The Dove World Outreach Center (DWOC), headed by Rev. Terry Jones has already triggered violence internationally with its promise this weekend to burn copies of the Koran (Qu’ran) and prompted our military commander in Iraq to speak out that such a hateful act would put the lives of U.S. soldiers in jeopardy. Jones, however, is unmoved and is willing to sacrifice someone’s son or daughter for his publicity stunt. Now, we are learning how really creepy this group is.
The 50-family Gainesville church is headed by Jones and his wife Sylvia. Its “Academy Rulebook” was written in November 2007 by Sylvia Jones. The rulebook restricts every part of the lives of students including cutting off contact with family members. They warn “[f]amily occasions like wedding, funerals or Birthdays are no exception to this rule . . . No phone calls. Exceptions can be made under certain circumstances but only after receiving permission.” Romantic relationships are barred: “there is no need to talk at all, or even flirt!” Students must be weighed repeatedly and are barred from “eating out in restaurants.” Students are told to “wash or shower at least once a day but not more then 2 a day,” and to be sure to cleanse “Mouth, sweat areas, hair, feet hands.”
For members have accused the Jones’ of abuse and using church funds for personal purposes. They appear to be in the furniture selling business, though allegations have been raised about the use of the church for this purpose (here).
Jones, 58, is the author of “Islam Is of the Devil” and models much of his lectures on the movie “Braveheart.”
Source: here.
After consults here on the ground, I have it on reasonable authority that it’s always time for pie.
Unfortunately, yeah I do. Then I remember that someone invented pie and I am happy again b/c I realize that we have evolved – we now have pie.
jde,
Did you ever get the feeling that mankind has not evolved an inch from the slime that spawned him?
lollakatz, you’re near St. Louis? I’m across the river in St. Clair County.
John said:
No steel building will survive a high-speed strike from a 767 resulting in a fireball which started fires over a large portion of several floors. And neither the twin towers nor WTC 7 collapsed at free-fall speed on 9/11. The seismic records indicate that the WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapses were about 15-16s as was the WTC 7 collapse if you start the time at the first visible effect (movement of the east mechanical penthouse) rather than when the entire roofline started to fall (the building had already been gutted by the falling penthouse at that point).
WTC 7 fell as a result of fires touched off by damage sustained in the collapse of the north tower and a defect in column 79 (modeling showed that merely removing a small section of column 79 would be sufficient to cause the building to collapse by itself). The collapse of WTC 7 was completely consistent with the results of NIST’s modeling of the building, damage, and fire.
Do you have any specific evidence you’d like to cite or are you just making baseless claims that you cannot support?
Tom said:
The evidence suggests no such thing – there is no evidence which shows that the collapses were anything other than the natural result of the aircraft impacts. I don’t think that you can provide any valid evidence to the contrary.
You might also want to take a look at this paper:
www(dot)civil(dot)northwestern(dot)edu/people/bazant/PDFs/Papers/00%20WTC%20Collapse%20-%20What%20Did%20&%20Did%20Not%20Cause%20It.pdf
If you’re going to argue that the collapse of the twin towers involved controlled demolition of some sort, you’d better be able to refute the conclusion of the paper that:
As for the link you provided, you can find a list of the top 10 mistakes made by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth and Richard Gage here. I notice that another group from the page you linked, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, sill have a demonstrably incorrect argument about the equivalent airspeed of Egypt Air 990 on the front page of their website (not that anything else on their front page has any credibility).
As there are already a couple of threads that have been hijacked by 9/11 discussions, if you’d like to continue this, please post on this thread:
http://jonathanturley.org/2010/08/01/australian-public-schools-teaching-humans-and-dinosaurs-co-existed
Bob, I agree w/ you. It’s time for pie. LOL
jde, We have anti-burning statutes here in my county. I’d be fined and under threat of jail time for burning anything publicly. In my county I can be fined and face jail time for not having the county government designated trash hauler and people have on the presumption that no one generates zero non-recyclable trash. There’s an interesting court case about that here in St. Louis.
A judge threw out an arrest for just that saying that the county has been citing and fining home owners based on a presumption, not demonstrable fact gleaned through investigation. There was no valid probable cause. The county gets a kickback from its designated trash haulers. I digress but with a point. The county would have a different (presumed) motive and impact. They want to make money. What could the feds possibly want? What impact could their presence possibly have if not to influence me regarding federal matters, most immediately my First Amendment right?
Regarding your solicitation argument I would say here is no reason to presume that the crazy pastors motives are different than he has stated. His intent would be, absent any further information, difficult to prosecute as wishing to provoke violence by a second or third party. It’s why Sharon Angle’s ‘Second Amendment remedies’ BS hasn’t landed her in jail. In fact, as a presumptive matter Ms. Second Amendment’s language and context is more directly deserving of a presumption of solicitation than the crazy mans, her speech is more obviously threatening and a call to violence IMO. If malicious prosecution becomes the rule (and who’s to say it’s not?) perhaps she and the pastor will one day share a cell 🙂
James, I have won, as a former prosecutor, and lost, now as a defense attorney, cases where the mens rea was denied. Just because the pastor has not confessed that he is trying to incite violence does not mean that is not his intent. If a person knows that someone will in all probability react violently to a statement or an action, then the speaker’s or actor’s intent is at issue. Mr. Sapp, an associate of Pastor Jones, said that he has started carrying a gun for his protection. I think that they are trying to pick a fight and they know that burning the Quran will incite muslims to react violently. Having been on both sides, I would rather try to prove he had the intent to incite violence than to defend against it.
James M.,
The mens rea arises by coupling the intent with the warnings of repercussions given by such folks as Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
That extra knowledge adds the element of scienter.
bdaman,
Thanks for the updates.
jde,
What exactly do you think the words “incite” and “induce” mean?
The key is mens rea. When you are inciting someone to do something, you are advocating for it to occur. Subjective intent matters.
You mentioned two cases:
Brandenburg v. Ohio says “the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is [1] directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and [2] is likely to incite or produce such action.” (emphasis and [1] and [2] added).
Brandenburg doesn’t move burning the Koran outside of protected speech because, while doing so may be likely to produce imminent lawless action, i.e. [2], doing so is not advocacy at all, and is not directed at producing such imminent lawless action, i.e. [1].
U.S. v White, 610 F.3d 956, http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/tmp/0Z0XAQ63.pdf is inapplicable. In that case, whether the speech at issue was protected or not hinged on whether White’s posting was a solicitation or not. All the case says is that since that is a factual dispute, it gets past a motion to dismiss based on the indictment and goes to the jury.
“These later decisions have fashioned the principle that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation
except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
Brandenburg v. Ohio 395 U.S. 444, 1969
Ah, fuc# it; who wants pie?
Brandenburg?
Apparently Florida never heard of Schenck v. United States.
Elaine M, :-0 Brilliant vid! Thanks.
lollakatz, I may be missing something here but I am not seeing the difference between the feds showing up and the county police showing up. Wouldn’t the county police have the same ability to infringe upon your constitutional rights as the feds?
Blouise, Thanks for the shout-out. There’s way more going on here than people are seeing IMO. I’m starting to think the Administration may have a really dark horse in this race or they would have passed up any involvement. A wave of new attacks, even small ones, would serve to expand the war(s), possibly publicly into Yemen where we have been operating more or less covertly for a while. Maybe for some new domestic programs. Um, maybe I am paranoid but I don’t know if it’s possible anymore to be TOO paranoid 🙂
I’ve been enjoying your postings (and everyone else’s of course) as I catch up with this blawg. The better half has been ill (again, still) and I haven’t had time for the interwebs at any kind of participatory level.
lollakatz, yeah, you are right that there are differences with cross burning case. I think this more akin to promoting violence through solicitation, which becomes a hazy line. According to the Brandenburg case, a person can advocate violence but not solicit one to commit a violent act. I see that as a pretty thin line. When does advocating violence stop being advocacy and starts becoming solicitation of violence? Who knows? It is hard to imagine that someone could honestly believe that burning the Quran will not lead to violence. If a person knows that this is guaranteed to produce violence, then one could argue that was part of the pastor’s intent. If someone were charged under the solicitation law, then I think circumstantial evidence on the speaker’s intent to produce a violent act, despite their claims of being a mere protest, could lead to a sustainable conviction. Criminals defendants frequently say things meaning they lacked the scienter to commit the crime and they are found guilty with that defense every day. So does this pastor really intend to make muslims react violently? Who knows? The Kansas case may make a better test case.
Buckeye:
“I find it hard to accept that anyone that publicly burns a book, of any kind, is a patriot, though I’m willing to be convinced.”
——
I’m of the mind that once in the fray you are compelled to take certain actions for reasons that might have shifted in focus from your original intent. That’s why you shouldn’t get into some situations until you’ve thought about their implications. This fool said he was doing this as a religious protest and he had the right to do it. OK, he should then be true to his God and his country and that responsibility has been magnified by the attention he now has on him.
The Federal government is now, through persuasion and by bringing in the FBI, intimidation to stifle a protected right. If he’s a patriot he must resist. This is his little moment to uphold the Constitution. The public emphasis has shifted and he should have been prepared for that contingency.
If I announced that I was going to fly my flag (yes, I have one) upside down for a week to alert the folks in my subdivision to the distress the country is in due to the overt mingling of church and state, and at the end of the week was going to light it up and use it to light up a pile of bibles and neo-con books I’d be cited by the homeowners association and arrested by the County police. That’s a given.
But if the Feds show up on my front porch the emphasis has shifted. As a patriot I’d be obligated to leave them on the front porch and walk the 10 feet to my flag and fire it and the pile of books beneath it up. BECAUSE the Feds were at my door. As a act of resistance to federal interference (by their very presence) and encroachment on my Constitution. That’s just the way it is IMO.
We’ll see if this this leader is true to his god or Constitution on Saturday.
jde: “law prohibiting the cross burning as a threat would be constitutional but a law prohibiting cross burning as a message of shared ideology would not.”
I understand the argument you are making but I see a difference in the cross analogy: A cross burned for purposes of intimidation is a direst threat. It means that the victim is in danger of physical violence by the cross burners and/or the cross-burners ideological compatriots. That is not the case here, it is a protest against Muslims for all of the insane reasons that people hate entire philosophies, religions, races, etc.
While I believe this cult leader is wrong, I believe his protest has a political/religious basis and is protected. Even if the political protection is slight the prohibition against favoring one religion over another is strong. That’s why I think it is appropriate for the local government to approach this as a limited question dealing with local burning ordinances as is the case.
I think the Federal government has made an astounding blunder by injecting itself into this matter at all. They can not and should not interfere with this stupid act. Over the years many books and record albums and CD’s have been burned by various church and political groups to decry the message they (the objects) convey but as I recall the feds stayed out of it, as they should. This is a manufactured controversy.