Monday, April 9, 2012

Waiting for Al Sharpton and NBC... waiting... waiting...

From Dalina Castellanos at Nation Now:


Five men charged with torturing, killing two Michigan women 

Five men were charged with murder Saturday in the abduction, torture and killing of two Michigan women. 
The victims -- 18-year-old Abreeya Brown and 22-year-old Ashley Conaway -- were taken Feb. 28 from their home in Hamtramck at gunpoint and were stuffed in the trunk of a car, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said in a statement Saturday. 
The young women were found March 25 in a shallow grave in a wooded area of northwest Detroit, both bound and shot in the head. 
The five charged with their murder, all from Detroit, are Brandon Cain, 26, Miguel Rodriguez, 24, Reginald Brown, 24, Jeremy Brown, 19, and Brian Lee, 25.
Neither of the suspects named Brown are related to victim Abreeya Brown.
Worthy said the homicides appeared connected to a Feb. 8 incident in which Abreeya Brown went to pick Conaway up at Cain’s Detroit home around 2 a.m. Earlier, Conaway and Cain had been at a topless bar. 
As the women prepared to leave Cain’s home, Cain threatened to have his friend shoot at the car if the women left; he allegedly told the friend to shoot Abreeya Brown first, the Detroit Free Press reported. 
Police reports said Conaway switched seats with Brown because Brown was too shaken by Cain's threats to move. 
Conaway drove away as bullets shattered the car’s rear window, and one hit her in the back of the head. Conaway was treated at a hospital, and reported the incident to police. 
“This case represents many of our fears when it comes to vital witnesses in a case,” Worthy said in the statement. “These women were heroic. They refused to relent and let these defendants deter them from continuing on with their previous case, and they paid with their lives.” 
The night the women were abducted, Abreeya Brown’s stepfather, Major Chatman, heard a commotion at about 10 p.m. and ran downstairs to see the two women being pulled out of his house. 
“I snatched the door open ... I saw a man standing in the street with a gun and I saw someone dragging Abreeya out of the corner of my eye." the Free Press reported Chatman as saying. 
He said he exchanged gunfire with Cain as Abreeya Brown and Conaway were thrown in the car and driven away. 
After police arrived at Chatman’s house, Brown called from her cellphone and told him she was in the trunk of a car. She was never heard from again. 
The five men are charged with two counts of first-degree premeditated murder and two counts of felony murder, which are both punishable with life in prison without parole, Hamtramck police said. 
The men were also charged with two counts of torture and two counts of unlawful imprisonment.
What do you think the chances are that the National Action Network or The Nation of Islam or Rainbow/PUSH will stage marches demanding justice for these young women? Do you think the legacy media-- NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, the New York Times, etc. will devote even one-hundredth of the time and electrons and paper to this savage crime as it did to the killing of Trayvon Martin?

Of course not. There's no racial angle here. There is no race-hate to stoke, no press conferences to be had, no national media exposure, not Nielson ratings to boost. The accused killers aren't the right race. Nothing to see here. Move along...

Most murders of blacks in America cause no stir. This indifference, this double-standard, this implicit assertion that the murder of black people is only worth outrage if the killer is white and racial animosity can be whipped up and ridden for money or for publicity or for ratings, is the most vile racism.

Thousands of people-- black and white and every color-- should be marching peacefully to demand an end to this carnage. Every murder is a horror, not just the murders that serve the craven ends of others.

Please pray for these young women, and for their families, and for real justice and peace.


9 comments:

  1. I know this is off topic, but can you spot the error in this?

    (Hint: you need to scroll to the 9th slide...)

    Enjoy!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Pepe,

      You illustrate perfectly Orgel's Second Rule; 'Evolution is cleverer than you are'.

      But then again, with you it's not difficult.

      Delete
    2. Pépé,
      The title of that piece is what immediately alerts me to the teleological assumptions on the part of the author. The words 'technology' and 'harnessed' are a dead give away. Technology is designed and has a function and goal (again final cause).
      As if the article and the subsequent one are not enough, bach seals the deal with his borrowed 'Evolution is cleverer than you' line.
      A theory that predicts a process that is random is not clever at all, it is a theory of: 'it just happens'.
      Call it 'emergent phenomena' or the more down to earth 'shit happens', or whatever you like.
      Same thing.
      Such randomness does not 'harness' any force and certainly does not design technology.
      Something that is clever either possesses an intelligence (ie a clever man or mouse) or is the descriptive of something that is CREATED and has a function, purpose, and design - something that is the result of the previous cleverness.
      One does not look at a beautiful cloud, for example, and say 'oh what a clever example of nature harnessing the processes of fluid dynamics', unless one assumes nature is a driven force and fluid dynamics is a means of that force's expression of cleverness...or, alternately, they think themselves VERY clever for noticing the obvious.
      The latter example indicates an arrogance and a none too bright level of personal intelligence.
      Not very clever at all, really.

      Too bad these cloistered academic proponents of randomness can't understand what the words they use mean when they attempt to proselytize their nihilism. They might just realize that language itself is another 'clever' 'technology' being 'harnessed' for a purpose.
      But then I suppose the alternative to tarting up the language would be so boring and unattractive they would never get ANY converts.

      Oh and speaking of converts.
      Compassion and logic win the day over obsession and intolerance in the Lone Star State :)

      Delete
  2. If the murderer of these young women was a vigilante apprehended by the cops but not charged with anything, then sent home with his gun, then maybe you would have a point.

    Your making false analogies in order to tar your opponents as racist is laughable, and reveals who the real racist is.

    -KW

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey yo, KW:

      You called George Zimmerman a "vigilante". There are neighborhood watch programs in my area. Are they all vigilantes?

      How's this for vigilanteism? The New Black Panther Party has placed a ten thousand dollar bounty on Zimmerman and called for an army of ten thousand black men to go to Sanford and nab him.

      Are they vigilantes too?

      JQ

      Delete
    2. "If the murderer of these young women was a vigilante apprehended by the cops but not charged with anything, then sent home with his gun, then maybe you would have a point."

      Many murders of young black men are unsolved, and many times the police have a very good idea of who did it (usually another young black man) but don't have enough evidence to arrest and convict.

      In this case, Zimmerman legally owned his gun, and police apparently decided they did not have cause to hold him.

      Would you have preferred they just took him to the nearest tree and lynched him? After all, that was a common way for Democrats to administer justice in the South for a century. It seems you're reverting to form.

      "Your making false analogies in order to tar your opponents as racist is laughable, and reveals who the real racist is."

      Characteristic of a liberal. You start losing an argument, you play the race card.

      Delete
  3. "If the murderer of these young women was a vigilante apprehended by the cops but not charged with anything, then sent home with his gun, then maybe you would have a point."

    KW, how many times do we have to tell you this? They sent him home with his gun because he wasn't charged with anything. When you aren't charged with anything, you get to keep your gun. It's called the second amendment. You seem absolutely obsessed with this.

    He probably did something wrong and he may be arrested. But this is not a "false analogy" as you said. The outrage is not merely that he wasn't arrested but that it happened at all.

    Jackson and Sharpton: there is an epedmic "of white men killing young black men."

    Between 1976 and 2005, 94% of blacks in the USA were killed by other blacks. In 2005, the latest year for which I could find statistics, white on black murders amounted to 3.2% of the total, and black on white were 8.8%, despite the fact that white non-Hispanics outnumber blacks by a factor of about five. So, if we multiplied the number of black on white murders by five, we would have 44%.

    Yes, they're mad that he hasn't been arrested yet. But that doesn't mean that they'll be satisfied if he is arrested. James Byrd' murderers were not only arrested but tried, convicted, and sentenced to death, and still some professional race-dividers weren't happy because there weren't "hate crime" statutes in place to convict them of their thoughts.

    How does this post reveal "who the real racist is?" Explain that part. I don't understand your meaning.

    TRISH

    ReplyDelete
  4. By the way, KW: Your analogy is faulty too.

    "If the murderer of these young women was a vigilante apprehended by the cops but not charged with anything, then sent home with his gun, then maybe you would have a point."

    There is no Stand Your Ground Law in Michigan to my knowledge. Zimmerman didn't abduct and torture Martin. So your comparison is pretty faulty right from the get-go.

    What to know what I think happened? Zimmerman saw Trayvon Martin and thought he looked like a hoodlum because, well, he was a hoodlum. Zimmerman was a neighborhood watchman who had stopped robberies before. Trayvon copped an attitude with Zimmerman and probably swung at Zimmerman. (This part is probably unclear). They ended up rolling around on the ground, with Trayvon getting the best of Zimmerman. Trayvon was on top, smashing his head on the ground, which is why ABC News went to such great lengths to blur Zimmerman's wounded scalp. When Trayvon finally got off of him and started walking away, an angry and humiliated Zimmerman reached for his gun. He was embarrassed to have just gotten his butt kicked by a teenager. And then he shot Martin.

    That's not self defense in my state, and I doubt it's self defense in Florida either, although I'm a little unclear about this Stand Your Ground law.

    Anyway, so the cops came and brought him to the station for questioning, in hand cuffs. They took his gun from him. The lead investigator didn't believe Zimmerman's story and wanted him arrested and charged. His boss, someone with a state attorney's office, overruled him and told him that Zimmerman should be let go.

    I agree that that wasn't the right decision. I think the attorney in this situation was wrong, although he probably knows a lot more than me (or you) about Florida law. And then he got his gun back and went home.

    TRISH

    ReplyDelete
  5. "If the murderer of these young women was a vigilante apprehended by the cops but not charged with anything, then sent home with his gun, then maybe you would have a point."

    KW

    I agree wholeheartedly

    The problem with the case of Trayvon Martin is that the Sandford PD in conjuction with high level officials decided not to charge Zimmerman despite evidence pointing to a actual case of possible homicide-proof-HE IS NOW CHARGED!!

    I am african -american and the entities and people you speak of as needing to speak on this case do so by preaching against such actions- tirelessly. Teaching blacks to love themselves fight these kinds of event events and are detested by the true black community, not the criminal underworld.

    C.M.

    ReplyDelete