December 23, 2012

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Unheard Martin Luther King Jr. recording found in attic

August 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Originally posted by Lucas L. Johnson II, Associated Press

In this 1960 file photo, Martin Luther King Jr. speaks in Atlanta. (AP File Photo)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Stephon Tull was looking through dusty old boxes in his father’s attic in Chattanooga a few months ago when he stumbled onto something startling: an audio reel labeled, “Dr. King interview, Dec. 21, 1960.”

He wasn’t sure what he had until he borrowed a friend’s reel-to-reel player and listened to the recording of his father interviewing Martin Luther King Jr. for a book project that never came to fruition. In clear audio, King discusses the importance of the civil rights movement, his definition of nonviolence and how a recent trip of his to Africa informed his views. Tull said the recording had been in the attic for years, and he wasn’t sure who other than his father may have heard it.

“No words can describe. I couldn’t believe it,” he told The Associated Press this week in a phone interview from his home in Chattanooga. “I found … a lost part of history.”

Many recordings of King are known to exist among hundreds of thousands of documents related to his life that have been catalogued and archived. But one historian said the newly discovered interview is unusual because there’s little audio of King discussing his activities in Africa, while two of King’s contemporaries said it’s exciting to hear a little-known recording of their friend for the first time.

Tull plans to offer the recording at a private sale arranged by a New York broker and collector later this month.

Tull said his father, an insurance salesman, had planned to write a book about the racism he encountered growing up in Chattanooga and later as an adult. He said his dad interviewed King when he visited the city, but never completed the book and just stored the recording with some other interviews he had done. Tull’s father is now in his early 80s and under hospice care.

During part of the interview, King defines nonviolence and justifies its practice.

“I would … say that it is a method which seeks to secure a moral end through moral means,” he said. “And it grows out of the whole concept of love, because if one is truly nonviolent that person has a loving spirit, he refuses to inflict injury upon the opponent because he loves the opponent.”

The interview was made four years before the Civil Rights Act became law, three years before King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, and eight years before his assassination. At one point in the interview, King predicts the impact of the civil rights movement.

“I am convinced that when the history books are written in future years, historians will have to record this movement as one of the greatest epics of our heritage,” he said.

King had visited Africa about a month before the interview, and he discusses with Tull’s father how leaders there viewed the racial unrest in the United States.

“I had the opportunity to talk with most of the major leaders of the new independent countries of Africa, and also leaders in countries that are moving toward independence,” he said. “And I think all of them agree that in the United States we must solve this problem of racial injustice if we expect to maintain our leadership in the world.”

Raymond Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Maryland’s Morgan State University, said the tape is significant because there are very few recordings of King detailing his activity in Africa.

“It’s clear that in this tape when he’s talking … about Africa, he saw this as a global human rights movement that would inspire other organizations, other nations, other groups around the world,” said Winbush, who is also a psychologist and historian.

“That to me is what’s remarkable about the tape.”

U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a Freedom Rider who organized Tennessee’s first lunch counter sit-in at age 19 in Nashville, said hearing King talk about the sit-ins took him back to the period when more than 100 restaurant counters were desegregated over several months.

“To … hear his voice and listen to his words was so moving, so powerful,” said Lewis, adding that King’s principles of nonviolence are still relevant today.

“I wish people all over America, all over the world, can hear this message over and over again,” he said.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who worked with King while a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, agreed.

“I can’t think of anything better to try,” Lowery said of nonviolence. “What we’re doing now is not working. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Matching violence with violence. We’ve got more guns than we’ve ever had, and more ammunition to go with it. And yet, the situation worsens.”

A spokeswoman for King’s daughter Bernice, head of The King Center in Atlanta, said she was traveling and couldn’t comment on the audio.

Tull is working with a New York-based collector and expert on historical artifacts to arrange a sale. The broker, Keya Morgan, said he believes that unpublished reel-to-reel audio of King is extremely rare and said he’s confident of the authenticity of the recording based on extensive interviews with Tull, his examination of the tape and his knowledge of King. He’s collected many of the civil rights icon’s letters and photos.

“I was like, wow! To hear him that crisp and clear,” Morgan said. “But beyond that, for him to speak of nonviolence, which is what he represented.”

 

Source: https://www.kpic.com/news/national/Unheard-Martin-Luther-King-Jr-recording-found-in-attic-167043495.html

Filed Under: Equality, Human Rights, Media, Racism, Revolution, Rights, Social Unrest

Dehumanized: Will Arabs Forgive Them?

July 11, 2012 By 3 Comments

He lives in a tent. He rides a camel. He carries a sword on his back.
She’s a seductive belly dancer.
She lives in a harem. She only exists for male pleasure.

They are Arabs.

The negative images of Arabs had long been emblazoned into our minds. Where do these images come from?

“Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place
Where the caravan camels roam
Where they cut off your ear
If they don’t like your face
It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home”

This was one of the verses of the opening song “Arabian Night” in the movie Aladdin, one of the most successful Disney movies ever made.
Following protests from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination, the lyrics were changed from “Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face” to “Where it’s flat and immense and the heat is intense”. Children from all over the world viewed Aladdin and Arabs have been portrayed as backward, barbaric, sinister, violent and imminently dangerous to the Western world.

At a very young age, many children start to learn stereotypes from the environment in which they are raised. They begin to acquire prejudices from their parents, teacher, peers, the media and others around them. They investigate the world around them and start developing their own racial identity between the ages of two and five. They first become aware of how people look. For instance, they start to notice the difference in skin colors. They also become aware of their own physical characteristics. Then they start seeking explanations for differences. At a later stage, they begin to identify with the ethnic group that they perceive themselves to belong to.

In his paper titled “Development of social categories and stereotypes in early childhood: The case of ”the Arab” concept formation, stereotype and attitudes by Jewish children in Israel”, Prof. Daniel Bar-Tal (Tel Aviv University) demonstrated the strength of the Israeli cultural stereotype of Arabs and its influence on young children. Research of concept development shows that Israeli children begin to use the word “Arab” between 24 months and 30 months of age and they also become able to draw a picture of an Arab man which represents their image of him. The majority of young children with any knowledge about Arabs associated them with violent and aggressive behaviors, directed mostly against Jews.

Us and Them

“The way we see things is affected by what we know or what believe” – Berger

The Western Media has projected negative images of the Arabs in order to create “Otherness”. The concept of Otherness consists of dividing people into two social groups: Us (in-group) and Them (out-group). The in-group views the out-group as being different in a fundamental way. The out-group may be of a different race, nationality, religion, social class, political ideology, sexual orientation or origin.

Evaluating others as “Us” and “Them” is based on Social Identity Theory developed by Tajfel and Turner in 1979. The theory is based on three mental processes:

  • Social categorization
  • Social identification
  • Social comparison

The first process is categorization. It represents our tendency to categorize individuals, including ourselves into groups. In his book “The Nature of Prejudice”, Gordon Allport (1954) wrote that the human kind must think with the aid of categories… Once formed, categories are the basis for normal prejudgment. We cannot possibly avoid this process. Orderly living depends upon it.

The second process is social identification. In this stage we adopt some of the values and behaviors of the group we have categorized ourselves as belonging to. In other words, we adopt the identity of that group. Belonging to a social group gives us a social identity that boosts our self-esteem by enhancing our image.

The final process is social comparison. Once we see ourselves as members of a group, we start to define ourselves by comparison with other groups. People make social comparison with other individuals they perceive to be better or worse off than themselves.

Many of the studies have shown that our self-esteem is maintained by making social comparison with other groups: individuals with high self-esteem tend to make upward comparison choices, whereas low self-esteem individuals tend to make upward comparisons only when there is no threat to their self-esteem (Wood, 1989).

In conclusion, society is composed of social groups that tend to maintain their self-esteem. The power and status relations between groups are based on social identity (Hogg and Abrams, 1988). Members of high-status groups gain positive social identity and high self-esteem. They even tend to discriminate and be prejudiced against low-status groups in order to enhance their social power and status.

Nations and Identities

National identity is the sense of one’s belonging to one nation. Based on Social Identity Theory, a nation defines its own identity by comparing itself to other nations. As a result, having an out-group strengthens a sense of belonging to a nation that places an enmity between “Us and Them”. In brief, a nation needs enemies to maintain its identity.

As Sam Keen puts it in his book Faces of the Enemy: “In the beginning we create the enemy. Before the weapon comes the image. We think others to death and then invent the battle-axe or the ballistic missiles with which to actually kill them. Propaganda precedes technology.” (1986, p. 10).

Governments use the process of creating enemy images as a method of social control. They rely on negative stereotypes in an attempt to create a common enemy. They vilify and dehumanize the enemy as merely being thief, murderer, rapist, monster, criminal, kidnapper and terrorist. Once the enemy is depicted as evil, inferior and not human, it becomes psychologically acceptable by people to persecute him. The psychological process of dehumanization is very dangerous for it often paves the way for violence.

In Search of An Identity

There are many historical examples of dehumanization. Before and during the Second World War, Hitler and his Nazi regime created a negative image of the Jewish people using stereotypes and propaganda. The Nazis dehumanized the Jews by naming them “inferior race” in order to make their persecution more psychologically acceptable.

After the Second World War, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers and Cold War began. America used Hollywood and media in order to promote an anti-Communism propaganda. America created the negative images of the Soviet Union enemy and managed to manipulate public opinion to fear the new enemy.

When the Soviet Union ceased to exist, America needed a post-Soviet foreign devil (Said) to maintain its identity. And once again, the Western monopoly of power has dehumanized an entire group of people in order to create “a stereotypical image of the dangerous ‘Arab Other’.”

Dr. Jack Shaheen, Professor Emeritus of Mass Communication at Southern Illinois University, studied portrayals of Arabs in Western Media by examining 900 U.S. films. He writes “Arabs are the most maligned group in the history of Hollywood. They are portrayed, basically, as sub-human untermenschen, a term used by Nazis to vilify Gypsies and Jews. These images have been with us for more than a century.”

Hollywood has internalized the negative stereotypes of Arabs before 9/11 in order to serve the U.S imperial objectives. The Department of Defense and CIA have always been cooperating with Hollywood. Former Hollywood Reporter staffer Robb exposes In his book “Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies” how Hollywood producers ask the Pentagon for help in making films. The department of Defense provides filmmakers with a crowd of Marines, or a Navy aircraft carrier and Blackhawk helicopters and the CIA provides filmmakers with a pile of script ideas. After all, the producers want to make money and the Defense Department wants to make propaganda (David L. Robb).

Hollywood’s representation of Arabs before 9/11 has been influenced by three major political events: the creation of the state of Israel, the 1973 oil crisis when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries proclaimed an oil embargo, and the Iranian Islamic revolution.

First, The Sheik (1921) and The Son of the Sheik (1926) were two films that depicted Arabs as savage beasts who auction off their own women. After World War II, Exodus (1960), a film based on the 1958 novel Exodus by Leon Uris, was the first movie to deal with the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. This movie highlighted the Israeli struggle against Nazi oppression and confirmed the U.S. support for Israel. After the Iranian revolution, the film Not Without Your Daughter (1990) depicted the escape of American citizen Betty Mahmoody and her daughter from her husband in Iran. The film was shot in the United States and Israel. The film highlights the return of Iran to the dark ages. After the first Gulf War and the end of the Cold War, the film True Lies (1994) directed by James Cameron, Arnold starring as Harry Tasker leads a double life, performing covert missions for the United States Government under a counter-terrorism task force called “The Omega Sector”. Harry’s latest mission in Switzerland reveals the existence of an Islamic terrorist organization group known as the Crimson Jihad, led by Salim Abu Aziz (Art Malik). And once again, Arabs were portrayed as terrorists, extremists and religious fanatics bent on destroying the world. The Rules of Engagement (2000) portrayed Arabs as extremists attacking the U.S. embassy. This movie dehumanized Arabs, which justified US Marines killing Arab women and children. These are some of the movies that depicted negative images of Arabs. After watching more than 900 movies, Jack Shaheen claims that only 50 or so had shown a neutral image of Arabs. He also says, “Each of Hollywood and Washington share the same genes”.

Conclusion

In the period before 9/11, the Western Media has developed a set of negative stereotypes depicting Arabs as enemies in order to serve the U.S. political agenda. On Sept. 20, 2001, President Georges W. Bush addressed a joint session of Congress and a national television audience to launch the “war on terror”:

“Every nation in every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”

As Slavenka Drakulic expresses it, ‘once the concept of “otherness” takes root, the unimaginable becomes possible’. And once again, President Bush and his administration managed to convince the American public of the need to go to war with Afghanistan and Iraq.

If you’re still wondering:

  • Why most Westerners do not show empathy to Palestinian suffering
  • Why most Westerners did not stand up against the war in Iraq
  • Why most Westerners support Israel
  • Why most Westerners hate Muslims

That’s because Americans tell the best stories, they can invade a country and immediately construct a narrative justifying it (Jean-Luc Godard).

It’s time to occupy Hollywood.

 

Sources:

Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, Jack G. Shaheen

The evolution of Hollywood’s representation of Arabs before 9/11: the relationship between political events and the notion of ‘Otherness’ - SULAIMAN ARTI, Loughborough University

The Construction of Arabs as Enemies: Post-September 11 Discourse of George W. Bush, Debra Merskin

https://www.self.ox.ac.uk/Current_Research_Students/documents/CHAPTER_2.pdf

https://www.sesamestreet.org/parents/topics/getalong/getalong05

https://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/412/studyguide_412.pdf

https://www.ibiblio.org/prism/jan98/anti_arab.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotypes_of_Arabs_and_Muslims

https://arabstereotypes.org/why-stereotypes/what-orientalism/veils-harems-belly-dancers

https://beyondintractability.colorado.edu/essay/dehumanization/?nid=1082

https://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=16888

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis#Arab_oil_embargo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Without_My_Daughter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Lies

Filed Under: Equality, Featured, Media, Propaganda, Racism, Sexism, Women

Gingrich: Disturbing Racist Rant

December 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By Linda Heard

Gingrich’s statements would be outrageous coming from the mouth of Joe Ordinary let alone a man who aspires to become the leader of the world’s wealthiest and most militarily powerful nation that takes on the role of the world’s policeman.

Have you ever looked at someone in a high position only to wonder how on earth they got their job let alone managed to hold onto for so long? The Republican Party’s front-running presidential candidate is a glaring example of such a person. Newt Gingrich is a seasoned politician and former speaker of the US House of Representatives. He has authored 23 books and was named “Man of the Year” by Time Magazine. He is also no stranger to scandal.

He was reprimanded by the House for ethics violations and ironically was having an affair with one of his staffers even as he was investigating President Bill Clinton for deception over his involvement with Monica Lewinsky. However, judging by his popularity within the US, Gingrich clearly has the luck of the Irish, his reputation unscathed.

Whatever good he may have achieved within US domestic politics pales in comparison to his recent rant during a candidate debate when he slandered the Palestinians en masse. Masquerading as someone who has “the courage to tell the truth”, he has dubbed the Palestinians as an “invented people who are, in fact, Arabs.” “Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire,” he asserted.

In fact, Palestine was referred to by Herodotus in the 5th Century BCE as “Palaestina”, a land stretching from Pheonicia to Egypt, while during the 2nd century CE, the word “Palestine” appeared on coins and in rabbinical writings. The Palestinians have far more claim to be a cohesive, indigenous people than most Americans. Gingrich himself is part German, English, Scottish and Irish.

To add insult to injury, Gingrich went on to characterize Palestinians as “terrorists.” “These people are terrorists,” he said. “They teach terrorism in their schools…we pay for those textbooks through our aid money.” He neglected to mention that one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter or that Israeli textbooks paint Arabs as losers, thugs and thieves and argue for war as a means of protecting the Jewish state.

Gingrich’s statements would be outrageous coming from the mouth of Joe Ordinary let alone a man who aspires to become the leader of the world’s wealthiest and most militarily powerful nation that takes on the role of the world’s policeman. He has attacked the very identity of millions of Palestinians on the West Bank, in Gaza, and throughout the Diaspora and has stuck a terrorist label on every single Palestinian man, woman and child. And in reward for his racist comments, he received warm applause from the audience.

Just imagine the reaction should a would-be president or prime minister anywhere in the Western world make the claim that Jews are an invented people and all Jews are terrorists! I’ll bet my home that such a lunatic would be kicked out of his party and, in some countries, might even be taken to court on the charges of anti-Semitism, defamation of character, and/or racial incitement. Indeed, Gingrich sounds more like a spokesman for British National Party (BNP) or Germany’s Neo-Nazi Party than the wannabe leader of the so-called free world.

Actually, when the anti-Semitic slur is already being thrown at US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the US Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman for daring to justly criticize Israel’s policies, no imagination is needed.

Panetta simply told Israel to get back to the peace table and mend fences with Egypt, Jordan and Turkey. Clinton said she was concerned about the state of democracy in Israel in light of new laws that would gag the media and strip foreign funding from NGOs that help Palestinians, as well as the segregation of females on some buses. All Gutman did was to suggest that a distinction should be made between traditional anti-Semitism “which should be condemned” and “Muslims’ hatred for Jews, stemming from the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.”

If there’s anything incorrect in Gutman’s message it’s that Muslims do not hate Jews whom they recognize as one of the respected “Peoples of the Book”; their anger is directed at Zionists who drove an indigenous population from their homes and have lorded over an occupied people for over 60 years using the point of a gun.

Gingrich is either so ignorant that he’s unfit for the top job or way too reckless. In one fell swoop, he’s managed to alienate the entire Arab world, which, in case he hasn’t noticed, is the guardian of much of the planet’s oil reserves and controls strategic waterways linking Europe to Asia. Moreover, his remark is sheer stupidity when anti-Americanism in North Africa and the Middle East is rife.

If Republicans tilt their cap at Gingrich and he succeeds in ousting President Obama, the US will have no role in any peace process as a Gingrich White House will have lost what little credibility remains of its former “honest broker” status. Gingrich has either bought into the propagandist Israeli narrative, hook, line and sinker, or he’s deviously out to grab the Jewish and Christian Zionist vote.

Whether he’s been hopelessly indoctrinated by one side, is ignorant of historical facts or is craftily playing to Israel’s American friends, he is clearly unfit. In the event that he means what he says, he would do well to read,“Breakthrough: Transforming Fear into Compassion” by Jewish author Richard Forer, who was staunchly pro-Israel and fiercely anti-Arab for most of his life until he was persuaded by a friend to undertake independent historical research. After reading a book that opened his eyes, he devoured library books on the Middle East and traveled to the West Bank to see the plight of Palestinians for himself. He always told the Palestinians he met that he was Jewish and says they didn’t bat an eyelid; on the contrary, they were warm and welcoming. It was first-hand knowledge that caused Forer to U-turn and step into Palestinian shoes.

Ignorance is one of humankind’s greatest evils, but that kind of evil takes on a greater power when wielded by a person with the world’s most sophisticated nuclear-armed military at his disposal. Now that Newt Gingrich has showed his true colors, I only hope Republican America will be educated enough and wise enough to give his incendiary opinions short shrift before the Doomsday Clock is pushed forward once again.

 

Search: https://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/12/13/gingrich-disturbing-racist-rant/

Filed Under: Palestine, Politics, Racism, USA

A Hate Crime Case From Hungary, Retried And Revisited

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By

Six perpetrators of a “hate crime” were released last week in Hungary, after having served two years and eleven months in jail for attacking three passengers of a car passing through Miskolc. Considering that the crime targeted the victims on the basis of their ethnicity, the combined sentences of the eleven individuals convicted totaled over 41 years.

At that time, the court was satisfied with the prosecution’s claim that the accused, all of whom are Roma, committed the crime out of racist motivations. Theirs is a peculiar case demonstrating the idiosyncrasies of Hungarian law originally designed to punish hate crimes. To be pedantic about legal distinctions, the Hungarian penal code does not designate a legal category for “hate crimes” or “hate speech.” Instead, a supposed legal equivalent -”közösség elleni izgatás” or “incitement against a community” – covers bias-motivated acts that intentionally perturb an atmosphere free of prejudice. Two subclasses compose this unusually defined crime: crimes inciting before the greater public to hate against a) the Hungarian nation or b) a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, or a particular group of the population.

To be sure, sub-class (a) is much more frequently used in Hungarian legal proceedings than subclass (b). The hate crime recently retried is a perfect point in case.

On the night of March 15, 2009 (a national holiday in Hungary) rumors were spreading that skinheads and the Hungarian Guard, an extremist paramilitary organization of the far-right party Jobbik, were to march to the Muszkás side, a Roma neighborhood of the city of Miskolc. With the community in upheaval in anticipation of a pogrom, the regional online news portal mentioned the news and the local police was placed on a state of alert.

Preparing for a possible attack, the residents built a bonfire. A conspicuous car, a red Peugeot, had appeared several times in the neighborhood, driving slowly by on each approach. Eventually, the group of perpetrators stopped the car and attacked it with sticks, baseball bats and iron pipes. The three passengers of the car suffered injuries from the broken glass of the windshield. The damage in their car was approximately 100,000 Hungarian forints (at current exchange rates, 447 US dollars).

The incident took place only three weeks after the infamous killings in Tatárszentgyörgy. In this small town only about 40 miles from Hungary’s capital, Budapest, unidentified perpetrators threw a Molotov cocktail into the house of a Roma family during the dark of the night, and opened gunfire on the family as it was trying to escape the flames. A five-year-old child and his father died in the attack; the mother of the family, their six-year-old daughter and a three-year-old child were injured. The police did not notice the bullets or the gunshot wounds during the first phase of the investigation: until civil rights activists monitoring the investigation pointed these out to them, they were investigating an electric fire resulting from an illegal connection to the power grid. The perpetrators of this series of murders were not apprehended until well into the summer of 2009.

The court trying the case of the assault in Miskolc, however, did not consider the resulting mindset of the Roma an attenuating circumstance. To the contrary, the group that attacked the car was charged, in addition to truculence, with “incitement against community.”

Originally, the indictment even stipulated that their hate crime was pre-mediated. “False rumors were disseminated that the Roma minority population had been physically assaulted, or that they would be, citywide by armed right-wing radical groups,” described the document. “An atmosphere hostile to Hungarians evolved for this reason in the above mentioned locales; the Roma population formed groups, and taking possession of various stabbing, beating and cutting devices, they were preparing for a clash with Hungarians.”

The court’s original verdict, from 2010, that the car was attacked because of racist hatred against Hungarians relied on two facts. A wooden stick, with the words “death to Hungarians” carved into it was recovered from the crime site. In addition, one of the witnesses at the scene heard shouts of “Stinky Hungarians, beat them!”

Nevertheless, the verdict passed produced absurdly paradoxical consequences. The judge’s ruling over the proceedings determined the victim of the crimes to be “the Hungarian nation.” Following this logic, one could also conclude that the Hungarian Roma are not a part of the Hungarian nation.

In May 2011, the appeals court discovered several mistakes in the judicial proceedings of 2010 and ordered a retrial. By this time, however, five of the perpetrators were already serving 4-6 year prison sentences. Even the lesser sentences were unusually severe: one of the group convicted, who did not actively participate in the attack on the car but was heard yelling, was sentenced to two years and eight months.

It was widely known at the time of the attacks that the victims of the crime were far-right sympathizers. On the retrial of the case, two out of the three accusers failed to show up, despite subpoenas. Evidence, however, was presented of their personal background: a photograph of one of them posing in the company of his brothers with a Hungarist flag (i.e. the flag of Hungarian neo-nazism), their hand extended in a Nazi salute. On a social networking site, the same individual listed a number of skinhead bars as his favorite hang-out places.

The stick carved with the sentence “Death to Hungarians” was also presented, for the first time during the second trial, to the court. According to the indictment used during the first trial, it belonged to one of the perpetrators who received a lesser, suspended sentence – in an expert’s examination, he is “feeble-minded” to a mild extent, and even his own words demonstrated that he had a child-like understanding of the events surrounding him.

The “death to Hungarians” (“halál a magyarokra”) stick, here showing only the hard-to-make-out part of the words “a magyarokra.”

This stick is a key exhibit: the only physical evidence establishing that the accused were driven by anti-Hungarian sentiments into the commitment of the crime. But, as noted by the defense, the actual craving in the stick is so difficult to make out that already at a distance of 2 meters (6 feet) one could not even discern that there is writing on the stick.

Since its election to the Hungarian parliament, representatives of the Hungarian far-right Jobbik party regularly exert pressure on the government, demanding that the Hungarian government crack down with the same vehemence on hate against Hungarians as it uses for fighting hate crimes in general.

In the meantime, civil rights activists in Hungary are not impressed by the judicial system’s “vehemence” to bring justice to minority victims of hate crimes. The standard of evidence required to establish that assaults on minorities are motivated by bias is so difficult to meet that hate crime prosecutions regularly fail to lead to legal consequences. Besides cases brought on behalf of the Hungarian Roma, members of the Hungarian LGBT community are also unable to find protection under the Hungarian hate crime clause (note that the above definition of “incitement against a community” does not even make reference to sexual orientation – their complaints therefore must be brought as hate crimes committed against a “particular group of society”).

It is a well-known fact that Hungarian legal practice has yet to be brought in line with international standards for hate crime prosecutions.

As an OECD report put it – highly recommended reading, even though it only covers the wave of crimes against the Roma up to 2009 - in Hungary “the weakness of legislation specifically addressing hate crimes and limited capacity to investigate or prosecute such crimes”continually hampers efforts to stem the tide of bias-motivated criminal acts. In the current political atmosphere, however, improvements in this regard are hardly on the horizon.

 

Source: https://thecontrarianhungarian.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/a-hate-crime-case-from-hungary-retried-and-revisited/

Filed Under: Crime, Racism Tagged With:

Norway Massacre: Breivik Declared Insane

November 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Psychiatrists assessing self-confessed Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik have concluded that he is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

They believe he was in a psychotic state both during and after the twin attacks on 22 July that led to the deaths of 77 people and injured 151.

Their report must still be reviewed by a panel of forensic psychiatrists.

Breivik will still be tried in April but it seems likely he will be placed in psychiatric care rather than prison.

Breivik admits carrying out the attacks but has pleaded not guilty to charges, arguing that that the attacks were atrocious but necessary for his campaign to defend Europe against a Muslim invasion.

The two psychiatrists who interviewed him on 13 occasions concluded that he lived in his “own delusional universe where all his thoughts and acts are guided by his delusions”, prosecutors told reporters.

Online manifesto

The 243-page report will be reviewed by a panel from the Norwegian Board of Forensic Medicine.

Breivik, 32, is due to stand trial on 16 April for a hearing scheduled to last around 10 weeks.

Norwegian prosecutor Svein Holden: “The observed person was psychotic”

“If the final conclusion is that Breivik is insane, we will request that the court in the upcoming legal proceedings pass sentence by which Breivik is subjected to compulsory mental health care,” prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh told reporters in Oslo.

She later told the BBC that the trial would be unaffected by the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia: the only difference was that the prosecution could not ask the judge for a jail sentence.

“It will go as a normal trial as if he had been sane. We will ask him questions and the defence will ask him questions and the judge will ask him questions and he will have his time to talk,” she said.

Analysis

Norwegians have reacted with surprise and disbelief at the report stating that Breivik is criminally insane.

“I don’t see how Behring Breivik’s opinions set him apart from war criminals, who are tried in court as if they are sane,” said one man.

Hours before the announcement, radio news reports were still saying that such a verdict would be highly unlikely.

The shock is heightened by the media portrayal of Breivik as carefully planning his actions as a functioning member of society. He does not match the public’s idea of a paranoid schizophrenic.

Some see the verdict as Norwegian society’s attempt to marginalise and silence extreme right-wing opinions. Clearly this would harm open debate concerning these ideas.

Norwegian courts tend to abide by forensic reports.

If people do not see Breivik receive what they consider due punishment, it could reduce public faith in the courts and the Norwegian legal system.

Breivik’s defence lawyer, Geir Lippestad, said he was not surprised by the psychiatrists’ findings, adding that his client was unlikely to be surprised either.

But the deputy leader of the opposition Progress Party, Per Sandberg, thought the conclusion that Breivik was criminally insane was “completely incomprehensible”.

“How can someone who has planned this for such a long time… be considered insane,” he told Norwegian TV.

Before the report was made public, a lawyer for the victims said it did not matter what the conclusion was as long as Breivik was not allowed to go free.

“What will happen in the case, no matter what the conclusion, is that he [Breivik] will of course be incarcerated,” John Christian Elden said.

“And if the outcome is criminally sane or insane, that is, first and foremost a psychiatric question. The most important thing in our clients’ opinion is that he will not be able to walk the streets.”

On 22 July, Breivik disguised himself as a police officer to plant a car bomb that exploded close to government offices in the capital Oslo, killing eight people.

Still in uniform, he then drove to the island of Utoeya, where a summer youth camp of Norway’s governing Labour Party was being held.

In a shooting spree that lasted more than an hour, he killed 69 people - mostly teenagers.

In a manifesto he published online, Breivik said he was fighting to defend Europe from a Muslim invasion, which was being enabled by what he called “cultural Marxists” in Norway’s Labour Party, and the EU.

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15936276

Filed Under: Crime, Extremism, Law, Mental Health, Police, Racism, Religion Tagged With: ,

A Story of Death Threats and Casual Insults: Racism in Germany

November 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Germany was shocked to learn the extent of the crimes committed by a recently uncovered right-wing extremist group. But racism is hardly an anomaly in Germany. One family’s experience shows just how widespread prejudice and hate really is.

Four weeks. Even the timing itself seemed calculated for maximum intimidation.

Four weeks are long enough to begin forgetting, to regain a certain amount of calm. To begin thinking that maybe it was just a bad joke. But four weeks is too short to completely overcome the fear.

Four weeks was the amount of time that passed between the two death threats the Krause family (eds. note: not their real name) found in their mailbox. The first letter came in August 2011. The sender had cut letters out of a newspaper to form a message warning that Mr. Krause and his family would be killed if they didn’t leave Germany.

Why? Because Mrs. Krause and the couple’s two children have dark skin. Because Mrs. Krause comes from East Africa.

The second letter came in September, and the sender spent far less time on it. He simply drew four crosses on a sheet of white paper — one for each member of the family. For the son, for the daughter, for Mr. Krause and for Mrs. Krause.

Mr. Krause, a middle-aged professor, had long promised himself not to take occasional incidents of hostility too seriously. He wanted to avoid overreacting, to prevent those who would sow fear from feeling the satisfaction of success.

The second threat letter, however, made stoicism impossible. And since news broke of the neo-Nazi group that apparently killed nine immigrants over the course of several years, his composure has completely evaporated. The perpetrators of the killing spree purposefully chose victims who did not originally come from Germany.

“I am afraid,” says Krause. “I feel the presence of an unpredictable threat.”

Concerned about Consequences

Krause is not the kind of person who would normally shy away from openly speaking out. He embraces his civic responsibility. “I won’t accept insults,” he says. But now, Krause is extremely wary of seeing his name in print — and doesn’t even want it known where he is from. He is afraid for the lives of his wife and children, and for his own.

German authorities asked him to keep his story as quiet as possible and to only share it with his closest friends. They were concerned, they said, about the consequences should news of the threats become widespread. The letters are now in the hands of law-enforcement officials.

They have, however, refused to actively pursue the case, says Krause. No guards or police have been posted in front of his house. Krause claims the authorities made it clear to him that he simply wasn’t prominent enough for such measures. Instead, he is to follow a few simple rules: Only go to places that are well-lighted and where there is plenty of human activity. And to always monitor his rear-view mirror when driving. They also assured him that threats such as the ones he received aren’t particularly rare and that it was probably just some crank.

But Anders Behring Breivik, the man who killed almost 80 people in Norway in July, was also a crank. “The fact that someone is crazy doesn’t exclude the possibility that they are violent,” says Krause. He doesn’t believe that the neo-Nazi terror cell from Zwickau is an isolated case. “And it is wrong to think that they are just idiots,” he says. “They may be immoral, but they are intelligent.”

Krause is an economist, and he lives with his wife and children in a house located in a well-off district of a large German city. His wife, a doctor from a country in East Africa, moved to Germany to join her husband. At the time, she was pregnant with their second child. Even Krause’s manner of explaining how he met his wife in 2004 makes it clear just how often he has been confronted with prejudice. No, she wasn’t a prostitute that he met in a hotel, nor was she seeking to marry a rich German. She herself comes from a prosperous family. In reality, he explains, he met her at the university on the way to class one day.

Insulted on Account of Her Skin Color

Krause was happy to be able to bring his wife to Germany. It is safer here, the job market is better, medical care is superior — and he likes his homeland. “Germany is a great country, and it offers the opportunity to live in peace and harmony,” he says. Still, he didn’t want to be naïve. He told his wife that she might be insulted in Germany on account of her skin color.

But the reality has turned out to be much worse than he had imagined. And the death threats are only the tip of the iceberg.

The Krause family has experienced things that white-skinned Germans could never imagine. But everyone in the country who looks “foreign” has plenty of stories to tell - about not being served at the deli counter, of parents at the playground telling their children not to play with the dark-skinned child, of the Israeli’s neighbor who calls over from the neighboring balcony: “You Jews always have money.” Or even stories about open attacks, like the Asian woman who was spat on while walking on the sidewalk.

Krause has kept careful notes on many of the incidents he and his family have experienced, and he has notified the authorities. “It’s the sum total of the relatively small things,” he says. “At some point, you ask yourself if you are being overly sensitive. But the opposite of sensitive is insensitive, and that’s not how I want to be.”

His daughter, the oldest child, goes to kindergarten. “They are all very nice there, the parents and the teachers,” Krause says. But once another child told his daughter, “you are black, dirty and bad.” Where does such a thing come from? “Such a thing doesn’t kill anybody, but it is an indication of an attitude that would seem to be widespread,” Krause says.

No Public Interest

In a department store, according to Krause, one of the saleswomen said “poor Germany” when she saw his dark-skinned wife.

In a pharmacy parking lot, a car refused to stop for Krause’s wife and child, coming dangerously close to them. When Krause rushed to stand between his family and the car, the driver stepped out and called the family “monkey asses.”

Authorities rejected Mrs. Krause’s official complaint. “The accused denies having called you and your husband ‘monkey asses’,” reads the official reply. “Independently of that, such an utterance would not fulfill the legal definition of incitement. The mere incident of someone insulting a person who belongs to a particular ethnic group is not enough if the insult has no connection to that ethnic group.”

The letter also said that there was no public interest to be served in prosecuting the accused for the alleged insult.

Kind Gesture

His wife also tells the story of seeing a neighbour — a former teacher who lost his job because of right-wing extremist statements — give the Hitler salute to an acquaintance. “But maybe my wife just misinterpreted it,” Krause says.

After all, he is concerned that he has become obsessed. And he also tries to emphasize the positive situations he has encountered — like the older woman in the supermarket who gave each of his children a stuffed animal. “She simply wanted to say that we are extra-welcome here,” he says, adding that the gesture of kindness almost made him cry.

And yet, he still can’t sleep anymore. Every night between two and three in the morning, he finds himself standing at the window. Once, he saw a police car parked in front of his house for half an hour. But he doesn’t know what that might mean.

Source: https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,799987,00.html

Filed Under: European Union, Extremism, Racism, Violence Tagged With: