First up, a little mood music from the maestros:
And now, today’s dose of mother-fucking outrage:
The Big News Network website reports today (April 4, 2011) that extremist US pastor Terry Jones has announced he will lead an anti-Islam rally outside the largest US mosque in Dearborn, Michigan on April 22.
The anti-Islam minister supervised the burning of the Koran — Islam’s holy book — on his church grounds in Florida on March 20.
This event led to deadly protests in Afghanistan where a score of people were killed last week.
Jones has now defiantly vowed to lead the protest in Michigan, still claiming the Koran incites violence.
This comes on top of his brazen refusal to be accountable for the havoc his stupid words and stupider deeds have already wrought:
The notorious preacher who last month oversaw the burning of a copy of the Qur’an in his Florida church after a mock hearing said anyone blaming him for provoking the mob who killed UN workers was “only making a justification” for murder. Pastor Terry Jones insisted last night that his actions bore no responsibility for the murders in Mazar-e-Sharif.
“We find it very tragic any time that someone is murdered but we do not feel any responsibility for that,” he said. “It definitely does indicate that there is a very radical element of Islam. We’d like to see the president of the United States not only condemn these actions but to call on the UN for these people and Muslim-dominated countries to be held accountable.”
Okay, this is way beyond weekly wankapedia territory now. Since at last count sixteen people were killed and over a hundred injured as a result of what this fucking bastard has said and done, his call for “these people and Muslim-dominated countries to be held accountable” is the most blatant projection. He knows damn well that it could not have happened unless he did something to provoke it. When will Terry Fucking Jones be held accountable?
And speaking of provocations and not being held accountable, guess what? He’s got further antics planned. From the same Guardian piece:
He also said he may put the Prophet Muhammad on trial in his next “day of judgment”. “It is definitely a consideration to stage a trial on the life of Muhammad in the future,” he told the Sunday Telegraph.
Hey, what a brilliant idea you got there, Ter. What say we drop you off in Kandahar first, so you can do it in an atmosphere of something other than complete impunity? If you’re going to play God and pass judgment on their prophet (something which, I note in passing, Muslims have never done to Jesus OR Moses, because those men are prophets to them as well), the least you can do is take your shrivelled little gonads in hand and face the people you blindly condemn, right where they live. That way, they can at least take out their anger on its rightful source, instead of third parties.
Sadly, this charlatan will probably rake in further donations and support for his hatemongering. Amurricans love a good hate-preacher, when all’s said and murders are done…overseas, of course, where it never touches them at home. They can wash their hands of all responsibility for it, and even join the hate-monger in saying that it’s the other guys’ fault, because they hate us for standing in the way of their global caliphate, and that the war against Those People is therefore justified!
But that’s all bullshit. There is no justifying this.
Terry Jones is a murderer. He has the blood of at least sixteen people on his hands. He ought to spend the rest of his life in a max-security federal penitentiary. Another cult leader, Charles Manson, went to prison not for killing anyone himself, but for ordering others to do it. There is thus a legal precedent here to try Terry Jones for murder. And yet there will probably be no such trial, thanks to the most grotesque possible interpretation of the First Amendment.
Meanwhile, on the flipside of said amendment, I note that no one has been able to demonstrate beyond doubt that any part of Bradley Manning’s contribution to Wikileaks, the Cablegate CD, has led to even one death in Afghanistan (or anywhere else, for that matter). Yet this brave young soldier is being driven slowly insane in the USMC brig in Quantico, with no trial in sight, and his freedom of speech is clearly not protected. Why?
They can’t call what he did espionage, because he wasn’t, by definition, spying on or for anyone else. He was an intelligence analyst who handed over copies of diplomatic cables to a news website. Since when is investigative journalism the Enemy? Since the US decided to keep official secrets without bothering to enshrine an Official Secrets Act in their laws, apparently. But since no such law exists, it could not have been broken, whether by Bradley Manning or Wikileaks!
They can’t claim he outed any agents or caused their deaths or those of civilians, because relevant names were redacted by Wikileaks’ editors, and nothing was published until well after the actions mentioned in the diplomatic cables had taken place. No troop movements were revealed in advance, and no agents or assets placed at risk. Unlike Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby, Bradley Manning outed no NOCs. He did not declare Valerie Plame “fair game”. He put nothing at risk except the US’s reputation, which is already down the shitter in most parts of the world anyway.
They can’t call what he did treason, because he made no effort to overthrow his own government, nor did he act on any other government’s behalf to help them do so. All he did was shine a light on what it was doing wrong. That’s not illegal. It is, at most, embarrassing and inconvenient to the government, like a rogue wind that keeps whipping off the Good Guy’s white Stetson and rolling it away in the dust while the guys in the black hats look on and laugh.
In short, they got nothin’. They won’t try him, because they can’t. Like Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, this whole sordid affair exists in a legal and moral vacuum. All they can do is torment Bradley Manning until he goes insane, to make an example of him: Never mess with our imperial official secrets, kiddies, or this can happen to you, too. Ain’t freedom grand? Woohoo, U-S-A.
The hypocrisies of this brand of “freedom” are never more evident than when an inflammatory preacher knowingly provokes murder and gets away with it, while a soldier who is very likely a hero to those who believe in real freedom of speech and information wastes away in a military prison, the victim of a federally mandated witch hunt.
Will Terry Jones ever suffer anything approaching the horrific consequences that Bradley Manning is facing now? And will anyone defend to the death Bradley Manning’s right to tell awful but potentially liberating truths, instead of Terry Jones’s privilege to utter murderous slanders and self-serving bullshit?
In a land where truth and justice really prevailed, the answers to those questions would be self-evident.
Terry Jones, the true face of America. I can imagine he would invite his friends to Dearborn, such as Pam Geller, Michael Savage, Fred Phelps, Rush Limbaugh…
Oh, I’m sure they’ll be there with bells on. If they’re not all pissed as hell at him for stealing their spotlights…
What should be done if we had a President with balls enough not to worry about the wingnuts calling him a Muslim, which they’re going to do anyway, is tell his Department of Justice to get a permanent injunction against this delusional moron for provoking a “Brandenburg” situation. Brandenburg said that if the speech is going to pose a provocation to an imminent lawless action, you can get your permanent injunction. The provocation is the attack on innocents that has clearly been demonstrated by his previous outrageous attacks on Islam.
After they get their permanent injunction, the judge can throw him in jail for criminal contempt if he continues to try his provocative idiocies. Preferably Gitmo since that is another promise broken by this lying sack of shit of a President that we have. Then they can strip him nekkid (you know, naked means you have no clothes on, nekkid means you have no clothes on and you’re up to something you don’t want your Mama to see.), keep Kleig lights on him all the time and play Poison, Uriah Heep and Aerosmith to him 24/7.
That should accomplish 2 things. 1. It will shut this moron up and keep our soldiers safer (who shouldn’t be there in the first place) by not enraging the Muslim population, and 2. Improve our relations with the entire Islamic world and lessen Israel’s dictating our foreign policy.
Just solved major irritants is one easy posting. I should be Ruler of the World. Or maybe Ruler of the Asylum.
Jim, that’s a terrific legal analysis! I knew about the Manson case, but Brandenburg of course went right by me. It’s even more applicable than the precedent Vince Bugliosi set with Manson, though. Whether it’s “suggesting” that you want someone killed (and your loyal cult followers then go out and do it), or whether you deliberately provoke someone else to riots, knowing that people are going to be killed, obviously you don’t get to say just any old stupid thing you like.
I’m always amazed at how many halfwits there are who think freedom of speech is an absolute right, but who then turn right around and say that Bradley Manning, of all people, should be shut away incommunicado for treason because blah, blah, blabbity blah blah. That’s all they got–they can’t name a single person his speech has killed. I can name at least sixteen whose deaths are on Terry Fucking Jones’s ugly old hands and knavish tongue, though!
I haven’t heard anything about Pastor Jones’ background… he apparently spent several years as a “missionary” in central Europe (his son speaks with what sounds like a German accent to me). His congregation seems to be an outgrowth of whatever the sect was “back in the old country” — where extreme anti-Islamicism is a more … not exactly “mainstream”, but … common element in political and religious discourse.
Yes, I seem to recall hearing that, too. I also heard that Germany kicked them out because they were becoming something of an embarrassment. Probably a liability for terrorism, too…if not doing it themselves, then certainly inviting it against ordinary Germans. Personae non gratae? No-brainer.