Tag: White House

A Heinous Crime That Could Have Been Prevented

It had been the end of a long day when 23 year old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zartuska boarded Charlotte’s Lynx Blue Line train at 9:46 on August 22, 2025.

Also boarding the train, but evading paying for his ticket, was Decarlos Brown, Jr., a homeless man with fourteen run-ins with the police, awaiting trial for a new offense.

In four minutes, Iryna, who had fled the violence of the Ukraine conflict for a better life in America, would be dead, stabbed three times in the neck while looking at her cellphone by Brown, who sat behind her.

She died almost instantly.

Still wielding a bloody pocket knife, Brown was heard repeatedly shouting, “I got that white girl.”

Video captured the killing.

Brown, 34, has been charged with first degree murder.

In 2014, he was sentenced to prison for armed robbery and released in September, 2020.

In February, 2021, he was arrested for assaulting his sister, leaving her with minor injuries.

A few weeks later, he was arrested for injury to private property and trespassing.

In July 2022, he was arrested for a domestic disturbance.

Shortly after, he was arrested for injury to personal property and trespassing.

Brown’s criminal history is lengthy, reaching back to when he was a minor.

He has a documented history of mental illness. After the armed robbery, his aggressiveness intensified, resulting in his mother having him committed under court order for psychiatric observation—the diagnosis: schizophrenia.

Following his release, his aggressiveness increased still further and his mother ordered him to leave the household.

A few weeks before murdering Zarutzka, police detained Brown for misusing 911.

Despite all of this, he remained free to walk Charlotte’s streets.

Subsequently, Magistrate Teresa Stokes allowed him freedom from incarceration in exchange for his written promise to show up for a later hearing.

In a July 22 continuance hearing on Brown’s 911 misuse, judge Roy Wiggins ordered a forensic evaluation.

Unfortunately, he did not detain Brown in the meantime, a mistake with lethal consequence four weeks later.

As for the evaluation, it never happened.

In the aftermath, some on the Left argued that Brown was as much a victim of a system that failed as was Iryna. In turn, they initiated a GoFundMe account that raised $75,000 dollars to defray his legal expenses as part of the “fight against the racism and bias against our people.”

GoFundMe pulled the account.

Iryna’s murder became politicized, Trump labeling Brown a “lunatic.” Democrats, in turn, accused Trump of exploiting the tragedy for political gain.

Otherwise, Democrats have been largely silent about the murder.

In fairness, North Carolina governor Josh Stein (D) did speak out, denouncing the crime as senseless and calling for a greater police presence.

For many Democrats, however, the story didn’t fit their narrative.

Charlotte mayor Vi Lyles commented that the Charlotte transportation was safe, “by and large,” despite a recent survey reporting just 37% of Charlotte residents consider the Charlotte Area Transit System safe.

It can be argued that Progressives share responsibility for people like Brown being on the streets, abetted by black leadership and liberal media frequently engaging in racial framing that rationalizes black criminality as the offspring of white racism.

Many on the right fault Progressive advocacy of cashless bail, reduced incarceration, expunging felony records; and last, but not least, defunding the police, constitute a litany of liberal efforts more focused on criminals than the law-abiding.

Apart from the Washington Post, liberal news media, by and large, did not report the murder, consequently censoring the public’s right to know through omission, a noticeable detour from its intense coverage of the subway death of Jordan Neely by Daniel Perry, a white man.

Among media not reporting the story,

The New York Times
CNN
NPR
USA Today
Reuters
Axios
ABC News
PBS
MSNBC

(CNN did finally reference the crime, but only after the video’s release on September 5, devoting a two minute blurb to the story in its morning show).

Even Wikipedia has been caught up in the frey, one of its editors calling for the deletion of the posting titled “Killing of Iryna Zarutska.” A box message, later deleted, appeared above the post: “An editor has nominated this article for deletion.”

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sander believes Wikipedia is now “too left” and “unreliable” (Manhattan Institute).

Brown, obviously mentally ill, should have been removed from the streets long ago in the interest of public safety.


The Brown case is not unprecedented when it comes to the American justice system’s failing the mentally ill, many of them homeless.

As Charlotte council member Edwin Peacock put it,
“If you’re constantly arresting people and they keep coming back out on the streets, what type of message is that sending?”

In 2020, former Democrat governor Roy Cooper, now running for the senate, established the “Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice,” co-chaired by then Attorney General and current Governor Josh Stein. It recommended “reimagining public safety” to “promote diversion and other alternatives to arrest,” “deemphasize” some felony crimes, prioritize “restorative justice,” and “eliminate cash bail” for many crimes (The Department of Justice (September 9, 2025).

In 2020, Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Chief Johnny Jennings declared  “law enforcement, in general, is based on racism” and their department can “probably slow down” on “discretionary arrests.”

In 2020, Democrat State Senator Mujtaba Mohammed, who represents Charlotte,  declared “independence from rogue police” (DOJ, September 9, 2025).

As I write, the Department of Justice has announced Brown will face federal charges, making him eligible for the death penalty. In a statement, Attorney General Pam Bondi depicted Iryna Zarutska “as a young woman living the American dream. Her horrific murder is a direct result of failed soft-on-crime policies that put criminals before innocent people.”

Ironically, the media is now weighing in. Where have they been? Is it the White House intervention and possibility of the death penalty that motivates this sudden rush to reporting in?

News comes that Paramount has now appointed an ombudsman to review bias at CBS news.

As for our courts, my thoughts drift to the late, gifted satirist Tom Wolfe of “Radical Chic” fame. His acclaimed Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) got it right—America’s highly politicized, often incompetent judicial system, is a sham.

rj

Ambush at the White House: A Hero Humiliated

Zelensky arrived at the White House, mocked openly by Trump for not wearing a suit. Zelensky soon discovered that the anticipated signing of an agreement for access to 50% of Ukraine’s minerals offered no security guarantees. Unwilling to sign, Zelensky was lured into an ambush before a gathered press. If you are defined by the friends you keep, then the reality sinks in: Trump’s friend is Vladimir Putin. In what followed. he lavished praise for the dictator, who he said can be trusted to keep his word.

As usual, Trump couldn’t get the facts straight. Boasting of the US giving Ukraine $340b, the truth is $119b, a not inconsiderable sum, but Europe has given more at $138b.

Zelensky was expelled and the planned celebratory luncheon canceled.

Trump appears ready to cut off all military aid to the besieged nation. Meanwhile, the Russian press has been exuberant in its praise of Trump.

We are in a shameful moment of a fascist government, run by incompetents, trampling on dissent, imperiling our obligations to the marginalized, abandoning its allies, and subordinating itself to corporate oligarchy.

Stand up for Ukraine. Incorporate its flag into your FB profile. Support the boycott movement, the public protests. It isn’t just about Ukraine. It’s coming cuts to Medicaid, the suspension of environmental and health safeguards, the cut off of aid to developing nations.

America is engaged in a war—a moral one. We can win, and with your help, we will.

–RJoly

The Heart of Darkness: The Syrian Inferno

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The civil war in Syrian, which began in March 2011, drags on with all its madness and no end in sight.  In that time, 125,000 (latest figures) have died and 2 million of Syria’s 6 million population fled, spilling its human burden into refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq.

All wars are destructive, but civil wars usually are among the worst.  In our own civil war, 600,000 died, which is more than all our wars combined; more than a million perished in Spain; 2 million in Algeria and Korea.  One of the worst scenarios missed by the media is the loss of 5 million lives in the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1998 and 2008.

The present conflict proves no exception.  While we normally associate casualties with the military waging war, the truth is that civilian casualties nearly always exceed military losses by a wide margin; for example, an estimated 20 million European civilians died in World War II.

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In Syria,  a good many of these casualties are children.  Consider these recently released findings (UN High Commissioner Report):

11,000 children killed.

More than half of 70,000 families now without a father.

4000 children separated from their families.

Hundreds of children born in refugee camps stateless (unregistered births and no birth certificate).

Most children cut off from school.

All wars are tragic enactments of the primordial vestiges still resident in Man. This conflict, however, has seen some of their worst manifestations, with children deliberately targeted by sniper fire and even tortured.

Horrendous as all of this is, no one seems to have come-up with a chokehold to halt the carnage.  Maybe it’s too late anyway in a struggle that seems to have come down to attrition.  While the Assad regime has gained momentum lately against the rebels, the war has become more complicated with jihadists, including al Qaeda, pouring in from other nations. Increasingly, the struggle has turned sectarian, with Shiites pitted against Sunni. It’s Iraq all over again with long term, intractable violence the likely fallout even after any settlement is reached.

In my view, it needn’t have turned out this way had we armed the moderate rebels from the beginning, even as the Saudis had wanted, and before the entrance of Iranian-supported Hezbollah and al Qaeda in large numbers.  While the Obama administration finally did opt to supply at least light arms to the rebels, it turns out that after a year it hadn’t shipped any.  It’s simply too late to help now, since the old alibi that weaponry might fall into extremists hands has gained a validity that didn’t initially exist.

I blame President Obama for much of Syria’s pro-longed anguish.  From the very beginning, he has been ambivalent, or unable to come to a decision, despite his often pointed rhetoric should the Assad regime use chemical weapons:

We have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region that that’s a red line for us and that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons (August 2012 News Conferences).

Then came his notorious aborted cruise missile launch in response to Syria’s calling his bluff with its chemical assault on civilians, resulting in a thousand deaths.  As it turns out, there had been previous, smaller scale chemical attacks and the President had not acted.  In mid stream, naval vessels off the Syrian coast ready to launch, the whole world watching, he did an about face, passing the puck to Congress, only to withdraw the vote option when Russia came up with its initiative to negotiate the destruction of the government’s chemical stockpile with Assad.  Got Obama off the hook, to say the least.

Imagine my surprise in all of this!  A Hamlet in the White House, this president suffers from an inability to act.  We should have seen this coming.  In election year 2012, he had the gall to use the bin Laden hit for political fodder, though the truth is he knew of bin Laden’s hideout  since  the summer of 2010, or nearly two years earlier, thus risking his escape.

As liberal Arianna Huffington shared with CBS: ‘We should celebrate the fact that they did such a great job. It’s one thing to have an NBC special from the Situation Room… all that to me is perfectly legitimate, but to turn it into a campaign ad is one of the most despicable things you can do” (Daily Mail).  It turns out that the White House had drawn up a contingency plan with a general for a fall guy should the assassination go awry.

Returning to the cruise missile fiasco, I like how House Democrat Adam Smith, a key member of the House Armed Services Committee, put it:

I don’t think you draw a line like that, that is not well thought out.  You do not say, ‘If you step across this line, we will commit U. S. Military force,’ unless you really mean it, unless you know the full implications of it.

Under the cover of the chemical weapons agreement things have gotten considerably worse for the rebels, with Assad’s forces launching daily bombing raids on the rebels and civilians in the areas they control.

Sadly the American public seems in lock-step with Obama, despite dissenters on his own White House team.  If you dip into Google and Twitter commentary, you’ll find Syria virtually absent as a search or discussion item.  We’re much more into Miley Cyrus.

I think of Auden’s poignant depiction in his “Musee des Beaux Arts” poem with its ironic undertones of the corner existence of human grief in the public world:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just dully walking along.

………,,

In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

I think of Syria’s children.

–rj

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