Violence 27
Kyle Rittenhouse, a new “American hero”?
Kyle Rittenhouse, a new “American hero”?
By Dalia González Delgado, Professor at the Center for Hemispheric and U.S. Studies (CEHSEU) of the University of Havana.
November 29, 2021
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Last November 19, he was acquitted of all charges, after a highly publicized trial, the result of which has left many people unhappy.
Kyle Rittenhouse is the new hero of the radical right in the United States. The acquittal of the young man, accused of killing two people during protests in Wisconsin, has provoked mixed reactions and fuels the long-running debate about racism, violence and gun ownership.
Beyond the controversy surrounding the judicial process, I am interested in focusing on other fundamental questions: Why were there protests in the first place? What was a 17-year-old teenager doing there with an assault rifle, in a state where he does not even live? What consequences could this event have?
The drama began on August 23, 2020 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, was shot seven times in the back by police as they attempted to arrest him. He was left partially paralyzed as a result. The officer who fired the shots has not been prosecuted.
That spark reignited a flame in a country rife with cases of police brutality against African-American citizens. A few months earlier, in May, the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer spurred massive protests by the Black Lives Matter movement and other activists.
Kenosha, as with much of the smaller communities and rural areas in the United States, is majority white in population and has a very strong history of racism. Donald Trump won there in both the 2016 and 2020 elections.
Donald Trump said Rittenhouse is a “fine young man,” after they met at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
In that heated scenario, further complicated by the health crisis, with a Trump in the White House that stoked feelings of hatred towards minorities and gave wings to white supremacism groups, Kenosha became a place of protests and confrontation. On the one hand, demonstrations against the shooting of Jacob Blake; on the other, vigilantes seeking, they say, to “defend” private businesses and other property.
Among them was Kyle Rittenhouse, then just 17 years old, who traveled 20 miles from his home in Antioch, Illinois, to Kenosha. Despite being a minor he had acquired a semi-automatic rifle; specifically an AR-15, a weapon linked to several mass shootings such as the one at a school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. In the midst of protests on August 25, 2020 Rittenhouse killed two men and wounded a third. He was charged with multiple counts of manslaughter, but his lawyers argued that he acted in self-defense.
Last November 19, he was acquitted of all charges, after a highly publicized trial whose outcome has left more than a few people unhappy. Meanwhile, the radical right not only defended him, but praised his actions. Some now feel they have a kind of “license to act”.
This case combines several issues of contemporary American society: racism, white supremacy, police violence, gun ownership, militias and so-called vigilantism, the idea that individual citizens apply what they consider justice on their own, outside – and sometimes against – the law, Batman-style.
Among those celebrating is Kevin Mathewson, a private investigator and former Kenosha City Councilman. According to the New York Times, he is known for being the creator of an organization called the Kenosha Guard, an armed group that declared its intention to “deter riots/looting” in the context of racial justice demonstrations. After the Blake shooting, he urged his supporters to take to the streets. “I felt vindicated,” he said after Rittenhouse’s acquittal. “It vindicates people who say, ‘Look, nobody’s coming to help, we have to help ourselves.'”
That idea that, regardless of the actions of the authorities, citizens should take up arms to defend themselves even from their neighbors, has deep roots in American history and connects with the individualism that is for them a virtue. The self-made man, the American hero, the lone ranger who conquers the frontier and annihilates Indians in his path, the comic book superhero, feed a mythology according to which it is “normal” for a teenager to go out into the street with a gun to confront a group of demonstrators, protected also by the right granted by the Second Amendment of the Constitution.
The issue has been interpreted from the point of view of opportunism and political polarization and has even crept into the electoral environment for next year’s mid-term elections. For example, Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke told CNN that the incident in Kenosha shows that Americans should not be allowed “guns designed for battlefield use.”
Meanwhile, Donald Trump said Rittenhouse is a “fine young man,” after they met at his Mar-a-Lago residence. That meeting ended up catapulting him into the hall of fame of the radical right, which has not only celebrated the young man’s acquittal but is trying to present him as a “moral example,” a new “American hero.”
Several Republican lawmakers have offered him internships to go to work in Congress. Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene – connected to the QAnon movement – went further in the praise and introduced a bill to award him the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest distinction offered by that institution and which has been received by the likes of George Washington, Rosa Parks and Nelson Mandela.
“Rittenhouse’s acquittal will add fuel to the fire of armed radicalization in the United States,” wrote Margaret Huang, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an institution dedicated to tracking extremist groups in the United States. She criticized “systemic racism” in a country where “a young white man can travel across state lines, armed with an assault rifle, and engage in an armed confrontation resulting in multiple deaths without facing criminal liability.”
“Those on the far right have already published an avalanche of propaganda extolling Kyle Rittenhouse, and his acquittal is likely to further encourage them to pretend that his violent actions were somehow heroic,” she added.
For its part, the Party of Socialism and Liberation said in a statement that what happened gives racist vigilantes a “license to kill,” and that the deadly tradition of far-right militia-style violence in the United States has received a huge boost. “Rittenhouse’s acquittal is a clear signal from the government that vigilantes who kill anti-racist protesters – or any kind of progressive protester – will enjoy impunity. All they have to do is say they feared for their lives and claim self-defense.”
Experts say the combination in 2020 of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis led to an increase in conflict. Approximately 23 million weapons were purchased in that year, a 65% increase over 2019, according to a report by Small Arms Analytics, a consultancy that tracks the arms and ammunition market.
At the same time, although armed militias in cities have a long history, they also gained prominence in 2020. Recall those images of storming the Michigan Capitol to protest against confinement measures. Some were even arrested for organizing a plot to kidnap the Democratic governor of that state.
Taking into account all this panorama, in a context of accumulated social debts and problems, expansion of the arms market and a pandemic scenario full of conflicts and frustrations, decisions such as the acquittal of Rittenhouse will probably stimulate the occurrence of incidents like the one in Kenosha, and even more serious ones.
Family violence: new views
A MATTER OF LAW
Family violence: new views from the legal system
The new Family Code is one of the norms that should be born in line with the constitutional precepts regarding the approach to violence in this area
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Internet
Myths about family violence are as old as each of its manifestations. And they are absolutely false.
That only physical assaults are expressions of violence, and that nothing else occurs in low-income households in marginal places, are some of the most common beliefs.
The reality, however, confirms daily, with sufficient eloquence, that violence can also be psychological, economic, patrimonial and can occur in all types of families, regardless of their economic or cultural level.
“She (or he) asked for it”, “jealousy is a manifestation of love”, “what happens in the family, good or bad, stays in the family”, “the letter with blood enters”, are also phrases that swell the bulky list of myths that, in the opinion of specialists, make the victim responsible, harm her perception of the abuse and neutralize her reaction and denunciation.
For Dr. Yamila González Ferrer, Vice President of the National Union of Jurists of Cuba (UNJC) and of the Cuban Society of Civil and Family Law, “the Cuban Constitution gives the highest rank to the prevention and attention to violence in the family space”.
Both in this area (Art. 85), adds the also titular professor of the Faculty of Law of the University of Havana, and in what refers to gender violence (Art. 43) and against children and adolescents (Art. 84 and 86), the 2019 Magna Carta is located in a remarkable place on a planetary scale in the constitutional approach to this issue.
The Law on Laws, specifically in Article 85, states that: “family violence, in any of its manifestations, is considered destructive of the persons involved, of families and of society, and is sanctioned by law”.
Such projection, González Ferrer considers, is comprehensive of the three scopes in which the violence in the familiar space affects negatively, and that cannot be lost sight of: the individual, the familiar one and the social one. In that same sense, the precept opens its protective fan to all the manifestations in which it can appear.
Nevertheless, the expert clarifies, “except in cases where its scope requires treatment in criminal proceedings, family violence does not usually generate any palpable legal consequence in Cuba today.
“Hence the need to promote the improvement of legal mechanisms and public policies, so that there is no impunity and the highest protection is provided to the victims”.
According to González Ferrer, it is necessary to elaborate new legal provisions and to modify or perfect other existing ones, not only in substantive family matters, but also in contractual, succession, procedural and criminal matters, so that it is possible to develop the constitutional postulates.
The new Family Code, therefore, is one of the norms that should be born tempered to the precepts of the Magna Carta as to the treatment of family violence, as well as to the protection against any of its manifestations.
THE ROOTS OF PAIN
Yamila González, who also coordinates the UNJC’s Gender Justice Project, insists on defining what family violence is, and what its causes and types are, because one must always know the phenomenon in order to face it and avoid it.
According to the professor, violence in family contexts is part of the network of violence that exists in society. It is, in turn, a universal phenomenon, with its concrete historical characteristics and the peculiarities of each family group; it is a social problem that has different causes and dimensions and encompasses all types of existing families.
The very patriarchal structure of the family, recognizes González Ferrer, “makes it one of the most violent social institutions, since it develops asymmetrical power relations through gender and generation, which are the guarantors of the legitimization and reproduction of the patriarchy as a system of domination”.
Based on its interdependence with the environment, “family violence must be understood as a process. It is not casual or established overnight, but has a painful path of formation, which is established in the family climate through an endless cycle of very harmful behaviors for human beings.”
In the opinion of the Vice President of the UNJC, violence is a cultural problem, not entirely legal, so it must act on the social, educational, cultural resources that make it possible, without disregarding the use of law as and when appropriate.
In conceptual terms, she emphasizes, “family or intra-family violence is that which occurs within the family. It refers to any form of abuse that occurs among its members, and implies an imbalance of power that is exercised from the strongest to the weakest”.
The expressions of family violence are the physical, psychic, moral, sexual, economic or patrimonial abuse, either by action or omission, direct or indirect, in which aggressors and victims maintain or have maintained couple relationships, as well as the one that takes place between relatives. The same treatment must be given to acts of this nature committed between people in cohabiting relationships.
In the words of the expert, there are three significant ways in which family violence is expressed, since in the patriarchal, hierarchical family, power is exercised along two fundamental lines: gender and generation.
GENDER VIOLENCE
It is a very particular type of violence, based on a patriarchal culture, rooted in the inequality of power between men and women. It is based on sexist stereotypes, which generate prejudice and lead to expressions of discrimination based on sex, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity.
It can be physical, psychological, sexual, moral, symbolic, economic, or patrimonial, and has a negative impact on the enjoyment of rights, freedoms, and the integral well-being of people.
It occurs in family, work, school, political, cultural, and any other environment in society. Its most generalized, frequent and significant expression is that which occurs against women.
Nevertheless, gender violence against men exists, such as homophobia, for example, when they are attacked for having transgressed gender norms from the canons of hegemonic masculinity; or the mocking and questioning that those who assume co-responsibility for domestic tasks and the care of their children may receive and are then criticized by their relatives, co-workers, or friends.
VIOLENCE AGAINST THE ELDERLY AND THOSE WITH DISABILITIES
It is one that manifests itself against people because of aging, given the decrease in their physical and intellectual capacities, economic and social participation.
Its most common expressions are physical and emotional abandonment, hygienic, medical and food neglect, underestimation, financial and patrimonial manipulation, physical and verbal abuse.
VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS
This is what happens with respect to children and adolescents because of their condition as developing persons. Even if it is not directly about them, it is considered direct violence because it affects the adequate development of their personality and the feeling of security and trust in those around them, with transcendence to their social life.
On this sensitive subject, some think that, in situations of violence within the family, if it is not about the person of the son or daughter, there is no significant level of affectation, when the damage derived from living in violent environments is severe for the integral development of their personality and with very negative consequences towards the future.
Whatever the nature of the conflicts, Gonzalez Ferrer says, “their solution should not be managed in a violent way but through communication and negotiation. There is an urgent need for education and a culture of peace, of respect for human rights, based on the need to learn to live and relate in harmony.
Culture of Violence in the USA
Culture of Violence in the USA:
More Guns Than People
A shooting, which occurred on February 26th in the city of
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has so far left seven dead
——————————————————————————————————————
Author: Raúl Antonio Capote | internacionales@granma.cu.February 28, 2020 01:02:35
@granma.cu.Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Police cordoned off the area of the incident in Milwaukee, where a shooting left seven people dead.
Photo: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Once again, firearms are the protagonists of a painful act of blood, pain and death in the United States. A shooting, which took place on February 26 in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has so far left seven people dead. According to local police, among the dead is the attacker, who was apparently a former employee of the Molson Coors brewery, where the incident occurred.
The city’s mayor, Tom Barret, called the incident a terrifying episode. Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul also arrived at the scene.
“This is heartbreaking. My heart goes out to the Molson Coors employees, their families and the entire Milwaukee community. The Criminal Investigation Division of the Department of Justice is on the scene and will continue to assist local authorities with whatever they need,” tweeted Josh Kaul.
Police have cordoned off the area of the incident. Nearby businesses and enterprises in the area were closed as a result of the shooting, the fourth of the year in the United States, which has so far claimed 12 lives.
The last such event in Milwaukee was in August 2012, when a white supremacist terrorist killed six people.
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, a Democratic nominee for the U.S. presidency, recently devoted most of his speech at a Democratic gala in Las Vegas to harsh criticism of the National Rifle Association and gun manufacturers, promising to hold them accountable if elected President.
After lamenting the “carnage in the streets,” according to El Nuevo Día, and the anguish of families who lost loved ones to gun violence, Biden said he will not rest until they can sue gun manufacturers and ban assault weapons.
Joe Biden misquoted statistics on the number of Americans killed by gun violence since 2007. The mistake occurred while discussing gun control during the Democratic debate in Charleston, S.C., on Tuesday, Feb. 25, when he spoke of more than 150 million Americans killed by guns that year, according to Hispantv, a figure no doubt exaggerated in the midst of the debate for the Democratic nomination. But it reflects the plight of the American people in the hands of unscrupulous gunrunners and politicians who make a career out of suffering and death.
The Legacy of 2019
Official figures show that in 2019 there were 44 shootings that left 224 victims. However, a report by the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) handles much higher statistics that not only refer to deaths caused by single shooters, but to all deaths from firearms.GVA notes that at least 38,730 people were shot dead. Of these, 14,970 were victims of homicides, murders, intentional shootings or use defensive, a number very similar to that recorded in 2018, which was 14,789.
The nonprofit group, which documents firearms incidents across the country, counted 23,760 suicides involving some type of weapon.
The organization defines “mass shootings” as events in which at least four people are injured and “killings” as incidents in which at least four people are killed. It confirmed that in 2019 there were 409 mass shootings and 30 killings in that country.
He points out that there are also fatalities in family disputes, crimes of passion, gang fights, assaults and robberies, and from firearm accidents.
The areas where most of these incidents occur are Louisiana, Mississippi, North Florida, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, followed by North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, Delaware and New York, according to the gva report.
In the United States, there are approximately 200 million to 350 million firearms in the hands of citizens; however, these figures are highly inaccurate, due to the lack of a national census and federal documentation of control of such weapons.
The ease of acquiring almost any type of firearm and the state laws that allow its carrying and use, plus the culture of violence, rooted in the foundations of the nation, are the main causes of the high number of fatalities.
Source: Reuters, AP, EFE, Gun Violence Archive (GVA).
Good Capitalism
The Tall Tale of Good Capitalism
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Cecilia Zamudio is a Colombian-born painter and writer who has lived in a dozen countries around the world. Her work, very versatile and integral defined within Humanist Colorism, stresses her concern and study of social and historical processes.
One of her most recent works is devoted to demonstrating that capitalism is ruthless by nature, that there is no less-savage form of capitalism since it is a social order based on exploitation.
“Poverty is steadily increasing worldwide at the same time that big fortunes are growing exponentially: capitalists gradually degrade the planet and enslave and objectify more living beings.”
“They exclude millions of people from the possibility of a dignified healthy, life while exterminating species and ecosystems,” says the Colombian intellectual.
Millions of human beings, impoverished by the plunder perpetrated by the multi-nationals –that capitalize on the basis of the destruction of mountains and rivers– end up huddled in the miserable slums of the big enriched cities.
The exodus of people from the most brutally-plundered countries to the metropolis of capitalism is intensifying.
But the countries enriched at the cost of impoverishing others cynically appreciate riches but not people. Walls and fences grow while analysis and empathy diminish.
The sand of the beaches is whitewashed with the skeletal remains of the thousands of the gshipwrecked who perish in their attempts to flee from the capitalist cauldron their countries have been turned into due to looting and imperialist wars.
The bosses of the countries in the capitalist metropolis, who also intensify the exploitation against their own workers and make them live in precarious conditions, need a scapegoat. It’s purpose to take the blame for the actions for which they do not wish to be accountable, and to use their media to alienate the majorities on the grounds that the precariousness of their living conditions is caused by “immigrants”.
The promotion of racism and fascism is intensified by the media of mass alienation in order to increase divisions within the working class, and to multiply the levels of racist fanaticism.
Violence against women is also intensely promoted by the media of mass alienation. Given that machismo is an essential part of the capitalist superstructure, the profits of a few grow resting on the aberration of femicide [woman-killing].
The objectification of the human being is promoted to extremes. The values of solidarity are replaced by consumerist pseudo virtues. The notion of “social justice” is to be erased, and supplanted by the perverse, egocentric, and sad concept of “charity.”
“As the media of capitalist alienation homogenize the people with their promoted “don’t change the world, change yourself” (as if were impossible to do both things at the same time) capitalists continue to depredate.
“They implement with greater intensity the idea of planned obsolescence (premature and planned wearing-out of things), turning the planet into a dumpster.
They poison the earth and food in a carcinogenic way, murder by hunger a child every five seconds in a world where today’s agriculture would be enough to feed 12 billion people.”
“Capitalists take advantage of the increasingly precarious conditions of life that they themselves have caused to expand their quarry of enslaved, and thus modern slavery, prostitution, sexual exploitation, and child trafficking grow.”
It is urgent to get out of this system in which a few capitalize on the blood, sweat and tears of the majority.
Faced with the inevitable increase in exploitation of misery and plundering of nature, the big capitalists attack with their think tanks: they try to colonize our minds and manage our perception of reality.
These think tanks try to pose the problem under distorted lights and, in order to gain time, they invented the false dichotomy of a “savage capitalism” versus a so-called “capitalism with a human face”
Capitalism is savage by nature, since it is based on the exploitation of one part of the human race against another: there is not a “less savage capitalism” because its violence is intrinsic to the acceleration of capitalist accumulation that increases every day
And together with it: exclusion, exploitation, looting, repression, state terrorism, imperialist wars, fascism, racism, machismo, and all forms of violence by the rich against the poor.
April 24, 2019.
This article may be reproduced by quoting the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
Graphic against family violence
Chapter III. Article 85. Family violence, in whatever its manifestations, is considered destructive of the persons involved…
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
This cartoon was one of a many which appeared in the newspaper Juventud Rebelde during the campaign to secure approval of the new Cuban constitution.
An American Tragedy Multiplied
An American Tragedy Multiplied
Ex-marine kills 12 people in a California bar and apparently commits suicide.
Posted: Thursday 08 November 2018 | 10:17:27 pm.
By Juana Carrasco Martin
juana@juventudrebelde.cu
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
The National Rifle Association champions like Pedro for his house. Author: wp Published: 08/11/2018 | 10:05 pm
It’s not Theodore Dreiser’s novel, An American Tragedy, but murder is in the plot and it’s a real tragedy that shakes American society almost daily. Thirteen people, including the attacker, died when the victims assumed that on Wednesday night they would celebrate with country music at the university students’ favorite bar in the town of Thousand Oaks, a suburb of affluent residents northwest of Los Angeles, considered the third safest in the United States.
In cold blood, as Truman Capote’s documentary novel is titled, the Borderline Bar & Grill killer, a 28-year-old ex-marine suffering from post-traumatic stress, indiscriminately fired at least three extended magazines of his Glock 21, 45 caliber automatic pistol after throwing smoke grenades. The gun had been legally purchased…
Twenty-two other people were injured by bullets or injuries during the hasty escape to avoid the shots of Ian David Long, a young man described as angry and irrational by the police who came to his house last April for complaints of disturbance of order and were already known to the authorities by two other violent altercations.
At the first call for help, at 11:20 p.m., a sergeant from the sheriff’s office and an officer from the Road Patrol came immediately to try to “neutralize the threat. They were shot and Sergeant Ron Helus fell, with 29 years of service and only five months to his retirement.
“It’s a horrible scene. There’s blood everywhere,” Sheriff Dean told reporters. Some of the celebrating students were known to have survived the massacre at the Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas, a massive country concert in which 58 people died and more than 500 were injured on October 1, 2017, under the gunfire of Stephen Paddock, a sober and healthy 64-year-old man.
Just ten days before the new massacre, the “safe” Thousand Oaks, an ultra-massacre of 11 faithful at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Oct. 27; and just a week ago another individual fired on a yoga gym in Tallahassee, Florida, killing two women, injuring others.
According to the Gun Violence Archive – a nonprofit group that tracks these incidents on a daily basis – between January 1 and October 31, 2018, there have been 47,467 firearm incidents and 12,183 people killed, 23,759 injured, 560 of the fatalities were children, 2,370 teenagers, 1,701 were armed home invasions, 1,502 incidents used weapons as a defense, 1,332 were unintentional shootings and 301 mass shootings.
Already those numbers are history past, the numbers have increased. In the first eight days of this November, the United States has witnessed six mass shootings (description for those occurrences in which four or more people have died, not including the gunman), bringing the mass shootings to 307.
Alarms ring again and again, an increasing proportion of Americans are calling for laws that effectively limit or control gun ownership – there are at least 310 million in the possession of the nearly 325 million people, approximately 89 weapons for every 100 people, and a total of 48 percent of the 650 million weapons held by civilians worldwide.
Only 27 words of their Constitution give them that “right” and justify a culture of extreme violence, which is officially deployed with organization and participation in almost every war that occurs in today’s world.
However, President Donald Trump and many of the legislators are deaf to the petition.
After the Thousands Oaks event, Trump, in his usual way of “facing” the problems, immediately tweet: “I have been fully informed of the terrible shooting in California (…) God bless the victims and relatives of the victims. Thanks to law enforcement.
The National Rifle Association champions like Peter for his home. In 2017 weapons were sold in the United States for $41.93 billion, the same revenue as Facebook. Everything is resolved.
Where do Assassins Come From?
- English
- Español
Where do Assassins Come From?
The imam who inspired the Orlando assassin was a homophobic ex-Marine and former FBI agent
14 June 2016 22:36:33 CDT
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Marcus Dwayne Robertson was undercover FBI agent for 15 years.
Author: dailymail
WASHINGTON, June 14.- Omar Mateen, Orlando’s killer, was a follower of Marcus Dwayne Robertson, a former imam who preached hatred of homosexuals.
Robertson, 47, has a past that raises more than one question about the effectiveness of U.S. intelligence controls of suspected terrorists, ANSA said.
The imam, who was allegedly interrogated Sunday along with other colleagues, has been known to law enforcement since 1991, when he was first arrested, Foxnews reported.
This is an American ex-marine who later became the leader of a New York gang known as Ali Baba and the 40 thieves, considered responsible for robbing more than ten banks, post offices and houses, as well as shooting three policemen.
At that time Robertson served as a bodyguard for Omar Abdel Rahman, known as “The Blind Sheik,” who led the terrorist group that attacked the World Trade Center in 1993.
But after his arrest, along with others in the gang, the plaintiff reached an agreement with Robertson: a sentence of only four years in prison, before working as an undercover agent for the FBI to document terrorist plans and networks in Africa, Egypt and the United States.
In 2011, Marcus was re-arrested and sentenced to four years for fiscal fraud and violation of the weapons law: his goal was to pay for a Mauritanian student’s trip to teach him how to be a terrorist.
The prosecution asked to add another ten years for his links to terrorism, but district judge Gregory Presnell released him last year.
During his detention he was confined to solitary confinement because he was suspected of having radicalized at least 36 prisoners.
Robertson launched a seminar on Islam, via the Internet: a spiritual school frequented by Omar Mateen that may not have been the only source of inspiration for the author of the Orlando massacre.
In fact, Mateen was in the Islamic center of Fort Pierce with Imam Shafig Rahman two days before the attack, according to The Washington Post.
This mosque was also frequented by Monar Abu Salha, also known as Al-Amriky (the American), considered the first with that nationality to commit a suicide bombing in Idlib, Syria, in 2014, as a militant of a group linked to al-Qaeda.
Mateen and Abu Salha knew each other and this relationship led the FBI to interrogate the former in 2014, though without judicial follow-up.
Imam Rahman confirmed that Omar “prayed in the mosque three or four times a week” and took part in the evening ceremonies, recently even “with his little son”.
Orlando’s killer was not very sociable: “Once the prayer was over, he left, he didn’t socialize with anyone. He never seemed like a violent person,” Rahman said.
¿De dónde vienen los asesinos?
Un homofóbico exmarine y exagente del FBI, el imán que inspiró al asesino de Orlando
Marcus Dwayne Robertson fue agente encubierto del FBI durante 15 años.
Autor: dailymail
Juventud Rebelde
digital@juventudrebelde.cu
14 de Junio del 2016 22:36:33 CDT
WASHINGTON, junio 14.— Omar Mateen, el asesino de Orlando, era seguidor de Marcus Dwayne Robertson, un exmarine devenido imán, que predicaba el odio contra los homosexuales.
Robertson, de 47 años, tiene un pasado que plantea más de una interrogante sobre la eficacia de los controles a sospechosos de terrorismo por parte de los servicios de inteligencia estadounidenses, dijo ANSA.
El imán, quien habría sido interrogado el domingo junto a otros colegas, es conocido por las fuerzas del orden desde 1991, cuando fue arrestado por primera vez, informó Foxnews.
Se trata de un exmarine estadounidense quien luego se convirtió en jefe de una banda de Nueva York, conocida como Alí Babá y los 40 ladrones, considerada responsable de haber robado más de diez bancos, oficinas postales y casas, además de haber disparado contra tres policías.
En aquella época Robertson se desempeñó como guardaespaldas de Omar Abdel Rahman, conocido como «El Jeque Ciego», quien guió al grupo terrorista que atacó al World Trade Center, en 1993.
Pero tras su arresto, junto a otros de la banda, la parte demandante alcanzó un acuerdo con Robertson: una pena de solo cuatro años de cárcel, antes de trabajar como agente encubierto para el FBI para documentar planes y redes terroristas en África, Egipto y Estados Unidos.
En 2011, Marcus fue arrestado nuevamente y condenado a cuatro años por fraudes fiscales y violación de la ley de armas: su objetivo era pagar el viaje de un estudiante de Mauritania para instruirlo como terrorista.
La acusación pidió agregar otros diez años por sus vínculos con el terrorismo, pero el juez distrital Gregory Presnell lo dejó en libertad el año pasado.
Durante su detención estuvo confinado a aislamiento porque era sospechoso de haber radicalizado al menos a 36 encarcelados.
Robertson lanzó un seminario sobre el Islam, vía Internet: escuela espiritual frecuentada por Omar Mateen y que podría no haber sido la única fuente de inspiración del autor de la masacre de Orlando.
De hecho, Mateen estaba en el centro islámico de Fort Pierce junto al imán Shafig Rahman, dos días antes del atentado, según informó el diario The Washington Post.
Esa mezquita era también frecuentada por Monar Abu Salha, conocido también como Al-Amriky (El estadounidense), considerado el primero con esa nacionalidad en cometer un atentado suicida en Idlib, Siria, en 2014, como militante de un grupo ligado a Al Qaeda.
Mateen y Abu Salha se conocían y esta relación llevó al FBI a interrogar al primero en 2014, aunque sin seguimiento judicial.
El imán Rahman confirmó que Omar «rezaba en la mezquita tres o cuatro veces a la semana» y formaba parte de las ceremonias nocturnas, recientemente incluso «con su pequeño hijo».
El asesino de Orlando no era muy sociable: «Una vez finalizada la plegaria se iba, no socializaba con nadie. Nunca pareció una persona violenta», relató Rahman.
Cuba’s Solidarity with Nicaragua
Cuba Reiterates Solidarity with Nicaragua
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba denounces the attempts to destabilize the Republic of Nicaragua, a country that lives in peace and where remarkable social progress has been achieved.
By Juventud Rebelde
digital@juventudrebelde.cu
Posted: Saturday 28 April 2018 | 08:54:30 PM
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba denounces the attempts to destabilize the Republic of Nicaragua, a country that lives in peace and where significant social, economic and security progress has been made in favor of its people.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba reaffirms its commitment to the principles of the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, signed by the Heads of State and Government during the Second Celac Summit in January 2014, and rejects interference in the internal affairs of that sister nation.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs supports the sovereign efforts of the Sandinista people and Government of Nicaragua, chaired by Commander Daniel Ortega Saavedra and Vice-President Rosario Murillo Zambrana, to preserve the dialogue, peace and well-being of Nicaraguans.
Havana, April 28, 2018
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King: 50 Years Can’t Kill a Dream
April 4, 2018
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The speech that American activist Martin Luther King is remembered for today was entitled “I have a dream”. The three words became a milestone. Hundreds of politicians and presidents from around the world have used that same phrase at public events. But none has been as powerful as the one Luther King starred in on August 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. However, last Saturday, March 24th, the story of this phrase began a completely new chapter.
Yolanda Renee King, granddaughter of the leader of the civil rights movement in the United States, repeated her grandfather’s words very close to where he first spoke them 55 years ago. At just nine years of age, Yolanda stepped onto the stage with the confidence of a leader who knows the legacy that precedes her and the power of words.
Yolanda Renee King, granddaughter of Martin Luther King Jr., speaks on “The March for Our Lives” in support of gun control. Photo: Andrew Harnik/ AP
VIDEO: https://twitter.com/AMarch4OurLives/status/977625892745658368
MLK: When a Dream Doesn’t Die
MLK, Jr.: When a Dream Doesn’t Die
Fifty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the United States is still convulsed by racial inequality, but hope also remains.
By Marylín Luis Grillo
digital@juventudrebelde.cu
Posted: Wednesday 04 April 2018 | 09:35:06 PM
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
It was a single shot from a Remington-Peters rifle. Martin Luther King Jr. had fallen in Memphis, Tennessee.
Hours earlier, in a sermon, as if in anticipation of the bullet that tried to quell his throat, he had said to the congregation of the city: “We have difficult days ahead of us […] Like everyone else, I would like to have a long life. […] But that doesn’t worry me now. I just want to do God’s will. And he has allowed me to climb to the top of the mountain. And from there I saw the promised land. I may not get to her with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will reach the Promised Land. And I’m happy about it. Nothing worries me.
Luther King, who at the age of 39 had won the Nobel Peace Prize, had led a non-violent struggle for the civil rights of the African-American community, which had become the banner of hope… King did not die, because dreams do not die, they only come true.
The results of their struggle are not yet complete. Fifty years after his murder, the United States is still convulsed by inequality. The latest statistics illustrate that African-Americans suffer three times as many expulsions and school dropouts, their average household income is half that of white families, and with only 13 percent of the population, El País reported, they account for 40 percent of drug arrests.
A study by the Inequality of Opportunity Project also concluded that racial income disparities are one of the most persistent issues in American society, and that the racial identity to which one belongs marks the opportunities for study, work, salary levels, and social advancement from generation to generation.
Black people are also three times more likely than whites to be victims of police in the United States, and in 2015 alone, for example, with Barack Obama in the White House, law enforcement officers killed more unarmed blacks than armed whites. Faced with an Afro-descendant, the trigger is pulled without much attention.
Police repression, increasing inequality, debates in society about the role of identity groups, and Trump’s racist rhetoric are some of the factors that have led to the resurgence of movements like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the birth of others like Black Lives Matter.
“No Justice, No Peace” said one of the posters that flooded the streets of Sacramento a week ago protesting the death of another black man by police, 22-year-old Stephon Clark, who was shot down in the Californian capital on suspicion of breaking car windows and running around with a cell phone in his hand, which officers said they mistook for a gun.
Police opened fire up to 20 times on Clark and eight bullets hit him, seven from behind. The video of the arrest hardly shows whether the young man was approaching the officers or not. They do not order him to freez, or to lie on the ground, after the first order to show his hands, they immediately shout “gun” and shoot. The city has been shaken up again, but it is not enough.
This is a good time to remember Luther King. Less than two weeks ago, her nine-year-old granddaughter, Yolanda Renee, was repeating the mythical words “I have a dream. She called for “a world without weapons”. His father, Martin Luther King III, son of the pastor, announced Friday the launch of a global initiative to encourage young people to focus on non-violence to resolve their conflicts.
The struggle continues, but it must be carried to its end; “from the mountain of despair, a stone of hope,” Dr. King would say. He was the same one who never stopped spreading faith because he had died: no bullet can kill dreams.
You must be logged in to post a comment.