Now, the unsympathetic part: anyone with half a brain should know that engaging in fuck-the-Man fantasies that involve terrorist activities like blowing up the Sears Tower is playing with fire and liable to land himself in a world of hurt. It's real hard to be sympathetic either to such stupidity or to these particular kind of fantasies -- I live in Chicago and work in a high rise (not the Sears Tower, but I have friends who work in the Sears Tower), so this cuts a little close. But aside from any personal issues I may have, terrorism is wicked and stupid whether it is carried out by US forces in Baghdad or by real or would-be jihadis in New York, DC or Chicago.
In the days when I was doing things where the issue might arise with people I was working with rather than merely representing, we used to say that anyone who suggested any such thing was a provocateur or a cop. Seems that was true here. People should learn the lesson. I defend people who are far less sympathetic than these characters, and I don't think idiocy means that anyone should go to jail to satisfy the administrations' hunger for a successful antiterrorism prosecution. (This one probably won't go anywhere either.) But really, put brain in gear before engaging mouth.
This episode is not like the original Chicago Seven case, where serious activists were framed for things they were not responsible for in the context of a political protest which, if it got out of hand, was nonetheless right and just. (I am happy to say that one of the judges I clerked for wrote the opinion overturning their conviction -- way before my time, I should add. I'm ancirnt but not that ancient.)
--- tfast <tfast at yorku.ca> wrote:
> The Terror of the New Chicago Seven
> Filed under: Etc Etc, Cultural Crit -
> canadianobserver @ 6:44 pm Edit This
> By Goodwin Ginger
>
> Is anyone out there taking seriously the proposition
> that the seven young black men living in a storage
> facility were doing anything more than talking loud
> and talking proud as young men are want to do
> especially when being coached along by a
> professional whose job it is to get people to say
> what you want them to say? Are we really to believe
> that these young men would have been doing anything
> other than engaging in fuck-the-man fantasies in
> absence of coaching by the FBI? Are we really to
> believe that these young men which have no military
> or industrial training in explosives or indeed even
> in marksmanship and who appear also to the lack the
> means to purchase any materials of significance are
> really to be taken seriously?
>
> Yes, Yes, Yes, of course if coached appropriately by
> O'Brien,
>
> article continues:
>
>
https://canadianobserver.wordpress.com/2006/06/24/the-terror-of-the-new-chicago-seven/
>
> tfast> ___________________________________
>
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