Moussaoui: The real flip-flopper

Didn't I say Moussaoui might change his mind over time? It's all so sudden that the immediate explanation is "I don't like my sentence -- I wanted to be a martyr." But perhaps, just perhaps, the contents of his memo asking for a new trial is evidence of exactly how non-acculturated to the west communities of Africans are in Paris. It might even be a measure of the justice gap between the French system and the British one (together with its logical descendants, including that of the US).

We in the west get pretty cynical about our governments, our courts system. We've seen, often enough, things that feel like travesties, legislated injustices, people who get let off that shouldn't, people who are punished that shouldn't. But at the end of the day, the system we have in Canada, the systems in Britain, the US, Australia and other post-British countries allows for the most credible attempts anywhere on the planet for real justice to be done. We should appreciate it more than we do.

It's too bad Moussaoui didn't know what to expect. But perhaps if he had, he wouldn't have been available for recruitment by al-Qaeda in the first place.

Note to Zac: take more than your Qu`ran with you into the supermax. You'll need more than one kind of thought to keep you from going utterly nuts in there.