posted
British comedians are having a field day with the notion of Yanks boycotting Scotland over this. Andy Parsons suggested that the notion of Scotland with absolutely no US tourists would make the rest of the world wonder if this was the year to visit. But my favourite comment was from Frankie Boyle - "Americans boycotting Scotland is like Wayne Rooney boycotting the Large Hadron Collider!"
Da_bang80
A few sectors short of an Empire
Member # 528
posted
No U.S. tourists in Scotland? I Gotta go pack...
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
posted
Funny- people over here are calling Scotland "Terrorist Friendly" and writing editorials on how their justice system is hypicritical at best and complicit after the fact at worst- assuming Lybia really did negotiate this releae in exchange for friendly terms with the UK.
quote: Yes, the former Libyan intelligence agent is purportedly dying of cancer. But as a London Times columnist asked: Would the same Scots release Robert Black, the Scottish serial killer of young girls, if he were on death's door?
I'd have to say "Fuck No, they wouldn't.
quote:Clearly something is going on here that has little to do with compassion. Americans, who remember the Lockerbie tragedy with horror, deserve to know the real reason Megrahi was freed.
The most likely possibility falls under the heading ``business and blackmail.'' The Brits have extensive trade interests in Libya, and Megrahi had become an obstacle to them. (No one believes British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's claim that the decision rested solely with Scottish officials.) [As Saif Gadhafi, a son of Libya's leader, put it last week, ``In all commercial contracts for oil and gas with Britain, Megrahi was always on the negotiating table.'' His father, the mercurial Moammar, went out of his way to embarrass Brown, along with Queen Elizabeth and her son Prince Andrew (a regular visitor to Libya on trade missions), by thanking them publicly for their alleged role in Megrahi's release.
The British had been seeking to unload Megrahi for some time since Gadhafi's renunciation of terrorism and his scrapping of Libya's weapons of mass destruction in 2003. Gadhafi made clear that lucrative oil deals depended on Megrahi's repatriation.
Moreover, Gadhafi has been using his oil and gas wealth to blackmail Europeans into accepting his unorthodox behavior. Over the past year, the Libyan leader waged economic war against the Swiss after his son Hannibal, a reputed playboy, was briefly arrested by police in a Geneva hotel based on complaints that he had been beating his servants.
In response, Gadhafi cut off crucial oil supplies to Switzerland and made two Swiss citizens living in Tripoli virtual hostages. After the Swiss president made a groveling apology, Libya promised to restore normal relations and to let the hostages go.
British expats were threatened with similar reprisals if Megrahi died in prison, according to The London Times. So home he went.
I think you guys underestimate exactly how shitty this make all of the UK look- what's more, how it looks to the families of the victims of terrorists everywhere and the families of the fallen british soldiers that have died "fighting terrorism" that the UK sold out this way.
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Maybe. He probably didn't do it, and a deal probably was done. All the bereaved have got as much from Libya as they're ever going to get (all those billions Libya paid) so we're not going to feel bad that their sense of 'closure' is threatened. Look again at Libya's "admission of guilt" - it effectively says they're only admitting culpability because the court case said they did it. That's right up there with Kirk admitting responsibility for what Burke and Samno did! And we suffered for decades from the US' notions of what constitutes terrorism. So, make a fuss about it now, it'll soon blow over.
posted
Yeah, dont feel bad for the victims -just because the killer of their children and family members went free to a hero's welcome.
So much for compassion where it's needed.
Also, a lot of the families told Lybia to stick their reparations up their ass.
quote:And we suffered for decades from the US' notions of what constitutes terrorism. So, make a fuss about it now, it'll soon blow over.
Well there's the problem- a lot of people are defensive about whatever they think the US had wronged them on in the past and are not seeing this case clearly. There is NO dispute that this is terrorism, for pete's sake- they intentionally blew up a plane! That's pretty much covered in any definition, I'd say.
There is a lot to show the Lybians were behind it-Their admitting they were most of all: a story which remained unchanged until this release. Now they can say whatever they like.
It's amazing how the international community has used the reparations for a henious act of terrorism as an excuse to do business with this awful dictatorship. Gadafi was the major sponsor of world terrorism in the 80's but hey, he's our pal now.
Registered: Aug 2002
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Of course, Saddam Hussein was blowing people up left and right in the '80s, and he was our pal then. Just because he didn't like the Iranians. Who were also, secretly, our pals.
And let's not even get into bin Laden and the Taliban.
If you're amazed, you haven't been paying attention.
Registered: Mar 1999
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I'm not saying we dont (historicly) suck- just that we're not letting assholes go free and calling it "compassionate".
In fact, for the past eight years out government did not even know the word.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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But it's not justice- justice serves the victims, not the criminal. We dont have a "Criminal compassionate system"- we have a Criminal Justice System of governance. This one man crtainly did not act alone but letting him go free tosses aside what tiny amount of justice was meted out by the courts.
In this case, it can be argued that his impending death is a mitigating factor, but unless the Socts offer the same "compassion" for every criminal diagnosed with a terminal codition, it's all bullshit.
Bullshit disguised as compassion is still bullshit.
Please prove me wrong- find a case- any case- of a Scottish man -guilty of multiple homicides- that has gone free on such "compassionate" grounds. As the victims are likely to be Scottish (and local), the backlash for releaseing such a person would prevent it- not so here.
In this case, the international community is so eager to jump (back) into bed with Lybia that the restitution paid to some of the victim's famalies is thought of as somehow evening the scales. As though it brings people back to life after being murdered.
If I had lost someone on that plane, I'd feel betrayed, and not just disgusted with these events.
Registered: Aug 2002
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You don't have a criminal justice system either, you have a criminal vengeance system. And we're sorry to have thwarted your little don't-get-mad-get-even scheme. The guy was about to win his appeal anyway, unless the specific evidence certain to guarantee that was suppressed - again - by government order.
And Americans can hardly carp over the denial of one group of people's interests in favour of the interests of a government. That's exactly what happened in South-East Asia after World War II, when the native peoples, after being encouraged by the US to fight the Japanese with a promise of eventual independence from French Colonial rule, found that once the war was over, it suited US interests FAR better if, um, French Colonial rule was re-established.
OK, so the repercussions of that little miscalculation were a tad more severe than there being a few less Yanks staring hopefully at Loch Ness next summer, but the point is valid.
quote:And we're sorry to have thwarted your little don't-get-mad-get-even scheme
Now you're just being silly- "get-even-scheme"? If there was any intention of "getting even, it surely would have been a military response to the attack, and not just shock and ourage at the bomber's release years after the fact.
You seem to want to compare the US courts with those of Scotland as means of defending the Scottish court's decision- which is far from the norm- as though citing miscarriages of justice from in US has any bearing on this man's release- which it obviously does not. This is (thankfully) a unique case.
Seriously though, Lee, I have to ask, how do you define "Justice"? This man served less than 11 days for each person he murdered. Can you really say that is justice for the victims? People in both justice systems serve more time just for stealing money.
I've been reading up on this case quite a bit since we began this conversation and it seems only two possible causes for this guy's incarceration are likely: First- he was guilty (in part of a larger operation no doubt) and they convicted him justly, even while the other particiapnts went free.
Or
He was just a sap that the Scottish government (which seems unlikely for several reasons, despite VERY shady dealings amongst witnesses).
It seems to me that the Lybians (the world's major supporters of terrorism in the 80's and 90's) were indeed responsible and probalby acting on behalf of Iran. Forensic evidence from the crash -A circuit board fragment, found embedded in a piece of charred material, was identified as part of an electronic timer similar to that found on a Libyan intelligence agent who had been arrested 10 months previously, carrying materials for a Semtex bomb. So it's established taht Lybian agents were useing bombs of the same design. and of course, on 16 August 2003 Libya formally admitted responsibility for Pan Am Flight 103 in a letter presented to the president of the United Nations Security Council. Felicity Barringer of The New York Times said that the letter had "general language that lacked any expression of remorse" for the people killed in the bombing.[58] The letter stated that it "accepted responsibility for the actions of its officials".[59]
But it's unclear exactly how the US Attorney General and the Scottish Lord Advocate determined that Al Megrahi in particular should be charged- it's not like they picked his name from the phone book.
quote:The guy was about to win his appeal anyway, unless the specific evidence certain to guarantee that was suppressed - again - by government order.
Here's where the Scottish courts seems to have some shady goings on- and I in no way think additional evidence would be permitted, based on their past refusal.
So either the Scots have willingly supressed evidence that would aquit an innocent man or they (and the US) know he's guilty and botched the case so badly that a court would throw it out, and so deny an appeal in the cause of justice (though illegal). Add to all this, the emerging details of a possible deal for normalization of relations between Lybia and the UK, and the old "compassionate release" notion does not hold water.
Be here next week for my next book (which will be shorter than this post).
Registered: Aug 2002
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You started it. "We dont have a "Criminal compassionate system"- we have a Criminal Justice System of governance."
And, LIbYa, dammit.
Ah, yes, the circuit board. Found months after under dubious circumstances, and with a chain of custody that would get it laughed out of even a US court.
The fact that other Libyans have apparently used similar bombs is circumstantial evidence at best - it was hardly a copyrighted design.
I myself an rather puzzled as to how Big Al McGrahy came into the frame. And frame it may well have been - his whole implication in the crime rests with the identification of the Maltese shop-keeper.
For all that it was the Scottish government who tried him, it was the US and British intelligence agencies keeping evidence out of the trial. Try to remember that. It was the Scottish legal system trying to put him behind bars in the first place.
Yes, the 2003 letter failed to show remorse, and accepted responsibility for the actions of its officials. To you that's a clear admission of guilt. But to many others it's exactly the opposite. The letter says they accept responsibility because the agent has been found guilt. Simply that. And yes, they failed to show remorse. Why would they? There are millions of people in the world who. Don't. Like. America. That among their number might be a Dictator who lost an (adopted?) child, in the 1986 US air-strike intended to assassinate him, should be no more surprising (or incriminating) than the notion that a few Iraqis might fancy painting a celebratory 9/11 mural.
Teh PW
Self Impossed Exile (This Space for rent)
Member # 1203
posted
Oh Jesus Crist! E! (usually you rant about Star Trek. How you been? )
Hey! It took him ... alright, slightly less than a year for him to post again. Do he troll really that much that to make a forum run, it takes close to a year?
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