Rapidly Morphing Message; ) Re: [greatbiggroup] Re: Battlefield Earth (more RAL for some) Re: Steve Kurtz for Art Types

Perhaps although I think Rush Limbaugh likes to fly by the seat of the
pants more. So he has less staff checking stuff. I think Moyers has people
check a bit more. So I would like to see examples of his actual factual
errors. For example did he and PBS say cut and paste Pat Robertson or some
other conservative religious leader in a bad light.

I worry I trusted Adam Curtis and BBC2 a bit much on their sources for The
Power of Nightmares, since his "thesis statement" is so strong and claims
much more authoritativeness than is usual these days when people are more
cautious about "Big Picture" types of productions and statements. But so
far all the stuff he presented about the general failure of court cases
against terrorist cells checks out. In fact it has got me to go and aask
some legal authorities "Why does it seem Federal Prosecutors often at
least get 'consolation prizes' " By that I mean they file a whole bunch
of charges and many of them very grand like "terrorism" and "bioterrorism"
and they might very well get "mail fraud" for some little mistake someone
made that is akin to not reading the whole EULA when you download
something. This does baffle me.

Because there is the case of a Buffalo Art Professor who fell afoul of
terrorism laws for having a bunch of advanced science equipment in his
house. His name is Steve Kurtz and what he and Robert Ferrel of the
University of Pittsburgh and pretty accused of is not fully reading the
EULA for the American Type Culture Collection. This is after the
governements failed to prove any bioterrorism charges.

Now if one has ever watched these Federal Trials they are very often showy
events. One side will pack the gallery with its supporters, the prosecutor
and defense will dress very fashionably etc. etc. In Kurtz's case it was
only the results of a Grand Jury but the FBI filled the gallery with
police and fire and other first responders.

In theory one can say "Well Rules and rules and if you didn't read it and
you used the mails to send it then you commited fraud, but overall it
would seem to be very easy to prove that fraud wasn't intended and very
few people in labs read all the deliveries they sign for, or all the stuff
everytime they set up with a supplier. In fact I probably signed off on a
whole bunch of poisonous substance purchases in my life without reading
the full agreement.


Anwyay the moral of this whole thing for me is that we should all be a
little more careful with things we see, hear and sign because most the
time it means nothing but sometimes very different things happen.

Have Fun,
Sends Steve

>>Note I guess I find it more laughable than alarming that someone would
>> use
> the words of a political commentator (Rush Limbaugh) as holy writ to
> comment on the work of a scientist and writer without easily looking up
> biographical material and reading the person's words. In this case I am
> pretty sure that Rush Limbaugh put false words into someone's mouth of
> that is an accurate quote of him. If this is how conservative decide how
> to think, it is uh, pretty questionable.<
>
> Yikes! Careful, Steve, what's good for Limbaugh is good for Moyers! They
> are the same kind of political ideologue, they simply sit on different
> sides
> of the fence. Quite honestly I would take anything said by either with a
> grain of salt.
>
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