Thursday, February 28, 2008
EVIL CONSIDERED
It’s root causes time in the Victorian Supreme Court:
The jury in Australia’s largest terrorism case has been asked to consider the “evil” America has done, as a court judges 12 Melbourne men accused of plotting to commit “violent jihad”.
Opening the defence case today, lawyer Remy van de Wiel, QC, told the jury America had suffered an enormous blow to its pride as a result of the September 11 World Trade Center attack.
Mr Van de Wiel described the attacks as “evil and shocking”.
"But don’t forget, America has done many evil things too,” Mr van de Wiel told the court.
He also told the Victorian Supreme Court jury to be cautious about forming the opinion that Osama bin Laden, who it has heard was a hero to the leader of the Melbourne group, was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
"To say this was all orchestrated by Osama bin Laden is also very silly," he said.
"He has never claimed responsibility."
We’ll be hearing about “controlled demolitions” and Jews being warned to stay away from the WTC before this case is done. Further from van de Weasel’s address:
If you think about movies and how many of them have an Arab hero, very few portray them in a positive light, the media, commentators, documentaries. I’m not saying they are all deliberately biased but they come from a particular standpoint.
History and the concurrence of events that were happening in the background of those conversations are relevant. There was the conflict in Iraq, the conflict in Chechnya, the conflict in Afghanistan, the Sudan and Ethiopia, all involve Muslims. The media is very rarely sympathetic to them.
This guy’s a riot.
We all know 4,000 American soldiers have died in Iraq but do you ever say to yourself, how many Iraqis have died? Does the media ever tell us?
Better than that - via repetition of bogus bodycounts, the media even tells us about dead Iraqis who aren’t dead.
What we are interested in is what a person who lives in a Muslim ghetto in Melbourne says as a reaction to what’s happening to people he regards as his people.
His people, eh? The chap van de Wipe refers to has lived in Australia for nearly twenty years. Here’s a novel legal angle:
The leader of an alleged Melbourne terrorist cell could not organise a booze-up in a brewery, a defence lawyer told the Supreme Court today.