After two juries refused to convict or acquit 6 of the so-called “Miami 7” (which then became the “Liberty City Six” after one was acquitted in the first trial but then deported anyway), five were convicted today of involvement in an al Qaeda plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago.
From the very beginning it has been known to the general public that this entire case was cooked up by the cops, that the idiots they entrapped were just that and that said idiots were simply (they thought) playing the pretend terrorist informant for money when he was really playing them for a conviction and some hard taxpayer cash of his own.
The jurors who went along with this ought to be in prison themselves along with the judge who allowed this sham to proceed and everyone in the US attorney’s office who participated in this conspiracy to deny these Americans their liberty under the color of law.
But as every single one of us knows, that will never happen because there is no such thing as “the law.” It is simply the excuse for those who run the state to do what they want with us, while it never applies to them.
Facing decades in prison, I guess they should be thankful Obama hasn’t invoked the Military Commissions Act on them.
Update: The Miami Herald has a great editorial about the inustice of this case here.
Defense lawyers believe a juror who disagreed with the jury-panel majority should not have been removed from the trial. They are fighting an uphill battle in trying to persuade U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard, who dismissed the juror, to grant a retrial. …
Two jurors were dismissed in this trial, one because of illness and the other, a black woman, whom a majority of the panel said was uncooperative.
The jurors asked that she be removed. After interviewing all of the jurors, Judge Lenard removed the woman, Juror No. 4, from the panel. In her note to the judge, the woman complained of being disrespected. No one ”respects my answers, and I feel I’m being attacked every time I open my mouth,” she wrote. She told the judge: “To me all of the negativity is directed at me.”
Maybe they’ll be offered a chance to “enlist” in the Army instead.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
Let me see if I got this straight – the U S Government has spend undoubtedly millions of dollars to convict some street crazy that walked around Miami’s Liberty City in PJs and holding a stick like it was a prophet’s staff claiming that his “magic powers” would destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago. The U S Government also convicted several other street people who joined this fool in an idiotic scheme to score some combat boots and some cash from a federal agent masquerading in the neighborhood as “Al Qaeda”. The U S Government had to seat three juries before they got enough citizens paneled to keep a straight face during the “proceedings”.
Meanwhile, the U S Supreme Court has ruled that an 89 year old blue collar guy can be extradited to Germany to be tried for war crimes during WWII. The same guy (John Demjanjuk) was tried in Israel and convicted until the truth was revealed that he was the victim of mistaken identity. To get around the inconvenience of double jeopardy, the authorities changed the scene of the crime. Taking the guy from where he wasn’t to another place where he probably also wasn’t. Watching the TV coverage, the arrested guy looked comatose in the back of an ambulance. The TV commentator, Rick Sanchez, angrily asked “I wonder how sick he really is?” Rick, at 89 years of age and having been hounded for maybe 30 years, you don’t have to fake it.
What we need in this country is some sort of ombudsman who has the provence to view such proceedings and then utter an official “Are you sh-ting me?”
agent provocateurs!
“Muslim and Arab American groups are also upset with the FBI’s decision to allegedly place an ex-convict as an informant in the Muslim American Community in Orange County, California.
The informant posed as a new convert to Islam and reportedly espoused terrorist ideology to several members of the Islamic Center of Irvine. That prompted two members of the mosque, including a man named Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, to report the informant’s inflammatory statements to the FBI and ask for a restraining order against him.
FBI officials then began investigating Mr. Niazi and asked him to become an informant, according to the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections, which has formally filed a complaint with the FBI. When Niazi refused, an agent told him he’d make his life “a living hell.” Niazi has since been arrested and charged with making false statements to gain his citizenship and failing to disclose that his sister is married to an Al Qaeda operative, according to court documents.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0325/p02s01-ussc.html
The jurors who went along with this ought to be in prison themselves along with the judge who allowed this sham to proceed and everyone in the US attorney’s office who participated in this conspiracy to deny these Americans their liberty under the color of law.
Ah, but you see, Scott, the victims of this sickening farce are what I call “poodles” (that’s from PWDL, or “People We Don’t Like”). After all, they’re Muslims, members of a religious (and probably also ethnic) minority who espouse views and embrace a culture that are alien to Jane and Joe Sixpack. As long as the victims of Amerika’s [In]Justice system are “different” from the “mainstream” that is brainless, hedonistic, apathetic, disconnected, pseudo-Christian “Middle Amerika”, then the machinery of the State is free to run roughshod over them without any objection whatsoever from Joe and Jane. The Federal Establishment damned well knows this, which is why it chooses its victims carefully, making sure to target people of “alien” background, or those whom they can accuse of acts that violate “traditional American values” that Joe and Jane hold dear and that will predispose these brainless creatures toward rubberstamping a guilty verdict. Were the “Liberty City Six” working class white guys of Polish, Irish, or Italian descent, this case would never have made it to court at all. However, once the Establishment finishes dispatching all of its “poodle” victims, then Jane and Joe will be in its gun sights. Martin Niemoeller’s famous but widely ignored poem will then hit home harder than ever.
Obama seeks to block release of abuse photos
“The pictures show mistreatment of detainees at locations beyond the infamous U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Word of Obama’s decision on Wednesday came after top military commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan expressed fears that publicizing the pictures could put their troops in danger. When the Abu Ghraib photos emerged in 2004 of grinning U.S. soldiers posing with detainees, some naked, some being held on leashes, they caused a huge anti-American backlash around the globe, particularly in the Muslim world…
..Federal appeals judges have ruled, in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, that the photos should be released. After those losses in federal court, the Justice Department concluded that any further appeal would probably be fruitless…
…On Capitol Hill, the top Republican welcomed the move.
“I agree with the president that the release of these photos would serve no purpose other than to put our troops in greater danger,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “The president made the right decision and I applaud him for it.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_pentagon_abuse_photos
Read our lips:
“WE DO NOT TORTURE”
Perhaps what makes these photos more embarrassing than others is that they show “sexual activity”; that is, US soldiers raping Iraqi men and women prisoners. Americans don’t mind violence, but do mind sex.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China