Leader. Prophet Hiram Kaching of the Church of latter Day Saints and Kim il Jung III, President of the People’s Christian Republic of the Koreas, reassured the MormansRChristians community that Ging Hua would be respectful of the life and beliefs of the Great Leader.
It appears that the Enright had worked (or was working) for a group called “Intersections International”, which describes itself as a “global initiative dedicated to promoting justice, reconciliation and peace across lines of faith, culture, ideology, race, class, national borders and other boundaries that divide humanity.” Intersections international supported the Park51 project.
Link
Right wingers gone wild!
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpoi....._mosqu.php
Ahhh.. The stupid things people do when they drink.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_.....z0xjbuBeO0
Anybody who thinks the right is innocent of the “blood in the streets” internationlly hasn’t been paying attention to 20th century history, or is altogether ignorant if it.
Let’s focus for just a moment on the Friekorps (sp?), made up of former WWI soldiers who formed private armies which were used in the early days of the 1920’s Weimar Republic to attack communists, leftists, anty-royalists, or anyone else who’s politics disagreed with that of their leaders. They gained control of important pockets of Germany’s territory, and didn’t hesitate to use murder against their opponants. To aid them, sympathetic Army commanders would make sure they were suplied with excess WWII stockpiles of rifles, machine guns, and ammunition, which they used to fire on demonstrators. Because of the societal disorganization at the time, plus sympathetic government administrators, the death toll will never really be known. With the later rise of the Nazi movement, these guys became the core of the early Brownshirts and S.S.
And need we talk about the Kristalnacht, as long as we are talking about blood in the streets?
Ignoring Italy for the moment, let’s move on to Spain, where Franco’s fascists brutally overthrew the Republican Government there (the first democratically elected government in Spain), with the aid of German and Italian arms, tanks, and airpower.
Should I go on with discussions of right-wing violence in Chile, Brazil, Honduras (just to keep it within this Hemisphere).
@41 ,, rhp6033 the R v L myth.
The whole bit of lumping folks into categories ans then demonizing them with their beliefs is asinine.
Objectively, the fanatic right and left are the same thing. How do you discriminate Stalin form Hitler or Mao from Tojo?
There is, however, on “ism” that seems to me to be innately peaceful .. that is democracy. While democracies can do bad things, eg Bush war, the interests of the people provide a counterbalance that no other ism can offer.
The common thread in Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan, Iran, the Crusades is not r vs left, it is the right to rule, the concept that someone has the innate right .. whether from God or from “the People” , to rule overyone wlese.
Do not give the flippant bastard a beer, he is way too immature to imbibe.
@43
I can buy my own beer, thanks.