9/11 "Mastermind" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Set For Kangaroo Court

Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, and four alleged conspirators would be tried in criminal court in New York.

Blogger Burkeman1 turned up a revealing quote from an AP reporter, who asked President Obama this question, which speaks volumes:

Q. President Obama, how can you assure the American people that a trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now that your administration has now decided will take place in a civilian court in New York, will be safe and secure, but also not result in an innocent verdict for him?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Here's the thing that I will say. I am absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice. The American people will insist on it and my administration will insist on it.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured on March 1, 2003, held in a black prison until being transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006. He was waterboarded 183 times. KSH confessed to planning the 9/11 attacks and several other actual or attempted terrorist acts in March 2007.

In any court in America, let alone the rest of the Western industrialized world, any other defendant whose confession was obtained through the coercion of unremitting torture would have been released years ago, such a confession being inadmissable. The case would never go to trial if the defendant had competent counsel. But this is the post-G. W. Bush era, now being smoothly continued by Obama.

Culture Zohn Off the C(H)uff: Roger Corman and His Oscar

Corman has always been a shrewd opportunist. He employed people like Coppola and Scorcese because he was getting nascent talent at bargain basement prices. He was not the initial distributor of the films of Fellini, Kurosawa, Truffaut, et al. He picked up the American distribution rights to their films in the '70s after some of their previous films had been commercial failures in the U.S. He got the rights cheaply when other art house distributors weren't buying, distributed them and made a handy profit.



Apart from The Intruder, which coarsely exploits the then topical issue of racial integration and isn't a very good film, none of Corman's other films has much to say about politics, including The Wild Angels and The Trip.



I've enjoyed some of Corman's films and consider him to be an intelligent fimmaker with a modicm of taste and talent, but let's not perpetuate the myth of Corman that has been created by overly fannish writers since the '70s.
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