'Harry Potter' Actress' Brother Sentenced in Her 'Honor Beating'

[jlprk]

Murder and the most serious crimes aren't the issue. The crimes in the media are the top 2% of the pyramid. The 98% are smaller oversentenced crimes, the ones you don't read about. As the article says, when Republicans are in the majority, suddenly they have to stop their attack dog tactics on Democrats, and actually face up to the deficits their hatred causes.

As for your sexist example of man hitting woman (you don't care about woman hitting man, e.g. when my psycho ex-wife broke my glasses in half unprovoked--but I would never dream of destroying her life over it with the legal system), so-called "punches" in the original post's family fight, where there were no injuries and the whole crime was a figment of a judge's imagination, have, as I said in this thread, 5% the power of a punch in a street fight. They aren't real punches unless they cause a real injury. Did you experience reality or are you an only child? With your sexism, you certainly had no sisters, and probably no brothers.

I may have been belted all my childhood, and I may have been really angry at my father the Colonel, but I would never dream of destroying his livelihood over it, causing him (like almost all felons) to be underemployed the rest of his life, possibly living under a bridge some of that time, ineligible for social services like a place to sleep, etc. See, I was taught to love, unselfishly like Jesus, not to be full of hateful spite for some imagined abstract crime when the uninjured so-called victim is crying to the judge to stop this hateful nonsense, as in the article in the original post.

I can be critical of religion, but there is plenty of it I like. Deficits are pulling the extremist legal system back in the direction of Christian love. Back to how it was before Republicans vastly increased prison sentences in the 1980s, flush with Reagan deficits to spend.

And I haven't even addressed the non-criminal nonsense. I have a hearing Friday. One lawyer pulled a hundred thou out of the family inheritance. Another one who claims to represent my sister is after my brother and me for a couple hundred thousand for selling my parents' house late, after its value had dropped. We opposed their forcing us to sell, so it was sold late. He says we owe my incapacitated sister damages. She lives with me, I take care of her for free, and she opposes the whole lawsuit, but her say doesn't count. If I lose this money it will shorten my life. Supposedly she will get it, but actually her Guardian will and increase his fees with it, total expected $300K. She sees none of her inheritance. He takes $110 per hour to drive her to medical appointments and deliver her meds, minimum wage tasks. I can do that for free. She can drive and do it for free. But the asinine legal system says that I have to lose a few years of my life to enrich the unnecessary Guardian. There are so many lawyers making money off of the siblings that it's like a convention at the hearings.

You might be surprised that the families who fight, when young, are the ones who stick together, when old, against giant evil forces. That's because we have passion for each other. If there's no negative passion, there will also be no positive passion, just bored disconnected people who don't care, which is what the legal system wants the family to be. Deficits will make this country return to good old fashioned values and silence the money-grubbers who hate human emotions and want us to be robots. Passion and human love will again be legal when we are poorer, and it's coming in our lifetimes from Republican social engineering to channel most money from the bottom 98% to the top 2%. As Charles Dickens wrote, "The law is a ass."

http://www.bartleby.com/100/470.22.html

 

[BrianFromWA]

bumped for "whacky Islamic honor killings"

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-national/20110222/US.Westernized.Woman.Killed/

PHOENIX — A Phoenix jury convicted an Iraqi immigrant of second-degree murder Tuesday for running over and killing his daughter in a case termed an "honor killing" by prosecutors who said the father carried out the attack because he believed his daughter had become too Westernized.

Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 50, also was convicted of aggravated assault for injuries suffered by the mother of his daughter's boyfriend during the October 2009 incident in a suburban Phoenix parking lot, as well as two counts of leaving the scene of an accident.

Maricopa County prosecutors told jurors during the trial that he mowed down Noor Almaleki, 20, with his Jeep Cherokee because he believed she brought dishonor to the family. He had wanted her to be a traditional Iraq woman, while she refused an arranged marriage, went to college and had a boyfriend.

The case brought nationwide outrage after prosecutors deemed it an "honor killing."

Defense lawyers called Noor's death and the severe injuries to Amal Khalaf an accident. They said he only wanted to spit on the older woman, who Almaleki thought helped his daughter stay away from her family. Khalaf had taken Noor in several times after she left home between 2007 and 2009, and that was a cause of increasing friction between the families.

A detective testified that Almaleki acknowledged under questioning by police that he intentionally ran her over. But the transcript of the taped interview showed he repeatedly called the incident an accident. Khalaf also testified during the four-week trial, saying he ignored her screams to stop before he struck her and then ran down Noor.

The defense called no witnesses. They argued for a lesser charge, saying Almaleki made a split-second decision that he should be held accountable for but that he did not intend to kill anyone.

His lawyer said during opening statements that the truck driver from southern Iraq was angry at the older woman, and he was trying to drive by and spit on her when she jumped in front of his Jeep.

He swerved, but could not avoid accidentally hitting her and running over his daughter, his lawyer said.

Almaleki, who wore headphones as he listened to an interpreter, showed little emotion when the jury read the verdict.

The court was scheduled to convene Wednesday to hear testimony from Khalaf on the aggravated assault conviction. She remained composed Tuesday as the verdict was read and declined reporters' request for comment, as did prosecutors.

Defense attorneys said in a written statement that they were "pleased the jury took the time necessary to consider all of the evidence in this important case," but declined further comment.

The incident happened on Oct. 20, 2009, outside a state Department of Economic Security office in the west Phoenix suburb of Peoria. Noor had gone with Khalaf to interpret and the women were waiting to be helped when Faleh Almaleki came into the office.

He left after a short time, and Khalaf said she was worried he might do something violent toward Noor, so she drove around the parking lot to make sure he had left. She testified that she was so nervous, she locked her keys in her van and had to call her son to bring another set.

They left the office to go to a nearby restaurant when the Jeep bore down on the women.

Almaleki fled to Mexico and then London, where he was detained and then returned to the U.S.

 

[MARIS61]

wait a second..."rallies and workshops" equals violence? In a thread about punching, choking and dragging? Seriously?

Read about Hitler's early years and get back to me.

 

[BrianFromWA]

I have (pretty extensively). What do you want me to teach you?

 

[TradeNurkicNow]

bumped for "whacky Islamic honor killings"

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-national/20110222/US.Westernized.Woman.Killed/

Sounds more like a "whacky Iraqi honor killing" to me.

 

[MARIS61]

I have (pretty extensively). What do you want to teach me?

Certain kinds of "rallies and workshops" create violence in otherwise non-violent people.

In fact, nearly all really evil leaders throughout history have had a personal magnetism that allowed them to incite people to horrific actions simply by getting them revved up in a rally.

Religious leaders are no exception.

Being in the military, I'm sure you've seen mob action up close and personal.

That shit doesn't just happen. There's always some loudmouth that starts the ball rolling. Somebody has to start the fire and fan the flames.

 

[BrianFromWA]

it's actually a good point, but I'll make a distinction here...tell me what you think.

Hitler's early rallies, (aside from the Beer Hall Putsch, which was a violent attempt at a takeover rather than a "rally") played upon fears and problems that people were going through and attributed them to various groups (the Jews, the generals who signed the Treaty of Versailles, the puppet gov't of the Weimar Republic, etc). As a manifestation he sent out the Brownshirts to attack people, burn down houses, eventually physically silencing his opposition. It wasn't the power of his oratory or the logic of his message that caused the violence in his rise to power, it was the henchmen on his payroll that were ordered to pillage, punish and intimidate. And even after he came to power in 1931, it wasn't until he'd received the emergency powers from his cronies in the Reichstag that he was able to pass the horrific laws that ended up consuming Germany.

As far as the Uganda rallies (and to be completely honest, I know only what I've read in the links above) go, it seems as if they were much the same as those in Atlanta or various other places around the country and world. At the rallies that I'm familiar with it's not "go forth and do your Christian duty to punish gay people! They're the cause for our problems!" (continuing the Hitler parallel). And it didn't seem as if the Uganda stuff was Christian mobs patrolling the countryside looking for victims. It seemed the work of people bent on causing trouble.

I guess a more apropos analogy would be with the WI teachers' union rally. Regardless of how you feel about the issue, I think we'd both agree that neither side is stating that the other should be harmed for their views. Yet if a protester (or 10!) show up and start bashing in windows, looting, and in general causing panic and riot (which actually can start the "mob action" you speak of) it doesn't mean that protesting and rallies cause violent acts; it's that people who break the law while doing it should be punished.