Summary: Many odd stories mark the evolution of America-that-once-was into the New America. Dark and mysterious stories, often about the uses of government power for private ends. Today we look at the death of Sunny Sheu, and the cover-up of the death of this anti-corruption whistleblower by numerous agencies and the mainstream media.
“The Death of Sunny Sheu“
Will Galison &Milton Allimadi at Truth-out
23 August 2012 — Excerpt
Protection by law enforcement and a criminal justice system is the most fundamental contract between a people and their government. Without security, all other rights and liberties are moot, so we employ our government to protect us from being robbed, injured or killed by anyone with the inclination to harm us.
- … What would the public’s reaction be if the police department in question was the largest and most powerful in the nation, the New York Police Department (NYPD)?
- What if the murder was not an impulsive act by an unstable misfit, but apparently a premeditated assassination?
- What if the police not only failed to investigate, but were directly implicated in the crime and proven to have covered it up in collusion with the FBI, the New York State judiciary, and others?
- What if the victim had made a video weeks before his death, exposing the corruption he had uncovered, predicting his death and naming the people he believed would kill him?
- What if the medical examiner (ME) officially ruled the cause of death “blunt force trauma to the head with skull fractures and brain injuries” and the NYPD continued to maintain that the victim died of “natural causes” with “no head trauma“?
- In other words, what if the entire structure of governmental institutions, which exist to ensure our security, colluded to protect the killer through negligence and outright criminality?
That is precisely what appears to have happened in the case of Sun Ming “Sunny” Sheu, an anti-corruption whistleblower who was bludgeoned to death on July 26, 2010. The details of this case and the reasons you have never heard of it will be the subject of this article.
The Sheu story exposes criminal complicity and betrayal by all of the institutions we depend on for our security: local and federal law enforcement; the courts; politicians; health care providers; and, most chilling of all, our refuge of last resort, the media. …
(2) Sunny Sheu’s Video Predicting His Murder
He recorded this video on 9 April 2011. He died on 26 July 2011. See the transcript here.
(3) Other articles about this story
(a) A series at Black Star News (New York’s leading investigative newspaper); “Was Sunny Sheu, Foe Of Judicial Corruption, Murdered?”
- “Activist Dead Weeks After Posting Video About His Fears“, Milton Allimadi with Will Galison, 20 June 2011
- “Sunny Sheu’s Death — ongoing Coverup?“, Will Galison, 9 July 2011
(b) “Sunny Sheu: Murdered for Investigating NY Foreclosure Judge Joseph Golia?“, Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism, 23 June 2011
(c) “Business Insider Solicits, Then Refuses to Publish, Story on Suspicious Foreclosure-Related Death of Sunny Sheu“, Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism, 7 September 2012
(d) Website about The Murder of Sunny Sheu
This blog is a repository of documentation regarding the death of Mortgage Fraud victim and anti-corruption activist Sun Ming (Sunny) Sheu, and the ensuing cover up by law enforcement including the FBI, NYPD and Queens DA. There are many pages on this site that are not visible on the opening page. Please use the “SEARCH” function to locate articles of interest regarding this case.
(4) For More Information
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See these posts about America’s shameful criminal justice system…
- The Feds decide who to lock up for life (not just at Guantanamo), another nail in the Constitution’s coffin, 2 June 2010
- The Collapse of American Criminal Justice System — Excerpts from The Collapse of American Criminal Justice by William J. Stuntz
- More about the collapse of the American Criminal Justice System – Studies and reports about our shameful system.
- Final thoughts about the American Criminal Justice System, 21 September 2011
Speaking as a longtime resident of New York City and someone who has kept abreast of numerous articles in the Village Voice which have shone light on the dark side of the NYPD — the actions of various corrections officers within the prison system, the ongoing subjection of minority men to stop-and-frisk while citizen reports of serious crimes are deliberately downgraded or even ignored (in order to keep the statistics down), and the treatment which fellow whistleblower Adrian Schoolcraft received — I sadly have no particular reason to be skeptical of the allegations that the NYPD may have played a role in the death of Mr. Sun Ming Sheu.
Unfortunately, this may not necessarily be anything new, Anyone who refuses to believe that the NYPD could possibly be this corrupt should probably ask Frank Serpico for his opinion. Mr. Serpico, of course, is the famous NYPD whistleblower from the 1970’s (and the subject of the 1973 film starring Al Pacino) whose revelations led to the formation of the Knapp Commission which eventually resulted in criminal indictments against corrupt police officers. In February of 1971, Serpico was involved in a drug raid during which he was shot in the face — his fellow officers ignored his calls for backup, and also “neglected” to dispatch a call to police headquarters to inform them that an officer had been shot.
There are some who believe to this day that the shooting was not impromptu and that his fellow officers had secretly arranged to silence Serpico by having him assassinated in a setup that would make it look as if he had died in the line of duty. He survived the shooting but suffers to this day from the injuries he sustained — he’s reportedly deaf in one ear because the bullet severed the auditory nerve on that side and suffers from chronic pain stemming from bullet fragments which remain lodged in his brain. While he was in the hospital, he was harassed by members of the police department. Frank Serpico retired from the NYPD in 1972 after testifying before the Knapp Commission and left New York City for eight years — it’s been said that he did so in order to get away from persistent harassment and there are reports that intermittent harassment continues to this day more than forty years after his original disclosure.
Do I think it’s possible that the NYPD played a role in the death of Mr. Sun Ming Sheu? Damn right I do. Do I think that they were definitely involved, or that they carried it out themselves? I don’t know, but I’ll tell you this much…anyone who insists on thinking that they couldn’t possibly have been involved is simply wearing blinders and that’s all there is to it. After all, social critics and whisteblowers use the term “blue wall of silence” (or variations thereof) for a reason.
Thanks for this additional context! Now for the big question : has the problem of police corruption gotten worse or better? Or gotten better and now getting worse?
Speaking as someone who is only able to observe from a distance, I would say that the problem of police corruption in the NYPD at least temporarily got better since the Knapp Commission did result in indictments…but I think it’s also quite possible that police corruption has been on the increase over the past ten years as a (unforeseen) side effect of the War On Terror and the greater degree of power that the police have received as a result. After all, as the quote widely attributed to Lord Acton states, “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
This implies that the more power people have, the more likely it is that they will be tempted to abuse that power — and since the chances of being penalized for abusing that power will probably decrease as their power increases, the harder it becomes to resist the temptation to do it and the stronger a person’s willpower and ethical principles need to become in order to do so.
That seems likely. I wonder if the kind of corruption varys over time. Corruption by organized crime differs from corrupt police doing the bidding of powerful business interests. Did the Knapp Commission address just the former, or both?
A very strange tale. The part where the corpse was taken from the hospital morgue by a policeman who refused to sign for it a mere 12 hours after the death? That reads like an unlikely plot found in an improbable pulp fiction mystery novel. Strange days.
Astounding. I cannot figure out whether overzealous policemen tried to render a service to honcho judge attempting to get rid of a case that he bungled through crass incompetence, prejudice and indifference in the first place — leading to increasingly frantic and violent means to make the poor Chinese shut up, or whether there is a whole gang of officials up and down the hierarchy in cahoots with banks and swindlers to rip off simple citizens, enjoy the loot, and eliminate whomever tries to fight back and alert about the malfeasance.
I don’t have much to add, other than the whole thing just gives me the creeps. Sounds like the judge and his cohorts found a guy with poor English skills, and owner who was living oversees, and figured their property would be easy one to steal. They underestimated this Chinese guy’s tenacity, though, and escalated from stealing to murder.
In an nutshell, Golia fucked up by having Sheu killed. He figured that some Chinese guy with his own business would not have any friends with the courage and resources to raise a fuss. Unfortunately for Golia, one of Sheu’s friends owned a newspaper and another had the foresight to make a video of Sheu saying that if he was killed it would be by Golia and the NYPD/
When Captain Austin learned about the video on the night of the murder, he freaked out, and went into plan” B” – panic mode- stealing the body from the hospital and trying to dupe the M.E. The M.E. did not want to be an accessory to murder and told the truth the the BSN reporter in a recorded phone conversation.
Plan “C” was to keep this story from ever appearing in the press, but unfortunately Truthout and a few other independent news venues still exist.
Among those who are trying to cover it up include: Village Voice, NY Post, Daily News, Huffington Post, Newsday, NYPD Confidential, Time, Newsweek, New York Times, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, etc….
And a few you might not have expected: WNYC, NPR, Business Insider, Reader Supported News, Salon, Democracy Now, Mother Jones, Al Jezeera, RT, Epoch Times
It is fair to say that this story is an acid test of journalistic integrity and independence. Every one of the above news venues ran many articles on the Trayvon Martin case. What is the difference between that and the Sheu case????
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I would like to read the court transcript. The Judge had to state for the record why he was going forward with the case based upon a known felony having been committed.
The MO of the FBI does match anything I ever dealt with.
Why would this guy deliver a letter to a Judge’s personal home mailbox… ta judge that knows does not like him.
Something the general publ doesn’tn’t see on the TV Police is that bodies get misplaced all the time….sad but true.
Police officers do get the facts wrong all the time but they a straightenghen them out. Reason: witnesses can be very unreliable not that they lie(some do) but often they are scared from seeing real violence both intentional and accidental. Again it is not like the TV Police shows where science solves everything down to the last detail, that is all El Toro Poo-Poo but most civilians have never scene any kind of real crime scene processing or real Police Investigation procedures.
Corruption certainly exist in Police departments and the Legal System because they have to recruit from the same population as anybody else but this case seems strange in a lot of ways. And maybe that can be explained away but I am not so sure in this case.
I’m a little skeptical of slapout’s comment, but very skeptical of this:
I’d like to see some supporting evidence for this. Misplacing small objects is easy. Misplacing something the size and weight of a human body is difficult, especially when it rots. A dead squirrel can empty a house. A dead body would annouce itself quickly and loudly. Also, they are easy to identify if mislabeled.
(1) From the author of the article: “The MO of the FBI does match anything I ever dealt with.” It matches exactly the MO that I and countless others have dealt with when he fBI is confronted with judicial corruption.
Check out this conversation with the assistant to Janice Fedarcyk ( a week before she became Director of the New York FBI, and ask why there was no follow up:
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bovopx5Z71I
.
Response? crickets.
(2) “Why would this guy deliver a letter to a Judge’s personal home mailbox… ta judge that knows does not like him.”
Because the Judge would not respond to any certified mail service over several years.
(3) “Something the general publ doesn’tn’t see on the TV Police is that bodies get misplaced all the time….sad but true.”
The body wasn’t “misplaced”. It was stolen! Read the Coroner’s Morgue Stay Document and listen to the Director of Admission’s at NY Hospital describe how the cops came in and took the body without any means of identifying it.
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p80mLeqUbek
.
The M.E. report says they demanded the body at 5:00 AM on a Sunday, nine hours after Sunny died! Does that happen all the time?
The NYPD took the body to the morgue with a note from the 109th saying there had been an investigation, but their own detective said there hadn’t been.
Read the article, buddy!
Fab Max,
Skepticism is good but I don’t see what the problem is. Mostly I asked questions about the situation and ways that evidence could be found to help prove or disprove the case.
As to the specific questition of the misplaced body, perhaps I should have been a little more specific. I was talking about the procedures that are used when Hospitals release bodies to the Police(where I live it would be a civilian forensic services employee not regular police officer)release to a funeral home or to transportation company or to another government agency morgue. In a city the size of New York I bet bodies get lost and found all the time. That was what I was referring to. I have no evidence I can post but I am sure you know some Cops probably a few FBI types, asked them when you get a chance, what I said is correct
A few other comments to clarify what I meant:
Hope this helps.
That explanation does help. I thought you were speaking on the basis of some knowledge or experience. So let’s venture some tentative answers to his questions.
(1) “Why would this guy deliver a letter to a Judge’s personal home mailbox… ta judge that knows does not like him.”
People do strange things, esp people from other nations. He may have thought it would get more attention if sent to his home.
(2) “Something the general publ doesn’tn’t see on the TV Police is that bodies get misplaced all the time….sad but true.” “In a city the size of New York I bet bodies get lost and found all the time.”
I doubt that is correct. My guess is that it certainly happens, but not often.
(3) “Police officers do get the facts wrong all the time but they a straightenghen them out.”
The record shows that they do often make mistakes, and they often don’t straighten them out. Hence so many incorrect convictions. See The Innocence Project and the various State wrongful conviction projects.
I am speaking from experience ,you know I am retired LE from the SWJ/SWC.
My comments to your responses:
1- good call,that could explain his actions.
2-It happens enough that if the case is important enough or special enough they will put a sworn Police Officer with the body just to make sure nothing happens by intention or accident. Thought of a way you might be convinced……ever read about those creepy cases where they find 500 bodies in a grave yard that is designed for a couple of hundred? That is how stuff like that happens.
3-That is not the Police Officers fault that is the Lawyers fault. All Police Officers do is make the arrest based upon probable cause. Guilt or Innocence is up to the prosecutor,the defense and the jury.
Another issue on the FBI. What I meant by their MO is that based upon what I read they don’t have any jurisdiction to enter the case. This Judge apears to be some kind of circuit judge or something similar. If local authorities are considered corrupt or incompetent the next level of jurisdiction would be at the state level not federal.
Re 3: The prosecutor and jury don’t perform their own independent investigation and the defense doesnt have the means to either. The officers who investigate have a huge influence on the result based on what they include and what they exclude and how they spin the information they receive.
“retired LE from the SWJ/SWC.”
What does that mean? Is that something we should be expected to know?
LW = law enforcement (I assume that means law enforcement officer, but perhaps not). But what is “SWJ/SWC”? Small wars Journal/Small Wars Council is the best known fit for that acronym.
slapout9: If you were law enforcement it must have been in a hick town where nothing ever happened, because clearly you don;t know what you are talking about.
Once again, I suggest you read the article before making comments. Golia was a NY Supreme Court Judge, but that is irrelevant.
“If local authorities are considered corrupt or incompetent the next level of jurisdiction would be at the state level not federal.”
When local Law enforcement breaks the law, that is “crime under color of law” and it is a federal issue for the FBI. From the FBI website:
The FBI is the lead federal agency for investigating color of law abuses, which include acts carried out by government officials operating both within and beyond the limits of their lawful authority. Off-duty conduct may be covered if the perpetrator asserted his or her official status in some way. During 2009, the FBI investigated 385 color of law cases. Most of these crimes fall into five broad areas:
Re: FBI investigation of corruption and incompetence of local law enforcement
I believe slapout9 is correct in practical terms. This is a matter for State and local law enforcement. Althought the Federal government has very broad law enforcement authority, their limited resources prevent them from exercising it on any significant scale except for the limited areas on which they focus. 14,000 sworn agencts cannot do much in a nation of 300 million people.
Of the 385 color of law cases, how many were related to some form of group descrimination, which has been a driver of Federal action since Truman?
Fabius, I received your comment by email but don’t. see it here:
I urge you to read this certified , receipt confirmed letter from the Blackstar News to NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, and forwarded to the NYC Mayor, AG and others. If a friend or loved one of yours was murdered under circumstances similar to those of Sunny Sheu, and you received no response to the above letter, to what other State agencies would you bring the issue?
Again, here it is straight from the FBI’s own website:
How could they make this more clear. The FBI may not be required to investigate a wrongful parking ticket but kidnapping and murder of a whistle blower, removal of his body and illegal cremation, all with complicity of local law enforcement????? In case you forgot, the Fourth amendment to the Constitution states:
Sunny’s person was seized, his house was seized, his papers were seized, his effects were seized… and his life was taken. The kidnapping and murder of a person is as egregious a “deprivation of a right protected by the Constitution or U.S. law” as there can be. If the NYPD, the NY Governor, DA, AG all ignore the murder of a New Yorker and the failure to investigate, the FBI is the ONLY recourse.
If not, you have discovered a Constitutional loophole by which all Americans can be murdered by the police without investigation.
You are confusing two kinds of statements. From Wikipedia:
At Church we can sing about the world as it should be, and perhaps will be eventually. Here we spend most of our time with “positive” analysis. That’s what slapout9 discusses. That’s my interest, as you’ll see at the links at the end of this post. Don’t blame us for the difference between the two views.
The America-that-once-was did not have the world’s greatest criminal justice system. From the Civil War until the New Deal the primary function of the State security apparatus was to maintain order. The social order. That meant state-sanctioned violence against blacks, unions, and a wide range of reformers. Casual murder was OK. Public shooting was sometimes applied when things got out of hand. After the New Deal things got better.
The New America is a return to the former order, in many ways. No surprise. Under stress organizations and societies return to familar and comfortable patterns, those associated with success for the society’s stakeholders (ie, in America the rich and politically powerful).
That’s the context of this story. Citing the 4th ammendment is a nice touch, but of no operational significance. Chagne comes from mobilization of social resources. That’s the significance of this case, IMO. Many of the social forces that in the past would have acted (ie, the news media) no longer do so. It’s a milestone along the road we’re walking.
mtinberg,
That is not completely accurate. Many(probabaly most) prosecutors(district attorneys) have independent investigative staffs just for cases like this. I agree the defense is often at a disadvantage because of a lack of investigative capability but even that depends on where you live and weather the defense can gain access to private organizationss that will provide investigative services for free or reduced costs. The jury is where our legal system suffers the most. It is often very difficult for the average person to absorb all the intricate details and methods and procedures of law and law enforcement. I also agree that the Law Enforcement Officer(s) have a huge influence on the case.
Slapout9,
(1) “Many (probabaly most) prosecutors(district attorneys) have independent investigative staffs just for cases like this.”
While true, this is very irrelevant to the vast majority of cases prosecuted in America. They’re prosecuted on the basis of the police investigation, and plea bargained to a conclusions. What you see in Perry Mason, CSI, and such has no more relation to reality in America than Star Trek to NASA.
(2) “weather the defense can gain access to private organizationss that will provide investigative services for free or reduced costs.”
Wow, deep fantasy. For the vast majority of defendants, they have equal odds that the Blue Fairy will help them.
Suggestion: to gain a more realistic perspective on our criminal justice system, read some of the posts listed in the For More Information section. They all have links to articles from reliable sources.
A realistic look at American law enforcement, backed by considerable research: “Can we predict a wrongful conviction?“, Sue Russell, Pacific Standard, 9 September 2012 — “Experts find recurring themes in these cases, and safeguards in the system become “speed bumps at best”
Opening:
Fab Max,
Yes LE=Law Enforcement and yes SWJ/SWC = Small Wars Journal/Small Wars Council. You used to send me emails every once in a while but upon reviewing the material I see that Fab Max is now a Compsite ???have know idea what that means but it appears we/I have the wrong person. Sorry for the intrusion.
I see that I was too harsh in tone, for which I apologize.
But this is IMO a story to make any American’s blood boil. Of course we don’t know all the facts, but that largely results from our corporate media’s indifference to these stories.
From a larger perspective, perhaps we’re where we are because people too often wave away these stories (“bodies are lost all the time”) — too often without any factual basis. I wonder if this is just a defensive measure, to avoid confronting horrific aspects of the New America. Our criminal justice system is high on that list, IMO.
The Republic might have higher odds of reform (or even survival) if we got angry more often at these stories, and spent less time imagining ways to explain them away.
Fab Max,
Thank You for the apology. Just want you to know I am not the enemy and I am as concerned as you about the Criminal Justice Situation. What happened in this case was a very bad thing. There appears to have been a lot of criminal activity but there was also a lot of just plain ineptitude and general confusion. On another thread you and I had a discussion about complexity and you said there was no evidence of how complexity can cause a sociaty to collapse, I disagreed then and I do now and I think this is a real good example of how complexity is causing collapse. A lot of what happend in this case was due to the sheer complexity of our criminal justice system and conmen and criminals love complexity and they use to enable such crimes as may have happened in this case. IMO Criminality hates Simplicity!
Passion often leads me intemperate responses, esp as these are written on the run (my time goes into the posts).
I never thought you were the enemy.
A note about these discussions.
Note that discussion about complexity was largely theory, abstractions from specific events. Finding hard truth in such a discussion ranges from almost impossible to impossible. Opinions clash so we can test the metals of our views, but find no certainty (political and value-based discussions are also like this).
Here we are discussing real world events where there are actual facts — but we don’t and probably never will have them. For instance somebody knows how often morgues and hospitals in NYC lose human corpses, but we’ll probably never learn the answer. So we match guesses, which is why we want to know the authority behind any claims of experience.
BTW — for me that is from reading every one of the Perry Mason novels and watching every one of the first seven seasons of NCIS. For instance, it’s ok to shoot thru a hostage — if she’s a bad girl. If its a young (ie, good) girl, it’s ok to shoot if you’re confident that you’ll hit only the bad guy.
” Opinions clash so we can test the metals of our views, but find no certainty (political and value-based discussions are also like this).” That is sheer poetry!
Perry Mason is good…..NCIS not so good.
The all time best is John D. MacDonald. BTW he uses the…. what’s in the crimnals pockets routine several times in several of his stories and novels and is more accurate than the incedible Mr. Holmes,just my opinion.
Link to a lot of good John D. MacDonald stuff for free.
http://thetrapofsolidgold.blogspot.com/
While I enjoy watching the characters in NCIS, the plots are crazy dumb — but worse, it’s like watching a family-friendly show about the Gestapo. That was my point about shooting at hostages. Plus their near-total disregard for the law. They’re government vigilantes, sworn agents who disregard their oaths to save us from the jihadists around every corner.
Goebbels would admired NCIS, and wished he’d thought of this idea.
By the way…. Thank you Fabius Maximus. You pass the Sunny Sheu test!
You are the real deal in my book.
William Galison,
Thank you for posting the follow ups. Now that clears up a lot of my questions I had and it leaves little doubt that Sunny Sheu was victimized by the system.
William Galison,
I realize you may be busy but if you have time for a few questions. I initially listed elements that I thought were questionable but I also had several questions that I thought would pretty unusual for a Police department to do in an accident case.
slapout9:
(1) “The autopsy report (from the article)describes a small hole about 4cm. That sounds like a gunshot wound not blunt force trauma.”
Here is the official “Certificate of Death” signed by Queens Medical Examiner Michael Greenberg. Greenberg rules the cause of death to be “Blunt force trauma to the head with skull fractures and brain injuries” and the manner of death to be “undetermined” which mandates an investigation.
The blow to the head was directly at the base of the skull, which anyone with military training will tell you is exactly where you strike someone to kill them with the least effort. Also, 4 cm is nearly two inches, far to big to be an entrance wound, and of course there was no exit wound and no bullet.
(2) “Is it usual to schedule and autopsy and a cremation in New York? That sounded pretty strange.”
It is not unusual – it is unheard of, and criminal, for the police to remove a body from a hospital when there is no crime report and no investigation ongoing.
(3) “The funeral home man claiming to be next of ken, that would be a crime down where I live.”
To impersonate an executor and t transport a body comprises many felonies under the NY Penal code. The question is: why has this person, Bung Ha, whose identity and business address are publicly known never been arrested, or even questioned?
12 September 2012 10:14 pm: “slapout9: If you were law enforcement it must have been in a hick town where nothing ever happened, because clearly you don;t know what you are talking about.”
Once again, I suggest you read the article before making comments. Golia was a NY Supreme Court Judge, but that is irrelevant.
”If local authorities are considered corrupt or incompetent the next level of jurisdiction would be at the state level not federal.”
When local Law enforcement breaks the law, that is “crime under color of law” and it is a federal issue for the FBI. From the FBI website:
The FBI is the lead federal agency for investigating color of law abuses, which include acts carried out by government officials operating both within and beyond the limits of their lawful authority. Off-duty conduct may be covered if the perpetrator asserted his or her official status in some way. During 2009, the FBI investigated 385 color of law cases. Most of these crimes fall into five broad areas:
The above was posted by William Galison below is my response.
In my questions about your article(which I have read 3 times) I have always addressed you with the utmost respect and I don’t see why you think you snide little comments will help you. You do not write as well as you think and almost the whole first page was a rant about Trayvon Martin. But in the interest of Mr. Sheu here is my response. The little hick town was Montgomery,Al. which is pretty famous for “Color Of Law Cases” so you could have saved yourself the time. During my time as an LE officer I became familiar with the Southern Poverty Law Center, they actively seek these types of cases all across the country. Just Google the name for for all the contact information. As it is useless to argue with you let me simply say that if you really want justice and are not just some newsapaper reporter wanting to make a name for himself contact the splc with the infromation you have and let some very experienced attorney(s) make a judgement as to what course(s) of action you may be able to follow. Good Luck
(1) “In my questions about your article(which I have read 3 times) I have always addressed you with the utmost respect and I don’t see why you think you snide little comments will help you.”
My frustration is not with your tone of voice, but with your distorting of the facts and careless and/ or disingenuous rationalizations regarding a case in which my friend and colleague was brutally murdered, with no investigation by law enforcement and no coverage by the media.
(2) “You do not write as well as you think and almost the whole first page was a rant about Trayvon Martin.”
I am a professional musician- not a writer- so my own opinion of my own writing is of no importance.
The “rant about Trayvon Martin” was simply to ask the question why the media has published thousands of articles about the TM case, and NOT ONE (with the exception of mine) about Sunny Sheu. That is a very reasonable and germane question, and an important one.
(3) “if you really want justice and are not just some newsapaper reporter wanting to make a name for himself contact the splc with the infromation you have and let some very experienced attorney(s) make a judgement as to what course(s) of action you may be able to follow.”
Well, I am certainly not a “newspaper reporter trying to make a name for myself”. I am a human being trying to get justice for my murdered friend, and to protect myself and the rest of us from the prospect of being murdered without investigation.
I appreciate your idea of contacting the SPLC, but you should know as well as anyone that if the local authorities and FBI refuse to investigate and undetermined death, the SPLC is not going to change their minds. The only solution is to get this story out with full documentation, which is what I have attempted to do with this article.
I do apologize if my tone was insulting, but having worked for over two years on this case, under reasonable fear of retaliation, and with NO support from the government or the media, I am steaming mad. Having people question the veracity of my report without diligently studying the documentation makes me even madder, because people who don’t want to accept the reality of our lawless society will cling to any argument, no matter how specious.
This is a story of immense importance. Ultimately it shows how government officials can kill me, you and anyone else with impunity and with the complicity of the media.
Historical background on the abuse of state police powers by capitalists and the political order to put down labor reformers: “Frontier Justice A 1905 murder in Idaho provides the background for J. Anthony Lukas’s study of the battle for America’s future“, New York Times, 26 October 1997
Also see: Recovered Economic History: “Everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious”, Class War For Idiots at the Exiled Online, Yasha Levine, 5 April 2012 — excerpts:
https://soundcloud.com/able-the-unknown/conversation-with-golia this is a link to my conversation with Judge Golia..he said he was recording…well so was I..listen
Here’s a quote about John D. Macdonald that I often see bouncing around the web (I hesitate to quote from Wikipeida, which we all know is generally stuff we can wipe our asses with, but this seems legit). “Macdonald is by any standards a better writer than Saul Bellow, only Macdonald writes thrillers and Bellow is a human heart chap, so guess who wears the top grade laurels?” That’s from Kingsley Amis.
http://postmoderndeconstructionmadhouse.blogspot.com/2015/01/john-d-macdonald-look-at-some-aspects.html#.VNHn89L
Elizabeth,
Thanks for the interesting quote. Let me defend Wikipedia. It’s a useful source of references. In this case they cite a source for the quote: page 69 of Kingsley Amis’ book What Became of Jane Austen? And Other Questions (1971).
The common theme of defensiveness – why is it there? Well, we most assuredly know that the literati and the cognoscenti dismissed Macdonald as a hack. Prolific beyond words, he churned out novels and stories at a mind blowing pace his entire life. In the old school reference work World Authors 1950-1970 (published by H.H. Wilson) he says that when starting out as a young writer he kept thirty to forty stories in the mail at all times. What a fine example of self confidence and determination!
http://postmoderndeconstructionmadhouse.blogspot.com/2015/01/john-d-macdonald-look-at-some-aspects.html#.VNHn89L
“Around them in the world, people ride escalators up and sneak secret glances at the faces coming down. People dangle teabags over hot water in white CUPS. Cars run silently on the autobahns, streaks of painted light. People sit at desks and stare at office walls. They smell their shirts and drop them in the hamper. People bind themselves into numbered seats and and fly across time zones and high cirrus and deep night, knowing there is something they’ve forgotten to do.”
http://postmoderndeconstructionmadhouse.blogspot.com/2015/01/john-d-macdonald-look-at-some-aspects.html#.VNHn89L