--- Randy Remote <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Wait. We're not talking about demonizing all > "Arab-looking" > people. We're talking about people who were seen > with > Timothy McVeigh shortly before the bombing. > Hopefully you > read the articles Kakki posted. There were several > people who > saw this. If nothing else, it bears looking into, > but for some > reason, the authorities seem to be ignoring it or > covering it up. > Timothy McVeigh said he acted alone. They didn't > waste any > time executing him. Makes you wonder.
This is true. They were in a hell of a hurry to execute him, when other people linger on death row for years. But that could have been the gov'ts way of trying to deal with the public outrage over this act. A prolonged knee-jerk reaction. On the one hand, if you believe in capital punishment (I don't), then it makes sense for the punishment to follow as closely on the crime as possible. But what if he didn't do it? I'm not saying McVeigh didn't - it seems pretty clear that he did but he constantly acted as if he were on drugs, or dissociated from the whole thing, showed no feeling - was he a sociopath? was he sedated most of the time? who knows? but that kind of stuff pisses people off, so maybe that's why they were in such a hurry to get rid of him. > We can't be so PC that even identifying someone's > appearance > is considered racism. That's true and if that's the only description you have, OK - but what exactly is "middle-eastern-looking?" People from India or Pakistan could be "middle-eastern-looking", but they're not from what we think of as the middle-east. My kids get mixed up between darker-skinned people from India or Sri Lanka and Africans - that is, they call them all "black" if they're describing them. And people are always getting accents mixed up. So if a witness describes a person by their skin-colour or their accent, let's hope the investigators factor into the whole thing that people really aren't that observant. > The subject of racial profiling is an entirely > different one. The > feds have arrested, detained, and mistreated alot of > people of > middle eastern descent since Sept. 11, and continue > to cover it > up, for which there is no excuse. I totally agree. My 2 cents on that is that the average cop (or cop-like entity!), like the average person, is looking for the easy answer, so detaining *anyone* with dark skin is easier for them than looking more closely at it, and by golly, they're doing their job, aren't they? On a slightly related subject, I've always wonder why, during WWII, Japanese-Americans and Japanese-Canadians were placed in internment camps, but German-As and German-Cs were not. I also wonder how many people of Chinese background were hassled and mixed up with Japanese people. It's just so easy to categorize people by skin colour. (How the hell do the Northern Irish figure out who's protestant and who's Catholic?) ===== Catherine Toronto ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
