Since this piece was posted, a typical, hatred-infused American viciously attacked a Muslim cabbie in New York, an attack that has been linked to the Park51 project. Michael Enright, a 21-year-old film student who had been filming a boosterish documentary on marines in Afghanistan, slashed and stabbed the throat of Ahmed H. Sharif, a 44-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant.

Enright started up a conversation with Sharif, during which Sharif said he was Muslim. The following account comes from the cityroomblog of The New York Times.

After falling silent for a few minutes, the passenger began cursing and screaming, and then yelled, “Assalamu alaikum — consider this a checkpoint!” and slashed Mr. Sharif across the neck, and then on the face from his nose to his upper lip, the [New York Taxi Workers] alliance said.…

An emergency medical technician said that had the cut been any deeper or longer, the driver would have died, prosecutors said…

Mr. Enright sliced the driver’s “neck open halfway across his throat,” [said James Zaleta, an assistant district attorney]

Enright was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court on charges of second-degree attempted murder as a hate crime, first-degree assault as a hate crime and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon. The links above describe the details of this extreme example of officially sanctioned American bigotry, but discrepancies between the Times blog and the “fuller account” are disturbing in their own right.

1) There appears to be an active attempt to manipulate this crime and generate public sympathy for Enright by suggesting that he may have been drunk, as if that matters. In the “final fuller version,” an anonymous law enforcement official told the Times that Enright was “very drunk” at the time of the attack. Since no such official was there “at the time of the attack,” and since this person is unnamed, the assertion seems highly manipulative. The blog said the officer would not give his name because of the active nature of the investigation, but if respect for the investigation were a factor, the reporter should not have reported the substance of the comment.

Later we learn that a city official briefed [read: “coached”] on the investigation said there was an empty bottle of scotch in his backpack, though how he could say this with certainty strains credulity.

Last, we learn that police did not administer a Breathalyzer test, even though Enright was said to be “very drunk,” and an empty liquor bottle was found in his backpack. Did these members of New York’s finest [sic] somehow lose their sense of smell?!

Perhaps a more reliable witness is Sharif, who said Enright did not appear inebriated.

2) Neither the emergency medical technician’s comment nor that of James Zaleta, both found in the blog, appear in the final version. These are conspicuous omissions because they speak to the near lethality of the attack. Their absence clearly benefits Enright.

3) This choice piece of mawkish drivel, though, appears in both sources:

“He’s terrified,” said Mr. Enright’s lawyer, Jason A. Martin. “He’s shocked at the allegations. He’s just trying to cope with it right now.”

Note Enright’s Israel-style moral posture: “Murder? He was only a Muslim after all. It’s not as though I attacked a real person!”

The best comment on this sordid event comes from Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations:

“As other American minorities have experienced, hate speech often leads to hate crimes. Sadly, we’ve seen how the deliberate public vilification of Islam can lead some individuals to violence against innocent people.” [my emphasis]

What better way to show how zionist hatemongers turned America into the land of the freak and home of the depraved!