Jim Graham wrote:
"Mr. Oines is unfortunately attempting to mislead in his statement about " Mr. Graham's innuendo about Mr. Sabri and PPL is false." Perhaps Mr. Oines was one of the outsiders brought in by PPL at the meeting in question, but I do not remember him there. (Though he could have been.) I do however remember Basim Sabri insisting that he was a member of the "CVI Development Team", making a real loud scene about it and sitting on the stage with PPL representatives. Sitting with Steve Walsh from Sabathani and Barb McCormick of PPL AS one of the "Development Team". We even got a picture of it. Now PPL might have got a little worried about that affiliation and afterwards sought to minimize it, but please do not say it was innuendo, there were well over a hundred witnesses."
EO - No, I wasn't there. However, as I said, I have spoken with those PPL employees who were there, and as I say, there is no connection - there was no connection. They have no reason to mislead to me. We have been friends and co-workers for years. If Mr. Sabri spoke to the matter (which I am told he did, to the surprise of others in attendance), then it is probably the only time that Mr. Graham has actually believed what he said - at least given Mr. Graham's rhetoric on the subject of Mr. Sabri's veracity. Sitting next to someone, in a situation where you are among the presenters at a neighborhood meeting, doesn't make you "a team".
JG - "Perhaps PPL was only using Sabri in an attempt at the takeover and misleading him about his role? Never intending him to be part of the "Team". BUT they certainly accepted Sabri as a member of the "Team" and used him as such on that night. A move I am sure PPL staff very much regretted after the 10 o'clock news showed him attempting to bribe Brian Herron. Like Mission Impossible I am sure PPL "disavowed any knowledge" of Basim after he was "caught" on camera."
EO - You can be sure of anything you like. That doesn't make it reality. Mr. Graham has no facts, other than Mr. Sabri's assertion, which in any other case Mr. Graham would no doubt find reason to challenge, and his assumptions based on that assertion. The facts are that PPL and Mr. Sabri have never collaberated - before, during or after CVI. As I said, Mr. Graham's innuendo (definition: interpretation of allegedly libelous or slanderous material) is false.
Now, as this could easily (and may already have) turn into a "they said this/they did that" situation, I will simply say that I *believe* what my friends and co-workers, people who have *never* misled me and whom I deeply respect, have said. I do not support Mr. Graham's unsubstantiated assertions and decry his continued attempts to insinuate various nefarious motives on some of the finest people I have ever known or worked with.
Having said my piece as plainly as I can in a civil manner, I will now retire from the subject.
You may fire at will, Mr. Graham...
Eric Oines Lind-Bohanon North Minneapolis
"One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means."
~ Martin Luther King Jr., Agitator
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