Arson

Arson And Reported Gun Shots At TN Islamic Center Site

Bill Egnor — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 08:45:36 -0500

The anti-Muslim whirlwind continues to be reaped in the United States. For all that the Sarah Palins and Rudy Giuliani’s of the world think that the fight over the Park51 Islamic Center is confined to Manhattan the reality is that it is spreading and getting more and more violent. This weekend the site of new Islamic center outside Nashville was fire bombed. No one was hurt but some very expensive construction equipment was destroyed. Then when some of the members of the group building the mosque were looking at the site, they heard shots fired and reported it to local police.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

Liberals (like myself) often worry about the slippery slope. We spend a lot of time telling folks that if we go down path X it could lead to result Y. Some of the time we are flatly wrong about it but not always and sadly not often enough. The growing fervor about the construction of Islamic community centers and mosques is a good example of where we seem to be right about the slippery slope.

It has always been the case that when this nation is at war we have dehumanized our opponents. In the North the Southern soldiers were Rebels, during WWI the Germans were called Huns, and then in WWII Kruats; the Japanese were called Nips; the Vietnamese were called Gooks or Slants. These were probably terms that were used by a minority of racist or bigoted folks already, but in a time of war they get pressed into service. All of this makes it easier for young men to go and kill other young men. If they are “other” then they can be assigned all kinds of heinous traits which justify the actions of our soldiers.

The problem with this tacit is in long wars it bleeds into the general population. It spreads and can become mainstream in the national consciousness. After all, even Doctor Seuss drew racist cartoons during the Japanese interment period. Take a look at this one below.

To his credit, he did express regrets about these cartoons later in life. Still at a time of war this was acceptable enough to print in the LA Times.

Which brings us to the problem of anti-Muslim fervor today; the Right in this nation has been told by Talk Radio and its radical hate mongers that we are at war with all of Islam. That 1.5 billion practitioners of that faith are constrained by their religious tenets to bring Islam to whole world by any means necessary. The fact that this is not true, has not stopped them from purveying this slime. As an atheist is rather galling to me to have to defend any religion, but this meme of monolithic intent is so ridiculous that I have stand up for Islam right now. There are many, many points of view as to what the requirements of the Qu’ran are. Just as there is interpretation of the Bible (all versions), Torah and the Bhagavad Gita there are differing schools of thought on the holy book of the Muslims.

Still it does not matter to those who have internalized the message of war with Islam. They are willing to use terms like “rag head” and “camel jockey” to demonize their fellow citizens, who happen to be Muslim.

Hate is a very dangerous emotion. It is possible for it to start out rationally, but it almost always progresses to the irrational. Once you hate a person or group of people it is easy to be intellectually lazy and accept any negative stereotype presented about them. In this way hate grows and consumes those who engage in it. After the 9/11 attacks and nearly a decade of constant war in predominately Muslim nations it is easy to see how some of our less mentally rigorous citizens have come to the place where their hate has overrun their reason.

Acts of bigotry or racial violence almost always include a component of praise seeking. The number of people who will say racist and bigoted things is always going to be larger than the subset which will act out on those ideas. However the more socially acceptable bigoted speech is the higher the percentage of those who think they will be praised for their violence becomes.

This is the slippery slope we find ourselves on today. As many of the national figures on the Right find it acceptable to compare Muslims in general to Nazis (I am looking right at your pudgy face Newt!) and even some leading Democrats fall for the bogus sensitivity argument and say so on national TV the Overton window on acceptable bigotry against Muslims grows. This means the size of the population who might act out violently grows as well.

The issue of the Park51 Islamic Center and the other buildings is not one that we can just shrug on and look away. It goes to basic freedoms in this country. When churches of Christian religions are fire bombed there is a serious outcry. As it should be. However when a minority religion like Islam suffers the same fate you can find comments in local news story praising the action and telling American citizens to go home. It is good that the newspaper removed these comments and there are those that argued against them but the fact that there were folks who would advocate further terror in public is a sign of how far the window has moved.

There are those among us who will never be tolerant. They do not want a pluralistic nation where many cultures are welcome, as long as they respect the rights of other cultures. They can’t be reached and I would not spend a minute trying to do so. However there is a large group of Americans who can be reached. Standing up for the rights of Muslims to build wherever zoning permits is not about liking or disliking their religion, it is about standing up for one of the founding ideals of this nation. The premise that everyone should be able to be as involved in religion as they choose, whether that is deeply or not at all.

More importantly it is the core principal that democracy can only function when it protects the rights of disliked minorities. If we start to give in on that issue then we truly are on a slippery slope, where your Constitutional protections are only as strong as the majority group you happen to belong to. This is not what the Founders wanted. They were clear about the importance of all people having the same protections. The whims of a King, even a King mildly restrained by a Parliament taught them what being on the wrong side of the majority was like and they insisted that their descendants would not suffer it.

Standing up for the rights of Muslims is the right thing to do, not because I am of their faith or even like their faith. It is the right thing to do because it is the American thing to do. Standing up for those who would be oppressed by the majority is about as American as it gets.

The floor is yours.

Texas Executes Innocent Man, Gov. Perry Wants To Cover It Up

Bill Egnor — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:03:41 -0500

The Dog is not a supporter of the death penalty. It is not that he thinks there are no crimes where the proper punishment is death, there are things that some humans do to others from which there is no coming back. There are people who are so damaged that they will continually damage and kill those around them. For these few, it seems the prudent course is to make sure they can never hurt anyone else again and the only way to really do that is to take their lives. The problem is not in the concept as it much as it is in the practical application of the death penalty.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

If we are going to execute anyone, then we must be 100% sure we do not execute anyone who is actually innocent of the crime they are convicted of. In our system of justice this is a near impossibility and for that reason alone we should not have the death penalty. Many of the District Attorney posts in this nation are elected ones. This leads to pressure for these prosecutors to get convictions and be “tough on crime”. That alone can distort the arch of justice. Then there is the issue of racism in this country. No matter how far we have come there is a far greater chance of a person of color being convicted of any crime than a white person. This is especially true in cases which typically are brought with the death penalty.

In the last 20 years more than 200 prisoners on death row have been exonerated by DNA evidence alone. Think about that for a second, there were 200 people we had convicted and sentenced to death who did not do it! They were innocent of the crime we were going to kill them for.

This brings us to the odious Governor of Texas, Rick Perry. In 2004 the State of Texas executed Cameron Willingham. He was accused of setting an arson fire which killed his three children. At trial the prosecutors relied heavily on supposed expert testimony of “expert fire investigators” . In a recent New Yorker Article David Grann lays out the case that the “experts” were in fact no such thing and made multiple mistakes in their investigation of the fire and their testimony. Using a report written by a noted fire scientist who called the investigation “junk science” Mr. Willingham appealed for clemency to the Texas Clemency Board. The Board denied his request, even though they had exonerated another death row inmate with a similar report from the scientist. When Mr. Willingham appealed Governor Perry, he was also denied clemency. The Governor stated the denial was “based on the evidence of the case”.

In 2005 Texas established a commission to look into the use of forensic evidence in criminal proceedings. One of the first cases which were investigated was Mr. Willingham’s. A fire scientist named Craig Beyler was hired by the commission to review the investigation. He wrote a scathing report saying

“the arson investigators had no scientific basis for claiming that the fire was arson, ignored evidence that contradicted their theory, had no comprehension of flashover and fire dynamics, relied on discredited folklore, and failed to eliminate potential accidental or alternative causes of the fire. He said that Vasquez’s approach seemed to deny “rational reasoning” and was more “characteristic of mystics or psychics.”

This is a real problem for Gov. Perry. The whole concept behind the death penalty is that they would not execute a factually innocent person. Now Gov. Perry is trying to sink an investigation which is likely to say he signed off of the execution of an innocent man.

The Chair of the Texas Forensic Science Commission was not reappointed by Gov. Perry to the post, right before he was about to have a public hearing with Craig Beyler testifying as to the shoddy evidence which was used in convicting Mr. Willingham. In addition Gov. Perry appointed three new members, one being a new chair who is a hard line conservative prosecutor. This new Chair promptly canceled Mr. Beyler’s testimony, citing the need to “get up to speed”.

If this seems fishy to you, you are not alone. It has since come out that the former Chair of the commission, Mr. Sam Bassett has recently told the Chicago Tribune that the Governors office had previously tried to pressure him. He had been summoned to the to two meetings with Gov. Perry’s top lawyers who told him explicitly they were not happy with the direction the investigation was going.

This keeps getting worse for the Texas Governor. His office has refused to release records requested by the Huston Chronicle which would indicate if anyone in the office or the Governor himself had reviewed the new report just hours before Mr. Willingham’s execution. In politics the cover up is always more damaging than the action. It seems Gov. Perry has forgotten this.

This story is still developing, but one thing seems clear, the State of Texas and Gov. Perry for whatever reasons failed in their responsibility to make sure they were not executing an innocent man. They took Mr. Willingham’s life, perhaps through hubris, perhaps for political reasons, perhaps from laziness, but in the end they are responsible for the actions which lead to his death. This could affect Gov. Perry’s reelection chances as he faces Sen. Bailey-Hutchins for the Republican nomination. His actions to date seem to indicate something to hide which he feels could be damaging to him.

In the end it is likely Gov. Perry will try to brazen it out, standing by the “tough on crime” mantra which is a core Republican belief. For the rest of us it should be just one more nail in the coffin of the death penalty. Who can support a punishment which is irrevocable and can not be fairly applied?

The floor is yours.