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Saturday, February 14, 2015

Why The Chapel Hill Shooting Was More Hate Crime Than 'Parking Dispute'

OpEdNews 2-17-15, HuffPo 2-18-15

   
   

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- When word of the execution-style murders of three Muslim students here leaked onto social media on the evening of Feb. 10, the internet exploded with outrage. Frustration with the lack of any major media coverage gave birth to the hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter, and within hours, #ChapelHillShooting became the top worldwide trending subject on Twitter.

Overnight, the national and international press picked up the story. Pronounced dead at the scene were Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, three talented and promising young community members, killed in their own apartment in a quiet complex near the University of North Carolina's campus, all shot in the head. This grisly crime came at a time of rising anti-Muslim tensions in North Carolina and nationwide, on a day marked by a nonstop media drumbeat about the confirmed death of U.S. hostage Kayla Mueller, who was being held captive by ISIS militants. Many suspected the students' shooting was hate-related.

Yet early the next morning, Chapel Hill Police released a statement that said their "preliminary investigation indicates that the crime was motivated by an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking."

From that point on, corporate media outlets seemed content to follow Fox News' lead in whitewashing any suggestion that the killings were at least partially sparked by hate, trumpeting headlines like "Parking dispute, not bias, triggered triple murder, say NC police."

What is definitively known about the crime is that the murder suspect in the killings, Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, who turned himself over to police several hours after the shooting, was one of the victims' neighbors. Hicks moved to North Carolina from Illinois in 2004. According to the Los Angeles Times, "a Facebook profile that bore Craig Hicks' name and photo showed he appeared to be a militant atheist who shared anti-Muslim and anti-Christian posts and links."


Chapel Hill shooting suspect Craig Stephen Hicks

One of the last three posts Hicks made to this Facebook page, two days before the shooting, was an atheist-themed photo whose caption asked, "Why are radical Christians and radical Muslims so opposed to each others' influence when they agree about so many ideological issues?" Hicks expressed atheist beliefs in frequent public Facebook posts.

On Jan. 20, he posted a photo of what he said was "my loaded 38 revolver, its holster, and 5 extra rounds in a speedloader." In addition to the handgun Hicks was carrying when arrested, police recovered an arsenal of at least a dozen more firearms from his apartment, including "three handguns, along with several rifles and shotguns...(and) numerous loaded magazines and cases of ammunition."

The murdered women's father, Mohammed Abu-Salha, told WRAL-TV that the students were afraid of Hicks. "who had come more than once to their doorstep with a gun in his waistband."

"They felt he was hateful, and she used that word," Abu-Salha said. "She said, 'Daddy, we feel he hates us for who we are and how we look.' And our daughters dressed in the Muslim attire."

A close friend of the victims, Amira Ata, was interviewed by Dean Obeidallah for The Daily Beast, and explained why she thinks the shooting wasn't just triggered by anger over parking:

"Ata said she believes that Hicks killed them because they were the only Muslims in the apartment complex. 'They were targeted because they're different and this is a hate crime,' she stated emphatically. She also said that on the day of the murders, Deah had just returned by bus. The only one with a car was the younger sister Razan, who had already parked earlier in the day. The point being: There was no 'parking dispute' in close proximity to the actual murders."

It's undeniable that Hicks was a neighborhood bully known for hassling various other residents in the complex, especially when he felt they were parking in what he saw as "his" parking spaces. As Tara McKelvey reported from Chapel Hill for the BBC, "residents say Hicks had two parking spaces he focused on in front of his apartment."

Each apartment in the complex is assigned only one space, with all others reserved for visitor parking. By policing two spaces, Hicks was violating the complex's own parking rules. Deah Barakat's sister, Dr. Suzanne Barakat, confirmed to CNN that when Hicks returned home on the evening of Feb. 10, no cars belonging to any of the three victims were parked in the spaces he considered to be his:

"On the day of the murders, the parking spot that was, quote/unquote, 'disputed' had no parking -- no car in it. I wondered maybe was it Razan who was visiting her sister to keep her company had maybe parked in that spot and that triggered it. No. They all knew not to park in this disputed visitors' parking spot. And by disputed, I mean the one that the neighbor claimed belonged to his wife and had been cleared by the apartment complex agency as open and free to all. And despite that, they did not use it. So, this was not a parking dispute."

Hicks' ex-wife Cynthia Hurley said his favorite movie was Falling Down, the 1993 film starring Michael Douglas as a laid-off defense industry worker who goes on a lengthy shooting spree. Hicks reportedly tangled with numerous residents over parking issues, but his own shooting rampage began and ended only with his Muslim neighbors. Why were they the only ones he singled out for repeated, gun-toting harassment? No other residents have come forward to say Hicks ever came to their doors carrying a gun.

This crime has struck a powerful chord in the hearts of Muslim-Americans, Muslims abroad, and everyone else who cares about Islamophobia. The corporate media's willingness to frame these killings as resulting from nothing more than a parking dispute reveals a double standard when it comes to reporting about Muslims as victims of violence.

Mohamad Elmasry, a communications professor at the University of North Alabama, noted:

"When Christians, Jews and other non-Muslims are killed by Muslims, Islam is identified as playing a direct role. When Muslims are killed by Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims, however, the religious identity of the violent perpetrators is downplayed or ignored."

As some have pointed out, if Craig Hicks had been an observant Muslim with a history of posting Facebook rants against secular humanists, and then shot three white college students execution-style in the head, no one would be talking about parking. He would have been labeled a domestic terrorist, and if he had tried surrendering to police after the fact, might have been shot on sight.

Fox's rush to spin these killings as anything but a hate crime was understandable, because to explore otherwise would mean raising questions about the network's role in shamelessly fanning the flames of Islamophobia.

But why did other corporate media go blindly along that path? And why did local police do the same? What kind of thorough investigation into this crime's motives led to such a quick pronouncement?

It didn't help that the department charged with investigating the murders is currently underfunded and short-staffed. Or that despite serving and protecting the most liberal community in North Carolina, Chapel Hill's police department has a history of insensitivity towards the town's minority citizens.

Former resident Cynthia Greenlee, now a doctoral candidate in history at Duke University, describes once driving with her boyfriend, a "tall, bearded black man with a naturally serious (read: threatening) demeanor," when they were pulled over by police:

"When a Chapel Hill police officer pulled a gun on us for a routine traffic stop, we didn't argue. He said we were speeding, but he was the quick one as he drew his weapon the moment he disembarked from his car. I was still wondering if we had a taillight out when he screamed for us to stay in the car and pointed his gun at us."


Victims' family and friends waited for answers in shooting's aftermath

Also troubling is that the killings happened within Durham County, N.C., where law enforcement officials are not known for spotless ethics or competence. Over the past decade, "several scandals have raised questions about the dispensation of justice in Durham County," as the Washington Post reported last year. Two Durham district attorneys have been removed from office for misconduct since 2007, one of them Mike Nifong, of Duke lacrosse case infamy. "Prosecutors are rarely ever removed from office for misconduct," said the Post. "For it to happen twice, in the same county, within five years is extraordinary."

Observers hold out hope that newly-elected D.A. Roger Echols, who one local attorney described as "careful and deliberate," will adhere to a higher standard of justice while prosecuting this case. A Durham grand jury indicted Hicks on Feb. 17 on three counts of murder.

The FBI describes a hate crime as any "traditional offense such as murder, arson or vandalism with an added element of bias." In order to gather statistics, Congress has defined hate crimes as "criminal offense(s) against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation." On Feb. 12, the FBI announced it had "opened a parallel preliminary inquiry" into the students' deaths, "to determine whether or not any federal laws were violated related to the case."

The New York Times reported that "people who have talked with the victims' families say they have some doubts about the capacity of local authorities to handle the case." Linda Sarsour, a spokeswoman for the victims' families, said that "as of (Feb. 12), the family hadn't even been approached by law enforcement. They were already feeling like there was something missing."


Friday prayers outside the White House on Feb. 13 in memory of the shooting victims

Has our country's seemingly endless War on Terror made anti-Muslim bigotry more socially acceptable, and in the process devalued Muslim lives here at home? There are now five times as many hate crimes committed annually against Muslims in the U.S. than there were before 9/11. At the students' memorial service, attended by an estimated 5,000 people, Azhar Azeez, President of the Islamic Society of North America, said, "We are concerned that the anti-Muslim rhetoric may have angered some to commit violence against American Muslims."

Cynthia Greenlee analyzed the reaction of far too many to the media coverage of this crime:

"The fact that many of my Facebook friends are now doing particularly vigorous mental gymnastics to deny that ethnicity, race or religious identity might have anything to do with this act of violence speaks loudly to the needs of a dominant culture to see itself as bearing no responsibility for hatred in its midst--even in a town where a black man simply driving down the street invites a potentially deadly encounter with the law."

We will never know exactly what was going through Craig Hicks' deranged mind at the time these brutal killings were committed. But we should all reflect on the words of Yusor and Razan Abu-Salha's father, Mohammad Abu-Salha, who is a psychiatrist. "The media here bombards the American citizen with Islamic, Islamic, Islamic terrorism and makes people here scared of us and hate us and want us out," said Abu-Salha. "So if somebody has any conflict with you, and they already hate you, you get a bullet in the head."

There is much to suggest these three students weren't murdered solely over a parking space. This heinous act looks more like a hate crime.

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Friday, January 16, 2015

Phony Anti-Vaccine Propaganda Is Killing U.S. Children

The Huffington Post, 1-16-15

   
   

When the nation turned our eyes to watch the ball drop in Times Square on New Year's Eve, we saw actress and former Playboy Playmate Jenny McCarthy urging viewers to kiss her on our TV screens. Thousands of people did, and sent her pictures to prove it. That's the nature of being a celebrity, possessing the ability to influence other people's behavior, and therein lies its potential for abuse.

The idea that vaccines cause autism has been found to be totally false by doctors and scientists, in the same way almost all sane observers agree global warming is man-made. But thanks to anti-vaccine misinformation spread by some celebrities like McCarthy, Miyam Bialik, and right-wing idiot Donald Trump, doctors say preventable diseases like measles are making a comeback across America, and children are dying from them. From mid-2007 through the end of 2014, there were 6,274 U.S. deaths that could have been prevented by vaccines, as documented by CDC reports.

Measles cases in the U.S. reached a 20-year high last May. The CDC estimates that in 2013, ninety-two percent of measles cases occurred in people who weren't vaccinated.

Before the anti-vaccine propaganda campaign heated up, measles were prematurely declared eradicated in this country in 2000. This represented a huge public health victory, since in the 1950s, prior to widespread vaccinations, there were hundreds of thousands of cases annually -- in some years almost a million.

As MedicalDaily.com editor Elijah Wolfson reported in 2013:

Measles cause ear infections in ten percent of the children infected by the disease, and about five percent get pneumonia. Even scarier is the fact that one or two in every 1,000 infected by the disease die, according to the CDC. With numbers as low as they are right now, this isn't yet cause for concern -- but if we return to rates closer to those of the 1950s, it could become a major epidemic. Consider that the disease still kills about 164,000 people globally every year.

In 2001, 6-year-old Abigale Duffy of Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, was recovering from the chickenpox when she contracted pneumococcal bacteria. Her parents believed in vaccinations, but according to her mother, Shannon Duffy Peterson, "at that time, we had a pediatrician who did not push vaccinations and did not recommend the most recent vaccines available. Consequently, my children did not have their chickenpox and pneumococcal vaccinations." Abigale developed a fever one Sunday evening, and later that night died in her mother's arms on the way to the hospital.

Three years ago, in early 2012, 2-month-old Brady Alcaide Riffenburg of Chicopee, Mass. died of pertussis, or whooping cough. Brady's mother, Kathryn Riffenburg, had been vaccinated years before, but later learned a vaccine booster shot during pregnancy would most likely have saved him. Barbara Stechenberg, Chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Baystate Children's Hospital where Brady died, explained that "one of the important things to know is most babies who develop whooping cough get it from an older child or an adult in the family." As Christine Vera from ShotOfPrevention.com reminds us, "since infants don't begin receiving vaccinations for many diseases until they are two months old, they remain vulnerable at a time when they are also most fragile."

Even children who survive bouts with preventable diseases can have their lives altered forever. A 2010 outbreak of meningitis in the Oologah-Talala public school system in Oklahoma killed two children and infected five others. One of the survivors was kindergartener Jeremiah Mitchell. Doctors had to amputate both his arms and legs, plus parts of his eyelids, jaw and ears. "He came out with all his limbs cut off and wrapped up like a mummy -- I fainted," said his mother, Michaela Mitchell. "We cried for a long time."

Jeremiah was vaccinated against other illnesses, but not meningitis, because his school didn't require meningitis vaccinations for children his age. As reported by USA Today, "though his family did everything according to medical recommendations, Jeremiah was exposed because someone brought the disease into their community."

Jenny McCarthy has been described as a "Playmate turned pseudoscientist" who "by dint of sheer energy and celebrity...became the nation's most prominent purveyor of anti-vaxxer ideology." She is president of Generation Rescue, a non-profit group founded in 2005 by Lisa and J.B. Handley, which promotes the discredited idea that children with autism can be cured by unscientific, non-medical methods. Its website claims, "Conventional medicine treats the symptoms of autism. Biomedical treatment addresses the root cause." McCarthy stumbled onto this website within weeks of its debut in 2005, shortly after her son was diagnosed with autism, and soon afterwards began her anti-vaccine crusade.

The false theory that vaccines might cause autism came from a now-retracted 1998 UK study on the MMR vaccine (preventing measles, mumps and rubella) which turned out to have been almost entirely fabricated by its author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield. He made up virtually the entire thing, according to CNN, "misrepresent(ing) or alter(ing) the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study." A 2011 investigation by the British medical journal BMJ called it an "elaborate fraud," and concluded that of the 12 cases, "five showed developmental problems before receiving the MMR vaccine and three never had autism." Wakefield was stripped of his medical license in 2010.

But because it was reported as a credible study at the time, the idea of a vaccine-autism link entered people's minds. It perfectly illustrates how misinformation can spread like a virus. Years later, when the study was exposed as fraudulent, the damage had already been done, since a cottage industry had sprung up around the lies, exploiting the families of children with autism who were desperate for answers to explain why their kids were affected.

What's indisputable is that no real scientific research has ever found evidence vaccines cause autism. "The Earth isn't flat, it's round, and vaccines don't cause autism," says Dr. Paul Offit, Chief of Infectious Diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and co-inventor of a Rotavirus vaccine. "That's just a matter of scientific fact."

The original phony 1998 study sparked a worldwide scare despite being based on falsified data about only 12 children. In 2012, a review of actual, rigorous studies covering over 14.7 million children found no vaccine-autism link in any cases, as recently documented by Upworthy in its "All 7 Billion" series about global health and poverty, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Graphic by Adam Mordecai & NowSourcing, used under Creative Commons license.

Is it too much to ask Jenny McCarthy to read a simple, well-researched article like the one published by Upworthy and properly educate herself about how no legitimate scientific studies have linked vaccines to autism? And then, to announce to the world she was wrong? It would help undo at least some of the damage she's done to public health and our country's children by pushing phony anti-vaccine propaganda for the past decade.

Now that long-dormant diseases are reappearing, McCarthy has tried to deny her anti-vaxxer history. Worse, she is still misinforming the public.

"I am not anti-vaccine," she said last November, right before the debut of her new SiriusXM radio show. "I'm in this gray zone of, I think everyone should be aware and educate yourself and ask questions. And if your kid is having a problem, ask your doctor for an alternative way of doing the shots," meaning receiving fewer doses at once, which is not medically recommended, since it increases the time children remain unvaccinated and vulnerable to illness.

"The ironic thing is my position has always remained the same. People just never listened to it," McCarthy continued. "Literally, throughout the years, I have said the same thing over and over again. But people will only read headlines instead of looking back and seeing what I've been saying."

Taking a look back shows that in 2007, McCarthy appeared on Oprah and shared her beliefs:

We vaccinated our baby and something happened...Right before his MMR shot, I said to the doctor, 'I have a very bad feeling about this shot. This is the 'autism' shot, isn't it?' And he said, 'No, that is ridiculous. It is a mother's desperate attempt to blame something,' and he swore at me and then the nurse gave [Evan] the shot. And I remember going, 'Oh, God, I hope he's right.' And soon thereafter -- boom -- the soul's gone from his eyes.

On CNN, she said, "Without a doubt in my mind I believe vaccinations triggered Evan's autism." In 2009, she told Time magazine:

I do believe sadly it's going to take some diseases coming back to realize that we need to change and develop vaccines that are safe. If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it's their f-cking fault that the diseases are coming back. They're making a product that's sh-t. If you give us a safe vaccine, we'll use it. It shouldn't be polio versus autism.

Later in the same interview, she said, "If you ask a parent of an autistic child if they want the measles or the autism, we will stand in line for the f-cking measles."

If we ever want to see a meaningful public recantation from Jenny McCarthy, we have to make our views known to the people paying her salary and keeping her on television. Public pressure contributed to the non-renewal in 2014 of her contract to co-host ABC's "The View," after only one year on the job.

McCarthy's new reality show Donnie Loves Jenny premiered Wednesday, January 7, airing on cable channel A&E. In November, the network announced an unscripted production and development deal with D&J Productions, the joint production entity between McCarthy and her new husband Donnie Walhberg. Donnie Loves Jenny is only the first project in that deal.

You can let A&E executives know how you feel about their network giving airtime to Jenny McCarthy by emailing Chairman Abbe Raven -- Abbe.Raven@aenetworks.com, or calling her office at 212-210-9007. Or contact Chief Revenue Officer Mel Berning at 212-210-1321, Mel.Berning@aenetworks.com. Mel is in charge of A&E's ad sales, so you can try the subject lines, "Ask Jenny McCarthy to Publicly State Vaccines Work or A&E Advertisers Will Hear About It," or "Why Is A&E Giving Airtime to a Celeb Whose Anti-Vaccine Propaganda is Killing U.S. Children?"

McCarthy has appeared on ABC's "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve" as a Times Square correspondent since 2011. To reach Disney, the corporate parent of both ABC and A&E, go straight to the top and contact Disney CEO Bob Iger at robert.a.iger@disney.com, or through Disney's main switchboard at 818-560-1000.

Kids like Abigale Duffy and Brady Riffenburg can't advocate for themselves anymore. To protect the rest of America's children from similar fates, more of us must speak up until there's no doubt remaining that vaccines are safe, necessary, and they work.

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