A decade and a half back, I wrote a novel of British India- a huge, awkward thing I must revise before I ever offer it- but in it, there was a colonel in the King’s Indian Army who underwent a journey something like yours. In it, he was guided by a native of the Northwest Frontier who had foresworn violence and vowed to teach nonviolence to his fellow Pathans. The latter was based loosely on Ghaffar Khan and several kindred figures; the former had no known prototype, but spoke very clearly in my mind out of an experience that was not mine. You have nearly echoed his words. Thank you.

Thanks for your thoughtful post. I wish more people recognized the noxious threat of some of these guys.

Mark Potok has opined that this is a genuine and sincere transformation on the part of Mr. Witten. I accept this. We can never know, for certain, the hearts of others, but I think even a small gesture toward higher values, ANY higher values, represent the means by which we progress as human beings and members of society. So let us take his words with sincerity and acceptance.

Mr. Witten does not speak of his own pain. He speaks of compassion for others, for seeing through the infinite obscurations of rage, greed, and violence to their roots in fear, self interest, and ignorance. These are not small realizations, in my opinion. His pain is very great. And yet there is so much hope. These are the seeds of a new flowering, but also of discovering within oneself the value that he sees in others and expresses. He came from darkness, and is showing us the way out.

Our lives are so filled with so many travails, and at the root of them we always one way or the other, end up exactly where we started, with ourselves. Our own hearts, our own minds. These are cycles, waves if you will, and breaking free from them can be a monumental challenge even for the most fortunate, for the most gifted, the most kind. At least this is what I believe.

If Mr. Witten’s words are sincere I believe we should lend him all the support we can. No matter how greatly we speak of our own beliefs and values, Mr. Witten has the unique and priceless ability now to influence others in a positive way. His experience can be a gift to humanity. This is not about redemption, because I believe he has always had value and worth. This is about allowing his light to shine into the world, having come out of the darkness into which any of us, at any time, can and do easily fall.

He speaks of stigma and exclusion and I think it is important that society understand where he is coming from. This is not an appeal to self, or for pity, this is an appeal for others to see within themselves the kind of amazing transformations that can occur when we realize that compassion is the key to happiness. Mr Witten may still struggle with his past, but I am far more concerned with what he is doing right now. I revere what he is doing right now.

I don’t know what can be done, but I believe we should listen deeply to what he has to say and give him an opportunity to find a voice with us so that he can continue to carry this message into the world, that is still trapped in darkness. We speak of life and death, but every moment is a lifetime, each hour a new incarnation. Where he is now is in a very different place than where he was. I hope that we can help him along to find ever more of his inner radiance and inspire others to do the same.

Maybe the SPLC could spend more of its time investigating some real crimes? How about the nature of violent crime that takes place within a 15 square mile radius of SPLC headquarters?

“It turns out two Black males murdered that 12-year old White girl in New Jersey, Autumn Pasquale.

Why isn’t SPLC on the case? The authorities claim there was no sexual assault, Right…and I have some used cars for sale!

They dumped her body like garbage.”

Lew, we’ve heard your material before, and your great admiration for Swastikas, so don’t get all righteous on us.

Besides, I’m watching this case quite closely, and it’s pretty apparent that Miss Pasquale was murdered for her bicycle, not for her ethnicity. Nothing about it the SPLC would deal with…it’s ordinary, ugly, horrific, crime.

By the way, Autumn Pasquale is of Italian descent…100 years ago, Italian immigrants to America were not considered “real white Americans,” either.

Now back to VNN and Stormfront with you, where you can accuse each other of being FBI plants.

In the instance of this young woman filing a false police report, she needs help in realizing she matters simply because she exist, and does not need to become a headline in order to be significant. Sadly, our society does not overtly communicate this to our disenfranchised.

The tragedy as I see it, is that a very real assault on the sanctity of personhood is rampant in the GOP nominees for our nation’s highest office. Certainly not to the extent of the cowardice of rapists or physically abusive men, but the mentality of dismissing the humanity and individual value of women, LBGT, Minorities is a collective of the GOP mentality described in the opening paragraph.

These primarily White, priveledged, plutocrats and politically powerful are frustrated at their perceived loss of control; the long overdue distribution of political power to women and minorities fuel their feelings of inadequacy, so they focus on issues like controlling the “entitled 47%”, the wombs of women, and creating socio-economic environments where self-deportation becomes a viable option to those that threaten them, and make them feel lesser-than. I do not dismiss the power of their hedonistic greed, but see signs that it runs deeper than that.

The GOP ticket, not just fringe hate-groups comprised of under-educated, terrified White men, is threatening to take us back to a time when the bodies and humanity of women, minorities, those of different sexuality and personal sexual identification may once again be legislatively restricted.

The GOP pandering at its highest levels, along with the silence of its Presidential candidate, is an indication of the fear permeating the minds of Whites who I truly don’t believe even recognize these traits within themselves.

Our strenth against such bigotry will be shown on election day. I have faith in the overall goodness of the American people. We bled with Lincoln. We stood shoulder to should with Dr. King. The GOP must realize we will not allow them to control the wombs of society’s women, or crush the dreams of any segment of our society. I pray as much.

I have ancestors in Salem during the witch trials. I honestly do wonder if we are going to see something similar here.

Frankly, any woman or man that cares anything about women vote for any of these walking turds, needs to have their heads examined. There guys are out to do damage — and women are definitely one of their targets.

Rape victims even in the rare stranger rape cases are still attacked in ways that other crime victims are not. A woman who gets raped gets attacked for wearing a short skirt or walking down a dark street (which she lives on and is dark because cheap people don’t want to pay more real estate taxes for street lights and the closest parking spot is a block away – and of course, she was working late because her job required it) in a way that say a victim of robbery does not get blamed. No one ever says that a person who gets robbed at gun point was asking for it. Many people – and not just the theocrats and men’s rights idiots claim that about women who get raped at gunpoint.

But i seriously fear for the future – because i fear that things may soon since much worse and life may get much more dangerous for women. If the Men’s Rights Mysognists and their ideas were just some annoying people on the internet complaining about women it would be one thing – however we are seeing what are allegedly mainstream politicians in the Republican Party which is supposed to be a mainstream political party embracing those sorts of views. When a political candidate from a mainstream party says it is God’s will if a woman gets pregnant through rape these are very dangerous times indeed. So if you get raped because you have to work late to make ends meet and the city is too cheap to pay for working streetlights and there is no nearby parking its not only your fault but also God’s will. Lovely people these theocrats are.

Overall the ideology coming back is an extreme religious ideology which views women as property. Any denial cannot get around the fact that the Christian extremists view women as being property. There is even precedent for this country – the claims by people of going by the “original” intent of the Constitution and having a Supreme Court Justice (Scalia) saying that we have a dead Constitution which set laws in permanence as they were in 1789 should scare people in general but women in particular. In 1789 women were basically treated as property – husbands could legally rape and beat their wives under Common Law, women were not allowed to vote, were not allowed to work outside of the house, and could not own property.

Add in the religious nutjobs and the fact that they want to impose Old Testament Biblical law in this country which calls for stoning rape victims to death and i fear as bad as things are now they will get worse and worse.

I was pretty sure that the “Gregory” to whom I addressed my comments wasn’t you, since I have a pretty good idea of your discerning and humane thoughts, but thanks for clarifying.

Boy, that’s irritating to have someone use the same name and post something crummy. So I will say it again: THE GREGORY WHO MADE CRUMMY COMMENTS ABOUT MANDISA’S COMMENTS ISN’T OUR USUAL GREGORY!!!

Ray — what an incredibly cynical way of looking at terrible injuries to a woman who is obviously suffering mental problems. Sympathy, much?

Mark Potok — Many thanks for your clarification on rape. In addition to myself, I know a lot of other women who have been assaulted and just didn’t think they could handle going to the police. I do understand how important it is to protect men and boys from false accusations, but it takes a toll on the women and girls who don’t report, and in a perverse way, I think it may add to the cynicism of misogynists, who say, “see, most of ‘em aren’t even sure they were raped because they don’t report it, which means they probably wanted it on some level, or realize that they shouldn’t have dressed so provocatively or had a drink.”

Someone in that family had to be the principal in that crime, and the remaining someones the accessories. Given that Casey’s family members seemed to have been quite protective of her, while she was nothing loath to accuse them of misdeeds, if any but herself had done the murder, she’d have pointed them out. The fact that she didn’t point them out anyway suggests she knew that they knew she did it, and under the pressure of a direct accusation, would have said so.

There is little evidence Casey particularly hated Hispanics, but like many in such a situation, found it convenient to frame a member of an outgroup. It’s partly because members of the outgroup are not trusted, and partly because “they all look alike”.

The Anthony case points out the danger of overcharging. Had the jury been allowed the options of Murder 2, manslaughter, and negligent homicide, it’s likely that some kind of conviction would have followed.

That was a different “Gregory” and not my writing style. I do not capitalize “White” or “Black”. I suspect that a particularly tiresome commenter likes my moniker so much that he decided to make it his own.

Most crimes against children are domestic in origin – it is overwhelming that children are much more lilely to be sexually abused by family members than strangers – many “stranger” cases are actually murders by hire – until the full evidence comes out you simply do not know. but stranger danger cases have always been overblown.

And considerign that you have admitted that you’re a Nazi loving White Nationalist i’m simply not going to take your word about any sort of alleged crime.

http://www.splcenter.org/get-i.....bout-women

THE CLAIM Close to half or even more of the sexual assaults reported by women never occurred. Versions of this claim are a mainstay of sites like Register-Her.com, which specializes in vilifying women who allegedly lie about being raped. Such claims are also sometimes made by men involved in court custody battles.

THE REALITY This claim, which has gained some credence in recent years, is largely based on a 1994 article in the Archives of Sexual Behavior by Eugene Kanin that found that 41% of rape allegations in his study were “false.” But Kanin’s methodology has been widely criticized, and his results do not accord with most other findings. Kanin researched only one unnamed Midwestern town, and he did not spell out the criteria police used to decide an allegation was false. The town also polygraphed or threatened to polygraph all alleged victims, a now-discredited practice that is known to cause many women to drop their complaint even when it is true. In fact, most studies that suggest high rates of false accusations make a key mistake — equating reports described by police as “unfounded” with those that are false. The truth is that unfounded reports very often include those for which no corroborating evidence could be found or where the victim was deemed an unreliable witness (often because of drug or alcohol use or because of prior sexual contact with the attacker). They also include those cases where women recant their accusations, often because of a fear of reprisal, a distrust of the legal system or embarrassment because drugs or alcohol were involved. The best studies, where the rape allegations have been studied in detail, suggest a rate of false reports of somewhere between 2% and 10%. The most comprehensive study, conducted by the British Home Office in 2005, found a rate of 2.5% for false accusations of rape. The best U.S. investigation, the 2008 “Making a Difference” study, found a 6.8% rate.

Why isn’t SPLC on the case? The authorities claim there was no sexual assault, Right…and I have some used cars for sale!

They dumped her body like garbage.

In this particular case, it doesn’t appear to me that there WAS a rush to discredit the woman. My take on the coverage was that law enforcement and the town officials took this case very seriously. So I don’t agree that this was a case where anyone appeared to be setting out to discredit this woman–instead, they followed the evidence where it led.

However, I do understand Mandisa’s frustration. There are a lot of racists out there — including some that think black women are “asking for it” in some way, or are otherwise naturally duplicitous. There are also a lot of men out there (and some women, regrettably) who don’t appear to be hard-wired to believe that, unless an assault involves a 14-year-old lily white virginal blond haired girl, who was abducted from her home by a slobbering pervert, raped, and then killed, while she prayed for mercy on her knees, that rapes don’t happen. All you have to do is look at the statements made recently by certain Republicans about “girls who rape easy,” or how women just yell rape to get back at men. You can see my above post to get an idea of what I think of that.

As a woman who works in a technical field, even when no one is being deliberately dismissive, I have experienced for years what it can be like when men (and, again, some women) act dismissively toward you because somehow, what you say just doesn’t carry much weight because you don’t have a pee-pee hanging down between your legs. I am also aware that persons of color, immigrants, the elderly, and the very young are also very much at risk for having anything they say ignored because, well, the “dominant” ones (or their proxies, who may be minorities or women themselves) just don’t want to be bothered by people who just aren’t — to them — important. See some of Mitt Romney’s comments about women for an idea of the dismissiveness–and the one about how much better off he would be as a candidate if he was Mexican, for an idea of how this works.

So — Mandisa’s comment may not have completely applied to this case, but there is certainly validity in what she wrote. Such pervasive — “oh, did it really happen? Are you sure, dear?” attitudes are one of the reasons women avoid reporting rapes and many minorities avoid reporting being victims of crimes (they often get, “what were you doing there? Why were you there? What did you do to cause this?”) Disgusting, but real.

All i have to add is that while false rape accusations are exceedingly rare, almost all legitimately false accusations of rape occur within a mental health setting – often involving people (men and women) who suffered horrific sexual abuse as children and have PTSD as a result. Part of the PTSD is reliving the source of the trauma which can result in the belief that one is being raped repeatedly. Needless to say the men and women who suffer from those delusions of repeated sexual assault are extremely vulernable to further sexual assault by other patients and staff because any accusation they make is attributed to the delusion. Major issue within the mental health system

The men’s rights movement bozos only get away with trying to claim that there is a large number of false rape claims by classifying cases where there is insufficient evidence to prove rape beyond a reasonable doubt as being false accusations. Of course, in our criminal justice system ties – and even cases where there you think there is a 95% chance that the defendant is in fact a rapist but tehre is a plausible argument for innocence – go to the defense. That is how things should be in a free country