---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 13:21:31 -0800
From: radtimes <resist@best.com>
Subject: A Panthers Trial: Another Vindication of David Horowitz
A Panther's Trial: Another Vindication of David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 17, 2002
By: Jamie Glazov
THE CURRENT Atlanta murder trial of Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, a former Black
Panther, is another vindication of David Horowitz's critical assessment of
Panther criminality.
Also known as H. Rap Brown, the 58-year-old Al-Amin is accused of murdering
Ricky Kinchen, a sheriff's deputy, and wounding his partner, Aldranon
English, in a shootout in Atlanta in March, 2000. Kinchen and English had
attempted to serve a summons to Al-Amin after he had failed to attend a
court hearing on charges of driving without proof of insurance, receiving
stolen goods and impersonating a police officer.
Al-Amin fled after the shooting and was placed on the Federal Bureau of
Investigation's Most Wanted List. He was captured several days later hiding
in woods near a small town in Alabama. The weapon used in the fatal
shooting was found nearby. English, the surviving officer, identified
Al-Amin as the gunman.
A former Panther, Al-Amin has a history of violence and brushes with the
law. In 1968, he was charged with inciting a riot and went underground on
the eve of his trial, earning him a place on the FBI's Most Wanted List.
Three years later, he was caught during a shootout in an attempted-armed
robbery in New York and sentenced to five years in prison.
Al-Amin converted to Islam in jail. He moved to Atlanta in 1976 and opened
a mosque. In 1995, he was arrested for shooting a drug dealer and was
investigated for several homicides. No charges were laid.
The present trial not only crystallizes Al-Amin's individual criminality;
it also reminds us that the Black Panthers were ruthless thugs. David
Horowitz has been stating this fact for more than two decades, but the
American Left and mainstream media continue to force this issue into
invisibility.
Horowitz came to the truth about the Panthers the hard way. In December
1974, the Panthers abducted and killed his friend, Betty Van Patter. An
enthusiastic Leftwing radical who was working for the Panthers at the time,
Horowitz had recruited Betty to keep the books of a "Learning Center" in
Oakland that he had created to run a school for the children of Black
Panthers.
Betty had found something wrong with the Panthers' record books and naively
went to inform Elaine Brown, the leader of the Panthers at the time. She
subsequently disappeared. In January 1975, her battered body -- with her
head caved in -- was found floating in San Francisco Bay.
Horowitz was devastated. He began to ask questions, but he faced only a
disturbing lack of curiosity among his Leftwing associates about Betty's
death. It became obvious to him that the Panthers knew what had happened to
Betty - because they killed her. It also became obvious that his fellow
progressive radicals were not interested in Betty's murder. The sacredness
of human life was not on their priority list; the ideal of what the
progressive cause represented was.
In the end, Horowitz reconciled himself to the reality that the Panthers
were just plain ruthless thugs who were involved in racketeering,
prostitution, extortion, drug dealing and murder.
It was this realization that led to his political conversion -- a journey
that he recounts in his autobiography Radical Son.
Horowitz discerned that the way the American Left absolved Panther crime
was a mutated form of how socialists practiced Gulag denial. And to be
sure, the Panthers always enjoyed the support of the American Left, the
Democratic Party, and the mainstream media.
Till this very day, the national media still have yet to conduct a serious
investigation into any Panther murders. Could this be because Panther
crimes are directly connected to many political figures within the liberal
establishment? Hillary Clinton, for instance, did absolutely nothing in her
position of power to bring any Panther thugs to justice, let alone to set
any historical facts straight. Could it be because as a law student at Yale
in 1970 she organized demonstrations to exonerate Panther leaders from
being tried for murder?
Is it really a mystery why prominent figures like Tom Hayden and
journalists like Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer, both of whom
championed the Panthers at the time, have remained silent about Panther
brutality till this day?
No one has ever been charged in Betty Van Patter's death. But many Sixties
and Seventies radicals have knowledge about what happened to her. They will
not come forward.
Thanks to the efforts of individuals like Horowitz, the details of Panther
crimes continue to surface -- notwithstanding the blackout by the national
media. Yet Horowitz has been vilified by the Left for his efforts. He has
also put his life in danger.
In his last televised interview, Eldridge Cleaver, the former Black Panther
leader renowned for his vehement commitment to, and participation in,
violence, discussed his change of heart. In the now famous 60 Minutes
program during which he admitted the brutal ruthlessness of the Panthers,
he stated: "If people had listened to Huey Newton and me in the 1960s,
there would have been a holocaust in this country."
The current Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin murder trial is extremely significant in
this context. It reminds us of the Left's practice of historical amnesia,
and of how one man's fight to resuscitate historical memory, a fight that
has been waged at a great personal cost, has been vindicated by historical
truth.
-------------------------------------
Jamie Glazov holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Soviet Studies.
He is the author of 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist and of Canadian
Policy Toward Khruschev's Soviet Union which will be published by
McGill-Queens University Press in March 2002. Born in the U.S.S.R., Jamie
is the son of prominent Soviet dissidents, and now resides in Vancouver,
Canada. He writes the Dr. Progressive advice column for angst-ridden
leftists at EnterStageRight.com.
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