I'm as guilty as the Liberty Seven!!!

[Pab Sungenis]

I'm turning myself in. By the time you read this, I'll probably either be on my way to Gitmo, or successfully flushed by the Bush Administration down Winston Smith's Memory Hole. You see, I'm guilty of exactly the same thing the seven alleged "terraists" in Florida have been accused of.

I admit it, I've plotted crimes. I've even conspired with other people about them. I'm guilty of plans to blow up skyscrapers, rob banks, murder, wage religious war, and most recently, pull off a Columbine-style school shooting. And I've gotten about as far in all those schemes as the Liberty Seven have.

You see, I'm a writer.

That's right. I write sketches, plays, novels, and short little humorous snippets. And a number of them entail acts similar to what the Liberty Seven (as they are fast becoming known) are accused of plotting.

For my most recent novel, Rumpled Trenchcoats and Rubber Bullets (currently looking for a publisher), I meticulously laid out a plan for four boys to pull off a school shooting, take on fake identities, and escape across the Canadian border. I went through enough detail in my planning (so it would show in their planning) that I could conceivably do the same exact thing myself. Of course, I have neither the means nor the desire to do so, but I've still plotted it.

And yes, I conspired with others in this plotting. They're members of those insidious creations, writers' groups. We sat around tables, quietly sipping coffee (although not singing the Folger's "Happy Morning" song as we did so), and discussed how my boys could conceivably get away with their crime. We also discussed how one writer's doctor could successfully head off a tuleremia outbreak, and how another's protagonist could kill the man who turned her into a vampire.

These kinds of actions must not be tolerated!

What do we know about the Liberty Seven? They were seven people pissed off at George Bush and his little war of aggression, like my friends and I are. They talked theoretically about how to pull off terrorist acts. So have we. And they acted on....

...huh? They didn't act?

Well, they were stockpiling arms and bombs and....

...huh? They weren't?

Well, they were preparing to....

...huh? They hadn't made any preparations at all?

Gee, maybe I'm even more guilty than they are! Crap! Come and get me, Georgie! I'm at work right now, so I'll be easy to find.

All we really know is that they had ideas. We all have ideas. And an FBI agent, possibly even an agent provocateur, "infiltrated" their group and got wind of their schemes. He claimed to be connected to al Quaeda, and offered them help. After that, it's all hearsay. They'd done nothing but talk. My crime is worse: I committed my thoughts to paper.

Ladies and Gentlemen, barring some huge discovery (and from what we've been told, there won't be one) these seven people are guilty of nothing but thoughtcrime. When the mere thought of how to pull off a crime becomes enough of an excuse for an FBI agent to smash down your door, without knocking I might add (thanks Sammy Alito!), and haul you away, we are setting the bar dangerously low. My discussions last year with a theater friend about doing a production of Julius Caesar in modern dress and with "Caesar/Pompey" election posters in the "Bush/Cheney" font suddenly becomes plotting the assassination of our Fearless Leader.

Think twice, while you still can think. Do we really want to go down this road?

Consider it carefully, George, because by these standards you're going to have to arrest your own mother. If she is like any other pregnant woman I know of, when she first discovered she was carrying you the idea of an abortion briefly passed her mind, most likely for only a split second but passed nonetheless. That's a retroactive attempt to kill the President of the United States.

At least by the standards you're setting with the Liberty Seven, it is.

We can talk about it more when you come to pick me up. 40 West Landis Avenue, Vineland, NJ. My assistant manager is prepared to take over when you arrest me. But he's a writer, too, so maybe I'd better call in some backup. Oh, the things you have to worry about as a small businessman.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

1. kr

[DoYouEverWonder]

2. The Liberty Seven

that sounds a lot better then the Miami Seven. I like it.

[Pab Sungenis]

7. Not my creation.

Vyan used it before I did; I stole it from him.

[Tigress DEM]

3. As much as I champion liberty, I have to disagree with defending L7..

Drilling together at night... again, by itself not a crime, but combined with the attempts to obtain weapons and the (vague) plan to blow up something in Chicago is more than a "thought crime." A thought crime is thinking about something w/o really pursuing it.

Once you start trying to make connections to buy a gun and tell people you're going to take out old ladies with that stupid blue tint in their hair, you're past thought crime and into planning to commit a crime. Writing a story about people who do those things is thought crime.

If we had been able to get to the kids who did Columbine before they had gotten all their weapons together, it would have been difficult to determine if counseling would do it or if they needed to be locked up. Still the ability to foresee if they would have really done it is a hard call.. being cautious and getting people like that the help they need so we don't wind up with more American's slaughtered needlessly without going overboard is just as patriotic as defending our Constitutional rights.

If we had been able to get to McVeigh before he did Oklahoma and go through proper due process and get him curtailed by being on parole for planning and preparing to carry the crime out, many lives would have been saved.

Black & White thinking does not serve DU either.

IE: WHEN YOU SAY:
It's wrong to prosecute thought crime THEREFORE prosecuting those activities that fall way short of committing the crime is prosecuting thought crime, and it's wrong to do anything to these guys... they are totally innocent...

THAT is not a correct corollary. There are shades of grey and due process that applies to various levels of criminal behavior.

While I agree that these are much less guilty in their actual behavior than Osama or *ush himself of criminal behavior, I would recommend thoughtful action rather than knee jerk defense.

[Pab Sungenis]

4. Someone has to defend them, since the media has found them guilty.

If the government has more than they've told us, maybe then they can prove a case. From what we know already, it's hearsay pure and simple. We have to hold this case to the highest standard of proof, or it's going to set a bad precedent.

[Tigress DEM]

12. People can demand the truth without having to whitewash the facts.

Do they have enough for a case? I don't know, but it doesn't mean that I assume someone who was doing field drills in the middle of the night and talking about blowing things up is necessarily "innoncent" of any wrong doing.

Demand facts, yes.

Talk about innocent until proven guilty, yes.

But declare someone innocent simply because most of the people the government goes after these days are not guilty of the crimes they have been accused of? NO.

Look to the man who was beaten in NoLa for supposedly being drunk and disorderly and there was video proof of what happened and 20 years record to back his, "Ain't touched none of that for 20 years." Obviously innocent.

Just because these 7 had not gotten far along in any planning to merit concern by you does not mean they were innocent as the man in NoLa who was obviously being targeted and abused.

I'm just saying not to rush in saying, "These people are innocent!" if you don't have clear evidence that they are.

I myself would say, "These people are innocent until proven guilty and I want to see all the evidence before making any judements and the press should stiffle itself in order to give them a fair chance at a trial."

But I also want to know why they were out in the middle of the night practising militia type drills and talking about blowing things up. If only this much is true, there should be some monitoring program set up to keep them from heading down the path it seems they had chosen for themselves.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Tigress DEM]

13. I'm just saying don't rush to defend with the banner of "thought crimes"

The FBI did stick it's neck out and give us the down low on Gitmo and was the only govt agency to say torture was going on there.

The FBI did immediately refute the claim that there was any sort of threat in Warren Cty Ohio that justified them closing the doors to count the votes in secret.

Siebel Edmonds showed US there is a lot wrong with the FBI, but then there are people like her in it too. I kind of look at it as an agency that tries to keep its nose clean, but is always just a little bit dirty.

They DO tend to try and get more mileage out of things than they are worth, and recent changes there make me more leery, so with what you have said about possible entrapment, I would suspect that you may be right, but the argument that the things they were accused of are mere thought crimes is where I am uncomfortable jumping to innocent vs innocent until proven guilty.

How come people in the neighborhood saw them outside drilling at night? Was it an informal martial arts thing or what?

[eleny]

6. What about people who play video games - OMYGOD!!!

They actually sit there and practise terrorist acts night after night, day in and day out across America! :wow:

[tirechewer]

9. A valid fear for gamers

However, if they quickly switch over to the new "Left Behind" video games where the participants are killing humanists, and other non Christians for Christ,it will all be OK. They can all play the fascist way.;)

[Pab Sungenis]

15. Not necessarily.

In the "Left Behind" game you CAN play for Satan.

[tirechewer]

18. Does your character.....

get to wear the team T-Shirt with the picture of Cheney on it if you are playing for Satan? That one where he has his teeth bared and the spittle is kind of flying out of the side of his mouth would look great.

The whole concept of a Team Satan T-Shirt is one I am having a lot of fun with. Thank you. ;)

[Union Label]

8. K&R

I think most of us are with these neocon assholes.

[Vidar]

10. They have dibs on the Sears Tower. You can have the Empire State.

[Pab Sungenis]

16. Funny enough....

...one of my favorite books, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802141552/sr=8-1/qid=1151271097/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-6471935-4375819?ie=UTF8">Sewer, Gas, and Electic</a> by Matt Ruff, one of the characters is rebuilding the Empire State Building, which was destroyed when an airplane flew into it.

That book was first published in 1998. His latest novel is late. Maybe he's in Gitmo now, too.

"No one could have anticipated using airplanes as weapons...."

[Vidar]

17. Irony abounds. Seems to me a Mitchell B 25 did fly into

the Empire State Building circa 1940 without doing any significant damage. No jet fuel of course on a medium WWII bomber.

[ClassWarrior]

11. I know you're tossing this off as a satirical post...

...but if you can get a large enough group of writers, with some real luminaries in your midst, it could make an excellent demonstration/media event.

Vineland, huh? Your initials wouldn't be TP, would they? B-)

NGU.

[Pab Sungenis]

14. No, they aren't.

I'm not privy to a TP-initialled writer in Vineland. Unless you mean Thomas Pynchon, who never set foot in my city.