Sunday, April 29, 2007

NEED FOR HATE CRIMES LEGISLATION

The following is a reply to a Christofascist minister who sent out an "emergency appeal" about the pending vote on federal hate crimes legislation. According to this bigot posturing as a martyr, this legislation would ban hate speech so that "Christians would not even be able to read aloud anti homosexual passages from the BIBLE in their Church services. Oh, the poor martyred dears! The following post clearly states that I have read the Act and it only makes ACTS illegal and not thoughts or utterances.
I came across this despicable clerical bigots "emergency appeal" on the discussion of the twin cities 9/11 Meetup group. The Bush administration deliberately inflicted shock and awe on the American people by allowing the planes that Al Quaida hijacked to reach their targets and preplanting explosives in World Trade Center Towers 1, 2, and 7 to produce a controlled demolition. Building don't collapse straight down into their basements unless explosives have been carefully prepositioned.
9/11 has attracted activists from both the right and the left so, in becoming active in this group, I have encountered some people that are hard to take.

I read the federal hate crimes legislation that the Christofascists are alleging to be so terrible. It required some effort to focus on the meaning of the law amid all the interpolations the Christ Crazies interjected but is should be clear that the Act punishes only acts and not thoughts. (I have interjected some of my own justified hate speech here.)
To give an example, the Christofascists, Islamofascists and Judaeofascists have the legal right to think whatever bigoted thoughts they wish about me and other Gay people. But if someone throws a rock through my window, that is an ACT which is punishable by law. If they attach a note to the rock reading "Get out of town, faggot!", that is objective evidence that the INTENT was to express hate against me and other Gay people. There is really nothing subjective about how intent is determined.
This is not the only case in which the law considers intent. The punishment for first degree murder is greater than for second degree murder. It is first degree murder if the murderer cooly and deliberately planned the murder in advance. It is second degree murder if the murderer committed it in a fit of passion or anger. Here the law specifies a greater penalty for a crime not because of the murderer's beliefs or speech but first, for his ACT, and second, his INTENT in commiting that ACT.
Acts of assault, robbery, rape and murder cause other members of the community to fear they will be victims of those crimes also. When these crimes are motivated by hate against members of a particular group -- and as I have explained, there are objective methods of determining whether the crime was motivated by hate for a particular group-- the fear of being similarly victimized is even greater for members of that particular group than it is for members of the general public. For instance, it caused me more anxiety reading about the murders that occur in this city than I would have if I lived in a city or world where these crimes don't occur. We all worry that we could have been in that particular place at that particular time and, more importantly, whether we will someday be at the wrong place and time. But I experienced greater anxiety a few years ago when someone shot another Gay person in Loring Park and later shot and wounded several more Gays down on the Franklin Avernue River Flats.
Another reason for hate crime laws is that public attorneys all have to priortize the crimes they prosecute. Of course, the most serious crimes, i.e. the crimes with higher penalties, will be the ones the public attorney prosecutes first. In the 1980's, I heard an account on public radio about a Black family who was being harassed after they moved in to a white neighborhood. They couldn't get the County Attorney to do anything about it at first. But after a hate crimes law was passed, which enhanced the seriousness of the crimes, the County Attorney prosecuted. Again, the racist punks who were harassing the Black family were subjected to an enhanced penalty not because they had racist thoughts or even expressed these thoughts in speech. Their INTENT was considered only because it was the motivation for their ACTS.
There are many reasons why it is in the interest of the members of a community to punish hate crimes with a greater penalty. First, as I have said, it creates more fear among members of the community that is the object of such hate. But secondly, such hate crimes, if continued long enough, can provoke hate crimes by members of the minority community against members of the majority community. (Of course, these crimes would also be hate crimes and subject to a greater penalty.) In some situations, this can escalate to armed conflict between different communities. Perhaps if the first hate crimes by Sunnis against Shites or Shites against Sunnis in Bagdad had been punished more severely as hate crimes, the citizens of Bagdad would not now be in such great fear of becoming cictims of hate crimes. (Of course that is only a tiny part of a solution in Bagdad. They would have to have their own government instead of one set up by an invading foreign power and that government would have to be a just government.
That said, now I will indulge myself in a little hate speech. You Christofascists and Christ Crazies have spent 1500 years of the last two millennia burning members of my community at the stake. You have the right to hold whatever bigoted and odious beliefs you want about Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transgenders and Intersexed Persons. But you do not have the right to express your bigotry in acts. I don't see why you can't be born as many times as you like and be as disgusted as you like about our sexual practices but then LEAVE US ALONE! Any person who has not suffered brain damage should be able to easily grasp this distincction. But then, most people manage to escape brain damage the first time they are born but being born twice is pushing your luck too far.
And you Christofascists bleat like the southern racists who claimed their "states rights" were being violated when they were no longer allowed to discriminate through segregation. When a psychologist with anti Gay views was no longer allowed to do employment screening for the Minneapolis Police, you Christ Scum bleated as if you were martyrs when you asked, "Can Christians not be employed in any capacity by the City of Minneapolis?" Yes you can! Our belief in freedom of thought and speech precludes us from keeping your kind out. It is only when you ACT on your bigotry while on the job that makes you subject to dismissal. As an analogy, someone with racists views can work for the city of Minneapolis. But if they called Black people the n word when they came to their department for city services, they would and quite properly would be fired!
The only thing I would add is that our Constitution with its first amendment protects us from being tyrannized by the kind of hate speech laws they have in Canada and Europe. Of course, we should all remain on guard to prevent our courts from making the first amendment as much a non entity as they have made the fifth. But I have read the hate crimes legislation attacked on this meetup and it only punishes ACTS. It enhances the penalty when there is hateful INTENT motivating the commission of the ACT, but again, the law also considers intent when it punishes first degree murder more severely than second degree murder.
Robert Halfhill rhalfhill@juno.com

PS. The only thing I forgot to deal with was the Christofascist minister's placing great emphasis on his claim that perceived membership in the target group was unspecified, implying that this vagueness allows all sorts of horrible provisions to be slipped through. It is really not hard to understand what perceived group membership, as in Gay or perceived to be Gay means, when you consider a story I read in a book about the Gay world when I was just coming out. A man was waiting at a stop for a streetcar. A group of teenagers pulled up in a car. "Are you queer?" one of the teenagers asked. "Would it make any difference if I were?" the man asked.
That was the last thing he ever said. The teenaged punks beat him to death. He turned out to have been a married heterosexual so he was a victim of murder because he was perceived to be Gay instead of actually being Gay.
This reminds me of another Christofascist minister, Roger Magnuson, who asked during a debate after the Christ Crazies had put an intiative on the ballot in 1978 to repeal St. Paul's Gay Rights Ordinance. "What does manifest mean?" Magnuson kept asking over and over. The Ordinance referred to manifesting traits of group membership but it referered to nothing more sinister than, for example, someone learning you are Gay when they see you going into a Gay bar. By going into the Gay bar, you were manifesting your Gayness but Magnuson kept implying it meant something like commiting sex acts in public or on other people without their consent.

Monday, April 23, 2007

PLIGHT OF HIV+ INMATE IN HINDS COUNTY, MS, JAIL

I have just emailed the American Civil Liberties Union about the
plight of HIV positive inmates in the Hinds county jail in
Mississippi. The ACLU letter should explain the situation
adequately. I am requesting that people send letters protesting this
situation to the Hinds County Board of Supervisors at:
Hinds County Board of Supervisors
Hinds County Chancery Court Building
316 South President Street
Jackson, Mississippi,39201

The phone number of the Board of Supervisors is 601-698-6794.
The Supervisors are:
District 1 Charles Barbour
District 2 Douglas (Doug) Anderson, President
District 3 Peggy Hobson Calhoun
District 4 Ronnie Chappell, Vice President
District 5 George S. Smith
County Administrator Anthony Brister

On April 11, 2007, I sent you a letter about Karl Tyler, an HIV
positive inmate at Hinds
County Jail in Mississippi. Previously, in the late 1990's to early
2000's, you helped
when I contacted you about the plight of the HIV+ inmates at Parchman
State Prison in
Mississippi. Although Karl Tyler, a former Parchman inmate, told me
things are much
better at Parchman, his March 14th letter indicates that things are
just as bad in
Mississippi's jails.
A few days ago, I received a letter from Karl Tyler with an
affidavit signed by 16
inmates indicating that the situation is much worse. The Medical
Director at the jail,
Ruth Wyatt, "is denying HIV/AIDS inmates immediate access to their
HIV-Medication,
even after we report the Medications we take while being booked in.
We are told to put in
a Sick-Call-Request and charged 5 dollars to try to obtain
medication. We see the doctor
and still don't get medication. And told we will be sent to the
Medical Mall which might
take a month or two. This is a stall tactics by Medical because the
M.D. can prescribe
these Medicines which would only take a couple of days."
The inmates are denied all program participation except anger
management, which Tyler
and the other inmate with hepatitis C are allowed to attend. "As to
this day no
HIV/AIDS offenders has been allowed to take substance abuse
counseling, GED class, work
detail, laundry house keeping, reclassification to trustee status, or
any job or classes.
Mr Tyler also says "We are exposed to mice, spiders, mice feces,
fungus in showers,
cold food, mildew in cell 5155, roof leaking upstairs which runs
downstairs into
cells."
In addition, inmate Stanley Washington sent me a copy of his
Inmate program request
form which says that the inmates' food is allowed to sit for 30
minutes in stroform
containers until it becomes cold. This allows the mice time to eat
through the containers
and make the food unsanitary.
Inmate Willie Jenkins informs me that he has diabetes, high blood
pressure and
seizures. He is unable to get his glucose and blood pressure under
control because of the
food served in the jail.
I had hoped to save time by contacting you by email and that your
requirement that you
be contacted by letter would not apply in this case since I had
already sent you a snail
mail letter about this case on April 11, 2007. However, upon
rereading the inmates'
letters of April 14th, I see that they asked me to send the
affidavits to the ACLU, so I
guess I will have to forward the entire communication to you by snail
mail. I wrote to
them and gave them your address and phone number but the two letters
they have sent me
since I wrote to them on April 11th show no indication that they have
received my letter.
So I don't know if the Hinds County Jail is letting my letters
through to the inmates.
When I contacted you about the Parchman inmates in the 1990's, one
of your officers
explained to me that your organization was not equiped to respond
immediately and it would
take some time for your board to decided whether to take the case.
It took your board
thirteen months to decide. I hope, since this case could be
considered a continuation of
the Parchman case, that it will not take another thirteen months
before you decide to take
this case. Since Karl Tyler has only 28 T-cells, and has hepatitus C
in addition to AIDS,
I am afraid he will not survive if he doesn't receive some help
before thirteen months
have passed. I am also afraid that Willie Jenkins with his untreated
diabetes, high blood
pressure and seizures will not live another thirteen months.
Robert Halfhill
125 Oak Grove, Apt 41
Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403-4308
Phone: 612-870-8026
Email: rhalfhill@juno.com

Letters of support to Karl Tyler can be sent to:
Karl Tyler #072480
Hinds County Detention Facility-Raymond
1450 County Farm Road
Raymond, Mississippi, 39154

Everyone should understand that whatever their feelings
about "getting tough on crime and criminals," the U.S. Constitution
forbids "cruel and unusual punishment." Cruel and unusual punishment
includes not only the Medieval punishments of burning at the stake,
boiling in oil and death on the stretch rack but also depriving a
prisoner of medical care and allowing him or her to die slowly of
their disease. In addition, the treatment of prisoners with AIDS in
Mississippi reflects extremely backward attitudes and fear of people
with HIV/AIDS, the fear of infection from inmates with AIDs being so
great that they are not even allowed to attend substance abuse
counseling or GED classes. It is important to fight these attitudes
whenever they rear their ugly head.

Robert Halfhill rhalfhill@juno.com

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Monday, April 09, 2007

LIBERALS ASSUME THAT COMPROMISE IS ALWAYS THE BEST TACTIC

THIS IS IN RESPONSE TO SOMEONE OF THE MN-POLITICS-NATIONAL DISCUSSION LIST WHO ARGUED WITH RESPECT TO KEITH ELLISON'S VOTE THAT WE HAVE TO COMPROMISE, THAT WE HAVE TO GIVE UP SOME OF WHAT WE WANT IN ORDER TO GET PART OF IT, ETC.

David, what difference does it make whether the bill Keith Ellison
voted for passes or not? Contrary to what you posted, the deadline
is not firm. It contains enough loopholes to drive an escalation
through. The version passed by one of the Congressional houses is
nonbinding. It does not call for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from
the Middle East, allowing them to remain in Kuwait, or even in rural
areas of Iraq away from the major population centers, so they can
intervene if the American established Iraqi government shows signs of
being overwhelmed by the insurgency.
While compromise may be the best course in many situations,
liberals and other political tendencies not only assume that
compromise is ALWAYS the best tactic but react by conditioned reflex,
unthinkingly, and respond to any supposed and alleged compromise by
calling for its acceptance, whether the "compromise" is really a
compromise or contains any actual concessions or advantages.
In such as situation, the only tactic for a real antiwar
Congressperson to follow is to vote against any further war funding
period.
Robert Halfhill Loring Park


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ELLISON SOLD OUT ON IRAQ WAR FUNDING

THIS WAS PART OF THE DISCUSSION ON MN POLITICS NATIONAL ON ELLISON'S VOTE ON FUNDING THE IRAQ WAR. ALTHOUGH I HAVE IDEAS ABOUT THE POLITICAL SITUATION EVERY DAY, I AM FINDING IT DIFFICULT TO FIND ENOUGH TIME TO KEEP UP THIS BLOG EVERY DAY. MEANWHILE I WILL UPDATE READERS WITH MY POSTS ON VARIOUS ONGOING INTERNET DISCUSSIONS.

What Jordan Kushner points out and Mike Fratto does not realize is
that even if the Democratic bill on the Iraq war passes, even over a
Presidential veto, the war could continue with no changes after the
supposed "deadline" has passed. Passing the bill would be a
psychological defeat for Bush but it would make no real difference
for the continuance of the war.
Therefore, the only effective course for an antiwar Congress
member would be to vote against the war funding period. Remember
that while it requires two-thirds of both houses to override a Bush
veto, it take only 50% plus one of either house to cut off further
war funding.
Robert Halfhill Loring Park


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Sunday, April 08, 2007

SOCIALISM INVOLVES AN EXTENSION OF DEMOCRACY INTO THE ECONOMIC SPHERE, NOT TOTALITARIANISM.

FOR ABOUT THE LAST SIX MONTHS, I HAVE BEEN INVOLVED IN THE LOCAL, TWIN CITIES 9/11 TRUTH GROUP, WHICH ATTEMPTS TO EXPOSE THE GOVERNMENT'S COMPLICITY IN THE EVENTS OF 9/11/01. PEOPLE FROM BOTH THE RIGHT AND THE LEFT HAVE BEEN MOVED TO LOOK INTO THE MANY UNEXPLAINED ASPECTS OF 9/11 SO THE GROUP ENCOMPASES A BROAD SPECTRUM OF POLITICAL VIEWS. I WROTE THE FOLLOWING ON APRIL 8, 2007 IN RESPONSE TO AN AN ANTI SOCIALIST POST ON THE LOCAL 9/11 MEETUP GROUP.

When Tim Booth attacks socialism, he neglects to consider that a group of people can own property together. A maaried couple, whether they are a same or oppisite sexed couple, can own their property in common without either partner feeling that they have been forced to give up their time or property to another. Two business partners can also own their business together without either feeling that they have been enslaved by some collective duopoly. And more than two, in fact many, even thousands or more can own property jointly by incorporating.
Once you allow vastly disproportinate concentrations of private wealth, those who possess the wealth will inevitably be able to and thus will use that wealth to influence and even control the government. Look at the funds already raised for the 2008 presidential campaign. The funds raised has already reached 25 million and her secone place challenger has raised 23 million. You can't even run a campaign, in fact you can't even make many of the voters aware that you even exist, without going to those that own that kind of money!
You might try the thought experiment of imagining a feudal system. with the feudal lords owning the great wealth that comes from their large landed estates, but also having the added feature of one person, one vote elections and universal suffrage so that the peasants and other classes could elect the government. The feudal lords would still control the government through their great wealth, since no one could run for office without going to the feudal lords for money. It would be ridiculous to think that either a democracy or a republic could exist under those conditions, but no more ridiculous than to think that either a democracy or a republic can exist under captalism with its vast accumulations of private wealth. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said: "We can have Democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few...but we cannot have both."
Time Booth has written and talked at length on the Federal Reserve which he says has resulted in trillions of dollars being owned in private hands. I have pointed out to Tim that if this is true, it was precisely the owners of the great wealth which capitalism made it possible for private individuals to own who used their influence to cause Congress to pass the amendment establishing the Federal Reserve. Tim argued that it was pushed through Congress when most of the Congress had gone home for recess. But this does not matter. It was precisely the owners of the great concentrations of private wealth made possible by capitalism who influenced Congress to pass the Federal Reserve amendment when few were around. Indeed, I would say compelled, since, even then, it was impossible to campaign or even let the voters know you existed without going to these owners of great wealth, hat in hand, to ask for the money needed to campaign.
As I have pointed out, the 9/11 truth movement has attracted people from both the right and the left. I come from the left with a socialist background. Socialism is not what they had in Red China or the Soviet Union where a small caste controls the economy to provide their own wealth and priviledge. Socialism involves an extension of democracy to the economic sphere in that the workers in a given work site would elect their managers instead of those managers being appointed from above to order them around. This democratic selection would be extended to the workers in a given industry or geographhic area electing their managers and this would be continued on up to the national and eventually, planetary legislature. The means of production would be owned by everybody collectively but no one would have reason to feel that they were being forced to give up their time or property to some vaque collective since they would each be one of the owners. Their elected representative, with the constant imput that results from being elected and subject to a recall election if a sufficient number of people petitioned for it, would be able to plan the economy and the allocation of resources rationally, thereby avoiding the cycles of boom and bust and some people living in abject poverty.
Some of the people in the 9/11 truth movement may attribute the threatening and urgent problems of the world to the Illuminat or the Federal Reserve Bankers. I attribute them to a small ruling class, the capitalist class, who are responsible for the stolen elections of 2000 and 2004, the abandonment of the poor in New Orleans during Katrina, and 9/11, which was intended to set off the wave of super patriotic hysteria that was intented to facilitate the establishment of the totalitarian dictatorship necessary for carrying out the plans of the Project for a New American Century and the establishment of a new American World Empire.
Robert Halfhill

PROBLEM WITH BELIEVING THINGS ON FAITH

THIS LETTER WAS SENT TO THE STAR TRIBUNE ON SATURDAY APRIL 7, 2007 IN RESPONSE TO E.J. DIONNE'S COLUMN, THE PROBLEM WITH THE NEO-ATHEISTS. THE THREE PARAGRAPHS ABOUT THE PROOFS FOR GOD'S EXISTENCE HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THIS POST. THEY WOULD HAVE MADE THE LETTER TOO LONG TO HAVE MUCH CHANCE OF BEING PRINTED.

E.J. Dionne, Jr., in his "The Problem With The Neo-Atheists in
Saturday's STAR TRIBUNE states that the problem is our "dogmatic
insistence" that "religion is primarily destructive."
This problem threatens whenever you start believing things on
faith and without proof. For without the aid of reason, you are left
with no means of evaluating your belief and you are as likely to end
up with Nazism, Jim Jones, and the Taliban as something benign and
harmless. Thus it is no wonder the 9/11 has been described as the
ultimate faith based action.
Many contemporary theologians have given up on attempts to prove God's existence. But for those who still believe that the old arguments are valid and that believing in God thus not involve any of the problems that result from believing without proof, a little background is in order.
The old cosmological that there must be a God to explain how the universe came to exist, assumes that everything that exists must have a cause. But this means that God would require a Super God to explain how He or She came to exist, and the Super God would require a Super Super God... and so on ad infinitum with never any explanation of how the whole series came to exist.
The argument from design fails for the same reason since the argument that the universe is so complex and intricate that it must have a designer would mean that anything complex and intricate enough to be the Designer of the universe would require a Super Designer to design Him or Her and the Super Designer would require a Super Super Designer... and so on ad infinitum.
Furthermore, once you have abandoned reason as a tool for
evaluating your beliefs and start believing that some person or
religion has control over whether you spend eternity in agony or
ecstasy, you will do anything to retain their favor. Thus Voltaire
said that "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you
commit atrocities." Blais Pascal wrote "Men never do evil so
completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious
conviction." And James Weinrich states "We will always have good men
doing good things and evil men doing evil things. But to make good
men do evil things, it takes religion."
It is therefore no accident that it is religion that has fought
tooth and nail against women's reproductive freedom, as well as their
equal rights in general, and equal rights for Gay People. Christian
ministers used to quote the BIBLE to justify slavery.
Robert Halfhill
125 Oak Grove, Apt 41
Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403-4308
Phone: 612-870-8026
Email: rhalfhill@juno.com


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