Indicted Rutgers student Dharun Ravi and criminologist Sameer Hinduja are both "overzealous", Clementi is the Victim
A printed quote (has to be verified) supposedly from Hinduja:
“I understand the prosecutor wants to send a clear message, and that this case has and will continue to receive the national spotlight,” says Sameer Hinduja, a criminologist at Florida Atlantic University and the codirector of the Cyberbullying Research Center. “But pursuit of such charges is, in my opinion, incredibly overzealous.”
Really, should this guy, this criminal criminologist Hinduja be co-director of such a sensitive, presumably human-rights-justice-oriented group?
There are two "overzealous" actors in this sad, horrific real life-death narrative.
1. If anyone is overzealous it is Dharun Ravi, the Rutgers student who spied on Clementi's most private moments, broadcast words and images about Clementi's most private and personal identity.
I am wondering what parenting and which siblings and peers Ravi had that partly influenced his criminal and inhuman actions against Clementi. Ravi is of course entirely responsible for his own criminal acts. Let him do the time.
2. Sameer Hinduja, the co-director no less, of the Cyberbullying Research Center is "overzealous" in whitewashing Dharun Ravi's criminal intent and acts.
Dr. Chithra Karunakaran
City University of New York [CUNY]
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
www.disqus.com/EthicalDemocracy
@EthicalDemocrac
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Daily Beast copyright
story by Jessica Bennett on Yahoo (did she get her quotes right?)
Should Tyler Clementi's Bully Be Charged With a Hate Crime?
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Jessica Bennett – Fri Apr 22, 11:22 am ET
NEW YORK – Should Tyler Clementi's Bully Be Charged With a Hate Crime?Tyler Clementi's roommate—who broadcast the gay teen's sexual encounter with a man, leading to his suicide—could get 10 years in prison. Jessica Bennett on cyberbullying's new price.
It was perhaps the most brutal example of a private moment gone public. A shy 18-year-old, an accomplished violinist, learns a month into the school year that his college roommate has been spying, via a computer webcam, on his sexual relations with another young man. This student is not openly gay, nor does he know how many of his peers have viewed the recording. So it’s easy to imagine that Tyler Clementi was assuming the worst when, two days later, on September 21, the Rutgers freshman jumped 202 feet to his death from the George Washington Bridge.
Clementi’s death set off an immediate firestorm. Gay rights groups, devastated by the latest in a string of recent teen suicides, called for his roommate, Dharun Ravi—along with Ravi's alleged accomplice, Molly Wei—to be charged with hate crimes. Schools and law enforcement agencies began tearing through legislation to prevent bullying in the future. “Bullied to Death,” quickly becoming the year's most-discussed social crisis, was the talk of cable news shows all over the country.
On Wednesday, the case made headlines yet again when a Middlesex, New Jersey grand jury issued a 15-count indictment against Ravi, adding bias intimidation to the previous charges of privacy invasion—essentially, alleging that Ravi’s act rises to the level of hate crime because Clementi was gay. "The criminal case is about the line between acceptable conduct and unacceptable conduct... particularly in this era of electronic media," the attorney for the family of Clementi told Reuters. (Neither he nor Ravi’s attorney returned request for comment.) In order to prove the claim in court, prosecutors will have to show that Ravi’s motivation for the act was spurred by Clementi’s sexual orientation, and was not simply a nasty college prank gone terribly wrong. If convicted, the 19-year-old could face up to 10 years in prison.
Experts say the case has entered new legal territory—a hate crime charge for what has become, rationally or not, every parent’s worst fear: cyberbullying. New Jersey passed one of the strictest anti-bullying laws in the nation in the months following Clementi’s death, and 45 states now have such policies on their books. We now know that 1 in 5 students is harassed each year, along with a shocking 9 in 10 gay teens, according to the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network. Kids who are bullied are five times more likely to be depressed, and nearly 160,000 of them skip school each day, fearful of their peers. The problem is epidemic.
But as painful as Clementi's story is to hear about—and as much as the indictment has been applauded by some activists—there are legal experts who question whether the punishment fits the crime. Today’s world of cyberbullying is no doubt more potent than the bullying of yore. With smart phones and social media following kids wherever they go, the end of the school day no longer marks a reprieve from the taunts and torment bullies dole out. But most cases of this kind are infinitely more complicated than the public discourse makes them out to be. “People are thirsty for these quick fixes,” says Samuel Goldberg, a former New York prosecutor and legal analyst. “It was a horrible thing that happened, there’s no question. But I think people’s knee-jerk reaction is to simply throw the book at these kids.”
"Pursuit of such charges is, in my opinion, incredibly overzealous.”
Which brings us to the story of Phoebe Prince, the 15-year-old Massachusetts girl who brought bullying into the national spotlight early last year. Prince killed herself in January 2010, after suffering months of alleged verbal torment by her high school peers. Five of those former peers, all minors, have been indicted on felony charges that range from stalking and harassment to violation of civil rights; like Ravi, they face up to 10 years in prison. A sixth defendant, now 19, faces charges of statutory rape related to consensual sex with Prince when he was a senior. Each of these students was forced to drop out of school, many put off hopes of graduation, and one lost a football scholarship to college.
The public was quick to indict on their own in Prince’s case, long before the facts were in. As more details emerged, however, we learned that Prince had tried to kill herself before, was on medication for depression, and was struggling with her parents’ separation. As Goldberg put it at the time, “What happened until innocent until proven guilty? It's politically incorrect to even suggest that. These cases are very high-profile, but very few people know all the facts involved.”
Prince and Clementi’s cases have brought long-overdue attention to the bullying issue. But they have also shown that efforts to solve bullying problems through crusading prosecution can do more harm than good. Ravi and Wei were both over 18 when their crime was committed, but they were still teens. There is longstanding research to show that law is not a deterrent to young people, who often respond emotionally to their surroundings. Ultimately, labeling teens "criminals," say criminologists, will only make it harder for them to engage with society when they return. “I understand the prosecutor wants to send a clear message, and that this case has and will continue to receive the national spotlight,” says Sameer Hinduja, a criminologist at Florida Atlantic University and the codirector of the Cyberbullying Research Center. “But pursuit of such charges is, in my opinion, incredibly overzealous.”
Under the glare of a national spotlight, nobody would dare argue that Ravi’s crime go unpunished. But there are certainly details that have yet to make their way into the public eye. For one: Ravi’s attorney’s insistence that the images of Clementi—while widely reported to have been “live-streamed”—were never in fact transmitted beyond a single computer belonging to Ravi’s alleged accomplice.
Whatever the outcome, Ravi's and Wei's punishments will rightly continue. “They’re going to have to cope with the proverbial blood on their hands for the rest of their lives,” says Hinduja. Whether that's good enough will be decided in court.
Jessica Bennett is a Newsweek senior writer covering society, youth culture and gender. Her special reports, multimedia packages and original Web video have been honored by the New York Press Club, the Newswomen's Club of New York and GLAAD, among other organizations. Follow her on Twitter.
Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
Showing posts with label suicide bomber. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suicide bomber. Show all posts
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Suicide du jour: Discontent, Death & Democracy
Pick a day any day.
Today not far from Kabul a suicider killed himself and 9 others.
That makes 10. All were equally valuable humans with potential.
All were men.
All were clothed in some variation of uniform.
All were clothed to convey a 'message', perform some act of 'service' which included murder.
Death was the intended objective of all who died and death was the result.
Like the rest of US and NATO media, the Reuters story and headline (see below) is constructed to convey a sense that some of the dead were more valued than others. Valuable to whom? The 'foreign' (quote from story) white, male even though they are the invaders and occupiers, while also being soldiers born of mothers and possibly having sisters.
The 4 Afghan soldiers are presented and implied as less valuable, male, brown, the 'locals' the ones in need of being led by the 'foreign' white, now also as dead as the ones they led. The suicide 'attacker' is constructed as faceless, nameless and perhaps he deserves to be (perhaps not), for his act of death, an act he shared with all the others he killed.
The Taliban, created by the USCIA during the US-invented Cold War with the USSR, claimed responsibility for the deaths.
I'll keep working on this blog entry for a while
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Reuters copyright
Suicide attack kills 5 foreign soldiers in Afghanistan
Reuters
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Afghan blast kills nine troops AFP – Map locating Jalalabad in Afghanistan.A Taliban suicide bomber wearing an army uniform killed five foreign …
Afghanistan Slideshow:Afghanistan
Raw Video: Blast kills 5 NATO, 4 Afghan troops Play Video Afghanistan Video:Raw Video: Blast kills 5 NATO, 4 Afghan troops AP
AP Exclusive: Obama on Libya, Afghanistan, Gitmo Play Video Afghanistan Video:AP Exclusive: Obama on Libya, Afghanistan, Gitmo AP
By Rafiq Sherzad – 1 hr 49 mins ago
JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) – A suicide bomber in an Afghan army uniform killed five foreign and four Afghan soldiers on Saturday at a sprawling desert base in the east of the country, the highest toll on NATO-led troops in a single attack for several months.
Afghanistan's Ministry of Defense said it was investigating whether the attacker was an insurgent disguised in a fake uniform, or the latest in a string of "rogue" members of the Afghan security forces who have turned on their colleagues and mentors.
On Friday, a suicide bomber in police uniform evaded tight security in police Headquarters in Kandahar city and killed Khan Mohammad Mujahid, provincial police chief of Kandahar.
The latest attack was inside one of the biggest military installations in increasingly volatile east Afghanistan, home to the 201st Corps of the Afghan army, Afghan officials say.
The NATO-led coalition said it happened on a neighboring foreign base, during a meeting. The two are located close together in the Gamberi desert, a remote area that stretches between Laghman and Nangarhar provinces.
"Our reporting indicates there was a meeting taking place and that is when the attack happened," said Major Tim James, spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)
The attack highlights the pressure the U.S. and NATO troops face as they rapidly train Afghan security forces to pave the way for critical security handover which begins later this year, in the face of a spiraling insurgency.
Over 120 foreign soldiers have died this year in Afghanistan, but this is the deadliest single incident since December last year, when a suicide car bomber killed six NATO and two Afghan troops in Kandahar province.
ROGUE ATTACKERS?
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack in an email statement, saying 12 foreign troops and 14 Afghan soldiers were killed. The group frequently exaggerates casualty figures.
He said the bomber was from central Daikondi province, had enlisted with the Afghan army a month ago and detonated his explosives at a meeting between Afghan and foreign troops.
The Defense Ministry declined immediate comment on whether the attacker was a real soldier, saying it was investigating.
The uniform does not prove conclusively that he was a soldier because Afghan security force outfits are readily available in markets across the country -- although their sale is technically illegal.
Despite tighter vetting began by Afghan authorities for recruits, there are worries about the Taliban's ability to infiltrate the Afghan security forces.
Western forces in Afghanistan have begun to train counter-intelligence agents to help root them out.
U.S. Lieutenant General William Caldwell, head of the U.S. and NATO training mission in Afghanistan, said earlier this week 222 agents had been trained since the program began last summer, and there was a target of 445 agents by the end of the year.
(Writing by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by Emma Graham-Harrison)
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Today not far from Kabul a suicider killed himself and 9 others.
That makes 10. All were equally valuable humans with potential.
All were men.
All were clothed in some variation of uniform.
All were clothed to convey a 'message', perform some act of 'service' which included murder.
Death was the intended objective of all who died and death was the result.
Like the rest of US and NATO media, the Reuters story and headline (see below) is constructed to convey a sense that some of the dead were more valued than others. Valuable to whom? The 'foreign' (quote from story) white, male even though they are the invaders and occupiers, while also being soldiers born of mothers and possibly having sisters.
The 4 Afghan soldiers are presented and implied as less valuable, male, brown, the 'locals' the ones in need of being led by the 'foreign' white, now also as dead as the ones they led. The suicide 'attacker' is constructed as faceless, nameless and perhaps he deserves to be (perhaps not), for his act of death, an act he shared with all the others he killed.
The Taliban, created by the USCIA during the US-invented Cold War with the USSR, claimed responsibility for the deaths.
I'll keep working on this blog entry for a while
------------------------------------------------------------------
Reuters copyright
Suicide attack kills 5 foreign soldiers in Afghanistan
Reuters
Afghan blast kills nine troops AFP – Map locating Jalalabad in Afghanistan.A Taliban suicide bomber wearing an army uniform killed five foreign …
Afghanistan Slideshow:Afghanistan
Raw Video: Blast kills 5 NATO, 4 Afghan troops Play Video Afghanistan Video:Raw Video: Blast kills 5 NATO, 4 Afghan troops AP
AP Exclusive: Obama on Libya, Afghanistan, Gitmo Play Video Afghanistan Video:AP Exclusive: Obama on Libya, Afghanistan, Gitmo AP
By Rafiq Sherzad – 1 hr 49 mins ago
JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) – A suicide bomber in an Afghan army uniform killed five foreign and four Afghan soldiers on Saturday at a sprawling desert base in the east of the country, the highest toll on NATO-led troops in a single attack for several months.
Afghanistan's Ministry of Defense said it was investigating whether the attacker was an insurgent disguised in a fake uniform, or the latest in a string of "rogue" members of the Afghan security forces who have turned on their colleagues and mentors.
On Friday, a suicide bomber in police uniform evaded tight security in police Headquarters in Kandahar city and killed Khan Mohammad Mujahid, provincial police chief of Kandahar.
The latest attack was inside one of the biggest military installations in increasingly volatile east Afghanistan, home to the 201st Corps of the Afghan army, Afghan officials say.
The NATO-led coalition said it happened on a neighboring foreign base, during a meeting. The two are located close together in the Gamberi desert, a remote area that stretches between Laghman and Nangarhar provinces.
"Our reporting indicates there was a meeting taking place and that is when the attack happened," said Major Tim James, spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)
The attack highlights the pressure the U.S. and NATO troops face as they rapidly train Afghan security forces to pave the way for critical security handover which begins later this year, in the face of a spiraling insurgency.
Over 120 foreign soldiers have died this year in Afghanistan, but this is the deadliest single incident since December last year, when a suicide car bomber killed six NATO and two Afghan troops in Kandahar province.
ROGUE ATTACKERS?
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack in an email statement, saying 12 foreign troops and 14 Afghan soldiers were killed. The group frequently exaggerates casualty figures.
He said the bomber was from central Daikondi province, had enlisted with the Afghan army a month ago and detonated his explosives at a meeting between Afghan and foreign troops.
The Defense Ministry declined immediate comment on whether the attacker was a real soldier, saying it was investigating.
The uniform does not prove conclusively that he was a soldier because Afghan security force outfits are readily available in markets across the country -- although their sale is technically illegal.
Despite tighter vetting began by Afghan authorities for recruits, there are worries about the Taliban's ability to infiltrate the Afghan security forces.
Western forces in Afghanistan have begun to train counter-intelligence agents to help root them out.
U.S. Lieutenant General William Caldwell, head of the U.S. and NATO training mission in Afghanistan, said earlier this week 222 agents had been trained since the program began last summer, and there was a target of 445 agents by the end of the year.
(Writing by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by Emma Graham-Harrison)
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