The Boston Globe

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Prosecutors say Mehanna answered the call to terrorism

Defense says Sudbury man not in Al Qaeda

The opening statements from prosecutors and Tarek Mehanna’s defense marked the official beginning of his high-profile terrorism trial, and they came with the dramatics that had been expected with the highly anticipated case.

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stuff1

Honestly, I struggle with it. My most basic instinct is that if you promote violence against the body politic, that being us, I would really like our government to stop said violence before it becomes actual. On the other hand, we have protections of free speech. But just as we acknowledge that speech has ramifications, as when someone calls "Fire" in a crowded place, calling for Jihad also has repercussions that affect us all. In this case, I will choose to err on the side of the well-intentioned and the innocent, meaning that if your free speech is meant to rally others to cause my death and the death of my loved ones, then I will respectfully suggest that you are crying "fire"in my house to cause me and mine grievous harm, and YOU ARE NOT PROTECTED BY THE LAWS THAT GUARANTEE CITIZENS THEIR RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH. Because we are a free nation, that should not dictate that we are a sacrificial lamb to the principle of free speech. This is not an instance of an American who has reasonable differences with our system, he is opposed to our chosen system and wishes to destroy it. He is a self-avowed warrior against America, us, and should stand or fall on the merits of his defense without relying on free speech as a defense, given that free speech is the last thing that he or his compatriots would wish for any of us.

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