Can People Be Prosecuted for Their Aspirations?

[hglord]

The Feds are now saying that the men in Florida were arrested for plans that were "more aspirational than operational." I always thought that people could only be prosecuted for what they'd actually done, not for what they want to do or think about.

Those of you who know about the law and law enforcement: is it possible to successfully prosecute people for their aspirations? If so, isn't holding aspirations against folks - even evil aspirations - dangerous to the rest of us?

The men who were arrested probably had very bad intentions, but I think the precedent of prosecuting people for their aspirations raises some other issues that scare me - perhaps more than terrorism.

[Tom Storer]

My interpretation--none of the articles I've seen have had much detail--is that these guys had jihadist-style fantasies of blowing up huge buildings and killing thousands, and the feds brought them to the point of actual conspiracy (as opposed to sitting around jawing about it) by pretending to be Al-Qaeda and encouraging their violent fantasies by offering to get them guns and money. The suspects also wanted "boots and uniforms," which kind of shows how serious these so-called terrorists were.

I think they were a nutty crew, potentially dangerous on a small scale, but about as likely to bring down the Sears Tower as I am. I'm all for stopping terrorists from acting, but I don't think any serious terrorist of any kind, let alone Al-Qaeda, would touch these guys with a ten-foot pole. But what do I know? It will be interesting to see if they end up being convicted of anything.

[John P. Cooper]

Well....maybe if they couldn't kill thousands of people at once they'd have just settled for a few hundred. No bombs or anything....just lots of slaughter with guns and rifles. Might as well let that slide.

[hglord]

It certainly sounds like a "nutty crew," perhaps seriously dangerous, and I certainly don't want to let anything "slide." I'm concerned with the precedent of prosecuting people for what they think or talk about. When does thinking/talking become conspiracy? When people say they want to buy boots and military clothing? When they put their money on the table to buy military gear? When they talk about munitions or try to get some? Or actually use them? What constitutes crossing the line?

I absolutely don't want buildings blown up or people hurt or killed, but under what conditions is it legal and proper to stop people from planning? I'm suggesting that this is a very hard question, indeed, and should not be taken lightly - out of fear of terrorism or anything else.

[Gary Sisco]

Yes, they can be prosecuted -- not constitutionally but that doesn't matter today -- since they *are* being prosecuted. For talking. A speech crime, in short. I doubt very seriously that the gummint will get convictions but clearly yes they are now prosecuting people for speech crimes.

Almost every conviction they've had since 9/11 has been on simple immigrations charges.

The whole thing would be hilarious if it were funny.

I liked the part about seven people planning to wage war on the US. All seven of 'em, huh? Full time?

I had some friends charged with sedition once. The jury acquitted them for the same reasons I'm mocking here. They called the government's charge and case absurd. They had t-shirts made for a fundraiser: Sedition Is A Thought Crime. Think About It.

[Tom Storer]

I believe concretely conspiring to kill people is legitimately considered a crime. So if the feds got word that these guys wanted to go blow up buildings and kill people, and then gave them an opportunity to demonstrate that they were willing to take it past "wouldn't it be cool to blow up the Sears Tower" and move to "yes, put in our order for bombs and boots and guns," then I would assume the would-be terrorists had made themselves guilty of conspiracy to commit terrorist acts. Of course it could also be a case of entrapment.

I don't think it should be "let slide," since (if the charges are true) these are people with murderous intent, but on the other hand it's hard to feel that the Sears Tower was ever in danger from them. Bravo if a bunch of violent loonies have been prevented from crossing the line to action, but it doesn't seem to be a great victory in the "war on terror."

[Gary Sisco]

Well, since it was an FBI agent doing the rest of the talking, I'd say entrapment is rather a good word.

People talk shit all the time. Big deal.

First of all, one has to know how to use explosives. You don't just get handed some and blow up a skyscraper. People watch too many movies and too much tv.

Conspiracy is the most bullshit of bullshit charges. It's the one pulled out when nothing else can be made to "fly." It's the like the General Article in military law. If you haven't done anything specifically illegal under the other articles, they charge with that one "for general purposes."

If talk like this is now a federal crime, there are millions of guilty Americans, let's face facts. People say shit like this all the time. I hear people say shit like that in grocery county lines.

Murderous intent is now a crime? How is intent established? How is it distinguished from talking shit?

How about Pat Buchanan's speech about going to DC with an army of peasants to lop off heads? What's the difference? He said that on worldwide television. Millions of witnesses.

I was recently investigated by the State of Vermont for telling a bureaucrat I'd "take his head," meaning of course that I'd see to his being fired. Which I will. People say shit like this all the time. So much for the 1st Amendment.

Hell, they could arrest all of the ultraright on a bogus charge like this. The entire KKK, the entire Aryan Nations, every skinhead that ever lived, and so forth.

There are entire sections of the western US where the Forest Service and other federal agencies have long ceased to even have open offices for the open hostility with which the employees are greeted -- never mind the federal laws and regulations -- and this has been the case going back more than a decade, now. How come not hundreds -- even thousands -- of arrests for the hostile language of those Americans?

No one will have to force a police state here. The people will calmly accept one. They're well on their way already.

So, the general consensus here is to wait until these folks actually built the bomb before arresting them? From what I hear, bomb building is not that complicated and directions for building one is readily available via the internet.

It's probably not a crime to own a ton or two of fertilizer. These guys could argue that they were going to set up shop and sell it to farmers, that they need munitions to protect their investment.

Naiveté is just as irresponsible as being overly cautious. A potential crime was nipped in the bud and we don't know what to do about it. We're going to haggle with political correctness while these guys rot in jail, probably. This country is certainly in a sorry state of affairs. Everybody's always pointing their fingers and blaming "others" and can't see where their own fallacies contribute to the cluster fuck.

[jesus marion joseph]

Generally speaking, when the actors take concrete steps to implement their desires, aspirations morph into conspiracy.

Originally Posted by jesus marion joseph

Generally speaking, when the actors take concrete steps to implement their desires, aspirations morph into conspiracy.

Which leads to what constitutes the actual concrete steps, their owning the material for a bomb, or putting the stuff together creating the bomb? Maybe we should wait until they actually try to detonate, or maybe en route to plant the alleged bomb(bomb? what bomb?)? [Wouldn't want to step on anybody's constitutional rights.] Maybe the fact that they have the bomb material and have communicated their intents(among themselves? with outsiders? No, that won't work, they might have been unconstitutionally setup.). I say give the fertilizer to Vietnamese farmers and let the lads go.

[claude]

I guess the FBI had better go grab Joe McPhee:

"While I was in the army, I began reading these articles about Albert Ayler, and those fights about jazz and anti-jazz and how Coltrane is destroying the world. I thought, 'I want to blow up the world like that too'." - Joe McPhee (fall 2005 signal to noise)

[crawjo]

So Gary, are you saying that it should be unconstitutional for someone to be arrested for, say, plotting to kill their wife? If I meet with a hitman and we discussed, in detail, the way in which she would be killed, and arranged payment for his services, you don't think that should be a crime?

[Vince Kargatis]

Originally Posted by hglord

I always thought that people could only be prosecuted for what they'd actually done, not for what they want to do or think about.

Just want to point out that this logic, taken to logical extreme, would require harm to be done before criminal law kicked in. Meaning, for example, that pulling the trigger of a loaded gun at someone's head would not be illegal, only the harm done afterwards - if it misfired, no foul. I expect most people would want the law to proscribe the trigger pull.

[Dr Dave]

Originally Posted by Face of the Bass

So Gary, are you saying that it should be unconstitutional for someone to be arrested for, say, plotting to kill their wife? If I meet with a hitman and we discussed, in detail, the way in which she would be killed, and arranged payment for his services, you don't think that should be a crime?

Oh, absolutely. But when the "hitman" is an informant, who gets paid to turn in people who might kill their wives, and the "hitman" has cool tips about how to do the deed, well, then, it seems a bit less concrete, no?

And when the people who pay the "hitman" are running for office on the platform that they're going to make all wives safe from being murdered by their husbands...then the husband starts to look more like a mark and less like an actual potential murderer.

[hglord]

This is the kind of discussion/consideration of the issue I'd hoped for.

Since killing al-Zarkowi (an evil thug in the Saddam mold, for sure) didn't cure all Bush's problems (foreign and domestic), he's sic'd his federal cops on suspects who might or might not be serious bad guys. This isn't a matter of "politcal correctness." It's a matter of legal correctness. The authorities don't have to wait until a trigger is pulled, but they must wait until aspiration becomes unmistakable, operational intention.

[Gary Sisco]

I don't believe people should be prosecuted for anything but *behavior.* Talk is cheap and millions talk shit, all the time.

How many times have you heard someone way "they ought to be shot." "We should just blow up the fucking place." "Kill them all and let god sort them out." And so forth.

Having been arrested and locked up for speech crimes, I have a different take on them, perhaps, than others. So, too, does the Constitution, however, which protects *minority* views and *unpopular* speech -- majority views and popular speech not requiring the Constitution's protections for obvious reasons.

My personal political views are illegal in the US to the point that holding them is reason in itself -- not acting, holding -- for the State Dept to ban non-citizens who share them entry to the country. And my own aren't welcome in Canada, nor am I if the customs people get my name and check into it.

Truth is, if you look into these things, which I do, there are huge sections of the American ultra-right who hold extremely violent views toward both the US government and the society itself -- and they have acted on them more than once. Yet, they are not being rounded up and charged with conspiracy to "make war on the US." Something, please, I'm forced to scoff at. Seven people who've actually done nothing cannot and won't be able to "war on the United States." It's an absurdity.

And approaching someone and making an offer to provide explosives is entrapment, period.

I had an Irish friend (Irish Irish, not Irish American) who started an Irish human rights organization in Vermont during the hard days of the troubles, the hunger strike and so forth. He tended bar for a living in one of Burlington's swankier restaurants that wasn't far from the federal building. Every now and then FBI guys (obviously, to the point of laughter) would come around posing and making vague offers to supply him with stuff "for his friends in Ireland" wink wink. He'd laugh at them and tell them they're welcome to drink if they like but he had a job to do so please go away otherwise. The point is, they approached him, repeatedly, trying to get him interested in buying weapons *or at least talk about doing so* with them. He himself was doing nothing but organizing events that promoted political ideas and a struggle he supported. It was *they* who were trying to turn things into violence or its potential, not he. Nevertheless, it would have been him in the lock-up, not them.

Thankfully, he was a lot smarter than they were, and more experienced. These guys were not. So now they pay. Until acquitted, which I'd wager is nearly certain.

There are sections of the right that call for civil war on a regular basis -- and are armed to the teeth -- especially race war, and they make no bones at all about considering themselves at war with the US government -- hell, they write books about it -- but they are not rounded up by the FBI and charged with anything unless they actually do something. (With the rare exception, of course, like Randy Weaver in Idaho back in Clintoid days, who was fucked with for his views and finally entrapped, while also having had his wife murdered in cold blood while holding his infant child, by an FBI sniper who put the crosshairs on her forehead and let her have it.)

The Constitution assumes that government can't be trusted, only watched and controlled. All of American political tradition has this sentiment as an underline. So do I.

Behavior is one thing. Talk another.

There is a cat in Burlington who's lunatic. He has a hate program on public-access tv where he raves violently every week. He's sent letters to the editor calling for hanging antiwar people or just shooting them out of hand as traitors. And this guy is certifiable. I had to deal with him at the shelter for many years. A real nutcase who likely will hurt someone for hate reasons someday. Very likely. Yet, he goes on about his broadcasts, week in and week out, for decades. Of course, he's white -- and don't for a second think that doesn't matter because it very much matters. A black man saying the same things on television week in and week out about white people would be in a whole other boat than that loon is in.

And it was always in the end revealed, in my several decades in the radical movement, that the people who talked the most about wanting to move into armed struggle turned out in the end to be witnesses for the prosecution -- agents provacateur, in short -- when someone finally decided to go with them into some nitwit adventure or other. This was so to at least 98% of the time. Another way they always gave themselves away was by their entire lack of interest in ideas or talking about ideas. They were always pushing for "action, action, action" (a Nazi slogan, by the way) and so forth. They got to be easily recognizable after the first couple of trials for those of us able to learn from experience.

If we're going to start locking up people in the US who talk shit, what you're talking about is a police state. And it's already much more than potentially here right now, already, and the casualness with which too many people view the Constitution makes me wonder why we don't just get rid of it and allow the government to do whatever it is its going to do, for whatever reasons, including none -- this being the same government by the way which is considered hopelessly idiotic and incompetent by most people in all other activities. What makes them think it's any less incompetent on the cop end? The FBI's history as a political cop force speaks for itself, and not very well, I have to say.

[Gary Sisco]

Another speech crime?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...la-home-nation

[patricia]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

Another speech crime?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...la-home-nation

Do you not have freedom of speech and freedom of the press anymore? What happened when I blinked??

Didn't I see somewhere, Bush being quoted as saying that he wanted Al Jazeera bombed?

Speaking of Al Jazeera, today I heard on NPR that it's coming to the good old US of A.

[patricia]

Originally Posted by jazzbluescat

Speaking of Al Jazeera, today I heard on NPR that it's coming to the good old US of A.

Refresh my memory. What is the definition of freedom of speech and freedom of the press these days in the U.S.?
If nobody listens to Al Jazeera, if it should be available in the U.S., wouldn't it fail?
The marketplace determines the success of any enterprise, including a broadcasting enterprise in a free society.
Why is there an objection, if there is indeed an objection, to Al Jazeera being available to Americans in their country?
Who exactly is opposing this project?
Why do some Americans fear a dissenting, or alternate view of current events so much?

[Slurpy]

Originally Posted by jazzbluescat

Speaking of Al Jazeera, today I heard on NPR that it's coming to the good old US of A.

Whheeeeee dough-geeee!!!

[Tom Storer]

Hell, I get Al-Jazeera on cable here in Paris. But's in Arabic! Looks like CNN in Arab garb, but since it's not subtitled, I don't watch it.

Originally Posted by patricia

Refresh my memory. What is ...Why do some Americans fear a dissenting, or alternate view of current events so much?

Al-Jazeera is arab tv that has been known to give what people perceive as biased viewpoints favoring a people that aren't exactly the most loved here in the US at the moment. It is accepted as being anti-American propaganda tv; not totally unlike some of our very own american news media.

[patricia]

The reason I asked is that there is an interesting documentary about Al Jazeera which I saw here in Canada called Control Room.
There was much of it which focussed on the run up to the war and the subsequent invasion of Iraq. The conversation among the people in the newsroom was regarding their disbelief that the Americans would invade Iraq before the U.N. inspectors could complete their work.
They felt that the invasion of Iraq was always the goal of the Americans and that the demand for inspections were simply a delaying tactic in order to get the invading forces assembled.

All the people who work in the newsroom there seemed to be rational people who report the news with the aid of legitimate, knowledgeable reporters.
They didn't seem to be wild-eyed radicals.
There was also a very disturbing section which dealt with the deliberate bombing of the Palistine hotel by the U.S. which was known to be where more than 200 international journalists stayed.
As well, extensive material about a reporter for Al Jazeera, Tarek Ayyount, who was killed while reporting on the unrest in Bagdad, by American bombs was shown.
Of course it shows the news from the Arabic standpoint, but is this one of the few things that fall into the catagory that knowing the other side is somehow harmful?
How can one have an informed opinion if they only know one side of a situation, particularly one this serious?

Google control room,jehane noujaine
Noujaine is the film-maker who assembled the documentary and the information about the doc is interesting and informative.

Originally Posted by patricia

....Of course it shows the news from the Arabic standpoint, but is this one of the few things that fall into the catagory that knowing the other side is somehow harmful?
How can one have an informed opinion if they only know one side of a situation, particularly one this serious?
.....

It's not just having another viewpoint with which to form an opinion and learning the truth. People are not fond of arab culture nor their faith at the moment and are just not interested in anything they have to say. And if they do listen, they automatically assume the report is biased[not unlike some american media]. It's about attitude, not just the obvious; e.g. Al Jazeera might report a beheading with a "deadpan"/objective presentation, we would look at the report, not just the beheading, as outrageous that AJ didn't spin it as being the horror it is, etc., not being sympathetic, at the least.
It's dangerous to generalize. But the fanatics seem to be "sprinkled" over the general population, giving the appearance of fanaticism being more wide spread than it is, IMO. So, the "better to be safe than sorry" policy is adopted.

[patricia]

It seems to me that knowing the devastation that has been visited on a population would put this whole debacle into perspective. How is it harmful for the country from which the invasion of Iraq was launched to see what their politicians are doing in their name?

Everyone was shocked and angry when 3,000 people died in the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon and in a Pensylvania field.
We here on JC had a running thread on our reaction, from almost the moment the first plane hit the towers.

But, imagine how the Iraqis feel now with more than ten times that number of deaths, countless injured people and more coming down the pike?

Considering that this isn't even retaliation for anything Iraq did, they are understandably upset.

Seeing that from the Iraqi's standpoint may open some people's eyes to what this war of choice really is and really did.

How can that be wrong?
Seeing the consequences of a single order from the Administration which brought such misery to Iraq may not be easy on delicate sensibilities.
But this is what a single decision has done to an entire country.
Death and destruction is what war is.
There is no glory.

Originally Posted by patricia

It seems to me that knowing the devastation that has been visited on a population would put this whole debacle into perspective. How is it harmful for the country from which the invasion of Iraq was launched to see what their politicians are doing in their name?

......

Huh. I haven't thought of that, exactly. I figured the general Iraqi population were sorta in "hiding," not wanting to get involved. Some might think the insurgency is our fault, that if we leave the insurgency would cease. That would be ideal but is not the case, IMO, because there are so many factions, with no strong leader/henchman to hold them together, that they will fight even if we're not there.

There's nothing wrong with different perspectives. I wonder if it's possible to get an objective viewpoint to what's going on over there(?).

[patricia]

Or here?

So, why not have both sides, or all sides and form your opinion on your analysis of them?
Has the situation become that we need to be told what to think and how to react?

Darned if I know.
I deduce what's happening from what the media states, then applying a little common sense, e.g. factoring in human nature, stress and the money trail. That'll usually give a fairly viable opinion.

[patricia]

Whatever works for you.