Daniel Greenfield
Wasn't it nice for Mayor Bloomberg to invite the Muslim cabbie who was stabbed over to City Hall, and for the media to give him the high profile treatment.
But here are a few other New York stabbing victims who could have used that attention and concern. Unfortunately they weren't Muslims, whom Bloomberg could exploit to score political points.
There was Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax who saved a woman from a knife attack, only to be stabbed himself. He lay dying in a pool of his own blood for over an hour, while people walked by, until finally an ambulance came. Tale-Yax died. And Bloomberg didn't even notice. Meanwhile this April, Ricardo Williams and Darnell Morel were stabbed on the Number 2 train. Their stabber, Brenddy Garcia claimed that he had been defending himself and got off. Bloomberg did not invite either Williams or Morel to City Hall. But then he couldn't have, because both men were dead.
Anthony Maldonado was stabbed to death in Harlem. He was 10 years old. That little boy's murderer was an ex-con who had been paroled. If Bloomberg invited his family to City Hall, no one heard about it. If he apologized for a parole board that let the little boy's killer roam free, we never heard about it either.
Mohamed Jalloh, a Muslim African immigrant was killed with a machete after a fight in Washington Heights. He was Muslim, but his attacker was Latino. Naturally neither Bloomberg nor the press showed much interest in his death, or lavished a fraction of the interest that they have on our politically convenient cabbie.
Claudia Montoya was stabbed 17 times and had her throat cut. She left behind a 1 year old daughter. Perhaps Bloomberg could invite her to City Hall.
This summer Kelvin Buggs, an off duty FDNY EMT was stabbed to death while trying to break up a fight. Then there was Kirk Holgate, stabbed to death on New Year's Eve. 70 year old Fumitaka Kurita stabbed by his own son in his own apartment. All awful stories. None of their families seem to have gotten. the Bloomberg "star treatment"
Then there was Naief Al-mateiry, a charming Saudi fellow who invited a 69 year old man to his Manhattan apartment, choked, beat and raped him. Then Naief Al-mateiry threatened him with a knife and forced him to withdraw 1,200 dollars from his bank account. The Saudi embassy offered to cover his bail. His high powered three man legal team painted his victim as a liar who took money in exchange for sex. It worked. Naief Al-mateiry is a free man.
Bloomberg of course showed absolutely no interest in his victim. So take the media frenzy over the conveniently stabbed cabbie with a grain of salt. Bloomberg doesn't care about stabbing victims. He cares only about the Ground Zero Mosque. Stabbing victims who don't happen to be Muslim at a convenient time, hold no interest for him.
Regarding the Cabbie stabbing, the knife supposedly used in this stabbing has supposedly not been found. The accused stabber was drunk, and with a history of run ins while drunk. He probably isn't going to be able to give any kind of accounting of what happened. After Enright's attack, the police found him sitting in the middle of the street blocking traffic. That does not suggest a man who had much of a clue as to what was going on.
Calling this some kind of premeditated hate crime is a joke. If Enright didn't have enough sense to flee the scene of the crime, or at least not sit down in the middle of the street, he obviously wasn't functioning on anything resembling a conscious level. He was dead drunk. It's possible he could have stabbed a man in that condition. It's not possible that he could have done it because he read some negative news stories about Muslims.
The cabbie has insisted that he was stabbed because he was a Muslim. That doesn't add up. Enright was relating to the cabbie positively as a Muslim, by the cabbie's own testimony. Greeting him in Arabic and asking about Ramadan, is exactly the kind of behavior you would expect from an art school liberal. Unfortunately Enright was drunk. His checkpoint reference suggests he might have thought he was in Afghanistan. Or the real version of events might have been a drunken Enright squabbling with a cabbie over the fare, which would also explain why the partition was open. And until the knife is found, it's an open question of whose knife it even was.
Enright has become a convenient tool for an Anti-American media narrative. And that's all that really counts. That he was a drunken liberal who got into a fight with a cab driver, a ridiculously common event in NYC, doesn't matter. Because this fight turned violent, and it all happened at a politically convenient time. There's no real evidence for most of the charges against Enright, but again that doesn't matter, because a politically convenient case means everyone patting themselves on the back.
Also as Sweetness and Light points out,
What swift and severe justice. Compare and contrast to the ‘Beat Whitey’ attacks at the Iowa state fair, which have yet to even be deemed to be ‘bias crimes.’
But of course we're only concerned about politically convenient attacks, such as the Mexican robberies on Staten Island. And that is the problem with Hate Crimes in a nutshell, they're political charges used when politically convenient. Politicians love hate crimes because they allow them to claim credit for fighting bigotry, but not all bigotry is created equal, and hate crimes mainly become an issue when someone has something to politically gain from bringing attention to an attack. Meanwhile ordinary people of all races, colors and creeds who are attacked don't get the same benefit of attention and political pressure to get justice.
Earlier this week the media made much of the murder of Yoseph Robinson. While his murder was indeed tragic, and his story was compelling, he was mainly a top story because of that story, rather than because of his death. It's unfortunate when 72 people can be gunned, but they're not interesting, unless one of them is individually interesting. Had Yoseph Robinson not converted to Judaism, or had he just been an Orthodox Jew, but not black, he would have never made the front of the daily tabloids. Being a curiosity made his death newsworthy. But people's murders shouldn't be newsworthy because they have a less common background, but because murder is an evil, a wrong that people should be aware of, and because murderers should be stamped out. Instead murder is a form of celebrity.
Meanwhile while all the attention is on the Muslim stabby cabbie, opening statements began in the trial of 4 Bronx terrorists who wanted to burn synagogues and shoot down military planes. There is of course far less media interest in the case. And you can understand why. It's politically inconvenient.
Four would-be Bronx synagogue bombers prayed for success before setting out on their murderous mission, according to U.S. prosecutors.
The four, 44-year-old James Cromitie, 34-year-old Onta Williams, 29-year-old David Williams and 28-year-old Laguerre Payen, were charged with conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction and attempting to use missiles to kill U.S. officers and employees.
In his opening statement to the Manhattan Federal Court, Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Hickey told the jury, “They were prepared to go all the way through with their destructive and murderous plan,” which included shooting down military planes.
The prosecution said it would show the jury a video of the defendants praying for success prior to setting out to attack two New York synagogues in May 2009.
And what's the media's take on this. The same media which has been running non-stop and uncritical coverage of the cabbie stabbie case. How do you think the media covers politically inconvenient trials?
"Controversial Trial of 4 Terrorist Suspects Begins in New York" proclaims Voice of America. Just to be clear VOA doesn't mean that being a Muslim terrorist or burning synagogues is controversial. It means that putting the 4 terrorists on trial is controversial.
The article by Adam Phillips is extraordinary for not actually quoting what the government prosecutors said, despite the story being about the opening day of the trial with the government making its case. Instead the story quotes one of the lawyers, and one of the defendant's aunts, and then dedicates half its length to allowing a Columbia law prof to discuss whether the men are unfairly on trial because of entrapment.
What's missing? Unlike the Muslim cabbie stabby stories, there's no discussion of whether hatred in mosques feeds anti-Semitic violence. Such stories hardly if ever come up. The theme is that the men are probably unfairly on trial. The story questions the government case, giving a benefit of the doubt, that has not been extended to Enright.
And considering the attitude of Judge Colleen McMahon, the Newburgh 4 don't have anything to worry about.
“I have referred to the case for a number of months in the privacy of my chambers as the ‘un-terrorism case,’” U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon said. “It turns out I was right.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Halperin was quick to say that a lack of connections didn’t mean the men weren’t terrorists.
“I think that’s an open question,” Halperin said.
Of course if they were Americans trying to bomb mosques, it would be an open and shut question if they were terrorists or not. And the case would be high profile news. Obama himself would be making a statement. But they were just trying to attack synagogues, which is basically not so bad.
Colleen McMahon incidentally is a Clinton appointee. Her husband Frank Vincent Sica is a Senior Advisor to Soros Private Funds Management. Colleen McMahon is known for "having fun" in court, and pulling the usual Judge Judy antics that entitled judges tend to do when given a lot of power, and no standards of conduct to go with it. Colleen McMahon has been hostile to the government's case on the Newburgh 4 from the very beginning. She won't be able to just thrown open the door for the Newburgh 4, but defense isn't going to have much resistance from the bench.
But compare the two cases. One attempted murder vs four men who planned a reign of terror. Enright is charged with hate crimes, the There's no talk of charging them with hate crimes, even though their crimes were motivated by hate and prejudice. But who cares about things like this?
Cromitie told Hussain on the tape that “the best target in New York had already been hit” – an apparent reference to the World Trade Center that was destroyed during the 9/11 attack on New York by al-Qaeda terrorists in 2001. He added that he would like to hit another target, like the George Washington Bridge, a large military transport plane, or a synagogue.
“Above all, Cromitie said he wanted to hit a synagogue,” Hickey said.
And there you see the difference between the way crimes by Muslims are treated, and the way that crimes against Muslims are treated. The truth is that attacks on Muslims have been down, see the analysis on hate crimes at Elder of Ziyon.
Can you imagine Time magazine having a cover story on the relatively large number, and increase, of anti-semitic crimes in America (at the very same time that anti-Islamic crimes were going down)?
In New York State, the very spot where Islamic terrorists murdered nearly 3000 people, the number of anti-Islamic crimes were a mere six in 2008. The number of anti-semitic crimes? 129.
But meanwhile in what is a true triumph of Separation of Church and State, New York City comptroller, John Liu said that the city might subsidize the Ground Zero Mosque.
The Muslim center planned near the site of the World Trade Center attack could qualify for tax-free financing, a spokesman for City Comptroller John Liu said on Friday, and Liu is willing to consider approving the public subsidy.
The Democratic comptroller's spokesman, Scott Sieber, said Liu supported the project. The center has sparked an intense debate over U.S. religious freedoms and the sanctity of the Trade Center site, where nearly 3,000 perished in the September 11, 2001 attack.
This isn't too surprising as John Liu is a radical extremist and affiliated with ACORN, SEIU and the WFP. And possible controversial ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Chinese-Americans have protested against Liu in the past charging that he's in the pay of Communist China. And the situation is potentially even uglier.
Bizarre incidents have been afoot in Flushing, a city on the outskirts of Manhattan, over the last five months, as organized attacks against Falun Gong practitioners began taking place. Over 15 individuals have been arrested, and similar incidents are still occurring.
Soon after the attacks began, a recorded phone conversation revealed that the Chinese consul general in New York had boasted of having encouraged and congratulated the attackers. City Councilmember John Liu and State Assemblywoman Ellen Young were also found to have met with and supported those accused of the attacks.
Before John Liu took his peculiar stand toward the violence against Falun Gong in his district, he was honored in China by the Chinese Communist Party and its media as a rising political star, even though his only political activities have been here in New York City.
When Falun Gong practitioners were being attacked by large, organized crowds on the streets of Flushing, New York, they had tried to meet with their elected officials to ask for support.
Attempts to meet with Council Member John Liu and State Assemblywoman Ellen Young were unsuccessful. It was then discovered that Liu and Young had others they preferred meeting with, giving advice to, and supporting—the very individuals who had been attacking the Falun Gong practitioners.
The meeting was announced on June 29, when an article published by China Press said that on the following day, John Liu would be holding an open office for any resident who wanted to present their cases. On June 30, during a press conference at his office, Liu denied knowledge of violence of the attacks. He also refused to condemn the attackers or offer support to the victims.
Following the press conference, Liu kicked out Falun Gong practitioners who had come to his office to present their cases, and instead met with the attackers.
Among those who met with Liu in his office that day was Victor Yao (a.k.a. Qiu Wei), who was arrested for allegedly attacking a Falun Gong practitioner with a metal steering wheel lock in Brooklyn.
John Liu is the District 20 council member in charge of Flushing. He is also the first Chinese city council member in New York.
With all this ugliness behind the scenes of the corrupt and rotten Democratic Party, it's no wonder that Obama's popularity is sinking fast. In January of 2009, Obama's approval ratings were in the 70's for everyone but Protestants and Mormons. Today the only people who still hold a 70's approval rating for Obama... are Muslims.
Obama Akbar indeed.
At Sheik Yermani in Winds of Jihad, Daisy Khan says the money isn't in the bank.
Steve Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism, which has been doing much of the lead investigative work on this case, is asking the real questions.
The backers of the Ground Zero Mosque have virtually no money, one of the group’s leaders says, and plan to create another nonprofit organization that would further complicate the already labyrinthine financial network surrounding the project.Daisy Khan, one of the leaders of the project, told supporters over the weekend that the mosques organizers have “nothing in the bank” for their effort. Khan said there is no money and that she doesn’t know of anything that has been raised.
The finances are a sieve, as Emerson shows
Federal tax records show Rauf and Khan direct the two groups supporting the mosque project – the Cordoba Initiative and the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA). Those two organizations, along with Soho Properties, which owns the site of the proposed mosque and community center, are coordinating the project.
However, federal tax records show the Cordoba Initiative has not listed contributions from at least two charitable foundations that have supported its activities. In another case, a foundation gave money to Cordoba's sister group, the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), that was supposed to go to Cordoba; that money was also not listed in Cordoba's tax records.
Cordoba has failed to list almost $100,000 in charitable donations since 2007, federal tax records show.
Keep reading
During that time, ASMA reported receiving $1,382,194 in grants, the financial statement shows. Donors included the United Nations Population Fund, $53,664; the Dutch government's MDG3 Fund, $481,942; the Hunt Alternatives Fund, $15,000; the Carnegie Corp. of New York, $122,000; the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, $50,000; and the Qatar government fund, $576,312.
This is a sieve and the money could be going absolutely anywhere.
And now the US government is paying for Imam Rauf to go on a fundraising tour to the Middle East for his Ground Zero Mosque project.
But while they're doing that, Z Street, a pro-Israel lobbying group charges that a special DC unit has been set up to investigate the tax exempt status of pro-Israel groups that are not in agreement with Obama Administration policies.
From the Z Street complaint.
14. In a letter dated May 15, 2010, IRS Agent Diane Gentry, to whom the Z STREET file had been assigned, sent an IRS Letter 2382 requesting additional information to aid her in her review of Z STREET's IRS Form 1023 (the "Application"). Z STREET, by its corporate counsel, submitted a response on June 17, 2010, providing all of the requested information, most of which had already been provided in Z STREET’s initial application, including information about each of Z STREET’s board members. In fact, detailed personal information about each Z STREET board member had to be supplied to the IRS three times, a number in excess of the experiences of Z STREET board members for any other board on which they sit.
Detailed personal information, huh.
21. Agent Gentry also informed Z STREET’s counsel that the IRS is carefully scrutinizing organizations that are in any way connected with Israel.
22. Agent Gentry further stated to counsel for Z STREET: “these cases are being sent to a special unit in the D.C. office to determine whether the organization's activities contradict the Administration's public policies.”
The radical anti-Israel Forward paper of course penned an article justifying such a move, though if the Bush Administration had treated the ACLU similarly, the left would have lost its collective mind in one long shriek of uncontrollable rage.
But if true, this is a shocking case of the Obama Administration using the authority of the government to suppress dissent, and turning government agencies into Political Commissars. This isn't completely surprising though. The New York Times penned a huge story which attempted to make the case against pro-Israel charities, and pushing for an investigation. The recently leaked CIA docs suggest that what we're seeing may be a larger project within the government.
But while the Obama Administration and his media allies go after pro-Israel groups, the Ground Zero Mosque's misplaced finances get a perfect pass. Nothing to see here folks. Move along.
Much as trying to shoot down planes and attack synagogues merits a shrug, while a Muslim cabbie being slashed is the end of America as we know it.
Daisy Khan charges that opponents of the Ground Zero Mosque are just like Anti-Semites, but if that were so, then the media would be giving them a pass, they way they do Muslims who try to attack synagogues.
Robert at Seraphic Secret says;
The left, reliable idiots for transnational jihad—and yes, Daisy, in spite of her cute all-American name, is a stealth jihadist—always fall back on the same tedious attacks.
If you oppose Barack Obama's policies, it's not because you have legitimate policy differences, but it's because you are a bigot.
If you identify Islamist terrorists as, um, Islamist terrorists, that means you hate all Muslims.
If you oppose the Ground Zero Mosque, it's not because you think it's inappropriate, boorish, and an insult to the memory of the murdered, no, it's because you're un-American, a hater, and an Islamophobe.
Look, the majority of Americans are tolerant, decent people. They do not appreciate being demonized at every turn of the newscycle. Nancy Pelosi calls the Tea Party, “astroturf.” Barack Obama bloviates about those who “cling to their guns and religion.” And now the political class is telling normal Americans that the desire to protect and honor the memory of 9-11 victims is, at the core, hatred.
This is Orwellian poison.
Orwell of course foresaw the perversion of language as a tool for the perversion of culture and government. And that is an all too accurate assessment of what we're experiencing. Language as a weapon with no pretense of law or justice behind it. Just a worldview that justifies inequality in the name of politics. And there is no limit to how far that can go.
In England the clock is slipping back to the 1930's. Boycotts of Jews and the legal assaults on Jewish property have now become routine. Elder of Ziyon advises a response to it.
Elder of Ziyon Blog offers free advertising to victims of anti-Israel aggression
In reaction to the vandalism of the Ahava store in London, the Elder of Ziyon blog announces free advertising for every Israeli store that is attacked.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRLog (Press Release) – Aug 26, 2010 – On the night of August 25, 2010, the Ahava cosmetics store in central London was attacked by vandals who splattered red paint on its windows.
The vandals were part of a movement that wants to boycott all Israeli products.
These groups are not interested in equality, or fairness, or even in the Palestinian cause. They simply want to put a self-righteous veneer on their hatred for the existence of a Jewish state and their opposition to the Jewish right of self-determination.
In reaction, the Elder of Ziyon blog has announced a new policy: all stores and organizations that are similarly attacked will get free advertising in the blog.
It is to be hoped that all right-thinking blogs will follow suit, so that these sorts of anti-Israel and often anti-semitic stunts end up helping the intended victims.
The Elder of Ziyon blog is a popular Zionist website that draws thousands of pageviews daily.
I'm reminded of the story of the menorahs of Billings, Montana, when in response to attacks on Jewish homes with menorahs in the windows, thousands of people, both Jewish and non-Jewish, put up menorahs in their windows. But it will take more than that here. A good deal more.
Now in the days of the European Union, a personal dream of Mosley and the British Union of Fascists, Mosleylike behavior is becoming commonplace. As Mosley's ideas about socialism have become the norm, his New Party is now the true dominant party, though it is long gone. And his violence has become the norm among those who adhere to Mosley's socialism.
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