Dropping back to March 26, 2012:
One visitor has been lobbying in the public e-mail account repeatedly since Saturday morning for us to include the death of Shaima Alawadi. No, thank you. In this morning's four e-mails, the visitor argues that surely the Iraqi press must be covering the woman's death. They are. Here for Al Mada. They're also covering that Omar Sharif's grandson "admits" he's gay and half-Jewish. We're not going to be devoting space to that story either. For those who don't know, the woman is an Iraqi-American who came to the US in the early 90s. She was beaten and she's died. That's what's known. The coverage is a bunch of items that are speculation. And inflated outrage. It allows people to pretend they care about an issue, these momentary topics that flare up every few months. But they don't really have much to do with news. To be clear, her death is tragic, unfortunate and all too common for women in the US and around the world. However, nothing is known. When we covered the Iraqi woman run down in the US, killed by her own father, there were eye witnesses and that was a story the media didn't want to touch. This isn't any such story. The media has portrayed it as 'killed by an outsider who hates foreigners' and that is easy to cover, no real risk to anyone and allows everyone to mount their soapboxes. I'm sure there's already a Facebook outrage page for the woman, there are not, however, any real facts about who killed her or why.
A woman was murdered. But that wasn't enough for outrage. No, hate filled pieces of trash attempted to use this woman. When it turned out her husband killed her, they all fled the scene of their own crimes.
Let's start with human trash Khury Petersen-Smith who ranted for US Socialist Worker in "The racism that connects these murders:"
Then came the murder of Shaima Alawadi on March 21, one week after Dane Scott Jr. died.
The mother of five was viciously beaten into unconsciousness with a tire iron in her home in El Cajon, Calif. She died five days later after being removed from life support. According to Shaima's daughter, who discovered her mother's body, the killer left a note near Shaima, an Iraqi Muslim who wore a hijab, which read in part, "Go back to your country, you terrorist."
Yet police said in a statement, "Evidence thus far leads us to believe this is an isolated incident."
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SPEAKING ABOUT the murder of Trayvon Martin, President Barack Obama said that we would all have to do some soul-searching to ask how such a killing could happen. But an honest look at racism in the U.S. reveals that these killings are neither isolated, nor complicated, nor surprising.
Trayvon, Shaima and others are the latest victims of a deeply bigoted society, and their killings are the bitter fruits of the most recent trends in institutional racism.
When Petersen-Smith could scream "racism!," the murder of a woman held interest. When the racism angle was taken away (the Iraqi-American woman was killed by her Iraqi-American husband), so was Petersen-Smith's interest in the murder.
Where's the correction to this article?
Oh, that's right whores don't do corrections, just hand jobs, half-and-halfs, oral . . .
Khury Petersen-Smith didn't give a damn about Shaima Alawadi. So why would a correction be needed? She was nothing but a pawn to be used.
Over at PolicyMic, you could find another piece of trash trying to use the dead woman. This one's name was Felicia A. Reid and she talked her crazy in "Trayvon Martin and Shaima Alawadi Aftermath Shows Americans Are Afraid to Talk About Race:"
The deaths of Trayvon Martin and Shaima Alawadi should have been
teachable moments. Instead, in their respective aftermaths, the
opportunity for engagement and discourse has turned to experiential
warfare. There are sides against sides, fears against
fears, oppression against suppression, and ignorance against everyday
realities. Trayvon Martin’s death brought accusatory finger pointing,
anger, and indignation — both justified and not. The death
of Shaima Alawadi met with such relative indifference that it has become
incredibly apparent the extent to which we have dehumanized a racial
and religious minority.
We acknowledge that their deaths are tragic — but acknowledgement is
not confrontation. Though headlines give up-to-the-minute developments
on their stories, confrontation through engagement and discourse mean
understanding the significance of their deaths within our society and
ourselves. Acknowledgement is news, it is not understanding.
The reactions to these two deaths are the results of ripping open the ugly scars of wounds that were never adequately attended to, and so, never properly healed. They are the results of a conversation cut short. The public responses are in familiar forms — calls for justice, protests, and petitions — but without the openness of a past era, one where we could speak of inequalities without politesse or dilution.
The reactions to these two deaths are the results of ripping open the ugly scars of wounds that were never adequately attended to, and so, never properly healed. They are the results of a conversation cut short. The public responses are in familiar forms — calls for justice, protests, and petitions — but without the openness of a past era, one where we could speak of inequalities without politesse or dilution.
The only conversation cut short in this instance, was an exploration of how Shaima Alawadi, like too many other women, was killed by someone she knew. But Reid wasn't interested in the topic of violence against women.
Meanwhile, Nadia S.B. wasn't content to flaunt her ignorance on the pathetic Uprising Radio, she took to PolicyMic to advance her ignorance and her hatred:
Because the facts in both of these cases are still developing, it is not necessary to talk about gun laws, race issues, and other background information in retrospect. Rather, we should discuss that Trayvon and Shaima died because of their identities.
Shaima was not a stranger to America. Her name was foreign indeed, as was her “look,” but her smile was a universal trait, and now her children, husband, and community lost someone they loved and cherished. Someone hated a housewife because she was Muslim, an Arab, an outsider, and an enemy. She lay near a note to return home, as she was beaten in her home, yet it is still not being confirmed as a hate crime.
Just like the use of the term “self-defense” in the murder of an unarmed black youth, the hesitation to call Shaima’s murder a hate crime cannot be reconciled.
For a few weeks after she was murdered, Shaima's death got attention. There were protests "Hoodies and Hijabs," remember that?
The trashy 'media' that passes for alternative in this country can't do reporting, really can't handle thought but they can churn out hate, they can and they do. They scream for you to hate everyone because it's how they make their money.
So it was the writers above and so many other cheap hustlers, desperate to sell hate, desperate to point fingers at others using this woman as a political football.
Her death always had meaning.
Because her life had meaning.
She was a woman killed in her own home and if all the haters had any basic understanding of the lives of women, any respect for the lives of women, they would have grasped that women killed in their own homes have a good chance of being killed by a husband or boyfriend or ex-husband or ex-boyfriend.
They didn't want to deal with that reality.
They wanted to instead embrace their own sick need -- which they've never taken accountability for -- to believe that the woman was killed because she was Iraqi, because she was a foreigner, etc.
She was killed by her husband.
She's back in the news because of the trial.
You haven't heard about her because once it became clear the she couldn't be the poster girl for racism, they had no use for her.
Read the garbage, use the links above, that these people wrote.
They knew her, they cared about her, they wanted justice.
And then someone turned on the lights and all the roaches scattered.
That is what happened.
When it became clear that she was another victim of the violence against women, they had no use for her.
Immediately, they dropped her.
'Feminist' Sonali Kolhatkar no longer had time on Uprising Radio for the murder.
Women aren't a category that matters, you understand. If they could make the woman's murder about race, then all the useless could keep busy churning out one statement of outrage after another.
But when it was a case of one more woman killed by someone who knew her, they weren't interested.
And they ran from her, they fled from her.
They didn't offer corrections, they just didn't mention her at all.
So some news consumers today, with vague memories of the initial coverage, may not even know that the woman's husband killed her.
She was killed because she wanted a divorce.
Had her killers been two White male teens from Orange County, you can be sure Amy Goodman would be spending a whole week on the 'hate crime.' But when a woman is killed by a husband or boyfriend -- or ex-husband or ex-boyfriend -- that's apparently not news. And apparently it doesn't matter.
The next time these roaches start swarming around a corpse, you need to grasp that they really don't give a damn. They're using a death as a political football.
And, in the process, they make clear just how little women actually matter. Shaima didn't come back to life, they just lost interest when she became yet another victim of violence against women.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
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