I know I'm going to get in trouble from some of my blogger buddies for writing this post, but I'm going to write it anyway because failing to acknowlege a fact in the name of political correctness is stupid.
I also want to preface this with the fact that I know that there are over four million muslims in the United States (including some who are friends of mine) and that almost all of them are peace-loving people who absolutely do not support the use of violence as a means to achieve anything. To characterize all of them based on the actions of one, or even of several, seriously disturbed individuals is unfair and wrong.
However, I have to take issue with the whole 'loner' bit that is being kicked around about Major Nidal Malik Hasan. He is certainly a lone gunman, but there is a disturbing trend here. Just a couple of weeks ago there was a shootout in Detroit between the FBI and a group of radical muslims whose stated goal was to establish an autonomous state governed by sharia law on U.S. territory. We also recently had the case of Najibullah Zazi, accused of plotting to blow up targets in the United States. Before that we had Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, who attacked army recruiters in Arkansas. There is also a parade of young men from Minneapolis and elsewhere who have apparently been moving through a pipeline to Somalia where they end up as members of al-Shabob, an Islamicist rebel group in that country.
And that's just this year. If we continued this post back a few years, there are several other American muslim individuals who have committed senseless acts of violence in the United States or against fellow Americans (John Allen Muhammed, anyone?)
Now, I absolutely do not believe that we should in any way blame the entire muslim community (many of whom have condemned and spoken out against these senseless actions,) nor do I believe that the government needs more federal spy powers-- God knows we've given them enough spy powers already and if they are doing a poor job of using the powers they have now then the answer is not to give them more power to snoop on Americans. As I said before, there are millions of American muslims and these actions have been committed by a handful, who do not appear in most cases to be part of any sort of extremist organization.
However, to deny that these kinds of violent episodes are happening too often to be considered 'random' because it is politically inconvenient to do so, is also wrong headed thinking. Clearly the whole radical Islamicist, jihadi mentality has seduced a number of Americans, either those who were raised as muslims (as Dr. Hasan was) or those who have converted to Islam (as was the case for those involved in the Detroit shootout.)
We must acknowlege it and then look at how we can work with law enforcement officials and community leaders to get a handle on why some American muslims are attracted to extreme Islamicism and then address those causes directly. And to get this kind of a dialogue working we have to be willing to be blunt about what the problem is.
Showing posts with label random violence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label random violence. Show all posts
Friday, November 06, 2009
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Another attack on a homeless victim for the heck of it-- but this time making kids do it.
Attacks against the homeless, just on a lark and for no reason at all, are nothing new (tragically), and I've discussed them before. But today there is a story out of Florida that brings this crime to a new low: ten year olds pushed into beating homeless man.
(CNN) -- Egged on by a 17-year-old, two 10-year-old boys joined in the attack of a homeless man, leaving him bruised and bloody Tuesday, Daytona Beach Police said.
The incident highlights an upswing in violent crime across the U.S. against the homeless.
In 2006, there were 142 attacks and 20 murders, several involving teenagers seeking a vicious thrill, according to the D.C.-based National Coalition for the Homeless.
The incident, which took place in Daytona Beach, Florida, may make history, said the non-profit's acting executive director Michael Stoops.
"If we're talking about 10-year-olds, that means we've hit an all-time low," said Stoops. "The youngest person to have ever been arrested for a crime like this is 13....
Daytona Police Sgt. Billy Walden said the teen and two boys were walking in their neighborhood around 9 p.m. when they saw 58-year-old John D'Amico. They began throwing rocks at the homeless man.
The 17-year-old, Jeremy Woods, punched D'Amico who then fell over a concrete wall. As he lay on the ground, one of the 10-year-olds - whose names are not being released - used parts of the concrete to bash D'Amico in the head, a police report shows.
D'Amico's eye was severely damaged in the attack. Woods and the two boys were charged with felony aggravated battery and are being held without bond at a juvenile detention center in Daytona Beach, Walden said.
There was one good piece of news in the story though. In one of several posts I've done on this topic, Kill some time, kill a man I wrote about the brutal January 2006 murder of Norris Gaynor who was beaten to death with baseball bats for 'sport'. In the story linked above, it says later on (after noting that apparently Florida has an unusually high number of these kinds of cases-- though as I wrote about the suspects in the Phoenix serial shooter cases random recreational violence, Arizona is hardly immune from this kind of stuff) that
One of those cases has garnered international attention and is expected to go to trial this fall after a surveillance camera captured two teens beating a homeless man with bats in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on January 12, 2006.
Prosecutors say 17-year-old skateboarder Tom Daugherty, 18-year-old Brian Hooks, a popular hockey team captain, and a [third] teen, Billy Ammons, a high school dropout, assaulted two more homeless men that night.
And that is a piece of good news, that they have caught and are prosecuting these monsters.
Murder is always a crime of unspeakable violence.
And there is no motive for murder that justifies the crime. However, the motives that there have been in the past, if wrong, could at least be understood as being motives for murder. Money, passion, jealousy, personal rivalry, revenge, rage, organized crime or gang feuds, turf battles, sadistic sexual desire, paranoia, misplaced patriotism, to send a message to someone else, even things like blind racial, ethnic or religious hatred, or homophobia, all of these motives, if inadequate for the crime, fit our frame of reference as motives for the ultimate crime.
But with the dehumanization of the homeless, we see more and more attacks, nearly always by juveniles, just for the heck of it. I don't understand it. In nearly all of these cases, the attackers have been white, and in nearly all of these cases they have come from middle or upper-middle class families. So why would they feel that they need to kill someone who has nothing?
It is no secret that some of the attackers have watched videos like 'bumfights,' a video in which 300,000 copies were distributed in which homeless people were paid to fight each other in front of a camera. Do they feel that these homeless people are only fodder for them to take out aggression on?
Or could it be perhaps that they have bought into the line that homeless people have earned their lot in life by themselves and are not deserving of any better fate?
That the homeless people are not as good as they are?
As I wrote in the Phoenix case (and which also appears to be true in the Gaynor case, and is true most of the time in these cases:
both suspects apparently came from families in which they never experienced poverty, and so apparently bought into the misconception of transients as all being that way by choice or because they were lazy.
And with that, can it be all that surprising that some disturbed people have taken homelessness as a license to murder human beings with no more compunction than most people might kill a garden pest?
(CNN) -- Egged on by a 17-year-old, two 10-year-old boys joined in the attack of a homeless man, leaving him bruised and bloody Tuesday, Daytona Beach Police said.
The incident highlights an upswing in violent crime across the U.S. against the homeless.
In 2006, there were 142 attacks and 20 murders, several involving teenagers seeking a vicious thrill, according to the D.C.-based National Coalition for the Homeless.
The incident, which took place in Daytona Beach, Florida, may make history, said the non-profit's acting executive director Michael Stoops.
"If we're talking about 10-year-olds, that means we've hit an all-time low," said Stoops. "The youngest person to have ever been arrested for a crime like this is 13....
Daytona Police Sgt. Billy Walden said the teen and two boys were walking in their neighborhood around 9 p.m. when they saw 58-year-old John D'Amico. They began throwing rocks at the homeless man.
The 17-year-old, Jeremy Woods, punched D'Amico who then fell over a concrete wall. As he lay on the ground, one of the 10-year-olds - whose names are not being released - used parts of the concrete to bash D'Amico in the head, a police report shows.
D'Amico's eye was severely damaged in the attack. Woods and the two boys were charged with felony aggravated battery and are being held without bond at a juvenile detention center in Daytona Beach, Walden said.
There was one good piece of news in the story though. In one of several posts I've done on this topic, Kill some time, kill a man I wrote about the brutal January 2006 murder of Norris Gaynor who was beaten to death with baseball bats for 'sport'. In the story linked above, it says later on (after noting that apparently Florida has an unusually high number of these kinds of cases-- though as I wrote about the suspects in the Phoenix serial shooter cases random recreational violence, Arizona is hardly immune from this kind of stuff) that
One of those cases has garnered international attention and is expected to go to trial this fall after a surveillance camera captured two teens beating a homeless man with bats in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on January 12, 2006.
Prosecutors say 17-year-old skateboarder Tom Daugherty, 18-year-old Brian Hooks, a popular hockey team captain, and a [third] teen, Billy Ammons, a high school dropout, assaulted two more homeless men that night.
And that is a piece of good news, that they have caught and are prosecuting these monsters.
Murder is always a crime of unspeakable violence.
And there is no motive for murder that justifies the crime. However, the motives that there have been in the past, if wrong, could at least be understood as being motives for murder. Money, passion, jealousy, personal rivalry, revenge, rage, organized crime or gang feuds, turf battles, sadistic sexual desire, paranoia, misplaced patriotism, to send a message to someone else, even things like blind racial, ethnic or religious hatred, or homophobia, all of these motives, if inadequate for the crime, fit our frame of reference as motives for the ultimate crime.
But with the dehumanization of the homeless, we see more and more attacks, nearly always by juveniles, just for the heck of it. I don't understand it. In nearly all of these cases, the attackers have been white, and in nearly all of these cases they have come from middle or upper-middle class families. So why would they feel that they need to kill someone who has nothing?
It is no secret that some of the attackers have watched videos like 'bumfights,' a video in which 300,000 copies were distributed in which homeless people were paid to fight each other in front of a camera. Do they feel that these homeless people are only fodder for them to take out aggression on?
Or could it be perhaps that they have bought into the line that homeless people have earned their lot in life by themselves and are not deserving of any better fate?
That the homeless people are not as good as they are?
As I wrote in the Phoenix case (and which also appears to be true in the Gaynor case, and is true most of the time in these cases:
both suspects apparently came from families in which they never experienced poverty, and so apparently bought into the misconception of transients as all being that way by choice or because they were lazy.
And with that, can it be all that surprising that some disturbed people have taken homelessness as a license to murder human beings with no more compunction than most people might kill a garden pest?
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