seemslikeadream wrote:compared2what? wrote:Well. It's always nice to see littlegreenfootballs and a magazine owned by the Reverend Sun-Myung Moon bathing an RI thread with the pure beams of illumination for which they're so rightfully held in high esteem.
But 8bit, you should really take a very serious second look at the state's case against Muntasser. Because they didn't have one. It'd almost be enough to make a person think our government was capable of prosecuting patsies just to rack up a political victory, if we didn't all already know they'd never do that.
stop, info is info, from where ever it comes, I hold the belief that reading everything is the key to understanding everything, don't dismiss information of any kind, it is THE way to the truth. I took this kinda shit in the DU dungeon I believe RI is much more open to THE idea that we should avail ourselves to all and not to ignore any facts.
unless I mis understood your critizism?
did you even read the article?
I forthrightly admit that I did not, madam! I bid you good day! (turns, climbs on to broomstick, flies away.)
Just kidding. I didn't read it before posting, although I
think I've read it before at some point.
Anyway. I fully and humbly agree that reading as widely as possible is FUNdamental to the process of arriving at an independent understanding of the subject in question, as long as you're alert to the possible biases of what you're reading and taking them into consideration. And, um...I should have noticed I was being a total beyotch. Because I didn't really intend to criticize anything or anyone, per se. Certainly neither you nor 8bit.
The only totally serious part of the post was the heads-up on
U.S. v. Muntasser, et al. I followed it closely, because [long, boring and superfluous explanation deleted here]. And seriously, the prosecution's case wasn't even remotely legitimately supported by the evidence. They didn't have any that justified a big, showy trial dripping with implications of Ee-vil Terrist Activiteez. Those two guys were basically convicted of the total non-crime of being Ay-rab Muslims who were part of the same Ay-rab Muslim community and members of the same Ay-rab Muslim institutions as some extremely shady, very privileged characters of the type that inexplicably always seem to just go on suspiciously acting evil with full impunity all over the world no matter how numerous the enormous glaring indicators that they're big-time criminal conspirators happen to be.
I mean, just read
very windy bit of expert testimony from Evan Kohlmann, Teen Counterterrorism Shill For the Far Right. It's totally obvious from how heavily he's relying on ambiguous phrasing and implied guilt-by-association and unstated dark premises that they just had nothing on Muntasser. Not a thing.
The clear and reliable evidence proves only that he took what was obviously a classically non-administrative board position at what was -- as far as anyone could show he knew -- an Islamic relief charity. Because he was a prosperous, observant, sincerely religious man who owned a furniture store in Lynn, MA., living comfortably in the land of opportunity, and -- in summary -- practically the stereotype of the kind of self-made-man who's a reasonably well-to-do, possibly somewhat vain, but basically well-intentioned big donor to what appears to him to be (and to some extent actually was) an above-board religious charity.
To bring it into perspective using what's probably more easily recognizable as a credible and familiar scenario, his position was roughly comparable to that of, let's say, a well-meaning observant Catholic businessman who owns a small chain of car-dealerships in Long Island, and whose dedication the the local Catholic Youth Organization on the board of which he serves as President is due in part to self-satisfied egotism and in part to a real wish to do good in accordance with his belief system. He isn't himself a pedophile, and neither is he enough of a man of the world to think it's seriously possible that people whom he regards as powerful, important and impressive men that it's flattering to him to know personally could ever conceivably be running anything as extremely evil and arcane as a pedophiliac ring out of his backyard. And who therefore doesn't notice that they are.
Because from his POV, crimes like that are committed by deviant monstrous villains you read about in the newspaper, not by real people you drink punch with at the CYO picnic and whose frequent public expressions of outrage and contempt for all those anti-Catholic bigots who assume that everyone who's a power player at the archdiocese-level fucks little boys don't appear suspicious to him. Such a guy is definitely guilty of being foolishly blind to painful realities. Of course. But, you know, most if not all people are to a pretty significant degree. Quite apart from which, it's not actually a crime.
Anyway. If Muntasser did anything more evil than sign an inaccurate tax return, same as 99.9 per cent of everyone else who's signature has ever appeared on a Form 990, there's not any solid evidence of it. His conviction was the result of flat-out anti-Islamic bigotry and the government's need to disguise their total failure to apprehend any of the actual zillionaire funders of terrorist groups whose game they were totally aware of and in some cases complicit with. I don't know where it stands now, but last I checked, it looked like Muntasser was going to serve the year in prison that was merely twice the time that the Nobody Who Ever Goes To Jail For What He Did might get if they existed. After which plans were underway to deport him to Libya where his immediate execution by the government is fully guaranteed if it hasn't happened already. He was a legal resident of the United States who owned a furniture store and supported charitable relief work. He was happily expecting to become a full citizen when he got busted. His conviction was a tragedy and a serious miscarriage of justice. It obstructs rather than illuminates the role played by CARE and/or Ptech in events related to 9/11.
And I personally find it so sad and frightening that what happened to him can and does happen without even the people who are paying attention noticing or understanding it that it makes me weep to think about him. On his behalf, and also because there's really nothing preventing the same thing from happening to any of us, if it isn't obvious what's wrong with accepting the tenuous logic expressed by
this deep-thinking righteously anti-Islamic-TERRA and probably well-meaning blogger when she writes, "For a case where Judge Saylor kept reminding the jury "wasn't about terrorism," it obviously was."
Uh-huh. Obviously. Why even waste time and money on judges when the facts are as clear as that? It's just so, so sad and wrong. I wasn't really trying to do anything more than let 8bit know he should look at it more closely, but it was late and I put it much too snippily for that to be very readily apparent. For which lateness might be a reason but can't be an adequate excuse, by my standards. That I have no excuse for totally forgetting to meet. Please accept my apologies for that. Because I really mean them.
And you're totally right wrt the value of indiscriminately reading as much as you're able to read discriminatingly. If that makes sense.
Honestly, I was just being cheaply flippant. You know how I am. Sorry. In more ways than one. But not excluding the sincere way.