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26 de Octubre, 2007
Teen Jailed for Bad Reading Tastes
Categorized under Ley , Literatura | Tags: Fear, war on terror
AND TO SEND A MESSAGE. Remember the case I posted on, where a teenager (turns out he was 17) was arrested for owning a copy of The Anarchist's Cookbook? Well, it turns out that while the judge claims the kid is "not radicalised" nor a "politicised Islamist," hizzoner felt comfortable sending (now) 18 year-old Abdul Patel to jail for "one charge of possessing a document likely to be useful for terrorism."
Likely to be useful!! So...watch out for those hammers in your garage. They are likely to be useful in hammering the hell out of someone. And the nails might land you in prison under this logic, too. And who KNOWS what that old Orwell book might be likely to help people bring about!
I'd just throw out the whole bookcase if I were you. It's actually patriotic, I hear, to burn them.
I do love how the BBC article explains to people what the Anarchist's Cookbook is. The article scarily sums up the hodgepodge and out of date canon as an "explosives manual detailing the construction of home-made bombs" which "was originally written for US experts and contained diagrams and drawings for improvised explosive devices."
Gotta sneak that "IED" reference in there for sure! Timely. And probably a bit more dramatic than including the parts about hypnotizing yourself (or a friend), smoking banana peels or faking your compadres out with pretend pee in their pool. And it is interesting how it is assumed so easily that Abdul Patel (I think even that name is illegal to have now) had "no reasonable excuse" for owning such a thing. (I guess the fact that books are not illegal is not "reasonable" enough.)
Sentencing Patel, Judge Rook said that the jury had cleared the teenager on the more serious charge [possessing a document for an act of terrorism] but that he had 'no reasonable excuse' for possessing documents that were 'obviously likely to be useful to a terrorist'.'You were looking after that book for someone older than you who you did not know well other than he had been an associate of your father,' said the judge.
'It may be because of that man's association with your father that you naively agreed to look after that manual.'
He said Patel had sealed the box but would have known that the title of the explosives manual was clear in large letters.
'It was clearly of current utility, even though it was published in 1991.' said Judge Rook.
'It was dangerous if it had fallen into the wrong hands. I'm not prepared to say that you are a radicalised or politicised Islamist.'
For Patel, Michael Mansfield QC argued that the teenager should not be jailed because of both his age and the nature of the offence.
But Judge Rook said that there had to be a deterrence factor in the case and that people needed to be alert to the dangers of possessing such material.
AH, and we get down to it. "People" need to be "alert to the dangers of possessing such material." Especially people like
Abdul Muneem Patel.
I'll just say one more time that I knew a lot of kids who had this book. And to my knowledge, not one of them turned out to use the book for much more than reading late nights with a sense of awe and glee. And just to see it! Most didn't look like Patel, and it wasn't 2007. But I'm betting if you were to lock up all the people who had (or have?) this book, you'd need to call in Halliburton to throw together a few of their ready-made tent prisons that they are so good at making. (Don't get any ideas.)
I do understand that crusty English judges (and juries?) could easily be scared of brown Muslim youth they find in their midst, owning a book on the Taleban, a recording by Osama-Allah-Akbar-Goldstein, and an old cult classic like The Anarchist's Cookbook. We've brought about such a culture of fear (and a culture of fearing Islam), that we can all understand that impulse, I think. But Patel is not charged for having the book on the Taleban (are they not "terrorism related"?) nor having a taped speech by Bin Laden (is he not "terrorism-related"?). But we do have a silly arrest for owning a book that is SIXTEEN YEARS OLD, and Patel is billed on the BBC News site as "guilty of having a terrorism-related explosives manual."
The Anarchist's Cookbook is NOT "a terrorism-related manual" any more than owning a box-cutter is "skyscraper-crushing-related". Are we clearing out garages of box-cutters? Why not? Did not the Saudis use them to bring down the mightiest nation's mightiest buildings? I would be far more scared of box-cutters (and Saudis!) if I were you, my good English judge and jury.
Now you've sent a kid to jail (for three whole months) who was playing with tapes of Bin Laden, a book on the Taleban and an old book on rudimentary scams, cons, and weapon-making. Let him sit in there for a while and think about things. Ooh. Tough lesson for aspiring terrorists. I can feel the tide turning now.
The 72 virgins were tempting. But those three months in jail? They sort of changed my mind about the whole jihad thing.
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Comentarios (12)
Will dijo:
Just last week I saw that book on the shelf at Barnes & Noble.
Palabras por Will spat forth on el 26 de Octubre, 2007 at 10:01 AM
nezua limón xolagrafik-jonez
dijo:
!!!! really? how funny. how fucking hilarious. as long as you are not eating slop every meal in a cell. that could make it a tiny bit harder to laugh over it.
Palabras por nezua limón xolagrafik-jonez
spat forth on el 26 de Octubre, 2007 at 10:04 AM
Rafael dijo:
Well if thats the case they should ban tis book along side the Turner Diaries. Oh wait, thats a white supremacist manual on how to destroy the goverment. Never mind.
Palabras por Rafael spat forth on el 26 de Octubre, 2007 at 10:46 AM
Kai dijo:
Yeah that book made the rounds among my friends at school when I was maybe 14 or 15. I read it all, learned a few things, tried a few experiments, chuckled a lot at the ridiculous chapter about constructing an atomic bomb; then I emerged from pubescent boyhood (mostly). One of my (white) classmates at the time, however, did lose 3 fingers building a pipe bomb; hey, in certain fields, bad stuff happens when enthusiasm outweighs competence. At my high school we also had shootings, stabbings, lethal car crashes, gang fights, overdoses, all of which involved kids of all races (trust me, this Asian American was no model minority). Yet somehow it was always the POC caught up in zero-tolerance crackdowns. The rich white kids always seemed to get off clean, they're probably running law firms and subprime mortgage companies today.
Palabras por Kai spat forth on el 26 de Octubre, 2007 at 12:53 PM
RickB dijo:
Well to prove Kai's point we did have a case of BNP people (British white supremists) caught with actual bomb materials and a plan to use them who got off at first, then got a slap on the wrist sentence. The Judge (and I am sure he was crusty) & police virtually agreed with the BNP idiots about their 'fear' of a tide of immigrants destroying the fabric of society. This also tied into a Europol survey that I found out admitted that right wing terorists are not treated as such and so get lighter treatment throughout Europe.
http://tenpercent.wordpress.com/2007/07/31/bnp-bomber-sentenced-by-a-friendly-court-police/
http://tenpercent.wordpress.com/2007/04/30/right-wing-terrorism-is-re-classed-as-extremism-and-discreetly-ignored/
Palabras por RickB spat forth on el 26 de Octubre, 2007 at 03:06 PM
RC dijo:
I know nothing about that book, really, I know absolutely nothing, never saw it on a shelf, never read about it, none of my friends ever told me about it, I swear, I know NOTHING.
And if you are going to try the waterboarding with me, you are going to get very tired of dipping, I'm more fish than human, really, blub blub.
Nez, I really think we should send that Judge a petition. There is something extremely sloppy about his reasoning.
But just because I said that, it does not mean I know ANYTHING about ANYTHING.
Good one Kai, about the subprime boys. How did you know! You are on the money there.
Palabras por RC spat forth on el 26 de Octubre, 2007 at 04:10 PM
M dijo:
Am I a geek for reading the text behind the first graphic and laughing my ass off?
Maybe America will try to pull a holier-than-thou attitude; after all, they stopped the "Reading While Brown" enforcement a couple hundred years ago (though you wouldn't know it by our educational system's condition).
Palabras por M spat forth on el 26 de Octubre, 2007 at 04:40 PM
nezua limón xolagrafik-jonez
dijo:
oh damn i forgot to tip my sombrero in your direction! thanks for the headsup. :)
Palabras por nezua limón xolagrafik-jonez
spat forth on el 26 de Octubre, 2007 at 04:51 PM
Stephen Paulger dijo:
It might be worth mentioning that there are several books and online guides that use the name "Anarchist Cookbook". I've not seen the actual printed book, but the online files seem to be what you're referring to and seem to have a different type of content to the book.
His sentence does seem harsh though.
Hasta Luego
Palabras por Stephen Paulger spat forth on el 30 de Octubre, 2007 at 06:21 AM
nezua limón xolagrafik-jonez
dijo:
hi stephen, after reading your comment i think to myself:
a) how do you know how many versions there are?
b) how do you know i intend the "online" version?
Palabras por nezua limón xolagrafik-jonez
spat forth on el 30 de Octubre, 2007 at 06:35 AM
Skye Phoenix dijo:
When I was arrested, they later searched my home. I had this book(I had over 1000 books in my library)Then the investigator brought it up in my case both for motions and sentencing. Other books she noted: Handbook of No. American Mushrooms, A Monkeywrencher's Guide to..., Big Book of Hemp,and various "anti-government" materials. Books about the Zapatistas or Che perhaps? I'm surprised the did not take my books by Marx, Goldman or Orwell...oh well soon enough.Oh, by the way, they didn't find any of the things like the C-5 (their typo for C-4 i think)or the illegal drugs, paraphenalia, loads of stolen goods and crack ZtZ and his dad told them I had.The whole search turned up nothing except this antiquated manual I've had since the 1970's!
No matter, they came up with plenty of other lies to make up for that, they couldn't plant anything because they were in a different state (NM) than where i was arrested(CO).All on the word of a bitter,revengeful ex and I hope only naive and reactionary kid who hopefully learned something by the ruination of his mother's career and life.
Can we stop pretending this is a free democracy now?
Palabras por Skye Phoenix spat forth on el 30 de Octubre, 2007 at 03:43 PM
abw dijo:
Here here, Raphael! My sentiments exactly? Why NOT arrest known white supremacists who carry the Turner Diaries! Folks would be arrested for just breathing if it wasn't a natural reference!First it was sagging pants, then it was the incidents with the Haitians at the store, and now this dumb incident with Patel. WHAT NEXT?Skye, it is no question that we are officially a pluto-cratic dictatorship-seriously. With the exception of gas chambers and mass executions,bookburnings-at least yet- we ARE there!
Palabras por abw spat forth on el 6 de Mayo, 2008 at 05:48 PM