Category: crime and punishment

Glenn Loury (and, to some extent, John McWhorter) backpedal about the death of George Floyd

February 14, 2024 • 9:15 am

The death of George Floyd, and his presumed murder by Derek Chauvin with the complicity of several Minneapolis policemen, was an iconic moment in today’s race relations, the most important event leading to the “racial reckoning” of the last few years.  In late December of last year, I posted a movie, “The Fall of Minneapolis” (watch it here), and, after watching it and the included bodycam videos from cops that weren’t allowed into Chauvin’s trial, concluded that there was substantial doubt that Floyd had been murdered murdered, or that Chauvin had intended to do him in.

On December 28, after watching the film, I wrote this:

A few weeks ago I discussed the movie “The fall of Minneapolis”, which you can watch free here. The movie maintains that George Floyd was not murdered by racist cops, but died after he was arrested due to a combination of stress, use of dangerous drugs, and heart and lung problems. Here’s how I summarized the movie at the time:

  1. Floyd was not murdered by the police: he had serious heart problems, hypertension, artherosclerosis, COVID, and was high on near-lethal doses of fentanyl and methamphetamine during his arrest. He was also complaining about not being able to breathe well before he was brought to the ground by the police. Difficulty in breathing could easily be explained by both his heath condition and ingestion of serious drugs.
  2. The official autopsy found drugs in Floyd’s system, confirms the health problems mentioned above, and found no evidence from examining his neck that he died from asphyxiation.
  3. The [police] bodycam videos were not allowed to be shown to jurors by the judge. They show that Floyd might have been restrained simply by having a knee on his shoulder, not on his neck. This method of restraint, called “MRT” (maximal restraint technique) is taught to all Minneapolis police recruits as a way to subdue resisting suspects. (There is no doubt from the bodycam videos that Floyd insistently resisted arrest and fought the officers.)
  4. The judge did not allow mention or a photo of MRT in the Minneapolis police manual to be shown to the jury. Further, the police captain, lying, denied that MRT was taught to all police officers.
  5. The police called for medical assistance within minutes of Floyd having a medical emergency when he was on the ground. They also tried to resuscitate him via CPR. This is inconsistent with the narrative that the officers were trying to kill Floyd.
  6. The judge, mayor, city council and police hierarchy all “conspired” to convict Chauvin and the other officers, buttressing into an official narrative that was likely wrong.

Earlier I put up a discussion between John McWhorter and Glenn Loury, both of whom had watched the film and were not only impressed with it but agreed with my take that the “Chauvin murdered Floyd” scenario was likely a distortion. (See also this post by Loury.) It was after this discussion that the movie went public and I watched it.

Now, in the video below, Loury backtracks in his opinion, and several readers have called this backtracking to my attention (including some uncivil ones who basically accused me of being credulous and daring me to post what’s below). But of course if I put out my opinion, and it’s shown to be subsantially weaker than I thought, of course I’m going to post the countervailing arguments.

First, excerpts from Loury’s new Substack post, “We were too quick to praise ‘The Fall of Minneapolis“.  It’s accompanied by a short video (below) which will later be posted in full. When that happens, and the critic, Radley Balko, publishes all of his three-part critique, I’ll weigh in myself. For the time being, let’s withhold any judgment that Floyd was or wasn’t murdered by Derek Chauvin with complicity of other cops. Let’s wait for the evidence. But do watch the film; the links is above.

From Loury:

John and I helped bring a lot of attention to the The Fall of Minneapolis, a documentary by Liz Collin and JC Chaix which argues that Derek Chauvin is not responsible for the death of George Floyd and that Chauvin’s trial was tainted by perjury and manipulation of evidence. We discussed the film on one episode and brought the filmmakers on for a second episode. John and I both came away convinced that Derek Chauvin hadn’t gotten a fair trial and that he may well be innocent. But a couple weeks ago, the journalist Radley Balko published part one of what he says will be a three-part series debunking The Fall of Minneapolis. It was an unsettling read, one that I found so convincing that it’s led me to question my own earlier support of the film.

It was not wrong to call attention to the documentary, nor was it wrong to talk to the filmmakers. But I do wish I had not been so eager to accept their conclusions. I’ve spent years decrying the outsized reaction to the death of George Floyd, the riots and the antiractist mania that followed, and the superficial moralism of progressives who claim to find white supremacy at the root of even the most minuscule social infractions. When I saw a documentary that claimed to locate real, empirical corruption at the heart of the George Floyd case itself, I was primed to believe it.

I’ve had to take stock of my reasons for going all-in on The Fall of Minneapolis without subjecting it to scrutiny befitting the magnitude of its claims. Certainly I was ready to accept those claims, but at some level, did I want to accept them as well? I cannot be certain that my desire to strengthen my argument against George Floyd’s canonization did not neutralize the skepticism that should kick in whenever a shocking claim is made, no matter its ideological implications. The documentary’s counter-narrative fit neatly with my own, which should have moved me to seek further verification rather than accepting it at face value.

As you’ll see in this week’s clip, John doesn’t think we erred all that egregiously. But I do. I pride myself on remaining open to evidence and reason, even if they disconfirm something I had formerly thought to be true. I think I’ve succeeded in that where Balko’s critique is concerned, but only to the end of correcting an earlier failure. I sometimes describe myself as “heterodox.” That means looking on all orthodoxies with a critical eye, including the personal orthodoxies we develop over time. Without self-reflection and introspection, heterodoxy risks becoming orthodoxy by another name, a shallow rebrand that betrays its own purpose. As John is fond of saying, that won’t do. I may have fallen short this time. But, as I’m fond of saying, God’s not finished with me yet.

And a bit from the first installment of Balko’s debunking of the film. I’ll read all three parts and weigh in then. But again, realize that the film might have been edited to buttress an ideologue position: Floyd wasn’t murdered. Here’s Balko’s main conclusion in part one:

The documentary makes a lot of outlandish claims, but I want to focus mostly on the two that I’ve seen most often. These are also the two claims that [Coleman] Hughes spends most of his piece promoting.

The first claim is that when Chauvin put his knee on Floyd’s back and neck for nine minutes, it could not have been criminal assault because the Minneapolis Police Department has trained its officers — including Chauvin — to use that very technique.

The second claim is that Floyd’s official autopsy found that he died of a heart attack brought on by cardiovascular disease and drug use. Therefore, Chauvin could not have been responsible for Floyd’s death.

Both of these claims are false. The first claim is not only incorrect, the documentary engages in deceptive editing and convenient omissions to push it. In other words, the documentary is lying. The second claim is also incorrect, but the explanation is a bit more complicated.

The new (and truncated) 14-minute discussion between Loury and McWhorter is below.  Both agree that the filmmakers were “dishonest in their depiction” of how Chauvin restrained Floyd. McWhorter asseverates that he and Loury were nevertheless within their rights to call attention to the original documentary, for to ignore it simply because the filmmakers were conservatives would be a mistake. The question was whether these filmmaker/conservatives were not honest actors. McWhorter, while not as convinced as is Loury that the documentary was dishonest and misleading, welcomes the controversy and, like me, will wait until the to-and-fro is over before issuing a conclusion. (Loury seems more worried about being thought of as “too credulous” and for having confirmation bias because he was too woke to be objective.)  I suspect that the two filmmakers will themselves issue a critique of Balko’s critique.

To be fair, Balko is expert in investigating police issues, so I don’t feel as guilty as does Loury for taking the film’s assertions at face value.  But this is how the truth comes out: evidence is presented on both sides, even if one or both sides are ideologically motivated, and then one can try to adjudicate the evidence without being tained by one’s own ideology.

My stand is closer to McWhorter’s. I assumed the filmmakers were working in good faith, and I didn’t have the expertise to judge all the claims. If those claims are shown to be bogus, I’ll retract at least some of my conclusions I gave above. For now, it’s appropriate to withhold judgment on the conclusion that Chauvin, in doing a “neck restraint” of Floyd, was acting according to Minneapolis police instructions, in which case Floyd was the victim of either homicide or murder. I still think people need to watch the film to see what the officers were dealing with: an uncooperative, doped-up individual who resisted following police orders and was taken to the ground because of that. But what follows after Floyd was on the ground is the major issue.

The George Floyd “murder”: filmmakers interviewed by Loury and McWhorter

December 28, 2023 • 11:45 am

A few weeks ago I discussed the movie “The fall of Minneapolis”, which you can watch free here. The movie maintains that George Floyd was not murdered by racist cops, but died after he was arrested due to a combination of stress, use of dangerous drugs, and heart and lung problems. Here’s how I summarized the movie at the time:

  1. Floyd was not murdered by the police: he had serious heart problems, hypertension, artherosclerosis, COVID, and was high on near-lethal doses of fentanyl and methamphetamine during his arrest. He was also complaining about not being able to breathe well before he was brought to the ground by the police. Difficulty in breathing could easily be explained by both his heath condition and ingestion of serious drugs.
  2. The official autopsy found drugs in Floyd’s system, confirms the health problems mentioned above, and found no evidence from examining his neck that he died from asphyxiation.
  3. The [police] bodycam videos were not allowed to be shown to jurors by the judge. They show that Floyd might have been restrained simply by having a knee on his shoulder, not on his neck. This method of restraint, called “MRT” (maximal restraint technique) is taught to all Minneapolis police recruits as a way to subdue resisting suspects. (There is no doubt from the bodycam videos that Floyd insistently resisted arrest and fought the officers.)
  4. The judge did not allow mention or a photo of MRT in the Minneapolis police manual to be shown to the jury. Further, the police captain, lying, denied that MRT was taught to all police officers.
  5. The police called for medical assistance within minutes of Floyd having a medical emergency when he was on the ground. They also tried to resuscitate him via CPR. This is inconsistent with the narrative that the officers were trying to kill Floyd.
  6. The judge, mayor, city council and police hierarchy all “conspired” to convict Chauvin and the other officers, buttressing into an official narrative that was likely wrong.

This was followed by a lively discussion among the readers, many of them doubting the evidence given in the movie.  I highly recommend that you watch it, as it makes a decent case that not only was Floyd not murdered, but the cops followed official protocol, Floyd was not asphyxiated, and that the mayor and police chief of the city lied under oath in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the accused murderer. As I’ve discussed the evidence before, you can review it here. Meanwhile, click below to watch the movie if you haven’t:

In my earlier post, I showed a 48-minute discussion between Glenn Loury and John McWhorter, both of whom watched the movie and were pretty convinced by its thesis.  Now, they’re back on the “Glenn Show” (video below) discussing the movie with its two producers, Liz Collin, and JC Chaix.  YouTube, however, put restrictions on this one-hour discussion, so Loury decided to put it on his Substack site.  If you click on the image below, you can hear that discussion for free. Here’s Loury’s explanation for not putting it on YouTube:

As you may be aware, YouTube restricted this week’s episode of The Glenn Show to viewers 18 and older. My team and I determined that the reason for this restriction was the inclusion of footage and imagery taken from the scene of George Floyd’s death. I want as many people to see this conversation as possible, and an age restriction has the potential to severely limit the video’s reach. So we decided to re-edit the video and remove the footage and imagery that led to the restriction, and then re-upload it. The conversation itself remains intact—only the visual elements have changed.

However, I found it unacceptable to simply capitulate to what I believe to be an incorrect decision on YouTube’s part. Accordingly, I’ve made the version of the video I originally intended to release available here on Substack. This isn’t the first time The Glenn Show has been penalized by YouTube, and I doubt it will be the last. Rest assured that, no matter what happens, I’ll find a way to get my show—uncompromised and unfiltered—out to you.

Click to watch:

At the beginning and throughout, McWhorter plays the role of “bad cop,” even though he buys the film’s premise. He does this by asking the hard questions that have led people to diss the movie. For example:

Was the bodycam showing Chauvin sitting on Floyd’s shoulder rather than his neck produced by AI? The producers say definitely not: AI manipulation arrived long after the bodycam videos were made public.

Why did Chauvin sit on Floyd’s neck for so long when Floyd clearly said he was in trouble? In fact, the cops called for medical help within a minute, but the emergency help bot confused with directions and took longer to arrive.

Did Chauvin, even if he didn’t intend to murder Floyd, or killed him unintentionally, contribute to Floyd’s death by sitting on his neck or shoulders?  That’s doubtful; Chauvin was unaware of Floyd’s medical condition at the time of the arrest (an arrest that Floyd fought vehemently).  Also, Floyd was crying “I can’t choke! I can’t breathe!” before he was ever on the ground—indeed, before the cops ever touched him. Further, the official autopsy said there were “no signs of asphyxiation.”

Did the cops violate department policy by restraining Floyd the way they did? No, in fact they were strictly adhering to the department policy of “maximum restraint technique” (MRT), which all Minneapolis cops are taught. The mayor and chief of police lied about this, denying that it was taught, and then someone removed the MRT pages from the online police manual.

Why did the prosecution witnesses lie, and why did they show only 90 seconds of the 18-20 minutes of police bodycam video (that video’s in the movie)?  It’s not completely clear, but the producers suggest there was a narrative that had to be adhered to and that narrative was of a white cop, motivated by racism, murdering a black man. In fact, the coroner admitted there was such a narrative and was scared that he’d be fired because his autopsy report didn’t adhere to that narrative.

Why didn’t the movie show all nine minutes of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s back/neck? The explanation is a bit unclear, but apparently the producers wanted the viewers to get hold of the whole nine minutes and judge for themselves. But where would we get that video? This is the only waffle-y part of the producers’ explanation.

The discussion ends with a bit about the interviews with the Minneapolis police officers who weren’t arrested, and who are sometimes moved to tears by what happened to their department and by the lies of the prosecution witnesses and other officials. There’s also some discussion about the $27 million that Minneapolis gave to Floyd’s family. Apparently another person arrested and subject to the MRT also sued, though he wasn’t injured, and got $8-9 million.

If you’re not in the mood to watch Loury and McWhorter yet, at least watch the original movie. But I recommend watching the original movie and the Substack discussion above.

McWhorter and Loury and a new film: George Floyd wasn’t murdered

December 11, 2023 • 9:15 am

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd had a run-in with the Minneapolis police over his passing counterfeit bills, and the result was Floyd’s death. Four officers were involved in the altercation, and one, Derek Chauvin, was subsequently charged and convicted of second-degree murder and manslaughter (with a sentence of 22.5 years) for apparently kneeling on Floyd’s neck, causing him to suffocate. Three other officers were also convicted of violating Floyd’s civil rights, and were given sentences between 3 and 4.75 years. In a civil suit, the city of Minneapolis settled with Floyd’s family for $27 million.  Recently and unsurprisingly, Chauvin was stabbed 22 times in prison, coming close to death but surviving.

After Floyd’s death, there were not only violent riots in Minneapolis (downplayed by the mayor and the media), but, importantly, the “racial reckoning” began that continues to this day. Floyd’s death could be considered the pivotal act of not only this reckoning, but the spread of DEI activities throughout America.  The man has become somewhat of a hero: a latter-day Martin Luther King.

A new 142-minute crowdfunded movie, “The Fall of Minneapolis,” takes issue with the Floyd narrative, and for the first time shows the bodycam video of the arrested Minneapolis police officers. It argues the following points:

  1. Floyd was not murdered by the police: he had serious heart problems, hypertension, artherosclerosis, COVID, and was high on near-lethal doses of fentanyl and methamphetamine during his arrest. He was also complaining about not being able to breathe well before he was brought to the ground by the police. Difficulty in breathing could easily be explained by both his heath condition and ingestion of serious drugs.
  2. The official autopsy found drugs in Floyd’s system, confirms the health problems mentioned above, and found no evidence from examining his neck that he died from asphyxiation.
  3. The bodycam videos were not allowed to be shown to jurors by the judge. They show that Floyd might have been restrained simply by having a knee on his shoulder, not on his neck. This method of restraint, called “MRT” (maximal restraint technique) is taught to all Minneapolis police recruits as a way to subdue resisting suspects. (There is no doubt from the bodycam videos that Floyd insistently resisted arrest and fought the officers.)
  4. The judge did not allow mention or a photo of MRT in the Minneapolis police manual to be shown to the jury. Further, the police captain, lying, denied that MRT was taught to all police officers.
  5. The police called for medical assistance within minutes of Floyd having a medical emergency when he was on the ground. They also tried to resuscitate him via CPR. This is inconsistent with the narrative that the officers were trying to kill Floyd.
  6. The judge, mayor, city council and police hierarchy all “conspired” to convict Chauvin and the other officers, buttressing into an official narrative that was likely wrong.

There’s a lot more—the movie is tendentious and doesn’t try to pretend it’s impartial—but there’s surely enough there to disturb the viewer about both the narrative around Floyd’s death and its aftermath±both the immediate rioting and the “racial reckoning” that still pervades America.

I watched the movie, and think that every reader should, too. Just make the time to watch it (it’s at the bottom as well as on YouTube). for you won’t be sorry. Now I wasn’t on the jury, but after watching the bodycam videos and the movie’s interviews and courtroom scenes, I think that at the very least George Floyd wasn’t obviously murdered by police. The point that Chauvin was kneeling on Floyd’s shoulder as per MRT, and not on his neck, deserves serious consideration, and the “murder” scenario is thus not beyond reasonable doubt. That makes Chauvin and the other officers innocent.

The movie was fairly successful in convincing me that there was no good ground to initially bring charges against Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. It also suggests how corrupt and duplicitous the mayor, judge, and city officials of Minneapolis were in ignoring facts to further a convenient narrative.

But I’m not the only one to react this way to the movie. Both John McWhorter and Glenn Loury watched the movie, too, and came to the same conclusion. Their 48-minute conversation about “The Fall of Minneapolis” is below, and some of it is transcribed in Loury’s Substack post given below that.

I suggest watching the original video (at bottom) first, and then listening to the conversation between McWhorter and Loury.  But I’ve put them in reverse order if you don’t have time to watch the movie but want the précis. Seriously, though, given the impact of the Floyd death and the counternarrative of the movie, all Americans should watch “The Fall of Minneapolis” and come to their own conclusions.

Some people, of course, are impervious to fact, but there are enough facts documented in the movie, including nearly complete bodycam videos from the police officers, to raise serious doubts about The Narrative. I should add that the attacks on all Minneapolis police officers after Floyd’s death are frightening as hell. The mayor, who comes off as a subservient jerk, actually closed one police station and allowed it to be destroyed by the rioters.

The conversation:

Loury’s Substack article; click to read:

What is most striking about the Loury/McWhorter video conversation is the conviction of both men that Chauvin was not guilty of murder and that all the cops were unjustly punished. While Loury tends to be excitable, McWhorter is quieter and often more thoughtful, and yet both men arrive at the same conclusion.  In fact, McWhorter blames the rise of Ibram Kendi and his antiracist philosophy, which McWhorter denigrates, on the death of Floyd. And neither man sees Floyd as any kind of hero; Loury argues that the “racial reckoning” was “the excesses of a woke moral panic around racial issues that converted a miscreant. . . this is not a heroic figure; this is a flaky motherfucker.”  But that is how convincing the movie is, regardless of the fact that it is tendentious and aims to further its own counternarrative. But it is not a “conspiracy movie”; it’s a serious examination of the Floyd incident and the trial of the officers.

Other quotes from McWhorter:

“The idea of [Floyd] as a hero is revolting. . . absolutely revolting. . . the man was an utter and complete mess.”

“This evidence is clear, but it will not be accepted. . . It will not be allowed that Derek Chauvin got a bad rap.”

“People are not going to listen to the facts. George Floyd is going to be seen as this crucial moment on the civil rights timeline when America woke up to certain realities because of the murder of this man. And nothing we say, nothing that documentary says, will change anyone’s mind.”

“It’s difficult to make the case for black equality when there is this kind of know-nothing denialism now. .  it shouldn’t take people twenty years to admit that those riots were about something that didn’t happen.”

And a McWhorter quote from Loury’s transcript:

You know, Glenn, also, if you want to push it, if you think about what happened in the first half of 2020, also the whole racial reckoning and the grievous excesses that it’s led to that make people write books like Woke Racism, et cetera. I mean, frankly, we have to do it, we have to say it, and then we’re going to move quickly on. The elevation of Ibram Kendi really was sparked in large part by George Floyd. He was known before that, but him being a phenom whose counsel is attended to by people cowering in their boots becoming amoral people if they don’t follow it, that happens in the wake of George Floyd. And it was a lie. It was a lie.

I am still trying to grapple with the meaning of this. And so what it comes down to is George Floyd. He had serious heart disease. He wasn’t an old man, but he had serious heart disease, untreated. He had serious atherosclerosis, untreated. He was very high on both fentanyl and meth, which is a lethal combination. Very high on them, probably taking more while he was in the car to hide it from the cops. He opens his mouth in the footage, and you see he’s got something on his tongue. It’s not a Chiclet. He’s really, really high. He tested positively for COVID then. He had COVID. He smoked. He’s a very sick man.

And then all of this happens. He’s frankly out of his mind because of all of this. He couldn’t help it, but he was. And you know, he was upset. He was agitated, his heartbeat probably pumping harder. Now I’m going into a medical expertise I don’t have. But he was very agitated at being detained by the cops. And remember, they had a reason for detaining him. He was trying to pass counterfeit money. They were detaining him, and it got worse and worse. He couldn’t understand that he needed to just calm down, despite being told to by his friends. “Stop resisting, Floyd,” one of his friends said. And so, it got the best of him and his heart stopped.

But it wasn’t because he was asphyxiated. And the other thing is, there was no evidence in the autopsy report, which has not been shared with us until now—not the autopsy report that was suggested by George Floyd’s relatives, but the first one. There was no evidence of asphyxiation of any kind.

I find the autopsy report, which is shown in the movie below, to be pretty exculpatory. NO evidence of asphyxiation!

*********************

Click below to watch “The Fall of Minneapolis,” which you can also find on YouTube (with Polish subtitles!) here.

 

The media wants a hate crime

December 1, 2023 • 9:00 am

You have surely heard that three young Palestinian-Americans, Kinnan Abdalhamid, Hisham Awartani, and Tahseen Ali Ahmad, were shot on November 25 in Burlington, Vermont. Two of the injured were American citizens; the other a legal resident.  The alleged shooter, Jason Eaton, was captured and appears to be mentally ill. From the NYT:

They were shot and wounded on Saturday by a white man with a handgun while they were walking near the University of Vermont, the police said. Two of the victims were wearing Palestinian kaffiyehs, a traditional headdress.

The young men told family members they were speaking a hybrid of English and Arabic before the man shot at them four times without saying anything before the attack, according to a family spokeswoman.

Two of the victims were in stable condition, the authorities said. The third sustained much more serious injuries.

The one with serious injuries was shot in the spine, and may never walk again. This is a terrible attack, and, while we can be grateful that nobody was killed, losing your ability to walk is horrible. The shooter has been charged with second-degree murder, and, if he’s guilty, which seems likely, will be spending a long time in either prison or a mental hospital.

So far the cops haven’t found any evidence that Eaton was motivated by anti-Muslim sentiments, and yet the media is full of pronouncements that it must have been a hate crime. After all, it was three Palestinians speaking Arabic and wearing kaffiyehs.

It’s not hard to imagine that both Palestinian-Americans and the mainstream media really want Eaton to have been “Islamophobic,” as this fits the desired narrative, which is that Muslims are widely subject to Islamophobia in America, and that has murderous consequences.

Of course there is bigotry in America, bigotry against both Muslims and Jews, but that doesn’t lead to the conclusion that any Jew or Muslim who is victim of a crime was a victim because of his or her religion. That has to be found out via investigation, which could lead to “hate crime” charges. (As I’ve said, I’m still conflicted about we should even have the category of “hate crime”, since many other motivations are reprehensible; but sussing out why a criminal did what he did is important if you think that punishment should involve rehabilitation.)

At any rate, I have seen nothing in the press decrying the rush to judgement against Eaton, who is being touted as a murderous Islamophobe without any evidence. Here’s some stuff from the news showing this rush:

From the NYT, in an editorial which is all about the likelihood that this was an anti-Muslim hate crime (my bolding)

tThe authorities have not yet added a hate-crime enhancement to the charges against Mr. Eaton, who moved to the neighborhood a few months ago and has struggled with depression, according to his mother. Still it’s hard to ignore the current atmosphere of tension and vitriol surrounding the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, which has led to clashes and hate incidents around the country.

Note the devious way that the author connects the shootings with the war, and presumably with “Islamophobia”.

From NBC News:

The mother of one of the Palestinian American college students shot on the street near the University of Vermont has no doubt that the men were targeted and says the shooting should absolutely be treated as a hate crime.

. . .“There is no doubt,” she said. “It just defies logic. Why else would it be? … If they were not wearing the kaffiyeh. … If they were not speaking Arabic.”

She said she would be disappointed if the violence were not treated as a hate crime. “It would be sorely disappointing only because the facts are so obvious,” Tamimi said.

From the BBC, the mother of another of the injured men:

The mother of Mr Awartani, who is the most seriously injured out of the three with a bullet lodged in his spine, told the BBC she believed the attack was a hate crime.

“This man did not accept people who were different from him. And he wanted to destroy that,” said Elizabeth Price, who headed back to Vermont after the shooting, from her home in the West Bank.

From the Associated Press:

“Based on the information that is available, it appears this crime might have been motivated by the victims’ identity and, if that is true, it would be appropriate to seek the hate crimes enhancement,” [ACLU of Vermont Advocacy Director Falko] Schilling said, adding that the motive behind the shooting will be critical in determining whether this is treated as a hate crime.

Still, Chittenden County State’s attorney Sarah George told reporters on Monday that the state doesn’t “yet have evidence to support a hate crime enhancement,” which under Vermont law must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

“I do want to be clear that there is no question this was a hateful act,” she said.

This conflates a “hateful act” with a “hate crime”; George can’t resist implying that this may indeed have been a hate crime. But if the shooter was mentally ill, he may not have even been filled with hate, but with some twisted thoughts that we can’t fathom.

From Reuters:

Families of the victims issued a joint statement earlier in the day urging authorities to investigate the shooting as a hate crime, as did the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a U.S.-based advocacy group.

“The surge in anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian sentiment we are experiencing is unprecedented, and this is another example of that hate turning violent,” ADC National Executive Director Abed Ayoub said.

Again, the ADC is assuming that the crime stemmed from hatred of Arabs and Palestinians. Thje tweet below that says the ADC had “reason to believe” it was a hate crime. Is that because the victims were wearing Palestinian scarves and speaking Arabic?

Here is a proper response (in Vox): a call to determine if it was indeed a hate crime:

CAIR [the council on American-Islamic Relations] is among the groups that have called on law enforcement to review whether bias played a role in the college students’ shootings in Vermont. “We encourage law enforcement to file state and federal hate crime charges if the evidence confirms that anti-Palestinian racism motivated this attack,” the organization’s executive director Nihad Awad said in a statement.

You can find many similar statements implying that this surely was a hate crime, but I’ll leave you to search.

Now it’s understandable that the mothers of the injured men would want to find a motive, as crimes without known motives are especially disturbing to friends and relatives of victims. But the mainstream media has a responsibility to be, well, responsible, and remind us all that there is as of yet no evidence that Eaton was motivated by anti-Muslim bigotry.  The search is on by both local police and the feds, but so far all we know is that Eaton has a history of depression and had been reported to the police for harassing an ex-girlfriend. If -he was Islamophobic, it seems that we would know by now.

It’s curious to me that the MSM has a narrative that seems to want this to be an Islamophobic hate crime. Wouldn’t it be better if it wasn’t one, so that we’d have less violent anti-Muslim bigotry than we thought? But we also know that the liberal MSM is pro-Palestinian, and it may be in their interest to push the idea of pervasive anti-Muslim bigotry in America. (It’s similar to when papers like the NYT credulously reported that a hospital was destroyed by an Israeli bomb when, in fact, it was hit by an Islamic Jihad rocket gone astray).

Let’s just wait, shall we, for the evidence about Eaton’s motives to come out, if it can be found.

Vis-à-vis hate crimes, I see four reasons to punish those who violate the law, as far as I can see

  1. Deterrence
  2. Sequestration: keeping bad guys off the streets
  3. Reformation of the criminal
  4. Retribution

I’m opposed to retributive punishment as it presupposes that the criminal had a choice, and I’m a hard determinist who doesn’t believe a criminal could have chosen not to commit the crime. Gregg Caruso, also a hard determinist, thinks that deterrence is not a valid reason for punishment, either, because it violates Kantian morality by using a person to affect others. (I disagree.) I

f someone is determined to have committed a crime out of racial or ethnic hatred, that would affect the way they should be reformed, but if having an extra-long sentence is supposed to deter others from bigotry, then we need to know if that deterrence really works. (We already have evidence that capital punishment does not deter murder.) I suspect that the “hate crime” charge does not deter bigots, either.

Right now, I’m thinking that juries or judges should determine whether hatred was a motive, but shouldn’t necessarily impose to longer sentences unless those longer sentences act as a deterrent. Thus finding out the motive is important in reforming a criminal, but not necessarily in deciding whether to give him a longer sentence.

Others may feel differently from me about hate crimes, and that’s fine: just weigh in in the comments below. But what’s not at issue is whether Eaton shot the men out of anti-Muslim hatred, for the answer to that is “we don’t know yet, and maybe never will.”

Bad acts against Palestinians in the U.S.

October 16, 2023 • 9:15 am

I want to make it clear that I deplore violence (I was a conscientious objector, sanctioning state violence only in the case of a “just war”, which Vietnam wasn’t). And I don’t favor personal violence unless it’s necessary for self-defense or to defend others against unwarranted attacks. (I was in a fight only once in my life, when a group of thugs in my high school called me a “dirty Jew”.) I see the Israeli attack as a just war—a war of self-defense, but of course there will be unjust incidents, as there are even in just wars (e.g., WWII, when there were several incidents in which American or Soviet soldiers shot P.O.W.s).

Sadly, we’ve had an incident of individual violence here in Chicago: the murder of a 6-year-old boy and wounding of his mother, apparently stabbed solely because they were Muslim.

The authorities in suburban Chicago accused a man of fatally stabbing a 6-year-old boy on Saturday and seriously wounding the boy’s mother because they were Muslim, an attack that officials tied to the violence in Israel and Gaza.

The killing in Illinois alarmed Muslim leaders, who called on American politicians and journalists to more fully reflect the humanity of Palestinian people as they address the conflict overseas.

“This was directly connected to dehumanizing of Palestinians,” said Abdelnasser Rashid, a Democratic Illinois state representative who is Palestinian American.

Investigators in Will County, Ill., southwest of Chicago, described a gory scene. They said a 71-year-old landlord turned on the boy and his mother, who were his tenants, at their home in Plainfield Township on Saturday morning, stabbing them repeatedly with a serrated knife that had a seven-inch blade.

The boy, identified as Wadea Al-Fayoume by a family member and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, was stabbed 26 times and pronounced dead at a hospital, according to the sheriff’s office. The boy’s mother, 32, was in serious condition with more than a dozen stab wounds, officials said. Officials said she ran into a bathroom and continued fighting off the attacker as she dialed 911. Relatives said the family is Palestinian American.

They have a suspect, 71-year-old Joseph M. Czuba, and so far the evidence for a hate crime is this:

According to CAIR’s [Council on American-Islamic Relations] account of the text messages, the landlord knocked on the family’s door, and when the mother opened it he tried to choke her and attacked her with a knife, yelling, “You Muslims must die!”

Attacks on peaceful civilians like this are immoral and reprehensible, and what we see here is a mirror of what Hamas did: killing people because of their faith alone.  Here’s a photo of Adea Al-Fayoume from the NYT, a boy who will never get to grow up:

And while I’m condemning religiously motivated attacks, here’s one that’s not as serious but still unwarranted and reprehensible. Click to read:

This one’s especially bad because although it’s a Palestinian restaurant run by Palestinians, they welcomed Jews and Palestinians, who ate together amicably.

“I appreciate people coming here to eat good food and find peace,” said Ms. Masoud, who welcomes all.

Esther Smith, who is Jewish, stopped in for a quick bite this week with her husband. “It’s kind of ironic that we chose this place,” said Ms. Smith, 47. “It’s a good reminder that we really have to separate the politics from the people.”

But the war in Israel is testing the ties that bind Bay Ridge, and setting aside decades of complex and painful politics is not so simple. At Ayat, a mural overlooking the room shows Palestinian children imprisoned underneath the golden dome of the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in Jerusalem, guarded by Israeli soldiers.

After the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Ayat was suddenly flooded with dozens of one-star reviews online.

. . . Since Ayat opened, with its Palestinian flags and mural, the couple has been accused of antisemitism and of spreading hate and called terrorists on Instagram and other social media. They lost a few Jewish friends, who knew Ms. Masoud was Palestinian but became uncomfortable with their restaurant.

. . . After Ayat started racking up bad reviews, Mr. Elenani reported them and managed to get most of them taken down. Some reviews urged people to stay away from a Palestinian business. It did not work: There has been no drop-off in customers.

In the end, no damage done to the Masouds.  Good food is good food, and the owners seem fine.  Punishing them because they’re Palestinian is equivalent, in my view, to harassing Republicans dining in restaurants with their families, simply because they’re Republicans.

I’m not trying to say that “both sides are equal” in the war, of course (they’re not: Israel is far more morally justified), nor that comity will solve big political problems, for it won’t, at least in this war.  But neither will I let Americans get away with demonizing peaceful Palestinians because of factors that the Palestinians can’t control: their religion and national origin. Yes, Palestinian civilians will die in the coming ground assault, but they will not be deliberate targets, and that is surely not morally equivalent to the deliberate murder of Wadea Al-Fayoume.

As for the restaurant, if a Palestinian is going to serve me good food at a reasonable price, I’ll certainly eat there. Remember this scene in Seinfeld about the Palestinian chicken joint?

Should we cite the scientific work of colleagues who were sexual harassers?

June 25, 2023 • 12:00 pm

There’s a new movement afoot for “citation justice” a form of affirmative action in which we should cite scientists who are marginalized as a way of boosting their careers.  I’m referring to citations in scientific papers, and here’s one example: “maps of chromosomes can be constructed by the pattern of recombination shown by alleles producing visible mutations (Morgan and Bridges, 1919)”.

While I still think affirmative action should be practiced in some realms, like college admissions and hiring, I don’t favor practicing it in scientific papers as a form of reparations.  My philosophy (which I may not always have acted on!) is that when presenting other people’s ideas, facts, or results, you should give the most relevant citations: those that best demonstrate the phenomenon discussed. And you should be parsimonious: avoid overcitation and don’t put in too many different citations that show the same thing. In other words, I use citations based on their value to their paper—their merit, as you will.

Others feel differently, and I’m not going to argue with them except to say that if you leave out citations that are more relevant or important in favor of citations by marginalized scientists, you’re lowering the bar for citation, which could result in a poorer paper.  (This of course implies that I think that science papers should function to build up the edifice of science, not effect social justice, which is better done other ways.)

However, the authors of this paper from the American Astronomical Society note that some groups are undercited:

. . . . it has also been found that when researchers cite others, they are less likely to cite women and scholars of color at rates that match their respective contributions to the field. Many reasons for these unequal citation practices have been suggested, ranging from implicit or unconscious bias to careless citation practices (such as not seeking out the original reference) to consciously choosing to exclude certain researchers and/or groups when citing others.

If it is indeed the case that women and scholars of color aren’t cited as frequently as they should be given the relevance of their work to the paper, then that should be rectified.  Remember, a citation is there to document a statement or fact, not to laud somebody’s accomplishments, so what’s important here is not “respective contributions to the field” but “relevance of their work to the statement requiring documentation.”  If there is under-citation in this sense, then scientists should indeed do something about it when they write papers.

But the topic of the article below is this question:

 This leads to the crux of many recent discussions: is it ever acceptable to intentionally choose not to cite someone(s)?

Their answer seems to be “yes, it could be acceptable to deliberately omit a relevant citation, though there’s no cut-and-dried rule”.

Click screenshot to read:

The authors first lay out, in a good summary, why scientists use citations:

Currently, the relevant portion of the AAS Code of Ethics is found in the Publications and Authorship section of the Ethics Statement:

Proper acknowledgment of the work of others should always be given. Deliberate, wanton omission of a pertinent author or reference is unacceptable. Authors have an obligation to their colleagues and the scientific community to include a set of references that communicates the precedents, sources, and context of the reported work. Data provided by others must be cited appropriately, even if obtained from a public database.

The statement reminds us that there are several reasons why we are expected to cite others in our publications.  These include citations as an acknowledgment of the contributions of others to the ideas in our work, as well as to avoid plagiarism, and we cite others to justify our methods, assumptions, and research practices. Citations are also important for maintaining the integrity of the academic record and tracing the development of ideas over time, both for the historical record as well as for a proper understanding of how a research field has evolved.

To me, this alone implies that you cite based on relevance, not as a way to effect social justice. And even if authors have done some bad things, if their research is solid and relevant to the point being made, you should cite them. Not doing so violates all the reasons given above.

But moral considerations then creep into the article of Hughes et al.:

In the case of unethical research practices, we can look to other fields outside of astronomy for some guidance. The AMA (American Medical Association) Code of Medical Ethics suggests that when researchers engage with results that were obtained in a clearly unethical way, such as Nazi experimentation on humans during WWII or the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, they should first seek to cite studies that used ethical methods and obtained the same results. If that is not possible, then the harm involved in obtaining the results should be disclosed and acknowledged, the reason for needing to cite the study justified, and the authors should pay respect to the victims of the behavior.

I’m not sure that there are any results of Nazi medical experiments that are even worth citing; I remember reading one scholar’s conclusion that these experiments were so slipshod that they never produced anything of value, even given their aims—to save German soldiers (or, in Mengele’s case, to satisfy a sadistic curiosity). And nearly everyone now knows of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and about its unethicality. I don’t know if it generated any useful data, but to have to stop in the middle of the paper and recite a screed in honor of the victims seems to me a bit much. I’d rather just say “see X”, where “X” is a discussion of the harms produced by that study. Moral genuflection (“I will now show that I realize this work was unethical”) is somewhat demeaning in a case like the Nazis and Tuskeegee. In fact, I’m hard pressed to think of having to cite any study that requires that kind of qualification and explanation.

But the authors do find one case where citations may be properly left out without any qualification: when the scientist cited is a sexual harasser. As they say:

But the guidance becomes less clear when it comes to dealing with citations of documented sexual and serial harassers. While there have been several recent high-profile cases in astronomy, many other fields are currently struggling with this same issue. The arguments of whether we should cite these individuals boil down to two main positions:

Note that the links go to two sides of the argument, the “Yes” from my law-school colleague Brian Leiter.

This is the starting point from which the AAS Code of Ethics Committee, the AAS Publications Committee, and the Ethics Working Group are confronting the issue. There are several related questions to grapple with:

Here are the questions that, according to Hughes et al. must be answered before you can decide whether or not to cite a harasser:

  1. Is the research unethical, or is the person’s behavior unethical, and does it matter?
  2. Is sexual harassment a form of research misconduct? The American Geophysical Union says yes, and the NSF has instituted policies that require institutions to report sexual harassment findings which can lead to the revocation of grant funding. While the AAS code of ethics does not currently address this issue directly, the Astro2020 Decadal Report recommends that identity-based discrimination and harassment be recognized as causing the same level of harm to the integrity of research as is caused by research misconduct.
  3. How do we identify bad actors in our community? What is the threshold? By which temporal and cultural standards do we judge? Who ensures that the punishment fits the crime, and can there be a path to restoration?
  4. Who is harmed? What is the collateral damage? How do we limit future harm to the survivors of sexual harassment? Should we protect the junior colleagues and collaborators of bad actors from secondhand punishment, and if so, how? And when does the integrity of the scientific record take precedence?

The authors do admit that making a decision not to cite someone who’s a sexual harasser (and yes, the conclusion is that it may well be justified) is an “ethical gray area.”

But none of this stuff, to me, justifies not citing someone as a form of punishment because they engaged in documented sexual harassment.

Of course I abhor sexual harassment, and it should be dealt with promptly and properly.  But why is sexual harassment the only bad act that can be punished by canceling a citation? (And yes, canceling a citation means canceling the scientific community’s knowledge of relevant science.)  What about any felony: robbery, murder, or other bad acts like simple non-sexual harassment or bullying of students or colleagues? (It may be because the three authors, all women referred to as “she” or “her” on their professional webpages are more attuned to this form of bad behavior than are men.)

By all means punish those who engaged in misconduct—and apparently it doesn’t have to be “research misconduct” to make someone a “bad actor”. But remove their contributions from science? That’s a no-no to me.

I may be an outlier, but in my view there’s no good reason to not cite the scientific work of “bad actors” or harassers if the work itself is sound and relevant.  Even murderers should be cited if their work is relevant. There’s no “research misconduct” worse than killing one of your students, but to me even that’s not bad enough to expunge someone’s relevant work from science.

Punishment and ostracism  should be inflicted on people, not on science itself, for leaving out relevant citations because the person who did the work was bad is indeed hurting science, and scholarship in general.  Being fired or punished is enough; it’s not necessary (and is indeed harmful to science) to “punish” someone further by simply refusing to cite their work. If we did that, we wouldn’t cite great literature, for many famous authors were pretty bad people, including being sexual harassers.

In the end, I agree with Brian Leiter, whose “Yes” vote for not removing citations is explained in the 2018 Chronicle of Higher Education article linked to above: “Academic ethics: should scholars avoid citing the work of awful people?” (the three people cited in his first paragraph below were accused of sexual misconduct):

Certainly, scholars should condemn Frege, Searle, Ronell, and the like. But to excise from the canon of relevant knowledge those who are appalling people is simply a further betrayal of what justifies the existence of institutions devoted to scholarship.

. . . You should not — under any circumstances — adjust your citation practices to punish scholars for bad behavior. You betray both your discipline and the justification for your academic freedom by excising from your teaching and research the work of authors who have behaved unethically. Universities would, in principle, be justified in disciplining you for scholarly malfeasance, subject to appropriate peer assessment.

Such academic misconduct is unlikely to constitute a firing offense — unlike, say, serious plagiarism or fabrication of data. But researchers or teachers who let moral indignation interfere with scholarly judgment do betray the core purposes of the university and so open themselves to professional repercussions. The foundations of academic freedom demand nothing less.

h/t: Thanks to a scientist who does astronomy for alerting me to this piece.

TRUMP INDICTED! Orange Man may wear Orange Uniform

June 9, 2023 • 5:49 am

I couldn’t believe it when I heard this news last night, but all signs were that it was impending. Here’s the headline from the NYT. If you click on it, I’ve linked it to the news story that someone archived:

An excerpt:

The Justice Department on Thursday took the legally and politically momentous step of lodging federal criminal charges against former President Donald J. Trump, accusing him of mishandling classified documents he kept upon leaving office and then obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them.

Mr. Trump confirmed on his social media platform that he had been indicted. The charges against him include willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements and a conspiracy to obstruct justice, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The Justice Department made no comment on the indictment Thursday and did not immediately make the document public.

The indictment, handed up by a grand jury in Federal District Court in Miami, is the first time a former president has faced federal charges. It puts the nation in an extraordinary position, given Mr. Trump’s status not only as a onetime commander in chief but also as the current front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination to face President Biden, whose administration will now be seeking to convict his potential rival of multiple felonies.

Mr. Trump is expected to surrender to the authorities on Tuesday, according to a person close to him and his own post on his social media platform, Truth Social.

“The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been indicted,” Mr. Trump wrote, in one of several posts around 7 p.m. after he was notified of the charges.

The former president added that he was scheduled to be arraigned in federal court in Miami at 3 p.m. on Tuesday. In a video he released later on Truth Social, Mr. Trump declared: “I’m an innocent man. I’m an innocent person.”

The Washington Post gives the charges: seven of them:

Trump, who is again seeking the Republican presidential nomination, has been indicted on seven charges, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post, including willful retention of national defense secrets, obstruction of justice and conspiracy. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

Well, I haven’t had coffee yet, but I have to say that I’m pleased as punch. Not necessarily pleased that he’ll be punished—for that’s up to judges and juries—but chuffed that he’s going to have to publicly face the music, do a PERP WALK, and perhaps appear on the stand (that would be his downfall).

I haven’t read the news analysis, but surely this will affect next year’s Presidential election. It’s hard to believe that being an accused felon can win him votes, but you know the Republicans: they may see him as more of a martyr. Will they still run a candidate who’s under indictment? I bet so, since it’s legal and they won’t care if he may have to leave office if elected. Nothing can deter the GOP’s ardor for this narcissistic primate.

But if he’s convicted, he’s done for—an ex-President, singing with the choir primeval, longing for the pools of Mar-A-Lago. And, perhaps, there may be jail time. No ex-President has ever been indicted of a federal crime (Nixon was pardoned before he was ever charged), so we have an interesting political and legal season coming up.

Given Trump’s penchant for stalling, I doubt he’ll be tried before the November elections next year.

But I think most readers here will have a spring in their step today. I know I do!