Letters to the Editor
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He was working on tree DNA
sure sounds like a tool to me. maybe he should get out more.
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A big exemption...
Someone quotes another definition of terrorism:
"The definition of terrorism is "The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological." Sounds like this fits."
Why exempt the people who write and enforce the laws?
I think it's perfectly reasonable to consider the Nazi state terrorist - and it was writing the laws, not breaking them - and the resistance non-terrorist.
Yet the quoted definition considers the resistance terrorist - since they were trying to destroy the Nazi state - and the Nazi state non-terrorist.
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If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and calls itself a duck...
As a resident of the Northwest, as a person who knows people whose work was destroyed by the hortoculture center fire, and as someone recently reminded, yet again, by the burning of the Street of Dreams, that ELF is alive and well out here, I'm really irritated by the tone that suggests that, just because an action didn't kill 3000 people, we shouldn't call it terrorism.
So they're burning down university buildings and eco-friendly homes instead of flying planes into to buildings. Their goals are the same: scare people, make the establishment look foolish, get their pet cause in the news. SO FAR, they seem to have been lucky enough to avoid killing anyone, but anyone who uses homemade pyrotechnics to blow up buildings is already making it clear that "innocent human life" is not one of their priorities.
I would ask the author of this piece to imagine if, instead of blowing up the environmentally supporting hard work of scientists, they were burning down medical clinics to stop a certain procedure, or schools, to stop a particular point of view from being taught. Would THAT count as terrorism to you, even if it didn't kill a thousand people?
If Briana Waters has been unjustly convicted, I sincerely hope that an appeals process can help release her. That doesn't change the fact that ELF is a terrorist organization, by its own design and action.
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Briana and the ELFs
It is highly likely that Briana had little or nothing to do with ELF. However it points out several issues that white middle class kids posing don't seem to understand.
First point is that while it is exciting to pretend to be a radical activist and fight "the man" in reality "the man" usually wins. Ask the ladies formerly with the SLA and Weather Underground.
Secondly white middle class kids in the US are not the hardened cadres needed to pull these feats off. They are amateurs and behave like them
Third as a fellow in the Texas Rangers once told me, "There is no one in the world who will rat a partner out faster than a white middle class college kid who has just been busted."
If she was involved with the ELF to any degree she was probably the weakest one and the one who was set up to take the fall once the thing began collapsing. It is a shame but if you decide to fight you should be ready to get hurt. White middle class kids pretending to be terrorists and activists are too soft, too undisciplined and too easy to wedge to pull something like this off, not that it should be pulled off at all. In fact, what the ELF did was wrong, criminal, against the law, counterproductive and just plain stupid. Remember kids "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."
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First, do no harm.
" the Crusades, the Inquisition, and terrorism (by the government's definition) against abortion clinics in the name of God (or is that 'caring for the rights of...unborn human beings' so it's OK?)."
-- crunchette
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Nice try. The first 2 were perpetrated by the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church picks and chooses which parts of the Bible they like. Therefore, it is a cult. God never told them to force people to become Christians. That cannot be done. It is a choice.
The FEW abortion clinic bombings were either not done by Christians, or they were misdirected Christians. We're not perfect, just forgiven. I am no more offended by them than the "doctors" (First, Do no harm) that have killed 4 million unborn babies every year for the past 36 years.
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Yes, she is a terrorist. Sheesh!
Here's the bottom line: ELF and its minions can't get what they want by democratic means, so they use violence (arson) to scare people into doing what they want. Whether or not they actually harm people is irrelevant; it's terrorism.
To quote Ed Morrissey:
When its advocates turn to violence to intimidate people into adopting their positions, then they have crossed the line from free speech to terrorism, and it strikes at the heart of democracy. The government of a free people have the duty to ensure that law-of-the-jungle tactics get stopped and carry huge consequences to the people who use them, in order to deter others from adopting them.
Briana Waters stopped being an 'activist' when she traded in picket lines for arson conspiracies, and became precisely the kind of criminal for which these laws were written. If she didn't want to do 20 years in prison, she should have stuck with the picket signs.
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she is a terrorist -- and terrorism is what?
Several letter writers have defined terrorism as trying to achieve political objectives through extra-legal means, i.e. commiting crimes to advance their socio-political cause. The flip side of that is the government trying to achive political objectives through the use of the criminal justice system. That is to say -- an arson is not just an arson, depending on the politics and motivations of the arsonist. Is this fair? Is this just? Do we want our criminal justice system to be used for such purposes? Do we want impeding traffic or disorderly conduct misdemeanors to carry 20yr sentences because the government wants to slap a political label of "terrorism" on the defendants?
I am not questioning her conviction; don't have a basis to opine on that. However, I do think that she should be treated as just another arsonist, who destroyed some amount of property.