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British 'Shoebomber' Accomplice Jailed for 13 Years

LONDON - Today a British man who admitted to conspiring with "shoebomber" Richard Reid to blow up airliners over the Atlantic, but changed his mind before boarding his flight, was sentenced to 13 years in prison.

Saajid Badat, 25, plead guilty in February to conspiring with Reid to blow up planes in simultaneous attacks. Reid failed in his attempt to blow up an American Airlines plane in a flight from Paris to Miami on December 22, 2001, after passengers and crew overpowered him as he tried to ignite explosives in his shoe.

Badat confessed to an identical plan. He bought a ticket to fly from Manchester, UK, to Amsterdam on December 17, 2001, and then on to the United States. But he had a change of heart, he said in email to his family, and did not take the flight.

Judge Adrian Fulford gave him a 13-year sentence, saying that this was fair and just punishment for "making us all have to take off our bloody shoes in front of security personnel at airport terminals."

Reid himself was sentenced to life imprisonment by a US court in January 2003.

Subtle satire using a shortened, barely re-written, slightly altered news article by Michael Holden, Reuters, April 22, 2005. Used with permission.

How America loses face.  In the movie Hotel Rwanda there is a powerful scene in which Paul Rusesabagina, manager of the Hôtel des Mille Collines, (famous now as the brief oasis for 1200 endangered Tutsis and Hutu during the 1994 genocide), is seeking help again from the corrupt chief-of-staff of the Rwandan army, General Augustin Bizimungu, but Paul is all out of bribes. He has told the general that the Americans have been spying on Rwanda by means of a satellite; he tells the general that the Americans have him on their list as a war criminal and leader of the massacre, and he escapes being shot by the general by convincing him that he must live to tell the Americans how General Bizimungu protected the hotel. So important then was the American presence in the world, as an international envoy of moral courage and safety.

So how much further can we sink in the eyes of the world? On Tuesday the US released 17 Afghans from the Guantanamo prison, finally clearing them of terrorism charges and returning them to their country after three and a half years in detention but amid charges that they were victims of "indescribable tortures" while in American custody.[1]

American Christians seem absolutely oblivious to the kind of culture they have created. What was it the foreign journalist Jack (Joaquin Phoenix) said in Hotel Rwanda? Oh, yeah: "If people see this footage, they will go, 'Oh, God! That's horrible,' and then go back to eating their dinner."

1.  Le Devoir, April 20, 2005. News article is archived and translated into English at Truthout.org.

God is a performance artist.  On or about May 4, Ramune Gele, pregnant wife of German performance artist Winfried Witt, is expecting to give birth to their child in front of 30 spectators in Berlin's DNA Gallery—as part of a performance-art exhibition. Witt says that he wants to show "living people, perceived at the same time as object and subject through a kind of magnifying glass." Because we are unique, says Witt, man is "an existential object of art."[1]

I have a concern about this. Although I share the complaints of Germany's churches, which consider the planned performance at an art gallery both "tasteless" and a "platform for voyeurs," my issue is more substantive. My concern is that Witt is obscuring the identity of the artist in this performance. What is wrong, then, is that Witt is guilty not necessarily of a tasteless voyeurism, but surely of heresy.

I remember seeing my first performance artist in 1973, in a coffee shop in downtown Iowa City. That was the time of the visitation of Comet Kohoutek and this artist was commemorating the event by writing the world's longest poem. He had set up a long table upon which, at one end, was a large roll of paper; in his performance, he kept the paper streaming across the table as he wrote his poem, using a felt-tip marker, to commemorate the appearance of Kohoutek. I don't remember how long the poem turned out to be (i.e., in terms of paper, not stanzas), nor did I ever get to read the thing. I don't even remember his name, so don't know whether he's active in other performance art, like, for example, the talented Clarina Bezzola. I do remember the performance. The main difference between that performance and what Witt is planning is that it was never in question as to who the artist was, even if I can't remember his name.

It doesn't follow at all that man, an existential objet d'art, is himself the author of his own birth, or even of the birth process. He may be responsible for what he makes of himself, as existential philosophers maintain, but not for his existence.[2] If Witt is planning to present the birth as performance art, then he has conflated the Witt-Gele birth process as something for which they are responsible, when the plain fact is that God is the performance artist here.

1.  See Deutsche Welle, April 16, 2005. The thirty spectators of the planned performance are subscribed via the Internet. See also artnet Magazin, April 12, 2005.
2.  Those feeling bold enough to study this issue can start with Thomas Aquinas' De Ente et Essentia (Concerning Being and Essence) and then move on to Jean-Paul Sartre's L'Être et le néant (Being and Nothingness). Note especially Sartre's distinction between the Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself.