Liberty City 6 Convicted

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After two mistrials because of hung juries, US attorneys succeeded today in convicting five Florida men of intending to blow up the Sears Tower… with explosives and a plan provided by an undercover FBI agent. The defendants, one of whom was acquitted, were called the Liberty City 6 and they now face possible sentences of up to 70 years in prison.

The trial has been hotly debated due to lack of physical evidence, and the nascency of the terrorist plot. The defendants, who lived in a poor neighborhood and some of whom were struggling fiscally, had no means to blow up the Sears Tower: no explosives, no guns, not even a video camera to take surveillance. In fact, the plot to blow up the Tower, plus vans for travel and a camera to survey the area, came from a FBI informant who had been arrested for domestic assault. The main pieces of evidence from the prosecution seemed to be an oath to Osama bin Laden some of the defendants made, and a list of desired materials (which did not include explosives) they gave to the informant.

You can read more about the case, and other examples of pre-emptive prosecution, in our 2008 article, “The Department of Pre-Crime.”

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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