Death wears a hoodie



Yep it's an anti-Obama pic, but I thought it was really nicely done. Credit where credit is due. The Title though was was "Palin: Obama's "Death Panel" Could Kill My Down Syndrome Baby" so I think it was actually a bit of a mockery of Palin. take a look at the reflection in the scythe.

Anyway Hoodies even make kittehs scary

I'm a little uncomfortable with the murder 2 charge. I think Zimmerman shot the kid in a height of fear filled and adrenaline fueled emotion, and actually was almost temporarily insane. people said he was staggering about holding his head afterwards, as though he was shocked at what he had done. That said he would not have been in that situation if he had not gotten out of the car in the first place. So

We have his 911 call to the police. It gives clear clues as to his frame of mind. He is told not to chase the person he is reporting as 'suspicious' and says that he will not and then keep chasing him. The call does not show an intent to kill but it does show a reckless disregard for the safety of himself and others.

The prosecutors think they have enough evidence to make this charge stick or they would not make it. It also gives them more leverage in a plea bargain situation. It would be best for all concerned if this case does not go to trial. If it does, the jury can consider lesser included charges.

I just do not want the focus to come off of the 'Stand Your Ground' Laws. Neither do the parents of Trayvon. They want them repealed. They think the law contributed to the death of their son and the difficulty of having Zimmerman face charges for anything at all.

Zimmerman might well have shot Trayvon from his van. He was on the hunt, despite what 911 had advised. I don't see much evidence that Zimmerman was ever in fear. A quavering voice on the calls to 911 need not be the result of fear. As no drug or alcohol tests were conducted, we don't know whether there is an alternative explanation for Zimmerman's staggering, if it occurred. It could be that Trayvon had fought him in self-defense, as anyone would, which could also have resulted in that staggering. That could, of course, had been avoided had Zimmerman not gotten out of the van.

From the above, a statement on what the prosecution must prove for second degree murder. Emphasis mine.


Note that Neighborhood Watch volunteers are instructed (a) not to carry weapons and (b) to report suspicious activity to the police and do nothing more. It is not clear that anybody had approved Zimmerman as a Neighborhood Watch volunteer, which raises a third issue about his role in this crime.

Whether or not Zimmerman murmured "F...ing coon," the fact is that he had reported numerous blacks to 911. Has anybody found any evidence of a report of a suspicious white person? (Some White Supremacist sites are turning on Zimmerman, declaring that he is not white -- he is Hispanic.)

Thanks TollandRCR. Yes, that definition does pretty much ease my uncomfortable feelings with the charge.

MSNBC has fallen into the same racial/ethnic mess as have the White Supremacist and neo-Nazi parties

"Zimmerman, whose mother is Hispanic and father white,...". The reporter is Kari Huus, who had a great deal of experience in Asia before joining MSNBC when it started. She reported on post-Katrina New Orleans.

The U.S. Census considers "Hispanic" to be an ethnic, not a racial, category. There are white Hispanics and black Hispanics, as well as multiracial Hispanics.

Race has always been a confusing enterprise, especially for racists. Think of all those Jews who were subject to restrictive covenants because they were members of the "Hebrew race."

Yes. Also, there were Americans who considered Italians and other southern Europeans to be a race other than white. Calvin Coolidge was of the view that America should be populated by "Nordic races," which is pretty close to a Nazi view. The more I study it, the more convinced I become that Nazism found many of its roots in American political ideology, as did Apartheid.

Tell me do the descendants of the Normans, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Celts still have perceived "racial" rather than "ethnic" views about each other? I am reminded of the "No Irish" signs.

I was going to mention that there was a time when the Irish were not considered "white" either.

It seems that humans mostly find some need to identify themselves as part of the in-group" which they see as superior to outsiders or the others.

This may have served as a survivor strategy in our evolutionary distant past but it really has become time when thinking, reasonable humans should move beyond this. I always wonder how many centuries will have to pass before we move beyond such ignorant and divisive thinking.

I can't say about race but we Brits hate the damn French, don't like the Spanish much and really dislike the Germans who are always going down to the pool at 5am and putting their towels on all the sun beds. They also bombed our Chip Shop so there is that.

On a serious note while we have had race riots in the UK, race really was never much of an issue (we never had slavery for instance, unless you count the odd "House Boy" who's job was to wear nice clothes and stand there and look pretty). I was raised in a "rainbow" family (my sister is bi-racial) so I saw people and not color. Believe me it was tough for a person like me to emigrate to the deep south in the US.

I think that as long as we have people who are neither thinkers nor reasonable, we will never be able to totally move beyond this.

As for the prejudices among all those people of the British Isles, I'm not sure that anyone knows that much about them except through legend. Even who the original inhabitants of the island were is disputed, with some holding that Celts were Spanish fishermen who displaced the Picts, who might have been an earlier Iberian tribe. As successive waves of invaders swept into Britain, it seems certain that prejudice and worse arose. King Arthur was great in myth because he fought the Saxon invaders to defend the Britain that his ancestors, the Bretons, had invaded. The Welsh had probably fought against the invaders that preceded the Bretons. The island has been settled for a very long time. All of the peoples of Britain had to fear the "Northmen," the Vikings who had begun their raids with the destruction of the monastery of Lindisfarne in 793 C.E.

There was discrimination against people of Irish origin well into the 20th century. However, it was probably not nearly so strong in the U.S. as it was in the British Isles. In the 18th-19th centuries, it might have been more prominent among the English landlords of Irish tenant farmers than it was in the U.S. How much of this was attributable to being Irish and how much of it was attributable to being Catholic is probably never going to be settled. Pete Hamill's wonderful novel Forever: a Novel tells the story of an Irish family that was secretly Jewish in a society dominated by Anglicans, whose son was trained in Gaelic myth and magic before coming to America in the 18th century to kill the English lord who had casually killed his father and mother. Then he stays a while, enduring September 11, 2001. The anti-Catholicism of the English in Ireland is well-documented and quite brutal. Some historians attribute the epidemic of starvation during the Irish Potato Famine to England's insistence upon Irish tenant farmers producing wheat for export to England rather than food for their families. Food aid from England was pitiful.

Although every good Irish family has someone who remembers someone who remembers the signs in bars ("No dogs or Irishmen") and the job ads ("No Irish need apply"), including memories held by Ted Kennedy and Tip O'Neill from tales told to them, there is not much evidence that this occurred in the U.S. with any frequency. There are probably more such (fake) signs for sale on eBay than ever existed in reality. See "'No Irish Need Apply': A Myth of Victimization" by Richard Jensen. The belief in victimization was very strong; I think it cannot have arisen from pure fiction. Jensen acknowledges that discrimination did exist but not on the mythical scale.

Perhaps because of a history of religious persecution and perhaps also because of some trait of Irish culture, the Irish in America were very effective in organizing themselves, including into powerful labor unions. This was another reason -- beyond religion -- for discrimination against them. The political power of the Irish in New York City is well known, including the presence on the police force and the good and ill done by Tammany Hall. (Less well known is the fact that Tammany Hall was initially an anti-Federalist project of Aaron Burr, not an Irish club.)

The Irish discriminated as well. Somewhere else on TFB I wrote about Denis Kearney of San Francisco (for whom Kearny St. is not named), a founder of a movement to force Chinese laborers to return to China after the building of the railroad and then a leader of a racist party, the Workingman's Party of California. See Ireland’s worst racist in America recalled. As is so often the case, this racism was grounded in a competition for jobs, with the fear being that Chinese would work for less money and in worse conditions than an Irishman would.

The story of Irish victimization is so widely told that a song was written and is still sung:

The original title of this topic was "And the racism continues and ramps up." The murder of Trayvon Martin has yet again exposed the deep strain of racism in American life. From Iowa State University:

Racial slurs in Daily reveal racism at Iowa State

"Just Sayin" comments were edited and published by the campus newspaper's advertising department. Surprised?

The racism also appears on Facebook as Iowa State University Memes.

Tollie: Of course I'm not surprised. Since I've joined this forum, I've tripped over two long-forgotten words- sundown town. And I am so fascinated with the stories of sundown towns in my home area, I plan to research and hopefully contribute a few findings to Dr James Loewen's Sundown Towns project.

Forgive me if this was discussed earlier in the thread and I missed it, but some people I've talked to have said that when the dispatcher said "We don't need you to do that," it's not the same thing as telling Zimmerman to stay in his car or not follow Martin.
Is there an important distinction there or is it just splitting hairs?

It makes the situation more ambiguous, since the statement appears to leave Zimmerman at liberty to do it. I am not sure whether there is a law in Florida that one must obey a lawful order from a law enforcement officer, but even if so, "We don't need you to do that" would not seem to trigger such an obligation (even if a 911 dispatcher constitutes such an officer).

I believe Zimmerman's legal position is somewhat better because the dispatcher did not tell him unambiguously not to approach Martin.

Not a surprising perspective.

I think that racism is, to some degree, a natural human condition, and hardly limited to us white folk. I remember spending some time in Kyoto, and it was an unusual experience to be treated as a sub-species by some people. Kinda opened my eyes to what it's like to be Black, Asian, etc., in the US.

It's irrelevant.

Zimmerman bears the same responsibility for his action no matter what he was told.

The significant part of the 911 tape, as far as the prosecution is concerned, are the statements Zimmerman made, not what was said to him. There are a number of statements that are either admissions of material facts (Zimmerman stated that Martin was in his "late teens"; Zimmerman states that Martin is running; Zimmerman admits that he was following Martin) -- or else statements that are indicative of Zimmerman's hostile state of mind (states Martin looks like he is "up to no good", states "these assholes they always get away", calls Martin a "fucking punk").

Dallas Morning News April 15, 2012 Southern Baptist leader criticizes Trayvon Martin supporters

Uh, what year is this? Or should I have asked what century?

Some of the people live, or would like to live, in the halcyon days when black people knew their place. Richard Land heads the SBC's commission for racial reconciliation, a project that he has set back by many decades with this remark.

He can be heard on his radio site saying this on April 14, 2012 Media Bias

He certainly has set back the attempt to dispel the belief that the Ku Klux Klan was little more than a fig leaf for the white Southern Baptist church. For decades, this church's primary selling point was racism. It is apparently still there and scratch a fingernail across the surface and the slime comes oozing out again.

Reuters April 14, 2012 Trayvon overshadowing other killings: NRA chief