Amazon Eats Up Whole Foods as the New Masters of the Universe Plunder America
Unlike our old moguls, the new Masters don’t promise greater prosperity but a world where most people are to be satiated by a state-provided basic income and occasional ‘gig’ work.
“We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” —Justice Louis Brandeis
With his $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has made clear his determination to dominate every facet of mass retailing, likely at the cost of massive layoffs in the $800 billion supermarket sector.
But this, if anything, understates the ambitions of America’s new ruling class, almost entirely based in San Francisco and Seattle, as it moves to take over industries from entertainment and transportation to energy and space exploration that once thrived and competed outside the reach of the oligarchy.
Brandeis posed his choice at a time when industrial moguls and allied Wall Street financiers dominated the American economy. Like the oligarchs of the past, today’s new Masters of the Universe are reshaping our society in ways that could, if unchallenged, undermine the foundations of our middle-class republic. This new oligarchy has amassed wealth that would impress the likes of J.P. Morgan. Bezos’ net worth is a remarkable $84.7 billion; the Whole Foods acquisition makes him the world’s second richest man, up from the third richest last year. His $600 million gain in Amazon stock from the purchase is more than the combined winnings of Whole Foods’ 10 top shareholders.
The Emergence of Oligarchic America
Founded two decades ago, Amazon revenue has grown eightfold in the last decade. Bezos now wants to “reorganize the world,” as one tech writer put it, “as an Amazon storefront.” He has done this by convincing investors that despite scant profits, the ample rewards of monopoly await. Kroger, or the corner-food store, enjoys no such luxury. With a seemingly endless supply of capital and the prospect of never-ending expansion, the Silicon Valley-Puget Sound oligarchy now accounts for six of the world’s 13 richest people, and virtually all billionaires who are not either very old or merely inheritors.
Apple, even as it it evades American taxes, enjoys a $250 billion cash reserve that surpass that of the United Kingdom and Canada combined. Their new $5 billion headquarters in Cupertino—like those of firms such as Facebook, Alphabet, and Salesforce.com—reflect the kind of heady excess that earlier generations of moguls might have admired. The peculiar nature of the tech economy rewards even to failures, like Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, who earned $239 million, almost a million a week, as she drove one of the net’s earliest stars toward oblivion.
The tech booms of the 1980s and 1990s rode on a wave of entrepreneurialism that provided enormous opportunities for millions of Americans, the current wave is characterized by stagnant productivity, consolidation, and disparities in wealth not seen since the mogul era. As one recent paper demonstrates, the “super platforms” of the so-called Big Five depress competition, squeeze suppliers, and drive down earnings, much as the monopolists of the late 19th century did.
Indeed for most Americans the once-promising new economy has meant a descent, as one MIT economist recently put it, toward a precarious position usually associated with Third World countries. Even Silicon Valley, the epicenter of the oligarch universe, has gone from one of the most egalitarian places in America to a highly unequal one where the working and middle class have, if anything, done worse, in terms of income, than before the boom.
The Oligarchs Outsmart the Political Class
In the past, progressive political thinkers like Brandeis sought to curb over-concentrated wealth and power. In contrast, today’s Democratic establishment rarely addresses such issues. That’s no wonder given that the party is now financed in large part by the tech giants, which have backed in almost lock-step the environmental, social, and cultural agenda that dominates today’s left. In exchange, they have bought political cover for things such as misogyny, lack of ethnic diversity, and of unions and fair labor practices that old-line companies like Walmart, Exxon, or General Motors could never enjoy.
Hillary Clinton made clear that she would, at best, tinker at the edges of the so-called sharing economy. That after President Obama’s Justice Department did virtually nothing to employ antitrust to block the tech oligarchs’ domination of key markets like search, social media, computer, and smartphone operating systems. Nor did they pressure them to stop avoiding taxes that burden most other businesses.
Nor can we expect the Republicans, with their instinctive worship of great wealth, to stand up against monopoly and abuse of power. A White House run by Donald Trump, whose true religion seems to be that of the Golden Calf, and his Goldman Sachs economic henchmen are inherently unable to oppose ever greater concentration of money in the hands of a select few. It’s no surprise that so far, in terms of stocks, the tech giants have been among the biggest winners under Trump.
Controlling the Means of Information
The Masters’ ascendency has been enhanced by their growing control of the means of communications.Facebook is already the largest source of news for Americans, particularly the young. They, along with Google, seem capable of shaping information flows to suit their particular world view, one increasingly hostile to any dissenting opinions from the right. (One key to understanding post-election concerns about “fake news” is to realize that a staggering 99 percent of growth in digital advertising in 2016 went to Google and Facebook.) At the same time, those two, along with Apple and Amazon, increasingly shape the national culture, essentially turning Hollywood into glitzy contract laborers.
][But no one practices the politics of oligarchy better than Bezos. Under his ownership The Washington Post has been transformed into the Pravda of the gentry left. Last year, for example, they worked overtime to undermine Bernie Sanders’ campaign, whose victory might have led to stronger antitrust enforcement and the confiscation of some of their unprecedented wealth. Once Sanders was dispatched, Bezos, fearing the rise of uncontrollable Trumpian populism, sank his editorial resources into supporting the big money favorite, Hillary Clinton.
The New Political Agenda
Populism, left or right, represents the only viable threat to oligarchic ambitions. Bank of America’s Michael Harnett recently warned that if the growth of stock market wealth continues to be concentrated in a handful of tech stocks, that “could ultimately lead to populist calls for redistribution of the increasingly concentrated wealth of Silicon Valley.”
Deflecting populism is the central imperative of an oligarchy. They feel their dominance as evidence of their superior intellect and foresight, not the result of such things as political influence, or easy access to capital. They embrace, as former TechCrunch reporter Greg Ferenstein put it, the notion of “a two-class society of extremely wealthy workaholics who create technologies that allow the rest of society to enjoy leisurely prosperity. The cost for this prosperity will be inequality of influence.”
What Google’s Eric Schmidt calls the Valley’s “religion in-of-itself” has little in common with resuscitating grassroots Democratic capitalism, the old dream of libertarians, or empowering the working class, that of old leftists. The founders of the big tech firms may embrace progressive ideas on the environment, free trade, and immigration, but have little use for unions or raising capital gains rates.
Overall, notes Ferenstein, they eschew nationalism, favoring global governance, want more immigration and embrace the notion of a government nanny state to tell the masses how to live. They also prefer highly unequal conditions of urban density over the more traditionally egalitarian suburbs. Largely childless San Francisco, impossibly expensive and deeply divided by class, is the preferred model of the future.
The Problem is People
People, little or otherwise, now constitute the Masters’ biggest problem. Unlike the old moguls like Andrew Carnegie or Henry Ford, the new Masters do not promise greater prosperity, or even decent jobs for the middle or working class. Their vision, increasingly, seems to be a world where most people’s labor is largely superfluous, and will need to be satiated with regular basic income from the state, a position now widely embraced by such luminaries as Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, supplemented by occasional “gig” work.
They imagine a future where few will ever own homes or control any real assets. Rather than being parts of a geography or even a country, the increasingly socially isolated masses can be part of Zuckerberg’s “global community” while ordering food from Amazon, delivered by a drone from an automated warehouse, employing social media and virtual reality to fill their long periods of idleness.
As Brandeis warned, this vision—dominated by the interests and influence of the few who possess the bulk of the wealth—is incompatible with the democracy that we have known.
Finsbury Park suspect Darren Osborne's family 'in shock' The family of a man arrested after a terror attack near a north London mosque say they are "shocked" and "devastated". 19 June 2017 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40332616
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Suspect held in London attack was overheard to say: 'I want to kill Muslims' June 19, 2017 Police urged Britain to stay calm on Monday as authorities investigated the fourth terrorist attack within three months, this time directed against the Muslim community. One person died at the scene and 11 others were injured when a man drove a van into worshipers who were gathered near a north London mosque as Ramadan prayers ended shortly after midnight. All the victims were Muslim. Police said a 47-year-old man, identified by British media as Darren Osborne, a father of four who was living in Cardiff, Wales, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and terrorism-related crimes. Authorities said they believe he acted alone, and that they were carrying out a search at a residential address in Cardiff. The van came from a rental company, also based in Wales. A witness who helped to detain the driver at the scene until police arrived said the motorist shouted, "I want to kill Muslims" and “Kill me.” [...] http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-london-mosque-attack-20170619-story.html [with embedded video, and comments]
Terror in London seems to confirm Muslims’ growing dread
By Griff Witte and Karla Adam June 19, 2017
LONDON — In a city on edge over a series of Islamist-inspired attacks, where police keep extensive watchlists and monitor potential militants, terror took a new turn when a van plowed into a group of Muslim worshippers here Monday.
A man identified as Darren Osborne, a 47-year-old Welshman from Cardiff, was allegedly behind the wheel. He was not on any security watchlists. But if he took the authorities by surprise, the act capped a growing dread in London’s Muslim community.
Witnesses said the driver was heard shouting after he was wrestled to the ground that he wanted to kill Muslims. It was chilling but not, in the Finsbury Park neighborhood, entirely unexpected. Fears have been growing among Muslims here that they could be singled out by extremists in tit-for-tat attacks because of other attacks carried out in the name of Islam, even though they are widely denounced by the mainstream Muslim community.
Monday’s early morning attack was confounding in another way, too. Using vans, trucks or cars as weapons poses huge challenges to public safety. Hours after the London attack, a man in Paris drove his car into a police car; only the attacker died, but it underscored the difficulty of defending against violence by vehicle.
The Paris assailant has not been publicly identified but was known to French authorities, the Associated Press reported, and was listed in a dossier of people suspected of posing a threat to national security.
In England, an attack by a man who was on no one’s radar has deepened the anxiety, especially as he appears to have deliberately targeted Muslims. (Scotland Yard has not confirmed that the suspect, who was arrested, is Osborne; he was identified by several British media outfits.)
“We don’t feel safe anywhere,” said a young man who gave his name as Adil Rana. “We don’t feel safe walking the streets or going to the mosque.”
The incident occurred in Finsbury Park, for years considered to be a hotbed of Islamist extremism. A relatively deprived immigrant neighborhood in north London, it is the home of the Finsbury Park Mosque — once notorious for housing the radical Egyptian cleric known as Abu Hamza al-Masri, who was later extradited to the United States and found guilty of terrorism charges.
But like many of its surrounding neighborhoods, the area has rapidly gentrified in recent years, arguably becoming more diverse and tolerant at the same time. Kebab shops sit comfortably next to cafes serving flat white espressos. Finsbury Park Mosque has undergone its own dramatic reforms, too, with its extremist edges stripped away.
For the past decade, the mosque has sought to emphasize, according to its website, the “true teachings of Islam as a religion of tolerance, cooperation and peaceful harmony amongst all people who lead a life of balance, justice and mutual respect.”
Even before this attack, Muslims said they had seen a sharp rise in hate crimes, here and elsewhere in Britain.
“Over the past weeks and months, Muslims have endured many incidents of Islamophobia, and this is the most violent manifestation to date,” Harun Khan, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said in a statement.
At least 10 people were injured when the van hit the crowd of worshippers who had just left a Ramadan prayer service at the Muslim Welfare House, in Finsbury Park. One man died at the scene, but police said that he was receiving first aid before the van struck, and it was unclear whether he died as a result of the attack.
Abdulrahman Aidroos said he and his friends were attending to the man who had collapsed when suddenly he saw a van driving “straight into us.”
The driver jumped out of the vehicle and tried to run, Aidroos said.
“I tackled him on the floor until the police came,” he told the BBC. “When he was running, he said, ‘I want to kill more people. I want to kill more Muslims.’”
The driver was subdued by the outraged group, but one of the mosque imams appealed for calm, possibly sparing him serious harm.
“We found a group of people quickly started to collect around him, around the assailant. And some tried to hit him, either kicks or punches,” Imam Mohammed Mahmoud of the Muslim Welfare House told reporters. “By God’s grace we managed to surround him and to protect him from any harm. We stopped all forms of attack and abuse toward him that were coming from every angle.”
Mahmoud said he flagged down a passing police car and told the officers: “There’s a mob attempting to hurt him. If you don’t take him, God forbid he might be seriously hurt.”
Rana, who witnessed the incident, said the attacker tried to taunt onlookers as he was arrested.
“He said, ‘I’d do it again,’?” Rana said. “It was a premeditated attack. He picked this area well, and he knows Finsbury Park is predominantly a Muslim area.”
Fearing copycat attacks, many Muslims urged extra security for mosques and other sites. East London Mosque, one of the city’s largest, said it was evacuated Monday after receiving a fake bomb threat.
Neil Basu, a London police official, told reporters the Finsbury Park case was being treated as a terrorist attack. The suspect was arrested on terrorism charges as well as attempted murder.
British Prime Minister Theresa May met with members of the Muslim community even as they denounced a rising climate of anti-Islamic sentiment. Her response contrasted with her handling of a deadly fire in London last week, when she was widely criticized for not meeting survivors on the first day of the disaster.
This was the third attack in London this year involving vehicles, and it came a month after a suicide bombing in Manchester killed 23 people and injured more than 100.
May described Monday’s attack as “every bit as sickening” as those that have come before. She also hailed the “bravery” of those who detained the driver at the scene.
“Hatred and evil of this kind will never succeed,” she said.
Sadiq Khan, London’s first Muslim mayor, called the incident a “horrific terrorist attack” that was “clearly a deliberate attack on innocent Londoners, many of whom were finishing prayers during the holy month of Ramadan.
“While this appears to be an attack on a particular community, like the terrible attacks in Manchester, Westminster and London Bridge, it is also an assault on all our shared values of tolerance, freedom and respect,” he said in a statement.
Saadiq Mizou, a 35-year-old chef who is from Belgium, said the attack had made him reconsider whether he could go to the mosques in Finsbury Park again.
“Twenty days in a row I’ve been here,” he said. “Nothing happened. It’s all going good. People are eating, doing charity, doing things like helping people, praying and then going home. That’s it. And now that’s happening? We’re not safe. If I stay here, people could come and attack me with a car.
“It’s better to be safe and stay at home,” Mizou said. “Simple.”
Adam Taylor in London, James McAuley in Paris and Brian Murphy in Washington contributed to this report.
Van attack on London Muslims suggests new polarization
A police officer stands near floral tributes in Finsbury Park after an incident where a van struck pedestrians, in London, Monday June 19, 2017. British authorities and Islamic leaders moved swiftly to ease concerns in the Muslim community after a man plowed his vehicle into a crowd of worshippers outside a north London mosque early Monday, injuring at least nine people.?? (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)
By DANICA KIRKA, PAISLEY DODDS and GREGORY KATZ June 19, 2017
LONDON (AP) — The rash of deadly terror attacks that has rattled Britain in recent months took an ominous new turn on Monday as Muslim worshippers became targets during the holy month of Ramadan, mowed down by an attacker who plowed a van into a crowd leaving prayers at two mosques in north London.
It was the same tactic Islamic extremists used in recent assaults on Westminster Bridge and London Bridge. Those attacks and a third outside a pop concert in Manchester have triggered a surge in hate crimes against Muslims around Britain.
British authorities, including Prime Minister Theresa May, and Islamic leaders moved swiftly to ease concerns in the Muslim community following the attack shortly after midnight that injured at least nine people in London’s Finsbury Park neighborhood, which is home to a large Muslim population.
Authorities said the incident was being treated as a terror attack. One man died at the scene, although he was receiving first aid at the time and it wasn’t clear if he died as a result of the attack or from something else.
British media identified the suspect as Darren Osborne, a 47-year-old Briton and father of four living in Cardiff, Wales, who was not known to authorities before the attack.
Details about the assailant were sketchy, but the assault — the most dramatic against Muslims in London in recent years — suggested a new, dangerous level of polarization in British society.
“This was an attack on Muslims near their place of worship,” May said in a televised address. “And like all terrorism, in whatever form, it shares the same fundamental goal. It seeks to drive us apart — and to break the precious bonds of solidarity and citizenship that we share in this country. We will not let this happen.”
Mayor Sadiq Khan, London’s first Muslim mayor, also urged residents to stand together.
“While this appears to be an attack on a particular community, like the terrible attacks in Manchester, Westminster and London Bridge, it is also an assault on all our shared values of tolerance, freedom and respect,” Khan said, adding that there would be “zero tolerance” for hate crimes.
“We will not allow these terrorists to succeed. ... We will stay a strong city,” the mayor said.
May said police would assess security at mosques and provide any additional resources needed ahead of upcoming celebrations marking the end of Ramadan.
The Metropolitan Police Service, already stretched by investigations of the earlier attacks and a high-rise apartment fire that killed at least 79 people, said it was putting extra patrols on the streets to protect the public.
The attack occurred about 12:20 a.m. when a speeding white van swerved into worshippers emerging from prayers outside the Muslim Welfare House and nearby Finsbury Park Mosque. People surrounded the driver and witnesses said the outraged crowd began attacking him. A local imam, Mohammed Mahmoud, said he and others shielded the man until police could take him away.
“By God’s grace, we were able to protect him from harm,” the imam said.
Police said the driver was arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorism, including murder and attempted murder.
Toufik Kacimi, chief executive of the Muslim Welfare House, told Sky News the attack clearly targeted Muslims, saying the driver acted deliberately and was not drunk or mentally ill.
“The driver of the van, said ‘I did my bit,’ which means he’s not mentally ill,” Kacimi said. “This person was conscious. He did what he did deliberately to hit and kill as many Muslims as possible, so he is a terrorist.”
But Kacimi said there was no need for the Muslim community to panic, because police and government officials have been “very, very supportive.”
“At this stage, we are calling for calm,” he said.
Monday’s attack hit a community already feeling targeted from the fallout from three previous attacks in as many months, all blamed on Islamic extremists. Hate crimes directed at Muslims have increased nearly five-fold, according to British security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with official policy.
Ali Habib, a 23-year-old student, said residents were upset that Monday’s attack wasn’t portrayed in the same light as other attacks across Britain.
“There has been an outpouring of sympathy for all the recent terror attacks but hardly a whisper on this attack,” he said. “People are both scared and angry. Parents are scared to send their children to evening prayers. I don’t think people understand how much these attacks affect all of us.”
May attempted to counter that feeling, saying that police arrived at the scene within one minute, and that the incident was classified as a possible terror attack within eight minutes. The prime minister, who has been criticized for failing to show compassion to victims, traveled to the attack site within hours, and met with community and faith leaders.
“Diverse, welcoming, vibrant, compassionate, confident and determined never to give in to hate. These are the values that define this city,” she said later outside Downing Street. “These are the values that define this country.”
The attack occurred outside the Muslim Welfare House, a small mosque with about 200 congregants. Nearby, evening prayer services had just concluded at the larger Finsbury Park Mosque, which was associated with extremist ideology for several years after the 9/11 attacks. However, the mosque was shut down and reorganized and has not been associated with radical views for more than a decade.
The mosque’s current leaders say they support inter-faith dialogue and want to serve the community in north London, which is located near Emirates Stadium, home of the Arsenal soccer club.
Britain’s terror alert level is at “severe,” meaning security officials believe an attack is highly likely.
On June 3, Islamic extremists used a vehicle and then knives to kill eight people and wound dozens of others on London Bridge and in the popular Borough Market area. Police shot and killed the three Islamic extremists who carried out the attack. In March, a man plowed a rented SUV into pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge, killing four people before stabbing a police officer to death outside Parliament. He was also killed by police.
Manchester was hit by a deadly attack on May 22 when a suicide bomber killed 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert.
Why won’t Donald Trump rush to tweet criticism of attacks against Muslims?
Police form a cordon in the Finsbury Park area of north London after a vehicle hit pedestrians on Monday. (Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images)
By Philip Bump June 19, 2017
Donald Trump tweeted about the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015 about 3½ hours after they occurred. The following month, he tweeted about the mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., 90 minutes after the violence began. It took fewer than 12 hours from the time an EgyptAir flight went missing in May 2016 for Trump to speculate publicly that the attack was terror-related. More than a year later, it’s still not clear what happened to the plane.
About 15 hours ago, as of this writing, a man drove a van into a group of Muslims near a mosque in London. The attack, which killed one person and injured 10 others, is being treated as terror-related by authorities in Britain. Prime Minister Theresa May described the attack as “every bit as sickening” as the attacks at the London Bridge and, earlier this year, on Westminster Bridge.
Trump tweeted his condolences to the victims of those two earlier attacks — both linked to the Islamic State — the same day they happened. Trump has not tweeted about Sunday night’s attack on Muslims.
In response to a crisis, one of the simplest responses from a president is a carefully worded statement of support, condolence or outrage. Simpler still is a brief message on social media. Trump built his political career in part on his willingness to jump into any number of frays by tweeting about them. As we’ve noted in the past, he shows little reticence to tweet about things he sees on television right after he sees them [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/03/07/youll-never-guess-who-tweeted-something-false-that-he-saw-on-tv/ ]. Yet, Monday morning: silence.
Trump’s use of Twitter betrays his interests and disinterests. On Sunday, Father’s Day, Trump tweeted, in order:
• An outlier poll showing him as more popular than he is.
• A retweet of the performers Diamond and Silk criticizing the media.
• A retweet of his son critical of former president Barack Obama.
• Praise for Camp David, where he spent the weekend.
• And finally, a retweet of the White House’s “Happy Father’s Day” message that morning.
That Trump hasn’t mentioned the attacks on Muslims in London isn’t surprising, mind you. It took days for him to praise the two men who were stabbed to death in Portland, Ore., while defending Muslim women on a train. It took almost a week for him to speak out about the shooting of two Indian men in Kansas by someone who thought that they were Muslim. In one sense, it’s odd that Trump hasn’t tweeted condolences to the victims in London, given the criticism he’s received for his slow response to the above attacks — but, again, it’s not surprising that he hasn’t, given his history.
The broader question is why Trump remains uninterested in acknowledging such attacks.
One likely explanation is that Trump sees attacks by people of the Muslim faith through the lens of a rampant anti-Western ideology but views attacks on Muslims as being one-off examples of bad actors. The emergence of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State reinforced the idea that there’s a substantial, organized subset of the world’s Muslim population focused on political violence.
Absent those groups, attacks like the one on Westminster Bridge or at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub might more easily be treated as aberrant individual actions in the way that the attack on Muslims in London will be treated in some quarters. That there’s a strong but largely disorganized anti-Muslim undercurrent in Western societies that can make Muslims a target of violence lacks the sort of readily identifiable markers as a coordinated terror group, especially for those unwilling to see them.
In June 2015, when a white gunman shot nine black worshipers dead at a church in Charleston, S.C., shortly after Trump announced his presidential candidacy, Trump tweeted about it.
It was incomprehensible in the sense that murdering nine people at church is an affront to our sense of humans as rational creatures. It was entirely comprehensible in the sense that a white man who held racist views might target black people in a shooting spree.
To view attacks by Muslims as part of what being Muslim is about but attacks on Muslims as being distinct from the identities of the perpetrators demands seeing those two groups as fundamentally different. Trump has a presumption of guilt for Muslims that he doesn’t for the white people who committed the crimes in Kansas, Portland and at the London mosque.
It’s interesting to compare Trump’s response to the Charleston shooting with his response to the 1980s rape of a white woman in Central Park, for which a group of black and Hispanic teenagers were arrested and which prompted Trump to buy a full-page ad calling for the death penalty for the accused.
Those teenagers were later exonerated when another man admitted to the crime. But Trump, even as recently as last October, seemed to believe that the teenagers were the perpetrators. “They admitted they were guilty. The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty,” Trump said last year — eliding the critical point that the confessions were obtained under duress. In Trump’s eyes, those teenagers are guilty despite the judicial system rescinding that verdict.
Trump’s presidential campaign — and therefore his presidency — relied on the idea that America was under threat from terrorism and crime, a point of view that necessarily overlapped with America’s complex racial history. That’s the other reason Trump highlights terrorist acts by Muslims and ignores those against them: He has reaped political rewards from it.
Trump views terrorism through a very particular lens, and he won the presidency by articulating that lens. That it’s reflected in his Twitter account, then, is not a surprise.
Killing of a Muslim teenager in Virginia is being investigated as a road-rage incident, police say
By Dana Hedgpeth, Justin Jouvenal and Julie Zauzmer June 19, 2017
The killing of a Muslim teenager in Virginia is being investigated as a road-rage incident, Fairfax County Police said Monday.
Police say the suspect, Darwin Martinez Torres, was driving as a group that included Nabra Hassanen was walking and riding bikes in and along the road. “Our investigation at this point in no way indicates the victim was targeted because of her race or religion,” police said in a statement.
Police planned a news conference later today to discuss the case.
On Sunday, police found the girl’s remains after the mosque had reporting her missing and Torres, 22, has been charged with murder in connection with the case.
Relatives identified the girl as Nabra Hassanen of Reston. Prosecutors said Nabra was 16-years-old, but police had initially said she was 17.
On Sunday night as family and friends gathered, Sawsan Gazzar the teenager’s ’s mother, said, “pray for me that I can handle this. … I lost my daughter, my first reason for happiness.”
Torres was held without bond following a brief arraignment Monday in Fairfax County juvenile court. All cases involving juveniles are heard in juvenile court in Virginia, even if defendants are adults.
Appearing on a video monitor from the county jail, Torres spoke through a Spanish translator to answer a judge’s questions. He was appointed a public defender and his next court appearance was set for July 19.
Fairfax County prosecutors offered no new information about the case during the hearing and declined to comment afterward.
Police had initially said a possible hate-crime motivation was among the things authorities were investigating. But that changed Monday when they posted a message on Twitter saying they were not investigating the case as a hate crime. Authorities did not immediately elaborate on that statement.
The chief medical examiner’s office will confirm the identity of the remains and manner of death, Fairfax police spokeswoman Tawny Wright said Sunday.
According to accounts from police and a mosque official, a group of four or five teens was walking early Sunday from breakfast at an IHOP — where they had headed after leaving a mosque — when they were confronted by a motorist, now identified by police as Torres. All but one of the teens ran to the mosque in Sterling called the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS), where the group reported that Hassanen had been left behind, according to Deputy Aleksandra Kowalski, a spokeswoman for the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office.
An aunt of Martinez Torres, who declined to be identified and was at court, said the family is shocked and mystified about charges against their relative.
The aunt said Martinez Torres was at a Sterling park with her mother, hours before the incident. She said Martinez Torres left the park at around 11:30 p.m. Saturday to head home.
Family members of Torres said he worked in construction. He has a four-year-old son and a girlfriend and is originally from El Salvador. He attended school briefly in the U.S.
The aunt said she believed Torres did not know Nabra adding that family members also did not know her.
“I can’t believe it,” the aunt said. “He is nice with my mom. He is nice with my family. He’s a nice dad.”
No one responded Monday when a reporter visited a home address associated with Martinez Torres.
Officials at the mosque notified police about the missing girl and Loudoun County and Fairfax County authorities began an extensive search, the mosque said in a statement.
The two agencies conducted an hours-long search around Dranesville Road and Woodson Drive in Herndon, which is in Fairfax. Remains thought to be the girl’s were found about 3 p.m. Sunday in a pond in the 21500 block of Ridgetop Circle in Sterling. During the search, an officer spotted a motorist driving suspiciously in the area and arrested Torres, police said.
Police said they collected several articles of evidence but declined to provide further details.
The girl’s mother said detectives told her that Nabra was struck with a metal bat.
In a neighborhood full of Muslim immigrant families, the victim’s modest Reston apartment was the one overflowing with friends and laughter most days, friends said Sunday.
“It’s a family where if you’re feeling down and you need to laugh, this is where you go,” said Samar Ali, 26, who grew up in the Hassanens’ apartment complex.
On Sunday night, that apartment normally filled with laughter was crammed with more than 30 women in traditional Muslim garb, sobbing and comforting one another. At the center of the crowded, dimly lit living room was the victim’s mother.
They described the young victim as a quiet girl who did not talk back.
“If you’re talking about sweet, she’s the definition of sweet,” said Samar Ali, 26, who grew up in the same apartment complex as Nabra.
Neighbors described the teenager as unusually respectful, calling older neighbors “sir” and “ma’am” and helping watch small children, at home and at her mosque.
“Nabra’s personality, she gets scared very easily,” said her mother, Sawsan Gazzar. “Nabra doesn’t even fight with her sisters. She’s very scared.”
In conversations with detectives, the victim’s mother said she was told the driver shouted at the teens, then threw glass beer bottles at them.
She also believed that her daughter’s death was a hate crime.
“I’m sure the guy hit my daughter because she’s Muslim and she was wearing the hijab,” she said. “The thing in my head is, why did he do that to us? We’re not bad people. He doesn’t know us. Why did he ever do that? I don’t feel safe at all anymore, as a Muslim living here now. I’m so worried about sending my kids out and their coming back as bodies.”
“I want justice. I want to know why he did this to her … Why would you kill a kid? What did my daughter do to deserve this?”
The killing rattled a Muslim community in the midst of celebrating Ramadan, a month of religious observance in which adherents fast from sunrise to sunset for 30 days. The period culminates in the feast-like celebration Eid al-Fitr, which is expected to fall next weekend.
“We are devastated and heartbroken as our community undergoes and processes this traumatic event,” Rizwan Jaka, chairman of ADAMS, said in a statement. “It is a time for us to come together to pray and care for our youth.”
ADAMS is Northern Virginia’s largest mosque and, with 11 chapters around the District and Northern Virginia, is among the nation’s most well-known congregations. According to ADAMS’s website, the Sterling location is 25,000 square feet and can accommodate more than 700 people. It includes a youth weekend school, a gymnasium and multipurpose hall, the site says.
Arsalan Iftikhar, an international human rights lawyer and commentator, said that he and his wife were at the mosque for evening prayers, which ended about 12:30 a.m. Sunday. As they were pulling out of the parking lot, he said, he saw a group of teenagers congregating and talking loudly about going out to eat. The girls, he said, were wearing the abaya, a full-length dress many Muslim women wear.
Police have not said that the slaying was a hate crime, but the issue was on the minds of many Muslims.
Last month, two men on a Portland train were stabbed and killed after they intervened to protect two girls who were being harassed, according to authorities.
Sunday night, a van struck a crowd of pedestrians, including worshipers leaving a pair of mosques in London. Witnesses said the pedestrians were struck as they departed late-night prayers.
The ADAMS Center has a paid armed security guard at the Sterling site, according to Iftikhar. He said many mosques have increased security since six Muslim worshipers were killed at a mosque in Quebec earlier this year.
Nabra’s slaying sent a chill through the community when news spread Sunday.
“People are petrified, especially people who have young Muslim daughters,” Iftikhar said.
Virginia officials condemned the killing Sunday night and expressed condolences to Nabra’s family.
Loudoun County Sheriff Michael L. Chapman said of the murder, “I can’t think of a worse instance to occur than the loss of a 17-year-old on Father’s Day, as the father of a 17-year-old myself.”
Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) said she visited ADAMS Sunday and met with leadership and law enforcement officials.
“We are heartbroken and horrified by the news of the brutal murder of a beautiful 17-year old girl,” Comstock said in a statement.
The night before, Gazzar — the victim’s mother — had cooked a feast for Nabra, the oldest of her four daughters, who wanted to host a big iftar break-the-fast dinner for all her friends from ADAMS and South Lakes High School, where she just finished 10th grade.
The iftar was packed — Nabra was always popular and sociable. And when it ended, a friend’s mom drove some of the teens to ADAMS for the midnight prayers that mark the last 10 days of Ramadan. Nabra wasn’t ordinarily religiously observant — she was more excited about fashion and makeup, including recently her nose ring — but she frequented the mosque during Ramadan, when it became a social hub for teens.
Gazzar said she thought Nabra and her friends would eat at the mosque after the prayers, and she would have forbidden her from walking to IHOP in the middle of the night. But she also wasn’t surprised that the girl went out; she and other teens had done it safely last year.
Other mothers in the apartment Sunday night echoed the same thought repeatedly — they and their children had always felt safe taking the sidewalk path to IHOP or McDonald’s for a fun meal on those final Ramadan nights.
Gazzar loaned her daughter an abaya to wear to the mosque Saturday night, since Nabra didn’t typically wear traditional Muslim clothes. She heard from a detective that when the man in the car started shouting at the teens, Nabra tripped over the long garment and fell to the ground, just before she was struck.
“I think it had to do with the way she was dressed and the fact that she’s Muslim,” Gazzar said. “Why would you kill a kid? What did my daughter do to deserve this?”
Nabra was a diligent student, so much so that although she was extremely proud to get her first job ever at a McDonald’s, she quit when her manager didn’t understand that studying for a school exam took priority over a work shift.
All four Hassanen girls were born in the United States — the younger ones are 11, 10 and 3. Ali described Nabra as a “daddy’s girl” who was close with her father, a bus-and-limo driver. Her father spent Sunday at the mosque, Ali said, beside himself with worry all day.
Gazzar’s phone rang yet again, and this time she didn’t answer. She turned instead to the hundreds of photos stored on it, scrolling through them until she landed on one of Nabra visiting her parents’ homeland in Egypt, laughing as she embraced two of the teen’s little sisters.
“They’d all be laughing. They used to be really happy.”
She gazed into the girls’ eyes, and cried harder.
Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Faiz Siddiqui and Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report.
American teens report sharp spike in bullying since President Trump's election, survey finds
"Another Noose Found Near D.C. Museums, Police Say The noose was discovered hanging from a lamp post outside the National Gallery of Art."
IMAGE: The survey notes that LGBTQ youth were among those most harshly targeted, with more than a quarter of gay teens saying they have been personally bullied since Election Day. (Matt Rourke/AP)
BY Chris Sommerfeldt NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Wednesday, January 25, 2017, 5:18 AM
The survey, conducted by the Human Rights Campaign, interviewed more than 50,000 Americans between the ages of 13 and 18 and found that 70% of respondents have witnessed bullying, hate speech, or harassment since the onset of the campaign season, with racial prejudice being the most common motive.
The survey, which HRC claims to be the largest of its kind, notes that LGBTQ youth were among those most harshly impacted, with more than a quarter of gay teens saying they have been personally bullied or harassed since President Trump’s election win.
Hispanic and Latino teens were also disproportionately targeted, with 20% reporting to have been personally harassed or bullied. The survey was based on interviews with more than 50,000 Americans between the ages of 13 and 18.
IMAGE: The survey was based on interviews with more than 50,000 Americans between the ages of 13 and 18. (Human Rights Campaign)
A transgender teen from Idaho, whose identity was kept anonymous by the HRC, said they and a Latin friend were confronted at school by a classmate who said, “Donald Trump is gonna deport wastes of space like you, and hopefully he does something about freaks like you too.”
Teens belonging to religious minorities such as Islam, Judaism and Hinduism reported that they have started changing their appearances and concealing faith symbols in order to avoid being targeted.
Moreover, the survey found that nearly half of all teens interviewed described feeling constantly nervous or hopeless, particularly in the past 30 days.
The survey consulted teens from across the country and was designed in such a way to represent diversities in gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity and religious backgrounds.
- IMAGE: People take part during the Women's March rally in Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017. The march was held in solidarity with the Women's March on Washington, advocating women's rights and opposing Donald Trump's presidency Millions attend Women's March around the world after Trump's inauguration .. 82 photos view gallery > http://www.nydailynews.com/news/millions-attend-women-march-world-trump-inauguration-gallery-1.2952229
President Trump was frequently accused .. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/donald-trump-election-unleashed-hate-article-1.2873987 .. of peddling in inflammatory and racist rhetoric during the campaign. Since his election, Trump has continued on a similar path, and has gained immense popularity among the so-called “alt-right” movement, which has close ties to white supremacy and neo-Nazi ideals.
A 15-year-old from Colorado, who was interviewed for the survey, expressed a glimmer of hope for the future.
“Although I hold very strong negative convictions about Trump and his administration, I love my country, and I want to see improvement in the lives of the people around me,” the teen wrote in a letter. “I desperately hope that he will prove me wrong, and not be the destructive force that I fear he will be.”
A clearly recognizable bully, liar and cheat was elected president. So his 'character' works. Right? That's the message many of our young and older have been given.
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